toward the small stage. In the main room the waiters leaned on the walls and yawned.
The bartender returned. He nodded. A minute or so later I sensed someone come out of the curtained doorway at stage left. She slid onto the stool beside me in a dead heat with a whisky sour from the bartender.
“Hello,” she said.
Her voice was deep and rough from shouting songs into noisy rooms. She wore her full work make-up, with mounds of orange-red hair piled on her head. Her body was trim and inviting in a black velvet leotard and net tights.
She smiled at me. “I’m Misty Dawn, Mr…?”
“Fortune,” I said. “I’m looking for Sammy Weiss.”
She stood up. “Get lost.”
“I want to help Sammy.”
Her eyes were black in the dim light. They might have been brown, or green, or gray if I could have seen them.
“I don’t know Sammy Weiss,” she said.
“How about a Radford? Jonathan or Walter.”
“How about the Mayor?” she said. “What are you, mister?”
“A friend of Sammy Weiss,” I said. “How about Paul Baron? He wants Weiss, too.”
“Okay, I know Paul Baron. That’s one out of four.”
“Do you know what Baron wants with Weiss?”
“I don’t even know if Paul knows the guy.”
“Yes you do,” I said. “I saw you with Weiss on Eighth Avenue last night.”
“No you didn’t,” she said, and walked away.
I watched her go. She walked nicely in that leotard. I watched until she went through the door backstage. Then I paid and left.
5
There were plenty of Radfords in the telephone book, and enough Walter Radfords, but only one Walter Radford IV. Those numerals seemed to mean a lot to the Radfords. The address was Gramercy Park.
I was in Mary’s Italian Restaurant just off Seventh Avenue when I looked up Walter Radford, and I stopped for some shrimp marinara. When I went out into the street again to find a taxi, it was dark and quiet and ten degrees colder since the snow had stopped.
The taxi dropped me in front of a new and shiny building, all glass and red brick, that was not exactly on Gramercy Park although it had the address. The lobby was elegant but small, and there was no doorman. Walter Radford IV had apartment 12. I rode the stainless steel elevator to the third floor.
There was no answer to my ringing. I looked up and down the empty corridor. The door had an ordinary spring lock, with enough gap between door and frame. I took out the stiff plastic rectangle I carry, slipped it between door and frame and against the lock, and pressed hard. I worked the rectangle. The lock gave with a click and I skinned a knuckle.
Inside I switched on the light. The risk was worth not being taken for a burglar. It was a gaudy apartment of chrome, plastic and bad modern-designed without art and selected without taste. The main room was a mess, as if it was lived in by someone who was rebelling against his mother who had made him pick up his toys and dirty clothes when he was a boy. A poker table was strewn with cards, and a toy roulette wheel on the couch was surrounded by loose chips.
I went to work looking through the chests, bookcases, table drawers, and the one desk. For what? Something to connect Walter Radford to Paul Baron or anyone else except Weiss. I didn’t find much: books about gambling; decks of cards; Playbills; dirty paper napkins with figures scrawled on them; letters that proved that the Radford- Ames family was large and that Walter had a lot of friends. From the way the letters read, the friends were from prep school and college and hadn’t changed much.
There was a small, 7-mm. Belgian automatic in a drawer. It was loaded. There was a large address book filled, mostly, with the names of men and gilt-edged business outfits. Paul Baron’s name did not appear in the address book or anywhere else. I became hypnotized by the slow reading. The sound of the elevator jerked me out of it.
I jumped to the light switch. Maybe it was someone for another apartment. It wasn’t. The footsteps stopped outside the door. I slid into the bedroom, behind the door.
The outside door opened. The lights went on. A long pause.
“Walter? Are you here, Walter?”
A woman’s voice, low. I waited. She moved and a drawer opened. I heard her pick up the telephone. I pressed against the door to try to hear. I didn’t have to try. She spoke loud and clear:
“I have a pistol. I am calling the police. You left marks on the rug. If you have no reason to be here, come out with both hands in front of you. If I don’t see your hands, I shoot.”
Her voice was quiet, cultured and steady-a finishing-school voice. She didn’t sound scared. I was. There are a lot of dangers for a one-armed man. This was one of them.
I said, loud, “I have only one hand. I’ll come out of the bedroom with my right hand out, my left shoulder forward.”
I stepped out-nervous. I showed my left side.
“Sit down,” she said, looking at my stump. “On the couch.”
I sat.
“Who are you? Who let you in? Walter?”
She had the Belgian automatic in her right hand, the telephone in her left. A young woman with a fine, classic oval face and no make-up. Chestnut hair hung long on her shoulders. Tallish, she had good legs. She probably had good hips and breasts, but the severe blue suit she wore did not display her hips, and in the suit she had nothing as obvious as breasts; she had a bosom.
The way she used Walter Radford’s first name, the fact that she had a key, and the way she looked at my empty sleeve told me who she had to be. George Ames must have described my arm.
“No, Miss Fallon,” I said. “I’m afraid I came snooping.”
“You’re the private detective Uncle George reported?”
“Dan Fortune,” I acknowledged.
“Show me,” she said, “and open your coat.”
“I don’t carry a gun,” I said, but I carefully opened both sides of my coat. Then I fished out my wallet and tossed my license to her.
She picked it up and looked at it. She did not put down the automatic, but she had put down the telephone. I felt a little better. I hadn’t wanted to face Gazzo again.
“Uncle George said the police were going to stop you.”
“I guess I talk faster than Ames,” I said. “The police can make mistakes, Miss Fallon, and they really want the truth.”
“They aren’t convinced that this Weiss creature killed Uncle Jonathan?”
“They’re convinced, but they’re willing to let me waste my time-grudgingly.”
She nodded slowly, thinking. She put the gun down on the telephone table, sat down, and lighted a cigarette.
“So you came here to investigate Walter?”
The word for Deirdre Fallon was “poised.” That was something of a surprise, since she didn’t look a day over twenty. The second word was “class.” Neat, graceful class. The third word I had in mind was “virginal,” but there was something about the way she handled her body that held me back on that word.
“I came to talk to Walter,” I said. “He wasn’t here. I decided to nose around. I’d still like to talk to Walter.”
“Walter is in North Chester at his mother’s. At least I supposed he was. When I saw those marks on the
