Steve Crawford wondered, wondered
to himself since his position at that moment precluded saying anything out
loud, anything he really wanted to say, when they, the coppers who were just
then giving him the “third degree” for the second time in his short sweet life,
going to stop picking him up for a going over every time some drop-dead dizzy
dishy dame got herself good and murdered in Manhattan, New York City, hell, the
world. Yes, Vicki was dead, very dead, murdered, found by him up in her walk- up apartment
that she shared with her sister, her older sister, Jan, when he went to pick
her up to take her to the airport, take her out of his life forever. Don’t try to make anything out of it, out of
that “forever” part like the cops in front of him tried to do and he laughed in
their faces. He explained, explained three times since you needed at least two
times with cops and the extra one was for them after they finally got it the
second time, kind of. Sure, he didn’t
like Vicki running out of him, running out on her contracts leaving him stuck,
stuck good, when Hollywood beckoned s but that was part of the business. They didn’t like that, didn’t like a dent in
their weak little set- up for him. Still he, her agent, her publicity agent,
the guy who put her in the bright lights of Broadway and a guy who was, had
been really, romantically involved with her (for public consumption mostly to
help her career, and his) for a short while, was automatically on the spot.
Again.
See a few years back, maybe four
by now, these same coppers had pulled him in for his first working over under
the bright lights at midnight when Clara, lovely Clara, his first real big
lovely meal ticket client, the one whose face launched if not a thousand ships
then a thousand opportunities, each one with his agent’s commission name on it,
had been found murdered in her apartment. Like with Vicki she was found by him
when he stopped by to take her to a job, a photo shoot, and the cops had
immediately built a frame around him as their only logical suspect, had him all
ready for the big step-off since he was known to be her lover (or one of them)
and they had been seen together all over town.
Then, out of the blue, her old boyfriend, Lenny, from back in Hoboken
had found out where she was, found out she had hit the big time, big time
singing in the Club Florian and started to be seen on fashion magazine covers,
found out she had been running around with every guy, every guy with a little
dough or some connections, who gave her an eye, and found out she wasn’t coming
back to him, no way, confessed. Lenny had
come to the big city, had some flame out argument with Clara, bopped her,
bopped her too hard, and then ran off leaving Steve as the number one fall guy.
That poor Lenny Hoboken guy when he took the big step- off never knew that it
was he, Steve Crawford, who had sent that note telling him where she was, what
she was doing with and with whom, and asking what was he going to do about it.
He omitted the part about his own little kinky sex romps with Clara from about
day one, from the time he had picked her up at Woolworth’s where she worked as
a sales clerk for nickels and dimes, took her to dinner, and that night hearing
her warble and getting his big idea about her future career before they hit the
pillows and she took him around the world. He had tired, tired quickly, of her
and her silly tantrums pretty quickly and, especially when she wanted him to
get one of his actor friends to marry her and threatened to expose him, the
actor, as her lover, something the actor’s very famous and rich wife would not
have appreciated, and desperate to get out from under wrote that note. So here
he was again under the hot lights being softened up by the “good cop,” crew with
a lot of silly leading questions waiting for the “bad cop” crew to come in and
do the heavy work.
As he listened to the cops drone,
and listened to his own half evasive answers, he thought back to Vicki and how
she had been, even more than Clara, his big time meal ticket, a ticket that he
might have been able to ride to early retirement. Then she went with another agency,
a big time agency, without telling him leaving him high and dry he was really
ticked off since he had put her up in the bright lights too. He could have
murdered her for that, but he thought he best not to mention that little fact
right then. He also thought back to how he (and his buddies, Larry and Robin)
had picked Vicki up at the end of her shift at that all night Joe & Nemo’s where
the landed after a hard night of drinking and where she was serving them off
the arm on the third shift. Hey, by the way, for anybody whose asks, tell them
you don’t find those glamorous dishes who fill the magazines at the modeling
schools, which are mainly holding areas for high- class call girls, once the
girl students know the score and have had enough of modeling off-the-rack stuff
at Macy’s, who “private” model for guys looking for kicks, but in odd-ball
places like dime stores and greasy spoons.
He, like with Clara, had seen her
potential, that night, and made a date with her for the next afternoon at here place since her sister, Jan, was
working (Larry and Robin for their own
reasons made dates with her there for later) to discuss the idea. She went wild
for it once he presented it, presented the glitter and glamour, offered to seal
the deal with him in her own way, jumped into bed with him to show what her own
way meant, showed him a couple of things he hadn’t had done to him before, and that was that. The rest until this foul
murder was New York high society and high café night life history.
Them he came in, came in like
four years ago, came in with his bad cop crew, that hard cop, Cornell, that was
all anybody called him, that hard guy who made the other coppers jump, jump and
stop drinking their coffee and eating their cadged doughnuts, for a minute.
Cornell still thought Steve had something more to do with the Clara case than he
let on, and more than he could prove. Cornell’s questions, the way he rolled
them off , bang, bang, bang, his constant calling Steve “pretty boy this and
pretty boy that” led Steve to only one
conclusion, clam up, because once again he was being fitted for the frame, for
the big step off, part two. He immediately went after Steve’s pillow talk
relationship with Vicki, and of her pillow talk relationships with Larry and Robin.
He could see where Cornell was going, the jealous lover bit. Steve thought then
how far off old Cornell was in reality, how after the first few times Vicki had
made his toes curl the magic was gone, they both had agreed on that point but
they would also keep each other warm if nothing else was around. Besides he was
having a very hush-hush and torrid off-the-record affair with Jan, who would
come over to his place in the afternoons when she got out of work. The sister,
Jan, was frankly a better lover fit and better company after sex. Vicki was so
hopped up on her career that she was a bore outside of the bed. The sister
though made him think of other stuff, little white picket fence stuff.
Cornell kept pressing the issue
for a few more hours but, since he was grasping at straws, Steve walked out of
the grilling, walked out laughing to himself about how cops really shouldn’t be
left to solve crimes, big crimes, not crimes involving women anyway, because
they don’t in their cramped and admittedly jaded little world realize that
women like sex, like to get around , as much as guys do and they always think
it’s some fast-talking guy, some pushy guy with
a quick line like him who is ready to flip out and bop somebody over
some indiscretion of some dizzy doll. Just then a uniformed cop, a cop he had
seen walking around Vicki’s neighborhood, handcuffed to Harry, Harry the night
clerk at the front desk of Vicki’s apartment building, entering the precinct
house.
The way the story went later
after his full confession was that Harry poor, Vicki love-struck, Harry had,
after seeing Steve and about five other guys come down from her apartment in
the early morning hours at various times decided to make his play, make his
play one late afternoon before he started his shift. She laughed him almost out
of the room. Mistake. Big mistake. Harry. Poor weasely Harry, didn’t like being
laughed at, laughed at by a tramp, a beautiful tramp but a tramp, and so he
bopped her, bopped her hard, no mistake he said, and a couple more for good
measure leaving her a heap on the floor. End of story.
Steve thought, thought hard,
after walking out of the precinct station after hearing Harry’s story, about
leaving the unfriendly confines of Manhattan and moving to, say, Atlantic City,
where he wouldn’t have to face the third degree by every hard-nosed cop in the
city when some beautiful did some guy wrong, or some guy though he had been
wronged. Just then, as he crossed the street to his car, he saw her, a vision, a sure fire thing, the
next big thing, working in the front window of
Miss Millie’s Dress Shop putting up a display…
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