The Sincerest Form of Slattery
Ralph McInerny

1

"May I call you Ishmael?"
Her hair was long and straight, sun-bleached rather than natural blond, and her face with its high molded cheeks was done to a turn. Her sea blue eyes looked me right in the eyes but her tanned flesh was as out of place in this climate as the outfit she wore. She had opened her coat, as if hearing a drumbeat or a snarling sax, squirmed out of it and then let it fall back over the chair I pointed her to. Underneath was beachwear, a striped purple and white billowy blouse that tied low on her slim hips, and what used to be called pedal pushers. She was freckled as well as deeply tanned. Obviously a dame who didn't know enough to come in out of the sun but she had walked out of a snowstorm into my office and asked if she could call me Ishmael.
"Not on the first date."
Her smile revealed long strong teeth. Even at my age, my first thought was how we might run away and live in sin together. Her smile faded and it was as if the thermostat had been lowered.
"Someone is trying to kill me."
"Would you like some coffee?"
She was shocked. "Do you know what coffee does to you?"
"It keeps me warm and awake. And it goes well with cigarettes."
"You smoke too?"
"Only when lit." I took out a crushed pack of Luckies, then put them away. They're a prop. I had quit. Just that morning. I couldn't stop coughing while I shaved and my wounded face looked like it. But what could I lose? This doll had obviously come to the wrong office and after some harmless badinage would realize her mistake and go.
"Why did you come to me?"
"I just flew in from Sarasota."
"I wondered about the fur coat."
She was maybe in her early twenties but looked like a college freshman—to be taken inclusively—when she smiled.
"It's imitation. Even so, I feel bad wearing it."
"You'd freeze without it."
"I can't stand the thought of killing animals for their skin."
"That's why I go barefoot."
She suppressed her smile and shook her head. "You're as bad as he said."
"Who recommended me?"
"Oh it wasn't a recommendation. I sat next to a policeman on the plane and asked him about private investigators."
At least it hadn't been just another dissatisfied client. "What was his name?"
"Brunswick."
"He's an old friend." I took out the Luckies, then put them away again.
"He sounded more like an enemy," she said.
"It's his manner. An affectation. He envies me."
"He said you were the worst private investigator he knows."
"So you decided to come to me."
"Can I be honest?"
Not an auspicious beginning, but I have learned to take the cards I am dealt. When you have the name Ishmael Slattery you had better be good or, if not good, philosophical. In any case, I was doing what I liked, it was better than working and, when things got very rough, I could fall back on Gwen Probst. Not literally. Although even literally she would at least try to break my fall. I had been very aware of Gwen's presence in the next office ever since the blonde walked in. Put them side by side and it wouldn't be Before and After. More like Now and Never.
The blonde's name was Dagmar West. Of course that was her professional name.
"Like yours."
"Mine's real."
"Come on. Ishy-male?"
"Ishmael. Two and a half syllables. What's your real name?"
"Mary Milosovich."
She had grown up in Chicago, attended the parish school, Transfiguration, then a public high school which had been preparation for life in the real world. She had come to think of school as combat training. No wonder she left as quickly as she could. To model. I waited. We live in a world of euphemisms.
"Model as in escort?"
Her teeth closed on her lower lip and she nodded. I got up and closed the door to Gwen's office, refilled my cup, got settled. "Tell me about it."
Her story was a familiar one, but however trite, it happens only once to each victim and the fact that it has happened to others would not cushion the blow.
"He said with my looks I should be on television. And I believed him."
He would start her small, he said, as one of the girls on quiz shows who carried cards around or turned over letters, then she would go on to be the sidekick of someone like Regis Philbin. After that, who knows? In the meantime, just to get used to an audience, he had booked her into this club as a dancer.
"A stripper."
She heaved a sigh. Even in a smoky, boozy, ill-lit dive, she would be something to look at. I asked her about the smoke.
"I wore a mask."
"Sure."
"I was sort of the cat woman and wore a cat's head. So I bought one of those masks painters wear."
"What was your manager's name?"
"Joe Derringer."
"Local?"
"More like an express."
"You didn't get that tan in a smoky club."
"He also has tanning parlors."
"Ah."
Between dancing weeks, Derringer had put her to work in the Spumento Spa. "I wore a black wig and said I was Japanese. My specialty was walking barefoot on people's backs."
When Derringer flew her to Florida, there was no longer any equivocation about her job.
"It took a while, but finally I figured it out. Am I dumb? Up until a week ago, I still thought all this was leading to a television career."
A throat cleared in the next room, very close. Gwen must be crouched by the door, listening. Unnecessary, really, since she bugged my office in order to record just such occasions as this, infrequent as, alas, they were.
"You said your life is being threatened."
"He said he would kill me if I ever tried to quit."
"Nonsense. This is America. We've only lost one war. Lincoln freed the slaves."
"You from the South?"
"Do I look Vietnamese?"
"Joe said Lincoln only freed the blacks."
"No Japanese?"
"He meant it."
"You want protection, is that it?" I sat upright, eased my shoulders back, gave her a glimpse of my chest expansion.
"I want to get out of town."
"This isn't a travel office."
"I need a new identification."
"Why did you come back here from Florida?"
My question puzzled her. "Chicago's my home town."
"You just got back and you want to leave?"
"What makes you think I just got back?"
"Your clothes?"
"I like to be comfortable."
"What do you want?"
"I want to stop being me."
The break in the lighting beneath her door indicated that Gwen wasn't missing a word of this. She wanted it live as well as a taped rerun. I pressed her buzzer and could hear her leap in surprise. The door opened almost immediately.
"Did you get all that?"
Gwen surveyed the considerable proportions of Dagmar West, no doubt thinking it would be difficult to disguise such endowments.
"What's the problem?"
I gave her a short version, knowing she had heard the long.
"No problem," Gwen said, as if we did a brisk business in wetbacks. "Dye the hair, change your name, get you appropriate ID, maybe stash you in a convent for a while."
"A convent!"
"You won't have to take vows."
"After where I've been, you want me to live in a convent?"
I suggested to Gwen that she come up with something better. And I wanted anything and everything she could dig up on Joe Derringer.
"It's already on your computer."
So she had been doing more than eavesdropping since Dagmar arrived. Gwen had pulled up from a database a dossier on Derringer. I perused it while the two ladies set off to the ladies'.
"Can I leave this here?" Dagmar asked.
It was a blue canvas sports bag she had carried slung over the imitation fur covering her shoulder.
"Sure."
She tossed it to me. I stood to catch it and was driven back to the wall.
"What's in it?" I eased it to the floor.
"Costumes," she said prettily. "And things."
I felt the perverse tremor felt by members of the British cabinet at the thought of lingerie.
Half an hour later, they had not returned, so I went down the hall to knock on the door. But the door of the powder room was open.
"Gwen!"
My voice echoed through the suite. Dark thoughts ran through my mind. A jealous Gwen had taken Dagmar out and dropped her off the bridge into the Chicago River. With her bosom, she would float. The ringing phone took me back to my desk.
"We got both of them."
"The left and the right?"
"The blonde and your office boy."
"That's no office boy. That's a dame."
"She fought like a man. Go to the public phone on the corner and wait."
The phone slammed in my ear. From the window I looked out at snow falling on Chicago. What kind of villain was he anyway, choosing an outdoor booth in this kind of weather? I sensed I was up against a ruthless adversary. How painful it was to think of Mary Milosovich, aka Dagmar West, kidnapped. And Gwen too, sort of.

2

I brought my car around and parked within hearing range of the outside phone and, using my car phone, called Brunswick.
"The Inspector is busy. Would you care to leave a message?"
"Tell him I represent the blonde from Sarasota."
"How do you spell that?"
"B-l-o-n..."
Brunswick came on, his tone testy. "Is that you, Slattery?"
"Thanks for the referral."
"What's this about Sarasota?"
"Did you come right from Midway to the office?"
"I've been back a week. That blonde really come to see you?"
"Just today."
"I'm surprised she came at all after what I told her."
"Why did you tell her about me?"
"As a warning."
"Well, now she's missing."
"She shouldn't be hard to find."
"They snatched Gwen too."
"Well, that rules out White Slavery. How long ago was this?"
I looked at my watch. I shook it. The battery must be dead. "Minutes ago. I am parked by an outdoor phone awaiting further instructions."
"Well, keep me posted."
He actually hung up. I angrily punched redial but just then the pay phone began to ring. On the sidewalk, pedestrians paused and looked at it, then looked at one another. I clambered out of the car and grabbed the instrument just before another hand closed over mine.
"It's for me," I explained.
His was an evil grin. The teeth he still had would soon go the way of those he had lost. "How can you tell?"
"Count the rings."
While he considered that, I said into the phone, "Slattery."
"Have you called the cops?" It was the same voice.
"Are you crazy?"
"I want you to call the cops. I want you to tell them everything. Got that?"
"What about the girls?"
Once more the phone was unceremoniously slammed in my ear. The tooth-impaired man had been loitering while I talked, and now came up to me.
"Are you Slattery?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Derringer wants to see you."
His mouth was closed but one incisor insisted on taking the air. His bloodshot eyes had the unfocused look of one who has kept reality at bay for most of his life. Was it plausible that Joe Derringer would use this derelict as his messenger? But if this man was from Derringer, who was that on the phone? The derelict was tugging at my sleeve.
"Just a minute. I've got to make a call."
That's when I realized he was carrying a knife. He put the tip of it shakily against my midsection. The fact that he looked new to surgery made him more menacing rather than less.
"Now."
"That's my car."
"We're walking."
"I can't just leave it there."
"We'll take care of it."
"You touch that car and..."
I could feel the tip of the blade through my waistcoat. He made a head feint, indicating that I should start walking. I did. I swung down the middle of the walk with my derelict escort puffing to keep up with me. I swung my arms like a British subaltern and tried to engage the eyes of those I passed. That was easy enough, but conveying to them that I was being taken somewhere against my will was harder. Gwen had been nagging me about getting out of this neighborhood but where was I going to get offices like mine for four hundred a month?
"You pay four hundred a month for this?" Gwen had said, looking around with curled lip. She is independently wealthy, through no fault of her own, but works with me because she has designs on my body. No, that isn't fair. Gwen thinks in terms of permanence. It told against her that she would want to marry me but it also tells you why I am unlikely to acquiesce.
Just when I had decided that Gwen was right about the lack of solidarity among my neighbors, I saw the patrol car on the opposite side of the street. I turned to see if my toothless escort had seen it. He was nowhere in sight. I craned my neck to look over the pedestrians, but there was no sign of the derelict.
I am still a young man, but there are times when my memory tricks me. Have you ever arrived at work and been unable to recall the drive that brought you there? Have you ever found yourself unable to remember whose deal it is? I found myself wondering if I had imagined that hand closing on mine when I picked up the outside phone. But I knew I could not have imagined his jack o'lantern grin.
The patrol car executed a screeching U-turn, its siren growling, but this did not stop drivers from making honking comments on the maneuver. Brunswick hopped out and Gwen was with him.
"They let me go," she said, clutching at my arm. "They dropped me off at the precinct."
"Derringer wants you to know he kidnapped Dagmar," I told Brunswick.
The inspector wore a tweed jacket, a denim shirt and a western tie. He was telling the cops to make the pedestrians move along. The patrol car had climbed the curb before coming to a stop and was undeniably something to excite curiosity. Gwen was babbling to me of her ordeal. Thank God the kidnappers had not realized they had an heiress as well as Dagmar in their clutches. But would they have chosen differently if they had known? My eye crept up the street.
"My car's missing," I cried.
"You called me to report a missing car?"
"I called you from the car. It was parked there, by that phone booth."
"Maybe it was ticketed and towed."
I knew better. In my mind's eye I saw the toothless derelict at the wheel of my car, going pell-mell God knows where. To Derringer? But he had said Derringer wanted to see me, he had pressed a knife against my tum-tum.
"You need a good cup of tea," I said solicitously to Gwen. "Will you excuse us, Inspector?"
"What kind of tea?"
"Oolong. You wouldn't like it."
"It's been too long since I've had some."
He dismissed the patrol car and the three of us went back up the sidewalk toward my building. We were twenty yards from it when the explosion rocked the street.
It was ahead of us. I began to run. But thinking better of it I stopped, turned and started back toward the explosion, hurrying to catch up with Gwen. Brunswick, rooted to the sidewalk, watched me go by.
"My office," I shouted.
Smoke was rolling from a pair of windows on the fourth floor. It was my office. Gwen darted into the building. When I came in, the lights above the elevator indicated it was on the rise. I entered the stairway and began to take them two at a time all the way to 2. I settled for a step at a time from 2 to 3. I slowed to a walk. On the landing between 3 and 4, I stopped, huffing and puffing, my heart pounding in my rib cage. I pulled myself up the final flight and stumbled into the smoke-filled hallway.
"Gwen," I called. "Gwen."
What had been the door of my office had been blown across the hall, sucking furniture after it. Papers were everywhere. I stood and looked into the haze. Gwen appeared, coming toward me.
"My office is all right. Yours isn't."
"Dagmar's sports bag," I said.
I stared into the smoke. Below in the street, there was the sound of fire engines. My office was torn all to hell.
"I have all the records backed up," Gwen said reassuringly. "There wasn't anything valuable in here."
"Not with me gone."
She put a hand on my arm and squeezed. I felt the intimation of a surge of equivocal affection for my partner.
Brunswick arrived, and then the firemen, lustily laying about them with axes. Gwen stood in the doorway of her office, arms outspread, and dared them to enter. When the inviolability of her workspace was established, she joined Brunswick and me.
"This might be a good time to retire," Brunswick said, lighting a cigar.
"This is a No Smoking zone," I said, my eyes smarting from the cloud still rolling from my office. From inside came the sound of ripping and tearing as public servants saved my property by destroying it.
"Let's get out of here," Gwen suggested.
"Not until I find out what happened."
Gwen took one of my arms and Brunswick the other and I was led away to the elevator.
In a nearby saloon, over corned beef and cabbage and a shared pitcher of beer, we reviewed the day.
Out of the cold had come Mary Milosovich, clad in summer clothes and an imitation fur, claiming her life was in danger. She had heard of me from Brunswick.
"That was a week ago," Brunswick said, puffing on his cigar while Gwen fanned away the smoke with a menu.
"A flight from Florida."
"Is that what she said?"
"Isn't that how it happened?"
"What would I be doing in Florida this time of year?"
"Getting warm?"
"She's talking about Sarasota, Minnesota. That's the last place she worked for Derringer."
"She told you about Derringer?"
"It helped pass the time."
"On the plane?"
"On the CTA from O'Hare. I had put my wife on a plane and was returning to the city. She sat next to me."
"What was she wearing?"
The garb he described was the garb she had been wearing when she came to my office.
"A week ago?"
Brunswick nodded. "How's the corned beef?"
"What's she been doing for a week?"
"Probably dancing in Derringer's dive in Old Town."
"Did she say she was going there?"
"She said she was going to kill herself."
Gwen sat back, horrified. "What did you tell her?"
"That's when I thought of you, Slattery. This dame didn't know what down was. I figured talking to you would cheer her up."
"Her sports bag must have been full of explosives," Gwen said.
"But why?"
"Don't assume she meant to leave it there. Remember we were kidnapped."
Brunswick asked to hear about that.
"She went in first and I waited. When it was my turn I heard a scuffle outside. By the time I got the door open, they were dragging her into the stairwell. I went after them."
"Them?"
One of her assailants sounded like the derelict with the jack o'lantern smile with whom I had dealt at the outdoor phone booth.
"He said Derringer wanted to see me," I said. "He pulled a knife. I walked half a block before I realized he wasn't behind me."
Brunswick found this amusing. His laughter shook the ash from his cigar and it dropped to the tabletop, retaining the shape of the bit of cigar, a corpse whose soul has fled.
"Was the toothless man working for or against Derringer?" Gwen asked.
"Ditto for Dagmar," I said.
Brunswick pushed back from the table. "Close your office, go to Florida, sit in the sun."
"After someone blew up my office?"
"Gwen may be right. It was probably an accident."
He left without paying for his share of the beer. Gwen brushed the cigar ash from the table.
"He's right, Ish. We should get out of here, take a trip..."
Whatever attraction such a cowardly exit might have was dimmed by the thought of Gwen in a bikini, her stick figure casting a minimum shadow on the Florida sands.
"I'm going to see Derringer."
She gripped my arm. "No."
I patted her hand then pried it loose from my arm, a grim determined look on my face. Derringer's place in Old Town boasted 24-Hour Nudes. It had been months since I had been there.

3

The music was taped, the volume an assault on the ear; the ill-lit place pulsed with its savage rhythm. On the stage behind the bar a girl wearing pasties and the figment of a sequined fig leaf writhed as if in passion to the music's beat. The lights trained on her were solid with serpentine smoke. I went among the largely abandoned tables toward the silhouetted customers at the bar. The bartender was half-turned toward the dancer, watching her antics with jaded disinterest.
The music crescendoed, the dancer went into a frenzy of simulated passion involving a pole which she also used to pivot herself offstage when finally the music gave way to a silence punctuated with feeble applause from the men at the bar. I took a stool and assumed the expression of a gawking tourist.
"Hi, Slattery," the bartender said.
"I don't know you."
"Derringer wants to see you."
"Yeah?"
Abruptly music began again, as loud as before. Another wench was on the runway, apparently in heat. A man with a face that would have given Darwin joy stood beside me. He took me firmly by the arm, eased me off my stool and propelled me at an undignified pace through the murky atmosphere to an office in the rear. I was pushed inside. When the door closed behind me I realized I was in the john. Only there weren't any urinals. The sound of flushing from one of the stalls filled me with panic. I turned and grabbed the door but it was locked.
"Thanks for coming, Ishy-male."
I turned to face Dagmar West, emerging from the stall. She shut the door behind her. It was impossible to think of her as Mary Milosovich in the outfit she wore.
"I can usually be found in the ladies' room," I said.
"No one will ever suspect we're meeting here."
"Derringer wants to see me."
"The bartender told you that."
I nodded. She nodded.
"That's what he was supposed to say."
"Isn't it true?"
She hesitated, then stepped aside and opened the stall door. A man with a glassy stare sat on the stool, slumped sideways so that his shoulder leaned against the wall. I turned my eyes to Dagmar.
"Meet the late Joe Derringer."
"What happened?"
"He's been shot."
"In the ladies' room?"
"It was where we met."
"Who did it?"
She opened her purse and took a gun from it, holding it by the barrel. She handed it to me.
"I found this beside the body."
"When?"
"Just before I went to see you."
"You left a gym bag in my office."
"I'll pick it up later."
"It had a bomb in it."
In the circumstances her throaty laughter seemed in bad taste. I told her about the shambles my office was in. A frown formed on her face. A knock on the door transformed her. She began to scream and to back away from me. The pounding on the door became louder. I looked at the door and then at the screaming Dagmar. The sound of smashing wood and fittings becoming unmoored told me we had visitors. Brunswick stepped into the room. He stopped abruptly and raised his arms. I realized I was still holding the gun Dagmar had handed me.
"Put that down, you idiot."
But the weapon gave me a sense of power. Disrespectful as Brunswick's tone was, I could see the fear in his eyes. Dagmar slithered past me, still whimpering, and sought refuge with Brunswick. Through the shattered door the bartender and several of the ecdysiasts were visible. Brunswick removed his jacket and was about to drape it over Dagmar's frail shoulders when suddenly he threw it at me. He came right along with it and I was driven across the room. When I hit the stall door, it popped open. Brunswick pulled me out of the way and stared at Derringer. "Is he finished?"
"Well, I heard the sound of flushing when I came in." 
"He's dead," Dagmar wailed. "And he did it." She was pointing at me. I looked down at the gun I held. I began to hand it to Brunswick but he caught me with a chopping movement of his hand and I sank boneless to the tile floor.
My situation was patiently explained to me by Brunswick in an interrogation room downtown. I was a hired assassin in the pay of those who wished to wrest control of Derringer's skin joints from him. He was betting that the gun he had taken from me in the women's room of the Ooo la la was the weapon that had killed Derringer. My prints were all over it. Dagmar had pretended to be my accomplice but would now do whatever was required to make me pay my debt to society.
"Do you believe that?" I did not sound as incredulous as I sought to.
He looked impassively at me. "It's dumb enough to be true."
"Brunswick, I am not that dumb. You sent that girl to me. She left a bomb in my office."
"Why would she want to kill you?"
"Have you asked her that?"
Brunswick laid his hands flat on the table between us. "She said she doesn't know anything about a bomb."
"You saw my office."
"She thinks it was meant for her."
"For her!"
I explained to Brunswick that Dagmar had asked to leave her bag in my office.
"When she tossed it to me, I nearly dropped it, it was so heavy."
"Dynamite isn't heavy."
"Is that what it was?"
"Pieces of what may have been a timing device were found."
"There!"
"You wouldn't be the first mad bomber who was his own victim."
"I was with you in the street."
"You were smart enough to get out of there before it blew."
I had the feeling he was toying with me. We were old enemies, to be sure. Once he had been my superior, but I had left the force to become a freelance defender of justice, the kind most despised by my former colleagues, a private eye. Brunswick and I had crossed swords both before and after my declaration of independence. He was a bastard but he was fair.
He left me alone in the empty interrogation room, but the place seemed full of unanswered questions. I tried not to think, assuming I was being observed through one-way glass. At the mirror, I straightened my tie, then winked and minced across the room.
"What's wrong with you?" Brunswick said, coming in.
"Sciatica."
"Maybe you can get a job in one of Derringer's joints after you've served your sentence."
"Brunswick, I did not bomb my own office. I did not shoot Derringer."
"Well, you didn't shoot Derringer anyway."
The bullets in the body had not come from the gun Dagmar had foisted on me. I was free.
"What brought you to the Ooo la la by the way?" I asked Brunswick.
"A routine raid."
"Ha. You, raiding skin joints?"
"I got a call."
"Saying what?"
He rubbed beneath his chin as if to firm it up. "It was Derringer. He said his life was being threatened. He also said he had some new girls and I was welcome as his guest."
"He sounded worried?"
"Well you know how unreliable new girls can be."
"I was set up, Brunswick."
"Why you?"
"That's what I intend to find out."
When he checked me out, Gwen was waiting for me. And Dagmar. The dancer had her false fur draped over her shoulders and beneath it she wore the kind of simple dress my sister might have worn. Or Gwen. She looked at me warily.
"Did he confess?" she asked Brunswick.
"I'm waiting for absolution."
"You shouldn't joke about things like that."
"You shouldn't tell lies about me."
Her face took on a sad expression, directed at Brunswick.
"It all started when you recommended Mr. Slattery to me."
"You call that a recommendation?"
"What do you call it?"
"Fair warning."
Dagmar turned to me. "Can we talk?"
"We seem to be."
"I mean just us."
Gwen squared her shoulders and came between us. "I wish we'd stashed you in a convent."
The idea didn't seem as improbable now, Dagmar being dressed as she was. The simple frock made few concessions to the natural undulations of her body. She was almost as shapeless as Gwen. Her face was free of makeup and the reddish hair that had been covered with a wig was cropped closer to her head. I learned that, like me, she had been in custody.
"What for?"
"Material witness. I told them I had seen you shoot Derringer."
"Thanks."
"It was every man for himself."
In order to speak to me, she kept moving her head, trying to avoid the intervening Gwen.
I reasonably asked, "If neither of us shot him, who did?"
"Where can we be alone?"
Gwen's right lifted and caught Dagmar under the chin. The ecdysiast lifted with the uppercut, her eyes glazed and she sank to the floor. I scooted around Gwen and tried to get my arms under Dagmar's but my aim was off. Gwen's wasn't. She caught me on the side of the jaw. My last memory was of sinking into the plush bounty of Dagmar.

4

I awoke in my own bed. I don't know how I got home. Gwen sat beside the bed, her expression one of rueful concern.
"I'm sorry I hit you."
I said nothing. How could I acknowledge that a woman had knocked me cold, let alone a ninety-pound frail like Gwen?
"I must have fainted," I finally said, just to say something. "Where's Dagmar?"
"I told her she is no longer our client."
"All she wanted was to get away."
"But with what?"
I realized that Gwen thought Dagmar had designs on me. Undesirable as Gwen's hankering for me was, it conferred on me a desirability that she might have been alone in noticing. But she assumed every other woman was after me as well. Perhaps a case could be made for this...
I was distracted from this pleasant line of thought by Gwen's review of what had happened. Dagmar had come to see me after Brunswick had mentioned my name. She left a sports bag full of explosives when she and Gwen went to the john.
"The kidnapping was obviously staged. Those two men were her accomplices."
"In what?"
She closed her eyes and shook her head. "I refuse to think about it. That girl will come to no good, but she is no longer our client."
A chance of redemption glimmered on the horizon of my still wobbly mind. Gwen had put a lot into that punch. My manner misled her. She had no idea how humiliated I felt at having been struck by my partner. Thanks God she had hit Dagmar first. Had there been any witnesses? It didn't matter. I knew. Obviously I couldn't hit her back. The risk was too great. Gwen was belted in several oriental martial arts. But could she walk barefoot on a man's back? My revenge was clear. I must remain Dagmar's champion and exonerate her from the charges that thus far only Gwen had made but which Brunswick too might level at her. Dagmar deserved the best and I was at her disposal.
Lying back, I sighed and closed my eyes.
"Does it still hurt?"
"I need more rest."
"Of course." Her warm hand fluttered to my face, patted my forehead. "You have a temperature."
"Doesn't everyone?"
She never laughed at my jokes but she laughed then. Her guilt went deep. I heard her leave the room.
It was my turn to review recent events. Dagmar had come to me out of fear of Derringer, but now Derringer was dead. Like me, Dagmar had been taken into custody, and the reason for that was as flimsy as the reason for arresting me. Just because I was found in a ladies' room with a gun in my hand and the bullet riddled body of Derringer enthroned in a booth. I had been shoved into the room by a man whose face I would never forget. I had seen his first cousin in the Museum of Science's display representing the stages of evolution. Obviously Dagmar had been similarly shoved in there. That was when Brunswick was called. In the meantime, I showed up and was propelled in where Dagmar was being detained with the murdered body of her employer. The explanation was risibly obvious.
A civil war had broken out in Derringer's organization and Dagmar had been caught in the middle. The attempt to frame her was crude, but her enemies might be attracted to it in the future. I had to talk with her.
In order to do this, I had to give Gwen the slip. Nothing easier. I dressed quietly and crept to the door. I put my ear against it and listened. Was Gwen out there? There was the soft murmur of the television. Television always put her to sleep. I gripped the door handle and turned slowly, then pushed. Nothing. The door was locked.
I mastered the impulse to beat on the door. That would have wakened Gwen, brought her on the run, and postponed my visit to Dagmar. It was a ten-foot drop from my window to a balcony below. I did not hesitate. I crossed the room and beat on the door.
I heard her scramble to the door and fumble with the key. In a moment, the door swung open and she rushed to the bed where I had drawn the covers over deceptively arranged pillows. I scooted around the door and outside and pulled the door closed. It gave me immense satisfaction to turn the key in the lock. Two can play at that game.
Gwen's Bronco was in the parking lot below and I borrowed the keys from her bag. There was an "Andy of Mayberry" rerun on television but I tore myself away. Below in the parking lot, as I was getting behind the wheel of the Bronco, I looked up. Gwen was hanging from my window. Then she dropped onto the terrace below. I started the engine and got out of there.
Several blocks away, I pulled into a Burger King to use the public phone. There was no directory and I stood in line impatiently to ask one of the employees for it.
"Do you have a directory?"
"Large or small."
"Chicago."
"Does that mean large?"
"Of course."
She rolled her eyes patiently. "Fries?"
"Fries!"
She made a face and punched at her computer. "That will be $2.98."
"For a telephone directory!"
"You want to eat in a booth?"
"I want the manager."
There was impatient rumbling in the line behind me. I sensed that sympathy was with the clerk and not with me. Behind her an adenoidal chap with lidded eyes appeared.
"I'm the manager."
"I want to use the phone."
"Go ahead."
"I don't know the number."
"Call information."
This was spoken into a silence that had formed. I felt at a disadvantage. "What's your name?" I asked, trying to sound menacing, but I found myself being pushed away from the counter as the hungry hordes pressed forward. I slunk to the phone, hearing behind me a voice crying that I owed $2.98. I called information.
"Do you have the number of a Milosovich?"
"Which one?"
"Anyone."
"I've got two and a half columns of Milosovichs."
"Is there a Mary?"
"There are eight M. Milosovichs."
I had a sudden inspiration. "Give me the number of Transfiguration Church."
"You're kidding."
"Why do you say that?"
"It's been in the papers and on television. The place has been shut down."
"Transfiguration?"
"That's right."
"How do you shut down a church?"
"Well, first you have to be made cardinal..."
I put down the phone. I turned and faced the man with the jack o'lantern smile. "Mertz wants to see you."
"I don't know any Mertz."
"I'll introduce you."
Once more I felt a knifepoint in my belly. He indicated the exit. In the lot, he prodded me toward a familiar vehicle.
"I wondered what happened to my car."
"So did I. You ever have the thing serviced?"
"At its age?" But it was pointless to expect this dolt to catch the witty reference to animal husbandry. "Do you want me to drive?"
"If you can get it started."
The Bronco would be safe in the Burger King lot. The place was open twenty-four hours a day. Like one of the late Derringer's skin joints. The car did not start immediately. If it had, I could have gotten away without my escort, since he lumbered around the car when I got behind the wheel. Of course I had my own key. Jack O'Lantern was in the passenger seat when I pulled away.
Mertz was a cadaverous man whose physiognomy had destined him for the undertaking trade. But there he was in a windowless office at the rear of one of the late Derringer's sleazier joints, wearing suit and tie, his long ringless fingers intertwined upon the top of his desk. He stood when I was in the room, but remained slightly bowed. Perhaps he had put in time running one of the oriental massage parlors. I bowed in return. Then I realized it was the low ceiling that explained Mertz's posture.
The reader with experience in copyediting will scrawl a query in the margin: How does Slattery know this is Mertz? Those familiar with the logical demands of such a reader will realize that it will not do simply to say that Jack O'Lantern had come to take me to Mertz, we had gotten into my car and driven away, presumably to see Mertz. Ergo, the man behind the desk must be Mertz. That requires too much offstage thinking on the part of the reader. No problem. There is a nameplate on the desk, facing me, reading Basil Mertz. To placate the copyeditor, I will have Mertz reach out with his long fingers and line the name-plate up with the edges of the desk's surface. This will establish that he is a meticulous man.
"You are Slattery," he said.
"And you are Mertz."
"Mr. Mertz."
I looked around the office. "I don't see your wife here."
Behind me, there was the sound of gurgling a clogged coffee machine will give off as it forces hot water through its calcified passages. Mertz's eyes lifted to my escort and the giggling stopped.
"Wait outside, Jack."
"Is that his real name?"
"John."
"Ah."
I was finding Mertz hard to figure. In the wake of Derringer's murder, there was the danger of full-scale civil war breaking out among his erstwhile cronies. The capo had been killed; there would be little hesitation eliminating anyone else who stood in the way. But stood in the way of whom? Was Mertz seeking control or only wanting to survive until it was clear whose boot he should lick? I put a version of this two-pronged question to him.
"I will not work for a woman."
"Then you aren't married?"
No gurgle this time. Jack was gone and Mertz's sense of humor seemed to have atrophied years ago.
"Derringer gave her the name of Dagmar West. He thought she was just a cute blow-up doll. Not that he didn't put her on the regular schedule. Within a year, she is plotting to take over."
I kept a straight face. Did Mertz know I had met Dagmar, in my office, in the ladies' room, at police headquarters? Evidently not. He went on to speak of Dagmar as a hardhearted hoofer with ambitions far beyond the dreams of avarice.
"Who said that?"
He looked around the office as if to make sure we were alone. "I did."
"I meant the phrase, 'dreams of avarice.' "
"One of the nuns in school used it."
"One of the nuns."
"I attended the parish school. Transfiguration."
Was this a test? I looked wise, what Gwen calls my gastro-intestinal expression. "They closed it down."
He sighed, then splayed one of his long fingered hands across his narrow chest. "Not in here."
"What did you want to see me?"
"You're a private dick, aren't you?"
I smiled. So I did have a reputation after all. "I am."
"What do I do to hire you?"
"Pay me money."
"I meant how much?"
"That depends on why you want to hire me."
He took his hand from his breast, waved away my presumed suspicions, laid it on the desk with the other one.
"It's all legit. I want you to nail Dagmar for the death of Derringer."
Clearing the way for him to ascend the throne? But I could not imagine the waif-like Dagmar involved in this kind of high stakes power move. It was clear that, whatever his motive, Mertz wished Dagmar ill. So did Gwen.
"The police have already let her go."
"I know. I had Jack switch guns before we put Dagmar in the john."
"You!"
"I thought she was innocent. Now I know better."
"How?"
"She's trying to frame me."
What a tangled web we had here, and it didn't matter that it existed only in Mertz's mind. What currents were running in the Derringer organization? How many were vying for the top job?
"Only a handful," Mertz said when I asked him. "And Dagmar. She's a handful in herself."
I bristled, but he apparently meant no double entendre. My adolescent desire to protect Dagmar's body and name from the predators of the organization into which she had been deceptively introduced so short a time ago filled me with heroic zest. It occurred to me that the best way to protect her interests was to be in the hire of her enemies.
"I'll need a hundred as a retainer."
He hesitated, sat forward, glanced at a picture hanging on the wall. Whistler's Mother. "I can only give you fifty."
I nodded. "It's the principle of the thing."
Mertz stood, moved Whistler's Mother on her hinges, twirled a dial and opened a small wall safe. He reached in and brought out a package. He closed the safe, restored the painting and sat at the desk where he proceeded to count out bills. Thousands. He counted fifty of them and pushed them toward me. I tried to recover my gastro-intestinal expression, but this was difficult. I had never been given such a wad in my life. I stood with the money in my hand.
"I'll be going."
"Better put that cash away."
Where does one put fifty thousand-dollar bills? I loosened my belt and slipped them into my shorts. Mertz pushed his chair back from the desk as if I were about to flash.
"Where is the gun that shot Derringer?"
He shrugged. "In the briny deep?"
"Who said that?"
"Popeye."

5

At Jack's suggestion, I had parked my car in the next block.
It was now the center of a small crowd, two patrol cars, and an ambulance. The trunk door was raised and a cop and a paramedic were bent over, looking in. I edged closer, hoping I wouldn't be recognized. The paramedic straightened and backed away.
"He's dead."
"So take him to the morgue."
"The union won't allow it. Call the meat wagon."
The paramedic weaved his way through the crowd to the ambulance. The cop stepped back too and I got a chance to peer into my trunk. Staring upward through lifeless eyes was the man who had hustled me to the ladies' room in the Ooo la la.
I found a public phone at a filling station at the corner.
"Gwen? Ish. Did you report my car stolen?"
"I reported mine stolen," she said coldly.
"It's in the parking lot at the Burger King."
"I was hoping they'd arrest you driving it and I could deny I ever knew you." And she burst into tears.
Poor wounded bird. A woman is never so vulnerable as when she has revealed her hand. This was as close as Gwen had come to declaring her passion for me, but I understood. What man would not? Oh, to have her brain and heart housed in a structure like Dagmar's. But would she love me then? Her imagined fickleness made me brisk.
"Go get the Bronco at Burger King and pick me up at..." I crouched and looked through the murky window to see what the street sign said. I read it off to Gwen.
"I'll be there."
"When are you not?"
I waited inside the station until I saw the Bronco moving tentatively along the curb. I ran out and hopped in.
"Let's get out of here."
"Where to?"
The office? Mine looked like a suite in Sarajevo but Gwen's was unscathed. A little ripple of resentment rode over the surface of my soul.
"Your office," I growled.
"Ish, it's ours, not mine."
"That's true."
Gwen paid the rent on the whole suite now, so I could lay as much claim to her room as mine. I was silent as she drove, chattering as she did. Compulsive talking was not like her. To quiet her I told her I had accepted Mertz as a client.
"Mertz?"
"He wants me to prove that Dagmar was taking over an operation that had been run by a gang of cutthroats for years."
"Did he give you any leads?"
"Leads! The whole idea is preposterous."
"Then why did you take the job?"
I looked at my meatless partner huddled over the wheel of her Bronco. She had the profile of a thirteen-year-old boy, with chest to match. "I specialize in lost causes," I said.
"We'll get the goods on Dagmar West. I guarantee it."
I reflected that at the moment Dagmar was probably taking the goods off in one of the smoky clubs the one-time Derringer organization ran. Two men were dead, she had been arrested, one of the top bananas had hired me to make a case against Dagmar, but she would be up on that rhythmic runway taking it all off because the show must go on. The little girl from Transfiguration had grit, no doubt about that.
She was waiting for us in Gwen's office.
At first I didn't recognize her. Her fuchsia raincoat had a hood which she had pulled over her head. She wasn't wearing her blonde wig either. Even her bosom seemed diminished. She noticed me staring.
"Cheap back-alley silicone," she said.
False? I had the fleeting notion that with a little help Gwen could blossom like Dagmar. The body as reshapeable mass. But then Dagmar flung back the hood and her uplifted chin and the fire in her eye brought back the girl who had taken my breath away the first time she walked into my office.
"I've been waiting here for hours."
"How did you get in?"
"Through the door."
"Wasn't it locked?"
"Sure. A Yale. A piece of cake."
"Do you remember the man who pushed me into the ladies' room with you at the Ooo la la?"
"Reuben?"
"He's dead. Someone put him into the trunk of my stolen car."
"You stole a car?"
Gwen made a noise. "Is that all you have to say?"
"It sounds like Mertz."
"Why do you say that?" I asked encouragingly, slipping into the chair at Gwen's desk. "Is there coffee, Gwen?"
She glared at me. "We just this moment got here."
"I thought I smelled coffee."
"You do," Dagmar said. "I made it. I hope you don't mind."
"Why aren't you drinking some?" Gwen asked.
"I made it for Mr. Slattery."
"Call me Ishmael," I urged. "Gwen, let's all have a cup."
"I never drink coffee," Dagmar said primly.
She did accept a fruit drink Gwen kept in the little fridge in the corner of her office. Holding her paper cup in both hands, legs crossed, leaning forward to give the silicone full advantage, she spoke musingly.
"Reuben dead, and Mr. Derringer. It is what everyone feared, a hostile takeover."
"By whom?"
"By any of three men. Reuben. And the man you described as accosting you at the outdoor telephone."
"Jack O'Lantern?"
She laughed. "He used to play hockey. Without a mask. He's not as dumb as he looks. And of course Mertz."
"He thinks you should be added to the list," Gwen said.
"I know. Jack told me that, but I didn't believe him. Not until the explosion here. Mertz gave me that sports bag.
When I asked why it was so heavy, he said it contained one of his bowling trophies. I should have been suspicious then. Mertz doesn't bowl."
"Who was the man who kidnapped us?" Gwen asked.
"That was Reuben."
"Who was Jack O'Lantern working with?"
"I don't know."
"They all said they worked for Derringer."
"They all did. While he was still alive."
"Mertz tried to hire me."
"Don't you work for me?"
"Of course he does," Gwen said, surprisingly. "Your fate is in the competent hands of Ishmael Slattery."
"And associates?" I suggested.
Before the silence grew uncomfortable, the phone rang. Gwen beat me to it. But almost immediately she handed the phone to me.
"Brunswick."
"What's up, Brunswick?" I was gratified by Dagmar's trilling laughter. Sycophancy is one thing, appreciation is another. Not that Gwen was laughing. Her expression suggested that my gastro-intestinal look was contagious.
"We found your car, Slattery."
"Oh good."
"There was a body in the trunk."
"No."
"That's two, Slattery. What's going on at Derringer's clubs?"
"Most people go there to see what's coming off."
"I want you down here pronto, Slattery."
"I don't have a car."
"I've sent one for you."
"Is this an arrest?"
"Call it what you want, but when you abandon your car with the body of a man you claim has been harassing you, I think I have a professional obligation to talk to you."
"Let me put you on with my social secretary."
I handed the phone to Gwen. She listened for a moment, then put it down. "He hung up."
"They're coming for me."
"Why?"
"Because a dead Reuben was found in my car."
Gwen sprang to her feet and pulled me to mine. "You've got to get out of here." She hesitated. "Both of you. Come on."
She hustled us into the hallway and then, on a dead run to the back stairway at the top of which she squeezed my hand. "Don't go to your place." A pained look and then a reconsideration. "Maybe Dagmar should stay here."
"And get arrested again? Not on your life." And she went bouncing down the stairs like a bag full of beach balls with myself in hot pursuit, so to speak.
"Call," Gwen called plaintively after us.
I stopped Dagmar before she opened the door into the parking lot. I nodded for her to follow me, and went down another flight to the basement. From windows there we had a view of the parking lot. My plan was simple. Wait for the police to come and go up to my office, then exit with Dagmar and take off in the Bronco.
Our patience was soon rewarded and then we doubled back to the exit door and moved swiftly as fog on little cat feet to the Bronco.
"Oh I love these," Dagmar squealed.
Moments later we were motoring away to a destination as yet undecided. "We can't go to my place."
She looked at me through the lattice work of her heavily made up lashes. "Will you behave if we go to mine?"
"I am a licensed detective," I said indignantly. Private dick had always seemed redundant to me. I felt a surge of professional self-abnegation. "We'll go to my partner's place."
Dagmar was not prepared for the pastel chintz nest Gwen had made for herself on the top floor of an exclusive apartment building on the north shore.
"She doesn't look at all like this."
"You don't know her soul."
"She must be a great help to you."
I chuckled. "I think of her as an apprentice. She did clerical work at an agency I was affiliated with before forming my own."
"But she's your partner."
"Look around," I suggested. "She has the money. That was important at the beginning, before the clients came clamoring. It would be churlish now to ask her to go."
Dagmar was silent for a moment. "Inspector Brunswick told me that you worked for Gwen."
My laughter was half convincing. "Ah, what envy will do to an otherwise good man. Poor Brunswick. But imagine what it must be like, harassing former colleagues, retrieving stolen cars, dropping the bodies of hoodlums off at the morgue. Would you care for a drink?"
"They killed him, Slattery. Mertz and Jack. Reuben told me they were plotting against Derringer and he had warned the boss."
"Why did he tell you that?"
"He liked me," she said simply.
That made sense, I supposed. The taciturn, ruthless second-echelon hoodlum needs someone to tell his troubles to. The naive unthreatening Dagmar would be perfect for the role. But where had such confiding taken place? There were many details of Dagmar's life that I realized I would never know—or want to know. But the image of her being whispered to by the late Reuben filled me with a sudden devil-may-care outlook. Dagmar was a lovely thing, but the sport of a moment, a toy. Enjoy her while you may, I recommended to myself, then fling her from you like a crushed grape.
"Wine?" she asked, pouring out two glasses.
"That's grape juice. There's nothing alcoholic here."
"I knew Gwen was a kindred spirit."
"You have a lot in common."
"A sound mind in a sound body."
"Well, there's nothing wrong with her mind."
Dagmar looked at me sadly. "Do you really think that looks matter, an extra pound here, a curve there, a pretty face? Most of it's phony, Slattery. It's what's up here that counts."
I followed her hand from bosom to forehead. Oddly, this made me dizzy. But I should be used to her endowments by now. She went on, speaking of her lifelong ambition to be an intellectual, to wear thick glasses and be listened to when she spoke. Prancing around in the nude was a humiliation, she said. She despised herself for doing it and hated those who had conned her into the life.
Her words were as soporific as an intellectual's. I found myself feeling a powerful desire to go to sleep. The thought of lying down on the floor was irresistible. I stood to do so and then fell gently into oblivion.

6

In the Sunday supplements of my youth one came upon articles dealing with people buried alive. Out of suspicion, perhaps, or only by accident, the victim was dug up and there were the gory results of awaking six feet under, boxed in, air running out. Torn throats and other evidence of loss of air were not what sent a chill down my spine. It was the psychological terror, the realization that one was trapped beyond rescue, the end inevitable. It never occurred to me that the darkness would add to the fright.
I awoke in circumstances that brought forcibly back to me these lurid and sensational stories. My limbs were not bound, I was not lying in a plush coffin, there was an edge of light to the darkness. I put out my hand and it struck metal. Metal that gave under the pressure of my hand. The crack of light widened to a wedge and then let in the whole out of doors. I was in a car trunk. When I sat up there was a burst of applause.
Looking around, I saw that those clapping were for the most part uniformed. But it was a silhouette in civvies that came toward me.
"We got a call that you would be in there."
It was Brunswick who spoke. It emerged, after I emerged, that I was in the police lot reserved for recovered stolen cars. The car I had been in was my own.
"I got a call that the car would be here," I said.
"You also got a call that I was sending a car for you."
"Where are the keys?"
"Not in the trunk."
My thoughts of course were on Dagmar. If I had been stashed in the trunk of my car at police headquarters, what had they done with her? Not that Brunswick was inclined to let me go without an explanation of what had happened. My hurried narrative that I had been anxious to save the taxpayers' money and had taken a bus to pick up my car met with skepticism. Brunswick was convinced that I had wanted to see if something I had hidden in my car was still there.
"A body?" I asked.
"Did you put Reuben there?"
I humored him, of course. Once he knew I was anxious to leave, he would keep me there indefinitely. There was, after all, the inconvenient fact that a dead body had been found in the trunk of my car. A trunk into which I myself had been subsequently lodged. I shivered at the thought of sharing a resting place with the late Reuben.
After a cup of coffee in Brunswick's office, my head began to clear.
"What are you on?" he asked.
"Someone doctored our drinks."
"Gwen too? That's funny, she's reported a missing Bronco. Does the Bronco have a trunk?"
I ignored his feeble efforts at humor. This was no time to worry about Gwen and her pardonable pique at my purloining her Bronco. I had a client to consider. Yes, a client. Accepting the fifty thousand from Mertz had been a ruse. The fifty thousand. I patted my pockets. I had finally managed to get the wad into the inner pocket of my corduroy sports jacket, but it was no longer there. Where had I been since receiving the money? Put off by the discovery of Reuben in my trunk, I had telephoned Gwen to come for me, which she did. At the office, Dagmar awaited us. After some time, I had gone off with Dagmar, borrowing the Bronco and taking Dagmar to Gwen's apartment, as the least likely place where we would be sought. I had been wrong. The money must have been in my pocket when Dagmar and I were slipped a mickey. But by whom? The thought grew in me that Dagmar was still at Gwen's, or at any rate out of harm's way. How she had accomplished it I knew not, but I was convinced that Gwen was the author of my present ignominy. Did she keep a pitcher of spiked punch in the fridge just in case? It would be like her, foolish female, to drive me to the police lot, dump me in the trunk of my car, and then call Brunswick to tell him where I could be found. Reporting the Bronco as missing was an unnecessary grace note.
"I'm going," I told Brunswick, settling my feet on the floor and rising slowly.
"On one condition."
I waited.
"Get that car out of our lot."
A block away, I was hailed by Dagmar, who stepped suddenly out of the recessed entryway of a clinic. I pulled over and she opened the passenger door which swung free. I called a warning but she moved fast and got out of its way.
"Just get in and buckle up," I said. "The door will close itself when I get going."
Well, not quite. She grabbed it and pulled it shut. Her bosom, outlined by these exertions, seemed if possible even more ample than I remembered.
"What happened?"
She waved away the recent past as if it were a mere bagatelle. Not to be outbid by such magnanimity, I told her we had been undone by my partner.
"Why?"
"Jealousy."
"Professional?"
"That too."
"Jealous of you and me?" She laughed.
I made a deprecating face and shrugged. "Where to?"
"Do you know where Transfiguration parish is?"
"Tell me."
I followed her directions and we wound up in a little street that time forgot. It was lined on both sides by rows of neat bungalows. At the corner a church the size of a cathedral rose above the trees. Behind it was the school. There was also a convent and rectory. She directed me to pull up before the rectory. We had come, she told me, to pay a visit on the pastor.
"I'll wait."
"No, come in with me."
His name was Father Cap, though this was short for something long that ended in ski. He wore a buttoned soutane, and sparse spears of still-red hair were drawn carefully across the globe of his head. Told that his visitor was Mary Milosovich, a graduate of the parish school, his wariness diminished. His old parishioner done up as Dagmar would have given any celibate pause.
"Ah, Milosovich. Of course, of course. I buried both your parents."
Dagmar nodded and we all observed a moment of silence.
"You broke your parents' hearts, child."
"I wanted to make something of myself."
"And what would that be?"
"I wanted money, fame, excitement."
"And have you got them?"
"No."
"What was the man's name again?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Tell him," I urged, surprising them both. They seemed to have forgotten I was there. This knack for invisibility is, you will appreciate, invaluable in my line of work.
"Mertz," Dagmar said in a whisper. "Basil Mertz. He promised me everything."
"Marriage?"
"He has a wife."
The old priest scrubbed his face with both hands. What must life look like from his vantage point, I wondered. Vanity fair, a ship of fools, a vale of tears. Not too far from the mark, by and large. But why had Dagmar brought me here to hear this tale of woe? It occurred to me that it did not jibe with the story she had given me when she first sailed into my office. Then the villain of the piece was Derringer. To her priest, she confided that it was the treacherous Mertz who had lured her from the innocent confines of Transfiguration parish into a low life of cigar smoke, loud music and dancing in the buff.
"Mertz told me he was from Transfiguration," I said.
"A lie," Dagmar said. "Apparently he thought I had not confided in you completely and the reference to Transfiguration would be clue enough for you."
I nodded in the manner of one who did not need half so much to get his inquisitive juices flowing. Not that I had made anything in particular out of Mertz's remark, except to think that it is a small world.
"Why have you come to me?" Father Cap asked.
"To see if you would see me."
"The nuns always said you would come to a bad end, Mary."
"I know."
"Do you want to go to confession?"
He glanced at me and I was immediately on my feet. So was Dagmar. "Not this time, Father." She took something from her purse. "Would you keep this for me?"
"What is it?"
"Money."
He shook his head sadly. His expression indicated what he thought the source of the money was. It occurred to me that the package she held out to the priest was the fifty thousand I had gotten from Mertz.
"It's okay, Father," I said. "The money's mine."
"And what do you do?"
"I am a private investigator." I added, "I was in the police force for some time."
A cop. That made a difference. He took the money, turned in his chair and bent over to open the parish safe. When it was safely stored, he stood, smiling.
"Call for it within a month or it becomes a donation to the parish."
"Wasn't Transfiguration shut down?" I asked Dagmar in the car.
"Don't you read the papers?"
She sounded like Gwen. "What do they say?"
"The campaign to keep it open was successful. There is a fund drive underway to make necessary repairs to the church."
In the light of such a project my ill-gotten fifty thousand was not much, but it was the biggest fee I had ever commanded and I intended to get it back. Thank God I had been there when Dagmar handed over the cash and had the chance to identify it as my own.
"You should have told him it was mine," I chided.
"Would he have believed me?"
"Where to?"
"The Papiti."
I glanced at her. The Papiti was where I had talked with Mertz and taken his fifty thousand dollars. It did not seem the part of wisdom for me to show up now with the woman he had accused of conspiring to take over the late Derringer's operation. But it seemed even less wise for Dagmar to walk in there alone.
"I can handle him."
There did seem to be a new strength in the girl. Perhaps her moral batteries had been charged by the visit to her home parish.
"What will you tell him?"
"That he has nothing to fear from me."
I dropped her at a corner where she disappeared inside a dress shop. My throat thickened at the trouble she was taking to disassociate me from her confrontation with Mertz. I circled the block, a protective patrol, but as I came again along the street I was startled to see Gwen walking purposefully toward the Papiti. I turned away as I drove past her and then headed for home.
My apartment has the look of an office, largely because I had worked out of it when I was getting started as an independent private investigator. I sat at my desk, put a blank sheet of paper before me, and put the pieces together.
What the police wanted was whoever had killed Derringer and Reuben. It was not that they regretted the passing of these two, but it was not good policy to permit private citizens to do the justice system's work for it. To say nothing of encouraging an unchecked gang war. My own aim was to free Dagmar from the clutches of the crowd she had all innocently fallen in with. Her manner had been palpably different when we sat in the pastor's office at Transfiguration. I could imagine her going straight again. Not completely straight, of course. What a vision she must be walking barefoot on the back of a man who knew how to appreciate her. I dismissed from my mind as unworthy of the subject Gwen's predictable objections to a close friendship between Dagmar and myself. Not that I could get all that close, given her pectoral amplitude.
I stared at the blank paper. Who had killed Derringer and Reuben? It was risible to imagine that it had been Dagmar. Reuben had shoved her into the john with the dead capo just as he had me. Reuben had killed Derringer, I decided, and then tried to frame Dagmar. Mertz's claim to have switched weapons drew attention to him. Reuben had been killed with the same weapon Derringer had.
I picked up the phone and dialed Brunswick.
"Who should I say is calling?"
"Mrs. Derringer."
"But you're a man."
"I'm her houseboy."
Silence. "Just a minute."
"Slattery?" Brunswick said, coming on. "What the hell is it now?"
"How are you coming on the Derringer and Reuben killings?"
"Do you want to confess?"
I thought of Father Cap and smiled. "Later. Have you found the murder weapon?"
"Where did you hide it?"
"I would guess it is at the bottom of the Chicago River."
"Which bridge?"
"Brunswick, I am prepared to solve your case."
"I know. Gwen told me. I'm to come to the Papiti Club in half an hour. Are you calling from there?"
"Just be sure you're there."
I hung up. I smiled. Gwen had been working with me so long she was able to anticipate my thoughts. Like a master magician with his apprentice, I wondered if I had taught her too much. But of course it did not take genius to see that I would be putting the finger on Mertz. I only wished that Dagmar could be there for the scene in which the master did his stuff. Would Mertz crack and confess or would there be violence? I swallowed. Brunswick would come prepared.

7

He did indeed. He had with him detectives Plague, Famine, Pestilence and War, as the four were called. They had won their spurs as horsemen on the mounted police detail. Their switch to the detective bureau was precipitated by their unwillingness to ride horses equipped with a baggie behind, an equine diaper. As detectives they were good horsemen, but they were big and they wore forbidding expressions, actually the frown of the uncomprehending which the uninstructed read as menacing. There were several patrol cars parked in the lot of the club and I saw Gwen's Bronco as well. I pulled in beside it and hopped out.
"Your motor's running," a patrolman called.
"I know. It's hard to get started again."
I walked jauntily to the club entrance, pulling the brim of my hat even across my eyes. I saluted the patrolman at the door and he took the opportunity to peer inside when he opened the door for me. On the stage the same frenzied dancing went on.
"Why don't you wait inside?" I suggested.
"I'm a married man."
"Then nothing should surprise you."
"Ha."
Brunswick and the Four Horsemen were in Mertz's office. Mertz sat behind his desk, smiling uneasily. Dagmar was in a chair facing him and Gwen fidgeted in the corner. She at least expressed joy at my arrival.
"This is an incompetent private dick named Slattery," Brunswick, always a kidder, announced.
"We've met," Mertz said. "I am Mr. Slattery's client."
Brunswick turned to me. "Is that true?"
"No," Dagmar said indignantly. "I'm his client."
"Mr. Slattery will clarify everything," Gwen said, taking charge. She moved another chair behind the desk, so I was sitting next to Mertz. "Should I begin?"
"Please." What is the point of training someone if you don't give them a chance to shine? In the Middle Ages the master teacher sat enthroned while his apprentices taught; afterward he gave the magisterial solution. So it was with Gwen and myself.
"You're wearing makeup," I whispered to her.
She rubbed at her face, as if in surprise. "Do you like it?"
"Proceed," I suggested.
"You are all wondering why Mr. Slattery asked you here to Mr. Mertz's office at the Papiti Club. The presence of the police is no accident."
Pestilence looked at Famine as if he missed the days when parking violations and the occasional accident defined their duty. My case against Mertz was circumstantial and I hoped Gwen would present it effectively. In any event, I was there to pick up any dropped ball. She continued.
"Two men have met violent deaths in recent days, Derringer the acknowledged owner of a string of strip joints and dubious massage parlors where the girls are little more than slaves, naive young things in from the country and easily sold a bill of goods. The promise of stardom and celebrity is made but it turns out to be little more than a relentless schedule of questionable dancing and unprofessional massage. It is a very lucrative business, most of the income untaxed. The ambitious eye it greedily. Derringer himself rose to the top of the organization after the mysterious death of the previous boss. That boss in turn ascended the throne through an act of violence. It seems reasonable to suppose that the pattern is repeating itself today. And Mr. Slattery has vowed to put an end to it."
I stared fixedly at a painting on the opposite wall, ignoring the curious glances that were cast my way. The painting was difficult to interpret: it could have been a close-up of a rain forest or perhaps some tropical fish. On the other hand...But Gwen continued with my findings.
"With Derringer out of the way, the question becomes: Who shall succeed? The demise of Reuben, who may have assassinated Derringer, narrowed the field."
I turned in my chair to look at Mertz. He was following Gwen's narration with rapt attention. His manner suggested that he knew he was soon to be accused of killing Reuben after instigating the assassination of Derringer. If only to prolong Mertz's agony, I interrupted Gwen.
"There are two remaining candidates to take Derringer's place," I observed. "Jack O'Lantern and my putative client, Ed Mertz."
Gwen laughed infectiously. "Mr. Slattery is toying with you. Of course the names he mentioned would occur to anyone. But it is the mark of genius to see what others do not see. Shall I reveal the culprit, Mr. Slattery?"
I nodded at Gwen, tugging a Lucky from the crushed packet I still carried. Gwen turned and pointed dramatically at Dagmar.
"There is your murderer, Inspector Brunswick. Mary Milosovich!"
All heads turned to the sumptuous blonde in the corner. Dagmar looked disdainfully at Gwen.
"She came to Mr. Slattery at Inspector Brunswick's inspired suggestion, bringing a tale of abuse and exploitation by the Derringer organization. And so it might have begun. But young Mary Milosovich had become fascinated by the career of a former fellow parishioner, an older man who was regularly pointed to as one who had chosen the broad road to destruction rather than the narrow gate of salvation. Mary envied rather than despised the man she heard about. But how could a woman emulate such a career? To do so she must use a woman's wiles. The Lord had given her the body, but had been less lavish elsewhere."
Gwen moved swiftly to Dagmar and snatched at her hair. To my astonishment her blonde tresses came away in Gwen's hand. On Dagmar's head a small crop of mouse colored hair sprouted. But Gwen was not done. Deftly she removed the lashes from Dagmar's eyes. With a Kleenex she forcibly removed the lipstick from Dagmar's mouth. The transformation was amazing. The body remained in all its glory but atop it was a most unprepossessing head and a face that seemed as plain as Gwen's. Dagmar, enraged, rose but before she could wreak revenge on Gwen she was detained by Famine and Plague. I too was on my feet, anxious to reverse this miscarriage of justice and correct Gwen's dreadful mistake. But before I could say anything, Dagmar began to speak in a high screeching voice.
"Men are fools! They have no idea what the profits from this organization could be. They are satisfied with the traditional return on investment. Their treatment of dancers and masseuses is a scandalous abuse of capital. A happy stripper is a better stripper, as every woman knows. And they refused to bring in male dancers. The arteries of the organization were clogged with conservative qualms. Within a year I could double income and get twice the mileage out of the dancers."
"So you killed Derringer?"
Her eyes gleamed as had those of stout Cortez when he gazed upon the Pacific. She was caught up in her dream of dominance.
"He killed himself because of his unwillingness to take seriously what I proposed. I had to fight him off while I was explaining my ideas. And Reuben!" Her eyes sparkled with mad anger as she looked at each of us in turn.
"He said he understood. He wanted to hear more. But I knew what he was after. And then when he saw me like this..." She waved a hand before her face. "He lost interest in both me and my ideas. When I went to Mr. Mertz, his only suggestion was that I drop the weapon into the Chicago River." Suddenly she produced a nasty looking gun from her purse and pressed the barrel against Gwen's head. "Of course I did no such thing. I may not get out of here alive, but I will take several of you with me. Beginning with this dingbat." And she pressed the barrel painfully against Gwen's head.
A large mistake. Gwen lifted her arm, lifting the gun, and with the other hand brought the blonde wig to Dagmar's face, blinding her. I lunged for the gun but Brunswick beat me to it. In a quince a disarmed Dagmar burst into tears. She tried to focus on me.
"I hate you, I hate you. And I won't pay your bill."
"Good work, Slattery," Brunswick said gruffly, and then he and his comrades were hustling a screaming, resistant Dagmar from the office.
"How much do I owe you, Slattery?" Mertz inquired after emitting a long sigh of relief.
Owe me? I was already into him for fifty grand.
"You'll get a bill," Gwen said. "Mr. Slattery is a stickler for records."
"But I don't want the payment recorded."
"Well, in that case."
He opened his safe and began counting out thousand dollar bills. Gwen let him count them all onto the desk, then scooped them up.
"You won't want a receipt."
"Of course not."
I shook Mertz's hand and then Gwen and I left the office and went through the club. There was a redhead on the runway who was emulating the age old gyrations of passion in a way that even to my jaded eye seemed fetching. Gwen's grip on my arm tightened and we continued to the door.
"How much did Mertz give you?"
"Twice what you stashed in Father Cap's safe."
She had driven a block before it occurred to me to ask how she had known about the money I had left with the pastor of Transfiguration.
"I'll tell you when we get home."
She meant her place. No sooner were we there than she disappeared into her bedroom. A few minutes later, to my utter astonishment, Dagmar West appeared in the bedroom door!
"Dagmar," I cried, unable to suppress the reaction the wench called up in me.
But if the body was the body of Dagmar, the voice was the voice of Gwen. Gwen. With a chest like that, this had to be ventriloquism. How could anyone mistake Dagmar for Gwen? That this was indeed possible when the wig came off, and the lashes, and there undeniably was Gwen. But my eyes were fixed on her chest which had never been so expansive. Indeed, it was the drooling image of Dagmar's. As if in answer to my unstated question, Gwen picked up a pin and stabbed herself. Her bosom burst like a balloon and now there was only familiar flat-chested Gwen. She stepped close to me.
"You didn't recognize me when we went to Transfiguration, did you?"
There are times when silence is the best response. Gwen was moving unnervingly closer. She slipped the blonde wig back on.
"Got any more balloons?" I asked.