THE PERFECT

FRAME
by

WILLIAM ARD

Walter Huntington was a prosperous

broker . . . until he died.
Rocky Castel wasn’t doing badly,
either, but his business ran to photo­
graphs that would not have amused the
Postmaster-General.
Timothy Dane got into the act be­
cause of a woman, of course. She was
blonde. She was gorgeous. And she
was all trouble. . . .
Timothy was fond of trouble, but some
very tough boys were fond of the
blonde . . . and not averse to murder!
The author is a talented newcomer to
the field of crime novels, and in intro­
ducing Timothy Dane, a young man
with nerve, charm, and a privatc-
deteclivclicence, he presents the reader
with a ticket to thrills in the best
tradition of hard-headed, hard-boiled
detection!

/' 8s. 6d,

NET
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THE PERFECT FRAME
 THE PERFECT FRAME
Walter Huntington was a prosperous broker ... until he
died.
Rocky Castel wasn't doing badly, either, but his
business ran to photographs that would not have
amused the Postmaster-General.
Timothy Dane got into the act because of a woman, of
course. She was blonde. She was gorgeous. And she
was all trouble ...
Timothy was fond of trouble, but some very tough boys
were fond of the blonde ... and not averse to murder!
The author is a talented newcomer to the field of crime
novels, and in introducing Timothy Dane, a young
man with nerve, charm, and a private-detective licence,
he presents the reader with a ticket to thrills in the best
tradition of hard-headed, hard-boiled detection!
 THE PERFECT
FRAME

by
WILLIAM ARD

LONDON

HAMMOND, HAMMOND & COMPANY

 COPYRIGHT BY WILLIAM ARD
First published in Great Britain 1953

Printed in Great Britain by

Wyman & Sons Ltd., London, Fakenham and Reading
for Hammond, Hammond & Company Ltd.
87 Gower Street, W.C.i.
7-53
 CHAPTER 1

said, ‘Yes, ma’am, my name is Timothy Dane’, and

I those were the first and last words of pure truth spo­
ken in my office that afternoon.
She said her name was Evelyn Huntington. Mrs.
Walter Huntington. She said she had married Walter
Huntington six months ago and separated from him
four weeks later. Walter, she said, drank. He had
strange habits. She patted a tissue thin handkerchief to
her eye as she told me about the night she had found a
brassiere in Walter’s overcoat pocket.
She crossed her legs. She said I knew the type of man
Walter was without going into all the details, lurid
ones. She adjusted her skirt. Did I know what it was
like, she asked, to be—well, considered attractive, and
be put through an experience like that? It was awful,
she said.
I just sat there and stared across my desk at her and
didn’t say anything. She was that pretty.
She told me that naturally she knew how busy I was.
Then, I thought, you know something I don’t. I told
her that I didn’t generally handle divorces, which
wasn’t a lie because I didn’t generally have any to
handle.
Oh, she didn’t want to divorce Walter. That wasn’t
it. She was here because she was frightened and be­
cause Walter might be in some kind of trouble.
5
6 THE PERFECT FRAME

‘You mean’, Tasked, ‘something aside from yourself?’

‘What?’
‘Nothing’, I said.
She said she knew she wasn’t giving me much to go
on, but would I help her? Then she took a deep breath
and her fine young bosom heaved.
I switched my gaze to the tip of my thumb and asked
her who had sent her up here and what, exactly, was
her problem.
There was a silence, and when I looked up she was
watching me with a strange look on her face, as though
she were about to say something she wasn’t supposed
to. But then her face composed itself and she told me
that she had opened the Classified to the Private De­
tective listings, closed her eyes and made a jab with a
pencil. When she opened her eyes again there was a
black dot between the words Dane and Timothy.
I grunted and went back to looking at my thumb. I
said, ‘Just how can I help you, Mrs. Huntington?’
‘ Oh, you’re wonderful’, she said. Her light blue eyes
were round and earnest, and the bodice of her beguil­
ing black dress rose and fell again, emotionally. She
did that very well and my own eyes cheered her on.
What she wanted me to do was visit a place called the
Harmony Bar. It was over on the East Side, at 21st
Street and Third Avenue.
‘Why?’
She gave me that strange look again and said that
was what she wanted me to find out. Why. She said she
had got a message in the morning mail, a note it was,
that advised her to be at the Harmony Bar that night if
she wanted to learn something important about her
husband, Walter Huntington.
 THE PERFECT FRAME 7

‘That sounds very much like divorce business I said.

‘I don’t think it is’, she answered.
‘Why?’
She said she just had a feeling, that’s all.
I asked her who the note was from. She said it wasn’t
signed. I asked to see the note. She said she’d lost it. I
smiled. ‘This isn’t a divorce mill’, I reminded her. ‘I
don’t snoop around wayward husbands, no matter how
many overcoats they stuff with brassieres.’
‘It isn’t for a divorce’, she insisted. ‘But Walter is
still my husband and I’m worried about him. I’m
afraid to go down to that place by myself’, she said.
Oh, wouldn’t I please, please help her?
I turned in my swivel and looked out the window.
Out towards the buildings that stretched for the sky, and
above them into the blue spring-time that blanketed
the city. But that didn’t make me any less aware of the
girl at my back.
Blonde, she was; honey blonde and cool. At first
glance, cool, but beneath the coolness was an honesty—
or innocence, if the word doesn’t gag you—that made
the other thing seem like a veneer, a defence against
something. When you looked beyond the covering she
was a beautiful girl from somewhere that was simple
and uncomplicated, not at all like New York. But she
had come here with a magic wand that was supposed to
set the big town on its ear.
What had gone wrong? She certainly had the build
to work magic. It was a display figure, stacked care­
fully and generously. A figure to be shown to men and
to be admired. To be inventoried and, if it came to
that, to be bargained for.
She looked like she could be anything she wanted to
8 THE PERFECT FRAME

be. But what had gone wrong? I swung back to her

and said I would help her if I could.
But saying I would help her didn't, for some reason,
seem to make her happy. I had the unusual feeling that
she had changed her mind, that she wished I had turned
her down. Then she smiled and said, fne, would I go
there tonight? And if nothing happened tonight, would
I go back to the Harmony Bar tomorrow night? That
was all, so she told me, that she could afford. How
much would I charge for two nights' work?
I looked into her wide blue eyes and thought about
the rent that wasn't paid. I thought about the shirt on
my back and the clean one, the last clean one, in the
bureau drawer in my room. I thought about the no­
nonsense letter in this morning's mail from the tele­
phone company. I remembered—as ifit was something
you're likely to forget—that this pretty girl was the
nearest thing to a client I had seen in three long weeks.
I looked at her and said, 'Fifty dollars', casually.
'Fifty?' She seemed surprised. I opened my mouth
to say forty but she spoke first. 'Well,' she said, 'that's
certainly reasonable', and taking a neat roll from her
purse she laid five new ten-dollar bills on my desk.
Another hundred or more went back into the purse, and
I sighed.
She asked me if I understood what I was supposed to
do. I answered that I guessed all I would do was go
down to this bar and see who it was that wanted to see
her.
'Yes', she said. 'Just find out what kind of a place it
is. Sec what's going on that concerns Walter Hunting­
ton. I’ll call you in the morning.'
Then she stood up, uncertainly, and hesitated before
 THE PERFECT FRAME 9

my desk for a moment. ‘You seem like a nice person’,

she said. ‘Are you happily married?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m not even unhappily married.’
‘It must be wonderful’, she said, ‘to be married to a
man and make him happy.’
She turned and walked out of my office, swaying her
nice, up-tilted behind at me. If the day ever comes, I
said silently to the behind, that you can’t make a man
happy, that’s when we all shave our curly locks and
join a monastery.
 CHAPTER 2

ow much is one dollar? One dollar is the price of a

H cab from my office at Broadway and 44th Street to
the bar on Third Avenue and 21st Street where I would
keep a date fur Evelyn Huntington. Half of it is the
price of a whisky and water when I got there. One
dollar is only a single buck, to be spent without think­
ing, on all the trivial incidentals that attend a man's
daily business.
Also, one dollar is the price Charley Fong charges to
launder five shirts for a bachelor. One dollar is one of
the meals at Child's, no appetizer, no dessert. One
dollar is a whole buck—and a whole buck comes hard
when you're fighting desperately to hang on in the
world's toughest city at the kind ofwork you want to do.
I should be, at thirty, and with a law degree, an eager
junior partner in some pine-panelled Madison Avenue
law firm. I should be, if not that, the bright-eyed law
clerk toJudge Reynolds in Washington (as he keeps ask­
ing me to be) and getting my hands into that lush politi­
cal mud-pie. I should be living in three modern rooms
in Georgetown, or Scarsdale, or Shaker Heights, or just
outside Los Angeles. But I'm not any of those things or
in any of those places. I'm a starving private detective
in one room on the third-floor rear of a converted
brownstone firetrap on 53rd Street, where I'm lulla-
byed to sleep each night by twenty-five Dixieland bands
blaring along 52nd Street's Strip Row.
IO
 THE PERFECT FRAME I I

And I’m not taking any dollar cab over to Third

Avenue. I’m walking, and I’m almost there, and the
broken neon sign reads Harmony Bar. The place has
been carved out of a warehouse that rises behind it, and
it hides under black, night-time shadows of the Third
Avenue Eh, which it should, because it’s the crummiest
dive I’ve ever walked into. And that, kiddies, is crum­
my.
The bar is scarred and dirty, and the glass of beer that
the weasel-faced, dirty-necked bartender sets down is
smeared and unwashed. There are three dirty tables
next to the bar, covered by dirty checkered cloths, and
if there were any customers sitting at them, I’m sure
they’d be dirty-necked, too. But as it is, it’s just me and
the bartender, and he doesn’t like my looks any more
than I like his. This is the first time I’ve ever felt con­
spicuous because my shirt is clean and my suit is freshly
pressed.
There’s nothing strange about such a filthy bar on the
east side of New York, and the only reason I mention it
is that Evelyn Huntington must have been intuitive
about not wanting to come down here. It is no place
for a girl. Not even a tawny-skinned rumbier on Okin­
awa (and they’re a hair below a Main Line debutante)
would walk a Marine gunner (and they’re a hair above
a Marine general) into a derelict trap like the Harmony
Bar. . . .
I stared down into the flat slush in the glass, knowing
I would never drink it, and then decided to do some­
thing this place had never seen. I went back to wash my
hands and hoped that the alleged message writer would
show up while I was gone.
When I stepped out of the john I gave the back of the
I2 THE PERFECT FRAME

place a quick look. To the rear was a shadowy, grime-

streaked wall hung from ceiling to floor at the far end
with a painter's tarpaulin. That's all there was to the
back, and all that was up front were the tables, the bar
and the bum behind it.
And a customer. Or maybe he wasn't a customer.
He had taken his place at the empty bar directly behind
my untasted beer and he was a very big man. Big from
the floor, where his big feet were planted, to the brist­
ling top ofhis close-cropped black hair. Big in the chest,
in the hands, in the face. Big from the slope of one thick
shoulder clear across to the other. The mahogany­
coloured mole on his forehead was bigger than my eye.
I didn't keep on walking toward him to make an
issue out of my beer but to find out why he thought he
had to guard it. And to find out where he'd appeared
from. The little bell over the door hadn't tinkled while
I was gone, and, Goel knows, he hadn't been there
before.
I was very polite. I said, ' If that beer is in your way
I'll move it', and I reached for it but stopped because
his thick fist wrapped itself around the glass.
He had watched me, scowling, all the way across the
room. Scowling and thinking, and it made cavernous
wrinkles in his forehead. 'You want this beer, Mac?'
he said, and the voice was a rolling growl from some­
where deep inside a keglike chest.
I shook my head and grinned up at him.
'How'd you like this beer', he asked, 'right in your
kisser? Glass and all, Mac?'
'I wouldn't like that', I admitted, and waited.
He eyed me with a tight grin across his broad face,
and I watched his mammoth fingers tighten on the
 THE PERFECT FRAME

glass. But he didn’t lift it from the wood and we just

stood there like that, eye to eye, for more seconds.
‘Ahh, let the bastard have it, Bull.’ The bartender’s
voice was a low, nervous whine in the room. ‘What the
hell you stallin’ for?’
Bull’s eyes didn’t waver from my face. He lifted the
glass of beer slowly. Then his left arm swept out sud­
denly, snatched my right arm in a vice and jerked me
toward him with a force that almost pulled me off the
floor.
His hand slipped down my arm to my wrist, and with
a sharp upward twist he doubled it back in a good ham­
mer lock. ‘Want that beer now, Mac?’ he snarled close
to my ear.
I could feel the tendons snapping up and down my
forearm. ‘ It’s going to break’, I told him. His answer
was to force my arm higher, and I began to chew on my
lower lip, trying to stay as erect as I could to move with
the last extra push he would give my arm.
‘Don’t you want that beer now, Mac?’
‘No.’
‘You sure?’ He brought my wrist as high as my
shoulder blades, and real pain was shooting up and
down my arm and into my side.
‘It’s going to break’, I said again.
‘Drink!’
‘No.’
He snorted and dropped my wrist. It fell of its own
accord and hung there beside me. His right hand
grabbed my shirt and tie, and the fist came up under
my jaw, jamming the back of my head against the wall.
He pulled me forward and did it again. I came off the
wall with my knee raised high and plunged it deep and
 THE PERFECT FRAME

hard into his groin. The big man gasped loudly and
bent over like the blade in a jack-knife, the back of his
neek directly below me. But I couldn't lift my right arm
to hit him, and that cost me the round and the fight.
Something swung from behind the bar cracked
against the base of my skull, and the dirty room went
all purple and yellow before my eyes. I should have let
myselffall immediately, but I didn't, and the bartender
had a second shot at me. That one toppled me across
the Bull, who was getting over the nausea, and he stood
erect, pulled me back up with his hands under the lapels
of my j'acket and rammed me into the wall again. And
another time. The shock of it began to clear my head
and help my eyes focus.
' Don't you crummy shamuses ever get enough ?' The
Bull was angry about something.
'What's a shamus?' I mumbled. 'What's enough?'
The wall met my head with a sick thud. 'What your
pal Jamieson got!' he roared. 'That's enough!’
Jamieson? If I'd been able to speak again I might
have asked it aloud. If I’d been able to think I'd have
wondered what the hell my client had sucked me into.
The Bull was shoving painfully against my Adam's
apple, convincing me that I'd been taken for a ride by a
beautiful blonde with a hypnotic behind. I was a shill.
'You oughtta get what Jamieson got', he was saying.
He swung me out of the corner and swept me along to­
ward the door. The bartender, grinning out of a face
with teeth missing, rushed around to see how he could
help. But the Bull didn't need any.
With his free hand he opened the door and then with
both hands he threw me out, backwards, on to Third
Avenue. I landed on my shoulder, but not full enough
 THE PERFECT FRAME It
■-r

to keep my skull from cracking hard against the con­

crete sidewalk.
‘And tell the party that sent you’, the Bull shouted
from the doorway, ‘ to keep you and every other crum­
my snoop the hell away from here. Next time, Mac,’
he warned me, ‘I get rough.’
The bartender’s ugly little head peered from behind
the other man’s mountainous bulk. ‘Next time’, Dirty-
neck screamed, ‘we fix you good, you lousy good-for-
nothing bastard! ’
The door to the Harmony Bar closed. I had the side­
walk on Third Avenue all to myself.
Next time, I thought, getting slowly to my feet and
grimacing at my dirt-smeared suit, I get smarter. When
I found I could stand without reeling like a drunk I
edged toward the doorway again. I wanted to take
another long look at what had happened to me. But
the Bull was nowhere to be seen inside.
Wherever he had come from five minutes ago, he was
there again. And if it was magic, the bartender wasn’t
as impressed as I was. He was sitting behind the bar
again, calmly reading the pink edition of tomorrow
morning’s News.
I could make out the headline clearly from the street,
but it didn’t say where the Bull was. A lot of things
climbed in and out of the wood inside the Harmony,
but nothing the size of him. I knew if I walked inside it
would bring him out-but what was still operating
among my scrambled brains told me that it would bring
me out again, too. Right out on to Third Avenue.
 CHAPTER 3

As I turned north along Third toward 22nd Street, I

had a lot of unanswered questions in my mind - all
of them starting and ending with Evelyn Huntington.
But I could find out why she had sent me down here at
my leisure. The pressing problem-literally pressing
and banging inside my tender skull - was the Bull.
Where he’d come from, where he’d gone - and what
was he watching in a dirty little dive like the Harmony?
Why did a firetrap like that one need a bouncer, espe­
cially a bouncer as efficient as the Bull? In spite of
everything else I thought about him, I had to admit he
had talent. For all his mammoth size, he moved like a
slick cat, and unlike most men in the 250-pound-plus
class, he knew how to make every ounce of it count. He
was a muscle boy with sharp co-ordination, and some­
body was paying a nice fee for the use of those muscles.
In the wrestling racket alone, he’d have made himself a
soft two hundred a week. Somebody was making it
worth while to keep him off television.
And if he was guarding the Harmony, how was I
going to lure him out of there long enough to find out
what it was? In case of emergency, says the telephone
directory, call the police. What made me think of the
police - me of all people? And what did the police
make me think of? It was something about that bar­
tender, something he had been reading in the News. It
16
 THE PERFECT FRAME I?

was the headline in the .News that / had read. I stopped

at the news-stand on the corner of 22nd and spent three
cents for a copy of my own.
The headline was, POLICE HUNT BRONX
STRANGLER, and below it was a five-column picture
of a woman draped like a rag doll over a very mussed-
up bed. Under the picture I read: ‘All police units in
the city were alerted in the search for the madman­
rapist who entered the apartment of Miss Tillie Bartell
(above) in the Bronx, attacked her, and then strangled
her to death as she fought valiantly for her honour.
Story on page 3.’
What story was left? I re-read it, knowing damn well
that Third Avenue and 22nd Street is a long way from
the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. And probably the
Bull hadn’t been near the Bronx since the Giants were
home last, which was over a week ago. Still, it was worth
a try. Anything is worth at least one try - except,
maybe, a rumbier on Okinawa, or so a Marine gunner
told me once.
I glanced up 22nd Street, and in my mind I could see
the two dull green lights out in front of the 13th Pre­
cinct, two short blocks to the east. The News said, ‘All
police units were alerted . . .’
Let’s see if that took in the 13th Precinct. I ducked
into an all-night candy store, dropped my dime and
dialled Operator.
‘ Get me the nearest police station! Life or death! ’
She plugged me in immediately. ‘13th Precinct’,
said the bored voice. ‘ Sergeant Winkler.’
‘The Strangler!’ I gasped. ‘The Bronx Strangler-
he’s in the Harmony Bar!’
‘The what? Where?’
B
l8 THE PERFECT FRAME

I came down two octaves. ‘The guy who strangled

the dame in the Bronx tonight. He’s in the Harmony
Bar. H as in Henry, A as in apple . . .’
‘ I know where it is! ’ He was excited now.
‘He’s there now’, I shouted back. ‘Insane drunk,
armed to the teeth! He’s yelling at the top of his lungs
—he says every cop in New York City is a yellow son of
a . . .’
‘He did!’
The receiver slammed against my eardrum, and by
the time I was out of the booth, out of the store and
back on the street, the cops were charging down 22nd.
Two green-and-white cars overtook the footmen at
Third Avenue and leaped down to 21st, sirens scream­
ing. A third and fourth carload screeched to a stop
right behind them, and more cops, running, filled
Third Avenue, still buttoning on their hardware and
swinging those nasty little black sappers.
I followed them, leisurely, like a man out walking his
dog except that he had no dog, and took up a spot in a
doorway opposite the good old Harmony Bar. It was
better than a seat on the fifty-yard line of the old Army-
Notre Dame fracas, and I didn’t need a programme to
tell who the players were.
This much can be said for the Bull: whoever was
paying him had told him to keep all cops out, whether
they were private and came one at a time, or public, a
precinct at a time. With a bottle in each tremendous
mitt, he met the first blue squad in the doorway, and
back they fell. But when the squad grew to a platoon,
the blues swarmed inside. The ape gave ground dearly,
only one foot a minute, and those yardarms hanging
from his shoulders swung about him murderously, drop­
 THE PERFECT FRAME 19
ping eager policemen in every direction. But then they
sent a flanking line over the bar itself, and this crew
immediately tipped the furniture, beer spigots, barten­
der and all into the centre of the small room. That
narrowed the Bull’s fighting room to a couple of feet,
and suddenly his great head disappeared from view
below an ocean of blue-coated shoulders. He had
definitely resisted arrest - if that’s the word I’m look­
ing for.
This much can be said for the police: they may not
dress as pretty as the Mounties, and they may not al­
ways get the right man, but when the desk sergeant tells
them to hop down to the Harmony Bar and get any
man, by George, they get him. And the only reason
they got the Bull alive was that the coward became un­
conscious before he became a corpse. Now they were
dragging him out, heels aloft, and his skull was bounc­
ing along the same pavement that the back of my head
knew so well.
The Harmony was a shambles, and my heart was
breaking to see the bartender lift himself to his feet and
stare around, dazedly, at the wreckage. Then he put on
his hat and coat, closed the door carefully behind him,
locked it and headed in the direction of the Bowery,
where, I imagined, he slept in some dime-a-night flea­
bag. When his back had disappeared into the shadows
of Third Avenue, I crossed over and let myself inside.
I have no secret knowledge of locks - it was just a mat­
ter of lifting the door as far as it would go on its hinges,
and leaning against it gently.
I stepped carefully over the broken glass and around
the up-ended bar to find the place, wherever it was,
that my boyo had disappeared to in between calls
20 THE PERFECT FRAME

from me and the police. Something on the shelf of

the bar caught my eye. Something that wasn’t
natural.
It was a bottle of whisky and it hadn’t been broken.
It looked unhappy and alone and I took it along with
me on my search of the Harmony.
 CHAPTER 4

xcept for what had happened to the front of the old

E dump, it was still the same old dump as I poked
around for the Bull’s hiding-place. The side wall had
no hidden door, nor was there any exit in the bar area.
The only way to leave the tiny john was the way I got
in. That left only the rear wall, and sure enough, when
I lifted the painter’s tarpaulin, there was the door. I
pushed it open and stepped through.
Now I was in a warehouse, a huge barnlike place
lighted by occasional dim bulbs. It was used to store a
great many files and wired crates, and I came close to
one of them to see who they belonged to. It said, in
stencil: PROPERTY OF OCEANIC BROKERAGE
COMPANY, NEW YORK CITY.
Somewhere, sometime, but only vaguely, I had heard
of Oceanic. As the name implied, they were brokers -
insurance, as I recalled-and Oceanic meant marine.
Marine insurance brokers. So what? Where did the
Bull figure?
Did the big guy work for Oceanic? Insurance brok­
ers stored old policies, that I knew, and probably kept
night-watchmen. But again-, the Bull was not the night­
watchman type. Night-watchmen are old men who get
paid sixty cents an hour to stay awake during the time
when they can’t sleep anyhow. But the Bull was work­
ing for somebody, and for some reason this warehouse
was where he kept coming from and going to.
21
22 THE PERFECT FRAME

Now I was wondering if Evelyn Huntington hadn’t

been levelling with me all along. Maybe she didn’t
know anything about the Bull. He might even be work­
ing for Walter Huntington and she didn’t know about
that, either. Maybe my business with her had nothing
to do with the Jamieson the Bull had told me about. I
wasn’t a shill after all. Maybe.
I pulled open one of the files, not expecting to find
any answers, and I was right. The file held nothing but
old policies from various insurance companies. They
were the Broker’s copies, all plainly marked in red with
the single word: Cancelled.
I lifted one out and studied it. It was a policy of an
English insurance company that protected the White
Circle Tanker Fleet for all hull damages up to thirty-
three million dollars. A hell of a lot of money - and
this policy in my hand was only one of the several hun­
dred in this particular file. I looked around. There
must have been over five hundred files and crates in the
room, and maybe Oceanic Brokerage had other ware­
houses besides this one.
It looked like a very healthy outfit, Oceanic, and
hardly one that needed personnel like the character the
cops had just hauled out ofhere. Nor did Evelyn Hunt­
ington, blue eyes and all, go with an operation as obvi­
ously dull and strait-laced as this huge brokerage firm
seemed to be. But just to keep all the loose ends in
order I decided to call the Oceanic’s claims man and
see what ideas he had, whoever he was. He wouldn’t
have any, naturally, but he should be interested to know
what was going on around his warehouse - and if some
outside job ever came up, as they do, he might remem­
ber Timothy Dane. I let myself out of the Harmony
 THE PERFECT FRAME E$

Bar as I’d entered, except that the door wouldn’t re­

lock and I took the whisky bottle with me. With all
that had been spilled on the floor, who’d miss the quart
I was going to spill into me?

The candy store from where I’d alerted the 13th Pre­
cinct was still open and the old man in the back gave
me a bored look. ‘Had some excitement down the
street’, I said. He shrugged, which is all you’ll ever get
on Third Avenue. I found the Oceanic Brokerage num­
ber listed and got the night man on the wire. ‘Every­
body’s gone home hours ago’, he told me. Yes, he’d
give me the name and telephone of the company’s
claims agent. ‘He’s Mr. Robinson’, he said, ‘Plaza
2-1516.’
‘Robinson?’ I asked. ‘That wouldn’t be Jocko Rob­
inson?’ The man didn’t know about any Jocko, but
the Oceanic claims agent was Mr. Robinson. I thanked
him and dialled the number.
I almost didn’t believe the voice that sounded a sleepy
hello. But it could belong to nobody else but Jocko
Robinson, the grim little Englishman who’d been the
top operative at the old Pioneer Agency in Chicago
while I was learning the business. I gave him a big
greeting. I called him an old jackass.
‘What do you want, Dane?’ he asked flatly.
‘What do I want?’ I laughed. ‘Still the same old
Jocko. Always happy to hear from his pals, always
ready for a party. How are you, boy?’
‘Dane, it’s nice to hear from you. What do you
want? ’
‘I don’t want anything, dammit. What’s biting
you? Don’t tell me you got married!’
24 the perfect frame
‘Look, Dane. I’m a respectable man. I work from
nine to five now. What do you want?’
‘Okay, Jocko. The hell with you. What I’m calling
about has to do with your nine-to-five Oceanic job.’
‘We’re full up, Dane. If a vacancy comes up, I’ll
keep you in mind.’
‘Will you really, Mr. Robinson? Honest? Listen,
junior, if a vacancy comes up you can take it and . . .’
‘Have you been drinking, Dane? Is that your
trouble?’
‘Hold the line, Mr. Robinson. Don’t go ’way.’ I
held the bottle to my lips and took a good pull. ‘Yes,
you anicmic little bastard,’ I said, ‘ I’ve been drinking.
Now. Does Oceanic have a warehouse on Third
Avenue and 21st?’
‘A warehouse?’ He sounded much different, a little
off guard. ‘Why ? ’
‘You got a watchman there?’
‘Why? What’s it to you, Dane?’
‘You got a watchman there?’
‘Why, Dane? What’s there to watch?’
‘Don’t you know, pal? Maybe there is a job open
down at Oceanic. Yours.’
‘What’s this all about, Timothy? Why should an
Oceanic warehouse cause you any trouble?’
‘Well, Jocko, since you put it that way, I was won­
dering if you knew that a guy about ten feet tall was
doing a lousy public relations job for Oceanic down
there.’
‘ Really? I don’t know of anyone that we have in that
warehouse. Do you know what’s in it? ’
‘Nope. Tell me.’
‘It’s for cancelled policies, that’s all. They’re of no
 THE PERFECT FRAME K

use to anybody, but the insurance laws say we have to

keep them stored for twenty years.’
‘Why?’
Jocko Robinson explained. ‘Protection for our cli­
ents. In case anything comes up that they might have
been covered for when the policy was in effect. Maybe
some seaman got something in his eye ten years ago, and
it doesn’t start bothering him until last week. Or may­
be a ship sprung a small leak on a trip a few years back,
and nobody finds out till tomorrow.’
‘But aside from that, these policies are worthless?’
Jocko Robinson paused for a moment, then he
laughed, if that’s what the sound was that came over
the wire. ‘Even then, they’re not much good to any­
body. It takes some proving before we collect a loss on
a cancelled policy. But the law says keep ’em, so we
keep ’em. Is that what you called about?’
‘I wasn’t even interested in the policies’, I said. ‘I
just thought you might be interested in this character
who hangs out in the warehouse.’
‘Well, you know Third Avenue, Dane. But thanks
for the tip, old man. I’ll have the police look into the
place tomorrow. Good night.’
‘The police already looked into it, Jocko.’
‘What?’
‘They got the guy down at the 13th Precinct. I
don’t know what he’s booked for, but he was arrested
on suspicion of murder.’
‘What? Murder?’
I laughed. ‘Just a gag, Jocko. But he’ll probably
spend the night there - or in some hospital.’
‘ Is that so ? Well, you certainly have strange tidings,
Timothy. Well, good night.’
US THE PERFECT FRAME

‘Before you go beddy-bye, Jocko, I just want to ask

you one more question. To convince myself of some­
thing.’
‘What now?’
‘I was just wondering if, off-hand, you ever heard of
anyone named Walter Huntington?’
There was silence on his end. Then, quietly, ‘Why?’
‘You know him?’ I was amazed.
‘Why?’
‘Now look, Jocko. Don’t start that routine again.
Who’s Walter Huntington?’
Jocko was deciding something. ‘ Huntington is a
vice-president of Oceanic, Dane. But what’s it to
you?’
‘Good night, Jocko. Thanks.’
‘Dane! Are you on a job? ’
‘A job? What’s a job, Jocko? I remember hearing
the word in Chicago. The Pioneer Agency used to get
things called jobs.’
‘What’s Walter Huntington to you, Tim? Maybe I
can help you.’
Now it was ‘Tim’. ‘You already have, Mr. Robinson.
Thanks again.’
‘ Stop clowning, Tim. I meant that I might be able to
help you pick up a few dollars investigating that ware­
house set-up. God knows, I’ve got enough to keep me
busy tracking down these claims every day. Maybe
you’ve stumbled on to something down there.’
‘You think so, Jocko?'
‘Who knows? Tell you what. I’ll have you come up
to see Mr. Forbes tomorrow morning. Mr. Forbes is
president of Oceanic.’
‘That’ll be nice.’
 THE PERFECT FRAME 37

‘ I’m trying to do you a turn, Tim. Then you can tell

Mr. Forbes what you suspect.’
‘What do I suspect, Jocko?’
‘ That something is out of order at the warehouse. I’ll
recommend that you look into it. It ought to be a nice
little job, Tim. And certainly very little effort.’
‘ You think so, Jocko ? ’
This time he chuckled. It sounded like Scrooge be­
fore the Cratchits got to work on him. ‘Believe me,
Tim. There’s nothing at Oceanic besides claims that
needs investigating. It’s a very respectable operation.’
‘And you’ve got everything under control up there?’
‘ I have everything under control. Everything, Tim­
othy.’
‘I’ll see.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I said I’ll see you tomorrow, Jocko. Have a good
night’s rest.’
‘Don’t worry, Timothy. I shall. Goodnight.’

And that, as they say, was that. Evelyn Huntington

had used me as a decoy, and she didn’t seem to care what
risks she took, so long as it was my body. And now my
ex-partner, the guy I once stopped a .38 slug for out in
Chi, the guy who spent two weeks on his back after pull­
ing me out of a hop-joint on the South Side, the guy I
roomed with, ate with, lent money to and borrowed
money from - now Jocko Robinson was setting me up
to shill for something else. Or thought he was.
Maybe, I thought, Evelyn and Jocko were putting
out feelers for the same game, but whatever the game
was, I didn’t have any idea. Not yet. It didn’t matter
so much about the blonde - women always try to use
 28 THE PERFECT FRAME

men for one reason or another - but Jocko made me

good and mad.
So mad that I almost forgot to call this fellow Jamie­
son, the one the Bull had ‘rearranged’. I located his
night wire in the Red Book and a woman answered the
’phone, cautiously. She said I couldn’t speak to Mr.
Jamieson. Whatever it was, she said, Mr. Jamieson
wasn’t interested. Who was she? She was Mrs. Jamie­
son, and she didn’t care whether I wanted to help her
husband or not - he wasn’t interested.
‘Right,’ I said, ‘but tell your husband, for whatever
it’s worth to his morale, that the Bull has got his.’
Mrs. Jamieson said she’d tell him, but she didn’t
think it would interest him. He wasn’t, she said, inter­
ested in anything any more. He was very sick. His head
hurt, and he had terrible pains in his stomach. He . . .
She hung up abruptly, but not before I heard her crying
into the mouthpiece, and trying to hold it back.
Wherever this thing led me, whoever else I was due to
meet before the end of the line - I told myself to be sure
to look after the Bull’s keeper. Personally. Professional
courtesy, let’s call it, to a private man named Jamieson
who was sick.
I headed back uptown to my office, wondering what
tomorrow would bring. The night guard took me up
and I asked him to wait. From my desk I got a small
white envelope, wrote the name ‘Jezebel’ on it, put in
forty-nine dollars and ninety cents of Evelyn Hunting­
ton’s money, and shoved the envelope into the safe.
That made me feel much better. Sure it did. Now I
could go home and it would be like all the other nights
- not a client on the books.
 CHAPTER 5

he telephone-answering service - secretaries don’t

T grow on trees - gave me two messages when I ar­
rived back at my office the next morning. One was from
Mr. Franklin Forbes of Oceanic Brokerage, and I was
to call him at my convenience. The other was from a
woman - no name - and I was to call her immediately
at Plaza 6-1000.
I thanked the operator for the service and sat down
to open my mail. The first letter was from the tele­
phone-answering service. All it had on it were some
dates with figures next to them. Someone had written
the word ‘Please!’ across the bottom and underlined it
dramatically. I filed it in the basket. The next letter
was from the people who own this building. Very nice
people. Very polite. Polite, but firm. The next letter
. . . Oh, hell, this goes on and on and on, and my re­
action is always the same. Tengo no dinero, the little
poem starts, caramba this is hell, it ends.
Jerry, the shoeshine boy, dropped by with my copy of
the Times. I asked him if he’d trade his News for it. He
shrugged, Puerto Rican style, and though he didn’t like
the idea, he wasn’t sure if maybe I might not come into
a quarter one of these days and want a shine. I got his
paper and he went along sadly with mine.
This was a final edition of the News. The headline
said, NAB BRONX STRANGLER, but they weren’t
29
gp THE PERFECT FRAME

talking about the Bull. It was some other guy, and he’d
been hiding in the basement of the Bronx apartment,
and he’d made,a full confession. I was almost to the
back page before the 13th Precinct got a break. There
was no picture of the Bull - in fact he wasn’t even called
the Bull, he was Clarence [«c] Hulbert. ‘Police’, said
the brief story, ‘ arrested Clarence Hulbert last night on
a charge of disturbing the peace. Hulbert, police said,
used abusive language to an officer, and when asked
to desist he continued to be abusive and profane. Hul­
bert, police said, listed himself as unemployed and was
booked on the additional charge of vagrancy. He was
removed to Bellevue Hospital, but no further details
were given.’ I added them up: abusing a police officer,
disturbing the peace, vagrancy, resisting lawful arrest -
it came to at least six months and I hoped that the
Jamiesons read about it.
I thought about that for a few minutes, and about the
honest charwoman who hadn’t nipped at the bottle of
Seagram’s in my desk drawer. It was just as I’d left it,
a quarter full. I pulled the cap off and took a mouthful
- and almost choked to death. It was plain water! Ter­
rible stuff. That thieving charwoman had drained my
precious liquor and poured back water.
That made me feel good enough to return the urgent
call to Plaza 6-1000, and the no-name woman who
answered was, of course, Evelyn. She sounded nervous.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘ Shouldn’t I be?’
‘ I don’t know. I - I’ve been worrying about you all
night long.’
‘ Why? Were you afraid you were running out of fall
guys ? ’
 THE PERFECT FRAME 31
‘What?’
‘The party’s over, sweetheart. I went down to the
Harmony like you said. I ran into that big ape, as you
knew I would. I didn’t get killed, but that’s not your
fault.’
‘Oh, Timothy . . .’
‘Don’t call me Timothy.’
‘You called me sweetheart’, she said, sounding very
young.
‘ Believe me, sweetheart, I didn’t mean it tenderly. I
don’t even know what to call you. You’re certainly not
Mrs. Huntington.’
‘I know, Timothy. Anything you want to say, I de­
serve it.’ She was crying. It came over the wire softly,
saying more than a thousand words. It was the sound of
a girl at the end of her rope - a beautiful girl from a nice
little town who was, somehow, deep in trouble in the
ugly city where all the slickers live. I couldn’t think of
anything to do about it.
‘I’m sending back your fifty dollars’, I told her. ‘Buy
a ticket with it. Get on a train and go home.’
‘Oh, Timothy. I’m in trouble. I need help.’
‘Go back home’, I repeated.
‘I can’t. Not now. I need help.’ She spoke like that,
slowly, jerkily.
‘ Get on a train ’, I insisted. ‘ Get out of town. What­
ever you’re mixed up in, drop it and run before you get
knocked down.’
‘ I can’t! ’ She sobbed the words. ‘Oh, I want to, but
I can’t. Won’t you please help me, Timothy? Please!’
‘Good-bye’, I said as softly as I could. ‘Good luck,
and no hard feelings.’
‘Timothy!’
 THE PERFECT FRAME

I held the receiver at arm’s length and looked at the

little holes in the ear-cup. I could still hear her voice
crackling out of those little holes. Crackling, but plain­
tive, and I remembered what she looked like and how
she probably looked now. I should have hung the damn
thing up. The voice meant nothing but trouble - more
than fifty dollars could ever buy. I started the receiver
back toward its cradle. I heard the small sounds again.
‘Please, Timothy.’
Then I spoke into the mouthpiece. ‘Where are you ? ’
I asked.
It came at me in a rush. ‘ 321 West 44th. The apart­
ment’s in the name of Barnes. She’s my room-mate.
Oh, Timothy . . .’
‘Now, look. I’m not promising anything’, I growled.
‘I’m no boy scout.’
‘Yes, you are’, she said. ‘Hurry, Timothy. I love
that name. Timothy. It sounds so protective. Hurry.’
She sounded better.
This time I did hang up, but of course it was too late.
I shrugged and wondered what was wrong with me
while I dialled the Oceanic Brokerage number and
asked for Mr. Forbes. His secretary sounded like a nice
old lady. She said her boss would be able to see me at
twelve noon.
‘Noon?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘noon.’
I shrugged again and said I’d be there, silently wish­
ing that I’d taken time this morning for some breakfast.
Then I was off to Evelyn’s - if that was her first name
-the ‘Jezebel’ envelope in my pocket and many
doubts in my mind. It was ten o’clock.
 THE PERFECT FRAME 33
Three hundred and twenty-one West 44th Street is
one of those apartment hotels just off Eighth Avenue
that are made to order for show people - actors, ac­
tresses, chorus girls - since they provide a central loca­
tion in the City, the convenience of hotel service, the
privacy of an apartment, and arc not especially expen­
sive.
They are also made to order for trouble, though no
one blames show people for that. It’s a strange fact,
though, that the New York Police have found, over the
years, that the City’s most bizarre murders, orgiastic
parties, and daring robberies have occurred in apart­
ment hotels, as against apartments, hotels, homes or
tenements.
They are also made to order for girls who are in a
special kind of show business. They say these girls
never leave the premises, but always have the rent when
it’s due. That’s what they say, but I don’t know for
sure.
But the desk clerk did. He knew about it. That is,
he’d heard it on good authority. Probably even seen
one once, for all the good it did him. I asked him for the
number of the Barnes apartment, and for some reason
that was funny, because he giggled. Then he lifted an
arm very gracefully and studied a tiny watch that was
strapped to his dainty wrist. ‘ At this hour ?’ he asked
archly, and his thin lips drew back in a haughty smile.
‘Just tell me the apartment’, I said.
That made his eyes close and brought a droop to the
wide, padded shoulders. He was resigned to the fact
that I really wanted the number of the apartment;
‘4-C’, he told me, utterly fatigued. Then he smiled
again, prettily.
c
34 the perfect frame
I told him to keep his powder dry and got into the
elevator, which was run by a man. Oops. He was
wearing trousers and had a shirt and tie on, and his
hair was cut like a man’s - those things fooled me.
The look I got from him didn’t. We got to the fourth
floor without the cable slipping.
I mention these things - the place, the clerk, the
elevator operator - to help explain why it felt so good
a moment later to see an honest-to-God woman, a clear­
cut member of the opposite sex, open the door to
apartment 4-C. Clear-cut is a good description of Evelyn
as she stood there in the doorway, sunlight streaming in
behind her, in a now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t negligee
made of some green, cloudlikc stuff. My long-legged
huntress, the blonde who baited her traps with me,
and I thought she looked just fine. She was cool this
morning, the way she’d been at first glance yesterday.
But now - maybe it was the green thing - she was cool
even at second glance. I stepped into her den, dropped
my hat on a chair, and spread out, tentatively, on one
of those curved, two-seater couches. We still hadn’t
spoken a word. Now she picked up my hat, sat down
on the chair, put my hat in her lap and raised her head
as though she were going to speak. But then she held
her head still and sat there watching me with a funny
little smile on her face.
‘Hello, Timothy’, she said. I gazed across the room
at her, puzzled. ‘Hello’, she said again.
‘So, hello’, I said, warily.
‘I guess I sounded sort of silly on the ’phone’, she said.
I looked at her. ‘Not necessarily’, I told her evenly.
‘But I have an idea you’re going to act silly now.’
‘What do you mean?’
 THE PERFECT FRAME 35
‘I mean that I think you’ve decided not to tell me
about this shakedown you’re mixed in. Or about the
job I was supposed to be on last night.’
She avoided my gaze. ‘I’m not mixed in anything’,
she said.
I stood up then. I even smiled down at her. ‘I’ll take
my hat’, I said. ‘Fifteen minutes ago you were in a
jam. Now you’re playing games again. Dangerous
games. My hat.’
She sat there without moving, my hat in her lap, and
her eyes were full on my face, worriedly. ‘No’, she said.
‘Yes. What do you think this is, a rehearsal for the
senior play? How many corny routines are you trying
out on me, anyway? ’ I stood above her. ‘ I fell for your
line yesterday. Apparently I fell for it again this morn­
ing. Now all I want is out - no more goddam theat­
ricals. You may have all the equipment’, I growled at
her, ‘but your technique is childish. I’m a big boy.
Give me my hat.’
She slipped to her feet, clutching the hat against her
flat stomach. ‘Don’t go’, she said. ‘Give me time to
think.’
‘You’re all out of time’, I said and reached for my
hat, but she darted her arms behind her back, the way
a kid does. But she wasn’t a kid. This was a woman.
A well-grown woman. I reached around her, not play­
fully. She held her arms outstretched behind her, and
turned her face up into mine. I reached further and
that was when she stood on tiptoe, dropped the hat to
the rug and brought her arms up around my neck. They
were slim arms, and very warm through the sheer green
material that covered them. And they were arms that
were strong enough to hold a man. ‘I am in trouble’,
36 THE PERFECT FRAME

she whispered into my ear. ‘I am in trouble.’ There

was nothing childish about the way she said that.
I kissed her and she held my head in both of her
hands and we rocked back and forth, gently, on the
soles of our feet. ‘That helps’, she murmured. Then,
‘Oh, that. That helps! Oh, Timothy, where have you
been?’ When I held her away from me and looked at
her, her eyes were still closed and there was moisture
beneath the lids.
‘Tell me about it’, I said. ‘What kind of a jam are
you in?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s terrible. It isn’t fair to tell
you.’
‘Fair?’
‘To you. You were right about last night. I used you
as a decoy. I’m not married to Walter Huntington. I
don’t even know him. My name isn’t even Evelyn. It’s
Sally.’
I had to laugh. ‘It was a good act’, I told her. ‘His
drinking. The brassiere in his pocket. I don’t think I
believed all of it, but I wanted to.’
She lowered her head. ‘ I know you did. I was hoping
you wouldn’t so that I could tell you the truth right
then and there.’
‘Who’s behind this thing? Who sent you to my
office ? ’
Her eyes avoided mine. ‘Don’t ask me about him.
Please.’
‘Who, Sally?’
She was biting her lip and shaking her head from
side to side.
‘Someone’, she said lamely. ‘A man. He says he
knows about you. He told me to be careful.’
 THE PERFECT FRAME 37
‘Tell me who he is.’
She turned from me and sat down on the couch. ‘ I’m
. . . Well - I’m afraid. He . . . Oh, I know it sounds
silly, but I’m in a position where I more or less have to
do as he says. At least for the time being.’
‘Why? Who is this guy?’
‘His name is Castel.’ Her voice, as she spoke the
name, was subdued.
‘Castel’, I echoed softly. ‘How in the name of God
did you get mixed up with a louse like Rocky Castel?’
She smiled wryly. ‘I guess you do know him, then.’
Her smooth shoulders hunched forward. ‘ I don’t really
know myself how I got mixed up with him’, she said.
‘Oh, I know how it happened, but it’s all such a night­
mare.’
‘Why did Castel send you to me? ’ I asked her. ‘What
business has he got with the vice-president of Oceanic
Brokerage?’
She spread her hands in a helpless gesture. ‘I don’t
know anything about it, Timothy. Walter Huntington
seems to be important to him. All I was supposed to do
is what I did - talk to you and send you to that bar.’
‘Like Jamieson?’ I asked quietly.
Sally covered her face. ‘That’s why I couldn’t sleep
last night. Thinking about Jamieson. Thinking that
the same thing was going to happen to you and wishing
I were dead.’
‘Apparently,’ I told her, ‘Jamieson and I only had
nuisance value to Castel. We were supposed to bother
somebody as far as I can make out. It seems to me that
Castel has enough guys on his own pay-roll who know
all there is to know about annoying people.’
‘I know what you mean’, she said. ‘I’ve met them.’
38 THE PERFECT FRAME

'What's Castel got on you, Sally? Money?'

She stood up, turned her face into my shoulder and
buried it there. Her voice came to me half-muffled
against the cloth of my jacket. 'If it were only money',
she said. 'It's something worse, Timothy. Something
shameful.'
'It's pictures,' I said then.
Her head snapped back. 'How did you know that?'
'With Rocky Castel', I said, 'it's two things. Money
or pictures.' I scowled at her. 'How did he ever get
you to pose for things like that?'
She began to cry again, silently. 'But I didn't. I
didn't pose for them. It was ... I don't know how it
happened.'
'Want to tell me about it?' I asked as softly as I could.
She nodded and brushed at her eyes and took me by
the hand to the couch. We sat down, close together. 'I
came to.New York', Sally began, 'from Montpelier.
That's a city. Not a city like New York. It's in Ver­
mont.' She took a breath. 'I won a contest. It was
state-wide. A talent search, they called it. I sang a
song and I won.'
'You wouldn't have to sing', I told her.
'But I can sing', Sally said. 'Anyhow, we didn't
display our talents in bathing suits, if that's what you
mean.'
'Go on with your story.' I grinned. At least I had
snapped her out of her tears.
'So I came to New York looking for a job.'
'Did you register with an agency?'
She shook her head. 'No, I j’ust began walking
around from place to place asking if they needed a girl
singer.'
 THE PERFECT FRAME 39
‘And what did they tell you?’
‘They wanted to see my legs. One man asked me if
I had to wear falsies.’
‘Did anybody ask you to sing?’
Now she smiled. ‘No’, she said, ruefully.
‘You should have gone to an agency first. Let
some little guy as tough as the bookers do your selling
for you. You got the kind of treatment you asked
for.’
‘ I guess I did. But about the sixth place I tried was
down in Greenwich Village. It looked very nice inside.
All chrome and those glass bricks that light up. I was
very impressed with it.’
‘It’s called the Cabin Club, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but . . .’
‘And Rocky Castel was there when you went in to
audition?’
‘Yes.’
‘And he hired you - or he was there when you were
hired, right?’
Sally nodded in surprise.
‘All right,’ I told her, ‘then what happened?’
‘Well, I sang for a week. I was sort of a hit, in a mild
way. Monday nights the Club was closed. Then Castel
invited me to a party. He said it was to be a private
party at the Club on Monday. He said it was sort of a
celebration for my first week’s success.’
‘And you told yourself that New York was easier to
get by in than Montpelier, Vermont?’
Sally bit her lip. ‘That’s what I thought. I went to
the private party in a brand-new dress. I was all
excited. Who wouldn’t be?’
‘Who wouldn’t?’ I agreed. ‘What happened?’
 ■ THE PERFECT FRAME

'Well, I hadn't had many drinks before that night. A

few, on Saturday nights up in Montpelier. But nothing
in a big way, do you know?' I nodded that I knew.
'But that night I couldn't refuse. How can you refuse
to drink at your own party?'
'You can't, providing it's really your party' I said.
'Yes. But that really wasn't my party. Not the way
I expected it would be.'
'How many drinks did you have?'
She shook her head. 'Not so many. Maybe five.
Maybe six. That's the point, Timothy. I really don't
remember.'
'You passed out?'
'Yes', she said. 'But I wasn't sick. I just got very
dizzy all ofa sudden and my body felt very warm. Then
my eyes seemed to get heavy as lead. It was very em­
barrassing. I don't even remember being taken away
from the table.'
' How many people were there, at the party?'
'About ten. Six men and four girls. Myselfand three
other girls.’
'Did they pass out?'
'I don't know. You see, I don't know very much
about that evening at all.'
'And when did you wake up? Where were you?'
' It was the afternoon of the next day. Tuesday. And
I was here in the apartment, in bed. My room-mate
had gone to work but she left a note to call her. I called
her and she said she was waked at five in the morning
by the desk clerk. A taxi-driver was in the lobby and I
was in his cab, unconscious. The driver had been told
to drive me here by two men in the Village. The men
told the driver I had been drinking more than was good
 THE PERFECT FRAME 41
for me. My room-mate, Jeanie Barnes, and the clerk
helped me up here and Jeanie got me to bed.’
I lit two cigarettes and handed her one. ‘Did you go
back to work at the Cabin Club that night?’
‘ I felt very sick all day - very restless. I couldn’t seem
to sit still in one place for more than a minute. But I
went down to work.’
‘And you talked to Rocky?’
‘I tried to avoid him. I had no idea what had hap­
pened at the party. I felt ashamed of myself for passing
out. But when my last number was finished he came
back and knocked at my dressing-room door.’
‘He had some news for you’, I suggested.
Sally nodded her head slowly. ‘ He had news for me ’,
she said. ‘He said I was quite the life of the party. I
asked him what he meant. I said I was sorry for acting
like such a little girl. He said, no, that I’d acted like
quite a big girl. I didn’t know what he was talking
about. Then he took a picture out of his wallet. It was
a shot of me singing at the microphone. The same one
I’d just finished singing at out front. With one differ­
ence.’ Sally looked away from me and I could see that
the memory of the picture was making her choke up.
‘With one difference’, she said again, slowly. ‘Oh,
Timothy! I was naked. Completely naked. And the
way the picture was taken it looked as though there were
a lot of people watching me. But there weren’t a lot. It
was the same bunch that had been at the party. But
there I was - at the mike - and smiling, kind of dopey
like, not the way I really smile. And there was a big
spotlight on me.’ Sally dropped her head to my chest.
‘And I didn’t have any clothes on. It was horrible!’
I sighed, and stroked the back of her neck, the way
 V THE PERFECT FRAME

you do with a kid or a beautiful little girl from Mont­

pelier who’s been taken by a vicious racket. ‘You were
doped, baby. Weren’t your arms sore the next day?
Full of tiny holes, needle holes?’
‘Not my arms. The soles of my feet. How did they
do it, Timothy?’
‘Well,’ I explained in a low voice, ‘first they knocked
you out with the drinks. Nothing violent. Nothing to
get you sick. Then they let you sleep for a few hours, or
maybe they shot some digitalis into your veins. That
would revive you ’, I said. ‘ Or at least shock you awake.
But from then on they kept you high on opium. High
as the big, blue skies. You were in dreamland, Sally.
Your mind was, but you could still walk around and
respond to orders. Then they told you it was time to
sing for the crowd. And you sang. To you, then, you
never sang as well. And the fact that you didn’t have a
stitch on seemed perfectly normal. That was when the
pictures were taken. The flashlights popped, but
chances are you never noticed them. Not that it would
have made any difference, because all you wanted to do
was sing for the people. The fact that there wasn’t even
any music - though they might have played a record -
didn’t make any difference either. You just stood up
and sang.’
‘Don’t, Timothy. Don’t tell me any more about it.’
‘ I won’t, baby. In fact, we’ll both forget it ever hap­
pened. And pretty soon I’ll get those pictures back and
that’ll be the end of it.’
‘You will?’ Her face was beaming with joy. ‘You
really will? Oh, Timothy!’
‘I’ll get them’, I told her. ‘But first tell me what
Castel wanted you to do about them.’
 THE PERFECT FRAME 43
‘ He said they were his insurance.’
‘Insurance?’
‘Yes. Those pictures were a guarantee that if he ever
had any special favours to ask I’d be glad to oblige.’
‘ Favours?’
‘Not that kind, Timothy. At least not then. He’s
been hinting about that lately, but not in connection
with the pictures. He says he wants me to be his girl.
Ifit ever came to that, I wouldn’t care what he did with
the pictures.’
‘What did he say he was going to do with the pic­
tures if you didn’t do what he asked you to?’
‘ He said he’d send them to my folks, and to the people
I know in Montpelier. He said he’d attach a note about
their little girl making good as a singing star in New
York. It was horrible. Just thinking about it was un­
bearable. My mother. And my father. They’d die of it,
Timothy. A thing like that would kill them both.’
‘He’s a nice boy, that Castel’, I said, half to myself.
‘We met once. We’ll meet again.’
‘That’s how I came to see you with that story about
Walter Huntington. A few weeks ago it was a private
detective named J amieson. You apparently know about
that, too.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I know about that, too. But don’t you
worry about it any more. You were framed as much as
he was - or I was. But you have no idea what Castel
wants from Huntington?’
She shook her head. ‘ Cross my heart, Timothy.’ She
actually made a cross over her heart and I smiled at her.
‘Well,’ I said, getting up again, ‘I’ll be finding out
some answers very soon. I’m on my way down to
Oceanic right now.’
44 the perfect frame
Sally laid a hand on my arm. ‘Don’t’, she said. ‘I
got you into this terrible thing. Please, now that you
know it’s bad, get away from it.’
I looked at her. ‘Bad? Hell, I think you steered me
into my first job in weeks. It might even be a big one.
That reminds me, here’s your retainer, ma’am. Since
it’s Castel’s money’, I added, handing her the envelope,
‘ it’s not only dirty but probably unlucky. I don’t know
what to tell you to do with it except hop a train to
Montpelier.’
She was standing next to me once more in that green
transparent cloud. ‘Is that what you want me to do?’
she asked, that mischievous look back in her eyes.
‘It’s what you ought to do’, I told her. ‘What I
want you to do doesn’t mean anything at all.’
‘It doesn’t?’
‘It shouldn’t.’
‘It shouldn’t?’
‘This is silly’, I said and held her the way I’d held her
after the hat trick a while before. I kissed her and it
was good. Better than good. I said I would be seeing
her.
‘Do you really have to leave?’
I nodded. ‘Yes, sweetheart. Business is business.
And besides,’ I added, looking at my watch, ‘it’s aw­
fully early.’ I don’t know why I felt self-conscious about
that precious little desk clerk. Sally just looked at me
for a moment, and then she came across the room,
picked up my hat, put it on my head and kissed me
again. ‘There’s your old hat’, she said.
I left her apartment and ducked into the subway for
Wall Street, thinking about many things. But for every
nice idea I had about the wonderful blonde from Mont-
 THE PERFECT FRAME 45
pelier, I had a savage one about Rocky Castel, the guy
with all the foul ideas.
And, apparently, he had some ideas about Walter
Huntington. There’s an excuse for a kid fresh off the
train from White River Junction - but the vice-presi­
dent of Oceanic Brokerage should know better than to
involve himself with someone like Castel. And if he
knew better, then what was the game?
How did the warehouse full of cancelled policies
figure - and the Harmony Bar? Hell’s bells, Rocky
Castel owned a small army of gunmen who could have
looked the Harmony and the warehouse over from wall
to wall. Why make shills out ofjamieson and me? . . .
Then I had it. At least that part ofit. My playmate up
in Bellevue, the big guy with the big ache in his head,
the Bull. The Bull would know any of Castel’s boys;
they all went to the same dancing class together. The
Bull wouldn’t know me, or there was a good chance he
wouldn’t.
So, whatever it was Castel had in mind he was play­
ing close to his chest. But maybe if I sniffed around it
long enough we’d get everybody out in the open. And
then I could go to work on getting Sally’s pictures back.
They played, and on this I’d lay odds, a bigger part in
this caper than just a lever to use the girl as a front to
hire detectives.
All out for Wall Street. Watch your wallet.
 CHAPTER 6

ew York is a tight little village of nine million souls

N and twice that many contradictions. Wall Street,
that quaint, tortuous little path twisting like a berserk
artery through this continent’s fi nancial heart, has more
than its share of the paradoxes. You can, for instance,
throw a baseball from the steps of the Bank of New
York and be sure of hitting some penniless derelict on
the South Street gutter. Or you can bump into a man
coming out of the subway, as I just did, and he may
look harassed because the company won’t raise his sal­
ary to sixty dollars - even though they trust him with
three million dollars of their assets. And while a citizen
in Harlem gets thirty days when they catch him ped­
dling a ten-cent policy slip, on Wall Street the cop on
the beat touches his cap to the lucky guy who just
guessed the million-dollar number on the big tote board
they call the Stock Exchange.
And Wall Street is where you enter the lobby of a
mammoth granite skyscraper, zoom forty-three floors in
an all-electronic elevator, step into a leisurely, deep-
carpeted reception-room, and pass through many hands
before you enter an office three times the size of your
own. But this isn’t the real one. This is only the secre­
tary’s hangout, the nice old lady who made the appoint­
ment for you.
But now a large oak door swings open and there he
46
 THE PERFECT FRAME 47
stands, the Big Boss, Mr. Franklin Alonzo Forbes, presi­
dent and proprietor of Oceanic Brokerage. And what
do you do in the presence of this tycoon? Search me.
But one thing you don’t do, no matter how strong the
urge. You don’t laugh at the timid, befuddled, grey­
haired little man who stands shy and dwarfed in the
middle of his office, waiting for you to make the first
move. You wonder, as you go forward cautiously, if this
is the third bookkeeper or the assistant stamp-licker
who wandered out of the mail-room. It can’t be
Franklin Forbes. . . .
I heard the big door shush behind me, electrically,
and I came to a stop a few feet from him. ‘ Mr. Forbes ? ’
I asked.
He blinked his large round eyes at me and nodded
politely.
‘I’m Dane, sir. Timothy Dane.’
‘I’m Forbes’, he said. ‘Franklin Forbes.’
‘Yes, sir.’ I held my hand out toward him and he
leaned away. ‘ How do you do?’ hesaidina thin, qua­
vering voice. ‘I never shake hands. Easiest way to
spread germs there is . . .’ The voice trailed off and he
looked at me absently. ‘What was your name?’
‘Timothy Dane.’
He nodded. ‘I knew your father’, Mr. Forbes said.
‘You favour him.’ I cocked my head in surprise, and
my puzzled eyes followed him as he turned and walked
to the great desk at the other end of the room. ‘Your
father was a fine man, Mr. - ah . . .’
‘Dane. Did you know my father in Chicago? ’
‘Chicago?’ he asked, almost disappearing from view
in a broad-backed chair. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been
in Chicago’, he told me.
4U THE PERFECT FRAME

‘You’ve got me confused with someone, Mr. Forbes.

I doubt if you knew my father. He stuck pretty close to
Chicago.’
‘Are you from there?’
‘I was born there’, I said. ‘My father died when I
was very young. I’ve been in New York most of the
time since then.’
‘Good for you’, he said. ‘This is the, ah, city of
opportunity, isn’t it? Fortune to be made on every
street corner, eh?’
He smiled. ‘Though it seems hardly worth it,
does it? Terrible taxes. Abominable situation, don’t
you agree?’
It was my turn to smile. ‘ Never really notice taxes, sir.’
‘Don’t notice them?’ he said with the nearest thing
to life that his voice had held yet. ‘Well, I must say,
Mr.----- ’
‘Dane, sir. Like the dog, Great Dane.’
‘Can’t stand dogs, Mr. Dane. Frightened to death
of the vicious things. Man’s worst enemy. Well, thanks
for dropping by, young man. Give my best to your dear
father.’
‘Mr. Forbes,’ I said in a different voice, ‘I’m here
about that business at the warehouse last night. I think
Mr. Robinson mentioned it to you.’
He blinked at me again. ‘Mr. Robinson? Ware­
house? What warehouse?’
‘The Oceanic warehouse on 21st Street, Mr. Forbes.’
‘Do we have a warehouse there? Whatever for?’
Aie! ‘You keep your clients’ old policies there, sir.
Cancelled policies.’
‘Why do you want to buy cancelled policies, Mr.,
ah Dane?’
 THE PERFECT FRAME

‘i don’t want Io buy llieni.’

‘ Can’l sayas I blame you for I hal ’, be lob I me slyly.
We were interi tipled by bis secretary's soli voice, but
sbewasii’l in ibe room. Her voice seemed Io conic from
all four walls al oik c, and I jumped. ‘Mr. Dane is a
private investigator’, said ihe voice. ‘lie’s here about
some!liiiig suspicious dial is supposed Io have hap­
pened in our warehouse last evening. I read you Mr.
Robinson’s memo about it this morning.’
Mr. 1' orbes looked down al his desk. ‘1 don’l remem­
ber it, Mary’, lie seemed Io be saying Io the blotter.
‘I’ll have. Mr. Robinson conic in llicn’, said Mary,
and dial was dial. I looked around me, saw nothing
on the wall but paintings of flowers and apples and
pears. I be ceiling was solidly plash-red, and tin: rug
ran from wall to wall. Wherever the speaker was hid­
den, it was a good one. (hear as a bell.
Mr. Forbes had been watching me look for il, and
now he. held a bronze paperweight in his hand. Ex­
tending below il was a wire dial < mill iiiucrl on inlo I lit:
desk. ‘My mi< rophonc’, he explained. ‘’I lie speakers
arc in all those painlings. Camouflaged.’
‘Very clever’, I said, wondering why all the liocus-
por.us;.
‘Walter’s idea’, said Mr. Forbes, and there was a
great difference in the timbre of his voice as hr: spoke,
lie. was pioud. And thcri lie looked at trie sharply.
‘Oh,’ hr: tried, ‘now 1 remember about flit: warehouse.
Of course. But you should hr: seeing Walter about il.
Waller is in charge of everything like dial.’
The voice from the paintings spoke again. ‘Mr.
Robinson ’, it said, anti the door opened to admit the
man l’d worked with in Chicago. 1 stood up Io lace
50 THE perfect FRAME

him, noticing that his thinning, colourless hair had

grown no thicker, and that he was wearing steel­
rimmed spectacles now. The glasses blended right into
Jocko’s thin, high-cheeked, expressionless face, as if
he’d always owned them. He was like that with every­
thing. A new suit, a new tie, even a new moustache -
once Jocko had them on you would swear he’d been
with them for years. He would always look the same.
A short, wiry, quick-moving character who’d started
on his first ulcer when he was eighteen, and been nur­
sing it along for another eighteen. I had liked him very
much in Chicago. ‘Hello, Jocko’, I said, a mitt out­
stretched.
He strode toward me brusquely, touched his dry palm
to mine for a brief second and said, ‘Hello, Dane’, in
that clipped, monotonous voice. However, he was no
more effervescent with his boss, so I didn’t take the
brushoff to heart. Besides, I knew from our conversa­
tion last night that Jocko had something on his mind.
Something that I had put my foot into.
‘Dane called me last night’, he said to Mr. Forbes,
all business at once. ‘ He’d like to investigate, privately,
some activity down at our warehouse.’
‘What does Walter say?’ asked the boss.
Jocko glanced at me swiftly and I shook my head.
‘Mr. Huntington doesn’t know anything about Mr.
Dane. Not as yet.’
‘That’s very irregular, Jocko’, Mr. Forbes told him.
‘You know that Walter should be informed of every­
thing immediately. You know that. Even before I’m
informed. You know that.’
Jocko had taken the ball, so I decided to see where
he’d run with it. But Jocko was passing. ‘Just as you
 THE PERFECT FRAME 51
say, Mr. Forbes. But perhaps Mr. Dane has something
to tell you about the matter. I know very little about it
myself.’
‘I have no objection to talking to Mr. Huntington
about the warehouse’, I said to them both. ‘In fact,
I don’t see how it can be avoided.’
‘Dane thinks his investigation may involve Mr.
Huntington’, Jocko put in.
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Involve Walter?’ Forbes seemed upset. ‘In what
way?’
‘ I have no idea, Mr. Forbes’, I said. ‘That’s why I’m
suggesting a look-see. All I know is that something
peculiar is going on at that warehouse.’
‘Something peculiar in Walter’s department?’ Mr.
Forbes stood up from his desk, not timidly. ‘That’s
ridiculous, young man. Investigate Walter? I won’t
hear of such a thing! ’ He wagged a bony forefinger at
me. ‘Walter Huntington is as close to me as a son. My
goodness, investigate Walter! Why, I brought Walter
to Oceanic myself. Took him straight from college,
made him my trusted assistant. Walter has been like a
son to me for almost twenty-five years.’ The old man
was so wrought up that he even made so bold as to come
out from the protection of that great fortress of a desk.
He glared up at me like an outraged sparrow. ‘ I won’t
hear of such a thing!’ he piped.
‘Okay, Mr. Forbes’, I said, holding my hand in the
air. ‘Okay. I’ll just poke around by myself, on a specu­
lation basis. If I come across any dirty wash, I’ll hang
it out and maybe you’ll want to buy. Or I can bring
it down to the police and trade it in for a little good­
will.’
52 THE PERFECT FRAME

The steam went out of him. 'The police', Mr.

Forbes murmured. 'My heavens.'
Jocko whirled on me. 'That'll be enough of that,
Dane. You don't try any of that strong-arm extortion
while I'm around.' He sounded just like the old Jocko,
but I didn't like it turned on me.
'What kind of extortion should I try while you're
around, Jocko? I got all kinds outside in my carpet
bag.'
'Being a wisenheimer is going to get you out of here
on your backside, Dane.'
I laughed at him. 'You got the wrong script this
time, Jocko. I'm the one who did all the throwing-out
in Chi.'
'That was there. This is here.'
'Yes, Jocko', I explained slowly. 'This is here.
This is New York, pal. My town.' I moved toward
him.
Mr. Forbes was standing in the centre ofhis office, his
head going back and forth like a man at a tennis match.
'Now, now', he said. 'What is this all about?'
'I'm sorry, Mr. Forbes', Jocko said. '!just happened
to resent Dane's tactics. Whatever he thinks may be
happening at our warehouse - and I don't care to say
whether he may be right or wrong - but whatever he
thinks is the trouble, it certainly has nothing to do with
the police.'
'I should hope not', said the Oceanic president. 'But
regarding what you mentioned, Mr. Dane, I certainly
don't think it's fair that you should extend yourself on
behalf of my company for the sake of-what did you
call it? -speculation.' He cleared his throat. 'Since
you are a professional investigator, I doubt ifyou would
 THE PERFECT FRAME 53
be spending your very valuable time on an affair unless
you thought it important. Am I right?’
‘Naturally’, I said.
He smiled good-naturedly. ‘Therefore, Mr. Dane,
Oceanic is quite anxious to retain your services in this
matter. We will be your client. On one condition.’
‘Yes? ’
‘That Walter be spared the terrible humiliation’,
said Mr. Forbes. ‘My goodness, I certainly don’t want
Walter to think that I distrust him after all these long
and wonderful years. That would be a terrible thing,
Mr. Dane.’
‘Well’, I began, but he stopped me.
‘That’s the condition, sir, and you may take it or
leave it. Heaven knows, I try to spend my life away
from every unpleasantness - but if you do not accept
my offer, then I’m afraid that I’ll be forced to take steps
to forbid you from investigating my warehouse or my
associates. Do you understand me, young man?’
If Forbes, the original timid soul, was a contradiction
of what the head of a huge firm was supposed to be,
then he was also a contradiction of himself when it
involved the fair-haired Walter Huntington. Damon
and Pythias. ‘ I understand, sir ’, I said. ‘ I’ll investigate
without Mr. Huntington getting wind of it, if that’s
what you want.’
‘That’s what I insist on. And when you’ve finished,
you’ll find that my trust in Walter is well placed. Why’,
the old man smiled, ‘Walter would give his life for
Oceanic-. And, I dare say, that’s more than can be said
for anyone else who works here. Including myself, Mr.
Dane. Including myself.’
‘Your reports’, said Jocko, ‘will be confidential,
 54 THE PERFECT FRAME

Dane. Confidential and verbal. No need to write

anything down, is there, Mr. Forbes?’
‘Oh, my, no. You’ll report to me on everything, Mr.
Dane.’
I took a good long look at Jocko, remembering rule
number one at Pioneer: Three copies of every investi­
gation. One for the client, one for the boss, and one
for the file. ‘As you say, Jocko’, I told him.
‘Then that’ll be all’, Jocko said. ‘You can go now.’
‘There’s one more formality’, I said. ‘The loot.’
Jocko turned to his employer. Our employer. ‘Dane
wants a retainer, Mr. Forbes’, he said, and I thought it
sounded unpleasant.
‘Mary will give you a cheque, Mr.----- ’
‘Dane’, I reminded him again.
He smiled at me slyly. ‘I just wanted to hear you say
it, young man. Great Dane, didn’t you say?’
‘I try, Mr. Forbes.’
He walked to me and extended his hand. ‘ Good-bye,
Mr. Dane. I’m sorry that I can’t wish you any luck.
I really do think you’re wasting your valuable time.’
His old hand felt firm in my own. ‘ In a way,’ I told
him, ‘I hope you’re right. Loyal assistants are hard to
find.’
‘And harder to lose’, he said confidently.
I turned from both of them and headed for the door.
It swung out toward me before I reached it, and when
I walked into Mary’s room she smiled up at me and
pressed a red button on her desk. The door closed. On
her desk she had an open cheque-book and she had
already filled in my name. ‘Will one thousand serve as
a retainer?’ she asked. I nodded. She finished writing
and handed me the cheque. Her name was signed
 THE PERFECT FRAME r)Cj

at the bottom. I thanked her. She lifted one of the

earphones and said, ‘What?’ I thanked her again.
‘These things’, Mary said, ‘are certainly silly.’
‘But Walter thought of them’, I reminded her. ‘So
they must be wonderful.’ Her face was non-committal
as I left the office. Down the hall from Mr. Forbes’ I
remembered passing an open door labelled ‘Walter
Huntington’ and I walked back that way casually. It
was only a swift glance, but enough to show me a
medium-sized, distinguished-looking man seated be­
hind a desk. I had the flash impression of neatness and
good grooming, and the voice that he dictated to his
secretary in went smoothly and capably. He didn’t
raise his eyes as I passed, but kept them on the girl
with the steno-pad. All I saw of her was the back of her
head, long black hair that hung to her shoulders in
defiance of the fashion, a thin waist and long slim legs.
She gave me the impression, from the rear, of being a
beautiful girl. And from the way she held Huntington’s
attention, I was sure of it. I moved on, thoughtfully, to
the elevator - still wondering where this shill game was
going to lead. At least, I told myself, I was moving in
the right direction. The fifty I had returned to Evelyn
Huntington had come back a thousand. That’s pro­
gress, my boy, I said to myself, and decided to take a
cab back to my office.
 CHAPTER 7

he driver, a squat man with a day-old beard, coaxed

T his hack down Wall Street, somehow, and had to
sneak on to Broadway even though we had the light.
We started north toward Times Square. For five whole
blocks - I counted them - we moved at the alarming
speed of twenty miles per hour, but then we hit the
City Hall snarl and had to thread perilously across the
east-bound Brooklyn Bridge traffic. Canal Street and
then Broome kept us in a nerve-edging second gear, but
he found rolling room for another five blocks until the
long jam started below 14th. From there to 44th we
really crawled, and I found out how to solve New York’s
traffic problem. Send everything on wheels via New
Jersey and fly what’s left. Or, damn it, let the City’s
traffic engineers pay my cab fares. A buck and a quar­
ter to go less than three miles.
I carried the thousand-dollar cheque into the bank
in my building and watched the lady write it into my
book. That brought my balance to one thousand and
three dollars and seventy-five cents. Plus the twenty­
eight cents that jingled in my pocket. I moved over to
another window and took three hundred bucks back.
I thanked everybody, went from the bank to the liquor
store next door, decided on a full quart of Seagram’s,
and got on board the elevator.
I had a new outlook on life, and as I turned the
56
 THE PERFECT FRAME 57
special lock on my door I whistled, ‘My Home Town
Is a One Horse Town’. I got a foot inside the doorway
and kept on whistling. But I flatted the tune badly.
I had a visitor. He was in my swivel, with his elbows
on my desk and his broad, mean face cupped in the
palms of his hands. His real sharp, bright-green hat
was set flat on his head and the brim was turned up all
around, just the way it came out of the Adam’s box.
I looked at him and stopped whistling. He looked at
me and his tongue moved around inside his cheek as
though it were digging things out of his teeth.
Something to the left caught my eye. I had two visi­
tors. He was not as wide across the shoulders as his
friend at the desk, but his hair was just as overgrown on
the sides, and it had started to curl, black and oily, over
the collar of his convert-cloth topcoat. The hat, tilted
back on his head, was violet-blue, the latest thing. He
was a handsome Italian except that he didn’t look too
clean a nd his mouth was too sardonic. He didn’t look
up at me, but concentrated on the long, tapering finger­
nails he was manicuring. Neither of the two spoke to me.
‘Stay loose.’ The voice, just above a whisper, turned
me around to the right. I had three visitors. The third
was half the size of the others, but he had the wide-
brimmed hat in white-grey. And he was a lot more
active. He got up from the client’s chair and moved
toward me in a floating motion, a queer, languid smile
on his chiselled face. It didn’t fit at all with his quick,
nervous-looking features. The first thing he did was
lift the quart from under my arm and set it on the desk.
Then his slender hands were busy on my body, touch­
ing, patting, feeling. ‘Where is it?’ His voice sounded
empty and deadly. The lazy, ou t-of-the-world sound of
5* THE PERFECT FRAME

a snowbird. This little greaser was coked to the eye­

brows. 'Where, you fink?' he purred at me.
'I hocked it', I said, and that was true. My old .45
was resting in an oiled rag in Uncle Sam Pinanski's safe
a block away on Eighth Avenue.
The one behind the desk laughed. The sound ex­
ploded unpleasantly in the small room. 'A lush racket
our friend has', he told everybody. 'He's gotta hock his
heat.' He sucked in air noisily through his mouth and I
took another look at him. Sure enough, his nose was
fat against his face. A fighter's nose, with the bone
removed, and that explained the extra wide shoulders.
Now all I had to have explained was how they had
opened the double lock, and what the hell did they
want with me. From the looks of them, they belonged
to Rocky Castel.
I turned to the hophead. 'How's Castel?' I asked.
'Stotte le zeech ', he drawled at me in that unique­
sounding New York Italian. 'Shut it tight, you fink.'
He leered up into my face crazily.
'It's those needles', I told him. 'You only think
you're ten feet tall.'
He swung, and it was funny because it came at me in
slow motion. I picked the punch off half a foot from my
face and pushed him, gently, to the foor with my right
hand. Then it wasn't so funny. I thought that the guy
coming at me from behind was right-handed. So I had
my right shoulder raised and was turning toward the
left. That put my head right under it. I heard the air
swish and then I was down on the floor, on my hands
and knees, and my nose was only a few inches from the
terrible, blazing eyes of the hophead. He relieved him­
self some by spitting at me crazily. Then, with a weird
 THE PERFECT FRAME 59
half-strangling sound, he scrambled to his feet and be­
gan to brush hysterically at his yellow camel’s-hair coat.
That’s the way it goes with these fastidious dressers on
the West Side.
I shook the cobwebs out of my head, and with a
watchful eye on the quick-moving pug who’d sapped
me, I got back up. We gazed at each other, level-eyed,
and from the slight sway of his head I knew he was
balanced on the balls of his feet, ready for another left­
handed try at my head. ‘Hurt?’ he asked, in an
amiable growl.
‘Why?’
He shrugged and closed his eyes. ‘I dunno. We
come here to work you over so I guess it don’t matter
none if it hurts or it don’t.’ He sucked in air, and there
was a thin whistling sound in his nostrils.
‘Shut up, Wemo’, the little ace snapped, all the purr
gone from him since his trip to the floor. He moved
over till he was at my shoulder and then jammed what
he thought was hard on my instep. ‘A friend sent us’,
he told me. ‘He got two things for you not to do.
Number one, you punk, stay away from the broad.
Understand, creep?’ He dug his heel into my instep
again. ‘Don’t go near the blonde, understand? Num­
ber two, keep your nose away from----- ’ His doped
mind struggled for a name.
‘Walter Huntington’, said the handsome one quietly
from his seat against the wall.
‘Shut up!’ The hoppy whirled on him, and Hand­
some smiled to himself and went back to his finger­
nails. ‘Nobody talks!’ screamed the tiny one. ‘Me, I
talk.’ He jabbed at his chest with a thumb. ‘Every­
body else, stotte le zeech. Understand?’ There was a
6o THE PERFECT FRAME

thin stream of spittle spilling on to his chin as his red­

dish, sick eyes danced over my face. He was really
wound up, this crazy one. And the more he screamed,
the tighter he was getting. Now, so suddenly that I
almost missed it, he flicked the wrist of his right arm,
and when I glanced down he was holding a long-bladed,
evil-looking shiv in his delicate pale fingers. Grinning,
he placed the sharp steel point against my groin and
leaned toward me.
'Ah, for crissake, Vito', the pug said wearily. 'What
the hell?'
'You think I'm scared, Wemo?' The hophead's voice
was soft once more. Soft and serious. It was a spot. IfI
made a bad move it would send him off again. But he
was pressing the shiv, and if I didn't move ... 'Go
ahead, Weem', he said. 'Tell me I'm scared to open
him. Go on, say it.'
'You're not scared, kid', said Wemo without enthu­
siasm. 'But what the hell?'
'You will be', said the one in the corner, 'when you
lose that snow and Rocky hears.'
The blade didn't press so tight.
'Yeah', Wemo said. 'Rocky only wants we should
run this bastard down. He woulda said cut him if he
wanted we should.'
The hophead's eyes went fat, and there was a click.
Then the blade was out of sight in his sleeve again. I
swung at him, and my shoulder was into it. It was a
gamble, the idea being to chill the maniac and have
him fall into the other one, knocking him off balance.
It worked, but not for as long as I needed. The big guy
tossed his unconscious friend to the carpet and moved
in on me, his body weaving, with the blackjack cocked
 THE PERFECT FRAME 6l
in his large left fist. I feinted with my own right shoul­
der, and he ducked. My left hand caught him below
the cheek-bone, full, the way it should. He poked a left
into my face, but he was hurt. And a second later he
was hurt more when I buried the knuckles and wrist of
my right hand into his solar plexus. But there’s more
to it than hurting somebody. If he’d only gone down,
that would have given me a chance with Handsome.
But he had come up behind me, measuring me, I guess,
for his own sapper.
Either way I was washed up in this brawl, but it was
my tough luck that Handsome was an expert. None
of this messy skull-rapping. No taking chances on killing
somebody, when you’re hired for something else. All it
took was one crack, hard, on the collar-bone close to
the neck. The pain was classic. Down my whole right
side and up into my head at the same time. I was para­
lysed with it, and my right leg crumpled under me.
But not before the pug I’d slammed exploded a brand-
new pain with a right fist against the bridge of my nose.
And there I lay, unable to move, completely con­
scious and every nerve in my body begging for death.
It hurt so bad I couldn’t even stop biting through my
lower lip long enough to scream. It’s a fabulous thing,
that tendon in the collar-bone.
Handsome was speaking to me from a great distance.
‘We’d stay and play with you, sweetheart, but we got to
shove. Don’t want the little man here to wake up and
find you so easy to take.’ His quiet voice echoed all
around me. I watched big Wemo lift little Vito like a
mail sack. ‘What you got was just the trial offer’,
Handsome said. ‘ Stay away from that blonde queen or
we’ll be back with the real treatment. And stay out of
 THE PERFECT FRAME

Walter Huntington's life.' I was going to be sick now,

and I was gagging on the effort to hold it back. ' One
thing more.' I closed my eyes tight. 'Make it a point to
stay out ofVito's way. He's a bad actor.' I heard his
foot scuff the rug and opened my eyes just in time to
watch him lift his right shoe and drive the tip of its
pointed sole into the side of my head. 'So long,
soldier', I think is what he said.
Then the three of them were gone, and I had the pain
and the sickness all to myself When I opened my eyes
again the sun was throwing long shadows across the
rug. The shadow I noticed first was the one made by
the quart still standing on the desk. Despite the
terrific spike through the middle of my skull, the idea
of going to work on that bottle seemed like a good one.
So I crawled over to my desk, climbed into my swivel
and got the wrapping off. I sat there till it got dark,
nursing the whisky and licking my wounds. It was only
twenty-five hours since a girl had come into this office
and called herself Evelyn Huntington.
Since then my life had taken on a certain zest, a rich­
ness, a je ne sais quoi. I longed for those times, the day
before yesterday, when everything was quiet and there
weren't so many people eager to meet me, physically.
Like hell I did.
 CHAPTER 8

ew York gets dark and the lights come on, and that
N just seems to make it darker. But from my office
window I can look beyond the explosion of neon on
Broadway, and my eyes are not harassed by more than
ten thousand nervous little bulbs that fidget their way
around the outside of the Thames Building, dealing out
all the news that’s fit to be forgotten.
The light I see from my window is the soft glow that
bathes the tower of the luxurious Winchester. This is
my evening star, far, far away - farther than China. In
my mind I can see into the tower suites. I can watch
the fabulous Raj of Jonipur, life and death to thirty
million souls in his Asiatic kingdom, standing spindly
and helpless in his drawers as a team of valets prance
around to dress him. In another huge apartment I
imagine some ancient, wrinkled billionaire being hand-
fed his poached egg, unsalted. Or maybe tonight it’s
farina with five soggy raisins in it. This billionaire can’t
buy false teeth that fit him, and his greatest pleasure is
to sit in a soft chair by the window and gum these
raisins for hours. He wouldn’t even breathe faster if he
could look into the less sumptuous, but still fashionable
tower suite directly below his own. There the girl with
the world’s shapeliest legs, roundest breasts, biggest
salary and most complicated private life in town is in
town from Hollywood for two ‘ civilized weeks’ after the
strain of her third Technicolour epic this year. Now
63
6.| THE PERFECT FRAME

she’s stretched luxuriously in a tub, directing a pale,

bug-eyed young bellhop in the scrubbing of her perfect
pink back. Two hours from now the boy will close the
door of her suite behind him, dazed, with a story none
of the other bellhops will believe, and especially the bell
captain. Later, though, he’ll see her, besabled, come
flouncing across the lobby on the arm of her next hus­
band, en route to the Stork Club where the party will
include two former husbands and the agent who got
there first, six surprising years ago. At four tomorrow
morning he’ll see her flouncing back across the lobby,
and he’ll be working the elevator and she’ll pinch his
cheek and go down the hall to her room - with the
agent.

And somewhere in my own building, a few floors

below me, the twelve-hundred-dollar-a-week publicity
director of that girl’s studio is still at his desk and quietly
bleeding his ulcer. Not about her. Hell, who’d print a
bellhop’s confessions and name names? What he’s
fretting about is their big Western star, the six-feet-four
of screen bashfulness who grosses the studio three mil­
lion every time out because he always turns his profile
away from the busty heroine when the saga ends and
kisses the horse.
Tex was due at ten this morning in Grand Central
Station. But he crossed up the six guards assigned to
meet him by getting off at 125th Street. Now he was
probably somewhere in the Harlem jungle, changing
his luck, and the last time he had done that the studio
had paid fifteen thousand dollars to some dark entre­
preneur who had taken a home movie of Tex - and he
wasn’t in bed with a horse.
 THE PERFECT FRAME

That last time had been my first free-lance job in New

York. I’d gone up to the tenement just off Lenox at
140th, forked over the fifteen G’s and taken the film and
the Pride of Texas out of there without the both of us
being sliced in small pieces and floated back downtown
on the North River. And I’ll never forget the sixteen-
year-old girl who had been Tex’s co-star during that
wild night. She was octoroon, fairer than spring-time,
and her hair was a soft chestnut colour with lights of
natural auburn sparkling in it. Maybe she was the most
beautiful thing in the world, and maybe I wanted to
stay there, or come back, because she smiled at me.
Tonight she was three thousand miles from here, out
in Beverly Hills, disguised as a governess for one
of the producers at Tex’s studio. He had seen the
film.
Crazy business, crazy world. I screwed the top back
on the bottle and stood up, experimentally. Pain or no
pain, it was seven o’clock and time to get back down to
the Harmony Bar and find out what I could have over­
looked down there. Obviously I’d missed something in
the warehouse that was important to quite a few people.
And the list was growing by the hour. Rocky Castel was
included to stay. That was for sure, and I didn’t need
my aching skull to remind me.
I was half-way out of the door and looking at the
thief-proof lock I’d been conned into buying when the
’phone tinkled on my desk.
Jocko Robinson said, ‘How are you feeling, Timo­
thy?’
How was I feeling? ‘I’m not bragging’, I told him.
‘What’s up?’
‘We’ve had an accident down here’, he said in a voice
B
66 THE PERFECT FRAME

that was even more iced than usual. ‘Walter Hunting­

ton just committed suicide.’
I looked at the receiver in my hand. ‘He what?’
‘Half an hour ago. He jumped out the window.
Forty-three floors, and then a sudden stop. They just
swept him off the street.’
‘You’re taking it well, Jocko.’
‘I’m trying to’, he said. ‘Mr. Forbes, of course, is
pretty hard hit. He asked me to tell you about it.’
‘Then start telling.’
‘Well’, Jocko began, and he didn’t seem to know
where to start in. ‘Well, it went like this, Timothy.
More or less. After you left here, Mr. Forbes got to
brooding about what you’d said and what he’d just
hired you to do. The more he thought about investi­
gating Walter behind his back, the unhappier he got.
His conscience bothered him, you might say.’
‘So he told him about it?’ I put in.
‘Exactly. About an hour ago he decided to call Wal­
ter in and get it off his chest. He said to him, “Walter,
I hired a private detective to-day”, and then an amaz­
ing thing happened. The shock of Mr. Forbes’ life.
Walter went all to pieces. He confessed the whole
thing.’
‘What whole thing?’
‘The whole thing about his embezzling, Timothy.
For the past year he’s been stealing Oceanic’s money.’
‘Were you there when he spilled it?’
‘What would I be doing there? It was personal
between them. Mr. Forbes called me here at home
and asked me to get in touch with you. He’s quite
upset, you might say. I think he’s near a complete
collapse.’
 THE PERFECT FRAME lW

‘ How was Huntington stealing? Where does the

warehouse come in?’
‘I have no idea’, said Jocko. ‘I don’t think Mr.
Forbes knows either. All that Walter said, apparently,
was that he was embezzling on his accounts. No de­
tails.’
‘So what happened?’
‘Mr. Forbes listened to him and couldn’t believe his
senses. He says that he must have had a fainting spell
and that Walter carried him over to the couch in his
office and revived him. When Mr. Forbes could speak
again he told Walter that what was done was done. He
assured him that we all have our weak moments.’
‘That’s quite a weak moment’, I reminded. ‘A
year.’
‘Perhaps’, said Jocko quickly. ‘At any rate, that’s
how Mr. Forbes felt, Timothy, and it’s his money. He
forgave Walter and Walter thanked him and promised
to repay all that he had stolen. They shook hands.’
Jocko paused. ‘They shook hands and Walter went
back to his own office. About six o’clock Mr. Forbes left
to go home. He passed Walter’s door, but it was closed
and the light was on inside. Mr. Forbes didn’t go in.
At half-past six, Walter Huntington jumped from the
window.’
‘That’s the police report?’
‘That’s the police report’, he repeated. ‘From sev­
eral hundred witnesses walking down Wall Street to the
subway. Huntington landed right in the midst of them.
It’s surprising that he didn’t fall on anyone.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it always is when they jump. Tell me
something, Jocko. Just what did Huntington do at
Oceanic? ’
68 THE PERFECT FRAME

'He had a very important job. It was his responsi­

bility to see that every policy secured for our clients
was letter-perfect. All the clauses, the special notations,
the legalities. Why?'
'Why not? Where does the warehouse come in?
Did he also have charge of cancelling the policies?'
' I think you can forget about the warehouse', Jocko
said.
'I can what?'
'That's why Mr. Forbes had me call you. He wants
the whole matter hushed up immediately. In fact, I've
given the police and the newspapers the "been-in-bad-
health routine".'
'I don't get it, Jocko. And if l do get it, I'm not sure
I'm going to like it.'
'Really? Well, those are the old man's orders. He
wants you to keep the retainer, which I think is very
fair, considering that you haven't done anything to
earn it.'
'Except bring something very fishy out into the open.
Except to uncover a thief right in your own goddam
backyard. That's all, Jocko.'
'Just as you say, Timothy. However, the orders are
to stay away from the warehouse. That's what I've
been told to tell you.'
'What's your own feeling about it?' I asked him.
Jocko didn't answer right away. 'I'd say I had no
feelings at all about it', he said finally. 'But I can un­
derstand yours. As far as Mr. Forbes is concerned, I
think his principal concern right now is to avoid any
possible scandal. His dearest friend is dead. A suicide.
Forbes is an old man, too old to make attachments that
would mean as much as Walter Huntington meant.
 THE PERFECT FRAME 69
And after all, it’s his company and his warehouse.
There are no stockholders in Oceanic. The money that
Huntington stole belonged to Forbes and nobody else.’
‘So long, Jocko.’
‘The investigation is off?’
‘So long, Jocko.’
‘Don’t go buying yourself any trouble, Timothy.’
‘If I do,’ I said, ‘it’ll be all mine. No stockholders in
Timothy Dane, either. Good-bye.’
I dropped the ’phone and hustled out of my office.
On Broadway I flagged a cab and gave the driver the
Harmony Bar address. Last night I’d had time to
walk over there, but now time was running out and I
was in a sweat.
But so was the Fire Department. Lots of it. A cop
flagged my driver to the kerb as we turned off Lexing­
ton, a block from the Harmony. I got out on the side­
walk to see what was up.
I counted ten pieces of fire equipment, all jammed
around the bar and the warehouse behind it. With
good reason. The whole building was ablaze.
 CHAPTER 9

had to get down to that fire. Not out of morbid

I curiosity, for there’s no sight more sickening or
sorrowing than the evil red tongues of flame defiling
the black night, devouring and destroying with the
passion of a maniac. But I had to get close to it, and I
began by shoving and elbowing my way through the
fascinated, saucer-eyed onlookers toward the fire lines
erected by the police.
If you think it’s tough to cross Fifth Avenue on St.
Patrick’s Day, then try getting through a fire line with­
out credentials. But I was going to get inside and was
just bracing the first of the big-chested cops when I got
lucky. Four feet away, directing a squad of firemen
hauling a great round hose already alive and humping
with the pressure of water, was Bill Stevens in the white
helmet of a Fire Department lieutenant. ‘Bill! Bill!’
His head turned. ‘Timothy! For crissakes, boy,
come back tomorrow. Can’t you see I’m busy?’
‘Get me inside’, I shouted, in competition with the
ominous crackle of the fire, the roar of the water from
the hoses and the voices of the men engaged in the
battle. Bill motioned me through with a wave of his
arm and the cop stood aside.
‘What the hell do you want? ’ my friend yelled at me.
‘When are you going into the building?’ I trotted
along with him until we came to stand at a spot on
70
 THE PERFECT FRAME ?I

Third Avenue less than thirty feet from the blazing

entrance of the Harmony Bar.
‘In there? We’ll be on our way in about two min­
utes’, he shouted. ‘We’re gonna tear it down from
the inside.’
‘Can I go with you?’
‘Are you drunk,’ he cried, ‘or crazy? Keep your dis­
tance, Timothy, I’ve got work to do.’ He ordered the
direction changed on a stream of water and waved a
chemical spouter, shaped like a mortar, brought closer
to the blaze.
‘It’s business’, I yelled, holding him by the arm.
‘I’ve got to get inside, Bill.’
‘Then you’re in the wrong business, boy. Now beat
it. Can’t you see I’m busy?’ He hurried over to his
battalion chief where he spoke a few words, listened to
a few and nodded his head. Then he began pulling a
white, one-piece asbestos suit over his rain jacket and
boots, and slipped an oxygen mask over his face. A
half-dozen firemen, unordered, began climbing into
identical rigs, and then all of them picked up wicked­
looking hook axes, formed a single file behind their
lieutenant and followed him into the inferno. A power­
ful concentration of water and chemical poured over
their heads into the building. Watching them, I was
back at Iwo, except that Bill Stevens was where I had
been that sunny afternoon.
As soon as they had disappeared into the fire, its
intensity seemed to increase. With a great roar, a sheet
of flame burst through the roof and out the sides of the
already buckling warehouse. From somewhere inside
came another explosion, and then the night was turned
into a flickering, frightening, unreal daylight. Smoke,
?2 THE PERFECT FRAME

tremendous, billowing black clouds of smoke, poured

out behind the ugly flame, and from somewhere to the
west came the hysterical wailing of more sirens as
another company sped along treacherous streets to join
the fight.
Another squad, under another lieutenant, were
climbing into those men-from-Mars asbestos suits and
off they trotted to help, or to flnd, Bill Stevens' crew.
The new trucks roared up, and in the confusion of
their unloading, amidst the thousand orders going
around, I grabbed an asbestos outflt, an oxygen mask
and an axe. In ffteen seconds I was racing across the
threshold of the Harmony Bar, and though I couldn't
see a thing, I knew where I was going and how to get
there.
It was either the fire or the axes of Stevens' men, but
now there was no searching for the door that led into
the warehouse. They had simplified it by taking down
the entire wall. I stopped beyond where it had been
and wiped the glasses ofmy mask. From inside I could
see the two demolition squads working quickly but
efficiently at cutting down every loose beam, every
partition, every possible piece of the structure that could
be separated from the burning mass. In there it was as
bright and as eerie as though you stood on the sun itself,
surrounded by an unbelievable incandescent light.
Only the floor, a concrete floor, was not afre; in every
other square inch of the huge, barnlike warehouse there
was terrible flame.
I moved, slowly, toward the files and gazed stupidly
at the twisted, still-glowing and white-hot mass of now
meaningless metal that sagged grotesquely in every
direction. I poked at the things with the tip of the axe,
 THE PERFECT FRAME 73
not hopefully, and rightfully so, for the parchment
policies they had contained were gone. Gone as far as
my reading them again, or trying to make sense out of
them was concerned. Gone as clues as to why they had
been guarded so carefully, and, perhaps, how a man
had used them to embezzle and then killed himself less
than two hours before they had been destroyed. I
poked at another thing that had once been a sturdy
metal file, and there was still nothing that looked like an
insurance policy. Not even, to my inexperienced eyes,
anything that even looked like the ashes of one. But I
knew one thing: it had taken a special fire - an espe­
cially hot fire - to do what this fire had done to that
steel.
Something jabbed frantically into my spine. I spun
around to face a Martian signalling to me in high ex­
citement to follow him. I started to shake my head. I
wanted to look at those melted files again. I say I
started to shake my head. The eyes behind the other
pair of goggles suddenly burned as hot as the fire about
us with indignant recognition. Bill Stevens had spotted
who the extra fireman was. Suddenly he ducked, drove
his wide shoulder into my mid-section, and as I jack­
knifed forward he lifted me on the same shoulder. Then
he whirled and out I went, my arms flailing but helpless
against the famous ‘fireman’s carry’. But, being in that
position, across his back, I actually saw what he had
only sensed a moment before. Slowly, as though my
eyes were a marvellous slow-motion camera, but fast,
faster than anything has ever happened before, the
street-side wall of the warehouse came tumbling in on
us. But it wasn’t a wall of wood, it was a solid mass of
orange and white and blue fire. As it struck, a great ball
 THE PERFECT FRAME

of it flew away and struck me right against the goggles

of my mask. Other chunks, hideous pieces offlame, hur­
tled all around us, but still I was being carried, and
moving, in some direction away from the terror behind
us.
The pavement, this time the actual roadway of Third
Avenue, rushed up to meet the back of my head. Then
the mask was ripped over my head, and the most fu­
rious fire lieutenant in New York City was gasping for
air and trying to bellow what he thought of me at the
same time.
‘You son . . . You son of a . . . You . . . you . . .
you crazy degenerate! You miserable . . .’
‘Hey, Lieut! Chiefwantsyainna hurry!’ Some fire­
man, some nameless, sweating, wonderful joe saved me
from the unholy wrath of my pal Bill Stevens. Still
gasping for air, and begging Heaven to send down some
new words to express what he thought of me, Bill
turned and hurried to his business. I raised myself to
one elbow and watched his retreat with relief.
The fireman stood over me. ‘You crazy jerk!
Whatsa matter, you a firebug or somethin’?’
I smiled up at him from the street. ‘I was chilly’, I
explained. Then I climbed to my feet, shed the asbestos
rig, and walked over to the fire line where I belonged
and was happy to remain.
After the collapse of the wall the fire fighters went to
work in earnest. Backed by powerful streams of water
from what seemed to be a hundred hoses, plus the mor­
tar-like chemical guns, they finally snuffed out the
flame that had fallen across the floor of the warehouse,
and now they swarmed into the open building - in fact,
a large hook and ladder was backed up over the side­
 THE PERFECT FRAME 75
walk into the place - and began pulling the other wall
in toward the centre of the demolished structure. Then,
with a suddenness that left me blinking, the fire was out,
and in its place was a hopeless mess of black, water-
soaked wood. Even the clouds of smoke were dimin­
ishing. It was all over.
Powerful motors roared into life all around me, and
the equipment that had responded from stations out­
side this district began rolling back home to await the
alarms that would send them out to new disasters. I
thought that would be a good idea for Timothy Dane,
too, but a little guy in a saggy blue serge suit, a crushed
brown hat pushed to the back of his head, had words
for me. He was a sharp-eyed individual and the eyes
moved around my face - photographically - before he
quickly flashed a buzzer under my nose. The badge
said that he was a fire marshal of the City of New York.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘Nice fire’, I said.
‘You liked it?’
‘Not especially. But somebody did. I can take my
fires or leave them alone.’
‘Why didn’t you leave this one alone then? ’ he asked,
turning his hawklike face sideways to spit expertly on
the already soaking street.
‘I left something in there’, I told him. I looked up
to see Bill Stevens coming toward us, holding his white
helmet in one hand and wiping perspiration from his
matted hair with the other.
‘You left something?’ the marshal asked.
‘ Last night.’
‘ You sure it wasn’t tonight? ’
‘It wasn’t tonight’, I said.
 .i THE PERFECT FRAME

'I think it was', he said.

'I got here after you did, Marshal. I came by cab
from the West Side. Hack licence four-three-two-five.
The driver is named Jack Katz. He wears glasses.'
It was a merciless smile that creased his weathered
face. 'Got it all down pat, haven't you, mister?'
I looked over his head at Stevens, who stood there
saying nothing and being worried. 'It's a habit', I
answered. 'The point is, I didn't get here till after you
did.'
'That's what you say, mister. Now tell me why you
stole various pieces of city equipment and entered a fire
zone against orders of a city fire officer? What else have
you got to say before I take you in and book you?'
'Nothing, Marshal. Except that I might be able to
help you get the incendiary who started this thing if I
were left outside the Tombs.'
'You know who started it, Timothy?' Bill Stevens
cried.
The fire detective held up his hand. ' I'll handle this,
Lieutenant', he said. Then, to me: 'How come you're
so damn sure it was arson, mister?'
'Aren't you?'
He shrugged his thin shoulders. 'I only know what I
see', he said. 'And all I see is you. You look like a fire­
bug if I ever laid eyes on one.'
'Thanks,' I said, 'but I know you're just saying that
to be nice. Let's stop horsing around, Marshal. I was
in there, you know. I saw those file boxes. Somebody
soaked those things with gasoline and torched them.'
'What file boxes?'
'That warehouse stored files in metal boxes', I ex­
plained. 'Steel boxes.'
 THE PERFECT FRAME 77
‘Whose files were they?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘you probably know that already, but
just to show how co-operative I am I’ll tell you that
they belonged to the Oceanic Brokerage Company.’
‘You work for Oceanic?’
I looked at him. ‘Yes’, I said. ‘I work for Oceanic.’
‘ I can check that, you know.’
‘I know’, I said. ‘I work for Oceanic. I’m a private
investigator and this job was confidential.’
‘Yeah’, he said. ‘It’s always confidential. If they
catch you stiffs taking a leak in the middle of Park
Avenue you say it’s confidential.’ He spat again.
‘Beat it’, he said. ‘ Get out of my sight. And if I catch
you so much as leaning against a fire hydrant in the
next twenty years I’ll run you in. Beat it.’ He turned
on his heel and walked back to the ruins of the ware­
house.
Bill Stevens put a hand on my arm and started walk­
ing me in the opposite direction across Third Avenue.
A train on the Elevated rumbled by overhead. ‘You
maniac’, Bill said. ‘What’s the matter with you, Tim­
othy? You gone out of your head?’
‘I had to get inside, Bill. I really am on a job. That
warehouse figured in it - but not the way it looks now.
I was on my way down here to have a look at it when it
was a warehouse, not a pile ofjunk and ashes.’
‘You think you know who did it?’
I shook my head. ‘No. But I think I have as good a
chance as you guys have of fi nding out.’
• ‘You think Oceanic did it?’
I smiled at him. ‘Why? To collect the insurance?’
Bill laughed. ‘Yeah, that would be screwy. Who
then?’
7a THE PERFECT FRAME

‘When I find out - if I find out, I’ll let you know

first.’
‘Okay, Timothy’, Bill said, patting me on the back.
‘But for crissake, next time you’re near the same fire I
am, turn around and go home. I got enough on my
mind without dragging you amateurs out of collapsing
buildings.’
‘Yes’, I said. ‘And incidentally, thanks, Bill.’
‘You’re not welcome ’, he said. ‘ Give me a buzz some
night next week. I’m working days then. We can go
out and hoist a few like old times.’
‘Will do’, I told him. ‘I owe you a drink.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, turning, ‘and I owe you a kick in
the pants. So long.’
Coincidence. I tell Jocko Robinson, an employee of
Oceanic, that there is something peculiar going on at
his company’s warehouse. I tell him about it to be help­
ful - it has nothing to do with the job I’m on. My job
concerns a girl and a crummy little bar and a man
named Walter Huntington. Then, lo and behold, who
is Walter Huntington but another employee of Oceanic.
Not an employee, but an officer. Coincidence.
Walter Huntington dives through a window forty-
three stories above Wall Street. Jocko tells me that
winds up my investigation. I am ordered to stay away
from the warehouse. While he is talking to me that very
warehouse is beginning to smoulder and burn. Co­
incidence.
Here’s another one: I hadn’t, until tonight, seen Fire
Lieutenant Bill Stevens in over six months. And now
that I’d seen him I was going to talk to someone else I
hadn’t heard from in six months. Another lieutenant
who works for the city. Lieutenant Hal Harper, the
 THE PERFECT FRAME ?g

‘Professor’. The homicide expert who runs the police

lab at Headquarters on Centre Street. Coincidence.
‘Why’, asked Hal Harper on the ’phone, ‘should I
be bothered about a corpse named Huntington? I’m
still on homicide, Tim.’
‘Did you see Huntington?’
‘ Never. Not in this life and probably not in the next.
Look, you easy-living lug, don’t you think the citizens of
this hamlet give me enough work - enough sure-enough
homicides - without my poking around suicides for it?’
‘Would you take a look at him?’ I asked.
‘Hell, no. Why should I?’
‘Merry Christmas, Hal.’
‘What?’
‘I said Merry Christmas. Merry last Christmas.’
‘Now, Tim.’
‘It was Christmas Eve’, I said. ‘Snow was falling.
The Christmas tree at City Hall was all lit up and the
Mayor sent all the city employees home at three o’clock.
All but Hal Harper. Hal Harper had a corpse on his
hands. A nice, fr esh corpse. A bullet through his head
and not a single identification.’
‘Aw, Tim. For God’s sake.’
‘Not a single identification’, I went on, ‘except for a
tattoo on his left arm. The homicide expert looked at
the tattoo. Two symbols, it was. The expert said it was
a fraternity symbol. The expert said . . .’
‘It could have been a fraternity. My fraternity,
Sigma Chi, had two letters just like the ones on his arm.’
‘And the expert started to figure how long it was
going to take to identify the corpse just from the fact
that the corpse went to college and had a fraternity sign
on his left arm. It was Christmas Eve and everybody
8o THE PERFECT FRAME

was on his way home. So the homicide man decides to

buy himself a quick drink and then go back to work.’
‘Look, Tim . . .’
‘So who does he meet in the bar across from Head­
quarters? He meets his old pal Timothy Dane, that’s
who. And where is Dane going? He’s on his way to
Larchmont to a great big party loaded with beautiful
women and beautiful drinks. So he buys a drink for the
homicide slave, the poor bastard, and the homicide
slave tells him what he’s stuck with. His words, and
I can hear them now, were . . .’
‘Tim, you’re breaking my heart.’
‘ His words were, “ Tim, I’ll be trying to identify that
corpse next August. Why the hell couldn’t he of got
himself knocked off the day after Christmas instead of
the day before?” I can hear him now, Hal. And what
does Dane do? Does he laugh in the guy’s unhappy
kisser and head for Larchmont and all those gorgeous
dames? Like hell he does. He goes back to the morgue
with his pal and when he sees the symbol he says, fra­
ternity, hell, that’s the guy’s initials. This stiff is a
Greek.’
‘Yeah, yeah. You’re a genius, Tim . , .’
‘So they pick up a newspaper and sure enough the
Greek ship Georges is in port. Down they go, on Christ­
mas Eve, and bring back the skipper of the ship. The
skipper takes one look and says, Christopher, that is my
third mate, Zolidanades Upelion! He has been mur­
dered, the skipper tells us, and I know the rat who did
it to him. And in thirty minutes a patrol car is rolling
into Centre Street with the first mate of the Georges, and
drunk as he is, he remembers knocking off poor Zoli.
Case is closed. The homicide man goes home to his
 THE PERFECT FRAME 8l

wife and kids for Christmas Eve and Dane goes to

Larchmont.’
‘When do you want me to look at this Huntington?’
Hal asked, wearily.
‘Tonight, Hal. Please. He’s probably being em­
balmed right now, but if you could just look in on him.
Just talk to the undertaker for a few minutes, that’s all.’
‘Well,’ he said, a little uncertainly, ‘I guess some­
body in the Emergency Squad will know who has the
body. What am I supposed to ask the undertaker?’
‘How the hell do I know? You’re the Homicide ex­
pert.’
‘Oh, fine. And all I’ve got to go on is one of your
hunches that this Huntington is a homicide.’
‘Call him a coincidence for the time being, Hal. All
I’m sure of is that the man is dead, and his being dead
is quite a coincidence. Good luck.’
‘Yeah, Tim. Same to you.’
‘And Hal, thanks.’
‘Sure, Tim. What the hell, huh, boy?’

F
 CHAPTER 10

twas nine o’clock that night when I got home. I’d

I gone home to try and do some thinking of my own.
But my home - my room - is not the place for that.
At ten o’clock the cacophony was going full blast on
52nd Street, and naturally the club with the world’s
loudest five-piece band - the High Hat - was the place
nearest my window. From the din of it, the floor show
was on. Bang! Bang! Bang! Tara, tara, tara! Bu-
room, buroom! The ‘burooms’ meant that Tania, the
Tassel Teaser, was grinding it and bumping it in the
centre of the tiny blue-lighted floor. But nothing is what
it seems in the High Hat Club. Not that little Tania
gave a damn how many square inches of her body were
on display, but the Police Department cared, or pre­
tended to. The customers all thought they saw some­
thing naughty, and would go back home to Zanesville
and Litchfield and describe it to the unlucky stay-at-
homes. But they didn’t see anything at all. It was the
blue lights and the bad liquor and the furious writhings
of Tania’s hips and shoulders that made it look more
entertaining than it was. Nothing is what it seems on
52nd Street, voyager, from one phony end of it to the
other.
So there I sat, worrying about other people’s hang­
overs, smoking half a dozen cigarettes in the dark and in
my shorts. I was waiting for some ideas to take form in
82
 THE PERFECT FRAME lyj

my mind. There was material for a good idea, God

knows. Huntington and Oceanic and Jocko and the
fire. Plenty of food for thought, but the only thing
my mind kept nibbling on was a character named
Rocky Castel, New York’s most lovable little bastard.
And I thought about Rocky’s organization. About
Handsome, the slick one, and Wemo, the friendly one.
And, of course, Vito, the crazy one who lived in a land
where there was always the foggy, foggy dew. I heard
Handsome’s smooth voice again. ‘ Stay away from the
blonde queen.’ Orders from the boss, Rocky the First,
king of the punks. Hands off Sally. Castel, himself, had
ideas about Sally, the golden girl. Taking pictures of
her and selling them to the highest bidder, that was all
right. That was business. Anything else was private.
That was Rocky’s pleasure, if and when - or rather -
whether or not Sally had any ideas of her own about
being Rocky’s girl. It didn’t matter. The important
thing was that Rocky wanted her and anybody who
thought different got visitors. Sometimes it was the
quick workover delivered with the message, as mine
had been this afternoon. Sometimes, if the workover
wasn’t convincing, it was a no-return trip out to Coney
Island. That was their favourite place to dump bodies,
Coney Island. I don’t know why. Maybe, when guys
like Rocky Castel were kids, Coney Island was the only
place to go and you didn’t go more than once a year.
My visit from the boys meant that Sally was being
carefully watched. Rocky was protecting his prize.
Everywhere she went, everything she did, everybody she
saw or talked to or even glanced at, Rocky knew about
it. He was after Sally, he wanted her. And he didn’t
want any interference from Timothy Dane.
 ■ THE PERFECT FRAME

I thought about it. I listened again to Handsome's

threat to stay away from her. Then I snubbed out my
sixth cigarette, redressed in the dark, and went out of
my room and down to 53rd Street. It was a warm star­
lit night in Manhattan. A night to be in love or fall in
love. My feet were pointing west and I started walking.
If Castel's greasers were watching Sally's place tonight,
I hoped that they didn't miss anything.

A cute little redhead, the bombshell type, opened the

door to the apartment and beamed up at me. ' Oh !' she
said before I said anything. 'Oh, come in. Wait! I
mean don' come in', she cried, grabbing at the front of
a white wrap-around that had suddenly fallen away
from her body. I was hypnotized.
'I . ..'
'You're Timothy!'
'I . . . ' She was having a time getting that thing
back where it belonged.
'Timothy Dane. You're a detective!'
'I'm . . .'
'Timothy!' Sally was there in the doorway, smiling
at me radiantly over her room-mate's auburn head.
'Of all the nice surprises', she said. 'Come in.'
'Oh, yes, come in', said the redhead.
'Is it safe now?' I smiled, thinking it was nice to be
able to speak a whole sentence.
'That's up to you', the redhead warned me. In that
case, I thought, looking at both of them, in you go, Dane.
'Well!' Sally said, standing before me in a blue
sweater that brought out new lights in her blue eyes,
and holding my hands in both of hers. ' I never ex­
pected to see you tonight.'
 THE PERFECT FRAME

‘Expect the unexpected’, I said, trying to connect

this marvellous girl with all that had gone on last night
and to-day, and now tonight again. There was no con­
nection. None at all. She made me feel like a beau
dropping in for a parlour visit up there in Montpelier.
She made me feel embarrassed because there wasn’t a
box of candy under my arm, or six red roses. I looked
at her and I guess it was shining out of my eyes like a
blinker signal. Somebody coughed politely.
‘Oh’, Sally said, laughing at me and herself. ‘I’m
sorry. Timothy, this is Jean Barnes.’
‘It’s always nice to be formal’, Jean said. ‘This is
the closest I’ve ever been to a detective. I like it.’
‘Yes’, I said.
Now it was Sally who coughed, politely, and the little
redhead grinned mischievously at both of us. ‘You did
come to see me, didn’t you?’ Sally asked.
‘That was the idea I started over here with’, I told
her. ‘ I came over to talk to you.’
Her face clouded. ‘Oh’, she said. ‘I thought you
might have come to see me just to see me.’
It was certainly a good idea, seeing her. ‘I have
something I want to talk to you about, too.’
‘You know what I’d like to do?’Jean said suddenly.
‘It’s such a nice night, I think I’d like to take a walk
for myself.’
‘Oh, no’, Sally said. ‘Timothy and I will go out.’
‘Well . . .’
‘What’s the matter?’ Sally asked.
I looked at Jean, not knowing how much to say.
‘Does Jean know’, I asked Sally, ‘about a guy named
Castel? ’
The redhead answered. ‘That horrible man. Yes, I
86 THE PERFECT FRAME

know all about him.’ She laid a friendly hand on

Sally’s arm.
‘What is it, Timothy?’ Sally asked.
‘Nothing to lose sleep about’, I said, not too truth­
fully. ‘But I think Castel or at least some of his friends
are hanging around your apartment.’
‘Oh, no! Around here?’ Just the thought of it was
frightening to her. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know’, I lied. ‘I guess he’s just curious.
You’ve got him guessing, Sally.’
‘Does it mean I can’t go out?’Jean asked me.
‘Probably nothing will happen, Jean. But anything’s
possible so far as Castel is concerned. My thought is
that you should both put off having anything to do
with Castel as much as you can.’
‘This is terrible’, Sally said. ‘It’s unbelievable.’
‘That’s only part of it, Sally. Does Jean also know
about a man named Walter Huntington?’
Sally shook her head. ‘Huntington?’ Jean asked. ‘I
never heard of him.’
Sally’s eyes searched mine. ‘What happened?’
‘Maybe’, I said, not harshly, ‘what Jean doesn’t
know about won’t haunt her.’ It was a suggestion and
Jean was quick to take it.
‘Well, if I can’t go outside,’ she said, ‘at least I can
get out of your way.’ She walked toward the bedroom.
‘It’s too bad’, she added, ‘that you have so many
serious things to talk about. You look like you’d be fun.’
‘I am,’ I said, ‘when I’m not working.’
‘When aren’t you working?’ Jean asked.
‘ I’ve been working since I was ten.’ She pouted at
me and closed the bedroom door behind her. It had
been small talk between us, light and airy. Now I
 THE PERFECT FRAME 87

turned to the blonde. I didn’t have any small talk for

her, unfortunately. I decided to say it simply. ‘ Hunt­
ington is dead, Sally.’
‘Dead!’ It was wrenched from her throat. Now she
sat down, lifelessly, on the chair and I went over and
took a seat on the couch. ‘When, Timothy? What
happened?’
‘Earlier tonight’, I said. ‘He . . .’
‘He what?’
‘ He died from a fall, apparently. A fall to the street
from his office at Oceanic.’
‘What do you mean, from a fall? What kind of a fall? ’
I frowned at the girl. ‘You’re asking the questions
I’d like to be asking somebody. Tomorrow’s papers
will say that Huntington killed himself, Sally. They’ll
say he was in bad health. “Wealthy broker in bad
health”.’
‘Was he?’
‘Well, if he wasn’t, he certainly is now. The story
about him killing himself may be true. If it is, then
it simplifies everything for everybody. If Huntington
jumped out that window of his own free will, then
maybe it eliminates whatever business he had with our
friend Castel. That means you can go on back home,
Sally.’
‘No, it doesn’t.’
‘ Castel won’t mail any pictures if there’s no business
in it.’
‘ I still can’t go back home, Timothy.’
‘Why not?’
She stood up and walked to the couch. ‘What do I
have to do, write you a letter about it?’
I took her hand and eased her down beside me and
88 THE PERFECT FRAME

then across my knees. ‘If you do,’ I told her, ‘then

deliver it in person.’
‘I am.’ She pulled my head down to hers and we
kissed. After a few moments shesaid, ‘Andstop talking
about my going home.’
‘All right’, I said. ‘But it’s still a very good idea.’
‘This one’s better.’
‘Yes, but . . .’
‘For heaven’s sakes, Timothy, stop talking to me.
Do something else with your lips.’
‘Yes, ma’am’, I said, and I did. It was very quiet in
that room, especially in the vicinity of the couch. Then
a soft voice spoke.
‘That’s nice work since you were ten’, said the
voice. It was Jean and I looked up to see her in the
doorway. ‘ It got so silent out here I thought something
was wrong.’
‘Nothing is wrong’, Sally said, making no move to
sit upright.
‘You’re telling me.’ Then Jean said to me, ‘I told
you you looked like you were a lot of fun.’
‘He is’, Sally said.
It was their conversation and I stayed out of it.
‘Well, I guess I’ll go back in the bedroom then’, Jean
said.
Sally slid to her feet effortlessly. ‘No’, she laughed.
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘I’m making tracks’, I said.
‘You’re making something’, Jean told me, ‘and I
don’t think it’s tracks.’
‘Jean!’
‘Oh, he’s a detective, Sally. He doesn’t shock like
normal men.’
 THE PERFECT FRAME 89

‘I think I’ll be going’, I announced. ‘Before the con­

versation gets over my head.’
‘You have to go?’ Jean asked.
‘ Say, wait a minute. That’s what I’m supposed to ask
him’, Sally said.
‘Well, ask him then.’
‘So long’, I said. ‘I really have to leave, no matter
who asks.’ To Sally I said, ‘And be careful. If any­
thing else happens get in touch with me quick.’ I gave
her my home address and the number.
‘Good-bye, Timothy’, Sally said. ‘Don’t be a stran­
ger-’
‘No’, Jean said.
‘You mind your own business’, Sally told her, but as
the door closed behind me they were both smiling.
I walked through the lobby of the apartment and the
slender, dainty desk clerk eyed me knowingly. ‘Good
night’, he said.
‘It could have been’, I told him. Then I went out
into the beautiful starlit night.
 CHAPTER 11

spotted three different characters loitering too

I casually in the shadows around Sally’s apartment.
One of them probably belonged to Castel, and the other
two were some other kinds of lice. To make sure that
the right one didn’t make any mistakes when he turned
in the full report to the head louse, I stopped under a
light in front ofWarners’ building and lit a cigarette for
a long time. Then I continued on across town, pushing
through the crowds just leaving the ‘South Pacific’ per­
formance and heading for Sardi’s, quickly crossed
Broadway, a really heartbreaking sight when the neon
has taken over, and on up 44th to Fifth. Now there’s
a street. Summer, winter, night or day, there’s nothing
like Fifth Avenue. But it’s especially good at eleven­
fifteen of a warm, leisurely evening.
And that’s what I had, leisure, as I strolled past the
famous bank that’s supposed to be unprotected against
night-thieves and is yet to be robbed, past the travel
agencies with their posters of far-away places, past the
Alexandra, the restaurant with the world’s greatest
bartender, Philip van der Karr, past the gleaming white
office building that was a church a few months ago, and
then, of course, the Promenade at Rockefeller Centre.
I kept walking, though the soft music of the waterfall
around the Prometheus statue - old ‘safe at second’,
himself-was a powerful lure to turn in there some
90
 THE PERFECT FRAME 91
night, soon, when all this Huntington thing was a mem­
ory and I was strolling up Fifth with Sally on my arm,
and she wore a summer dress and the worry was gone
from her eyes.
Any other night I would have kept straight on to
the Park for a couple of leisurely ones, outdoors on
the sidewalk, at Longchamps or the St. Moritz. But
tonight I came to 53rd, my block, and turned down to­
ward the familiar and out-of-place Modern Art build­
ing. And if the front is out of place on that block, then
the stuff they put on display inside is out of the world.
A very strange outfit. But then, maybe I don’t under­
stand them. All I know, when I look at a nude, whether
she’s in oil, water or flesh - I expect two breasts and the
regular number of everything else. If some of the things
they show in there are women, then the desk clerk at
Sally’s place is right about them and the rest of us are
myopic. That’s T. Dane on art.
I climbed the three flights of stairs to my room,
slowly, not in time with the ‘burooms’ that still accom­
panied Tania in the High Hat, put the key in the lock
and opened the door. Besides the studio couch, where
I pretended to sleep, I own a small radio, a rug, a mar­
vellous leather chair and a lamp. The lamp stands over
the leather chair. Next to the door is a wall switch, but
that doesn’t light the lamp. The lamp has its own
switch, and to put it on you have to walk across the
rug and lean over the chair. Hell, I’ve done it in the
dark a thousand times and never had any trouble. But
tonight I had trouble. As I leaned across the chair I
tripped on somebody’s big feet. The feet, as usual,
were aijpched to a body and the body, apparently, was
sitting in my marvellous leather chair. From the body
Q2 the perfect frame
came a voice, a sleek voice, newly familiar in my mind
but indelible. I turned on the light and looked down at
Handsome.
‘So you finally got back, lover’, Handsome said. He
was, as noted, sitting in my chair, and across his pin­
striped lap was a shiny, new-looking .38 Police Special.
I looked at the beautiful gun first and then at Hand­
some. He was beautiful, too. Tania would have
thought so. For him, all the tassels would come off.
To me he was too greasy-looking and unwashed.
‘Get out of that chair’, I said.
‘What?’
‘You heard me. Get up from my chair.’
‘Relax, snooper.’ His hand dropped silently to the
gun.
‘Get out of that chair.’
There’s nothing special about my voice, nothing that
I know of, but I guess I sounded serious. Handsome
stood up, the .38 in his fingers, and walked over
toward the window. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘what do you
want?’
‘You’re as crazy as Vito’, he said. ‘Whatta you got
in that chair, a million bucks, gumshoe?’
‘What do you want? Get it off your chest and get
lost.’
‘I thought we told you to stay away from the
blonde?’
I laughed at him and that made his fingers tighten
angrily around the gun. ‘What does Rocky give you
guys, two-way radio? When you see him, junior, tell
him I had a good time tonight.’
‘You tell him’, Handsome said. ‘Rocky wants to see
you.’
 THE PERFECT FRAME 93
‘ I’m busy. He’ll have to ’phone for an appointment.
Next year.’
‘He wants to see you. It’s business. Not about the
blonde.’
‘Tell Rocky to put his finger in his eye.’
‘You tell him, hawk-eye. Come on.’ He waved the
gun toward the door. ‘ Rocky wants to talk to you.’
‘And he sent you to get me?’ I laughed again. Not
that Handsome put me in a good mood, but my
laughing apparently bothered him. The gun shook in
his hand.
‘Yeah, he sent me. What’s so funny?’
‘ You are, you punk. Did you really think you’re man
enough to take me anywhere?’
‘You . . . I’ll kill you.’ Maybe he meant it, maybe
he didn’t. His voice sounded serious. ‘Come on,’ he
snarled, ‘get going.’ The gun waved me toward the
door again.
I moved in that direction, but instead of opening
the door I flicked on the wall switch.
‘What’s that? Turn it off!’
‘Turn it off yourself’, I said, grinning at him.
‘What’s that switch for? ’ All the sleekness was com­
pletely gone now. Handsome was confused. Things
weren’t going his way, and he was just another slow-
thinking gunman. I’ve never met a smart one yet.
‘ It’s a signal to my mob’, I told him. ‘You’re cooked,
junior. You haven’t got a chance of getting out of this
joint alive.’
‘ Turn that damn thing off! ’ He had the gun pointed
at my head and, excited as he was, it was fairly steady.
There were about ten seconds to go and I was set for
what was going to happen.
94 THE PERFECT FRAME

‘You turn it off’, I told him again. ‘Walk over here

and turn it off?
‘I’ll kill . . .’
‘ Here’s the news ! ’
The voice came from behind him. Loud and sudden.
Especially sudden. I was watching Handsome and his
face was so funny I almost lost my chance by laughing
at it. But he whirled, then, to face the sound and I was
all over him in that instant. My open hand slammed
down on his wrist, and the first thing that happened to
him was that he lost his shiny new gun. Then he lost his
breath as my left arm went wrist-deep into his stomach.
The third thing Handsome lost was his balance as I
sent him back into the wall and down to the floor with
a right.
I stepped over his body and turned off the radio that
had been put into action by the switch I had flipped.
The gunman was at my feet struggling to get up. Then
he changed his mind and decided to rest on his hands
and knees.
‘Stand up, junior.’ I had something to settle with
this one from earlier in the day. My neck and shoulder
still ached from it. ‘Stand up.’
‘No.’
‘Okay.’ I put my foot on his shoulder and shoved
hard. It worked fine. He turned completely over, his
nose and chin smacking into the wall. ‘Stand up’, I
told him.
‘Give me a break, buddy.’
‘I’ll give you a break all right. Stand up.’ He turned
his face up to me and climbed slowly to his feet. I
moved back about twelve inches. ‘There’s your gun’,
I said, pointing to the bright metal at our feet. ‘I’ll
 THE PERFECT FRAME 95
stand here and give you a chance to pick it up. The one
who loses, loses.’
Like I said, gunseis are all dumb. This fool bent over,
in what he thought was a quick move, but when he bent
over he put himself right in range. I had the back of his
neck directly below me and my right hand came down
sideways, like a blade, on the spot where it is joined to
the body. Handsome had hit me there this afternoon
with a blackjack, a little to the right of the spot I
wanted on him. My spot was much better. That’s the
advantage of joining the Marine Corps when a war
comes and learning such things in practice, instead of
dodging the draft, as Handsome probably had, and
reading about judo in books.
But I wasn’t so much interested at waving a flag at the
bastard or pointing up a moral as I was in hurting him
as I’d been hurt. If I’m a failure from here on in, I’ll
always remember tonight and be able to say I was a
smash hit.
Handsome kept going toward the rug but he wasn’t
interested in the gun any more. All he wanted to do was
die. Anything but feel the way he did now. I turned
him over with my foot and looked into the glazed, mois­
ture-filled eyes which had been so mean and command­
ing just a few minutes ago. I smiled at him. ‘I don’t
know’, I said, ‘how many guys you rabbit-punched in
the last few years, but what just happened to you goes
for all of them.’ Then I sat down in my nice leather
chair, poured a straight one from the Seagram’s bottle,
and waited for my unhappy friend to get over the worst
part.
When he looked like he was ready I picked up the
gun, stuck it in my back pocket, and told him to get up.
g6 THE PERFECT FRAME

‘I was only kidding before’, I said. ‘I’d like to talk to

your boss, too. On your feet, junior. It’s getting late.’
He got up and tried to shake the dizziness from his
head. ‘I’ll kill you, you son of a . . .’
‘Sure, you will. You and your little pal, Vito. Now
let’s go sec Rocky.’
Handsome followed me meekly out the door and we
grabbed a cab for the Cabin in Greenwich Village.
 CHAPTER 12

ou can say as many nice things about Rocky Castel’s

Y Cabin Club as you can about poison ivy and canker
sores. You can say as many unpleasant things as the
Vice Squad will let you read from their dossier - an
amazing record that takes in all the nine years since
Castel opened its foul doors to the public.
Three different men, on different occasions, have
been shot to death at its bar and the men who held the
guns are still at large and, presumably, unknown to the
police. The place is a notorious snow drop, everything
from the comparatively innocent marijuana to the
tragic opium and cocaine. It has been fined and shut­
tered - as its political influences waned - for indecent
performances, contributing to delinquency, violating
the State’s alcoholic laws, and then re-opened again -
as the ‘right boys’ got back in public office - to con­
tinue as the furtive lair where all the scum of the city
gather to speak in whispers of past immorality and plan
new outrages for the future.
It’s inevitable that the innocent and the young
sometimes stumble into this filthy trap, lured by the
bright chrome, the soft leather, the sleek lighting and -
sleekest of all - the thin-waisted, hatchet-faced, evil­
eyed characters who appear silently from every dark
corner of the single room and seem to infest the place.
One of these punks, Handsome, guided me now
o 97
98 THE PERFECT FRAME

around the outer edge of the room, past the red leather
bar, the black bakelite tables; past the tiny bandstand
and the microphone where one of the innocents, Sally,
had sung her songs and where, at this moment, a
statuesque, high-bosomed black-haired girl was sing­
ing to a half-attentive audience.
The singer’s dark round eyes shifted to us briefly as
we glided by, but darted away again as Handsome
glanced back at her. He slowed for a moment and I
wondered if the look on his face meant that she had
already been photographed and if that was what the
gunman was remembering.
We walked on and seemed to be heading into a
leather-covered wall. But it was a door and as he
pushed, it opened easily to let us through. We were
now in a sort of foyer in whose centre was a black door
lettered discreetly in gold with the word ‘Private’.
Handsome stopped suddenly and wheeled around.
‘We’re here’, he said. ‘Give me back the gun.’
I smiled at him and slid the shiny thing from my
pocket and handed it to him, barrel forward. ‘ But how
are you going to explain what the side of your face
looks like, sweetheart? Your lip is up like a balloon.’
He said something obscene.
‘The cops are right’, I sighed. ‘All you guys will ever
understand is a good kick in the teeth. What do you
want me to do, take the gun away from you again?’
He had started to replace the gun under his armpit,
but now he didn’t know what to do with it. Finally he
put it out of sight and patted his shoulder reassuringly.
I laughed in his face. ‘That’s the first smart thing I’ve
seen you do’, I told him. ‘Now open the door and let’s
go see the guy who owns you.’
 THE PERFECT FRAME 99
His eyes were hot with rage as he rapped on the door
and waited. It was opened a trifle and the sharp,
pointed features of little Vito peered out at us. Then
the door swung back for an instant and we slipped in­
side.
The office followed the colour scheme of the club.
The walls were covered with squares of red leather, and
the furniture was black and chrome. At the far end
of the room was a curved black desk whose bright finish
caught the subdued reflection from the indirect lights
hidden in a recess that ran around the walls near the
ceiling. In front of my side of the desk was a large chair,
and on the other side, watching me narrowly out of
hooded grey eyes, was the one who called himself
Rocky Castel. He looked trim and sleek and unsafe.
I knew he wasn’t a tall man, but sitting there he ap­
peared to be. The deception came from the way he held
his head thrown back, and now, as he followed my
movements, the head was still and erect. It wasn’t a
bad-looking head. Well-formed, with olive-complex-
ioned features that were in good proportion. A face
that would leave an impression, and the impression was
made stronger by the carefully trimmed steel-grey side­
burns that hung below the jet-black wavy hair. Castel
was in his middle forties.
‘No need to sit down, shamus’, he said to me
abruptly. ‘This isn’t going to take very long. I’m a
busy man, Dane. I sent for you to talk business. I want
to buy something. I want to buy it quick. I . . .’ The
long string of I’s stopped abruptly. He was looking
beyond me toward Handsome. ‘Mario’, he said omin­
ously, ‘what the hell happened to you?’
‘ Nothing, Mr. Castel.’ The voice was surly.
100 THE PERFECT FRAME

'Nothing? ' The sharp eyes flicked to my face. 'What

happened?' he asked me.
'I hit him', I explained.
The eyes widened for a moment. 'Just like that? You
hit him. You're a pretty fresh boy, aren't you?'
I shrugged my shoulders and reached for a cigarette.
When it was between my lips I couldn't find any
matches. I picked up the lighter on the gangster's desk.
It was in the shape of an ebony nude and the flame ap­
peared from an unexpected place. Typical bric-a-brac.
I replaced it on his desk carefolly.
Castel had watched every move I'd made. Now there
was a nerve twitching in his cheek. 'You bother me',
he said. 'I'm not sure it's worth it.'
'It ain't', Mario said flatly.
'If I needed advice from you', Castel told him, 'I'd
be in tough shape. Just shut up. Now, you. Let's get
this over with. Show me what you got to sell.'
'I don't know what you're talking about, Castel', I
said.
The lids covered his eyes completely and opened
again slowly. He turned his sun-browned hands palm
upward and gazed at them as he spoke. ' You were told
to butt out of this thing a couple of days ago. The word
was to lay off a man named Walter Huntington. And
a girl. Right?' He didn't look up from his hands.
'That's right.'
'Did you lay off?'
'No.'
Now his eyes were on me. 'No. But we won't talk
about the girl. Not now. You'll just tell me all about
Walter Huntington.'
'Why?' I asked.
 THE PERFECT FRAME IOI

His voice was unemotional. ‘Because, goddam it, I

tell you to. You stuck your nose in my business and
you got in my way . . .’
I was shaking my head athim. ‘I didn’t stick my nose
into anything. I was invited in. By the girl. She came
up to my office because you told her to. She gave me
fifty dollars of your money.’
‘And then you were told to get out. But every time
I turned around I started bumping into you. What
happened to Walter Huntington tonight?’ he asked
suddenly.
‘He died’, I said.
‘Why?’
‘The papers will say he was sick.’
‘Eat it’, he snarled. ‘Sick! All right, Dane. I think
you know something. I’ll buy what you know.’
‘I don’t know anything’, I told him.
‘Don’t stretch your luck. It’s so thin now, I can see
through it.’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’ I asked him.
‘ It means that Vito or Mario are itching to work you
over. Don’t give me any reason to let them.’
‘Lousy shamus’, Vito said. He walked or, rather,
swayed toward Castel’s desk. ‘Lemme take him’, he
said plaintively. ‘For one hour, Mr. Castel.’
Castel’s eyes moved from Vito to me and back again.
‘Go on upstairs and lie down for a while’, he told the
hophead.
‘I’m all right, Mr. Castel . . .’
‘Beat it. Go upstairs.’
‘I’m all right . . .’
‘Vito’, Castel said, and that was all. The little
one turned slowly, looked at me with a sad expression,
102 THE PERFECT FRAME

and sauntered from the room. The door closed

softly.
‘You see what I mean now?’ Castel said. ‘Nobody
likes you, Dane. You’d better smarten up.’
‘ I am ’, I said. ‘ By the minute. Why don’t you stop
trying to impress me and get to the point?’
‘I warned you not to stretch your luck, Dane. Vito’s
gone - but Mario’s right behind you. He’d sooner
knock you off than look at you.’
‘With what?’ I laughed. ‘Air?’ I turned to look at
Handsome’s raw, swollen face. I held my hand toward
Castel and showed him the six slugs for Mario’s empty
gun. I dumped them on the desk next to the strange
lighter. ‘ If you think you have something to talk to me
about,’ I said, ‘let’s get to it.’
Castel dragged his eyes away from the slugs and
stared at Mario. ‘Remind me’, he told him, ‘that I
want to talk to you later.’ There was a sharp intake of
air from Mario, but nothing else.
‘Why did Huntington jump out that window?’
Castel asked me.
‘I don’t know.’
‘You’re a liar. What happened when you went down
to that little joint last night?’
‘I had a beer and came home again. Nothing hap­
pened.’
‘You’re twice a liar.’
‘Why’, I asked him, ‘did you send the girl to see me?
What did you think was going to happen down there
when I went?’
‘I’ll do the asking, Dane. Who set fire to the place?’
‘If you know about it’, I said, ‘then you know as
much as I do.’
 THE PERFECT FRAME 103

He slammed on his desk. ‘Talk, Dane, and stop

cracking so goddam wise. I’m not used to it. It gets on
my nerves. Who burned that dump?’
‘You did’, I said.
‘What?’
‘How the hell do I know who set the fire? How the
hell dojjw know there even was a fire?’ I reached over
and jammed my butt into an ashtray and then sat
down in the chair facing his desk. I hoped I looked sore.
‘You got me into this rat race’, I told him. ‘Why?
What’s it all about, Castel? Why did you send Sally
to my office?’
‘ I said I’d do the asking.’
‘Why did you send her to me?’ I repeated. ‘Let’s
get that angle straightened out first.’
He was watching me quizzically, an odd expression
in his eyes. ‘You and I’, he said, ‘better not talk about
the girl. You know what I mean?’
‘If it makes you nervous,’ I answered, ‘let’s put it
another way. How did you come to pick my name out
of the hat to be your shill?’
‘You didn’t come out of a hat’, Castel said. ‘It was
the one before you that I lifted blindfolded.’
‘Jamieson’, I told him.
His eyebrows went up. ‘You’re quite a snooper’, he
said. ‘Ever think about leaving that penny-ante racket
you’re in?’
‘And do what? Work for you, Castel? Don’t make
me laugh.’
‘Why are you so tough to get along with?’ he asked
quietly.
It wouldn’t have helped anything to tell him.
‘You found a name in the Red Book’, I said instead.
104 THE perfect frame
‘Jamieson. You had the girl send him down to the
Harmony. Then he ran into trouble and you picked
me for the job. Why ? ’
The gangster shook his head. ‘I didn’t send Jamieson
to the bar. That came later. I just wanted Jamieson to
think he had to tail this other guy - this Huntington
- around town. Jamieson did.’
‘Why?’
‘That’s my business, friend. My personal business.’
‘Shakedown?’
‘That’s a nasty word’, Castel said. ‘I don’t like the
sound of it at all.’
‘Since when?’
Castel sighed loudly. ‘It really beats me’, he said.
‘Why aren’t you wrapped in a bag somewhere, Dane?’
I smiled again. ‘ And dropped out i n Coney Island? ’
Handsome had come to his feet at my words and
now he stood there waiting, watching Castel. ‘Why
Coney Island?’ Castel asked without emotion in his
voice.
‘Why not?’
He laughed, an unhumorous sound. ‘That’s right,
why not? Now, where were we? ’
‘You were telling me about the shakedown’, I said.
Bang went the hands on the desk. ‘ Goddam it, Dane,
I . . .’ He stopped and closed his eyes with an effort
and then re-opened them and looked at me. ‘Ah, skip
it. Boy,’ he said, ‘I never laid eyes on anybody like
you, and I’ve seen a lot of different types.’
‘ That makes us even’, I said. ‘ Now let’s get back to
Huntington and Jamieson and the job he was on. The
job I inherited.’
‘Fine’, Castel said. ‘Well, the way it turned out,
 THE PERFECT FRAME IO5

Jamieson would pick up Huntington about five o’clock

when he left his office.’
‘The Oceanic.’
He nodded. ‘That’s something else you weren’t sup­
posed to know about.’
‘Why not? Jamieson knew Huntington worked there,
why not me?’
‘Because you and Jamieson are two different char­
acters. You both carry licences to do your snooping,
but one of you is - how do you say it? - a harmless
little guy. Good for shadowing people, see, and not
even very good at that. The other character’, he went
on, gazing at me steadily, ‘I’d had reports on from a
friend of mine uptown. The other snooper wasn’t sup­
posed to be told anything that would get him in trouble.’
‘Your friend uptown sells pictures, doesn’t he?’ I
asked. ‘A fat, oily, ugly bastard who owns a camera and
sells pictures. When you say uptown you mean Har­
lem, don’t you?’
‘I wish he were here for that description, Dane’,
Castel laughed. ‘He’d love that. Yeah,’ he added,
‘this guy sells an occasional picture. He sold a couple
of very good reels to you. At least you were the strong-
arm boy that came to pick them up.’
It was the caper when I’d taken Tex away from that
little octoroon, but I didn’t know I’d impressed any­
body. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘now I know how I came into
it. But back to Jamieson . . .’
‘Who the hell came to see who?’ Castel demanded.
‘Try to get it through your head, shamus, that you’re
here to give me information. That’s the only reason
you’re still able to talk.’
‘Sure’, I said. ‘Now back to Jamieson. He picked
io6 the perfect frame
up Huntington i n front o f the Oceanic. Then where did
they go?’
I had to wait until he stopped shaking his head and
emoting behind the desk. When he spoke again his
voice was thin and irritated. ‘Some nights they went
to Grand Central. Huntington got on a train and went
home.’
‘Home where?’
Castel smiled. ‘You don’t know? You mean there’s
something you don’t actually know about my busi­
ness?’
‘It’ll take five minutes to find out. One ’phone call.
Make it three minutes.’
‘He lives in a town called Westport. That’s up the
line somewhere in Connecticut.’
‘Some nights he went to Westport. How about the
other nights?’
‘Most nights he went to Westport’, Castel corrected.
‘Then one night he went to that little dive, the what’s-
its-name, Harmony.’
‘Huntington went into the Harmony? What did
Jamieson do?’ I asked.
‘Well,’ Castel said, ‘that part’s a little vague. You
see, shamus, I never talked to the guy like I’m talking to
you. Every night after he’d tail Huntington he’d send
a report over to the girl and she’d bring it down here
when she came to work.’
‘Sally’, I interrupted, ‘was working here, singing,
during that time?’
Castel scowled. ‘Sure. She was working up until
yesterday when I sent her to see you. You know,’ he
said, ‘it looks like as soon as I made the mistake of
getting you, everything went screwy on this job.’
 THE PERFECT FRAME [QJ

‘Next time you’ll know better’, I advised him. ‘So

what happened when Huntington went into the Har­
mony?’
‘Jamieson’, said Castel, ‘apparently hung around
outside for a while.’
‘What do you mean apparently?’
‘Relax, boy. You’ll see what I mean. He apparently
hung around outside waiting for Huntington to have
his couple of drinks and continue on uptown to Grand
Central. But Huntington didn’t come out of the joint,
apparently,’ Castel said, ‘and so this bright bird dog I
hired barges right into the place and asks the barkeep
where’s the guy who came in here ten minutes ago.
That - and I got all of this second-hand and vague - is
one of the last things this Jamieson sucker remembers.
The next time he opens his eyes he’s in St. Vincent’s
Hospital and in very tough shape. He looks like a
truck hit him right smack in the guts. The hospital
report says he was picked up by two cops sprawled in
the grass alongside the East River Drive. In fact,
their report even now says it looks like a hit-and-run
case.’
‘How do you know what the report says?’ I asked.
‘Well,’ Castel answered, ‘a day goes by and there’s
no word from Jamieson. I have the girl call his office
and there’s no answer. Then the guy’s wife calls the girl
and she sounds all broken up, so I hear, and what I just
told you is what the wife told the girl and the girl told
me.’
‘So you immediately set me up for another hit-run
operation’, I said.
Castel smiled maliciously. ‘Not immediately. First,’
he said, ‘I send Mario here down to this little dump,
I08 THE PERFECT FRAME

the how-do-you-call-it. The Harmony. Tell the shamus

what happened, Mario.’
Handsome’s voice was flat and expressionless. ‘ I
walked in the joint. I bought a drink. What a dump.
Nobody’s there but me and the bartender. Then I look
up and I see an old friend of mine standing down the
other end of the bar. Where the hell he comes from
beats me.’
‘Your friend’, I said, ‘is a big guy named Bull.’
‘Bull Hinman, yeah. He’s a very big guy. I seen him
one night, in a whorehouse, he took a guy’s arm . . .’
‘Tell what happened in the bar’, snapped Castel.
‘Leave your love life out of it! ’
‘ Yes, sir ’, Mario answered quickly. ‘ So the Bull spots
me like I spot him and we cut up a few touches about
the old times. I ask him what’s his racket and he
dummies up tight. He tells me he ain’t doing a thing,
but I know different. He looks too good to be on the
bum. So I tell him I’ll see him and I duck out.’
‘He thought’, I said, ‘that you just happened to drop
in for a drink, is that it? You didn’t talk to him about
Jamieson or Huntington?’
Castel answered. ‘Mario didn’t say anything to him
about anything. He told me what had happened and I
knew it wouldn’t be smart to have any of my boys try to
smell it out. That’s when I thought about you, Dane.’
‘Sally just told me to go down to the Harmony and
look it over. That was the general idea, along with a
cock-and-bull story. What did you figure that would
do?’
‘Not’, said Castel, ‘as much as it did. I was just
trying to find out if you’d get worked over if you men­
tioned Huntington’s name in the place. And I wanted
 THE PERFECT FRAME IO9

to get your ideas on why a guy with a job like Hunting­

ton’s would go into a dump like that. I paid fifty bucks
to find out. So far, Dane, I haven’t had anything for
my fifty bucks but a lot of annoyance.’ His grey eyes
were hooded as he studied me.
‘Yes’, I said, not listening too hard as my mind tried
to make some sense out of it. From what he’d said,
Castel knew nothing about the warehouse behind the
Harmony Bar.
‘So now I want my fifty bucks’ worth’, he said.
‘Give.’
He didn’t even know about his fifty bucks. Not yet.
I smiled at him. ‘You got what you paid for’, I said.
‘ I got nothing.’
‘ That’s what you paid for. I was sent down to look at
the Harmony. I looked at it. Do you want me to de­
scribe it, Castel? Is that what you want for fifty dol­
lars?’
‘I want information. What’s this Bull do down
there? Why did Huntington go there? Why did he
jump out of a window?’
The longer his list got, the wider I smiled. ‘That’s a
lot for fifty bucks ’, I told him.
‘How much would it cost me?’
I ignored the question. ‘What was the story between
you and Huntington?’ I asked instead. ‘Who was
buying what?’
‘What’s it to you?’ He was getting sore again.
‘Not a goddam thing’, I lied and stood up from the
chair. ‘I’ll be leaving now’, I added and turned toward
the gleaming black door. Handsome moved in the
same direction, a step ahead of me. ‘That’s okay,
junior’, I told him pleasantly. ‘I know my way out.’
IIO THE PERFECT FRAME

Castel’s voice cracked like a whip at the back of my

head. ‘ Sit down, shamus! Where the hell do you think
you’re going? ’
I looked over my shoulder at him. He was on his feet
and the nerve in his cheek was pumping furiously. ‘ I’m
going home’, I said. ‘Beddy-bye. Good night, and
thanks for nothing.’ I was at the door, eye to eye with
Handsome, whose back was braced against it desper­
ately. ‘Outofmy way,junior’, I warned. He crouched,
waiting for me to make the next move.
Whatever was going to happen, Castel’s voice post­
poned it. ‘Don’t do it the hard way, Dane’, he said in
a different tone. ‘Come on back and sit down. Mario’ll
make us a drink and I’ll tell you a little story about that
guy Huntington.’
That was what I’d come to hear, and the drink
sounded like a fine idea. I took the invitation. ‘ Can he
really make a drink?’ I asked with a nod toward Hand­
some. ‘Does he really remember to put in the ice and
the water and the whisky?’ I sat down again in the
chair and stretched my legs.
‘Don’t get on his nerves any more than you already
have’, Castel said. He pressed a button somewhere on
the desk, and a part of the red-leather wall began to
slowly turn in toward the room. When it had made a
full pivot I was looking at a bright chrome bar, loaded
with all sorts of goodies. ‘What’ll it be?’ Castel asked
expansively.
I ordered rye and water and watched Handsome fum­
ble a couple of ice cubes on to the rug. But I didn’t
laugh. After I was gone he’d still have to explain to his
boss why the bullets for his gun were in my pocket, and
I guess my heart went out to him. The punk. When
 THE PERFECT FRAME I 11

the whisky was cascading silently down my throat I

spoke to Castel. ‘What went on between you and
Huntington? ’
‘Well,’ Castel began, ‘it’s a funny story. I mean it
had a lot of angles and a lot of puzzles. It began about
six, seven months back when I got a ’phone call up in
my apartment at three o’clock in the afternoon. Now
right there is a puzzle. Lots of guys put in private
’phones, but they have so many friends they start giving
out the number right and left; first thing you know, it’s
as private as Gloria Dawn’s or Penn Station. But not
me. I got a private line that’s so private, hell, the tele­
phone company has forgotten the number. Yet the
damn thing rings at three o’clock and when I pick it up
a dame is purring into my ear. Mr. Castel, she says, can
you be at the Easton Hotel, suite 1341, eight-thirty to­
night? What the hell? Sure I can, I said, but it would
sure surprise me if I were. What’s the matter, sister,
you crazy or something? She told me, no, she wasn’t
crazy. If I went to the Easton tonight I’d find a
man waiting for me. I can imagine, I told her. I can
just see him there waiting for me. Only I won’t see
him at all because he’ll be sitting there in the dark.
All I’ll see is the flash from the rod he’s pumping.
I don’t know who dreamed this up, honey, I told
her, but you and your friends’ll have to do better.
Imagine a guy like me, Dane, walking up to a flea­
bag like that Easton Hotel and walking into suite
1341?’
‘I can’t imagine it’, I said and held my empty glass
toward Handsome. Castel nodded and the gunsel took
it away, refilled it without spilling any ice, and handed
it back. ‘Thanks’, I said.
112 THE PERFECT FRAME

Handsome’s answer was obscene and a physical im­

possibility anyway. I turned back to Castel.
‘The dame on the ’phone said I had her all wrong.
This man was going to meet me and discuss money.
Fine, I said. Whose money, his or mine? His, she said.
It’s money that will be paid to you. Fine, I said. Why?
There’s something he wants you to do, she said. I fig­
ured there was a catch in it, lady, I told her, and started
to hang up. It’s a great deal of money, I heard her say,
considering what you have to do to earn it. That I’ve
heard before, I said to her. But she had me a little
curious, especially since she had called on this very pri­
vate telephone of mine. What, I asked her, does your
friend consider a great deal of money? About sixty
thousand dollars, she said, just like that. About sixty
thousand dollars. And what do I have to do? Can’t I
just send over there to pick it up?
‘That was a joke, see?’ Castel explained to me. ‘But
she takes it straight. Oh, no, she said. You’ll have to
come to the hotel in person. It’s very confidential. It
will all be explained when you get there. Not to me it
won’t, sister, I said. You tell your pals they’ll have to
come up with a better idea than this one. You’re talk­
ing to Rocky Castel, I told her. I got experts trying to
finger me twenty-four hours a day. I don’t fall for any
gag as simple as this one.
‘Well, that made her quiet for a few seconds. All
right, she said, here’s what to do. I’ll hang up and you
call the Oceanic Brokerage Company. On the level,
that’s what she said, shamus. You call the Oceanic
Brokerage Company, she said, and ask for Mr. Walter
Huntington. When Mr. Huntington answers you ask
him if he’ll be in suite 1341 of the Easton Hotel at
 THE PERFECT FRAME II3

eight-thirty tonight. Naturally, she said, all of this is

very confidential. Naturally, I said, and she hung up.
In ten minutes I called the Oceanic and asked for Hunt­
ington. A guy comes on sounding all business, and
when I ask him the question he says, yes, he’ll be there.
Will I? I tell him maybe, I got to think about it. He
says it’s a nice piece of money involved and very little
to do to earn it. I said I’d think about it, and hung up.’
Castel moistened his throat with a long pull from his
glass. ‘So’, he continued, ‘I thought about it and even
called back at Oceanic. The same guy answered when
I asked for Walter Huntington. Then I checked the
name a couple of other ways. It seemed to check
out.’
‘Did you keep the date at the hotel?’
Castel smiled and nodded. ‘What the hell? Sixty G’s,
and the way it was set up I sure wouldn’t be declaring
any taxes on it.’ That thought started him chuckling.
‘And that’, he said, ‘is how I got to be interested in
Walter Huntington.’
‘Wait’, I said, holding up my hand. ‘Aren’t you
leaving something out?’
‘Like what?’ Castel said, not smiling any more.
‘Like why you hire private detectives to tail him
around six months after you do business with him’, I
said. ‘And like what you did for him that was worth
sixty thousand dollars.’
Castel scowled. ‘In the first place, I didn’t get sixty
thousand. I got thirty thousand. In the second place,
pal, I’m through spilling my business to some two-bit
snooper. Now you start talking.’
‘ Thirty thousand,’ I repeated, ‘ and just a few minutes
ago you were screaming about fifty dollars.’
H
J [4 THE PERFECT FRAME

‘Mario,’ Castel said, ‘am I going crazy, or what?

Have you ever seen anybody like this guy ? ’
‘I’ll kill him, Mr. Castel.’
The boss laughed a short, choppy-sounding noise. I
looked over at Handsome and we stared at each other
for a long, quiet moment. I told him, ‘ Before you figure
how you think you’re going to do it, how about mix­
ing me another drink?’
Handsome mouthed something foul again. Some­
thing about what he would mix for me. ‘ If you want a
drink,’ Castel said when he was finished, ‘ maybe you’d
better get it yourself.’
‘ In that case I don’t want it’, I said. ‘ I’m trying to
figure out’, I continued, ‘what it was you had to offer
Huntington that would cost sixty or even thirty thou­
sand dollars. I’ve seen the kind of dirty pictures you
sell. A million of them aren’t worth five dollars.’
‘Who’s talking about pictures? Who said anything
about pictures?’
‘I did’, I said.
‘Well, forget them’, Castel growled.
‘Why?’ I pursued. ‘Did Huntington meet you in the
Easton Hotel and want to buy pictures?’
‘Why the hell do you keep talking about pictures?’
‘Because it makes you jump’, I answered. ‘That’s
why. Every time I say pictures you’d think I touched
you with a live wire.’
‘Mario. Get us a drink’, he commanded. ‘So you
don’t like the pictures I sell?’ he said to me.
I shrugged. ‘Of course, I’m no pimply-faced kid,’ I
admitted, ‘or like Mario here, or Vito. All I know is,
I’ve seen them and they stink. You take some broken-
down dame who wouldn’t even get a tumble if she
 THE PERFECT FRAME

walked naked through the courtyard in Sing Sing, turn

a spotlight on her in front of a black sheet, tell her to
stare off into space . .
‘Drink your drink.’
‘And then you call that a picture.’
‘You don’t know anything about pictures’, Castel
said, defensively.
The needle was working. I kept turning it. ‘The
trouble with your pictures ’, I said, ‘ is that you let your
own taste guide you.’
‘Why, you goddam . . .’
‘And your taste stinks’, I told Rocky Castel and then
stared into my drink and tensed myself. But he didn’t
say anything. I looked up again to find him grinning
at me. ‘Besides,’ I said, ‘it’s a cheap, nickel-chasing
racket anyway. You wouldn’t make thirty grand at it
in thirty years.’ I knew better than that, but I said it to
get a reaction from this egomaniac. He was still
smirking at me.
‘You think so, do you?’ he asked in an oily voice. ‘I
got bad taste, hah? How about the blonde, Dane?
Could she walk naked through Sing Sing? Could she?
How’d you like to hear about some of my special pic­
tures? Very special ones.’
I had known when I started that it might come around
to Sally. Here it was. I gazed into my ice cubes again
and said nothing.
‘What’s the matter, Dane? Cat got your tongue,
fresh guy? Look at him, Mario.’
‘I’m looking’, Mario leered. ‘It looks good.’
‘He’s got it bad for a certain dame, Mario’, said
Castel. ‘A blonde twist. But Castel saw her first, see,
and Castel has her all wrapped up, ready for delivery.’
Il6 THE PERFECT FRAME

I jiggled the ice in my glass, made it revolve around and

around. ‘Okay, shamus,’ he said, ‘since you want to
hear so much, keep your ears open. I’ll tell you about
some pictures worth thirty thousand dollars. You want
to hear it? ’
I looked up at him. ‘If it gets boring’, I said, ‘all I
have to do is get up and go home.’
He was still grinning at me maliciously. ‘We’ll see
what you do’, he said and leaned back comfortably in
his chair. ‘ I told you this happened six months ago. I
went up to that hotel room and met Huntington. He
looked just the way he sounded on the ’phone, the typi­
cal well-heeled big businessman. Solid as a rock and
loaded with honesty.’ Castel laughed as he remem­
bered how Walter Huntington had looked to him that
night. ‘A real boy scout,’ he went on, ‘and he came
right to the point. He said he wanted to buy some pic­
tures from me. Pictures, I asked him, for sixty thousand
dollars? Yes, he said, but not the kind of pictures you
sell to everybody else. What I want, he said, are very
special pictures. Exclusive, he said, and nobody owns
them but me. How do you like that, Dane?’
‘He was an art collector.’
Castel laughed again. ‘Yeah, he was an art collector.
Very funny art. You hear about perverts’, said Castel,
‘and I do a big business selling to guys who just sit
around looking at a naked dame and drool. But this
Huntington was the world’s champion screwball.
Wait’ll you hear about what he wanted. First of all, he
said, they had to be nude pictures of girls who wouldn’t
in a thousand years pose for a nude picture.’ Castel
watched my face for a reaction. I tried not to give him
any. ‘ Get the guy’s angle, shamus? He was a goddam
 THE PERFECT FRAME II7

Peeping Tom, but he wanted the dame to stand still so

he could watch her! Ever hear of a character like that ? ’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘I told him it sounded like a tough job. Sure it is,
he said. That’s why it’s worth so much money. Who, I
asked him, is supposed to pick out the girls, and when
they are picked out, they won’t want to pose. I told
him it didn’t make any sense. He said he’d find some­
body else who could do it. Relax, I told him. I’ll do it.
Okay, he said, and here’s how we work it. You photo­
graph a girl like I described. She’s got to be beautiful,
he said, and fresh as a daisy. No dames like I’m taking
pictures of now.’
‘Dames’, I interrupted. ‘Was that your word?’
‘My word. Any objections?’
‘No’, I said. ‘I’m just trying to get a picture in my
mind of Huntington. What were his words?’
‘His words? His words were “beautiful”, and “vir­
ginal”, and “unprofessional”.’
‘Okay, that’s all I wanted to know.’
‘So,’ Castel continued, ‘he wants beautiful virgins
posing in the nude. Just like that. All I got to do is put
an ad in the Times and every gorgeous dame in New
York comes running down here and pulls her clothes
off. Except that he wants the ones who’d think a long
time about posing like that for their own boy friends.
Anyway, that’s what he’s willing to pay good dough
for. He tells me that I’m to let him see at least one
every month, and for every one he likes I get five thou­
sand bucks and he gets the negative and all the prints.
In all, Huntington tells me, he’ll buy twelve pictures.
That comes to sixty G’s.’ Castel stopped and gave me
a sour look. ‘What do you use, shamus, a stomach for
Il8 THE PERFECT FRAME

that liquor or some bottomless pit? Mario, make this

sponge another drink.’ When I had the fresh glass in
my hand he went on with his story.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘taking these pictures is a lot of
trouble but not so tough as I thought. I run a hell of a
risk, naturally. I’m dealing with a type of dame I never
even met before, let alone take pictures of? His lips
inched back in a mirthless grin. ‘And it’s a lot more
pleasure than I ever had. It’s getting to be a hobby’,
he said.
‘How did you take these pictures? ’
‘I got ways’, said Castel. ‘It’s involved and it takes
time. But I get the picture all the same.’
‘You said you made thirty thousand. That’s six
pictures. Now Huntington is dead’, I said, ‘what
about the other six?’
‘There aren’t supposed to be another six. That’s the
whole point, wise guy. Like you say, I delivered six of
them. Then I start to have trouble with Huntington.’
‘What kind of trouble?’
‘He doesn’t want any more. You see, Dane, the
sixth picture just happens to be the blonde queen. How
do you like that?’
I was supposed to be jolted out of my seat by the
news. His face was lit up like a Christmas tree with
expectant excitement. All I did was gaze back at him
and take a swallow from my drink. ‘ How do you like
it? ’ I said.
‘ I like it fine, shamus. Just fine. You haven’t got any
idea how much I like it. I like it so much I’d kill a guy
who got in my way about it.’
I put the glass down and smiled at him. ‘ I’m a popu­
lar guy’, I said. ‘Little Vito, this greaseball here’ - I
 THE PERFECT FRAME Iig

threw a look at Handsome - ‘ and now you want to kill

me. I’m a popular guy.’
‘You’d have a tough time buying life insurance’,
Castel said. ‘A very tough time.’
‘Here we go wasting valuable time’, I said. ‘Let’s
finish your tale so I can go home. I’m starting to get
bored, Castel, and very tired.’
‘You fresh bum’, he said. ‘Okay. Like I just told
you, I gave Huntington the picture of the blonde and
he gives me five thousand bucks, cash. Then the next
day I get a call from the dame that had contacted me
the fi rst time. Thanks, she says, for all you’ve done but
we don’t want any more. What do you mean? I ask her,
I’m burning. There’s still six more to go on the deal.
What deal? she says. Do you have some kind of con­
tract? Put Huntington on the goddam ’phone, I told
her. Quick. Then Huntington tells me that after look­
ing at the last picture he’s decided he doesn’t need any
more. He says anything else I gave him would be an
anticlimax. See what I mean, Dane? It’s some picture.
You’ll never find out, but that kid has a body nobody’s
ever seen before. How do you like that?’
‘He bought her picture and then quit’, I said, to
keep the story rolling and get away from how I liked it,
which I didn’t the more I listened. ‘What did you say
to Huntington?’
‘ I told him he was doing business with Rocky Castel,
that’s what. I told him to write out a cheque for thirty
thousand bucks and put it in the mail quick. The bas­
tard laughed at me. That’s when I decided to look into
his life a little.’
‘What do you mean, look into his life?’
‘Figure it out yourself’, said Castel. ‘Here’s a guy
120 THE PERFECT FRAME

who’s got a very big job in a very big company. It’s

such a big job that he’s ready to pay sixty thousand
dollars, and has already shelled out thirty of it, for a
thing like a nude picture. Any guy who’s as screwy as
that, shamus, is screwy in a lot of ways. What I wanted
to do was find out about some of the other things, and
also annoy hell out of him while I was doing it.’
‘Shakedown’, I said. ‘Just like I told you before.’
‘Shakedown, hell. The guy agreed to do business for
sixty grand. Now he backs out. So I decide to pester
the bastard and scare him with private cops until he
comes across. Meanwhile I’m finding out what makes
him tick.’
‘For a shakedown.’
‘You’re an annoying guy, Dane. Will you, for cris-
sake, stop saying shakedown?’ He turned his hands
around and stared at the palms again. ‘All right,’ he
spoke again, ‘now you know everything I know. Let’s
hear your ideas on why he jumped out that window and
why that Harmony joint burned down.’
‘I haven’t got any ideas’, I said.
‘The hell you haven’t. What were you doing up at
Oceanic this morning? And my boys spotted you at
the fire. What were you doing there?’
‘What were your boys doing there?’
‘I’m watching everything’, he said. ‘I’m watching
the girl, I’m watching Oceanic and I’m watching that
bar. At least, I was. Hell, I even figured to pull a stake
out up in Huntington’s place in Westport.’
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Why all the red-hot interest?’
Castel turned in his chair and looked at one of the
walls. When he spoke, it was slowly. ‘A hunch’, he
said. ‘Just a feeling. From the first time I ever saw that
 THE PERFECT FRAME 121

guy Huntington something smelled wrong.’

‘You mean, don’t you, that Huntington didn’t look
like the type who bought pictures?’
‘ Something like that. I’ve sold too many of them to
too many people. You get so you can spot the screw­
balls by just passing them in the street.’
‘And he acted like one and talked like one, but
didn’t look like one?’
‘Yeah.’ He turned to face me again. ‘Now let’s
have it, Dane. Spill it.’
‘ I have nothing to spill. I went down to the Har­
mony and I came back. I went down to Oceanic and I
came back. Now I’m down here in this lousy joint of
yours and I’m going home.’
‘ How much, Dane? See how I treat you? I ask you
like a businessman how much do you want for your
goods?’
‘I’m a lousy businessman. I have nothing to sell.’
‘Who are you working for?’
‘You know I wouldn’t tell you, even if I was.’
‘You’d be surprised what you’d tell me, Dane.’
‘Surprise me then’, I told him.
‘Now you’re getting annoying again. I’ll give you
five thousand bucks for what I want to know.’
‘You’re amazing, Castel. First you want a lot of in­
formation for fifty bucks. Now you offer five thousand
for the same thing. What kind of businessman do you
call yourself? ’
‘Do you want five thousand?’
I shook my head. ‘No deal.’
‘Ten, Dane. Ten thousand in cash, more than you
figured you’d earn all year. Ten thousand if you go to
work on this thing. Give me all the answers,’
122 THE PERFECT FRAME

More, he said, than I’d figured to earn all year. For

one job this sleek thief was going to hand me ten thou­
sand-dollar bills. My impulse was to shake my head
again, but I stopped the motion. ‘No deal,’ I said, ‘but
I’ll tell you what I will do. Y ou have a print of the pic­
ture you took of the girl. Huntington has - or had -
the negative. It’s hanging around somewhere. You
give me your print and I’ll clock this whole caper for
you. All the answers, like you said, for the picture.’
The gangster stared at me in amazement. ‘You’re
crazy, Dane’, he said. ‘You’re the craziest of them all.’
‘Is it a deal?’
‘My offer was ten thousand dollars’, he said. ‘That
picture stays with me. And pretty soon’, he added, ‘ I’ll
have the negative back. Nothing doing, Dane.’
I stood up, my mind crowded with many thoughts.
‘All right’, I told him, ‘you’ve been talking about me
getting killed because you don’t happen to like me.
Well, I’m telling you something, Castel. That picture
of the girl is liable to get you killed.’
‘By you?’
‘By me. I want that picture. I want it bad.’
‘You don’t get it. And you don’t get the girl. This is
your last notice, shamus. Stay away from her. Forget
you ever saw her and forget about the picture. And
stay out of this Huntington thing from this minute on.
Both the girl and the business belong to me, and if you
don’t want to play it smart, then play it dumb. But
don’t bump into me along the line. Don’t get in my
way, Dane. Now get out.’
That was how it went that night in Rocky Castel’s
Cabin Club. Oh, there was something else. Handsome
wanted to make a good impression on his boss as I left.
 THE PERFECT FRAME 123

He grabbed my arm roughly and began to hustle me out

the door, murmuring obscenities along the way. I
flattened him with a left hand. It wasn’t much of a
punch, but then, Handsome wasn’t much of a man.
And I don’t think he made much of an impression on
his boss, what with one thing and another.
 CHAPTER 13

don’t own an alarm clock. It isn’t down at Uncle

I Sam Pinanski’s keeping my .45 company, I just don’t
own one. Never have. When I go to bed I tell myself
what time to wake up the next morning and, give or
take five minutes, there I am.
The morning after my visit to Castel, still dripping
cold shower water and pulling on the day’s first cigar­
ette, I called Sally and woke her.
‘How are you with money?’ I asked.
‘Wonderful’, she said, sleepily. ‘You’d be surprised.’
There was a pause that must have been a yawn. ‘Are
you asking me to marry you ? ’
‘I’m asking how you’re fixed for money.’
‘Do you mean, do I have any?’
‘Yes, sweetheart.’
‘All I have is — Did you call me sweetheart, darling? ’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, that’s nice.’ Her voice was smiling. ‘You
should wake me every morning, Timothy. Go on,
tell me some more.’
‘Sweetheart,’ I said, ‘have you got any money?’
‘I told you,’ she answered, ‘all I have is what he
gave me. Castel. I’d rather borrow a secing-eye dog
and beg nickels on Broadway than touch any of it.’
‘ Fine. I’ve got some here that’s comparatively clean.
I’ll see you in half an hour.’
124
 THE PERFECT FRAME 125

I picked out my blue worsted, a white shirt, a dark

red tie, blue socks and my black, severe-looking shoes.
I wasn’t being fastidious. I was dressed in the only
presentable clothes I own for my visit back downtown
at the Oceanic building this morning.
Then I took a quick breakfast and went over to
Sally’s with a hundred dollars. Jean had already left
when I arrived and Sally greeted me at the door look­
ing like a piece of sunlight that had chipped off. For
the next hour I told her I had work to do and she kept
agreeing with me and pouring coffee and saying
things like, ‘The way I’m walking around here, prac­
tically in a nightgown, you’d think I was on my
honeymoon. Wouldn’t you, Timothy?’
But I left. And when I did, things had come to a
pretty pass between us. So pretty that I’d forgotten
all about Rocky Castel until I was entering an ele­
vator in the lobby of the Oceanic building.
The prim, flat-chested thing at the desk told me it
was not only impossible but unthinkable to see Mr.
Forbes without an appointment. Call him, I said,
and from the look of horror in her eyes you’d think
I was something that had crawled out of the wall and
was waving my antennae at her. Call Mr. Forbes? I
reached over, picked up the telephone and spoke the
sacred name into it as the receptionist began a silent,
face-contorting swoon against the desk.
‘Mary?’ I said to Forbes’ secretary. ‘Timothy
Dane. I’m in the reception-room and I’d like to speak
to the old man right away. Fine. Will you tell that
to the watchdog out here before she chokes on her own
indignation? ’ I walked on through toward the citadel.
Huntington’s ex-office, or vice versa, looked the
 THE PERFECT FRAME

same as it had the afternoon before. The dark-haired

girl had her back to me and she was taking dictation
again, except - and I almost tripped over my black
shoes - the man dictating to her was Jocko Robinson.
Aieee, how us private slobs were getting up in the
world. And fast. Very fast.
I stood in the doorway and looked in at him. He
was studying a paper as though it was all he had ever
done in his life, and I had to keep staring to convince
myself that this was the same Jocko who had crawled
with me on his belly through the slime of the sewer
under State Street looking for three hundred thousand
dollars’ worth of uncut diamonds. He lifted his eyes
from the paper, and there was nothing in them to
show how surprised he should have been to see me.
‘What do you want?’ he greeted me, and I guessed
he’d forgotten all about that sewer-crawling, among
other things.
The girl with the shoulder-length hair, slim waist
and long slender legs turned around in her low-set
stenographer’s chair and gazed up at me out of languid
black eyes that had no place in a business office.
And I knew now why she had been holding Hunting­
ton’s attention when I looked in yesterday. She had
left more of her prominent chest out in the open than
was enclosed, and straining hard, beneath the delicate-
looking material of her blouse. We surveyed each other
silently - and for some reason there was an electric
hostility between us. Why does that happen? Is it
chemical, or is it the same thing that short-circuits
dogs and cats on first sight?
I watched her warily out of the corner of my eye,
as though I expected her to spring at my throat, and
 THE PERFECT FRAME 127

answered Jocko Robinson’s question. ‘What the hell’s

it to you what I want?’ I said.
‘Because’, Jocko snapped, ‘it happens to be my
business, Dane. I thought I told you how things stood
between you and this company?’
‘You told me,’ I answered, ‘but you forgot to men­
tion the fire that somebody was starting while you
were assuring me that everything was settled up
here.’
‘What do you mean, I forgot to mention it?’
‘I guess it slipped your mind, Jocko. Hell, you’re
such a busy little beaver these days you can’t be ex­
pected to remember every little warehouse that’s
burning to the goddam ground.’
He was around the desk and pointing his little
terrier’s face into mine. His eyes were blazing behind
the glasses. ‘What do you think you’re saying, Dane?
What do you mean by a crack like that?’
I backed off from the little fireball. I didn’t want to
get singed. The man, after all, had been practically
a boss of mine at the Pioneer Agency, and ex-bosses
leave their mark no matter where your different trails
lead.
‘Well? What did you mean?’ His voice could have
split an iceberg in two, though it wasn’t even loud
enough to carry into the hall beyond the office.
I looked away from his furious face and found the
peep-show brunette smiling at me in the unfriendly
way I thought she would. ‘I’ll tell you what I meant’,
I said, ‘when I’m through with the guy that still owns
this place.’
‘And what does that crack mean, “Still owns this
place”?’
utl THE PERFECT FRAME

‘You figure it out’, I said, but I was half-way out

of his office by then. Amazing. I sass Rocky Castel
and practically run away from Jocko Robinson, a
guy who’d give me about as much trouble in a fight as
your Aunt Mathilda. I turned to see him pounding
down the hall after me in the direction of Forbes’
office. I stopped and faced him. ‘Where are you
going, Jocko?’ I asked.
‘I’m going to see Mr. Forbes. Where are you
going?’
‘You know damn well that’s where I’m going.
What are you sticking your nose into it for?’
‘There’s two things you’d better get straight right
away, Dane. The first is that you’re not wanted at
Oceanic by anybody. The second is that I’m per­
sonally going to see to it that you don’t disrupt the
operations up here. Now. If you’ve wangled an ap­
pointment to see Mr. Forbes, and I don’t see how you
have, then I’m going in with you.’
‘What the hell has happened to you, Jocko? Did
you really get married?’
For a moment the sharpness left his eyes and I
thought his shoulders fell in an inaudible sigh. But
I must have been wrong. ‘Times change, Dane’, he
snapped. ‘Some day, if you live long enough, you’ll
understand that. Times change and people change.
I’m not the fool I was when I was risking my life
seven days a week in Chicago for forty dollars.’
‘Plus expenses’, I reminded him.
‘ Expenses! Your idea of expenses is a fifteen-minute
lunch in a hamburger joint. A taxi instead of a trolley
car. You don’t know what expenses are, Dane.’
‘ If you’re going inside,’ I said quietly, ‘ I guess there’s
 THE PERFECT FRAME 129
nothing I can do about it. But unless you want a
punch in your ugly little kisser, you’d better get in
there quick.’ Those days right after the war were good,
and I wasn’t going to listen to the guy who had shared
them with me run them down.
Jocko knew what I meant. Without another word
he swept by me in the hall and opened the door that
led into the anteroom where Forbes’ secretary, Mary,
held forth with the microphone and listening equip­
ment.
‘I understand’, Jocko said, ‘that Dane here has an
appointment to see Mr. Forbes.’
Mary looked at both of us, blinking her eyes in con­
fusion. ‘Well,’ she began, ‘ I don’t know whether you’d
call it an appointment.’
Jocko spun on me. ‘I thought so. What is this, Dane,
more strong-arming?’
. ‘Will Mr. Forbes see me?’ I asked Mary, ignoring
him.
‘Should he?’ she asked, a thin smile on her strong,
kindly looking face.
‘Yes’, I said. ‘He should.’
She looked at Jocko for verification. ‘Maybe he
should’, he said. ‘Maybe we can clear up Dane’s
business in about three very brief minutes.’
Mary picked up the little hand mike and adjusted
the earphones over her grey hair. It looked out of
place, but at the same time she looked capable doing
it. ‘Mr. Robinson is here to see you’, Mary said into
the mike. ‘The private detective, Mr. Dane, is with
him.’ As she said my name she reached beneath her
desk and pressed a button. That opened the door to
Forbes’ office and the two of us went in.
130 THE PERFECT FRAME

The timid little man, looking even more cowed

and shy than I remembered from yesterday, sat be­
hind the huge desk that swallowed him. I said hello
and he just continued to gaze at me. It was one of the
saddest and most frightened faces I’ve ever looked into.
Not terrified, but cowed. I said, ‘I know that by
ydkr instructions I’m not supposed to be investigating
the business of your warehouse, or the fire, or Mr.
Huntington’s death.’ No one seemed inclined to
answer me, so I spoke again. ‘I came up here this
morning to find out if those instructions still hold.’
Don’t ask me why I was so formal. Maybe it was
Forbes, who kept looking up at me like a cocker
spaniel that’s just been smacked across his rearend
with a newspaper. Still nobody talked to me. ‘If
that’s the way you want it, Mr. Forbes,’ I said, ‘then
I’m going to return the retainer you gave me yester­
day and consider myself relieved of all obligations to
this company. That means’, I added, ‘that I’ll feel
free to sell my services to anyone that wants to buy
them.’
‘Who’, asked Jocko, as I expected somebody would,
‘would want to buy your services?’
‘Maybe’, I replied, talking to the old man and not
Jocko, ‘I used the wrong word when I said “buy”.
I meant, I think, I would turn over my report to the
authorities.’
‘What report?’ asked Jocko. ‘What authorities?’
I gave him what should have been a dirty look, but
he returned it blandly. I turned to Forbes to answer
Jocko’s question. ‘By authorities I mean the City’s
homicide bureau, a very curious crowd, Mr. Forbes,
and the fire department.’
 THE PERFECT FRAME J J]

‘Mr. Forbes’, said Jocko, ‘has already been bothered

by the fire department.’
‘What did you tell them?’ I asked the old man.
‘Mr. Forbes told them everything he knew about
the warehouse, which was all he was able to tell them.
The fire was a regrettable accident, Dane, but appar­
ently it looks like some sort of detective-story co­
incidence to you. And you alone.’
‘Do you mean to say’, said Forbes at last, ‘that you
think there was some - connection - between poor Wal­
ter’s act . . .’ He took a deep sigh. ‘Between poor Mr.
Huntington’s demise’, he went on quickly, ‘ and the
fire at the warehouse?’ His milky-blue eyes were
as round as two silver dollars.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I think there was.’
‘But . . .? But in what possible way, Mr.—?’
‘Dane’, I said, frowning. ‘The name is Dane’, I
said again. ‘I can’t tell you what the connection is
between Mr. Huntington’s death and the fire.’ Forbes
seemed to recoil at the mention of his assistant’s death.
‘I only know that I feel a connection, Mr. Forbes.
And I’m going to keep after it until I’ve been proved
wrong.’
‘But you will’, cried Forbes. ‘You will be proved
wrong.’ He was breathing strongly. ‘There can’t be -
there mustn’t be any connection. It’s . . . Why, it’s
unimaginable, Mr. - ah - Dane.’ When he finished
speaking his mouth hung slightly open from the passion
he seemed to feel.
‘In that case’, I said, ‘I’ll return the money you
gave me’ - not knowing where the hell I was going to
raise the rest of his thousand bucks-‘and investigate
independently.’
 THE PERFECT FRAME

‘That will be fine’, said Jocko. ‘Good luck to you,

Dane.’
‘Oh, no’, said Forbes. ‘Oh, we don’t want that at
all. Walter’s . . . There must be no, how do you say
it, muckraking into Walter’s unfortunate act. I . . .
Well, if I felt there was something I could do to pre­
vent any scandal from touching Walter’s memory -
and I f ailed to do it . . . Oh, no. If Mr. Dane is so
insistent I think we should allow him to proceed. I
say that because I know that Mr. Dane is a scrupulous
person. He will not take fees from any other party to
investigate this matter while he also accepts monies
from us. He will not do anything that he knows
serves no other purpose but to spread unnecessary
scandal upon poor Walter’s . . . upon his grave.’ The
old man swiped furtively at his eyes.
‘Well,’ said Jocko grudgingly, ‘if that’s how you
feel, Mr. Forbes.’
‘ It is the only way I can feel. But I don’t mind say­
ing that I am greatly disappointed in you, Mr. Dane.
Tremendously. I thought that your sensibilities . . .’
‘Yessir’, I said. ‘But my senses won’t let me abandon
this thing. You’ve given me one thousand dollars to
conduct a confidential investigation of your warehouse.
Somehow that investigation began by concerning Mr.
Huntington. Now’, I added, picking my words care­
fully to keep the old guy from jumping like that, ‘cer­
tain events have made it unfair for me to take that
thousand dollars and . . .’
‘Oh, I’ll pay you another thousand’, Forbes said.
‘What?’ Both Jocko and I said the word in unison.
‘The thousand, or whatever it was you received yes­
terday was for what you thought you suspected at the
 THE PERFECT FRAME J33
warehouse. This is something different. This new
investigation, from what you say, concerns Walter.
Or, rather, Walter’s memory, God rest his soul. I
insist that you accept another retainer. Oh, yes,
indeed.’
I knew Jocko was staring at me. I could feel the
heat of it burning my ears. If he hadn’t been, and if
he hadn’t been so surly before, I would have answered
differently. ‘I think that’s very fair’, I said, and out
of the corner of my eye I saw Jocko rocking as though
I’d slugged him. It felt just as good. ‘Is that’, I
added, cruelly, for Jocko’s benefit, ‘in addition to
expenses?’
‘Whatever is usual’, said Forbes and it was obvious
he hadn’t even read about guys in this line of work.
‘Very good, Mr. Forbes’, I said. ‘Now, I’ll need
something else.’
‘Something else?’
‘Yes’, I said. ‘ I’ll need the fullest co-operation from
the - er - employees at Oceanic. They’ll have to be
helpful, Mr. Forbes, if I’m to get anywhere.’
‘Of course’, he said.
‘For example,’ I said, ‘I’d like to start this morning
by having a good look at Mr. Huntington’s office.’
‘Walter’s office?’ He was dismayed. ‘His office?’
‘To begin with, Mr. Forbes. And I’ll need all the co­
operation I can get. That means Mr. Robinson here.
As I suppose you know, Mr. Robinson occupies Mr.
Huntington’s office now.’
Forbes nodded, not understanding, apparently, what
was going on in here.
‘And I’ll need help from everyone else I may want
to question.’
134 THE perfect frame
‘I understand’, Forbes said.
The voice that came from all points of the room
spoke out suddenly. ‘ I’ll instruct the staff’, Mary said
through the apparatus, ‘to answer your questions and
co-operate.’
‘Would you thank her for me, Mr. Forbes?’ I
said.
Obediently, the President of Oceanic picked up his
own microphone. ‘Thank you, Mary’, he said into
it.
Then I thanked him and Jocko, and I left his office.
As I emerged Mary removed the headset and began
writing another cheque. ‘You are a very expensive
man’, she told me.
‘I hope I’m worth it’, I said.
‘Yes,’ the old lady said, ‘I hope you’re worth it.’
I followed Jocko back to his office, keeping a safe
two paces to the rear. From the set of his head on
the bowed neck to the pistol-crack sound of his heels,
Jocko was sizzling.
‘All right, wisenheimer,’ he said, when we were
facing each other near the dark-haired girl’s desk,
‘now let’s see you perform. You’ve got sixty seconds
to work in, get going.’
‘I’ve got all day to work in’, I said. ‘And all day
tomorrow and the next day. After all, the old guy
gave me a thousand dollars. I’ve got to be thorough.’
‘One thousand? Two thousand! And for what,
Dane? You may kid him, but don’t forget who you’re
talking to now.’
‘How could I?’ I said and walked around him to
the large window behind the desk. ‘He jumped from
here?’ I asked.
 THE PERFECT FRAME 135
‘ I told you that last night.’
‘That’s what you told me’, I agreed.
‘Don’t start that again. I’m warning you.’
‘If you don’t want to co-operate, Robinson,’ I told
him in a different voice, ‘then I’ll have to conduct this
investigation differently.’
‘Holy Hannah!’ he breathed. ‘Conduct this in­
vestigation differently! Have you ever heard anything
like that?’
‘No’, the girl said in a throaty, vibrating voice.
‘I’ve never heard anything like that.’
‘I’ll bet you’ve heard a lot of other things, though’,
I told her, looking out of the window at the scene
below. It would have looked something like this to a
man getting ready to jump.
‘I beg your pardon?’ the girl said in that dirty
voice.
‘Granted’, I said. Then I turned to Jocko. ‘When
the police came back up here to investigate Hunting­
ton’s fall, who did they talk to?’
‘In the office?’ he said. ‘The only one still around
was Mary, Mr. Forbes’ secretary. Besides Huntington,
of course.’
‘Everyone else had called it a day and gone home?’
‘It’s all in the record downstairs’, he told me. ‘The
building checks everybody who leaves after five and
arrives before nine.’
‘The police looked at that record, I suppose?’
‘What do you think?’
I smiled at him. ‘I’m getting a thousand dollars-
two thousand - to think, Jocko. Very expensive
thoughts.’ That made him snort. ‘Where was Mary
when the cops arrived?’
T'iG the perfect frame
‘She was clearing Mr. Forbes’ desk and getting
ready to go home herself. Why don’t you ask her?’
‘Jocko, if you don’t want to co-operate . . .’
‘Look, Dane, I’m very busy. Besides my own work
I’ve got to handle Huntington’s as well.’
‘Yes’, I said. ‘How come, Jocko? Since when are
you a big insurance expert?’
‘Ask Mr. Forbes that’, he said. ‘He hired me.’
‘You’ve got a hell ofa nerve’, I said, ‘yapping about
my two thousand bucks. What’s your haul up here,
Jocko?’
‘Of all the goddam gall’, he said. ‘Of all the god­
dam gall I’ve ever listened to . . .’
‘This window’, I interrupted. ‘I assume it was open
when the police arrived.’
‘Of course it was open’, he answered angrily. ‘Is
this your idea of an investigation?’
‘No.’ I laughed. ‘Come here a minute, Jocko.’ He
stood beside me and we looked out the window. ‘I
don’t know anything at all about Huntington except
what I’ve heard. I saw him once - and that was yes­
terday and only for a second. Do you know what he
looked like to me in that second?’
‘What?’
‘He looked like a man who would stand here at
this window for ninety years and never jump out of
it.’
Jocko was silent for a long moment. Then he said,
‘The man had his troubles, Dane, as you know.’
Jocko glanced to his side at the secretary, who was
watching us intently. ‘He was very ill. Been in bad
health for some time. Finally, it looked to him like
a better idea to be dead.’
 THE PERFECT FRAME *37
‘Yes’, I admitted, not wanting to fill her attentive
ears with anything that didn’t concern her. ‘He had
his troubles. All God’s chillun got troubles. All God’s
chillun have their own ways of getting out of them.’
‘Huntington is out of his. For Heaven’s sake let him
rest in peace.’
I sighed and turned to look down at the desk. On
one corner was a stack of insurance policies. The
policy on top was stencilled with the bright red word:
Cancelled. On the other side of the desk was another
pile of policies, from various companies, and these
were not stencilled. ‘What are these?’ I asked.
‘This is part of Huntington’s work’, said Jocko.
‘ The brokers have to cancel their copies of the policies
that lapse. I’m sending these over to the warehouse.’
‘What warehouse?’
‘We’ve rented one on First Avenue’, he said.
I picked up one of the cancelled documents and read
it. The amount of premium was thirty-eight thousand
dollars. ‘What’s this thing?’ I asked Jocko, pointing
to a large square stamp in the lower left-hand corner
of the policy. It had also been stencilled with the red
Cancelled.
‘That’s the Federal tax stamp. What are you doing,
taking a short course in insurance?’
‘Yeah. What do you mean, a tax stamp? Since
when do insurance policies carry stamps like this?’
‘Life insurance doesn’t’, he explained. ‘These are
marine insurance policies that Oceanic secured abroad.
Any marine insurance placed by a foreign insurance
company gets taxed by our government, Dane. We
pay the tax by purchasing these stamps from the
Treasury.’
 THE PERFECT FRAME

‘How much is the tax?’

‘Buying the stamps was one of Huntington’s jobs’,
Jocko said.
‘Don’t you know how much they were?’
He shrugged. ‘ I don’t know - maybe they run four
or five per cent of the premium.’
I whistled. ‘ Four cents for every dollar is a healthy
cut for Uncle Sam.’
‘But what’s all this got to do with anything? I
told you I was busy, Dane. How about getting the
hell out of here?’
‘Don’t crowd me, Jocko. Give me room. Is that
what you call being busy - cancelling policies?’
‘It’s got to be done. That’s the law.’
‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘and you were always the boy
who obeyed the law.’
‘Now, look, Dane . . .’
‘Don’t be so touchy’, I told him. ‘Sit down and
play with your pretty red stencils.’
He didn’t sit down. ‘Are you getting out of my
office?’ His voice was tight.
‘For a while, Jocko’, I said. ‘See you around.’
He didn’t say anything more as I left the office, but
the dark-haired girl with extraordinary build said
‘Good-bye’ with an inflection that was lost on me. I
continued down the hall, through the reception-room,
in and then out of the elevator until I was finally out
on the street again.
I was thinking of nothing but what Jocko had told
me about the policies and what I remembered seeing
in the warehouse files two nights before. Maybe the
law did say to cancel those Internal Revenue stamps
on policies that came from abroad, but the one I
 THE PERFECT FRAME 13g

had looked at had been issued in London and it

hadn’t been cancelled. It didn’t, in fact, even have a
stamp in the lower left-hand corner. And that was
how Huntington had been embezzling Oceanic. He
had been buying stamps for the foreign policies, all
right, but when a policy lapsed - say, one in ten -
he had not cancelled the stamp but had transferred it
to another policy, a new one that had been placed
with some company like Lloyd’s or Commercial Union.
Then he had charged his department with the amount
of the stamp, four per cent of whatever the premium
was, and in due course a company cheque would come
to him as reimbursement for the tax money that had
never been paid to the government. If he had been
stealing in that way for a year, as Jocko had told me,
the amount probably ran into six figures. A hefty
theft, and an annoying one to track down. Unless,
of course, you had been shilled into it. Then you
stumble into a warehouse and blindly open up the
exact file that tells the story.
Where else would there be any evidence? Not in
Huntington’s office. All the policies there - the ones
still in force - would bear the tax stamp. Only the
policies I’d seen in the warehouse - their ashes I’d
seen last night - would show what was going on.
To me that meant the fire and Huntington’s death
had to have a connection. And when they had a con­
nection, then Walter had not willingly jumped from
that window, and the fire had been deliberately set
to cover up the embezzlement.
Someone in that building had been working with
Huntington. That someone had made him expendable.
I told the cabby to drop me at a Western Union
>40 the perfect frame
office. The message I sent was addressed to Fred
Shelby, owner of the Pioneer Agency in Chicago. It
read: ‘What do you hear about Jocko Robinson?
Urgent and love, Timothy Dane.’
Then I got back in the cab and went on uptown to
my office.
 CHAPTER 14

y telephone had only been jangled once that

M morning, and after causing a high-grade dis­
turbance in the bank with the deposit of a second
thousand-dollar cheque, I sat down to hear the girl
from the answering service tell me to call Lieutenant
Harper as soon as possible. I did.
‘ I got a look at your friend ’, Hal said. ‘ They were
just signing a release for his body at the Medical
Examiner’s when I walked in.’
‘The Examiner was peaceful about him?’ I asked.
‘“Death by his own will as the result of a fall”,’ he
quoted. ‘Huntington was a suicide.’
‘He was?’
‘Well’, Hal said and paused. ‘I looked at him,
Timmy. Naturally everybody started to fuss around
because a homicide man was poking his nose in. The
Examiner started to opp off very expertly and I just
kept nodding at him and looking at the corpse. Now
listen, I wouldn’t in ten thousand years want to get
quoted on this, and it wasn’t even enough to warrant
holding the body from the undertaker. It could have
happened naturally.’
‘What could have happened, for God’s sakes?’
‘The shape of his body’, said Hal. ‘The condition
of it.’
‘You mean he didn’t fall from that window?’
141
 the perfect frame
‘Oh, yes, Tim, he fell. Lord, yes. Huntington came
down forty-three floors and hit the pavement. Make
no mistake about that.’
‘Then what are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about the shape he was in after a fall
like that. Tim, I looked at a guy three months ago.
He was about this Huntington’s age, forty-eight,
fifty - and this guy had jumped ten floors. Well, this
guy’s body is a lot more disarranged, if you know what
I mean, than Huntington’s.’
‘I don’t know exactly what you do mean’, I said.
‘Bones broken, dislocations, limbs sprung from
sockets. There was a lot less of that on this Hunt­
ington than on the guy who’d dropped ten floors.’
‘What does that prove?’ I asked discouragedly.
‘Prove? Tim, like I said when I started, it doesn’t
prove one blessed thing. But if you called me last
night on just a little bit more than a hunch about
this guy, then I’d advise you to keep after it.’
‘Because he didn’t have as many bones broken?’
‘Exactly. You see, Tim, even when a person has
made up his mind to jump from a building - even
when they actually do jump - it’s only natural to
fight the fall. They stiffen up, Tim, sort of a desperate,
last-second bracing against the impact. It’s when they
stiffen up that their bones get broken and dislocated.
That’s why cats can take a hard fall. They’re loose
when they strike the surface. Instinctively. Same is
true of a trapeze artist. When he’s doing a double
spin and his partner misses him he heads down through
space toward the net. Now if it was you or me falling,
that net would snap our neck in two or break our
back. But the trapeze boy lets himself relax, and nine
 THE PERFECT FRAME I43

times out of ten he comes out of it with nothing worse

than a bad net burn.’
‘That all may be true, Hal, but I don’t think Hunt­
ington was a trapeze artist. Besides, he knew he didn’t
have a net to hit. All that was waiting for him was
Wall Street.’
‘Right. But suppose he didn’t even know he was
falling, Tim? Suppose he came out of that window
unconscious and never regained consciousness through
the length of the fall? If he were out he’d be loose
and not tightening his body to resist the shock. Drunks
and sleepwalkers take astounding falls, Tim, and just
get up and walk away. Babies, who haven’t learned
to be afraid of falling, sometimes drop six stories and
there isn’t even a bone broken. Your guy could have
been unconscious when he left that window.’
‘Could he have been dead, Hal, before he struck
the pavement?’
Hal said no. ‘He was killed by the fall. That is
definite. Hell, boy, that was the first thing I asked the
medico. The fall killed him but he might have been
- might have been, Tim - unconscious when the fall
began.’
‘Could he have lost consciousness during the fall?’
I asked. ‘Could he have blacked out?’
Hal said no again. ‘If he had the energy to climb
through a window and jump, he would have been
conscious at the time he hit.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘thanks an awful lot, Hal. As you
said, knowing a thing like that - or even thinking that
it could be true - gives me something to hang on to.
Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome’, he said. ‘Naturally, anything
t.|.l the perfect frame
you happen to turn up on it you’re going to get in
touch with me immediately. You’re not going to be
one of these heroes who withholds evidence.’
‘Naturally’, I said.
‘People lose licences for being heroes like that.’
‘Thanks again, Hal.’
He said good-bye and that was that.
What he had told me, of course, made me surer than
ever that I was heading in the right direction. All I
had to do was to find who had pushed Huntington
out of the window. Mr. Forbes, according to what
he told Jocko, had passed Huntington’s lighted office
at six o’clock. Huntington jumped at six-thirty, but
Oceanic was empty of people except Mary, or so
Jocko said the building’s records would show. Things
like that bother the hell out of me. It means I have
to work.
I had the ’phone all ready to lift and dial Sally’s
number to check on everything at her place. She had
been on my mind steadily, and I thought that tonight
I could pick up a few groceries, a steak and a quart
and we could have dinner over there. But my ’phone
rang before I could get a signal.
I said hello to the girl who had said good-bye to me
an hour ago in Jocko Robinson’s office. She sounded
as suggestive as before, and as it turned out, she
actually did have a suggestion.
She said that she didn’t think Mr. Robinson had
been very co-operative with me, but that if I wanted
to try a few questions on her I’d find her very co­
operative. I told her that was very co-operative of
her and was all set to throw my first question when she
interrupted. Of course, she explained, I could be very
 THE PERFECT FRAME 145
co-operative, too. And I could start by taking her out
to dinner tonight.
‘Why dinner? ’ I asked. ‘This is strictly business with
me, sister.’
‘Exactly’, she said. ‘Strictly business.’ The dinner
would be evidence of good faith and, after all, I did
have those two thousand dollars and no co-operation
up at Oceanic.
What, I interrupted her, did she have in mind?
Exactly? She had three hundred dollars in mind,
exactly. For three hundred I could buy information
about Walter Huntington, about Jocko Robinson,
about Oceanic, and, if I was interested, about Lorena
Dahl.
‘About who?’
‘About me’, she said. ‘I’m Lorena Dahl.’
Well, I said to myself, that makes sense. You didn’t
look like a secretary, you don’t talk like a secretary
and, unless Billy Rose has opened a business school,
you aren’t even named like a secretary. Aloud I asked
her what made her information worth three hundred
dollars.
‘The same thing’, said the Dahl, ‘that made it
worth two thousand dollars to you.’
‘Sorry,’ I told her, ‘but I doubt if you could give
me ten dollars’ worth of news that I haven’t got
already.’
‘You lousy cheapskate’, said Lorena Dahl.
‘ So long, lady’, I said.
‘Make it a hundred’, she said. ‘Plus the dinner.’
It was the old story, pleasure versus business. Sally
against this man-eater. ‘Okay’, I said, all business.
‘Where do I pick you up?’
K
I46 THE PERFECT FRAME

She named New York’s famous women’s hotel. She

said eight o’clock in the lobby. She said bring the
hundred with me, in cash. She said good-bye.
I held down the button on the cradle of the ’phone,
let it come back up again and dialled Sally.
‘I was just going to call you’, she said. ‘How would
you like to come over here and let me cook you a
dinner?’
Oh, fine. ‘Steak?’ I asked.
‘And what a steak. But first there’ll be cocktails.
And after dinner . . .’
‘I’ll have to get a raincheck, Sally. I’m working
tonight.’
‘Oh, no. But you have to have dinner somewhere.’
‘That’s when I’m working’, I explained. ‘At din­
ner.’
She was silent for a moment. ‘Will you call me
when you’re through?’ she said. ‘No matter how
late?’
‘With pleasure’, I told her. ‘Good-bye, Sally.’
‘’Bye, Timothy. And Timothy, whoever she is, I
hope she chokes on her antipasto.’ She hung up.

At eight-fifteen that night Lorena Dahl slithered

across the spacious lobby of her hotel in a shimmering
dress of coal-black satin that she should have bought
at half-price. It was only half a dress. The front was
two strips of satin that tied around the back of her
neck and plunged their separate ways until they
joined the body of the dress in a V just a sixteenth of
an inch above her navel. With each undulating sway
of her body two very round and very firm breasts
fought to get out from behind the thin strips that
 THE PERFECT FRAME

held them. The breasts seemed to be winning and if

Lorena Dahl ever took a deep breath the battle would
be over.
I stood up and said hello, wondering if we’d be
arrested before we got out of the lobby.
‘I’m a little late’, she purred. ‘I took some extra
time getting dressed tonight. I wanted to look spe­
cial.’
‘You do’, I said truthfully.
‘That’s good’, she answered. ‘I think our con­
versation this afternoon went all wrong. I really do
want to be of some help to you, Timothy.’ She cocked
her head at me seductively and the two black eyes
promised all a man needs but help.
We got out of the hotel safely, and after we were in
the dark interior of a cab I asked her where she would
like to eat.
‘Someplace special’, said Lorena, snuggling into
the seat comfortably. ‘Someplace where we can pre­
tend we’re just a man and a woman going out on a
date. A very nice-looking man, incidentally.’
Some would say she had a voice that was charged
with sex and passion and longing and the promise of
longing fulfilled. But it just annoyed me, and the
words she spoke annoyed me more. It was a phony
sex, and laid on with a trowel. ‘Where would you like
to eat? ’ I asked again, and the driver was turned in
his seat waiting for the same information.
‘The Skylight Club’, said Lorena Dahl, and when
she said someplace special that was what she meant.
‘Let’s just sit on the top of the world, just you and
me.’
I gave the address to the driver and we were there
148 the perfect frame
in several minutes. An express elevator climbed re­
lentlessly for sixty-four stories, and we stepped into
the rather breath-taking lounge of the Skylight Club.
The man behind the plush rope glanced appre­
ciatively at the girl and quizzically at me. ‘Good
evening’, he said.
‘This is Mr. Dane’, Lorena told him.
‘Ah, yes’, he said, glancing at a card in his
hand.
‘We have the table you requested, Mr. Dane.’ A
look that was supposed to be supercharged with mean­
ing passed from his eyes into mine, but, of course, I
didn’t get the point as yet. He held the rope down
for us with a flourish and we followed him across the
expensive, thick-rugged room, past a very inviting
little bar set unobtrusively against the wall, and out
on to a small balcony that really did overlook the
whole world. The balcony had room for only one
table, and this glowed in the soft light of a single
candle. Around the table ran a sort of couch, and I
held the girl’s tanned bare arm to help her git down.
‘What will your cocktails be?’ asked the captain.
‘For me a martini’, she said. ‘Very, very dry. Very,
very powerful.’
‘As Mademoiselle wishes’, he answered, his eyes
making a photograph of Lorena Dahl’s figure. ‘ And
what does Monsieur wish?’ la
I wished that everything was just as it was except
that the girl in the satin, ah, dress, had honey-blonde
hair, a warm voice and an honest smile. Out loud I
wished for a dry manhattan. My old standby, rye
on the rocks, seemed a little crude for the balcony
table at the Skylight Club. And, as I suspected, the
 THE PERFECT FRAME [49
bartender here knew how to blend a cocktail so that
the vermouth was impossible to taste. The drink was
good and cold and I sipped it appreciatively. The
girl went after her crystal-clear martini as though
somebody had poured water into it by mistake. Then
she was lifting her second one and smiling at me
brightly in a toast as I worked my way half-way
through my first.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘how do you like my arrange­
ments?’
‘If you overlooked anything,’ I replied, ‘I don’t
know what it is.’
‘Isn’t it special, Timothy? Isn’t it a date?’
‘It’s something’, I said and she could make what
she wanted to out of the word. ‘When do we eat?’
Her eyes opened in great surprise and she leaned
forward to rest her hand over mine. The movement,
of course, played havoc with the narrow halter over
her chest. ‘Eat? Oh, Timothy, we’ve just arrived.
Drink and be merry,’ said my half-naked companion,
‘for later we eat. Don’t you want to be merry?’ Her
head was tilted far to the side, and the great mass of
jet-black hair hung provocatively just above the table
top. I looked at her eyes and her eyes moved to the
opening in the black satin. ‘Be merry with me,
Timothy.’
Just as suddenly, he was erect and the fire had died
in her eyes. ‘Lorena wants a martini’, she announced.
‘Very dry, please.’ I moved my head and a waiter
appeared out of nowhere. I ordered the drink and a
second one for myself. ‘I’ve changed my mind’, she
said to the waiter. ‘I’d like a double martini. And
make it snappy.’
150 THE PERFECT FRAME

When he got back I asked for menus, and when

he got back again with those, Lorena Dahl ordered
another martini, double. It was an amazing per­
formance. Not the quantity the girl took, but the fact
that they didn’t seem to have any extra-special effect.
Except for the dead seriousness with which she or­
dered the martinis, drinking them didn’t seem to
make her especially sloppy, or even drowsy. She was
still laying on the charm broadly, just as she had in
the lobby of her hotel.
‘You don’t like my dress’, she told me.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Oh, I suppose you like it,’ she said, glancing down
at herself critically, ‘but you’re not crazy about it.
It doesn’t make you drool. Does it? You don’t look
at me and get ideas like every other man does . . .
Who the hell are you, anyway?’ she asked suddenly.
That was a tough question, and I was saved from
answering it by the arrival of two marvellous-looking
fillets. And not only did they look marvellous, they
tasted delicious. In fact, I became so absorbed in the
steak that I was hoisting my third forkful before I
looked up to see my undressed lady watching me in­
tently, her knife and fork lying innocent and unused
beside her plate. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I didn’t come here to eat’, the girl said.
‘What did you come here for?’
‘I didn’t come here to eat. I want another drink.’
‘It’s a beautiful steak’, I told her.
‘I want another drink’, she repeated, like a broken
record. When it arrived she attacked it as though she’d
just crawled across Death Valley. ‘ You make me sick’,
she said.
 THE PERFECT FRAME I5I

‘Don’t confuse me with those martinis’, I told her.

‘Do you really feel sick?’
‘Go to hell’, she said. ‘I feel fine. Stop eating that
damned steak and look at me. Don’t I look good
enough to eat?’ She had her fingers on the thin strips
of the halter as though she were going to pull it away
from her breast.
I slammed my fork hard on the table. ‘ Look,’ I
told her sharply, keeping my voice low, ‘you can cut
out the goddam nonsense right now. You conned me
into this thing, this date as you call it, but now you
can stop trying to prove you’re something special in
women. Sit there and drink this place out of its gin’,
I growled at her, ‘but for crissakes stop threatening to
take your clothes oft' every other second.’
‘Did you bring my hundred dollars?’ asked Lorena
Dahl, sitting erect and holding her head back.
‘The deal’s off’, I told her.
‘You can’t’, she cried. ‘I need the money.’
‘What you need is a rest, honey. Go join a nudist
colony.’
Her fingernails dug right through my jacket into my
arm. ‘Please. I need the money. I can tell you all
about Mr. Huntington and about Mr. Robinson.’ I
looked at her closely. She didn’t look tight, but very
much sober and in earnest. ‘And you asked about
those insurance policies this morning’, she said.
‘What about them?’
‘Do you have the hundred dollars?’
‘Yes’, I said. ‘What do you want me to do, take it
out and give it to you here?’
She nodded and held out her hand. I shrugged and
took an envelope full of five-dollar bills from my
 THE PERFECT FRAME

inside pocket and laid it on the table near her tiny

purse. She scooped it up, counted the bills carefully
and put the envelope in the purse. Then she smiled
at me. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘suppose I told you to go
to hell? What would you do?’
‘Don’t try it’, I said.
She laughed. ‘If you made a fuss, do you know
what I’d do? I’d stand up and scream to the whole
place. I’d say you slept with me and gave me a
present and now you wanted it back. I’d like to see
your face then.’
I watched her and knew that was exactly what she
would do. ‘But you wouldn’t like to see your own
face’, I told her. ‘I’d slap you silly, sister. Your teeth
would rattle.’
It was her turn to watch me and I think she knew
I meant it, too. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘what do you
want me to tell you?’
‘Start with the policies, and don’t pull any more of
your act on me.’
‘You know,’ she said, ‘you could sleep with me. To­
night, if you wanted to. I don’t like you at all,’ she
added, ‘but I’d like to go to bed with you.’
‘All I’m buying is information, sweetheart. Tell me
about the policies.’
‘It’d be for free, Timothy. One on the house.
There’s a little hotel just around the corner from
here. We’ll . . .’
‘Tell me about the policies, dammit!’
‘I’ll tell you about them in bed’, she said. ‘If
you’re still interested.’
‘You’ll tell me about them right now. Right now.’
She began to sulk but she also began talking. ‘Mr.
 THE PERFECT FRAME r53
Robinson lied to you when he said he didn’t know
exactly how much the tax stamp cost that goes on the
policies. He knows what they cost. I’ve heard him
talk to Mr. Huntington about it several times.’
I offered her a cigarette and lit one for myself.
‘He talked to Huntington about the stamps? What
did he say?’
‘Oh, he’d just come in the office and pretend he
was curious. It was never official, really. Mr. Robinson
would just act friendly and interested.’
‘And was Huntington friendly with him?’
‘Well, he wasn’t unfriendly. Listen, can’t we leave
here, Timothy?’
‘No’, I told her and then the waiter came to ask
us about dessert. I ordered some brandy and iced
coffee. He brought that and I asked the girl to go
on with her information about Jocko and Walter
Huntington.
‘I really don’t like you at all’, she said. ‘Under­
stand that. But you’re certainly different and . . .’
‘And you’re a masochist’, I interrupted. ‘Stop
talking about us going to bed, Lorena. We’d probably
kill each other. Stick to things like tax stamps. Did
Huntington ever let you cancel them when he was
busy?’
‘Never’, she said. ‘What the hell’s a masochist?’
‘Look it up when you get home. He was pretty care­
ful about who stamped the policies and cancelled
them?’
‘And how. And I’ll tell you something else. You
said that Mr. Huntington didn’t look like the type
who would jump out the window. Well, I was his
secretary for six months and I know he wasn’t the type
154 THE PERFECT FRAME

to do a thing like that. And he wasn’t in bad health,

either.’
‘I guess you’d know about that’, I said.
She shook her head. ‘ No ’, she said, shrugging. ‘ Not
that at all. Mr. Huntington was one of those happily
married types. All he ever talked to me about was the
insurance business.’
I guess it was the look in my eyes.
‘Honest’, she said. ‘He never said “boo” to me in
all the six months I was there.’
She sounded like she meant it. ‘How did he come
to hire you as his secretary?’ I asked.
‘He didn’t hire me. I was assigned to him.’
‘Who did hire you?’
She looked at me strangely. ‘I’m selling you in­
formation about Mr. Huntington’, she said. ‘Isn’t
that your job, to find out what made Mr. Huntington
jump from the window?’
‘In a way’, I said. ‘What’s so mysterious about
who hired you at Oceanic?’
‘Ask me questions about Mr. Huntington’, she said.
I sipped at the brandied iced coffee. ‘Okay’, I said.
‘Did Mr. Huntington like your picture very much?’
She had been lifting her own tall glass and now it
slipped from her hand and clattered to the floor. A
squad of waiters appeared and whisked the broken
glass away. I waited until Lorena Dahl had a fresh
drink before speaking again.
‘Isn’t that how you became his secretary, because
of the picture?’
She poured the brandy into the coffee very deliber­
ately. ‘What’, she said very quietly, ‘do you know
about my picture?’
 THE PERFECT FRAME IjJ

‘That’s not important, Lorena. I haven’t seen it, if

that’s what you mean. What is important, at least to
me, is that you give me a song and dance about Hunt­
ington’s virtue and all the time you know that the
man made a hobby out of collecting pictures of nudes.
And not only that, a picture of you is included.’
She was shaking her head as I talked. ‘No,’ she
said, ‘you’re wrong. You don’t know anything about
it. You’ve got Mr. Huntington all wrong. He doesn’t—
He didn’t . . .’ Then she stopped.
‘He didn’t what?’
‘Are the pictures important?’ she asked me. ‘Are
they important in what you’re supposed to be doing?’
‘Everything about Huntington is important.’
‘Iff told you the whole story about the pictures,’ she
said, ‘ how much would you pay me? ’
‘I just gave you a hundred dollars’, I reminded her.
‘Yes, but that wasn’t for what I know about the
pictures, or why I’m working at Oceanic. Those
things are personal’, she said. ‘They cost money.’
‘How much do you want?’
‘Three hundred dollars.’
‘Okay.’
‘Do you have it with you?’
‘No’, I said. ‘I’ll give you a cheque for it, or an
I O U.’
‘Cash’, she said, shaking her head again. ‘Would
you give me five hundred dollars, in cash?’
‘'Five hundred? You must think those pictures of
yours are as important as the hydrogen bomb.’
‘Maybe they are’, she answered. ‘I never thought
of them in connection with Mr. Huntington’s death.
Maybe five hundred isn’t enough.’
1^5 THE PERFECT FRAME

‘If you talk to yourself long enough,’ I said, ‘you’ll

be up in the millions.’
‘I don’t have to talk to myself about the pictures.
I don’t even have to talk to you. Maybe I’ll talk to
somebody else about them now.’
‘Who?’
She gave me that cruel smile again. ‘Wouldn’t you
like to know? Come on,’ she said, ‘I want to go back
to my place and telephone somebody.’
‘What are you turning this into,’ I asked, ‘an auc­
tion? ’
‘That’s right, an auction. What do you bid?’
‘Three hundred.’
‘All right. You take me home and I’ll call some
people for their bids. It goes to the highest bidder.’
I stood up from the table and left money for the
bill. ‘You’re making a mistake’, I told the girl after
we were in a cab again and on the way to her hotel.
‘An auction is one thing. But what I think you have in
mind is blackmail. Blackmail is a very bad occupation.’
‘Not if it pays,’ she answered, ‘and this will pay.’
We didn’t talk about it any more until she was leaving
the cab. ‘You go home’, she said,‘and I’ll call you. If
three hundred dollars wins, then you can bring the
money and I’ll meet you somewhere.’
‘You’re making a mistake’, I warned her again.
‘Blackmail never pays off.’
Lorena Dahl only smiled at me and walked away
into the lobby of her hotel. I gave the cabby my
address and went on home to wait for her call.

There was a telegram shoved under my door, no­

body AT PIONEER TALKS ABOUT JOCKO ROBINSON ANY
 THE PERFECT FRAME J57

more love fred shelby. The chief of the Pioneer

Agency, I knew, loved to send cryptic messages, but
what the hell did this one mean? Had Jocko quit
Shelby, or had he been fired? Had he left for a
better job at Oceanic, or was he in disgrace back in
Chicago?
I stuck the telegram in my pocket and then remem­
bered my promise to see Sally no matter how late I
got back. It was eleven-thirty as I dialled her number.
Her room-mate, Jean, answered.
‘Timothy! Isn’t Sally with you?’
‘No, of course not. Why should she be?’
‘ She went out an hour ago’, Jean told me, fear and
surprise in her voice. ‘She was in a terrible hurry.
She said she was going to meet you, that you were in
trouble.’
‘Did she get a call?’
‘Yes. And then she flew out of here. Oh, Timothy,
I’m scared.’
So was I, plenty, but I didn’t say so. I hung up and
started out the door again. A dark shape faced me in
the dimly lit hall.
‘What the hell do you want?’ I asked it.
‘I want to see you, Timothy’, said Jocko Robinson.
‘Save it’, I said, pushing around him. ‘Now I’m
too busy to talk.’
He moved his body in front of me and we collided.
‘Wait’, he said. ‘Before you get into any more trouble
you’d better talk to me.’
‘What do you mean, any more trouble? Don’t tell me
you’re lined up with Castel, loo, you thieving bastard.’
‘ Castel? Rocky Castel? What the hell are you talk­
ing about?’
[jB THE PERFECT FRAME

‘Get out of my way, Jocko, before I knock you

over.’
‘You and who else?’ he snarled and I let him have
it. He went down with a crash and I stepped over
him.
‘I’d finish that right now,’ I yelled to him over my
shoulder, ‘but I’m busy, you lousy thief.’ I heard
him call my name as I went out the front door to
53rd Street. I climbed into a cab on Sixth Avenue
and ordered him to get down to the Cabin Club as
fast as his heap would take us. We were half-way
there before I finally took time to think. And when
I thought I realized how badly I missed that .45 of
mine in Sam Pinanski’s safe. That would get me in
and out of the Cabin - if I had it. But I didn’t have
it, and I was going to get in and out of there anyhow.
And Sally would be coming out with me.
 CHAPTER 15

t was easy. Getting into Castel’s office was easy.

I It required no more effort than simple walking. I
paid off the cab, entered the Cabin, strode past the bar,
around the edge of the tables, past the high-bosomed
brunette singing on the bandstand, through the hidden
door in the wall, across the foyer - and threw open the
black door marked Private.
Rocky Castel was there, in the chair behind the desk.
He wore a soft grey flannel suit and his black hair
shone with brilliantine, highlighting the grey side­
burns. Handsome was there, standing near the desk.
His face was still raw and discoloured from last night.
I forget how he was dressed or whether his hair was
as shiny as his boss’s. Sally was there, cowering in
the chair I had occupied. She wore a sheer dress that
was white and striped with blue. She was beautiful,
and worth anything.
Especially after the indescribable way she cried,
‘Oh, Timothy!’ and sprang from the chair and into
my arms. I held her shaking body against me and
whispered something or other to her that was pro­
bably trite and not worth remembering. Then I
tried for a grand slam and missed by an eyelash. I
whirled Sally around and grabbed for the doorknob.
As my fingers touched it, something in the lock clicked
and the knob turned uselessly and unopening in my
hand. From the desk, Castel had locked the door.
159
160 the perfect frame
‘Now what, sucker?’ I heard the mean, familiar
voice at my back. ‘What’s your next play? Even if
you’d gotten the door open you’d have run into Vito.
He just stepped out for a second.’
I took my arm from Sally’s waist. ‘Over there’, I
said, indicating the farthest corner of the room.
‘Stand over there, baby, and don’t move.’
‘Timothy, don’t!’ Her great round eyes pleaded
with mine. I moved my head again to the corner and
she went obediently, out of the immediate danger zone.
‘I’m touched’, rasped Rocky Castel in a voice that
quivered with fury. ‘This breaks my heart, shamus.’
I turned to them. Both he and Handsome watched
me from narrowed eyes, guns in their hands and
pointed at me. Knuckles rapped insistently at the
door. A muffled voice said, ‘Open up, Boss. It's me,
Vito.’
‘Wait there’, Castel shouted back. ‘Stay where you
are.’
Then I dived, headlong, down toward the floor and
across it in the direction of Handsome’s legs in front
of the desk. He had carried his gun at the hip with
the barrel pointed at my head. I knew he would have
had to read my mind to lower the sights in time to
hit me. It worked. The shot passed over my head,
and now my momentum carried me crashing against
the gunman’s legs, putting the wide expanse of the
desk front between my body and Castel’s own gun.
Sally was screaming in terror. My shoulder hit
Handsome just below the knees and lifted him off the
floor and over my shoulder. His gun thudded against
the thick carpet, and as I grabbed it I rolled to the
side of Castel’s shiny desk.
 THE PERFECT FRAME jfi]

Outside, Vito was pounding on the door and yelling

to get inside. Sally screamed again. Castel, surprised
by my sudden dive and the noise and confusion, had
no idea where I was. When he did see me I was al­
ready coming up at him, and the slug from his gun
damaged only the rug. My outstretched hand, the
one that now held Handsome’s gun, struck against
his wrist and forced his arm upwards. He stood there
like the Statue of Liberty when I hit him with every­
thing my body held. Something inside his jaw made
a dull crunching sound as he reeled backwards against
the wall and slumped to the floor.
I whirled to face the oncoming Handsome. Tonight
he had the blackjack and it was inches from my head
as I turned. But tonight I was moving in luck. I
wheeled away from it, and the force of his swing
carried him head on into the upsweeping gun barrel I
held in my fist. He cried out horribly and pitched
forward on his face.
The pounding on the door went on, but now Sally
had stopped yelling. Her side was winning, tem­
porarily. I shot her a grin and told her to stay in that
corner. Then I dug my fingers under Castel’s expen­
sive flannel lapels and hauled him to his still wobbly
legs. ‘The picture!’ I shouted into those glassy grey
eyes. ‘Where’s the picture?’
The gangster began to shake his head, but I stopped
that abruptly by rapping against his broken jaw with
the side of the pistol. "Where?"
‘Desk’, he mumbled. Even moving his face to talk
was painful to him. I shoved him against the wall
again and turned to the desk. Desk, hell! All I could
see on the desk was a row of coloured buttons. No
L
161 THE PERFECT FRAME

drawers, no nothing. It was as smooth on his side as

on the other. I grabbed for him again, angrily. ‘ Red ’,
he pushed out through his lips. ‘Red button.’
I jammed my finger on the red button, and a panel
on the right side of the desk slid sideways, revealing a
shelved section. The middle shelf held a small stack
of photographic prints. My arm darted inside and
came back with the pictures. There they were, six
prints of the six naked and beautiful girls that this
louse had delivered to Walter Huntington for thirty
thousand filthy dollars. Sally, my Sally, was on top
- where she belonged in any crowd - posed singing as
she had described it. I flipped through the others
quickly. Lord, what women. On the bottom was
Lorena Dahl, sitting at a typewriter but turned
around and apparently taking dictation, just as she
did every day at Oceanic. Except that in this picture
she was not half-nude, but completely.
Sally stood at my shoulder. ‘Don’t look at them’,
she said, just like a woman.
‘Okay’, I told her. I bent the prints double, picked
up Castel’s nude-lady lighter and touched the flame
to their edges.
‘You’re burning mine, too?’ she asked, just like a
woman.
‘I haven’t got any use for your picture’, I said, and
then I had an idea. I slapped the burning edges of
the prints against Castel’s desk and got the fire out.
I put them in my pocket.
‘So you are saving them’, she accused.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but I’m damned if I know why.
Now’, I added, ‘comes the tough part.’
‘What do you mean?’
 THE PERFECT FRAME jjij

‘We both got in here’, I said. ‘How do we get

out ? ’
‘Oh, Timothy . .
‘ Are you all right, honey? What did that . . . What
did he do to you?’ As I spoke, Castel began to get
to his feet slowly, holding the left side of his face with
his hand. Handsome still lay motionless on the rug.
‘Outside of frightening me half to death’, Sally
said, ‘he didn’t have time to do anything.’
‘What did he say to you?’
‘ He said he was going to take care of me for a while.
That’s what scared me. He said I was going to live
upstairs over the Club in a nice room. I was going to
have everything my heart desired, including Rocky
Castel.’ She stared at Castel and then turned her head
from him quickly.
‘What did you tell him?’
‘I told him . . .’ Sally stopped and looked at me
like a little kid. ‘I told him Timothy Dane would
rescue me. I actually used those corny words, Tim­
othy.’
I smiled back. ‘And what did he say to that? ’
‘He laughed and told me to act my age. He said I
wasn’t living in a fairy tale. And then, bang, you came
charging into the room, just like a fairy tale.’
‘If I get you out of here, it will be one.’ I turned to
Castel whose eyes bored into my face, full of pain and
terrible anger. The knocking on the door, which had
stopped for a few moments, began again.
‘Mr. Castel!’ came Vito’s voice into the room.
‘Everything all right, Mr. Castel? It’s Vito, let me
in!’
The problem was whether to open the door and let
 THE PERFECT FRAME

him in or not. The brief silence before might mean

that outside was not just the little hophead, but half
a dozen more. The second problem was what button
opened the door. Besides the red one there were five
more, all differently coloured. Suppose Vito was alone
out there and I pressed the blue button. Suppose the
blue button didn't open the door but brought the half­
dozen guys on the run.
'Come over here', I said to Rocky Castel, but he
only continued to glare at me out of those maniacal
red-grey eyes and I knew I couldn't frighten him into
doing anything to help us get out. Even if I forced him
he wouldn't care if his own life was in danger. All that
went through his mind as he stared was to kill me and
- I didn't want to think of what he would do to Sally.
'Timothy, I'm frightened.' She had seen what was
in Castcl's eyes as he stood there silently rubbing what
seemed to be a badly aching jaw.
'Castel', I began again, knowing it was no use.
'What will it get you except a lot of trouble? Why not
play it smart? Point out the button that opens the
door and come over here and stand in front of us. Let
us get out and forget about us.' It was no use. His hot
gaze moved between my face and Sally's, coming to
rest on her. 'The girl', I said again. 'Let the girl out.
I'll stay here.'
' No!' Sally's voice had begun as a protest but ended
with a piercing, terrified 'Timothy!' The warning
came too late. I felt a vicious, powerful blow against
my leg behind the kneecap. Handsome had made a
sucker out of me. He hit me again with the sapper
and the leg buckled under me. I went down on one
knee and Handsome came up on one of his. My luck
 I HE J-E 1' E E C 1 PPAME I L j.

Ija.d r'jfi out. ! )><-. bla.'.kp' k carne at my head with

m 'ji'j'.l'j'jy, t v/ii’ n< and though J ducked hiwaid it
u’jJJ < aught me full L< hmd the car. Lard and I
pit'bed forward. 1 fell ’he bla.ckja.'.k again. He struck
at the '/,JJar bon':, v/h'r>. be had hit me yesterday.
I lay on the rug, fu.c* duv/h, and the room swirled
'tazjly. Above rnc th'r'- v/as a terrible confusion of
sour.': .. „;s j jy vor'.c, iri dismayed sympathy, trying to
oa-ii dovm to me; Ifandsom'/t, jn triumph : Castel’s,
jr’ a mad. onmt'.flip'i bIe roar ;md then the sound
of >h< door swinging open. Vito’s high, choked
:/d as 111'.■.>i>nto me as his boss’s, but I knew
th;;’ ! had guessed ba/JIy. He bad L< cn alone outside.
Ad ! }u:,d Lad to do a. short moment b'dore was press all
th' bu’t.orjs at orrce and take care of Vito as quickly
as. possrbJe. i Lal v/as all.
J }jc sljattcrcd nerve jrr rrjy <,ollarbon<: pained as
r.'ju'.li as t},c last tim<:. !>ijt 1 had other tilings t.o think
about nov/. 1 had Sally to thtrik about, But all J could
do v.as roll os-cr on my Lack, ijnafrlc to get up on my
J'p;s because tiicre was nothing in rny legs to get up
or., and 'rs ’o protect her f/orn the floor. What with,
your eyes? J asked rnyself ferociously. Oh, you slick,
stupid bastard:
J hen J<o'ky Castel v/as standing directly above me
a nd Ljs Land v.as strut'Led toward Vito, a fever ish
gesture for ’he knife, 'flic sharp, evil shiv appeared
in Cast'J’s slrakirig fingers, arid as J stared up at him
r.ciplcssly, his arm darted above his head and lie came
down toward me.
A thunderous explosion rose above every other
sound in that room, four thunderous explosions-
separate but in frantic succession - and four flashes of'
166 THE PERFECT FRAME

orange flame. Four shots, from the doorway, and

Rocky Castel came down toward me and the knife
dug into his expensive rug. The man who had held
it was draped lifelessly over my body, four holes in
his body, one through the heart and the others in a
straight line that ranged to the top of his head.
It seemed very important to twist my own head
around and see who stood in that doorway. To do it
I had to go through more tortures than hell itself, but
it was the most important thing in my life to see who
held that gun.
It was Jocko Robinson who held a smoking Police
.38 in his sure hand, and now it moved slowly between
Handsome and Vito who stood frozen on each side
of me and the dead Castel. It was Jocko who had
come through that door during the last possible second
and who knew that he must fire enough slugs to kill a
man already in the swift act of murder - and still save
two slugs to defend the new situation. It was Jocko,
just like old times.
‘Well, Dane, get up’, he said. ‘What the hell are
you waiting for, the second feature? ’
Nothing ever hurt so hard or felt so good. I smiled
at him foolishly and got up. And I was glad that
Sally was still too stunned to help me do it. If somebody
had tried to help I’d never have made it to my feet.
‘What kept you?’ I asked him and fell down again.
 CHAPTER 16

lay sprawled on the couch in Sally’s apartment,

I my head in her lap, and she was taking the kinks
out of it with the tips of her long cool fingers. We both
watched Jocko Robinson and listened to him.
Back at Castel’s there had been a lot of police.
Jocko, being Jocko, had insisted we all hang around
and wait for the formalities, and the law had come
charging in, intimidating everybody they could lay
their fat hands on.
But the intimidation had stopped abruptly when
Jocko went off" into a corner with a sharp-eyed captain
and let him look at something in his wallet. Now, in
the apartment, I was looking at it. A neat gold badge,
lettered in blue with the words, ‘ Special Agent, Treasury
Department’, and in the centre was the U.S. seal.
‘This’, said Jocko sarcastically, ‘is what I wanted to
talk to you about at your place. But you have to do
everything the hard way, just the way you did up at
Oceanic.’
‘If anybody did it the hard way,’ I told him, ‘it
was you. First you’re a claims man. Now you’re in
the Treasury. Why all the hocus-pocus?’
Jocko smiled patiently. ‘This is only a temporary
arrangement, thank God. I’m not working for any
sixty dollars a week when I’m a partner in the Pioneer
Agency.’
167
168 THE PERFECT FRAME

‘Oh, no! A what?’’

‘Partner’, he repeated. ‘And your telegram about
me to Fred was very sweet, Timothy. He called me
and we had a laugh over it. That’s why I came to
see you. After Fred sent his wire back I didn’t want
to get involved with that ridiculous .45 of yours.’
‘What the hell do you mean, ridiculous?’
‘Timothy’, Sally scolded.
‘What the hell do you mean, ridiculous? ’ I repeated.
‘Skip it.’ He smiled, and the smile widened when
Jean entered the room carrying a tray of cups and
coffee. He watched her move around appraisingly.
‘You girls’, he said, ‘have a very homely place here.’
The redhead beamed at him. ‘We’ve never enter­
tained a T-man before’, she said.
Jocko grimaced. ‘Don’t call me that’, he said.
‘The job was only a cover-up. I’m a partner in an
agency. A very good agency. Have you ever been to
Chicago?’ he added.
‘No, I haven’t’, she admitted wistfully.
‘Jocko,’ I interrupted, ‘let’s not stray. Why are
you working for the government? What were you
doing up at the broker’s place?’
‘It’s a tax-evasion job’, he said. ‘The Treasury boys
had an idea that Oceanic should have been buying a
lot more tax stamps than they were. They sent some­
body around to see Mr. Forbes and he referred them
to Huntington. Huntington opened up the locked
files and let them look at all the copies of their client’s
policies. All the foreign policies had the stamps on,
and the stamps weren’t counterfeit. So, the Revenue
guy went back to his office, and as far as they were
concerned in New York, Oceanic Brokerage was
 THE PERFECT FRAME 169

clean. But Fred Shelby was in Washington on business

and he got to talking shop with someone in the Treas­
ury. This fellow wasn’t convinced at all. Fred asked
him if a private outfit, like Pioneer, uncovered it,
would they be entitled to the twenty per cent that the
government pays oft' for all tax-evasion money recov­
ered. This fellow said sure.
‘When Fred got back to Chicago he got credentials
for me as a Special Agent and we figured out how to
handle it. I came here and spent a week getting myself
in a very rundown condition. When I thought I looked
seedy enough, I went up to Oceanic and asked for a
job as a claims investigator. Huntington talked to me
and when he asked for references I mumbled some­
thing about having worked at Pioneer. Huntington
said he would let me know.’ Jocko stopped to sip at
his coffee. ‘This tastes wonderful’, he said.
‘So what happened?’ I asked.
Jocko gave me a look. ‘So Huntington hired me.
He had checked on me at Pioneer and got back a
report that I was unreliable. It didn’t accuse me of
anything in particular, but it didn’t have anything
good to report, either. And when Huntington hired
me after that, then I was positive he was the thief I
was after. Who else would want a claims investi­
gator like I looked to be?’
‘Gosh,’ said Jean, ‘that was clever, Mr. Robinson.’
‘Jocko’, he corrected her. ‘Thanks.’
‘So you got yourself inside the place’, I said, post­
poning their negotiations. ‘What did you find out?’
‘I found out that Walter Huntington was a very
cautious thief, for a thief. He held the stamp opera­
tion all to himself. Not even his secretary, that Dahl
170 the perfect frame
girl, could help him when it came to cancelling
policies or stamping new ones. I tried to get into the
act myself, but he shooed me away. Then, one night
after I’d been there spending Pioneer’s good money
- half of it mine, incidentally - I played a hunch. That
afternoon Huntington had been busily cancelling
policies and I waited outside the building for him
after quitting time. He carried a brief-case with him
and I followed him uptown to the Harmony Bar.’
‘You, too?’
‘What?’
‘Everybody in New York must have followed Hunt­
ington to that little dive at one time or another.’
‘Well, I know about you’, said Jocko. ‘Who else?’
‘Millions of guys,’ I said, ‘for millions of reasons.
Tonight you killed a louse who had one of the reasons
to tail Huntington. It turned out that he had the wrong
reason, though. Castel had absolutely no idea why
Huntington went in there.’
‘But you did’, Jocko told me. ‘And I was just get­
ting ready to rig a trap for Huntington - actually find
him in the warehouse when he was lifting stamps off
old policies to put them on new ones the next day. But
you had to come nosing around and bring everything
to a boil.’
‘It was accidental, Jocko. When I called you that
night I was just a shill. I was down there on Rocky’s
business, but I didn’t know it.’
‘It was all my fault’, said Sally.
Jocko shrugged. ‘ All’s well that ends well. Pioneer
doesn’t get twenty per cent of all the money that
Huntington stole from the Treasury . . .’
‘Why not?’ I asked.
 THE PERFECT FRAME J7]
He smiled. ‘Believe it or not, all that Huntington
had in his safe-deposit box was four thousand dollars-
His bank account was higher, but his wife will be able
to prove that that money came legitimately. The man
must have got away with plenty, but where it is is
anybody’s guess.’
I shook my head. ‘ There’s still something very fishy,
Jocko.’
He laughed. ‘Old Bulldog Dane. The case is
closed, Timothy. It died when Huntington jumped
from that window. I started to say that Pioneer won’t
get twenty per cent of any half million, but I went in
to see Forbes this afternoon and explained myself to
him and what I was doing.’
‘You’ve already told Forbes?’
‘Why not? The poor old guy ought to know, now
that it’s over. Besides, I’ve got to get back to Chicago.’
‘So soon?’ Jean asked.
‘Well,’ Jocko began expansively, ‘I don’t . . .’
‘What did Forbes say?’ I broke in again.
‘He took it hard. Very hard. But then he pulled
himself together and said that he understood. He
agreed that Pioneer should get something for its
trouble.’
‘He’s certainly a fast man with a buck’, I said.
‘He’s got it to be fast with, Timothy. The next
job you’re on, you’ll work a month for a hundred
dollars. This one is wound up in half a week and you’re
two thousand ahead.’
‘If it’s wound up. Suppose’, I said, ‘that Hunt­
ington was only a part of the story? Suppose there’s
more? ’
He grinned and shook his head. ‘If you’re thinking
1J.J THE PERFECT FRAME

of hitting the old man for another thousand you can

forget it. Mary is going to keep Forbes away from
you and every other private detective for a long, long
time.’
‘We’ll see. If Huntington was the beginning and
end of this job, Jocko, then who put a match to the
warehouse? ’
Jocko shrugged his thin shoulders. ‘That’s the Fire
Department’s headache. That warehouse fire was just
one of those things, Timothy. A coincidence.’
‘ Coincidence my eye! ’
Jocko’s jaw set. ‘Walter Huntington was a louse. He
had everything he could ever want from Forbes, and
instead of being loyal, he tried to steal the old man
blind.’
‘That’s what you say.’
‘That’s what I know. Hell, I worked up there for
four months, watching Huntington like a hawk every
hour of it. He worked alone in this thing. There was
no other thief but him.’
‘Let’s take a walk, Jocko’, I said.
‘A walk? Now?’
‘Come on.’
Sally said, ‘Let’s all go for a walk. I never thought
that being able to leave this apartment could seem so
important.’
‘Why don’t you go to bed?’ I asked softly. ‘It’s
been a hard time, honey.’
‘You mean you’d rather we didn’t go?’
‘You and I’, I told her, ‘will take a walk tomorrow
night. Someplace special.’
‘Where are you and Jocko going? ’
‘We’re just going out fora while. It’s business, Sally.’
 THE PERFECT FRAME 173

‘Isn’t this mess over yet?’ Her voice had a quiver

in it.
‘For you it is’, I said. ‘For some other people, I’m
not so sure.’
‘Timothy,’ Jocko said, ‘if you’re trying to ease your
conscience about that money you got, why drag me
into it? All you’re doing is frightening the girls.’
‘Not as much as having to look at you. Come on,
bright eyes’, I said, taking him by the arm.

The hands on the big Paramount clock glowed at

1 a.m. as Jocko and I walked up 44th to Broadway.
We had crossed Eighth before I spoke. ‘You still
handy with electricity?’ I asked.
‘Good Lord! You mean you actually hauled me
out of that nice apartment to fix some busted lamp
in your room?’
‘No.’ I laughed. ‘Another question. When you
went in and resigned, let’s say, from Oceanic, did you
give Forbes your building pass?’
‘No, I didn’t. I’m glad you reminded me, Timothy.
First thing tomorrow morning . . .’
‘It’s already tomorrow morning’, I reminded him.
‘I want you to hold on to that pass, Jocko.’
‘Come off it, will you, boy? All this talk about elec­
tricity and building passes. I think Castel and his
friends put you on queer street tonight.’
I turned him into Louie’s, the hideaway bar that’s a
favourite of mine. The boss gave us a smile and
pointed to the table I always use. When there were
two drinks in front of us I told Jocko why Huntington
wasn’t working alone. I told him about Hal Harper
and the Medical Examiner’s report. I tore down his
1^4 THE PERFECT FRAME

coincidence theory about the warehouse fire. I told

him about Castel’s angle, about Huntington and the
pictures.
When I was finished he was pulling on his chin and
studying the snow-white tablecloth. Finally he shook
his head. ‘You make it sound good, Timothy. But
Huntington is dead and now Castel is the same way.
If Huntington had a partner, if, then it was Castel.
There’s your case, all wrapped up and down at the
morgue.’ He looked at me over the top of his glass.
‘If you carried your ideas all the way out,’ he said,
‘then I’d be number one on your list.’
I swallowed some of my own drink and put the glass
down. ‘You certainly would be, Jocko. You cer­
tainly were.’
‘Were, Timothy?’
I nodded. ‘Castel and Huntington have been doing
business for over six months. You’ve only been in on
the case for four. Besides that’, I smiled, ‘I need you
to help me nail down this thing.’
‘Well, thanks’, he said. ‘I still say you’re crazy.’
I took out the picture of Lorena Dahl and handed
it to him. ‘Tonight’, I said, ‘this dame was ready to
spill what she knew - and I think she knew who it
is I’m looking for. But my price wasn’t high enough.
She went home to telephone somebody - maybe the
somebody. She was also supposed to call me back.
I hope she has, even though I wasn’t there. I hope
that whoever it is she’s trying to blackmail about these
pictures won’t do business with her.’
Jocko looked thoughtful. ‘It could have been Cas­
tel’, he said.
‘ No. Lorena doesn’t have much sense, but she’s been
 THE PERFECT FRAME J75
around long enough to know you don’t shake down
Rocky Castel. Or didn’t. Jocko,’ I asked, ‘who would
have hired her as a stenographer?’
‘Huntington’, he said, surprised.
‘He didn’t. Who else?’
‘Well, they don’t have an out-and-out personnel
man. One of Mary’s side jobs is to take charge of
the secretarial help.’
I frowned. ‘Mary and these pictures don’t ring a
bell.’
‘For God’s sake, Timothy! Don’t look at me like
that.’ He was swallowing hard. ‘ I like girls as well as
the next man. But I like them in all three dimensions.
In three dimensions like that little redhead we just
left . . .’
‘That leaves Forbes’, I said.
‘Forbes?" Jocko almost choked on his drink. ‘That
harmless old man? Holy Toledo, you’re living in a
dream world all of your own.’ He put his hand out
and laid it over my arm. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘the girls
are probably still up. Let’s rustle up a quart of this
stuff from your friend here and go back and have a
little party. I haven’t had a party with someone like
Jean in years. I . . .’
‘Forbes’, I said again. ‘That’s what I want you to
help me with. If I’m right, Jocko, the fee you got
and my two thousand are going to be just so much
chicken feed.’
‘How’s that?’ He looked like a partner in an
agency now.
‘We split whatever we get’, I said. ‘If I’m right,
you take home half to Chicago. You can buy Fred
out.’
176 THE PERFECT FRAME

‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that, Timothy. After all, Fred

was good enough to take me in. I wouldn’t even
suggest . . . Let’s hear your idea’, he finished sus­
piciously.
I gave it to him in detail. Then I got up and called
Hal Harper. I told Hal the pros and the cons.
‘It’s strictly for the Rover Boys’, he said.
‘It may turn that Huntington suicide into some­
thing else’, I reminded.
‘When do you want to pick up the stuff, Tim?’
We were at Centre Street Police Headquarters in
twenty minutes. Ten more and we had the portable
wire recorder, the clamps and the rolls of extension
wire. The cab started up again and took us further
downtown to the Ocean building.
A slcepy-looking night-watchman examined Jocko’s
pass and took us up to the forty-third floor. We told
him not to wait, that we were going to be busy for a
while.
We were. It took Jocko an hour and a half to make
the tap-in - and to make it look good. We tested it
for thirty minutes more. It was four o’clock when I
was finally back in my room on 53rd.
When I’d dropped Jocko off he hadn’t looked happy
at all.
 CHAPTER 17

hey had Lorena Dahl on the front page of the

T morning News. It was Lorena’s long black hair
and her slender waist and her beautiful legs, and
she was in a negligee. She was lying on Madison
Avenue and there was an ambulance off to the side
of the five-column cut, but the ambulance wasn’t
necessary because Lorena Dahl was dead. There
were a few people standing around, helplessly, and
cops. The cops were staring into the camera and if
there was any expression on their faces it was puzzle­
ment.
The caption was seventy-two points high and
funereal black. BEAUTY IN DEATH LEAP, it
said. The caption told who she was and said she came
from Los Angeles, California. It went on to say that
she had been private secretary to Walter Huntington,
who had killed himself in a similar leap the day
before. According to police, said the paper, Miss
Dahl and Huntington had apparently shared an illicit
love affair. Huntington, they pointed out, was a
married man with a family. His suicide had proved
too much for the girl, and she had followed him in
death. Other pictures were on page three and the
centre-spread, the caption concluded.
I read the words over and over. I pretended I
didn’t know the girl and read it neutrally. That made
m i77
 178 THE PERFECT FRAME

it just as the paper said. Unrequited love. Suicide

pact. No way out.
But I had eaten dinner last night. And I had told
the girl with me that blackmail was dangerous. And
she had said, not if it pays. She had also been very
sure of herself and the breasts which must have been
warm then and full of life.
I thought of the little hotel around the corner and
how she talked like a nymphomaniac. What would it
have taken? An hour? Two hours? Two hours out
of my life - and how many would it have added to
hers if I’d gone there and in her passion she had told
me what the pictures were for, and who they were
for?
The newspaper was wrong. Lorena Dahl hadn’t
died for love. She lived for love - but she died for
money. For blood money. She died for three hundred
dollars and ten cents. Ten cents for a ’phone call and
death had answered.

It was nine-thirty. Things ought to be brisk and

businesslike at Oceanic by now. Every busy little bee
in his hive, making honey, storing honey, feeding the
queen bee all the honey she could want. But there
wasn’t a queen at Oceanic. Just a king - and the
king wasn’t big and fat but small and frail and scared
of his own thin shadow. A king whose heir apparent
had jumped from a window.
And Lorena Dahl was a number on a slab at the
morgue. Maybe Hal Harper was still studying that
body and scratching his head. Maybe - maybe - there
weren’t the right number of fractures and dislocations.
Maybe Hal was looking at Lorena Dahl and thinking
 THE PERFECT FRAME 179
of Walter Huntington, and remembering what we’d
talked about. Lorena was dead and time was wasting.
I dialled the number and got put through to
Mary. I told her I was coming up to see Mr-
Forbes.
‘I’m afraid that’s impossible, Mr. Dane’, she said.
‘Why? Isn’t he there?’
‘Mr. Forbes is here, but I don’t think he’ll talk to
you. He had another tragic upset this morning.’
‘Secretaries come,’ I said, ‘and secretaries go. Or
was Mr. Forbes particularly fond of Lorena Dahl?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ she said crisply. ‘Mr. Forbes
hardly knew Miss Dahl. It was a terrible thing, her
suicide. But the upsetting thing to Mr. Forbes is the
insinuations about the girl and Mr. Huntington. Mr.
Huntington was like a son to Mr. Forbes.’
‘So I’ve heard it said’, I told her. ‘Any number of
times. But I have to see him anyway. I have some­
thing to return to him.’
‘Oh’, she said. ‘Why don’t you just deduct your
expenses, Mr. Dane, and mail Mr. Forbes a cheque
for the rest ? ’
‘It isn’t the retainer’, I said. ‘I’m still working on
this case.’
‘ But you said . . .’
‘I said I have something to return to him.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s quite valuable. I want to give it back to him
and collect my reward.’
‘You’re being quite mysterious’, Mary told me.
‘What is this thing?’
‘ I’ll bring it up with me.’
‘You can only see Mr. Forbes for a few minutes’,
l8o the perfect frame
she said. ‘Mr. Forbes cannot bear any more irritation
or excitement.’
‘It will only take a few minutes’, I answered and
hung up.

The cab wormed its way downtown at an agonizing

pace. Other cabs, thousands and thousands of them,
huge buses, aggravating traffic lights, foolhardy pedes­
trians - everything ganged up on us to keep me from
reaching the Oceanic building.
But then we were there and I was paying the fare
and tipping him - for exactly what I’ll never know -
and the elevator was making its familiar climb to the
forty-third floor.
The girl with the inhaled chest gave me a frightened
glance and immediately warned Mary that I was
already going through the reception-room and on
inside. Mary greeted me with a tired smile. ‘You
seem to terrify the receptionist’, she said. ‘Are you
really such a dangerous person, Mr. Dane? ’
‘I’ve had my moments’, I said. ‘Is he briefed and
ready for me? ’
‘Mr. Forbes knows that you are coming in to see
him. I’ll announce you.’
‘That will be nice’, I said and watched her pick up
the little microphone and speak into it. ‘The private
detective is here, Mr. Forbes.’ Then the door swung
open and I stepped in and got a surprise.
Forbes was not alone in his tremendous office.
Sitting uncomfortably in a chair against the wall was
a stranger. To me he was a stranger. What he was to
the old man who watched me from behind the desk
remained to be learned.
 THE PERFECT FRAME [3l

‘Be brief, Mr. Dane’, said Forbes. ‘This has been a

terrible ordeal. I have had quite enough of death and
detectives.’
I turned to look at the stranger. He was a short,
squat man, heavily built through the chest and not
fat. His face was square and might have run to jowls
if he hadn’t kept himself in shape, which he defi nitely
had. It was a face that looks dark with beard five
minutes after shaving. If I say Jack Dempsey you’ll
know the face. But he was a head shorter than Demp­
sey and not half so pleasant. If that makes you smile
then you’ll know just how unpleasant the stranger was
who scowled at me from beady eyes that were sunk
deep in his head below black, bushy eyebrows.
‘Who’s this ape?’ I asked Forbes.
The ape reacted. He grunted.
‘You don’t know this gentleman’, said Forbes.
‘I don’t’, I admitted. ‘He isn’t Margaret O’Brien,
is he?’
The ape reacted again. The reaction brought him
out of his chair and now he stood at full height. Five-
two was my guess, and about three feet of it was m
his big iron barrel of a body.
‘Cecil’, said Forbes quietly. ‘Cecil.’
Cecil? What did Cecil make me think of? It made
me think of Clarence. Clarence Hulbert. ‘How’s the
Bull?’ I asked the Ape.
‘It’s you!’ he said in a snarling growl. ‘You’re
the one! ’ He took a step forward before Forbes stopped
him.
‘Cecil! Sit down!’ It stopped him. It stopped me.
This was Forbes speaking? The voice he had used on
the Ape was no timorous pipsqueak. It was a voice
rEfa THE PERFECT FRAME

with volume and authority, and malevolence. ‘Now,

Dane,’ he said to me in the new tone, ‘what is your
business? What do you have of mine to return? Speak
quickly.’
Instead of speaking quickly I reached into my inside
coat pocket and took out the packet of prints. Five
of them. Sally’s stayed in the pocket, but the others
I laid on his desk, fanwise. ‘These’, I said and watched
his face closely.
Forbes’ head was motionless as he stared at the pic­
tures. In his eyes was grand disbelief and then even
grander confusion. The head and eyes moved. But
not up at me. Without willing it, his glance swerved
to one of the paintings on the wall - a still life of apples
and pears and a vase. Then he gazed at me. ‘What
are these things?’ he said.
‘Those are women. Five beautiful women. They’re
for sale, Mr. Forbes.’
‘Why bring them to me? Why would I be inter­
ested ? ’
‘Aren’t they yours?’
‘Of course not.’
I looked disappointed. ‘Oh’, I said slowly. ‘Well,
would you like to buy them? I have the negatives
and I’m going to print them up. Can I make you a
set?’
‘No! You don’t have the negatives! You don’t
have them!’ The authority in his voice had cracked.
He was shrill now, out of his mind and crying.
‘The hell I don’t’, I said.
‘They’re mine’, he sobbed, sweeping the pictures
toward him with his old, bony fingers. ‘Mine! I
bought them. No one can see them. No one else . . .’
 THE PERFECT FRAME I

The voice that I had heard speak through the pic­

tures on the wall was speaking now. Mary’s voice.
But it didn’t come from the wall. It came from a
spot a foot from my right shoulder, and something
long and pointed was pressing into my back, below
the shoulder. ‘I warned you’, said the voice, ‘not to
make the old man excited. Walk over this way.’ The
gun that was at my back indicated a direction toward
the Ape.
‘Cecil,’ Mary said, ‘see if he carries a pistol.’
The Ape slid out of his chair with catlike ease. The
Bull, the one in Bellevue, was this one’s brother. But
little brother moved even slicker. His large hands went
over me expertly. ‘Nothing’, he told Mary. ‘Can I
have him?’ he asked. ‘This is the one who sent Clare
to the hospital.’
‘You may have him’, said Mary, ‘when we have
talked to him.’
‘That would make three suicides’, I said. ‘Two
from the same building in three days.’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Mary said.
But I looked at Forbes. ‘It means that this is the
guy who pushed Walter Huntington out of the win­
dow the night before last. The fellow you loved like
a son.’
‘Take him out of here’, said Forbes. ‘Throw him
out the window.’
‘Who throws me out?’ I asked. ‘Mary or this ape?’
‘I can kill you right now’, Mary said.
‘But that wouldn’t be as cute as the window business.
What did you do to her, Mary? Did you get her to
drink until she passed out, or did you hit her on the
head?’
] 04- the perfect frame
‘What are you talking about? ’
‘I’m talking about Lorena Dahl. She died on
Madison Avenue last night. Or was it early this
morning? But she came through a window in her
hotel. A woman’s hotel, Mary. A man couldn’t have
come up there to see her. She knew that when I had
dinner with her. That’s why she wanted to go back
there and make her call. She was calling a woman,
someone who could come up and see her and not even
be noticed by the desk clerk or the people in the lobby.
You were the woman she called. She asked how much
it would be worth not to tell about the pictures. She
wanted to know how much Forbes would pay for her
to keep quiet about the pictures and the fact that
she had been hired because Forbes liked the picture
so much.’ I whirled to the old man behind the desk.
‘Some picture, wasn’t it? A private secretary, taking
dictation without a stitch on her back. You poor,
perverted bastard’, I told him, ‘you looked at that
picture and you thought it would be good to have the
girl around - actually have her as a secretary.’
‘I didn’t’, he said.
‘Like hell you didn’t! But even that wasn’t enough.
You send your trained seal out on another dirty job
for you. Walter Huntington, the man you love as
you’d love a son, has to find out who the girl is that
Castel photographed. He did locate her and Mary,
here, hired her as Huntington’s secretary. And every
day you’d watch her and then come sneaking back in
here to slobber over her picture.’
‘Take him out’, croaked Forbes. ‘Throw him out
the window.’
‘Mr. Dane,’ Mary said, ‘you’re such a fool. Imagine
 THE PERFECT FRAME

coming up here to tell us such things and then try to

brazen your way through it.’
‘Nothing’s going to happen to me’, I told her.
She laughed. ‘Of course not. All that’s going to
happen to you is that you’re going to die.’
‘ Like Huntington?’ I said. ‘ Like that girl last night?
Don’t kid yourself.’
‘Oh, not exactly like them’, she said. ‘The only way
for you is to disappear. Cecil will see to that.’ She
pointed to the wall near Forbes’ desk. ‘That hides a
private elevator’, she explained. ‘You and Cecil will
descend to the subbasement without a soul being the
wiser.’
Rover Boys, Hal Harper had cracked last night.
Fantastic. This old man, this nice old lady, knocking
off the government for all that money, buying porno­
graphy, having people killed. Now she held a gun in
her motherly hand and was sounding off about secret
elevators and subbasements.
‘Any time Cecil wants to start’, I said, ‘is all right
with me. But I’m going to give him a little more
trouble than he had with Huntington.’
‘If I shoot him’, Mary said dispassionately, ‘it may
be heard. That will bring the dreadful police again.’
‘Cecil will throw him out the window’, said the old
man with the one-track mind. ‘Make him uncon­
scious, Cecil. Throw him out the window. Like
Walter.’
‘And then you can go down and start another fire’,
I told the Ape, who was on his feet now and looking
me over with a weird smile. ‘Maybe Mr. Forbes has
another warehouse you can burn down.’
‘Who told you about the fire?’ Mary asked.
l86 THE PERFECT FRAME

‘Why do you think anybody had to be told? The

deal you’ve been working is all pegged out. Hunt­
ington was the fall guy all down the line. He didn’t
figure out the tax deal, but he was the sucker who had
to carry the ball for it. Then Forbes got tired of the
regular smut he was getting, so Walter had to front
for that deal, too. Then I came into it, via Castel.
‘You had no idea Jocko Robinson was smelling you
out, but you knew I had to be handled. The first
thousand you paid me was to keep me away from the
cops. That gave you time to get rid of Huntington.
Then Cecil puts a torch to the warehouse and that
should close me out tight. But I show up the very next
day, so you come through with another thousand.
‘That was a big mistake. I’m just a poor working
stiff - two thousand dollars is a lot of money to me.
And for what? For nothing! It was screwy, and my
nose started twitching.’
‘ Stop all this drivel’, yelled Forbes. ‘ Stop this ridicu­
lous talk. What did you come here for, Dane? More
money? You fool! You walk in here, looking for more
money, and what you’ll get is the end of your life.
Like Walter. Like that silly girl who threatened Mary
last night. Like everyone and anyone who is useless
to me.’ He was puffing like a bantam cock. ‘Of
course it was Walter who changed the stamps. Who
did you expect would do it? Mary? Myself? Some­
one had to, so Walter did. Walter! The fool actually
thought he was going to inherit this business some day.’
Mary’s voice soothed him. ‘Don’t get over-excited,
Franklin’, she said.
‘I’m all right, dear. Oh, if it hadn’t been for that
scheming girl - that Lorena! ’
 THE PERFECT FRAME 187
‘No’, I said. ‘If you’re looking to find out what
happened this week - why it all blew up in your face
- then blame yourself. Blame your greed, old man.
If you’d been satisfied with less you might have gone
on fooling the Treasury for ever. And if you’d stuck
to your deal with Rocky Castel he’d never have got
curious about Walter Huntington.’
Forbes sniffed at me and spread the five pictures on
his desk. ‘There’s one missing’, he announced, half-
gleefully. ‘The best of the lot-you didn’t get that
one!’ His face leered at me, senile and obscene. ‘I
didn’t want any more when I had her . . .’
‘I have the blonde’, I said, patting my inside
pocket.
His eyes travelled to the wall painting again.
I shook my head. ‘They’re not in there’, I lied. ‘I
broke in last night and took them all.’
‘You’re lying to my brother’, Mary cried.
‘You’re . . .’
‘Brother?’ I peered at her, unable to see any re­
semblance. ‘What do you do with your share, retouch
pictures of Alan Ladd?’
The old man had come to his feet as I spoke and now
he ran toward the painting. It swung upward usder
the pressure of his hand, revealing the safe. 'He
whirled the combination feverishly.
Its small door swung open, and so did the big door
behind us. Jocko came through that, along with Hal
Harper and a young uniformed cop. Mary made a
strangling noise in her throat and pointed her gun
toward her breast. My wrist deflected it and a shell
exploded at the ceiling. Before she could try again I
snapped it from her fingers.
188 THE PERFECT FRAME

Harper was busily barking orders to the confused

roomful and I took a chance at reaching inside the
safe. My hand came back with the negatives and a
piece of paper crowded with numbers.
Then everybody went uptown to Police Head­
quarters. It took an hour to book Forbes, Mary and
Cecil on all the counts that Jocko, Harper and I had
to explain to the open-mouthed Assistant D.A. But
then it was done, and Jocko and I left while Hal stayed
behind to play the wire recordings for his boss. None
of it, we knew, would amount to a damn as court
evidence. It wasn’t even worth an indictment. But
it was enough to give the police and the Revenue
Department a lead on what they could squeeze out
of this trio.
The next stop was the Treasury office in the Wool­
worth Building. There I turned over the numbered
list - which carried the code names of the banks and
the deposit boxes where the stolen tax money was
cached. It was when I had the Agent’s receipt in
my hand that I finally stopped feeling like a shill.

I’ve called myself a shill. I said I was taken for a

ride by a blue-eyed blonde who didn’t even give me
her right name. Well, I was taken for two rides.
The second ride was by train to an unheard-of
place miles beyond even Montpelier, Vermont. It
isn’t even a town, just a half-hearted collection of
stores that run alongside the railroad station.
You walk a hundred yards from this town and
you’re in a deep, cool woods. We’re a thousand yards
beyond that, in a cabin that hangs out over the river
and is surrounded by silence. The cabin looks rugged
 THE PERFECT FRAME 189
from the outside. But the inside is quite a surprise,
even for a city boy.
Oh. That agent from the Treasury Department.
He said I was entitled to ten per cent of all the money
they find in Forbes’ safety-deposit vaults. It’ll come
to, he said, about fifteen thousand dollars.
I’ll believe that when they send me the cheque.

THE END
EVERYBODY
READS THRILLERS!
And a Hammond thriller is always good value in every
way. To make it easier for you to recognize your favourite
mystery writers (Hammond authors, of course) we have
introduced the Cloak and Dagger Mystery symbol, which
guarantees first-class writing, good characterization, and fine enter­
tainment.
If you like smart sophisticated detection, you should read Frances
Crane’s Pat and Jean Abbott series. Pat and Jean are an engaging
pair of sleuths, and you can meet them in 13 WHITE TULIPS and
DEATH IN THE BLUE HOUR.
Should you prefer a more rugged type of story - not too tough but
with plenty of action and suspense - you will enjoy George Harmon
Coxe’s EYE WITNESS and INLAND PASSAGE.
Also in the fairly tough but very humorous class are Joseph
Shallit’s YELL RUDDY MURDER and LADY, DON’T DIE
ON MY DOORSTEP.
Elizabeth Daly is anotherthriller author who combines a good plot
with suave, smooth writing, wry humour, and good characterization.
Her two latest books are DEATH AND LETTERS and AND
DANGEROUS TO KNOW.
For more exoticsettings we recommend Kathleen Moore Knight,
who is equally at home whether depicting her characters against a
background of Cape Cod or New Mexico. Judge for yourself in
THE BASS DERBY MURDER and DYING ECHO.
Do you like English thrillers ? Margaret Erskine writes bril­
liantly, and the American Crime Club takes all her books for publica­
tion in America. Her Detective-Inspector Septimus Finch is a
delightful and unusual young man, and you can match your wits
against his in DEAD BY NOW and DEATH OF OUR DEAR ONE.
Another English detective whom we are sure you will like is
Inspector Ashton of Scotland Yard. You can meet him in Eliza­
beth Antin’s DEATH ON THE BARRIER REEF and MURDER
IN MID-ATLANTIC, both interesting and exciting yarns written
in a light sophisticated style.
For a thriller with a genuinely unusual theme, we recommend
Guy Cullingford’s POST MORTEM, a story with an English
country setting, rich in local colour.
A newcomer to our Thriller List is Dennis Allan, whose BORN
TO BE MURDERED (the gentleman so born was a successful
publisher !) was very favourably reviewed. His second book — DEAD
TO RIGHTS - introduces a new sleuth, Blaise de Brincourt, con­
noisseur of blondes 1
If you like your murder mysteries without a detective, you’ll enjoy
Joan Storm’s DEADLY DIAMOND and BITTER RUBIES,
they are different from the usual run, and are most entertaining.
Ask your bookseller or librarian about these
 Looking for Laughter?
Hildegarde Dolson has a truly delicious sense of the ridiculous,
which is revealed in her two books THE FORM DIVINE,
a novel which pokes riotous fun at the typical New York Beauty
Salon, and WE SHOOK THE FAMILY TREE, the story of
her own life, which the critics acclaimed as being expert, and
so very, very funny.
Of course, the word laughter is synonymous with Betty
MacDonald, who leapt to fame with THE EGG AND I, and
of whom it has been said ‘everything she touches turns to golden
laughter.’ Her latest book, ANYBODY CAN DO ANYTHING,
in which she relates the job-hunting adventures of herself and
her family before THE EGG AND I made her wealthy, has
proved that she can turn any situation into a laugh riot, whether
it be life on a chicken farm (The Egg and I), life in a sanatorium
(The Plague and I), or life in an office (Anybody Can Do Any­
thing). Over three million copies of these three books have been
sold.
Betty MacDonald comes of a talented family, for her sister,
Mary Bard, who has the same sense of deep, bubbling humour,
has written two books, THE DOCTOR WEARS THREE
FACES, highlights and sidelights on the everyday life of a
doctor’s wife; and FORTY ODD, in which she tells of her
frantic and hilarious efforts to cure herself of being forty.
A book for all women to read, roar over, and present to any
scoffing males who claim that a day at the office is hard work,
is Alfred Toombs’ RAISING A RIOT, in which he takes over
the care of the children, the house, and the kitchen for a hilar­
ious and exhausting eighteen months. Not content with that,
he then marries a widow with two children of her own, and his
further adventures are recounted in HONEYMOON FOR
SEVEN.
Bennett Cerf’s GOOD FOR A LAUGH, LAUGHTER
INCORPORATED, and SHAKE WELL BEFORE USING,
are three books of humorous jokes and anecdotes guaranteed
to cause chuckles and, even guffaws. They are ideal for the
after-dinner speaker, for Bennett Cerf is acknowledged to be one
of the wittiest and most quoted raconteurs of to-day.

Askjiour bookseller or librarian about these

 EVERY THRILLER FAN
has known the exasperation of having to put down a book
right in the middle of an exciting chapter, or has sat up till
the early hours of the morning just to find out whodunit.
To obviate this frustrating state of affairs here are three
books (written by famous members of the Mystery Writers
of America Inc.) to while away that odd half-hour; perfect
bedside or fireside books.

Murder Cavalcade
In this book each author has chosen the favourite story
he or she has written. The result is a thoroughly enjoyable
selection which should please the most blase of thriller
addicts.
20 Great Tales of Murder
The title of this book is self-explanatory. The twenty
tales are by famous members of the Mystery Writers of
America Inc., and it goes without saying, therefore, that
they can be relied upon for good characterization, clever
detection, smooth writing, and fine entertainment.

Four and Twenty Bloodhounds

The four-and-twenty fictional sleuths whose exploits are
contained in this volume share only one common denomin­
ator ; they are all modern creations by famous members of
the Mystery Writers of America Inc. As an added attrac­
tion, each story is followed by a detective Who’s Who, so
that the reader may have a permanent record of his
favourite crime detector. Thus, John Dickson Carr’s Dr.
Fell is revealed in all the rich splendour of his unorthodox
career, while Ellery Queen prefers to keep his private life a
mystery for once unsolved.
Amongst authors included in these three volumes are:
JOHN DICKSON CARR ELLERY QUEEN
HUGH PENTECOST GEORGE HARMON COXE
LILLIAN DE LA TORRE ANTHONY BOUCHER
BRETT HALLIDAY Q. PATRICK
STUART PALMER HELEN MCCLOY
CRAIG RICE DOROTHY B. HUGHES
BAYNARD KENDRICK FREDERIC BROWN
To while away that odd half-hour or so, withfi
the exasperation of having to stop right in tl
middle of an exciting chapter, we recommend

MURDER
CAVALCADE
*
FOUR AND
TWENTY
BLOODHOUNDS
*
20 GREAT
TALES OF
MURDER

Three anthologies of excellent stories created by

famous members of the Mystery Writers of
America, Inc. These stories have a wide range,
and each has been chosen for its ability to excite,
stimulate, and entertain. Authors include:
Ellery Queen George Harmon Coxe
John Dickson Carr August Derleth
Anthony Boucher Stuart Palmer
rett Halliday Frederic Brown
Hugh Pentecost Helen McCloy
Q. Patrick Lawrence G. Blochman

A complete book list

will be sent on request
HAMMOND
87 Gower Street, W.C.l.
W.F.6.53
— _ J * .

Everybody Reads Thrillers!

.And a Hammond, thriller ia.always good v*alue in every way. T yj\
To make it easier to recognize your favourite mystery writers /* I
(Hammond authors, of course), We have introduced the /%%?/
Cloak and Dagger Mystery symbol,,which guarantee's „ fir§t- „ I cuccta
class writing, good characterization, aiTd fine efitertai nmeriV. / ••««»
The following authors appear under this symbol:—• (j '

DAVID ALEXANDER Most Men Don’t Kill

(American. Tough and tense)
ELIZABETH ANTILL Death on the Barrier Reef
(Light, entertaining style) Murder in Mid-Atlantic
GEORGE HARMON COXE Eye Witness
(Rugged, not too tough) Inland Passage
ERANCES CRANE 13 White Tulips
(Smart, sophisticated detection) Death in the Blue Hour
GUY CULLINGFORD Post Mortem
(Unique theme; English setting) If Wishes Were Hearses
ELIZABETH DALY Death and Letters
(Suave, smooth detection) And Dangerous to Know
JACQUES DECREST Body on the Bench
(Paris setting. Shrewd detection) Meet a Body
DAVID ELIAS
(Amusing, witty, exciting) The Cause of the Screaming
ALFRED EICHLER Murder in the Radio
(Authentic background) Department
MARGARET ERSKINE Death of Our Dear One
(English settings, tense, eerie The Disappearing Bridegroom
atmosphere)
। KATHLEEN MOORE KNIGHT The Bass Derby Murder
(Exotic settings) Dying Echo
ANNE NASH Said with Flowers
(Refreshingly humorous) Unhappy Rendezvous
MANNING C INE Dodos Don’t DUck
(In-the Peter Cheyney tradition) Corpse to Cairo
INEZ OELLRICHS Death of a White Witch
(Keeps one guessing) Murder Makes Us Gay
JOSEPH SHALLIT Yell Ruddy Murder
(Plenty of humour and Lady, Don’t Die on my Doorstep
excitement)
JOAN STORM Deadly Diamoixfi,,
+ (Continental post-war setting) Bitter Rubies ’■'
H. A. WRENN Tangle
(Light, English background)

fl
HAMMOND