Dead, She Was Beautiful Read online

  “Of course,” Dagne replied coldly and what little warmth had grown between them was utterly gone. “Be sure to tell me if I get in your way, won’t you? Where do you want to start?”

  Hagen shrugged. “Right here will do.” He indicated the corner liquor store and headed toward it, Dagne following him aloofly and silently. He wondered why this girl—what she thought, how she reacted, her opinion of him—should be of any importance to him, except professionally. She was hardly the handsomest girl he had ever met, or the most lovable. In fact, she could be downright infuriating. And dangerous, Hagen added; he couldn’t forget the gun locked away in his desk. Yet he was drawn to her, albeit unwillingly. He had known her only a half-dozen hours but she was not a Stranger to him. He felt the same compelling excitement of the early days with Hilda, before the disillusionment had set in. Careful, he warned himself, remember what happened the last time. But he wondered if Dagne too sensed anything of the bond between them; women were usually more perceptive along those lines. He couldn’t tell.

  The search went slowly. By the time an hour had passed, they had covered barely three blocks and without result. Shopkeepers, hotel clerks, taxi drivers, waitresses … they all had the same answer, a shake of the head. Sorry, pal, but I don’t know anybody who looks like that. Sure, I’ll keep an eye out—and what’s going on, anyway? Hagen gave the same story everywhere, a vague mention of an inheritance and a missing heir, and a reward to anyone who located him. He figured that would get more results than the truth. The Fathom Street crowd, like all the downtrodden, protected its own. Nor was he discouraged at his failure to find his man. Success quite aside, there was pleasure in the pursuit itself.

  Dagne put it into words. As they paused to light cigarettes in front of the burlesque theatre’s blatant posters, she said, “You’re really enjoying yourself, aren’t you? You like this sort of thing.”

  “Well, it’s my job. I might as well like it.”

  “You’re pretty good at it, too,” she admitted. “Thorough, I mean. I’d have given up long ago.”

  “Tired, baby?”

  “Don’t call me that,” she said irritably. “I Hate that term applied to a grown woman. Yes, I’m tired. This isn’t exactly my cup of tea. Everybody looks at me as if they think I’m a floozy. Another hour down here and I’ll feel like one. Did you know that that man in the card room actually patted me on the behind when you weren’t looking?”

  “Probably thought you were somebody else,” said Hagen, nodded toward the nearest life-sized photograph. “How’s that for figure control? Come on, I’ll buy you a drink.” He took her elbow and guided her into the bar next to the theatre. She accompanied him grudgingly.

  The small lounge was cool and dim after the sultriness of the street. They were the only customers. The bartender put down his paper and came along the counter to serve them, yawning broadly. “Hi, there,” he greeted them. “How you been? What you going to have?” Hagen ordered highballs.

  “Friend of yours?” Dagne inquired sulkily while the drinks were being mixed.

  “Yours, I’d say.” Hagen indicated the newspaper the man had been reading. “Five to one there’s a picture of Hilda on the front page.”

  “Still one of the Christy twins,” she muttered and drank her drink when it came without responding to Hagen’s toast.

  Hagen downed half his glassful before he put the routine inquiry to the bartender. He forgot about the other half because the man, instead of shaking his head, was nodding affirmatively. Hagen felt a stab of pure delight. “You know this guy?”

  “Maybe. From that description, I’d say it might be Doc.”

  “Doc.” At last, he had a name to give his quarry. “Doc what?”

  “Who knows?” The bartender shrugged. “The boys call him Doc, that’s all. I don’t think he’s really a doctor of anything, except maybe hangovers.”

  “Where can I find him? I’ve got some business with him.”

  “I figured you did. I haven’t seen him around lately.” He watched Hagen place a five-dollar bill on the bar and then he added, “Try the burleycue next door. He hangs out there a lot. Used to be an actor, to hear him tell it.”

  Hagen nodded. He seized Dagne’s hand and hauled her after him out into the sunlight again. “We’re in business, honey. Is honey all right—or do you object to that too?” He was bubbling with anticipation.

  “Aren’t you getting awfully excited over almost nothing?” she asked, trotting to keep up with him. “It might not be the same man at all. He might have just been kidding you to get the five dollars.”

  “When you’re thirsty, a pond looks as big as the ocean. Old Spanish proverb.” The front entrance to the burlesque theatre was padlocked, the box-office empty. “Come on—there’ll be a back door.”

  There was. Hagen pounded on it until he heard footsteps inside. Then the door was opened and a weasel-faced man peered out at them. He was elderly, with a day’s growth of beard and about him hung the sour smell of wine. He said huskily, “Come back later. There’s nobody here but me.”

  “You’ll do,” said Hagen and put his foot between door and jamb so that it couldn’t be closed. “I’m looking for Doc.”

  “You won’t find him here,” said the man, obviously the doorman. “Not after …” His voice died away to a mumble in which Hagen could only catch the word “ungrateful.”

  “Do you know him?” Hagen persisted. “Where can I find him?”

  “Sure, I know him. You bet I know him. Doc and me, we used to be friends. Anybody can tell you. Shared everything with him, everything that was mine was his.” He stabbed Hagen with a shaky forefinger. “That’s what it means to be a friend.”

  “Sure, Pop. Where’s your friend Doc now?”

  The old man took time out to squint at Dagne. “You dance here, honey?”

  “No, thanks,” she said fervently.

  “Sharing, that’s what a friend is for,” the doorman muttered, eyes withdrawn. “When I had it, Doc had it too—I always saw to that. You can ask anybody. They’ll tell you.”

  “He’s drunk,” Dagne whispered. “Can’t we come back later?”

  “I’m not drunk,” the old man declared with sudden loud vehemence. “I’m just disappointed, that’s all, disappointed and sick at heart.” His voice dropped down to a mumble again. Hagen shook him gently by the shoulder. “Excuse me—what was I saying?”

  “You were telling me about Doc. Where is he?”

  “Doc.” The old man cleared his throat rackingly as if he wanted to spit. “Don’t even mention his name. He’s no friend of mine. You know what the Bible says? It says that greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. That’s real friendship and don’t forget it.” He peered belligerently at Hagen.

  “Right?”

  “Right as rain,” agreed Hagen patiently. “Doc is no friend of yours.”

  “You bet your sweet patootie he isn’t. When he got all that money did he give me any? Did he do anything except come prancing around and lording it over me, who shared everything with him, the way a friend should?” Sudden tears came to the bleary eyes at the injustice of it all.

  Hagen drew a deep breath of vindication and looked at Dagne. “It checks. Where else would he get a lot of money all of a sudden?”

  “It won’t do him any good, though,” said the old man. “God takes care of those things, you know. He watches out for His own. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay.”

  “Sure,” agreed Hagen. “Your turn is coming, Pop. Maybe sooner than you think. Where’s Doc now?”

  “It’s already come!” crowed the old man triumphantly. “The hand of God has smote him down, just like the Bible promises!”

  Hagen felt his stomach contract with a chill premonition, felt his exhilaration shrink. He grabbed the doorman by the front of his ragged sweater. “What are you talking about?”

  “The hand of God!” the old man babbled. “It smote down Doc this morn
ing. I saw the ambulance myself. They took him to the county hospital!”

  9

  IT is one thing to fail when there seems to be no hope of success. Such failure can be accepted, if not with pleasure, at least with a certain degree of equanimity. It is quite another thing to fail after you have come to believe that you have been successful. Only a stoic or a fatalist can remain unmoved in those circumstances.

  Mort Hagen was neither a stoic nor a fatalist. On the contrary, he was a quite normal human being whose hopes had soared high, had for a moment appeared to have been realized—and then somebody cut the string. His fall was a whopper, and he reacted as most men would.

  “My,” said Dagne in something like awe. “I didn’t realize that anybody could go on for so long without repeating himself at least once.”

  “I’m just starting,” muttered Hagen, but actually he was finished. He didn’t regret his outburst; it had done him considerable good. With very little exception, his every move since entering upon this strange case had led to his own frustration, and an explosion was long overdue. Now he felt somewhat purged and capable of going ahead. But where was he headed?

  At the moment he was headed toward the county hospital, physically at least. It was all he could think of to do but he didn’t expect anything worthwhile to come of it. With a sure doomed instinct, he knew that he had seen the last of Doc, alive at least.

  “And I came so close, too,” he told Dagne, sitting beside him, for perhaps the tenth time since the drunken old watchman had blurted out the awful truth. “That’s the worst of it.”

  “Maybe you’re giving up too soon, Hagen. A lot of people go to the hospital and come out alive.”

  “Not this one. I feel it in my bones. It’s too pat, Dagne. Doc was the only one who could put the finger on Hilda’s killer. If I could figure that out, the killer could too, sure as shooting.”

  She was frowning, watching the scenery skim by the speeding automobile, block after block. “I don’t know. It sounds awfully cold-blooded to me, hardly human, I mean. I can imagine killing somebody you hate or somebody who has hurt you—but to kill somebody just because he might be dangerous …”

  “Self-preservation is the number one instinct, and don’t you forget it.” He smiled mirthlessly. “If you knew that the gas chamber up at San Quentin was all laid out for you and that the only way to dodge it was to kill somebody else, you’d see how long it would take you to make up your mind, honey.”

  Dagne was silent for a while. Then she said slowly, “Something good may come out of this for you yet, Hagen. You couldn’t have been the one who killed Doc—you were with me, or the police, practically all day.”

  “Where does that get me?”

  “Well, I guess it’s sort of negative proof that you didn’t kill Hilda, either.”

  Hagen patted her knee. “Thanks. Do you know that’s the first even halfway open admission you’ve made that you believe in me? I’m afraid that the cops won’t buy it so easily. It’s still only my word that Doc is the man who hired me Troge will think it’s pretty clever of me, hinging my whole story on a dead man, even if he doesn’t come right out and say so—and he probably will. No, Dagne, I needed Doc bad—alive. Dead, about the only help he’ll be is proof to myself that I’m not out of my mind.”

  “Turn right at the next corner,” she warned and didn’t argue any more.

  Hagen swung into the long parkway that led up to the imposing lemon-coloured bulk of the county hospital. It was an old rambling structure with many haphazard wings jutting out in all directions. It had been much smaller when first built and it had grown along with the city shooting forth a new branch with each new generation until the original clean lines had been virtually obscured. It was a maze, and some called it a firetrap, but it served its purpose as well as a newer building would have. A good many of the persons brought there were in no condition to appreciate architecture, anyway.

  Hagen knew the place from melancholy experience and he did not pause at the parking lot, nor at the sign that said Positively No Automobiles Beyond This Point. Instead, he continued on around to the rear of the hospital building and stopped near the ambulance emergency entrance. No one challenged his right to do so.

  “If you want to wait in the car, I don’t think I’ll be long,” he told Dagne. “And this probably won’t be very pleasant.”

  “Are you kidding? I’ve come all this way, I want to see the finish of this thing. Wait for me.”

  Together they entered the wide emergency doorway and he found the office of the superintendent of nurses. It was open and Hagen went in without knocking. The head nurse was a stout middle-aged woman with the forearms of a wrestler and the fixed stare of a marmoset. She viewed their intrusion as if she suspected they had no business being there.

  Hagen didn’t give her time to put the suspicion into words. “Police business,” he informed her brusquely, but didn’t prove it with credentials. “I want to find out about a man that one of your ambulances picked up on Fathom Street this morning.” He described Doc quickly.

  “I came on duty at noon,” the nurse objected, beginning the age-old litany of denial-of-responsibility. But when Hagen pointed out that the information would be in the register, she went grudgingly to consult it. Clucking to herself, she spent enough time reading the morning’s entries to have memorized them before she finally nodded to Hagen. “Here it is. 2891 Fathom Street. Unidentified man, white male American. Oh, it says D.O.A. That means—”

  “I know what it means,” Hagen interrupted wearily and turned away. Up to that moment, he had unconsciously been keeping a weak flame of hope alight. Now it flickered and went out. The man he knew only as Doc was dead and for ever beyond confirming the truth of Hagen’s story. He turned back to the nurse. “Who certified the death? I’d like to talk to him.”

  She had already closed the register and so she had to search for the entry again. “Dr. Dworkin. He’s one of our trainees. I don’t know where—”

  “I’ll find him,” said Hagen. “Thank’s a lot.” He took Dagne’s hand and led her out into the corridor.

  She whispered, “I was hoping she’d page him. You know, like they always do in the movies.”

  “Want to wake the dead?” He was already moving down the hall. “Now, if you wanted to find a doctor at this time of day, where would you look? Surgery? The lab? The bedside of a dying patient? Not on your life. I’ll give six to three that he’s having coffee at the snack bar. Any takers?”

  “Not me,” Dagne panted, trotting to keep up. “You have a disconcerting habit of being right.”

  They found Dr. Dworkin at the counter of the hospital lunch room, drinking black coffee. He was one of a group of white-garbed young trainees who were kidding perfunctorily with the two homely waitresses. They all broke off to regard Dagne with solemn approval. Dworkin was glad to join Hagen and Dagne at a table in a quieter corner of the lunchroom.

  “Sure, I picked up the old boy down on Fathom Street,” he replied to Hagen’s question. “There wasn’t anything to do for him. He was too far gone.”

  “When did he die?”

  “In the ambulance on the way here. Maybe, if we’d been able to get him on the table …” Dworkin shrugged. “But you never know. What’s your interest in this, Mr. Hagen? He a friend of yours?”

  “Just investigating his murder.”

  Dworkin’s attention had been mainly directed at Dagne. At Hagen’s words, however, his gaze snapped around. “What are you talking about? There’s no murder here.”

  “ But I thought—it must—” Hagen halted. “Are you sure?”

  “I don’t sign any certificate without being sure. This fellow died of a heart attack, a coronary occlusion brought on by gastritis. From what the registrar at his lodging-house told me, he simply ate himself to death.”

  “But couldn’t it possibly have been some sort of poison?”

  “It was poison but not the kind of poison that would kill you or me.” Th
e young trainee looked at Dagne, pleased with the chance to show off. “It was simply rich food, there’s your poison. I understand he came into an inheritance a day or so ago, started to splurge—and his stomach just couldn’t take it.” Dworkin spread his hands. “What do you think of that?”

  “I’d rather not say,” said Hagen. “There’s a lady present.”

  “It didn’t stop you before,” Dagne reminded him. “I rather enjoyed it.”

  Dworkin was a little bewildered. He said, “I’m sorry if I’m not telling you what you’d like to hear.”

  “Why should you be different?” murmured Hagen. “Look, Doctor—I don’t suppose you could sneak me in to See the body, could you? I’d at least like to have the satisfaction of verifying a hunch.”

  “Why couldn’t I?” countered the young man, with a glance at Dagne. He rose. “Come on—simplest thing in the world.”

  He led them out of the lunchroom, with a condescending nod for the other trainees, down the corridor and to the elevator. As they waited for the car, Dagne whispered in Hagen’s ear, “Don’t leave me alone, will you?”

  He pressed her hand and whispered back, “Scared?”

  “Not of the dead ones.” She winked at him and Hagen couldn’t suppress a grin. Even now, with the laboriously constructed castle of his hopes levelled to the ground, he still felt happier for Dagne’s presence. And he wondered about this a little. Up to now, he had been able to blame her attraction for him on the resemblance to Hilda, but he couldn’t remember feeling this way about his ex-wife. Or had he just forgotten?

  They went down in the elevator to the basement and along another corridor to the hospital morgue. It was a cheerless low-ceilinged room with cold cement walls and merciless fluorescent lamps. Dworkin approached one of the shrouded slabs and thumped the covered shape resoundingly on the chest.

  “Here he is,” he announced jovially. “Just where I left him.”