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