The Blonde Wore Black

operation.”
“You step out back a moment and we’ll talk some more,” I replied nastily.
Martello chuckled briefly, his brother merely watched.
“Boys, boys,” sighed Jake. “Anybody’d think you fellers couldn’t get along.”
“You better tell the pretty boy not to needle me, or I’ll spread him over some alley,” I warned.
Jake patted Hamilton on the arm as he was about to speak.
“Calm down. Clyde here is new in town. He don’t know about you, Preston.” Turning to Hamilton he said, “Preston’s O.K. He does what he does and he keeps his mouth shut.”
“Whatever you say, Mr. Martello.”
Each word was forced unwillingly through the handsome mouth.
“That is absolutely right. Whatever I say. Well Preston, what’s it gonna be?”
I was thinking about it.
“If I turn up this killer, how do I know you won’t knock him off?”
“Because I tell you so. Me personal, Jake Martello. And I guess my word’s been good enough around this village for twenty years or more.” That was true. Jake was as good as his word, whether for good or bad.
“Mind you,” he qualified, “I ain’t saying the guy wouldn’t get pushed around some. People has to be taught manners when they mess in my business.”
“No objections,” I replied. “I don’t like guys who shoot from behind anyway.”
“Then it’s a deal?” he beamed.
“I don’t give guarantees,” I repeated. “Let me try it for two days. If it comes up empty, I’ll ask you whether you want to spend more money.”
Jake turned to his brother.
“Ya see? Like I told you, this guy is on the level. You’ll need some dough. Here.”
He pulled a wadded roll of bills from his pocket.
“There’s a grand, just to get you started. You need more, holler.”
I got up, stuffing the roll in my pocket.
“After nine any evening at Rose’s?”
He looked at my face to be certain I wasn’t pulling his leg. Jake’s admiration for Rose Suffolk was a byword in Monkton.
“Yeah, I get around there most nights,” he nodded. “I’ll be in touch.”
The Martello brothers nodded. Hamilton studied the ceiling.

CHAPTER TWO
THE OLDEST NEWSPAPER in town is the Monkton City-Globe, and I went around to the office for a word with Shad Steiner. He was surrounded by the usual heaps of paper, and busy bawling somebody out over the telephone when I walked in.
“No,” he was shouting, “There’s no hurry, no hurry at all. We only print this magazine twice a year. You have thirty minutes to get that story in front of me.”
The phone went down with a bang.
“Reporters,” he scorned. “They call them reporters. I’d like to have seen a few of those bums covering the old 12th Ward thirty years ago. They’d have died of fright. What can I do for you, Preston? And why should I?”
“Now Shad, just calm down. It isn’t my fault you have a bum staff.”
He quivered with wrath.
“Bum staff? Who says I got a bum staff? Let me tell you, no newspaper in this town can match the Globe in any contest. And that includes staff. Anyway, what would a bar-haunting peeper know about real work, like running a newspaper?”
“I thought you said——”
“Never mind what I said. I don’t have time to sit around flapping the breeze with you all day. State your business.”
At least I needn’t enquire after his health. When Steiner barks and snaps that way, it means he is one hundred per cent fit.
“I noticed a few lines about the guy who fell off Indian Point today. Anything there for me?”
He squinted suspiciously over the top of his spectacles.
“You know something,” he accused.
“No, I just don’t happen to be working, and I wondered——”
“Don’t lie to me. People have been trying for forty years and I always know. You got anything I can print?”
“No. But if I find out anything, I’ll see you get it.”
“H’m.”
Diving into one of the heaps around him he fished out a sheet of paper.
“You might as well see this. Be on the street in two hours anyway.”
It was a two column story now, with one-inch headlines. It confirmed what Martello had told me. What had seemed at first like natural causes turned out to be murder. Brookman lived alone at 824 Monteray Building and his occupation was poet. None had seen him later than eight o’clock the previous evening when he left the house of his friend, Hugo Somerset. Somerset was stated to be an entrepreneur, whatever that might be. He’d had a few friends in for drinks, one of them was Brookman. No, he didn’t remember him leaving, nor whether anyone accompanied him. It sounded like that kind of party. There was a photograph, and obvious publicity handout, of a girl called Shiralee O’Connor, dancer. She’d been at the party too, presumably with more clothes on than the photograph indicated. In fairness to Somerset, if I had been present, I doubted whether I’d have known what time Brookman left either.
“Wow,” I muttered.
Steiner chuckled.
“You should see some of the others her agent sent in. Sometimes I regret I’m such an old man.”
“We’d soon see how old you are if she walked in here in this rig,” I told him. “Who’s working on this?”
“Randall, so far. They tell me Rourke is off with a head cold.”
I didn’t know whether that was good news or bad. Neither of them was much improvement on the other, from my point of view.
“You got anything you didn’t print?” I demanded.
“The Globe prints all the facts,” recited Steiner monotonously. “Our readers are entitled to know everything that happens.”
“Don’t stall me, Shad.”
He whipped off the spectacles and tapped on the desk with them.
“The girl they call a dancer,” he rapped. “She only dances the private circuit.”
“Good. Anything else?”
“Got a list of the other people at the party. Here.”
Another shuffle with the paper and he handed over a list of names. I didn’t recognize any.
“Queer bunch,” he submitted. “They’re all poets, ballet dancers, composers nobody ever heard of. Fringe characters. I’ll bet there isn’t one with his rent paid up. Except this