Leseprobe

 

 

 

 

ELLIOT KENNEDY

 

 

The Big Loser

 

 

A Novel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Apex-Verlag

Content

The Book 

THE BIG LOSER 

Chapter One 

Chapter Two 

Chapter Three 

Chapter Four 

Chapter Five 

Chapter Six 

Chapter Seven 

Chapter Eight 

Chapter Nine 

Chapter Ten 

Chapter Eleven 

Chapter Twelve 

Chapter Thirteen 

Chapter Fourteen 

Chapter Fifteen 

Chapter Sixteen 

Chapter Seventeen 

Chapter Eighteen 

Chapter Nineteen 

Chapter Twenty 

Chapter Twenty-One 

Chapter Twenty-Two 

Chapter Twenty-Three 

Chapter Twenty-Four 

 

 

The Book

When Ben Kavanaugh is robbed and murdered, it seems that Private Eye Cliff Dexter, hired by Kavanaugh to trace Laura Gordon, must mark the file case closed. But Dexter's investigations have already carried him to a psychological point of no return. Piece by piece he builds up a fascinating picture of Laura, no looker, but seductive to a wide variety of men, all of whom she dupes and betrays in her hunger for the good life and a stage for her own rare talents...

 

The Big Loser by Elliot Kennedy (a pseudonym of the bestselling British author Lionel Robert Holcombe Godfrey; * 01. January 1932; † 01. January 1980) was first published in 1972; Apex is publishing a new edition of this classic of crime literature in its ENGLISH CRIME NOVELS series.

   THE BIG LOSER

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Chapter One

 

 

The case began quietly – no bodies falling out of closets, no semi-nude beauties beating down my door to demand sanctuary, no hardnosed characters waving guns in my face. 

Just an ordinary guy called Ben Kavanagh, who came to my office in the usual way and dumped a commission in my lap that looked like a hundred other commissions.

When I entered the outer office that morning, Pat Hayward stood leaning over her desk, sifting some papers. She was a tall brunette who did things for a simple sweater and skirt. What moved around inside them was a walking anatomy-lesson. On impulse, I crept up silently in back of her and put my hands lightly on her hips.

»Griff Dexter,« she diagnosed, straightening up. »Couldn’t be anyone else.« 

»Right,« I admitted. »How the devil did you know?« 

»We’ve danced together a few times – remember? Your hands were almost as active as your feet.« She turned around to face me, and I kept my hands on her waist. In a city full of lovely girls, she had beautiful features. The wide mouth, especially, seemed designed to receive a kiss. She inquired coolly, »Is this casual lechery or do you have something more definite in mind?« 

»It couldn’t be definite and casual, could it? Not with you.« 

»I think not.« 

»That’s what I thought.« I frowned. »How come you and I never tangle?« 

She smiled. »That’s simple, boss-man. I’m not very good at casual involvement. And you’re rather scared of anything else.«

»Maybe I ought to kiss you.« 

»Not if you need to discuss it.« 

»Oh, you do wonders for my ego, baby.« I released her. »To hell with sex! Let’s get down to business. What’s happening around here?« 

Smoothly, with no observable shifting of gears, she dropped into her office-manner, a sometimes tantalizing amalgam of impersonal efficiency, underpaid thoughtfulness and slightly remote femininity.

One day, I thought, though without urgency, I would have to pick the lock of her reserve.

She said, »That report on Jackson from the Anderson Agency has arrived.«

»About time.« 

»Artie Strauss asked you to call. He says he has some information...« 

»You call instead. And tell the bum to drop dead.« Artie was a would-be informer and authentic wino. »He’s out for a fast buck, and he doesn’t know a thing that would interest me. Anything else?« 

»Yes. You have a ten o’clock appointment to see a Mr. Ben Kavanagh.« She anticipated my next question. »You don’t know him, and I don’t know what it’s about. He wasn’t exactly communicative. In fact, he seemed kind of embarrassed.« 

»Embarrassed, huh? You don’t see many of those any more. What sort of guy?« 

»Quiet, presentable.« She shrugged. »Probably a nice guy.« 

I grinned. »Well, he’ll be the first since 1965.«

I passed the time until Ben Kavanagh’s appointment by studying the report from the Anderson Agency. It was a thorough piece of work that didn’t, unfortunately, help me at all. Exactly on ten, Pat ushered Kavanagh in. His arrival, right on the nose, impressed me, because punctuality was, in my experience, a rare and undervalued habit.

It might also have indicated that Ben Kavanagh was anxious.

He was in his mid-thirties, and he was wearing a conservative business-suit. His smile was somewhere between a reflex action and a symptom of relief. He had regular, unmemorable features, and so far, there seemed nothing remarkable about him – nothing, that was, except perhaps some indefinable gleam in his eyes, a kind of febrile light that I had seen, with varying degrees of intensity, in the eyes of idealists, political fanatics and some criminals. 

Maybe you couldn’t see that at all. Maybe, in retrospect, I put it there, because of conclusions I formed later. 

I got him sitting down and whisked through the formalities.

»What can I do for you?« I asked. 

He said, »I’d like you to trace someone for me. I’m pretty sure she’s living in Los Angeles, but that’s about all I know.«

He sounded a shade nervous and fiddled with his hat. For the first time, I noticed he was sweating slightly.

Noting the gender of his concern, I wondered: Wife? Daughter? Sweetheart? But I was in no hurry. From experience, I knew it would all come out – bit by bit, if not all in a rush. 

»What makes you sure she’s living in L.A.?« I asked. 

»Because I saw her yesterday.« 

»And yet you want me to find her.« 

»Let me explain, Mr. Dexter.« He leaned forward eagerly to clear up the apparent contradiction. »It was just for a moment. On Wilshire Boulevard among a crowd of people. I caught sight of Laura there. She – she’s changed a lot, but it was her, all right.« 

He looked lost, floundering, as though he was waiting for a cue. Well, I was a reasonable guy, and the suspense was killing me anyway, so I gave him one.

»You mean,« I suggested, »that you found her and lost her again immediately.« 

»That’s it. I called to her, but I guess she didn’t hear me. Before I could reach her, she was crossing the street. I followed, but the traffic was heavy. I knew the danger of losing sight of her, but I had to concentrate on survival.« 

»Let me guess. When you reached the sidewalk, she had disappeared.« 

»Right. There were stores she could have entered – I didn’t know where to start.« He added slightly apologetically and rather irrelevantly. »Besides, this isn’t my town. I’m here on business.« 

»Is that so? Where are you from, Mr. Kavanagh?« 

»Albany, New York.« 

»A long way from home,« I commented. 

»Like I said, I’m on business. I work for Zenith Electronics on the sales side, and I’m going to be here for the next four to six weeks.« 

I nodded. »Now tell me about Laura.«

His eyes still held that faintly obsessed look. He made me think of someone on the edge of a great discovery, like a guy I once knew who was always on the verge of working out a perfect system for the horses. Such people weren’t the easiest to live with. They might appear to function passably, but their contact with reality wasn’t like yours and mine – they lived in the mythical future. For them, tomorrow was always brave, the bravest word in the language. 

But Kavanagh looked embarrassed, too, as though we might be entering sacred areas. To help him out, I offered him a cigarette, but he didn’t smoke, so I lit one myself, realizing that it would probably have the same effect of lowering the tension.

When he spoke, his voice had a reverent tone to it. I soon found out why. He was treading among beautiful, maybe even idealized, memories.

»Laura,« he said, »is Laura Gordon. I met her in Albany in 1969. I was in my present job, and she worked in an office. She said she was twenty-eight, and she certainly looked mature. But I found out later she was only twenty-two. A little young for me, maybe, but we got along fine. Maybe – maybe she didn’t feel quite the same way about me that I felt about her. Sometimes I think nobody could, if you see what I mean.« 

I guessed I saw, all right.

He went on, »Well, you understand, we saw a lot of each other.«

»For how long?« 

»About a year, I suppose. Yes, almost exactly a year.« 

»What sort of girl is she?« 

He had come prepared, and he fished in his pocket. »This is a picture, but not a very good one. The only one I had with me.« He smiled apologetically. »In fact, the only one I possess.«

He passed it over, and I inspected the slightly fuzzy likeness of a brunette with large, pretty eyes, a tender mouth and a nose that spoilt the face by being askew.

The photograph was black and white, and Kavanagh commented, »The eyes are green. Laura’s an intelligent girl. Ambitious, too. I don’t know much about her past, because she hated to talk about it.«

»What happened after a year?« 

He flushed. »My work sometimes takes me away. Trips like the one I’m on now. That time, I went to Peoria for a week. When I got back, Laura had given up her job and moved out of her apartment without leaving a forwarding address. It came as quite a jolt to me. She’d said nothing, given no indication...« He looked down to inspect the carpet. I hoped he liked what he saw, since it was past its best, which hadn’t been so special to start with. »Well, I have all sorts of hopes, Mr. Dexter, but I’m not a fool. I got the picture. Like I said, she was an ambitious girl, and I’m not so special. She was gone, and I never did try to trace her. I mean, she made things pretty clear, didn’t she?« 

He was, it seemed, a modest guy – all heart. I found myself liking him, and I didn’t want to like him. I sensed all sorts of possibilities and overtones in what he said, and I didn’t want my judgement clouded. 

I forced myself to do some probing of the kind clients sometimes found offensive or humiliating.

I asked, »You’re sure there was no warning that Laura was going to run out on you?«

»No. None at all.« 

»Were you engaged?« 

»No – not officially.« 

»Just tell me how she looked yesterday, Mr. Kavanagh.« 

»Different.« He was looking at me now and not seeing me. He was a rapt audience for some private Technicolor movie he was running. All about how the golden princess turned up in Southern California, which was, for some easterners, where all dreams came true. »Different,« he repeated. »But the same. I don’t know.« 

»How – different?« I persisted. »Her clothes? Hair? Make-up?« 

He puzzled over that for a moment. »Her hair – yes, it’s blonde now. I think her clothes were good, too. But she always dressed well. There was something else.« 

»Such as?« 

»Something that changed her greatly.« He sighed. »But I can’t think what it was. I – I guess I was excited.« 

»Mr. Kavanagh, why should Laura Gordon turn up here in Los Angeles, three thousand miles from where you last saw her?« 

He grew excited at that. »But that’s just it! It makes sense. One thing I do know about her past is that she grew up here.«

I said quietly and pointedly, »Let me put this to you. When Zenith Electronics sent you here, to Laura’s town, it revived memories. The girl once meant a lot to you. Maybe you’re not over her as much as you think you are. So, what happens? You imagine you see her on the street. What could be more natural? It happens all the time. People die, and those who love them run after them in public places. Only it isn’t them. The mind plays tricks...« 

»Mr. Dexter,« Kavanagh said unemotionally and with dignity, I know what I saw. That was Laura Gordon yesterday.« 

After a pause, I said, »Okay. I’m sorry, but I have to ask these questions.«

»I understand.« 

»In that case, perhaps you can tell me why you want to find her. After all this time. I don’t want to offend you, but every so often, you know, somebody hires a P.I. as a preliminary to putting the squeeze on another party.« 

He sighed, presumably in exasperation over my cynicism and worldliness.

Sometimes it depressed me, too.

»It’s nothing like that, I assure you,« he said. »It’s just that she and I are in the same city. Call it fate nudging me, if you like. After all...« 

»Nothing else?« I bored on. »When she skipped town, she didn’t by any chance take something of yours with her, did she?« 

»Yes, she did,« Kavanagh said angrily. »Four hundred dollars – a loan she never repaid. She was welcome to it then, and she’s welcome to it now. That’s the truth, Mr. Dexter. I just want to speak to her, that’s all. To find out whether she’s happy.« He looked at me pleadingly. »Things like that.« 

I leaned back in my chair and thought. In my line of work, it paid to think.

Clients came in all shapes and sizes, even in the form of lovesick guys who worked in the electronics racket. Unwittingly, Ben Kavanagh had lied about Laura Gordon. When she skipped town, it was with more than his four-hundred dollars.

She took his heart, too.

Now he wanted me to be the instrument of their reunion, which he no doubt saw as a touching little drama at whose climax Laura would fling herself into his arms, crying, »Ben, thank God you’re here! I was such a fool. I’ve been so lonely without you.«

Well, I didn’t see it quite that way. Far from it. Love could be a lousy motive, one that might make my client buy himself, through my services, a heap of grief – both for him and his one-time girl. I wasn’t happy about it. Love, flags, God, children, small furry animals – the mind was supposed to become pulp at the mere sight or mention of any of them. You didn’t think about things like that. You just let your intellect drivel away in sentimental crap. 

But I thought about it.

Already I had certain preconceptions about Laura Gordon. I could see things differently from Kavanagh. She took him for four C’s and then blew town. Maybe because Ben was a nice guy, but no big-shot. He, with his love-sick vocabulary, had called her ambitious. Well, maybe that was what Pat Hayward would call a euphemism, a gentle word meaning a chiseling little gold-digger.

You could look at the rest, too, with other eyes than Ben Kavanagh’s. If he really did see Laura, she disappeared double quick. Suppose she had spotted him first, ignored his shout and got the hell out of there. Suppose she didn’t want to meet him. There could be many good reasons for that.

What good could I do either of them by tracking her down?

Knock it off, Griff, I told myself. You’re a businessman – so many bucks a day plus expenses or a flat fee for the kind of job that can be done at one push. So act like a businessman. Solve their cases, but don’t try to run their lives for them. 

»Okay,« I said, with something like fatigue. »I’ll try to find Laura Gordon for you, Mr. Kavanagh.« 

 

 

 

 

  Chapter Two

 

 

I could tell he was pleased and already composing the rest of the script in his mind. He had that look in his eyes again.

When we had come to a financial agreement, I attempted to see whether he had anything else I might start digging with. There wasn’t much. He had no idea what Laura Gordon might be doing in L.A. One thing he did remember, though. He knew her mother’s name – Mrs. Irma T. Gordon – from the return-address on a letter Laura had once received. 

I took him back over the previous morning, and he remembered something else. Laura had been carrying a large bunch of flowers, and it seemed reasonable to assume she might just have left a florist’s.

I fared even better when I asked him about little quirks or idiosyncrasies.

»Restless hands,« he said instantly. »She hates people who can’t keep their hands still.« 

»Why?« 

He shrugged. »Just an irrational aversion, I guess.«

»Anything else? Something like that – that probably wouldn’t change.« 

»Well, she has a peculiar habit when she drinks. Always orders tomato juice. On the side.« 

»That’s odd, all right,« I said. »Chaser?« 

»Chaser – or before or during the time she drinks the other stuff. I got to thinking about it one time and decided maybe she wasn’t all that keen on liquor and this was one way of easing it down.« 

»Okay,« I said, jotting something down on a scratch-pad. 

I wouldn’t forget it, but I figured he might be reassured if I made my activities look systematic.

He handed over the fuzzy likeness of Laura, which I didn’t really expect to help much, if at all. I felt reasonably sure that Laura Gordon had had herself made over. 

»Where can I reach you?« I asked Kavanagh. 

»The Dattler Hotel. Max, the desk clerk there, gave me your name. He said you’d remember him.« 

The hell he had, I thought. It didn’t ring any bells with me. But if somebody called Max wanted to shunt custom my way, it was okay by me.

Showing Ben Kavanagh out, I could have sworn his eyes seemed a shade more feverish, as though he was already nearer his heart’s desire. He had claimed to get the message when Laura ran out on him. And maybe it was true. On one level. In another idealistic, almost impersonal way, his feelings, I guessed, were still intact, and on that level, he would never get the message.

I must have looked worried.

»Anything?« Pat asked. 

»Yeah, something. Check Laura Gordon in the telephone book.« While she went to work, I commented, »Dexter’s principle: if it seems too obvious to be worth a try, give it a whirl anyway.« 

»Is that so? No listing under that name.« 

»Well, I didn’t expect it to be so easy.« I pulled a face. »I have a hunch about this one.« 

»Intuition? That’s my department.« 

»Go ahead – laugh. Just remember I had a hunch two years back, about the Waxman case. And you had to buy me a new head after that one.« 

Bureaucracy had its uses. Government by paper See Bullets Are Final meant that the average citizen was indexed and cross-indexed, listed, graphed and fed into computers pretty well from the day he was born until the first shovel of dirt hit his coffin. Then there were registers of blood-donors, mailing lists of various kinds – all of them useful when you were trying to find an address to fit a name. The name on my mind was Mrs. Irma T. Gordon. I played into the blue ones, tracing her in less than an hour. She lived in Harbor City, and the address sounded like Squalidsville. 

Before I talked to Mrs. Gordon, however, I thought I would work the florists in the area where my client had lost and found his Laura. I didn’t realize what I was letting myself in for, how many there would be. 

It was no dice all along the line until I came to a ritzy establishment that looked as though it catered exclusively to the carriage-trade. Here a guy in striped pants greeted me with faint suspicion that deepened when I showed him my card and stated my business. 

»It is not exactly our policy to give out the names of customers,« he said icily. 

The striped pants didn’t do a thing for this guy. He was a tough-looking hombre with piercing eyes, and if I had connected him in any way with flowers, it would have been with blooms of the variety commonly on show at wakes and funerals.

»I’m not asking you to get anyone into trouble,« 

I explained. »I merely want to locate this woman. She may be using a different name these days. Here’s a picture of her – not good, but the only one I have. Does it remind you of anyone – even faintly?« 

With an expression of distaste, he took it and studied it for a few seconds.

Intelligent people trying to bluff had trouble with their eyes. Striped Pants had a look there that spelled recognition. He killed it fast, but I was almost certain of its fleeting appearance. Then he looked bored and handed back the picture.

»No,« he said. »It doesn’t resemble anyone known to me.« 

»Are you sure? She could be blonde now.« 

It occurred to me that maybe I wasn’t speaking his language. Returning Laura’s picture to my billfold, I let him see a five-spot.

He eyed it coolly and then said, »For five dollars, I’m quite sure. For ten, I’d be doubly sure. If you doubt my word, perhaps you carry a portable lie-detector.«

Not good, but reasonably fast. Enough to put me in my place, at least.

I put my money away, and feeling the situation slipping from my grasp, I took one last stab at it.

»I’d like to see the manager,« I said. 

»I am the manager,« he replied with a humorless smile. »You might have guessed. But, then, perhaps you missed a lesson somewhere in your correspondence course.« 

»You’re a smash with those jokes,« I said. »You ought to write for television.« 

I went outside and took a few paces up the street. Then I doubled back and sneaked up on the shop to look through the window. Striped Pants was at the back, talking on the telephone. He looked quite animated.

As I drove over to Harbor City, I tried not to think about him. I could, of course, have been wrong about him. But if he had been tipping off Laura Gordon, it could make her twice as hard to find – if I assumed she didn’t want to be found. 

I thought about perfection, of Laura Gordon – or the Laura Gordon whom Kavanagh wanted me to find. He had commissioned me to seek out for him the beautiful and witty Roxane. I hoped I wouldn’t disappoint him. Maybe I had a grim outlook on life, perhaps I was jumping the gun on a cynical assessment of Laura, but I couldn’t help thinking that for unworldly guys like Ben Kavanagh it was sometimes safest to go on chasing the ever-receding illusion. Or perhaps not chasing it – just nursing it. 

The address I had dug up took me to a rooming house on the edge of the slums, and there I found Mrs. Irma Gordon. 

The woman who answered the door was gaunt and old. Yet if this was the right woman and Kavanagh hadn’t slipped up over her daughter’s age, she could not have been much older than her middle-fifties. Wearing a shapeless black dress, she had done a good job of disguising what femininity she possessed. She wasn’t exactly Bette Davis playing Apple Annie, but she wasn’t so very different, either. If she wasn’t dirty, at the same time her appearance didn’t suggest she might be a paragon of hygiene, any more than her grey hair proclaimed she took pains over it. Her eyes were not pleasant. Their glance darted about almost vindictively. She had a mouth like a steel-trap.

»Mrs. Gordon?« I asked. 

»That’s right.« Her voice was harsh, unfriendly. »What is it?« 

»Mrs. Irma T. Gordon?« 

»Yes.« 

»Have you a daughter called Laura?« 

»I had a daughter called Laura May,« she said dispassionately. »She is dead.« 

That news started the clocks in my head ticking. I shoved Laura’s picture at her.

»Is that your daughter?« 

She nodded. »Where did you get that?«

»May I come inside? I’d like to talk to you.« 

Grudgingly, she pulled the door open for me, and I went in. There were holy pictures on the walls, and I was about to discover that Mrs. Gordon had religion the way some people had malignant growths. It was a depressing room, almost devoid of light and air. Later, I decided their absence was symbolic. 

Shoving a card at Mrs. Gordon, I explained, »A client of mine claims he saw your daughter yesterday in L.A. He wants to trace her. Now you say she is dead...« 

»She is dead to me,« Mrs. Gordon declared with finality. »Dead as only those sick with sin can be.« 

»I see. You wrote her in New York State. That would be 1969 or ’70.« 

»Yes. Her father had died. She did not come home.« 

»Three thousand miles is a long way to come,« I suggested. 

»She did not even write.« 

»Mrs. Gordon, can you think why

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Texte: Lionel R. H. Godfrey/Apex-Verlag/Lionel R. H. Godfrey.
Bildmaterialien: Christian Dörge/Apex-Graphixx.
Cover: Christian Dörge/Apex-Graphixx.
Lektorat: Mina Dörge.
Korrektorat: Mina Dörge.
Satz: Apex-Verlg.
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 08.03.2022
ISBN: 978-3-7554-0932-8

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