Lay Her Among The Lilies

It took me a few minutes to lock up the office. While I was turning keys, closing the safe, and

shutting the windows, I thought about Nurse Gurney. Who had kidnapped her? Why had she

been kidnapped? Was she still alive? Thoughts that got me nowhere, but worried me. Still

thinking, I went into the outer office, looked around to make sure the place was bedded down

for the night, crossed the room, stepped into the passage and locked the outer door behind me.

At the end of the corridor I noticed a short, stockily-built man lolling against the wall by

the elevator doors, and reading a newspaper. He didn’t look up as I paused near him to thumb

the bell-push calling the elevator attendant. I gave him a casual glance. He was dark skinned,

and his blunt-featured face was pock-marked. He looked like an Italian; could have been

Spanish. His navy-blue serge suit was shiny at the elbows and his white shirt dirty at the

cuffs.

The elevator attendant threw open the doors, and the Wop and I entered. On the third floor,

the elevator paused to pick up Manfred Willet who stared through me with blank eyes and

then interested himself in the headlines of the evening paper. He had said he wanted secrecy,

but I thought it was carrying it a little far not to know me in the elevator. Still, he was paying

my fee, so he could call the tune.

I bought an Evening Herald at the bookstall, giving Willet a chance to leave the building

without falling over me. I watched him drive away in an Oldsmobile the size of a

dreadnought. The Wop with the dirty shirt cuffs had collapsed into one of the armchairs in the

lobby and was reading his newspaper. I walked down the corridor to the back exit and across

the alley to Finnegan’s bar.

92

LAY HER AMONG THE LILIES

The saloon was full of smoke, hard characters and loud voices. I had only taken a couple of

steps towards my favourite table when Olaf Kruger, who runs a boxing academy on Princess

Street, clutched hold of me.

Olaf was not much bigger than a jockey, bald as an egg and as smart as they come.

“Hello, Vic,” he said, shaking hands. “Come on over and get drunk. Haven’t seen you for

weeks. What have I done?”

I pushed my way towards the bar and winked at Mike Finnegan as he toiled under the

double row of neon lights, jerking beer.

“I’ve been to the fights pretty regular,” I said as Olaf climbed up on a stool, elbowing a

little space for himself with threatening gestures that no one took seriously. “Just didn’t

happen to see you. That boy O’Hara shapes well.”

Olaf waved tiny hands at Finnegan.

“Whiskies, Mike,” he bawled, in his shrill, piping voice. “O’Hara? Yeah, he shapes all

right, but he’s a sucker for a cross counter. I keep telling him, but he don’t listen. One of

these days he’s going to meet a guy with the wind behind him, and then it’s curtains.”

We talked boxing for the next half-hour. There was nothing much else Olaf could talk

about. While we talked we ate our way through two club sandwiches apiece and drank three

double whiskies.

Hughson, the Herald’s sports writer, joined us and insisted on buying another round of

drinks. He was a tall, lean, cynical-looking bird, going bald, with liverish bags under his eyes,

and tobacco ash spread over his coat front. He was never without a cigar that smelt as if he

had found it a couple of years ago in a garbage can. Probably he had.

After we had listened to three or four of his long-winded, dirty stories, Olaf said, “What

was that yarn about the Dixie Kid getting into a shindig last night? Anything to it?”

Hughson pulled a face.

“I don’t know. The Kid won’t talk. He had a shiner, if that means anything. One of the taxi-drivers on the pier said he swam ashore.”

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LAY HER AMONG THE LILIES

“If he was thrown off the Dream Ship, that’s quite a swim,” Olaf said, and grinned.

“You two guys talk to yourselves,” I said, lighting a cigarette. “Don’t mind me.”

Hughson hooked nicotine-stained fingers into my breast pocket.

“The Dixie Kid went out to the Dream Ship last night and got into an argument with

Sherrill. Four bouncers are supposed to have tossed him overboard, but not before he’s

supposed to have socked Sherrill. There’s a rumour Sherrill’s going to bring an assault

charge. If he does, the Kid’s washed up. He’s over his ears in debt now.”

“It’s my guess Sherrill will bring a suit,” Olaf said, shaking his bald head. “He has a mean

reputation for that kind of thing.”

“He won’t,” Hughson said. “He can’t afford the publicity. I told the Kid he was safe

enough, but even at that, the little rat won’t talk.”

“Who’s Sherrill, anyway?” I asked as calmly as I could, and crooked a finger at Finnegan

to refill the glasses.

“You’re not the only one who’s asking that,” Hughson told me. “No one knows. He’s a

mystery man. Came to Orchid City about a couple of years ago. He took a job selling real

estate on commission for Selby & Lowenstein’s. I believe he made a little money; not much,

but enough to buy himself a small house on Rossmore Avenue. Then, somehow or other, he