Gilded Canary Read Online Free PDF

more locked
     eyes. He nodded slightly to her, wheeled around, and left.

CHAPTER
2
    For Jabber-Jabber Jacoby, “right after breakfast” meant 2 P.M. , as it did for most of Jacoby’s show business cronies. And “my office” had its own unique meaning. Jacoby had no office as
     such, just a phone booth in the lobby of the Alvin Hotel on West 47th Street. From there, he made all his phone calls to the
     columnists his living depended upon, and there too, he received calls. The management, such as it was, for it was a hotel
     of less than salutary standards, tolerated Jacoby; in all likelihood, he’d been there longer than any of its drift-prone staff,
     breathlessly phoning in all the news of his tiny, spangled world and meekly accepting the demands and threats of the entertainers
     and restaurateurs who, at their whim, paid him or stiffed him for his services.
    Jabber-Jabber was doing business as usual as Lockwood walked up. “Tony, I can’t believe it. I look in the
Journal
, and there’s no picture of Muffy or anyone who was at her opening! Are you trying to bury me, Tony? Do you know how I need
     that picture, Tony? No, no, I’m not trying to push you, Tony, God forbid I’d try anything like that. You’re a great newspaperman,
     how could I question the judgment of a certified journalist like you. It’s just that I—what? It did make the early edition?
     You’re sure? Well, you know what I mean, of course I believe you! Listen, I know a newsie, he probably has some of the earlies,
     I’ll go get it—thanks a million, Tony—listen, what brand of booze do you drink? Right, right, aw, thanks a million!” Jabber-Jabber
     was sweating as he dropped his hand onto the hook, cutting off the call. “I can’t believe it, what are they doing to me, do
     they think I’m Christ or something?” he moaned as he considered his next step. Lockwood moved into his line of vision.
    Jabber didn’t focus in right away, too enwrapped in his problems. “What—oh—oh, I remember! Lockwood! Yeah, listen, I’m a little
     busy—”
    “Sooner or later we’ve got to talk, Jabber-Jabber,” Lockwood said. “It might as well be now.”
    “Right, right, right. Well, whattya wanta know?”
    “What you know, Jabber-Jabber.”
    “Nothing. I don’t know nothing. All I know is what I read in the papers. And, well, what Muffy told me, but she didn’t tell
     me nothing I didn’t see in the papers. Okay? Is that it?”
    “The Winchell item, Jabber-Jabber. How did it get in?”
    “How do I know? Do I know all of Walter Winchell’s sources? Do I have some kind of pipeline to Winchell no one else has? How
     I wish I did!” he groaned.
    “Did Muffy take the jewels herself, for the publicity, as Winchell said?”
    “Muffy?
That
angel? My God, with a voice like that, she needs to do something so stupid? Believe me, Mr. Lockwood—”
    “Come on,” Lockwood cut in. “You know she’s no Helen Morgan.”
    “Helen Morgan? She’s better!” Jabber-Jabber insisted. “She’s a great one, and someday the whole world is gonna know it.”
    Lockwood saw no point in pursuing that line of questioning. He’d run up against other press agents in the past. To convince
     newspapermen that their clients deserved space in print, they first had to convince themselves, and usually after a couple
     of payments from their new client, they were hopelessly sold on him or her, no matter how dismal the publicity-seeker might
     actually be.
    A sudden movement in the glass of the phone booth caught Lockwood’s eye. It was a reflection, and for an instant, almost mirror-like
     in its clarity. Its image was of the face of a mobster Lockwood had seen before: Richie Calidone. And he wore an expression
     on his face that Lockwood had also seen before, but on someone else; twenty years ago on a German soldier leaping into a shell-hole,
     demonically intent on bayoneting the wounded Hook.
    Reflexes trained by the war were undimmed. Immediately Lockwood