by Ron Levitsky
Rosen nodded, at least he thought he did. He tried to smile, then frown, but couldn’t feel his face. Leaning forward, he saw his shirt was splattered with blood. It had dried into a series of Rorschach patterns, which had formed into a violin and a man playing the violin and the man hovering over a rooftop like in Chagall’s painting. Was the fiddler moving, or was Rosen unable to keep his own head steady?
“Here,” the old man said, “drink some of this brandy.”
He felt a few drops roll inside his mouth like ball bearings, suddenly dissolving into liquid fire. “Why don’t you add a shot of sulfuric acid?”
“Huh?”
“Help me up.”
His body was a fulcrum, either arm leaning against the old man and a garbage can, until he could steady himself. His arms ached, and his breath came tight at the ribs, but his head was clearing. Grabbing the brandy bottle, he took two short swallows. The liquor oiled his mouth like a rusty gate.
He asked, “Don’t I know you?”
“You was in last week asking about Hec Perry. I found you here in the back alley a few minutes ago. Come out to empty the trash and saw you lying there. Somebody mug you?”
“What time is it?”
“Almost two.”
“I’ve been out almost two hours. Did you . . .” He leaned against the old man for a moment. “Did you see me or anyone else inside the bar around noon?”
“No. Guess I nodded off for about an hour. Why, was you inside? You ain’t saying I’m liable for what happened to you? Don’t know a thing about any of this.”
“Don’t worry. Is there somewhere I can clean up?”
“Uh . . . sure. Use the bathroom inside. Need any help?”
Rosen waved him away and, with minced steps, walked inside.
The men’s room was typical of a cheap bar. Cold, with the For Prevention of Disease Only condom machine in one corner, broken towel dispenser in another, and the smell of blue antiseptic mixed with urine. Rosen opened both faucets; of course, only the cold one worked. He wondered if there was any bar in America with hot water in the john.
He splashed his face, then touched his right cheek, swollen to the size of a White Castle burger. He looked into the cracked mirror and grimaced. He’d been beaten worse. His nose had stopped bleeding, the inside of his cheek was cut, but he hadn’t lost any teeth. His ribs seemed all right. What about his head? He recited the Kiddush, the blessing over the wine, then one of the first Talmudic passages he’d ever memorized—what to do after forgetting to bless the meal. He whispered the Hebrew words perfectly and smiled, despite the pain, remembering his rabbi’s praise: “Even the great Hillel couldn’t have said it better.”
Rosen straightened his clothing, buttoning his coat to cover most of his bloody shirt, and walked into the bar. Behind the counter, the old man poured two brandies. For the next few minutes they sipped their drinks in silence. A pair of workmen came in, and the old man went down the bar to serve them. He lingered near the cash register, occasionally glancing at Rosen.
It was time to leave. Claire would’ve been long gone from Hec Perry’s room. Anyway, before seeing her, Rosen needed to discover why she was being blackmailed. He’d find out from the source—Aadams. The last thing the big man would expect was Rosen mixing so soon in his “private business.” If he could somehow search the detective’s office . . . He knew he wasn’t thinking too clearly but maybe he could work out the details as he went. At least he’d be doing something.
The drive to the LaVergne Building took a few minutes. On the way, Rosen realized how hungry he’d become, with no breakfast or lunch. He stopped at a deli and bought a corned beef on rye with a diet cola. The clerk stared at his battered face as if it should’ve been between two pieces of bread.
Rosen pulled into a space just around the corner on Aadams’s street. At the far end of the block stood the LaVergne Building, where the detective’s Granada was once again parked. He unwrapped his sandwich. The pickle brine burned the cut on his inside cheek, but the corned beef tasted good, especially considering this was Nashville, not Chicago. He felt better after the sandwich and settled back with his drink.
He’d wait for Aadams to leave, then try to get inside the office; he could jimmy a simple lock. Maybe Aadams would get drunk and leave the door unlocked. Whatever—Rosen would improvise, just as Thelonious Monk and all the jazz greats did. To pass the time, inside his head he played his favorite Monk renditions, beginning with “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.”
By the time he’d finished the set with “Just You, Just Me,” an hour had passed. A few vehicles, including a squad car, drove down the street; two bag ladies entered the hotel; and a taxi dropped off a young woman in a leather skirt at the LaVergne Building, probably an employee of the escort service. However, there was no sign of Aadams. What kept him in that hole of an office?
Leaving his car, Rosen stretched his stiff legs and walked back to a corner drugstore. Inside a phone booth, he looked up Aadams’s number and dialed the detective. After ten rings no answer. Maybe Aadams had gone for a walk or caught a ride with someone else. Maybe he’d drunk himself into a stupor and passed out on the office floor. Whatever the reason, Rosen was tired of waiting, aching for a hot bath and a long sleep.
Walking into the LaVergne Building, he tried the stairs but his hip tightened in pain. He took the elevator. Like an old man upset at being awakened, the elevator car groaned, then slowly moved, finally shuddering its door open at the third floor.
The corridor was deserted. Rosen approached Aadams’s door and knocked softly. No answer. He tried the knob, which wouldn’t turn. The lock looked simple enough; with proper manipulation a credit card might . . .
The escort service door opened, and Rosen heard several female voices. Not wanting to be seen, he hurried down the hall to Madame Tallulah’s. Her door was unlocked, and a bell jingled as he entered.
A small waiting room was carpeted the color of melted Fudgsicle, its walls barely illuminated by a candle atop a rickety card table. A joss stick smoldered, emitting a heavy peppermint fragrance that permeated the room. On the far wall a door-size opening, covered by neon streamers, glowed faintly in the flickering light.
Through the opening, a woman’s voice called, “I feel a troubled soul, one who is in need of Madame Tallulah’s help. Come forward. Yes, come inside for the help you’ve been seeking.”
As Rosen pulled aside the streamers, he saw a sign on the wall—no personal checks.
The second room was larger and lit by a small chandelier. Ida—a.k.a. Madame Tallulah—sat behind a large wooden desk while intently studying a pile of tarot cards. Directly behind her, beside the dusty window, hung a large velvet portrait called The Smiling Elvis.
“I can see from the cards you are deeply troubled.” She looked up. “Oy vay! What happened to you? Sit down already, while I get something to clean you up with. Such a mess.” She disappeared into another room, and he heard running water.
Ida returned with a cloth and a pan of cold water. Washing his face, she said, “A nice Jewish boy getting into a fight. What would your mother say?”
“I need . . .”
“Hold still. I’m almost finished.”
“I need to use your phone.”
“Why, to call your friends so they can see this face, too? Such a face shouldn’t be on my ex-husband.”
“Your phone?”
“There in the corner, Mr. Joe Louis.”
Rosen dialed Aadams’s office. Through the wall, he heard the phone ringing, but again no answer.
“Did you see Aadams go into his office this afternoon?”
She shook her head, then her eyes widened. “Did he do this to you?”
“We had a little disagreement over who was the better singer—Billie Holiday or Ethel Merman.”
“That’s right, joke about it. He could’ve killed you.”
“Thanks for cleaning me up. I’ve got to get into Aadams’s office. Too bad you don�
��t have a key.” Rosen started to leave.
“Sure I have a key.”
He stopped suddenly.
“Yeah. One time he was standing by the door so drunk he couldn’t put his key in the lock. I helped him inside—what a schlep! I left him on the couch. There was an extra key in his vest pocket. I took it so I could go back and check on him later. I didn’t want him dead—think how he’d stink up the building. Well, I got involved with a client and forgot to go back. I never bothered to return the key. It’s in one of these drawers.” She rummaged through her desk. “Here it is. You really have to go into his office?”
“Don’t worry. No one’s there.”
Ida hesitated a moment, then said, “All right, I’ll let you in.”
“Just give me the key. I don’t want you involved.”
But she was already past him. “Nu? What are you waiting for, an invitation?”
Rosen followed her into the hallway. After she opened Aadams’s door, he slipped past her and put a hand against her shoulder.
“Thanks.”
She stepped inside and closed the door quietly, while whispering, “Why take chances? In case that momzer comes back, he wouldn’t hit you with a lady present. Now get whatever it is you need. I’ll be your . . . your lookout.”
The floor plan of Aadams’s office seemed identical to lda’s. They stood in a waiting room, where a desk took up most of the space. The desk top was bare and covered with dust; obviously a secretary didn’t go with the furniture. Two prints hung on the wall—one of Andrew Jackson and the other a Japanese landscape entitled Mount Fuji at Dawn. The door to the second room was slightly ajar. Pushing the door open, he walked inside.
A large metal desk occupied the center of the room. Its chair had been pushed back almost to the window. A half-filled whiskey bottle with two glasses rested on the desk top. To his right, a small bookshelf leaned precariously against the wall; it contained a few law books but mostly abridgments from Reader’s Digest. Against the opposite wall stood a metal filing cabinet, all three drawers closed. Rosen walked past the desk and tripped over Aadams’s body.
The detective lay on his side, knees bent, one hand over his stomach. A knife handle stuck straight out from his diaphragm. It was covered with blood, blood that also covered his shirt. Blood that had collected under his body, soaking the carpet into the color and consistency of mud. Eyes open, almost quizzical, Aadams appeared to be just awakening from sleep, instead of having been put to eternal rest. His nose had been flattened and speckled with blood that had dried long before he’d been killed.
Rosen twisted away from the body and grabbed the desk to steady himself. Feeling the sweat drip down his face, he shivered, fighting to keep down his lunch. Death always sickened him, but this was worse. True—Aadams was probably more deserving than most victims, but he’d died before Rosen had a chance to make peace, even if that had meant bringing him to justice. It was Rosen who’d flattened the detective’s nose, and it was Aadams’s blood splattered across Rosen’s shirt, just as it probably had splattered over the murderer’s chest. When they’d fought earlier that morning, had Rosen been angry enough to kill the detective? Was the difference only a matter of opportunity?
“Young man, you almost done?” Ida walked into the room. “God in heaven!”
He grabbed her. “Don’t touch anything.” He felt better taking charge of the situation. “Understand?”
She nodded dumbly and took a few steps back, while Rosen knelt to examine the body. Carefully inserting a hand under Aadams’s suit coat, he felt some warmth between the arm and rib cage. The detective hadn’t been dead long.
“Is there another way to leave the building besides the front entrance?” When Ida didn’t respond, he said, “Don’t look at the body. Just answer the question.”
“Uh . . . yes. There’s a back way to the alley.”
“Probably how the murderer left.” Rosen knew he’d better keep talking, for his own sake as well as Ida’s. “Take deep breaths. You’re doing fine. You hearing me?”
She nodded, pressing her hands against her cheeks.
He returned to the body. “Down here, where his face and left arm meet the floor, the skin’s beginning to turn purplish. He’s probably been dead at least an hour—maybe two.” He lifted the corpse’s elbow; the arm was still flaccid. “No, probably closer to an hour. I could’ve been in my car, eating my sandwich and watching the building at the very moment Aadams was murdered.”
“Do you . . . have to mention food?” Ida’s color wasn’t much better than the corpse’s.
“From the angle of the knife, the coroner should be able to determine the height of the murderer. They must’ve stood very close to one another, with the way the blade’s been driven in.”
Ida took a step closer. “I’m all right.” She stared at the body. “Then whoever killed him must’ve been a friend.”
“The spirits tell you that?”
“He’d never let a stranger get that close—not with a weapon.”
“Good point. You’re thinking like a detective.”
Rosen examined the desk top. No papers, only the whiskey bottle and two glasses. The glass nearer the victim contained some liquor, but the other was bone-dry. He used a hankerchief to open the top drawer. Under a box of paper clips lay a receipt book. Thumbing through its pages, he found three stubs with the name “Ben Hobbes” written in a caveman scrawl. The first two, each for $500, were dated respectively four and two weeks ago. The last receipt was for $1,000, paid two Saturdays ago—the day before Ben Hobbes was killed.
Could Aadams have been hired by Hobbes to follow Claire? Was that how the old man knew something “evil” was going on with his wife and the church? That last $1,000—a final payment for a completed job, or the beginning of blackmail? If the dead could only talk. Putting back the receipt book, Rosen finished checking the desk. Aadams’s gun and holster lay in the middle drawer, and the bottom one was empty.
“Find what you came for?” Ida asked.
“Some of it. Let’s hope there’s more in the cabinet.”
Still using the handkerchief, he slid open the top drawer, marked “A–H.” There were about a dozen files of what looked to be old cases, arranged alphabetically. The last was labeled “Henderson, Phil.” No “Hobbes,” which didn’t make any sense, since the receipt book showed that Ben Hobbes had been a client. Either Aadams had pulled the file himself or the murderer had gotten what he’d come for. Looking behind the Henderson file, Rosen noticed a slip of folded paper at the bottom of the drawer. Opening the paper, he saw it was a receipt for photoprocessing. In that same nearly illegible scrawl, Aadams had printed the word, “hobbes.” There had been a file; the receipt must’ve fallen out when the folder was removed.
The middle drawer, “I–P,” had another dozen folders, including one labeled “McCrae, Gideon.” The file contained only one page, with McCrae’s home and church addresses, along with the names of his daughter and cousin. Was Aadams engaged in yet another blackmail scheme? If the murderer had taken the Hobbes’s files, would he have also wanted the one marked “McCrae”? Had he even bothered to look?
Nothing of interest in the bottom drawer, but something just below it on the carpet caught Rosen’s eye. Blood. Maybe the murderer’s; more likely some of Aadams’s blood that had dripped from the killer as he checked the files.
Rosen walked back to Ida, who stared wide-eyed at the corpse. He put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her away.
“Ida, it’s a terrible thing to see something like this. No one deserves to die that way, not even a man like Aadams. Sure you’re all right?”
She nodded slowly. “At least I’ll have something to say when the girls ask over maj-jongg how my day went.”
“Forget about everything you’ve seen here. I’ll call the police from a phone booth. If they question you, neither you nor the spirits know a thing about this.”
“All right.” She trembled slightly. “I’m goin
g back to my office and make us some tea. But no cookies—I don’t think I could hold them down.”
Rosen led her into Aadams’s waiting room, then looked into the hallway.
“No one’s there. Go home to have your tea. I don’t want you in the building when the cops come.”
He waited by the stairs while Ida went into her office to get her coat. They hurried down the three flights into the lobby. Rosen’s aching muscles, jarred by the steps, screamed in protest, but he bit his lip and said nothing.
Outside Ida grabbed his coat. “Maybe you think I’m a phoney. Nu, maybe the spirits don’t exactly talk to me—who am I to be on their social list? But I have a sense about people. Just like I knew all along what a shmuck that Aadams was, may his soul rest in peace, I know you’re a good boy. Stay out of this. Don’t even call the police—why take chances?”
“I never did tell you my name. It’s—”
“I don’t want to know. The police might ask me questions. Better I don’t know. It’s enough you’re a good boy. Your mother must be proud of you. You’re maybe a doctor?”
“Lawyer.”
She smiled. “Almost as good.” She hugged him, then quickly walked away.
He watched her disappear around the corner and knew, in all likelihood, they’d never meet again. He’d stay far away from Ida, to keep her from being implicated. She was a good woman and, for some reason, made him think of Ruth Hobbes. She had the same openness, the same simple goodness. Strange, he should’ve been thinking of Claire; after all, she was his client.
Three murders—Ben Hobbes, Lemuel Banks, and now Aadams—in a little more than a week. Three methods of homicide—poison, bullet, and knife. Three locations—Ben Hobbes’s home in Earlyville, the field adjacent to the Hobbes’s furniture factory, and the run-down Nashville office of a detective who was probably blackmailing both Ben and his wife. Rosen was certain Claire was linked to all three, through either Danny or Gideon McCrae. If only he could discover why she was being blackmailed. With Aadams dead, she’d be even less inclined to tell anyone, unless someone else knew. There might be someone else. Sure.
