The Disappearing Body

by David Grand

“Yeah,” Freddy grunted. “In the kitchen, in the kitchen above the stove, in a coffee tin.”

  The man let go of Freddy’s ankle and stepped off his knee. He then lifted him up by the nightshirt collar. “Show me.”

  Freddy stumbled down the hall ahead of the man to the kitchen. “Just tell me,” he said, not looking back, “what’s this all about?”

  “You tell me. You’re the one who hired me.”

  “To do what?”

  “Just shut the fuck up and get the money. Show me that money before I wrestle you back down to the ground and break your leg off for good.” The man pushed Freddy between the shoulder blades.

  Freddy plunged forward and slammed up against the stove, knocking the pot of boiling water onto the floor.

  “And don’t be reaching into anything.”

  From a cabinet above the burners, Freddy removed a coffee tin and handed it to the man. The man lifted the lid and pulled out a bunch of crumpled bills, which he stuffed into one of the pockets of his coat. He then reached out for Freddy’s throat and gripped it with his large hand. “Don’t say anything,” he said, his teeth gritted. Freddy shook his head cooperatively. “Just look at me.” Freddy looked at him, at his face, in his eyes. “I’ll be waiting for you at the club tonight, ten o’clock. You get that?” Freddy nodded again. “You talk to anyone about this, I’ll turn you inside out. You get that?” Freddy nodded again. “All right then. Go find my money.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “I’ll break a new bone in your body every day until you do.”

  “Great,” Freddy said.

  And with that, the man let go of Freddy’s throat, turned his back on him, and exited the apartment. When he was gone, Freddy sank to the floor and cradled his face in his arms, trying to figure out what had just happened. He lifted himself off the floor and stumbled over to the mirror in the bathroom to find himself in one piece, the side of his face already swollen from the blows. He gently washed up, got dressed, and, still dizzied, started his day as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all.

  Chapter 22

  Faith Rapaport arrived at the Globe Building a little after eight, after a long bath and a pot of coffee. She half expected the police to be waiting for her, but the offices were quiet. It was post-deadline for the late morning edition, and most of the reporters on the city desk were already out on their beats. Those who weren’t sat around reading the paper, their feet up on their desks beside their typewriters, waiting for nine o’clock to roll around so they could start making calls. Marty Volman was the only one waiting for her. He stood in the threshold of his door, looking over his staff as if they were a pile of open books he regularly thumbed through. Although he was getting old, liver-splotched, round, bald, his boyish eyes looked like they could burn a hole right through human flesh. When Marty saw Faith walking toward her desk, he waved her over to his office. He was collected on the outside, but as Faith made her way over she could tell from the way he was fumbling with his shirt collar that there was some sort of groundswell about to rise up to the surface.

  “The Long Meadow pieces were good, real good, Faith,” Marty said as she crossed the threshold of the door. “The interview had real bite.”

  “Where’d you stick it?”

  “Page one, just like I said I would.”

  “I’ve heard that line from you before, Marty.”

  “Well, this time it happened to turn out that way.”

  “Good thing,” Faith said less enthusiastically than she thought she should. She looked over Marty’s shoulder, out the window onto a blue mist lightly floating down the corridor of midtown buildings. Beyond it, she could see a tall bank of storm clouds collecting over the far side of the river. “What have you got for me?”

  Marty was trying to look reserved, but it was apparent that he was agitated. “I just got a big tip about a corpse.”

  Faith felt an involuntary twinge inside her belly, as if there were a baby in there, kicking. Already knowing what the answer would be, she asked the question anyway: “Who’s the corpse?”

  “Murray Crown.”

  “That is big,” Faith said with all feeling hiding behind her clenched jaw.

  “Very big,” Marty said, thrown by Faith’s seeming lack of interest.

  Faith felt the twinge again, this time more violently. “Who called it in?”

  “It was anonymous.”

  “What did anonymous say?”

  “He said, ‘Murray Crown’s dead, shot, in his office, at his plant.’ He said, ‘It’s not what it looks like,’ is what he said.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means ‘It’s not what it looks like.’ What do I know? It’s a tip. A big tip. And it’s yours, your story.”

  “I guess I won’t be going to the courthouse today,” she said, her voice now fading into an almost inaudible whisper.

  “That’s one way to look at it,” Marty said. His confusion indented itself on his forehead.

  Faith stared at Marty Volman for a long time and could feel her left ear getting hot. She could feel it turning crimson. It was burning.

  “If I didn’t know it was you, cupcake, I’d almost say you look a little broken up about Crown getting it.”

  Faith stepped into Marty’s office and shut the door. “Marty . . .”

  “What is it, honey?”

  Faith took a seat next to Marty’s desk. “You take this call yourself?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The guy sound like he busted a gasket?”

  “Come to think of it, yeah. How’d you know?”

  “He called me first,” she said, reaching for a Lucky in the hip pocket of her pants.

  “And?”

  She lit her cigarette. “I’ve already been there. I got there before the cops did.”

  “Do I want to know about this?”

  “I don’t know, do you?”

  Marty started tapping his fingers on the edge of his desk. “Start talking,” he said.

  “Look, Marty, I didn’t know he was dead when I went.”

  “Then why’d you go down there?”

  Faith removed from her pocket the key she had taken from the desk. “For this.” Faith pointed to the key with her nose and handed it to Marty.

  “Goes to a safety deposit box would be my bet,” Marty said, handling the key as if he were holding the tail of a dead mouse.

  “That’s what I figured.”

  Marty handed the key back to Faith. “I wouldn’t have gone,” Faith said, rubbing her finger over the key’s teeth. “It’s just . . .”

  “Just what?”

  “He had a good line. He got me hooked.”

  “On what?”

  “Pop.”

  “What’s this got to do with that no-good son of a bitch?”

  “He called up looking for Sammy Rapaport’s little girl. He said that Pop didn’t shoot himself. That if I went down to Crown’s plant . . .” The words starting spilling out of Faith’s mouth. “He said that if I wanted to know why Crown wouldn’t be testifying in court today, if I wanted to understand how it is that Pop ended up dead the way he did, I should go down to Crown’s plant, find this key, and have a look around.”

  “You lost me, kid. What’s the connection?”

  “All I know is that when I walked into Crown’s office and saw him lying there, it was the same setup. Gun in hand. Note to the next of kin saying goodbye and good luck.”

  Marty puckered his lips and pondered this for a few seconds. “It’s a pretty universal setup,” he said thoughtfully.

  “Yeah, true, but why? Why would someone want me in that room, with the corpse like that?”

  “I don’t know. It’s curious, I’ll give you that.” Marty reached his hand out toward Faith. “Give me one of those,” he said, pointing to her hip pocket.

  Faith squeezed out a cigarette and handed it to Marty.

  “Putting this thing with your father aside for a second
,” he said as he lit the cigarette, “though I still don’t put it past that bastard to put a gun to his head, mind you—what I want to know is how Crown got over to his plant in the first place. Narcotics was supposed to have him under wraps.”

  “Obviously they didn’t have him wrapped up too tight.”

  “Shortz is going to have a lot to answer for. I’d like to see the look on his face when he tries to explain how his favorite kicked dog finally kicked it. If you ask me, this might just undo him, right out of the race. . . . I want you down there as soon as they announce a press conference.”

  “All right, Marty, but that’s a little beside the point right now,” Faith said, holding the key up for Marty to see.

  The sight of the key made Marty pout. “I’m still not sure I want to know about this.”

  “If you want to be fair about it, the door was open, Marty. I just walked in.”

  “Still, it doesn’t look good.”

  Marty gave Faith one of his looks.

  “Look, if it makes you feel any better, as far as I’m concerned, you don’t know a thing, all right?”

  “Let’s try to keep it that way.”

  Faith looked at Marty obsequiously, and then looked at the key.

  “I won’t even ask if you’re planning on turning it in.”

  “I was thinking, maybe I’d take a look at what’s inside first? Just a little peek? I can always turn it in after that, after I get my look, right?”

  “I don’t know,” Marty said. “It’s tempting, I’ll give you that.” Marty tamped out the cigarette. “But I just don’t like it. I don’t like any of it.”

  “Since when do you get scared off by the possibility of a good story?” Faith said, trying to win him over.

  “Since it’s obvious that you’re becoming even more reckless than your old man, and because I do know about that thing in your hand, and I don’t want to get locked up.”

  “But what if Pop didn’t shoot himself? What if whoever did this to Crown did the same to Pop?”

  “What if it was Crown who did this to Crown? . . . And we both know your pop was capable of anything, including putting a gun to his head.” Marty was wagging his finger at Faith now.

  “Then we’ll let them both rest in peace if nothing comes of any of this.”

  “Somehow I don’t think you or either of them are capable of that. I’m sure you’ll all be giving each other hell all over damnation.”

  “Look, Marty . . .”

  “I don’t think you should be chasing this one, Faith. Really . . .” Marty’s brows drifted together like the colliding storm clouds out in the distance. “It feels like some of your father’s worst unfinished business.”

  “Speaking of which, what do you know about Sammy’s take on Victor Ribe’s murder trial?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Anonymous. He said I should look into it.”

  Marty looked perturbed all over again. “All I know is that all the people involved were about as lowlife as you would expect from a story your father pursued and that he stuck his neck out for Ribe.”

  “Why?”

  Marty raised his lower lip then relaxed it.

  “Are the clips downstairs?”

  “You got me.”

  “I’m going to go take a look.” Faith stood up and looked at Marty, thinking she should tell him that someone saw her leave Crown’s garage, but then she thought better of it.

  Marty shook his head at Faith. “I hate to say it, cupcake, but you’re on your own with this one.”

  “I don’t buy that for a minute,” Faith said.

  “Well, look, whatever you’re going to do, I don’t want you missing the commissioner’s press conference.”

  “I have no intention of missing it.”

  “In that case, you be sure to act dumb, you understand?”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll mind myself,” Faith said as she stood up and walked to the door. She watched as Marty shook his head some more and reached for the bottle of seltzer sitting on the corner of his desk. “If I should only live long enough,” she could hear Marty say on her way out.

  Faith walked out onto the press floor. The typewriters were picking up rhythm now, clerks were delivering messages and paperwork, talk was fast on the phones, cigarette smoke choked the air. It made Faith want to smoke more. She lit another Lucky, rode the elevator down to the archives, and went to the Samuel R. Rapaport files. Her father had filed so many stories over the years about bootleggers, bookies, speakeasies, opium dens, pimps, whores, about all the scumbags everyone loved to read about, that he had gotten a memorial filing cabinet that in the top drawer held an urn filled with his ashes. The file cabinet, which had a cheap brass plaque with Sammy’s vitals, was Samuel R. Rapaport’s mausoleum.

  Faith found exactly what she was looking for right under R. RIBE, VICTOR. Transcripts, notes, stories, testimony, depositions . . . She grabbed the file, took it back to her desk, and started reading.

  Chapter 23

  All along his walk to work, Freddy was still in a daze from his beating. The storm clouds suddenly turned the sky gray, and the wind that had been blowing so hard for weeks had suddenly stopped, and snow flurries began falling. As the flurries clung to Freddy’s coat and eyelashes, time seemed to slow down considerably and the people before him appeared to walk less diligently. The air had thickened and had become more vaporous; billows of smoke blew from mouths and noses and mixed with the steam rising from manhole covers. Up and down the boulevard, people emerged from the subway stations with their heads hung low and their eyes looking down at their feet, at the crystalline paths of sidewalk that began to glisten like quartz. The damp, lingering cold felt good on Freddy’s face, but with it came a sharp chill that kept seizing his body and rattling it so badly he had to tightly cradle his chest with his arms until he stopped shaking.

  When Freddy approached the Fief Building, the cops that had questioned him in his office the day before unexpectedly swung through the revolving doors onto the street and greeted him. The gruff one with the prickly face took hold of Freddy’s chin and looked over his swelling head and face. “Look at this, Shaw,” he said, turning Freddy’s head to his partner. “Looks like someone planted one right where he thinks.” The officer turned Freddy’s face back to him. “You do think, don’t you, Mr. Stillman?”

  Freddy sneered into the officer’s dark eyes for a second and tried to pull his head away, but the man’s large gloved fingers held tight, pinching the cleft in Freddy’s chin together. Freddy thought of Victor standing before Miss Martin last night. “I took a fall on my way over,” Freddy said with some difficulty, his jaw stiff and uncooperative in the cop’s hand. “On a patch of ice.”

  “He says he took a fall,” the cop said as he let go of Freddy’s chin.

  “Is that what happened, Mr. Stillman?” Shaw asked. “You took a fall?”

  “Yeah,” Freddy said as he massaged his jaw.

  “Tough break.”

  “It’s nothing,” Freddy insisted.

  “Well, I tell you what: Reynolds, he’ll get you some ice for your head when we get downtown.”

  “Yeah,” Reynolds laughed. “No lack of ice where we’re going.”

  “Where’re we going?” Freddy asked.

  “We think we found your neighbor,” Shaw said mildly as he turned away from Freddy and started walking to the patrol car parked at the curb.

  “Found her where?” Freddy said to Shaw’s back. He tried not to sound alarmed, but he was alarmed. “Found her where?” Freddy asked Reynolds when Shaw didn’t answer him.

  “You all right?” Reynolds asked. “You seem a little jumpy.” Reynolds turned to Shaw. “Don’t he seem a little jumpy?”

  “We’d like you to come down and answer a few questions,” Shaw said as he opened the driver’s door of the patrol car.

  “I should go up and let my supervisor know where I’ll be.”

  “He already knows,” Reynolds said, stepping in
front of Freddy as Freddy tried to move toward the building’s revolving door. Freddy stopped short and looked over to Shaw.

  “How about it, Mr. Stillman?”

  “It doesn’t seem like I have a choice.”

  “That’s because you don’t.”

  Reynolds pointed to the curb. “Go ahead and get in the back.”

  Freddy did as he was told. He got into the backseat of the car and shut the door. Reynolds took a seat beside him. Shaw made a U-turn and drove down Central Boulevard in the direction of downtown. It was snowing more heavily now, but the traffic was lighter than usual. People with waxen gazes huddled together in doorways, under awnings, as they stood waiting for streetcars. Doormen scattered salt on the sidewalks as though they were feeding pigeons in the park. Every few blocks, Shaw worked the manual windshield wiper and brushed away the frost collecting on the glass with his glove. Freddy sat with his face to the car window, looking at the snow reflecting off the passing midtown office tower windows.

  “Looks like we’re in for a big storm,” Reynolds said, looking at Freddy. “I don’t know about you, Mr. Stillman, but I kind of enjoy it when the city freezes over a little. People don’t struggle as much in the cold. When it’s as gray and ugly out as it is on a day like today, I’ve noticed that most men lose their will; tend to give up on lofty ideas that don’t suit them. It’s pretty debilitating, this kind of weather. When you can feel the crunch of snow under your feet, it kind of makes you realize how fragile every step is, doesn’t it?” Reynolds leaned over to Freddy so that Freddy could feel Reynolds’s weight beside him. “My partner, for instance, he tends to shut down in this weather. Isn’t that right, Shaw?”

  Shaw grunted softly.

  “He gets very bearlike. Stops shaving, stops ironing his uniform, doesn’t talk as much. It’s like he’s hibernating, waiting for some warm weather to thaw him out and give him some fight. . . . I, on the other hand? I don’t know what it is, but I thrive in this weather. It doesn’t seem to hypnotize me like it does most people. It has just the countereffect on me—it invigorates me, actually. Makes me more keen and aware, gives me, uh, insight into all those people who are walking around in their trances.”