The Disappearing Body

by David Grand

  “No,” Harry said.

  Beverly clipped away the twine holding the package together and removed the paper to find in a gold-leaf grand baroque frame a painting of a young man with cold eyes, a thin smile, and a crooked nose. Stuck within the corner of the frame was a note.

  “It resembles you,” Beverly said about the painting as she pulled the note from the corner. “Though . . .” She looked at the painting, at Harry, and back at the painting, her tone a little lighter than before. “You look a little sinister.” She handed Harry the note. It was from Katrina.

  “Dear Harry,” Harry read aloud. “Mom painted this a long time ago. I kept it to remind me of the bum that broke her heart. I thought you should have it to mull over. I’ve lived with it long enough. You now have back all that you gave her—the ring, the house—everything except me. I expect that you’re in for plenty of troubles and anguish soon. I hope it does to you what it did to Mom. Good riddance, Katrina.”

  “Tough girl,” Beverly said.

  “Yeah,” Harry said. He lifted the painting from the floor and walked over to the study’s closet. He opened the door and placed the painting down by his shoes and shut it in.

  Beverly then went to the closet and retrieved the painting.

  “What are you doing?” Harry asked.

  “As a reminder,” Beverly said. She placed the painting on the mantel of the fireplace. “I’ll hang it later, myself.”

  “You’ve got a funny way about you, dear.”

  Beverly shrugged her shoulders. “Why don’t we take the boys to Mom and Dad’s? You can talk things over with Father and decide on a lawyer to represent you.”

  Harry nodded his head.

  “Tomorrow, you’ll hold a press conference and drop out of the race. They don’t deserve the likes of you anyway.”

  Harry nodded some more.

  “And then . . . you’ll take some time off work and we’ll go to Europe for a few months.”

  Harry continued to nod.

  “Until this blows over, I’ll make the decisions.”

  Harry followed his wife out of the study into the living room, and Harry sat with his two sons and listened to Louis Armstrong play “West Side Blues” on the radio. Beverly went into the foyer and dialed her father and told her that she, Harry, and the kids would be by for dinner.

  Chapter 32

  After Victor left the note for Elaine with the Ansonia’s concierge, he met the two grizzled men at the hotel’s entrance and walked with them to their car. Snow and ice covered the windshield so that when they settled in—Victor in the back, Sunshine and the moper up front—it was as if the three men were tucked away inside an igloo. “I see they did a nice job on you there,” Sunshine said to Victor.

  “Why wasn’t anyone around to take care of those two?” Victor asked.

  “The boss wanted you to meet the men that killed Lardner.”

  Victor looked confused.

  “Look at him,” the moper said. “He looks like one of those cartoon characters who got it in the head with a frying pan.”

  “But weren’t those the two cops who found me in Boris’s apartment after I killed Klempt?”

  “So you remember them. The boss thought, being as mellow as you were, you might have forgotten. He wanted to refresh your memory, so he let them in on where you were.”

  “No, I remember them, more or less. Except their names.”

  “Dubrov and Collins. Klempt, he was their third wheel.”

  “How do you know it was them?”

  “We got pictures.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, we got pictures.”

  “From who?”

  “Mann and Roth.”

  “They had ’em in this big vault in the cellar of the club,” the moper said. “Nice vault, too,” he said, turning to Sunshine.

  Sunshine nodded his head. “It’s true. Nice vault.”

  Victor looked at the two of them with an eyebrow propped up on his forehead. “Why would they give them to you?”

  “They won’t be needing them anymore,” the moper said squarely.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means they won’t be needing them anymore,” the moper said again with a little levity in his voice. He nearly cracked a smile.

  Sunshine could see how Victor was looking at the moper a little funny. “I can see you notice something a little different about my other half here.”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “He had a good day with the cards.”

  The moper pulled the corners of his mouth back nearly to the tips of his ears and beamed at Victor.

  “He beat me at one hand,” Sunshine went on. “He gets like this when he wins a hand. He suddenly gets a little mouse running rampant on his go-wheel.”

  “It was a beautiful hand, Vic. You should have seen it. Just beautiful.”

  Victor nodded with his mouth a little open. “Yeah . . .” Victor said, letting a moment pass for the moper’s enthusiasm. “Were Mann and Roth, were they the ones who called Boris’s murder?”

  “That’s neither here nor there,” the moper said.

  “You mean you don’t know, is what you mean.”

  “Exactly,” the moper said. “Exactly.”

  “So who are you two in all this anyway?”

  “Us?” The two grizzled men looked at each other. “We’re just a couple of bums who do dirty work,” Sunshine said.

  “Businessmen,” the moper said, pulling down on the lapels of his coat.

  “In business for who?”

  “Would we be in this business if you were meant to know that, Victor?” the moper said as though Victor had just sworn in front of a nun.

  “I suppose not.”

  “Very perceptive.”

  “Yeah, all right. . . . So, you’re saying those two cops . . .”

  “That’s right,” the moper said. “That we know. Those two, plus the one you did away with.”

  “Here, I’ll show you,” Sunshine said.

  “Allow me,” the moper said.

  “Go ahead, have your fun while it lasts.”

  The moper turned back to Victor. “I live for winning hands.”

  The moper had a black briefcase sitting on the front seat. He undid the clasp, slipped out a couple of pictures, and then handed them to Victor one by one.

  “You at least know why they did it?” Victor asked as he looked over the photos of Dubrov, Collins, and Klempt sending Boris Lardner to his death.

  The two men shook their heads again. “All in good time, Victor,” Sunshine said, looking at his watch.

  “When’s that time coming?”

  “Right now, as a matter of fact.”

  “Where?”

  “At the Prescot Building, inside the shoe repair shop.”

  The moper stepped out of the car and brushed the snow off the windshield with the sleeve of his coat. When he was through and back in his seat, Sunshine turned over the engine and started driving down Central Boulevard.

  Just as Sunshine turned the car’s engine over, Benny Rudolph entered Sidney Lardner’s shoe repair shop inside the paint-chipped lobby of the Prescot Building. It was a quarter to one. Sidney stood behind a messy glass display case full of galoshes. The walls were covered with loafers, square-toed oxfords, and an assortment of wing tips. The shop smelled like leather and polish. A couple of young men dressed in cloth aprons and black knit yarmulkes cobbled away in the back room while Sidney and Benny faced each other at the counter.

  “So, start talking,” Sid said quietly.

  “Not so fast.” Benny, who was carrying a black attaché, placed the attaché on the display case of galoshes and removed his wet coat and hat. He looked at his watch. “We’re expecting company.”

  “What kind of company?”

  “A couple of people whose lives you helped change forever.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  With the back of his h
and, Benny wiped away some cold green snot from his upper lip. “You like to pass yourself off as an upright guy, don’t you, Sid?”

  “I ain’t done nothing wrong.”

  “Then why is it you and I are sitting here talking to each other today? Can you tell me that?”

  “I thought that was clear. I thought you were going to help me finger Shortz for killing Boris.”

  “Is that really what you thought?”

  “That’s what we talked about yesterday, right?”

  “You think that’s why I wanted to come here and talk to you today? You think that’s why you spent the day sweating this meeting out? Wondering whether or not you should go hide your head somewheres? Is that why you had your girlfriend follow Victor Ribe around town yesterday?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure you do, Sid. You know exactly what I’m talking about.” Benny looked at his watch again.

  “Who are you expecting?”

  Benny Rudolph took a deep breath that wheezed on its way in, then out. He breathed in as if the inhalation of air filling his chest would somehow clear up the rasp in his voice and help him breathe more easily. Benny Rudolph didn’t know it as a scientific fact, but he knew he was dying. Slowly, as in sooner than later. He knew that there was something growing in his throat and his lungs, something that was making it harder for him to breathe, harder to talk, something that felt like a small animal lodged in his windpipe, a small animal that was stealing his air, taking a clear lively breath with each of his own. It sometimes left him gasping.

  “Tell me, Sidney,” Benny labored, “why is it after all these years you can’t call it bygones? Why do you care what Victor Ribe does with his life?”

  “What do you mean? Everything I know tells me Ribe killed Boris. It was only yesterday that you got me thinking maybe that wasn’t the case.”

  “You’re good at this, Sid, you know that? You’re good at looking me right in the eye when you say things like that.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Maybe.” Benny laughed a little.

  “Who are you?”

  “Me? I’m the ghost of Christmas past. That’s who I am.”

  “You are crazy.”

  “Your brother tell you that he hired a shamus to keep an eye out after he got taken in by Shortz all those years ago?”

  “No, I didn’t know.”

  “That’s because I told him not to tell you.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because I was that shamus looking out for your brother, and I told him not to tell you anything about me.”

  “On account of what?”

  “Now you’re starting to look the way I expected you’d look.”

  “So you did some legwork for Boris. What of it?”

  “Nervous, Sid. You suddenly look nervous, like I thought you might.”

  “You’re not good at getting to the point, are you?”

  Benny looked at his watch again, then leaned onto his attaché with his elbow so that his face was close enough to Sid’s that Sid felt uncomfortable enough to pull away. “You and Boris were on the outs for a number of years is what I know. Didn’t talk, didn’t write, didn’t even really love each other all that much. Isn’t that so?”

  Sidney, visibly angered, pressed the soft pouch of his belly against the counter and contorted his face as though he had just swallowed a spoiled piece of meat. “Who are you to say what my brother was to me?” Sidney pushed at the counter, pushed himself away from Benny, and pointed to the door. “I want you to leave.”

  “That ain’t gonna happen, and you know it.”

  “Then I’m calling the cops.”

  “Go right ahead. I got plenty to share with cops.”

  “What, for instance?”

  “Boris, he told me that when he didn’t want you in on his business, you stopped talking to him.”

  “I never wanted in on Boris’s dope business. I wouldn’t have gotten involved in any of that nonsense.”

  Benny clicked open the clasps of his attaché as if he had just cracked a safe. He pulled out an old envelope and from the envelope he pulled out an old letter. “This is a pretty angry letter you wrote your brother. Says here that if he didn’t let you in on his business, you were going to rat him out to the bureau. That you were going to go to Commissioner Shortz yourself and tell him everything Boris was into. Isn’t that what you said in this letter?” Benny held the letter up to Sid’s face. “Don’t you know, Sid, you should never put things like this in writing.”

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “From Boris, who else?” Benny Rudolph’s face was solid. He stared at Sidney until Sidney couldn’t take it any longer. Sidney looked over his shoulder into the back room where the boys were working. “Moishe, Aaron!” he yelled back. The two boys stopped what they were doing and looked at Sid. “That’s it, you’re done for the day.” He walked into the workroom. “C’mon, get your coats on and get out of here. I’m closing up early.” The boys looked at him a little dumbstruck, then sheepishly looked Benny over some. “I said I’m closing up. Out with the both of you already!” The boys quickly removed their aprons, removed their coats and hats from two hooks on the wall, and then started out. When they stepped out into the lobby of the building, Sidney locked the door behind them, then took his place by the counter. “Like I said yesterday, if you’re looking for money, you came to the wrong place.”

  “I already told you, Sidney, I’m not interested in money.”

  “Then what are you after?” he asked, pointing his nose to Benny’s attaché, into which Benny had replaced the letter.

  “I told you, Sid, I’m looking to tie up loose ends. I’m looking to put everything right.”

  “What do you want me to say? Yeah, I wrote that letter. Yeah, I was angry with Boris for not letting me in on his business. Yeah . . .”

  “Yeah,” Benny said, “and you ratted your own brother out to Shortz is what you did.”

  “Yeah, I ratted Boris out, okay? He was an ungrateful son of a bitch, my brother. No good. No good at all.”

  “And the next thing you know, you got his death on your conscience. Isn’t that right?”

  Sidney looked at Benny with his fat eyes. He nearly looked like he was going to spit in Benny’s face. “I raised that kid with no help from no one. I raised him up from nothing, and what did he give me in return? I deserved a little respect, a little compensation.”

  “You got him killed, Sidney.”

  “Yeah,” Sidney said, “all right, I got him killed. But that’s not what I wanted. I didn’t want him dead. I just wanted him . . . I wanted him sitting in a jail cell, biding his time for a few years. That’s all. Nothing more. To teach him a lesson. I never expected that he would end up dead like that.”

  Benny laughed at Sid again. “You’re a good liar, Sidney. Real good. Look at yourself. Can you see yourself?” Benny pointed to a mirror behind the counter. “Take a look. Not a stitch of guilt on that face of yours. Lots of self-pity, but not a stitch of guilt.”

  Sidney wouldn’t turn around. “What do you want from me?”

  “What do I want from you? I want your confession. I want your picture in the paper for everyone to know that you set your own brother up for murder is what I want.”

  “All because you got an angry letter from one brother to another? Because I handed him over to the cops?” Sidney laughed at Benny now. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  Benny stood up straight and lifted his brow. “You think that’s all I got?” Benny said, breathing hard. He opened his briefcase again and took out a couple of photographs. “You know who these clowns are, don’t you?” He showed Sidney a couple of pictures of Ira Dubrov, Pally Collins, and Maurice Klempt. They along with Sid were sitting at a table in the window of a deli.

  “Who took those?”

  “It doesn’t matter where I got ’em. I got ’em.”

  “What of it? I al
ready told you I ratted my brother out. So, I’m talking to those cops.”

  “Who do you think killed your brother, Sid?”

  “I don’t know. Those cops? Those cops, they sat me down and asked me about Boris’s operation. About how it worked. I told them what I knew.”

  “That’s what you think, huh?”

  “That’s what I know for a fact. We were sitting there talking about Boris. I clued them into what he was doing, what he told me he was doing, how he was doing it.” Sidney now looked more than nervous. He was distressed.

  As Sidney fidgeted with a stray tattered shoelace, both Victor Ribe and Faith Rapaport began knocking on the door of Sidney’s shoe repair shop. “What’s he doing here?” Sid asked.

  “I asked him to come.”

  “Who’s he with?”

  “She’s come to take your confession.”

  “She don’t look like no priest to me.”

  “I thought you were a Hebe?”

  “I am. We don’t do confessions.”

  “We’re gonna make an exception with her.”

  Benny Rudolph brushed aside his jacket and showed Sidney his gun. “Be a good kid and don’t run out on me.” Benny gestured with his head to the door. “Go let them in and draw the blinds.”

  Sidney did as he was told. He walked over to the door, his face stricken in a grimace, and he let them in. Victor and Faith looked at each other as they crowded into the small shop; they looked at Sidney, around the sloppy shoe repair shop, at Benny. Sidney drew the blinds on the windows facing the lobby.

  “Benny Rudolph?” Faith said to Benny.

  “That’s me, sister.”

  “Benny?” Victor said, approaching Benny. He placed his hand on Benny’s shoulder and said to him quietly, “How is it that you . . . ?”

  Benny leaned toward Victor and whispered in his ear, “Let’s save it for later, all right?”

  “Whatever you say,” Victor said as he took off his coat. “What’s with the voice?”

  “Later.”

  “Sure, all right,” Victor said as he stepped away to a stool by the wall of shoes.

  “Who’s this?” Faith asked, pointing to Sid.