“It reminded you of something?”
“Several things. Especially a picture I saw in the Louvre, back in ’28.”
“A picture of a nose?” The storekeeper’s shoulders went up and his eyebrows joined them. “In the Louvre they have pictures of noses?”
John Hedge smiled. “This was a masterpiece. The Old Man and His Little Son, it was called. Painted by Ghirlandaio. Italian master, he was.”
A customer came in. Hedge found an empty page in his well-filled pad of manila sketching paper. He penciled the broad mass of a man’s coat in three-quarter rear. Then the head flowed into place under his quick fingers, and the hat with the oversize brim, the black tie with the oversize knot, the pockmarked face, the small ears, the short-cropped hair; the pig eyes. Everything but the nose.
The newsdealer leaned over the counter. “You are finished with him?”
“I have enough of him.”
“Enough? You have his hat and his coat, yes. But where is that wonderful nose you wanted?”
John Hedge moistened a cigarette and slid it into his smile. “The nose escaped me. That nose will come to me some night after my fifth Tom Collins or a Welsh Rarebit cooked by Molly Andrews at three in the morning. It’s a nose for a nightmare, Sidney. It’s a nose to come haunting me in bed when my stomach turns to fictioneering with my brain. I’ve missed dozens of essential features in my day only to find them piling up on me in a rush from some hidden corner of my libido.” He blinked his eyes good-naturedly. “Of such is the kingdom of cartooning.”
The little man laughed up at the ceiling. “I never saw a man make himself so miserable, over a nose. Why don’t you guess at the nose? Take a stab at it. You saw him for a few seconds when he walked in, didn’t you?”
“It didn’t appeal to me in full face. That way, it was just another nose. Noses have a way of sinking into the flesh in full face. They are lost in the wrinkles, in the cheeks, in the fat. His nose in full face was pure stevedore. You can find a thousand of those noses down at South Street when the boats come in. These are the breed of broken snouts, smashed in battle … pig noses, blunt and broad and mashed into cheekbones.” He dragged, a smoky comma in his monologue. “But when he turned down to look at his paper, our man became a fascinating subject. The profile reveals all, of course. My split second glimpse at the lumpiness, the queer bumpy fatness of his nozzle was enough to tease my imagination. Nothing but a close-up of that snout would please me now.”
“And when you get it?”
“When I get it,” laughed Hedge, “then I’ll have it.”
The newsdealer’s brows wrinkled incredulously. “So you have it! What next? What do you do with it? You will maybe frame it and hang it over the piano? Or you’ll better send it to The Metropolitan so they can hang it in the Nose Wing?”
“Not at all. I’ll file it under noses!”
“You’ll file it? You have a cabinet with files for stuff like this?”
Hedge took the clip off his pad and flipped through the sketches. “Look here,” he said, and held up a drawing in pencil, a sketch of a woman’s rump, full-blossomed and ripe with flesh. “A man must make notes, Sidney.”
The little man squinted at the drawing and when he smiled the wrinkles were deep around his mouth. “Such notes as these I would make myself. If I could, that is.”
“It goes into my file of rumps. I have hundreds of anatomical views of that kind, from hair to ankle. Rumps galore. I’ve got sitting rumps, standing rumps, heaving rumps on a theater runway, tired old rumps on park benches, the rumps of babes and even elephants. A man can’t imagine these things when he draws—they’re utilitarian rumps.”
“Are you telling me? Such an item I could use myself this winter!”
John Hedge ripped the sheet away from the pad and handed it across the counter. “Keep it under your pillow.”
The door opened and a man walked in.
“Hello, Jeff,” said Hedge. “You finished? Sober?”
“Hello, whack. I got the stuff.” He patted a notebook under his left arm. “Over three dozen Bowery vignettes that stink from stale beer and wood alcohol. I ought to charge the paper for the swill I was forced to guzzle to get past the gatekeepers in those flophouses. They seem to think their lice-bound stables are secret treasures, to be kept alone and aloof from all humans except the mangy bums who sleep and die in them.”
They looked at the drawings. These were fine, clear pen and inks of Bowery life, done in a sharp and bold technique and full of an acid bite that was Jeff Grundy. Jeff had a flair for down-and-outers. He knew how they lived.
“Good,” said Hedge. His eyes were half closed on the last sketch, a perspective shot of an aged bum flat on his face in saloon sawdust.
“Marvelous,” said the newsdealer.
An old lady with a red hat broke into the discussion. The store owner dived behind the counter for her package of Sweet Caporals. Grundy and Hedge moved into the street.
Hedge said, “I’ll buy you a drink if you show these drawings to Earl Chance tonight.”
Jeff Grundy’s eyes went cold. He folded the sketches into his coat. When he answered he bit his words into quick, sharp syllables.
“Earl Chance can go to hell!” he said.
“You’re being stupid, Jeff. I’ll bet you another drink he’ll like them.”
“I told you where he can go,” said Grundy.
CHAPTER 2
Homer Bull was short and fat, but he was not slow. He crossed the outer waiting room of the Bureau of Investigation with his hands deep in his pants pockets. He took longish strides for a fat man.
At the glass door, a cop said, “You back again, Mr. Bull? The boss ain’t in but he said for me to tell you to wait inside.”
Homer said, “Thanks, Cassidy. Here’s a good five-cent cigar I found in an ashtray downtown.”
Cassidy eyed the cigar band and smiled. “Thanks. I wish I knew where to locate them ashtrays you’re always finding.” He opened the door to McElmore’s office for Homer. Then he walked back to the desk, sniffed the cigar, tore off the cellophane, sniffed it again and shook his head with a grin. “Five-cent cigar—malarkey!”
“What is it, then, a seven-center?” inquired Charlie Burtis.
Cassidy looked down his nose at Burtis. But then, how would Burtis know who Homer Bull was—Burtis had graduated from his beat in Flatlands to the main office only three weeks ago. And Homer Bull hadn’t been in the office since the Shemple case. “Listen, pavement punk, that little guy ain’t no seven-cent cigar man. That’s Homer Bull!”
Burtis swallowed his humiliation. “And who might Homer Bull be?”
“Who might Homer Bull be?” Cassidy mimicked his assistant. “Homer Bull might be Santy Claus, but he ain’t. He happens to be a bigshot writer in the first place. You ever heard of Dr. Ohm?”
“The comic strip?” Burtis was an avid reader of the pen and ink classics. “Sure, I follow him in The Star every day.”
“Of course you do,” sneered Cassidy. “As who doesn’t? Well, that little gent writes the stuff, sec? He makes it all up out of his own head, like a story in a magazine, understand?”
“Yeah,” said Burtis, who didn’t understand at all. In his mind’s eye all comic strips were invented by their artists. “The guy must be smart.”
“Like a fox. He’s terrific, that Homer Bull is. You remember the Giggles Shemple case, don’t you? Well, that little fat boy there in the chief’s office broke the Shemple case wide open. McElmore would be back in Flatbush if he didn’t run into this guy Bull. Happened in a bar one day when McElmore was going nuts from worry about losing his job. The mayor was at his neck about Shemple. ‘Find Shemple,’ says the mayor. ‘And find him quick, or back you go to Brooklyn!’ So what does McElmore do? He goes nuts, is all. He winds up at The Eight Ball Bar, telling his troubles to a bottle of Scotc
h. Homer Bull happens to overhear him and that’s how the two of ’em get together.” Cassidy patted the cigar and tucked it away. “Great little guy, Homer Bull.”
Inspector McElmore opened the door. “Bull get here yet, Cassidy? Good.” He strode into his office and slapped Homer on the back. “Glad to see you, Homer. You’re looking well. Getting fat around the tail again, though.” He sat down heavily and reached for a brown box of cigars with an automatic gesture. Homer took one, bit it, spat it and lit it.
McElmore eyed him with a glassy eye. “I suppose you’re sitting there thinking to yourself that McElmore is going nuts again, hah?”
“I’m not thinking,” said Bull. “I’m smoking.”
“You came over awful fast.”
“I’m always fast.”
“What’s the matter, you tired of writing your damnfool comic strip again?”
Homer puffed and closed his eyes. “I’m still smoking, Dick. You’re smoking and stalling.”
McElmore laughed a bit, but his heart wasn’t in it. Homer Bull had a habit of striking deep to the truth. Homer had always been that way. Six months ago the little comic strip continuity writer stepped into The Eight Ball Bar, downed six or seven straight ryes and attacked the Giggles Shemple mystery. A week later it was solved.
You couldn’t fool Bull. McElmore knew. Not with pretty speeches and side-slipping statements.
“I’m not exactly stalling, Homer. Honest. There’s really nothing new down here, nothing remarkable, and that’s the hell of it.”
“Your cigars have improved,” said Bull. “But your dialogue still stinks.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“Sure, sure I do. You called me down here to give me a cigar.”
McElmore half smiled. “Listen, if I sound mixed up about things, it’s only because I am mixed up. Almost everything we’ve had down here for the last few months has been routine.” He leaned over the desk and tapped a long finger on the ashtray, which was his way of telegraphing an important statement. “That’s the trouble with it—all routine.”
“And that bothers you? The city is giving you an unscheduled vacation, Dick. You should sit back in your little den, smoke your five-cent cigars and dream all day of Irish pixies.”
“Should I?” McElmore growled. “It’s bothering the pants off me.”
“Amazing.” Bull’s left eye opened, then closed again, slowly. A cheap little clock bonged six tin chimes from the corner filing cabinet. Outside, the voice of Cassidy at the desk mumbled into a telephone. Homer said, “You’re letting me in at the back door, Dick. Start at the beginning.”
“Beginning? There’s no beginning I tell you. Everything is routine—and that’s what’s burning my onions. Did you ever try to understand routine murder?” He leaned his big frame over the desk and played with his fingers. “Here’s how it goes. A man is stabbed in the back over in Red Hook, near the water. Simple, isn’t it? Just a stevedore lush in a brawl, no?”
Bull nodded in his sleep.
“Another one is shot on the sidewalk—you know how those things run. Some second-rate gangster is rubbed out by competition. The man on the sidewalk is killed by some heel in a car, who shoots his lead and scrams before anybody in the neighborhood can get the number of his license plate. Routine, isn’t it?”
“Routine,” said Homer Bull.
“Sure, routine. Well, I got a belly full of these routine cases. They all look alike and figure alike, whether they’re murder, robbery, rape or arson.” McElmore fiddled with a sheaf of papers, thumbed them briskly, holding out three sheets. He waved these slowly in the air. “But these things are different, Homer. Here are three routine cases that smell to high heaven of something else. You take this first one, for instance. A man is shot leaving a drugstore. Somebody in a private car did the job, then beat it up a side street in Flatbush. A young girl leaving the drugstore saw the license plate, wrote it down and gave it to us.”
“And you can’t find the car?”
“You’re kidding. We found the car. It was stolen the same night and abandoned out near the airport after the shooting. Somebody hated our man on the sidewalk, borrowed the car, did the job, ditched the car and then went home to bed. Simple?”
Bull’s cigar bobbed up and down.
“Yeah,” sneered McElmore. “Simple as hell, except for the fact that the little guy on the sidewalk is Mr. Nobody. He is a typical John Doe, a clerk in the telephone company in Brooklyn. Mr. Average American, he is. Get it?”
“Almost. You had several of these cases?”
“Not several—three. All of ’em routine, or made up to smell that way.” He frowned down at another sheet. “This one is a tootsie. I’m called over to Queens about two weeks ago to take a look at this one. We get over into the cheap rent section of Flushing and walk up three flights to this apartment. I find a cute little dame, no older than twenty-five, stretched out on her bed with a knife wound in her chest and signs of a terrific struggle. The room is turned upside down. Another simple one, hah?”
“Assaulted?”
“You’re as dumb as I am, after all.” McElmore chuckled. “Makes me feel young again when I hear you say things like that in such a hurry. No, it wasn’t assault as you mean it. The coroner found no signs, no bruises. The little dame was simply surprised in her bedroom and stabbed—probably after she had fallen asleep. The furniture was carefully upset after the murder, chum, or else the people downstairs would certainly have heard the battle. You know how those flats are, one bedroom under the other from the roof to the cellar. No, Miss Jane Doe was deliberately killed, and without any motive. She was a music teacher. Taught piano in a fancy music school over on the Heights. No jealous boyfriend either. She was engaged to a fiddle player who works up at Radio City and was in the orchestra all that night.” He threw up his hands. “No motive, no enemies, no disappointed boyfriends. How can you figure a thing like that?”
“Robbery?”
McElmore shook his head violently. “Not a red dime missing, not a piece of jewelry taken from her handbag. We checked with a good friend of hers, and unless that friend is mistaken, the lady wasn’t robbed.”
“Might have been a sex case.”
“Sure. Long Island pervert follows dame home and takes his pleasure by stabbing her in the chest? Don’t make me laugh!”
“You don’t know your Krafft-Ebing, Dick.”
“I won’t argue with you.” McElmore squinted mournfully at the third sheet. “This is the last one, Homer—happened just three days ago. Man by the name of Bartlett, he was. When this one came in I began to worry, because I didn’t like another knife murder so close to the last one. It means trouble for the office when two cases die that way by the knife. It means that some smart little reporter is going to make a stink about all this. You can just imagine the headlines when those sheets get the angle. We’ll be having another Jack the Ripper!”
Homer Bull flipped his cigar stub across the room and made the cuspidor. “Mr. Bartlett was stabbed in bed?”
“No, Mr. Bartlett was stabbed on the sidewalk over in Bay Ridge. He left his house bound for a movie. Next thing Mr. Bartlett knows, he is dead, stabbed several times through the heart and back. Cold-blooded massacre. The man didn’t die quickly enough for the murderer. He must have squirmed a bit on the sidewalk. So our menace rolls Mr. Bartlett over on his belly and jabs him in the back until he stops squirming. Nobody saw Mr. Bartlett get cut up. He was found by some kid about an hour afterwards.”
“I get the idea, Dick.” Homer Bull reached for another cigar. “You’re worried about systematic murder? Murder Incorporated stuff?”
“That’s it. And that isn’t it, exactly. I want to stop these murders before the papers get at ’em. I’ve got a suspicion these last two knife killings were done by the same man.” He ran his fingers through his hair, stared hard at a yellow shee
t on the desk. “Then, there’s this thing. This business of finding one of our boys burned to a cinder downtown this afternoon. Cramer was one of our best boys down there. What he was doing in that place I’ll never be able to understand.”
Bull took the yellow sheet. “Aren’t policemen supposed to enter burning buildings?”
“Are you kidding? We don’t mind him entering. But standing in there to be burned to a crisp—that’s different.”
“He entered that place for a reason. Your survey shows that the lower back room was being used for some kind of illegal printing since there’s no record of a print shop at that address. Seems to me it should be easy to discover why your man entered that place if we approach the business from the point of view of the cop.” Bull closed his eyes again. “Your man Cramer is pounding his beat. He sees smoke pouring out of the back alley of that tenement. What is his first impulse?”
“Cramer was a good man. His first impulse would have been to get the firemen. Phone in a report.”
“I doubt it. There was no phone in the hall of that tenement and Cramer must have been in plenty of those houses—he knew he couldn’t find a phone inside.”
McElmore nodded slowly to his blotter.
Bull said, “However, suppose Cramer saw somebody enter that building at almost the same time when he saw the smoke—then what?”
“You mean that Cramer went into the building to nab somebody?”
“Why not? Perhaps he thought he had an arsonist. We don’t know. We can assume, however, that Cramer could have left that building under his own steam if all things were normal when he got into that hall. All policemen are experienced firemen, aren’t they?”
“More or less.”
He Died Laughing Page 17
