Murder in Midtown

by Liz Freeland

  “He sent that crib. I bet he would’ve sent more, too, if he hadna died. Last time I talked to him, he seemed real cut up about how everything happened. I don’t think he was gonna tell his mother about Myrna, but he might’ve forked over some more dough eventually.”

  “You said he seemed cut up? About what, specifically?”

  He shrugged. “About Myrna, I guess. That’s why when I first heard about Guy being dead, I thought . . .”

  “Thought what?” I prompted.

  “Well, that he might’ve done it himself.”

  “Suicide?”

  “Maybe not even on purpose. But you know . . . like maybe too much to drink and a cigarette? My old man got drunk like that once and nearly burned our place down. It was a dump anyway, like Myrna’s place now. I can’t stand it there. She harps on me ’cause she thinks I’m like Guy. But Guy was the greatest. He took me to the horse races a few times. That’s more than my old man ever did.”

  “You really liked him.”

  “Sure. It wasn’t his fault I got fired, it was that old man’s. And as for Myrna . . .” He tossed his cigarette end down and mashed it under his heel. For a moment, I could see a struggle going on in him, between wanting to stand up for his sister and remaining faithful to his hero. “Well, I don’t understand all that love stuff. Six months ago, she was walking on clouds. Now she jumps down my throat if I even say his name. But I don’t think he was as bad as Myrna says. Some people just take longer to do the right thing, you know?”

  I nodded. If Guy hadn’t run out of time, maybe there would have been a happier ending for the couple eventually. But it was pointless to dwell on might-have-beens now. What I extrapolated from my visit with Jacob was that he was second only to Edith Van Hooten in his admiration of Guy and was unlikely to have caused him harm.

  I made little progress on anything besides my aunt’s book, which would have been more gripping had I not known how it was going to turn out. Her pages took me right back to the shocking events of the summer and highlighted the difference between then and now. After Ethel’s murder in June, events had unfolded rapidly. Now I was discovering that clues and suspects weren’t always going to appear as quickly as I needed them to. By Thursday, all I’d accomplished in my investigating was to prove by way of an informal survey of everyone I met that almost anyone in Manhattan could have provided the rat poison to murder Guy.

  I did toy a bit with Jacob’s suicide theory. Suicide didn’t quite square up with the Guy I’d known. He was always looking forward to the next throw of the dice. Yet, given the unhappy circumstances—money worries, and the rupture with the woman who’d had the son he was too craven to acknowledge as his own—it didn’t seem far-fetched that the man might have taken his own life.

  Thursday evening, as usual, my aunt’s friends, friends of friends, and even passing acquaintances of friends of friends descended on the house on Fifty-third Street to talk, drink, and eat finger food prepared by Bernice. I’d expected attendance to fall off as the weather grew cooler, but just the opposite happened. Manhattan’s population shrank during the summer as anyone who could afford to fled the concrete oven that was the city. Now, with autumn in full swing, the whole world seemed to be here. Those who didn’t have theater tickets or other activities planned could always fall back on Aunt Irene’s Thursday nights.

  Otto loved going. My aunt treated him like a nephew, and Bernice took special care to attempt to fatten him up with the choicest of the delicacies she’d prepared for the evening. Mostly, though, he camped out on the piano stool and entertained whoever wanted to hear him play. When he wasn’t showing off his own creations, he played hits of the day and old parlor classics. He knew how to please.

  Lacking any show-offy talent, I tended to my aunt’s guests who found themselves ill at ease and out of the swim. Ideally I would herd my misfits back into conversational huddles, but often I just listened. I met some interesting people this way. Also crackpots.

  That night a struggling violinist and frustrated socialist-Utopian with a heavy Eastern European accent was schooling me on the upcoming revolution. According to Mr. Popescu, the world was on the verge of a grand return to its pastoral roots. The industrial age, choking on all the soot it had belched out for half a century, would grind to a halt and we city dwellers would have to skitter out of our urban burrows to join our country-dwelling brethren. A new generation of peasants would tear down New York City brick by brick and return it to its natural state of farms and simple fisherfolk.

  “Will we give it back to the Indians?” I asked. “Or will we return to a system of patroons and peasants?”

  He scowled at me. “This time humanity will get it right. There will be true equality in the distribution of land. Every man will have his share of acreage.”

  Just my luck that as soon as I found a city I loved, Communists would come tear it down.

  As I listened to this nightmarish Utopian forecast, my gaze began to stray. When I caught sight of Muldoon entering the room, it was hard to contain my relief. I flagged him over.

  Mr. Popescu flicked his glance that way, too, annoyed my attention had wandered.

  “Would this new forty acres and a mule scheme benefit every woman, too?” I asked him.

  He pursed his lips at my naïveté. “Woman will return to her natural state. You will be able to put aside your typewriters and walk away from your switchboards.”

  “Back to babies and butter churns? No thanks.”

  He shook his head. “That is the problem. You are so far from how nature intended you to be that you no longer recognize what a woman should be.”

  Muldoon had threaded his way over, and I tackled him the way a person on a ledge would grab for a rope to climb back to safety. Or in this case, to sanity. I took his arm and pulled him to my side.

  “This is Detective Muldoon of the New York Police Department,” I said, introducing the men. “Mr. Popescu believes civilization in New York will collapse soon and Manhattan will become farmland again. I’m not sure what will happen to the police force.”

  The Romanian’s face soured. “The masses will police themselves. When all men are truly equal, there will be no crime.”

  I patted Muldoon’s arm. “I’m afraid you’ll be unemployed, Detective. Better start saving up for a plow.”

  He tried not to smile, but our mirth at Popescu’s expense must have come through. The man scowled at us. “Some who are shackled are afraid to throw off their chains!” He turned on his heel to leave us, then pivoted back, took half the sandwiches off my tray, and huffed away.

  “I hope he’s wrong,” I said. “I finally cracked forty words per minute on my aunt’s Remington. I’d hate to think it was all for nothing.”

  “You came by the precinct earlier this week.” Muldoon’s face tensed as if he were expecting something unpleasant. “Did you have news?”

  “If I had, it would be old news by now. It was nothing earth-shattering, luckily.” To be honest, I’d mostly gone by to see if he had news.

  His eyebrows rose. He still didn’t like my playing detective, although it hardly felt like playing now that it was consuming my life. “Really? Haven’t blown the case wide open yet?”

  I bristled at the sarcasm. “I was going to tell you something, but now I don’t think I will.”

  That look of dread returned. “Go ahead.”

  It would have served him right if I kept all my information to myself. Trouble was, I was hoping for a few tidbits in exchange. I swallowed my pride. “I’m beginning to wonder if Guy Van Hooten killed himself.”

  Silence stretched. His gaze remained fastened on me. “That’s your big news?”

  “I never said I had news. It’s a theory, that’s all.”

  He sighed, almost as if he weren’t terribly interested in talking about Guy Van Hooten’s death. What else was there to talk about? “What brought you to this conclusion?”

  He sounded so skeptical, I didn’t want to admit that the idea ha
d been given to me by a seventeen-year-old. I took a breath. “First, he was in debt. He also had personal problems.”

  “What kind of personal problems?”

  I shrugged. “A woman, of course. A star-crossed lover situation.”

  “Mm-hmm.” He couldn’t have looked less impressed.

  “So you don’t credit my suicide theory?”

  “You believe Guy poisoned himself and then . . . what? Set the building on fire during his last gasps of life?”

  I’d considered that thorny problem. “Maybe the fire was just an accident. He could have set out a candle that burned down and only caught fire later.”

  Muldoon didn’t look convinced.

  “Or he fell unconscious while he had a cigarette burning,” I said.

  “So he committed suicide and then accidentally, coincidentally, the building caught fire.”

  “There’s no arguing with a closed mind,” I said.

  “I didn’t come to argue. Anyway, I wouldn’t waste my time worrying about Guy’s death anymore if I were you. We’re following a different lead, and we might be close to an arrest.”

  I was bird dog alert. “Who?”

  “I can’t tell you. Even if I wanted to—I can’t.”

  “Then you do want to tell me?”

  He groaned. “Louise . . .”

  “I could get you a piece of cake from the kitchen,” I said. “Bernice’s coconut cake.”

  “Bribing an officer,” he joked. “Shame on you.”

  “Just a hint?”

  “No, sorry.”

  I sighed. “I never get what I want out of you.”

  “I could say the same.”

  “Well, thank goodness for that. You’re probably just like Mr. Popescu. You’d be happiest if I went back to Altoona and churned butter or something. That’s not going to happen.”

  “You don’t know me as well as you think.” The faintly teasing tone he’d been using was gone. “And I’m not sure if what you think you want will bring you the joy you expect it to.”

  “I wouldn’t worry my head over that possibility if I were you. I don’t.”

  “That’s why I worry.”

  He left me to pay his respects to Aunt Irene. My aunt pulled him down onto the sofa next to her, and for the next twenty minutes, Muldoon sat with a lap dog panting on his knee and listened patiently to her questions. No doubt Aunt Irene wanted details to make Detective Mulligan in her book more authentic.

  Muldoon left before I could talk to him in private again, and I kicked myself for that. He had news about the case. A different lead, he’d said. I should have tried harder to wheedle it out of him. Callie would have. Why couldn’t I be wilier?

  As Otto and I cabbed downtown after the house party broke up, Muldoon loomed in my thoughts. Why had he shown up tonight? He’d been at my aunt’s before, of course, and perhaps he thought it would be the easiest place to find me. Certainly it was a little more impersonal than seeking me out at my flat. He had strong feelings about unmarried men and women visiting alone together—his sense of propriety seemed to have been set in cement sometime during the McKinley administration. Yet I recalled now that his shoes had been freshly polished, his suit coat brushed, and his hair combed perfectly. His manner had seemed expectant, yet when I told him what I’d wanted to say, he’d appeared disappointed. Did he think that I’d merely been paying a social call when I sought him out at the precinct?

  Would he have considered a social call from me a good thing?

  “Louise?”

  I turned to look at Otto. The cab had stopped. I was home.

  Otto got out with me. “You don’t have to come up,” I told him.

  But it was dark, and he worried about my being alone in the apartment while Callie was gone. He didn’t trust Wally, with good reason.

  Sure enough, Wally was right there as I came in. He frowned at Otto. “I guess some fellas don’t know when they’re licked.”

  Otto frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Never mind,” I muttered. “What did you want, Wally?”

  “Letter for ya.” He held out an envelope.

  I went toward him to take it, but he drew it back at the last moment. His fleshy face smirked at my exasperation.

  “You should have put that under her door,” Otto told him. “Landlords aren’t supposed to interfere with the mail.”

  Wally’s eyes narrowed on me. “I was gonna shove it under your door, till I noticed the return address—it’s from the police. So I was asking myself, what would the police want with Louise Faulk now? What’s she done? Maybe I oughta tell Ma about it. She’s about fed up with all the police trouble you two have brought down on our house.”

  Our sin was having a houseguest who was killed in our flat last summer, but ever since then Wally and his mother had treated us as if we were scarlet women. I was glad Callie wasn’t here now to see the speculation in Wally’s eyes.

  I snatched the envelope from his hands. I could hardly wait to open it—though of course I wasn’t going to do so in front of him.

  “My correspondence is none of your business. And I assure you nothing in this letter would supply you any blackmail material, so you can crawl back into your lair now.”

  Otto and I went upstairs. When we were out of earshot, he asked, “Is that what I think it is?”

  I nodded. We let ourselves in and I headed for the kitchen. “Aren’t you going to open it?” Otto asked.

  “I’m going to make cocoa. Wouldn’t you like some?”

  “Sure, but . . .” He stared at the envelope, which I’d dropped on the table. “How can you stand not to tear it open and find out what it says?”

  I was itching to tear it open, in fact. And yet as long as the envelope remained closed, my dreams were still alive and my future as a policewoman remained a real possibility. The moment I opened it, I’d have to bow to the wisdom of the NYPD. And in all probability, I’d need to start pounding the pavement to get another secretarial position.

  “For Pete’s sake,” Otto said, “if you don’t open the letter, I will.”

  “All right. Go ahead.”

  His eyes bugged. “You really mean it?”

  “You’ll be my good-luck charm.”

  He took the single sheet out, unfolded it, and read. As his eyes scanned the lines, his face paled.

  “What?” I ordered myself not to burst into tears if it was bad news. Dream or no dream, it was only a job. I’d just have to find something else to do with my life.

  He held out the sheet of paper, his face breaking into a grin. “Wait till we tell Callie she’s going to be living with a cop.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The letter was real enough. It bore the raised seal of the NYPD and the signature of the Police Commissioner, Rhinelander Waldo. But Otto, just skimming it, had missed an important detail. Although I had passed the exam, I was instructed to report to downtown headquarters on Friday morning for an interview with a Captain Percival Smith. Friday was tomorrow, which meant that from the time of my receiving the note, my interview was only twelve hours away.

  I should have passed the time resting up, but I could no more sleep than I could have flapped my arms and soared across the Atlantic Ocean.

  After a few unrewarding hours of tossing and turning, I got up, took a long bath, and dressed in my favorite work clothes. White shirtwaist, not a lot of frills. A buff-colored skirt with very little in the way of ornament except for a pleat in back. My jacket was a brown herringbone pattern, fitted but not too tight. Brown hat with a not-too-outlandishly-wide brim decorated with a matching satin band and a few jaunty feathers.

  Callie always said I would probably march down the aisle on my wedding day looking like a votes-for-women protester, which I took as a compliment. Of course, if this had been her interview, she would have worn some fantastic creation copied from the latest sketches out of Paris, and probably charmed Captain Smith right out of his garters. But I’d learned the hard w
ay that “to thine own self be true” was doubly important for taste in clothes. If I wore anything too fine, I’d trip over my hem or spend the whole interview twitching in discomfort.

  As I marched into Captain Smith’s office, my head high but my heart thumping, I was glad I hadn’t worn any confining garments. I might have passed out. Surely the department would want me, I told myself, trying to exude confidence.

  The captain, who looked to be in his sixties, with spectacles perched on a beaky nose, iron-gray hair, and a full mustache, was absorbed in studying a folder. I stopped across the desk from him and suppressed the urge to salute. You’re not an officer yet, Louise. He didn’t invite me to sit down, so I remained standing at awkward quasi-military attention. A minute ticked by with no acknowledgment. I leaned forward to peek at what he was reading.

  “You’re hovering,” he snapped, still not looking up.

  I stepped back. “Excuse me, sir.”

  He scanned the lines on the page in front of him. “Do you always hover, Miss Faulk?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Bad habit,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Why don’t you sit down instead of looming there over me.”

  “Thank you, sir.” I dropped into the armless leather-seated chair provided. Another minute ticked by before Captain Smith glanced up from his file to inspect me. The gray eyes behind the spectacles blinked wide open. “Good God, you’re a girl.”

  Since he’d already called me Miss Faulk, I assumed he was referring to my age rather than my sex. “I’m twenty-one.”

  He sniffed at that. “Twenty-one is a dangerous age. You think you’re an adult, but you’re still a young idiot.”

  Saying “Yes, sir” to that pronouncement didn’t strike me as wise, so I held my tongue.

  “Mind you,” he continued, “I’m talking about twenty-one-year-old men. With girls, who knows? Some say women are smarter, but that’s a lot of flapdoodle. In my experience, females always seem to be giggling.” His eyes narrowed on me. “Do you giggle?”

  “Rarely, sir.”

  “Good.” He went back to inspecting the folder. “This says you were involved in a police investigation over the summer.”