CH04 - The Topless Tulip Caper

by Lawrence Block

  Haig turned to Tulip once more. “Miss Wolinski” he said. “I first made your acquaintance approximately forty-eight hours ago. They have been eventful hours, to be sure. When did you decide to consult me?”

  “Tuesday. The day after I got the lab report. That was when I decided, and then I thought it over for a while, and then I came here.”

  “Who knew of your decision?”

  “Nobody.”

  “No one at all?”

  “I didn’t tell anyone after I saw you. You told me not to. Oh, wait a minute. I said something to Cherry that morning, that I was going to see you and you would find out how it happened.”

  “So you told Miss Abramowicz. And she might have told anyone.”

  “Cherry wasn’t very good at keeping things to herself.”

  “She may have told anyone at all,” Haig went on. “What we do know for certain is that she told her murderer. He realized that I would rapidly determine that the poisoning of the scats constituted a misdirected attempt at Miss Abramowicz’s life. He had to act quickly.”

  Haig cleared his throat and let his eyes take a tour of the audience. I don’t know what he was looking for so I don’t know whether or not he found it. What I saw was Rita Cubbage picking at a cuticle, Buddy Lippa scratching his head, Gus Leemy frowning, Vincent Gregorio picking lint off his lapel, Simon Barckover glancing at his watch, Maeve O’Connor licking her lower lip, Glenn Flatt cracking his knuckles, Jan Remo rubbing her temples with her fingertips, Wallace Seidenwall yawning, and Leonard Danzig sitting in perfect repose, giving Leo Haig every bit of his attention.

  Whatever Haig was looking for and whether he found it or not, he evidently decided that the Rasboras were more interesting to look at than the eleven of them. He swung his chair around and stared into the fish tank, presenting his audience with a great view of the back of his head.

  That’s it, I thought. That’s all he’s got. I decided it was still pretty good, better than the police had managed to come up with, but why blow it by putting the show together prematurely? Unless he expected one of them to crack, but could you count on that happening? I decided you couldn’t.

  Haig swiveled his chair around again. “Mr. Flatt,” he said. “Mr. Glenn Flatt.”

  There was a lot of head-turning as our customers tried to figure out which of them was Glenn Flatt. They finally took a cue from Haig and looked where he was looking, and the boyish Ivy Leaguer frowned back at Haig.

  “Yes, I was hoping you’d get around to me,” Flatt said. “I came here to help Tulip. I used to be married to her and we’re still good friends and you said you were working for her. I didn’t know I was going to be part of a carnival.” He stood up. “I told you I had work to do. I came here as a favor to Tulip but this is ridiculous. I’m leaving.”

  “You are not. You will stay where you are. If you attempt to leave Mr. Harrison will knock you down and return you to your chair. Sit down, Mr. Flatt.”

  Flatt sat down, which took a load off my mind, believe me. If you think I was all that confident of my ability to knock him down you don’t know me very well.

  “Mr. Flatt. You came here because last evening I told you that I knew you were at Treasure Chest on the evening when Miss Abramowicz was murdered. That is why you are present this afternoon. When I told you I had a witness placing you at the scene you elected to cooperate.”

  “Where’d you get a witness?” Gregorio wanted to know. “And why did you hold that out?”

  Haig made a face. “I had no witness,” he said. “I merely said I had one.”

  “You were lying,” Flatt said. It was a pretty dumb thing to say, and he sounded pretty dumb saying it.

  “You might put it that way,” Haig allowed. “Or you might say that I was bluffing. I trust you’re conversant with the term, Mr. Flatt. You gamble quite a great deal, do you not?”

  “Sometimes I’ll make a bet on a horse.”

  “Indeed. Or on an athletic event, or on an election, or on the turn of a card. Would you say you are a compulsive gambler, Mr. Flatt?”

  “Not in a million years,” Flatt said. He looked somewhat less boyish now. “I like a little action, that’s all. So I gamble. There’s no law against it.”

  “Tommyrot. There are innumerable laws against various forms of gambling. The fact that such statutes are absurd does not wipe them from the criminal code. But we are not assembled here to convict you of gambling, Mr. Flatt. Rest assured of that.”

  “Look, I don’t—”

  Haig put his pipe back together again and tapped the bowl on the top of the desk. “I would be inclined to label you a compulsive gambler,” he said. “The evidence seems clear enough. Your marriage to my client dissolved largely because you kept going into debt as a result of your gambling. Your debts have increased considerably over the years. A friend of mine was in a position to make inquiries among various bookmakers on Long Island. You are well known to several of them. You gamble heavily. You almost invariably lose.”

  “I don’t do so badly.”

  “You do pay your debts,” Haig said. “According to my information, in the past four months you paid an amount to bookmakers slightly in excess of your salary during the same period.”

  “That’s ridiculous. And you couldn’t possibly prove it.”

  “I don’t have to. I told you I don’t intend to convict you of gambling. And your gambling doesn’t interfere with your ability to earn a livelihood, does it? You continue to be gainfully employed in a responsible position.”

  Ratt eyed him warily. “So?”

  “As a pharmaceutical chemist, I understand.”

  “That’s right.”

  “A position which would give you ready access to any number of interesting compounds. Such as strychnine and curare, to cite two examples.”

  “Now wait a goddamned minute—”

  “Mr. Flatt, you’re much better off if you keep your mouth shut. Take my word for it. You have access to such compounds and it would be puerile of you to deny it. That crossed my mind when first I learned of your occupation. Various poisons are readily obtainable. Strychnine is not. Neither is curare. You and I have not met before, Mr. Flatt, and we did not speak to one another until last evening, but you have been an important suspect since I first learned how the fish had died.” He said all this in a calm conversational tone. Then abruptly he raised his voice to as close as he could come to a bellow. “Why were you at Treasure Chest the night before last?”

  “You can’t prove I was there.”

  “Phooey. You’ve already admitted you were there. Have the courage of your errors, Mr. Flatt. Why were you there?”

  Flatt bought himself a couple of seconds by glancing to either side of himself. If he was looking for support he picked the wrong place to look for it. Everybody seemed to want to hear the answer to the question

  “I wasn’t there when Cherry was killed,” he said. “I left before her act started, I was miles away when she was killed. And I can prove it.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Haig said. “You did not kill Miss Abramowicz.”

  “But—”

  “Nor have you answered the question. Why did you go to that night club that evening?”

  He shrugged. “No particular reason. I’m sorry if I was out of line but I thought you were accusing me of murder.” He managed a boyish grin. “It certainly sounded that way for a while. For a little guy, you certainly know how to boss people around.”

  “You still haven’t answered my question, Mr. Flatt.”

  “Oh, hell. Look, I wanted a couple of drinks. Why did I pick a topless club? Jesus, you know the answer to that one. Or maybe you don’t, who knows with you? I like to look at girls. That’s all there is to it I used to be married to Tulip and we’re still friends so I picked that club rather than one of the others. My luck I had to be there on that particular night. But, you know, I go there a lot. Maybe not a lot but I’ll drop in now and then.”

  “Interesting,”
Haig said. “Mr. Lippa? Can you confirm that?”

  Buddy Lippa nodded. “I seen him before,” he said. “I dint make him at first but I seen him. Comes in once, twice a week, sits at the bar. Never stays any length of time. And he’s right about leaving before Cherry got the needle. I can’t swear to the time but I’d guess he came in like nine-thirty and left by ten o’clock. That’s not on the dot but it’s close.”

  “Absolutely right,” Flatt said. “I was out of there by ten. And I was in a bar on Long Island by midnight, and I can prove that with no trouble whatsoever.”

  “You needn’t,” Haig said. “So you’ve been in the habit of patronizing Treasure Chest once or twice a week. That’s interesting.”

  Flatt didn’t say anything.

  “There are topless clubs on Long Island, are there not? And are they not more conveniently located, since you both live and work there?”

  “Sometimes I’m in New York on business.”

  “Precisely my point. I submit that your visits to Treasure Chest are a business matter.”

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

  “Nonsense,” Haig said. “You know precisely what I am talking about. Five months ago Miss Wolinski went to work at Treasure Chest. You have kept in contact with her and visited the dub, perhaps out of curiosity. You needed money, you have always needed money, your gambling habit is such that you shall always need money. And you met someone at Treasure Chest who showed you a way to make all the money that you needed.”

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  “That’s not inconceivable. It is, however, irrelevant to the present discussion. You met someone at Treasure Chest, someone who was regularly present there during the ensuing months. You got into conversation. You mentioned your occupation, and your new acquaintance saw possibilities for profit. You had access, I have mentioned earlier, to poisonous compounds. There is, thanks be to God, no enormous profit at present in such compounds. But you also had access to quantities of a subtler, slower form of poison. As a pharmaceutical chemist, Mr. Flatt, you had access to drugs.”

  I looked at Flatt. He was keeping a stiff upper lip but the effort was showing. I glanced at Gregorio and saw him nodding thoughtfully. Leonard Danzig had a wary look in his eyes. Gus Leemy was frowning.

  “You stole drugs from your employers,” Haig was saying. “Perhaps you produced others. I understand lysergic acid can be readily synthesized by anyone with a middling knowledge of chemistry. With your background and your laboratory facilities it would be child’s play. You brought consignments of drugs to New York, once or twice a week, and you delivered them to your associate at Treasure Chest—”

  “That’s horseshit.” Gus Leemy was leaning forward, the light glinting off the top of his head. “I run that place clean. It’s not a front for nothing at all. It’s a decent operation.”

  Gregorio said, “There’s drugs coming out of there, Gus. Been going on for months, the rumbles we get.”

  “You’re crazy.” He glanced at Danzig, then averted his eyes quickly as if remembering that he and Danzig were supposed to be pretending they didn’t know each other. Since the two of them gave each other an alibi for Cherry’s murder I didn’t quite grasp the logic of this, but they could play it whatever way they wanted. “I run that place clean,” Leemy said. “I don’t fuck with drugs, I never did and I never will.”

  “I never accused you, sir.” Haig tapped his pipe on the desk again, then frowned suddenly at the bowl with the two dead goldfish in it. He rang the bell. I thought that would probably throw Wong, who wouldn’t know what to come in with, but instead Wong came in empty-handed. Haig nodded at the bowl and Wong removed it. “I never accused you, Mr. Leemy,” Haig went on. “If you stand accused of anything it is incompetence. Your nightclub served as a focal point for the dissemination of drugs, but this occurred without your knowledge. While that does not make you a particularly efficient manager, neither does it make you a criminal. It certainly does not make you a murderer.” Haig stroked his beard. “Or you, Mr. Danzig. You or Mr. Leemy might well have killed the person selling drugs out of the Treasure Chest, or issued an order that the person be killed, but neither of you would have had any reason to do away with Miss Abramowicz.”

  Danzig didn’t exactly glower but his face hardened a little. “Your reasoning is interesting,” he said. “But I’m not sure how my name got in that last sentence. I was going out with Cherry, that’s all. That’s the only reason I’m here.”

  “Oh, come off it, Danzig,” Gregorio said. He leaned forward and put a hand on Danzig’s shoulder. “Everybody knows Leemy just fronts for you. And nobody much gives a shit. The boys from the State Liquor Authority might be unhappy but they can’t prove anything, and as far as we’re concerned we don’t care.”

  Danzig smiled. “I have no connection with Treasure Chest. Mr. Leemy is a friend.”

  “Sure, if that’s the way you want it.”

  “That’s what the record should show,” Danzig said.

  All of this was fascinating, but none of it had much to do with who killed Cherry and I was getting impatient. The suspense was fairly thick in the room. I looked at all of them, and the most agitated one was Glenn Flatt, although he wasn’t approaching hysteria yet. He should have been the coolest; I mean, he presumably knew who his contact was, and thus he knew who committed the murder.

  “I could sue you,” Flatt said.

  “Oh, come now,” Haig said. “You’re going to go to jail at the very least for selling illegal drugs and as accessory to the fact of murder in the first degree. Do you really think you could find a lawyer to represent you in a libel action? I somehow doubt it.”

  “You can’t prove any of this.”

  Haig grunted. “I will tell you something,” he said. “There is nothing much simpler than proving something one already knows to be true. The proof generally makes itself available in relatively short order. No, Mr. Flatt, your position is hopeless. You have been selling drugs through a confederate. And what do we know about this accomplice of yours?” He ticked off the points on his fingers. “Your accomplice is regularly to be found at Treasure Chest, either as an employee or an habitual hanger-on. There are several here in this room who fit that description. Miss Wolinski, for one. Mr. Danzig. Mr. Leemy. Mr. Barckover. Miss Remo. Miss Cubbage. Mr. Henderson frequents Treasure Chest often, but if he were selling drugs he would no doubt do so through the medium of one or another of his stores, and—”

  “Drugs!” Haskell was outraged. “Me sell drugs? You have to be out of your mind. Drugs are a death trip.”

  “Indeed. We have already excluded you, Mr. Henderson, so you’ve no need to offer comments. To continue. Miss O’Connor has not been regularly employed at Treasure Chest, so she too may be ruled out. Mr. Leemy and Mr. Danzig may also be excused; they quite clearly did not know what was going on in the establishment. I would further exclude Mr. Lippa because I find the whole nature of this operation incompatible with my impressions of the man.”

  “Does that mean I’m in or out?” Buddy wanted to know, and Haig nodded and said that was exactly his point, and that Buddy was in the clear.

  “Now let us reconstruct the day of the crime. Mr. Flatt’s accomplice in the drug operation—let us call him X, as a sop to tradition—has learned directly or indirectly from Miss Abramowicz that I have been hired to investigate the death of the fish. X realizes that my participation will quickly establish that an attempt has been made on Miss Abramowicz’s life and that the fish were unintentional victims. When this became known, Miss Abramowicz would realize that she possesses some information which makes her dangerous to X, and this information would at once be brought to my attention. That, to be sure, was the original motive for disposing of Miss Abramowicz. She somehow learned enough about the drug operation to make her dangerous, especially in view of the fact that she seems to have been rather scatterbrained and loose-tongued. One hesitates to speak thus of the dead, but the fact appears
to be beyond dispute.

  “Thus X must act, and act quickly. So X contacts Mr. Flatt—yes, sir, it happened just that way, and you needn’t attempt to deny it by shaking your head. X contacted you, Mr. Flatt, and demanded a contact poison. Whether curare was specified or not I have no idea. It hardly matters. You had already supplied strychnine to X, although I cannot state with certainty that you knew how it was to be employed. It is often used as an adulterant in drugs to boost their potency and you might well have furnished it without knowing you were to be the instrument in a homicide. But if there is any other use for curare I am unaware of it. You knew Miss Abramowicz was to be killed, sir. You brought the curare that night with that specific purpose in mind. That was why you took pains to leave the club early, why you established an alibi in Long Island. You are a knowing accessory to murder, sir.”

  Flatt stared at him, and Haig stared back, and Flatt couldn’t take it. He looked down at his hands.

  “You brought the curare,” Haig went on. “You delivered it to X. You left. And X waited, because the last thing X wanted was to murder Miss Abramowicz on the premises of the nightclub. Ideally X would have waited until the evening had come to a close. X and Miss Abramowicz would have left together, and X would have managed to perform the deed in private.

  “This plan was spiked when Mr. Harrison made an appearance at the club. X learned his identity, realized he was my associate, and recognized that there would be no opportunity to go off with Miss Abramowicz and deal with her as planned. Mr. Harrison would instead be interrogating Miss Abramowicz immediately after she finished her performance, at which time her knowledge might well be passed on to him. And this was something X was wholly unprepared to leave to chance.

  “And so X waited, waited until the last minute. Waited until Miss Abramowicz was at the very conclusion of her act, and then injected curare into her bloodstream and killed her.”