Tarnished Gold

by Ann Aptaker

  Before the guy can remember anything he did see, like my briefcase, and before Huber can keep pumping the guy, I grab hold of the questioning. “Mr. Doyle,” I say with a courtesy I don’t feel, “you recognize me as the person who went up to see Hannah Jacobson, right?”

  “Yeah, didn’t I just say so? It was you, all right.”

  “And how do you know it was me?”

  “’Cause I know,” he says. “I recognize you ’cause you’re…you’re…”

  “Come on, Mr. Doyle, you can say it. We’re all friends here.”

  Even in just the light of the building it’s easy to see he’s blushing like a schoolboy. “’Cause you’re…’cause you’re wearing the same coat and hat.”

  I have to hand it to the guy; he wiggled out of that one damn well and wiggled himself exactly where I need him to be. “And you saw me again—what, about a half hour later? That’s at least an hour and a half until the police came around midnight, yes?”

  The guy gives me an uneasy nod.

  “Okay then.” I press him. “When I came out of the building and got into the cab waiting for me at the curb, did I seem different? Did I have any blood on my coat? Do you see any blood on it now? Or on my suit,” I say, opening the coat. “I’m wearing the same suit. See any blood?”

  “No, but—”

  “And what about later, after the neighbor heard noises and a scream in Mrs. Jacobson’s apartment and called the police. Did you see anyone leave the building? Maybe you saw the killer escape and you didn’t even know it.”

  “I didn’t see anybody,” he says, chafing and resentful at my constant questions. “And if whoever killed her used the tradesmen’s entrance in the back of the building, I wouldn’t see them at all. So for all I know, you came back!”

  “No, Mr. Doyle, I didn’t. Believe me,” I say through a slow smile, “I had better things to do.”

  Huber, no doubt feeling trumped by a criminal taking charge of his investigation, cuts off the conversation with a showy wave of authority. “All right, Doyle,” he says, “that’s all.” Cocking his head toward the door of the building, he says, “Let’s go, Gold.”

  But it isn’t all as far as I’m concerned. There’s more I want from Doorman Doyle, because as every New Yorker knows, no one knows a building’s dirty little secrets better than the staff, particularly the super and the doorman. “Listen, Doyle, was there anyone among Mrs. Jacobson’s visitors that you didn’t like? Anyone ever visit who gave you the jitters? Besides me, I mean,” I add with another smile.

  “I shouldn’t tell tales outta school—”

  “School’s out,” I say.

  Fingering his cap as if trying to figure a way he could hide inside the brim and avoid the question, he finally says, “Well, that niece of hers, Miss Stern. Pushy lass, if you ask me.”

  “Pushy how?”

  “You know, just pushy. As if being pretty and young and rich gives her the right to look down her nose.”

  “Oh,” is all I say. Maybe the niece’s only pushiness was to push away the advances of Doorman Doyle.

  “Let’s go, Gold,” Huber says again, making his point by prodding me along.

  Across the lobby, on our way to the elevator, Huber walks behind me, making sure, I guess, that I don’t bolt. He doesn’t lay a hand on me but I feel his presence anyway, like bad breath wafting from a sour mouth.

  In the elevator, during the ride up, he takes the opposite approach and stands in front of me, nearly pressing me to the wall, making sure he’ll be first out of the elevator. Sidekick Tommy is beside him. Huber says, “Stay outside when we’re in the apartment, Tommy. Understand? Stay in the hall. I don’t want you underfoot.”

  What’s Huber’s beef? First he slaps Tommy on the head to wake him from my chair. Now Huber’s cutting the guy on the job. I wonder how soon Tommy is going to put in for a transfer.

  The uniformed cop posted at the door of Mrs. J’s apartment looks bored until he sees me. Then his big pink-and-blond face goes through the usual series of permutations from bafflement to disgust to recognition—secondhand recognition, really, maybe from hearing about me from Huber or the other badge boys who’ve bandied my name around the precincts over the years.

  I have to admit, I take a certain amount of pleasure in my dubious fame with the Law. Knowing that the mere fact of me annoys them gives me joy.

  But the joy is gone when I walk into Hannah Jacobson’s apartment. The cozy living room with its pools of lamplight where Mrs. J and I shared a bit of life has turned into a charnel house. Where empty walls once seemed to be waiting for rescued artwork, now they’re canvases for wild sprays of blood. The sight makes me feel weak in the knees, not from all the blood but from the raging hate that splashed itself across the walls. Hate killed Hannah Jacobson’s family, and it finally came for her.

  Huber evidently doesn’t share my revulsion. Walking around the living room, his coat hanging on his skinny body like bark around a tree, he moves through the death room as if he’s the most comfortable man in the world, sidestepping the chalk outline and blood on the rug next to the sofa and the coffee table, where Mrs. J fell dead. The pool of blood looks so large next to the outline of a body so small.

  “Well, Gold? Anything to say for yourself? You going to tell me what you were doing here?”

  I don’t answer him. Instead I walk around the room, looking for anything that’s changed since I was here, maybe a clue to what happened to the Dürer, though I know that’s just wishful thinking. I’m really just playing for time, running ideas through my head that will keep Huber out of my business with Mrs. J.

  Huber may be an obnoxious lout, but he’s a perceptive lout. He’s caught me looking at the side table at the end of the sofa where Mrs. J sat when I gave her the Dürer. “What is it, Gold?”

  “That side table. It’s damaged. There’s a chip at the corner. I’m pretty sure the table was in good shape earlier.”

  We’re both looking at the floor near the little table. Huber’s pulled a handkerchief from his pants pocket. He bends to the floor, uses the handkerchief to retrieve a fragment of mahogany from the rug. “Maybe the fingerprint boys can do something with this,” he says. “Maybe you left a little bit of yourself behind.”

  “Still trying to tie me into something, Lieutenant? Stop wasting the taxpayers’ time. There’s nothing more for me here, so if you’ll excuse me, I’m leaving.”

  “Not so fast. You still haven’t told me what you were doing here.”

  “And I don’t have to. You know I didn’t kill her, so my social calls are none of your business.”

  “Your whole life is police business, Gold. You being the last person to see Hannah Jacobson alive is my business.”

  “Then you’ll have to talk to my lawyer,” I say as I walk to the door. “You remember? The high-priced one you’re so anxious to let into your bedroom? Good night, Lieutenant.”

  “Whatever you were doing here, Gold, I’ll find out,” he calls after me. “I’ll find out your connection to the dead woman.”

  “Do what you have to do, Lieutenant.” I’m just about out the door.

  “And you, Gold? What are you gonna do about it?”

  Good question.

  Chapter Four

  The first thing I do about it is find a phone booth and call Judson Zane.

  Judson is a young man of many talents. The smartest thing I ever did was hire those talents to work for me. Judson’s brain is organized with the precision of a Swiss watch. He’s sharp with details, like keeping track of clients and their money, and he has deep contacts among the sort of people who provide services you might need but who’ll never ask why you need them. He’s also very good at finding out people’s secrets, though he’s silent as stone when it comes to secrets I need kept. He spends a lot of time on the telephone, which in Judson’s hands is a chisel probing for information. Judson is over twenty-one but not by much, is thin and wiry as a clothes hanger, favors shirts without a tie—bu
t more often a white T-shirt tucked into his dungarees—and wears wire-rimmed eyeglasses, which give him the appearance of being shy, but he isn’t. Young women from Park Avenue to Delancey Street think Judson’s adorable. He’s never alone when he doesn’t want to be.

  After his groggy hello, I say, “It’s me, Judson.”

  “Welcome back Stateside. How’d everything go? You made the delivery?”

  “Yeah, I made the delivery, but the job’s gone sour.”

  “Huh? What are you talking about, gone sour? Don’t tell me the old lady stiffed us for the ten grand. She didn’t sound like the type.”

  “Hannah Jacobson paid us every dime. But now she’s dead and the goods are gone. Stolen.”

  Judson handles this news the way he always handles tricky news: silently. He’s not the type to blurt cheap responses but efficiently sorts out the information and its possible consequences. After he’s sorted the bad news I just gave him he says, “How’d it happen?”

  “She was murdered, cut up, according to the cops.”

  “You spoke to the cops?”

  “Couldn’t help it. Huber showed up at my door.”

  “And he thinks you killed her?”

  “Uh-uh. But he knows I was at the Jacobson place tonight because her doorman spilled it. I was able to sidestep Huber about what I was doing there, at least for now, so he still doesn’t know about the goods. He doesn’t know anything’s been stolen. Listen, Judson, I can’t just let this lie there. Hannah Jacobson was my client. If it gets around that a client of mine wound up dead and the goods pinched, it could be bad for business if I don’t do something about it.”

  Sure, that spiel I just threw at him is the official line, but I know damn well Judson heard me trying not to gag on it, heard me struggle not to go soft over Mrs. J’s death. I hear it in the quiet way he asks, “What do you want me to find out, Cantor?” But that’s as sentimental as he’ll get, which is how we both want it.

  “There’s a brother,” I say, “a Marcus Stern. He was a professor of chemistry at some college or other here in town, maybe still is. But he’s also a big deal in the plastics line. Stern’s married, and there’s a daughter. I don’t know the wife’s name or the daughter’s name or how old the girl is, but I think the doorman at Mrs. Jacobson’s building has eyes for her so she has to be at least a teenager. I want you to find out all you can about the Sterns, Judson. Who likes them, who doesn’t. They’re supposed to have money, but you never know, so take a good look inside their pockets. And get me an address on them, too. And listen, I know it’s the middle of the night, but if you have to, wake people up.”

  When I hang up, I already have another nickel in my fingers, ready to drop it in the slot and call Rosie. She’s probably still up. She’s probably waiting for me to call. I should talk to her, tell her how terrific she is for thinking fast and smart and saving our skins. I should tell her all sorts of sweet things.

  I put the nickel back in my pocket, walk out of the phone booth and into the night.

  At the corner, I hail a cab.

  *

  Vivienne Parkhurst Trent lives in the house she grew up in, an ornate number that’s bigger than your average town house but smaller than Grand Central Station. It’s on one of the swankiest blocks between Fifth and Madison, down the block from Central Park. The place is a three-story limestone confection in the Beaux-Arts style, meaning a little French, a little Italian, a bit of Baroque, a touch of Rococo, a dash of Classical Greek, and a whole lot of money, which more or less describes Vivienne, too. But she’s no society dilettante. When it comes to art, especially of the European Renaissance, Vivienne knows her stuff. She’s a curator at the city’s most high-hat museum. It was Vivienne who brought Hannah Jacobson to me.

  The door to Vivienne’s pile of stones is a thick slab of black walnut carved top to bottom with forest scenes painted red. During the day it looks like the forest is on fire. At night, with just the glow of streetlamps raking the door in light and shadow, it looks like the trees are bleeding. The massive door is original to the house, commissioned by Vivienne’s grandfather when he married the Parkhurst copper heiress during the Gilded Age. I once asked Vivienne why she kept such a spooky front door. “I like it,” is all she said. She smiled when she said it, though. Like everything else about Vivienne, the smile was gorgeous, as sure of itself as all pampered things are.

  The doorbell is silent from the street but I’ve been in the house before and know well the doorbell’s rich cascade of chimes. Right now, I’m sure those cascading chimes are disturbing the sleep of the butler, a guy named George who also doubles as a cook. He’s a very good cook.

  He eventually opens the door. His face is one big frown of annoyance at the late intrusion, but the frown soon curves up in surprise at who’s in the doorway, before his expression finally settles into controlled irritation that it’s me. Despite all his facial permutations, George always looks like a butler. Even in his pajamas and brown robe, his graying brown hair pillow flattened on one side of his head and sleep tangled on the other, he maintains the formal bearing of those who live to serve.

  “Good evening, George. My apologies for getting you out of bed, but it’s important that I speak to Miss Trent.”

  “The hour is rather late,” he says, in the dry tone of someone whose sleep was rudely interrupted but who’s determined to carry out his duties with dignity, “Surely your business can wait until—”

  “No, it can’t wait. I wouldn’t be on her doorstep at almost three in the morning if my business could wait.”

  “In that case,” he says with a slightly irritable sigh, “you may wait in the living room. I’ll inform Miss Trent you’re here.” Even George’s well practiced butler lingo can’t hide his distaste for the interruption I’m bringing to his carefully organized and civilized routine, not to mention his sleep.

  George takes my cap and coat and hangs them on the coatrack, a scary looking row of elephant tusks, souvenirs of Vivienne’s father’s African safaris. Daddy Trent was quite an adventurer, hacking his way through jungles to stalk big game. The elephants got their revenge, though. On his last safari, when Vivian was fifteen and confined to boarding school, a big bull gored Daddy Trent to death. Vivienne’s mother, whose mind was said to be fragile to begin with, was along for the ride and saw her husband ripped to pieces. She went nuts and stayed nuts. Vivienne visits her in the sanitarium.

  I’ve always wondered if Vivienne inherited a trace of her mother’s madness, but figured probably not; she’s a respected member of a profession that requires disciplined brain power. Still, you never know.

  George takes his leave of me and walks up the broad stairway to the second floor, where the private quarters and guest rooms are located. What the mansion set calls the public rooms—living room, dining room, library, and in this house a ballroom said to rival Mrs. Astor’s—are down here on the first floor. George is billeted on the third floor, his bedroom in handy proximity to the house’s linen closets and now-empty servants’ quarters, used these days for overflow storage. Before the War, the house employed three additional servants. And according to Vivienne, before the first war back in ’17, there was a staff of nearly a dozen. But with the exception of the requisite butler, live-in staff went out of fashion when chauffeurs and footmen went off to be soldier boys, and parlor maids earned higher pay in war-production factories. The fellas came back from their overseas adventures with bigger ambitions than servility. And when they came back from Europe and the Pacific this time around, first they bumped all the Rosie the Riveters out of their factory jobs, and then they sealed the deal by marrying them.

  So it’s just Vivienne and George rattling around here these days, giving the place an empty feel, which isn’t helped by the echo of my shoes tapping along the checkered marble floor in the hall as I wander toward the living room. But Vivienne’s money and George’s ministrations, helped by weekly visits from hired house cleaners, do a great job of upkeep. On either si
de of me, the carved mahogany paneled walls are polished to a luster and lined with a coolly serene Vermeer interior here, a moody Caravaggio church drama there, a couple of Leonardo studies of hands, a small, jewel-like Van Eyck triptych of the Annunciation commissioned by a Flemish cloth merchant hoping to buy his way into heaven, and a honey-toned Madonna by Fra Filippo Lippi, the bad-boy friar of fifteenth-century Florence. The model for the Madonna was likely Lippi’s mistress, a former nun. I acquired two of the works for Vivienne, even slipped the Lippi past the Vatican’s watchdogs before finally making it out of the great arms of St. Peter’s Square and into a cab for the short hop to the Tiber River and a waiting boat. It wasn’t as hard as it sounds. I was dressed as a priest. A monsignor even gave me the eye.

  Judson, of course, acquired the paperwork that stamps the acquisitions legit.

  The living room is one of my favorite rooms in Vivienne’s house, not that I’ve seen them all. For instance, I haven’t seen Vivienne’s bedroom. I’d like to, but to my disappointment she’s kept our tête-à-têtes all business, even over elegant meals whipped up by George. But I’ve seen enough of the house to like some rooms better than others. Some are too stiff and stuffy for my taste, holdovers from Grandpa Trent’s day, though the fussy decor was probably Grandma Parkhurst’s doings. But Vivienne’s been redecorating, and she’s done up the living room in rich greens and browns and golds that complement the pale skies and dappled waterways of the seventeenth-century Dutch landscapes around the walls. When I turn on a couple of table lamps, the room is as welcoming as it is classy, congenial as a warm snifter of brandy.

  I make myself comfortable on the sofa, a good-looking slate-green number with a row of black pillows fringed in gold. It’s the first time all night I’ve had a chance to relax since I left Mrs. Jacobson’s with ten grand in my pocket and arrived back at my apartment with Rosie.

  Rosie…