Murder and Gold

by Ann Aptaker

  There’s no venom in Alice’s baby doll smile now, no fire in her moonlit eyes. Just a fear she’s working to keep under control, and a sweetness I’d never seen in her before. “Thank you, Cantor,” she says, “for getting me out of reach of the police and hiding me from Johnny.” But before I can say, “You’re welcome,” she puts her arms around my neck and kisses me. It’s a different kind of kiss than I’d ever gotten from Alice. Softer.

  I notice Rosie roll her eyes.

  I pull gently away from the kiss. “It’s time for you to get out of here,” I say, and put Alice’s suitcase into the backseat of the cab. She climbs in beside it, and when I close the door, she turns to the window, smiles a little, and blows me a kiss. The Alice I knew five years ago, the Alice who tempted me into her hotel bed a little while ago, shines through the lingering fear in her smile. It’s the Alice who wants me to come see her tonight.

  Rosie guns the engine, drives the big Checker out of the alley, its tail lights leaving red trails in the dark.

  • • •

  It’s nearly seven o’clock when I exit the hotel by the front entrance. If Huber or one of his badge boys is watching, all they see is me walking along Thirty-Eighth Street to my car, all by myself.

  • • •

  I don’t see any cops on my tail in my rearview mirror, don’t get that skin crawly feeling of eyes on me. But I haven’t stayed alive and out of the slammer this long by being careless, so I do a few maneuvers through crosstown traffic, dodge cabs and buses competing for space outside Grand Central Station, hustle my way to the West Side past annoyed drivers honking their horns, and by the time the neon lights of my Theater District neighborhood streak across my Buick, I’m home free.

  And hungry.

  If any cops are watching my place, they’re in for a long night. I drop into Pete’s instead, ready for a bite to eat and Doris’s good coffee.

  The Tuesday evening crowd is a little livelier than the morning bunch, with out-of-work actors schmoozing over casting notices and endless cups of coffee, musicians charging up for their late-night gigs, their horn or string cases by their sides. Here and there, Broadway beat reporters, theater tickets sticking out of their hatbands, read their program notes while finishing dinner or drinking their coffee. No one gives me the side-eye, which is among the reasons I like my interesting neighborhood.

  I give Doris my order for a chicken pot pie, then head for a phone booth in the back.

  I figure Judson’s gone from the office by now, so I ring him at home. After we exchange hellos, I say, “Got anything for me?”

  “Yeah. You’ve hit the trifecta of dangerous dames. How about I start with Lorraine Quinn since she can’t do any more damage.”

  “A little respect for the dead, Judson.”

  “Sure, okay, sorry. So, Quinn has a bad history. I told you this morning that she left South Jersey for New York, tried her luck at being an actress. Well, all that’s hunky-dory, but she didn’t leave Jersey voluntarily. She was thrown out, warned never to come back. Seems she crossed the wrong politicians when she tried to blackmail them with dirty pictures of their escapades with mistresses or pretty boys. But she forgot that Jersey pols are cozy with the Mob. So it was either get out of town or get dead.”

  Now it’s my own respect for the dead that’s shaky. I tell myself to be a little choosier about who shares my bed. “Looks like she wound up with the perfect job at Hollander’s office,” I say.

  “Yeah, to a T,” Judson says. “Okay, on to dangerous dame number two, Eve Garraway. Twelve years ago, when Eve was a senior at a fancy women’s college upstate and old man Garraway was still alive and kicking, he used his political clout to get his darling daughter out of a scrape and keep it out of the papers.”

  “What kind of scrape?”

  “The bloody kind. Miss Garraway shared an off-campus apartment with a college roommate. They were in the kitchen one night when they got into a tussle, and somehow a carving knife wound up in the roommate’s belly. Eve didn’t call an ambulance; she called Daddy, who took care of things, made sure the mess was cleaned up. And get this: the roommate’s name was Fiona Mallory. Now, if you’re thinking that Miss Mallory was any relation to the Garraway butler and one-time bank thief Desmond Mallory, you’d be correct. She was his daughter.”

  The news that Desmond Mallory even had a daughter comes as a shock. The news that she was killed by Eve Garraway raises the hair on the back of my neck.

  I’ve always known that the world could be a dark and deadly place, known it since I was a kid in Coney Island when Sig Loreale was muscling in on the old Coney rackets and leaving bodies all over the place. I wouldn’t stay alive in my criminal world if I couldn’t deal with its denizens of thugs and killers, mobsters and dirty cops. But the news about the dirty dealings of Lorraine Quinn and the deadly doings of Eve Garraway has darkened even the darkest shadows of my already dark world.

  And yet . . .

  A shaft of light cuts through these shadows, a light that shines in a direction other than mine. Quinn’s and Garraway’s crimes might be well in the past, but revenge can fester for years.

  “Judson, use your most tight-lipped connections to get this information across Huber’s desk. I don’t want him to know where it came from, understand?”

  “Got it. Now, ready for dangerous dame number three?”

  There’s only one name it could be, and it will break my heart. “Tell me.”

  “It seems Alice Lamarr’s hands are dirty as a coal miner’s. Listen to this: the only part of her name that’s real is the Alice part. The name she was born with in Lincoln, Nebraska is Alice Letherby, but she’s gone by Alice Leander, Alice Lorrie, Alice McKenzie, and now Alice Lamarr, which seems to be the one she finally settled on. All those other names wore out their welcome when Alice was pegged in three states as a con artist specializing in jewelry investment scams. She did eighteen months in Indiana Women’s Prison for a con that went bad. Evidently that ended her taste for the racket, and she came to New York a little over five years ago, landed a spot at the Copa as a showgirl.”

  And met me.

  And now that Huber’s found Alice, it won’t be long until his cop’s mind gets curious, sends him digging around for Alice’s story, if he hasn’t already. He didn’t use Alice’s past at the hotel. Maybe he’s holding it for later if he needs to tighten the screws.

  And now I know what Otis meant by Alice’s interesting life. Maybe he figured once a con artist, always a con artist, and he might be her mark if he doesn’t do right by her in her divorce case.

  “Anything on Tap Tenzi? Like where to find him?” I ask Judson.

  “Zip. Guy’s a shadow, but I’ll keep digging around.”

  I tell him okay, we hang up, and I head back to the counter for my pot pie dinner, but I’ve lost my appetite.

  • • •

  I walk out of Pete’s and into a heavy rain. Ordinarily I like the way my neighborhood looks on a rainy night. Everything glistens. The glow from the neon signs is softer. Their colors shimmer on the wet pavement, wash along rain-slicked umbrellas and wet faces. The beauty of the city on a wet night has been known to refresh my spirit as thoroughly as the rain refreshes the streets. But tonight the rain and its pleasures are no match for the bad news about Lorraine and Eve and Alice poisoning my mood.

  It’s only a short walk up the block to my place. I turn up the collar of my coat, pull my cap down low, and dodge puddles.

  “Gold!” The shout comes from a green ’52 Plymouth sedan parked in front of my building, the car’s bulbous body streaked with rain and streetlight, its whitewall tires splashed with gutter grime. Mike Mulroney, the thug who took my gun at Sig’s seaside place this afternoon, gets out of the car and galumphs over to me, his coat collar up, his fedora dripping rain. “Mr. Loreale sent me over to sit on your place until you showed up. He wants to see you. Get in the car. No arguments.”

  An invitation from Sig is never going to come with a “pleas
e” in front of it. And his invitations are never turned down, not if you value your well-being. But I’m happy to take him up on this one. Maybe he’s got something for me on the Quinn and Garraway killings.

  I follow Mulroney to the Plymouth. He opens the back door, but grabs my arm before I can get in. “Gimme your gun,” he says. There’s no point in arguing, so I pull it from my shoulder rig and hand it over. Same ritual as when I drove out to Sig’s place this morning. Mulroney slides my .38 into his pocket, then cocks his head for me to get into the car. I get into the backseat, but I’m not alone. Another of Sig’s galoots, a ham-faced guy with big ears that hold up his hat, is next to me. His greasy pink cheeks shine in the sedan’s overhead light. When Mulroney gets into the driver’s seat and the car doors close, the light goes out and the guy next to me turns into a dark blob silhouetted by streetlight.

  I settle in for the long ride to Long Island, but Mulroney’s turn south on Broadway and a left turn a few blocks later onto Fortieth Street tell me that Sig’s not in his seaside place but in his penthouse here in town.

  We park in front of the sleek black brick tower Sig calls home. His penthouse, whose four-sided terrace is a Gothic confection of gilt arches and pinnacles, sits above twenty-two stories of offices Sig rents to legit businesses. By day, the building’s golden crown shines in the sunlight. At night, when the black brick dissolves into the darkness, the gilded penthouse, glowing like a royal crown, seems to float above the city, a fitting residence for the crime lord whose power reaches across the city and down to the streets below.

  It’s still raining when we get out of the car. Mulroney places himself in front of me, and Ham Face comes up behind me as we make our way to the soaring bronze-and-glass entrance to the building. Inside, the black-tiled lobby is a dim and shadowy cavern barely illuminated by the few wall sconces still lit after business hours. It’s the kind of place that makes the powerful feel important and belittles everyone else.

  I take off my cap and coat, shake off the rain.

  “Hey,” Ham Face says, “you’re messin’ up the floor.”

  “I’m sure Sig can afford to hire someone to mop it up,” I counter.

  Mulroney says, “Shut up, Gold.”

  Our friendly little exchange echoes up into the vaulted ceiling and dissolves in the darkness rising three stories above our heads.

  At the bank of elevators, Mulroney puts a key into a lock for the elevator at the end, Sig’s private car. When the doors open, we all step in, the same parade that marched into the building: Mulroney in front, me in the middle, Ham Face bringing up the rear. This arrangement sorts itself when the doors close and we ride up to the penthouse.

  “Thanks for the protection, boys,” I say. “You never know what goblins might leap out of the elevator walls and kidnap me.”

  I get another, “Shut up, Gold,” from Mulroney.

  At the penthouse floor, the elevator opens onto a green marble hallway that has the warm welcome of a mausoleum. At Sig’s big black door, Mulroney presses the buzzer. A moment later, a maid opens the door and our little parade walks inside.

  The maid takes our wet coats and hats.

  Mulroney says, “Mr. Loreale’s waitin’ for you in his den.”

  I have to go through the living room to get to the den. Despite its surprisingly homey décor for a guy for whom assassination is just another way of doing business, the living room is a haunted house of memories for me. Around the walls, many of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century landscape paintings— which reinforce Sig as lord-of-all-he-surveys— were supplied by me. A small granite Egyptian Eighteenth Dynasty statuette of the god Osiris that I smuggled out of Cairo is on the coffee table, and a twelfth-century jeweled chalice I lifted from the Louvre is on the mantle. It was here in the living room that I handed Sig an Athenian Geometric period vase and he handed me fifteen thousand dollars. And I was here the night that Mom’s daughter Opal died, the night she was going to marry Sig in this living room.

  I don’t linger in this chamber of recollections. I walk out of the living room and through the hall to Sig’s den. My knock on the door is answered by Sig’s slow, gravelly, “Come in.” It drills through the wood.

  He’s reading a file of papers and smoking a cigar at his desk, a sleek burled maple number that matches the burled walnut walls of the den. The desk lamp, the only light in the room, leaves the upper part of his face in shadow but picks out his mouth and the curves of his jowls. The burning tip of his cigar sends a red glow around his eyes. Completing this portrait of the Lord of Hell are tendrils of cigar smoke coiling along his cheek and into the darkness.

  “Sit down, Cantor,” he says, waving his cigar toward the pair of gray leather club chairs that face the desk. “I have information for you.” He’s smiling. I wish he wasn’t.

  But Sig’s just handed me the possibility of the first bit of good news I’ve had since Lorraine Quinn slammed the door of my apartment this morning. Maybe my lousy day is finally turning around. “Let’s hear it, Sig.”

  “Well,” he says, taking a torturous stretch of time before continuing, “it seems City Hall has an interest in the Garraway murder.” It comes out slow as a dirge, the spaces between each word just as deathly.

  “Not surprising,” I say. “Eve Garraway was the daughter of one of the most powerful politicians ever to swindle the State of New York. Our own city pols probably owed old man Garraway their careers. They’d likely remain loyal to his daughter.”

  Sig’s, “Naturally,” rides on a sigh that’s as good as a wagging finger accusing me of being stupid. He leans back in his big chair, his face now completely in the shadows. “You are not seeing the big picture, Cantor.” All I see is the burning tip of his cigar in the darkness.

  “Oh? And what picture is that? Enlighten me.”

  “There are certain facts in Miss Garraway’s past which City Hall would not like brought to light.”

  “If you’re referring to that little incident with the knife and the dead college roommate, where does City Hall come into it?”

  When Sig smiles, even a smile of approval, your first instinct is to run for your life. And when the smile comes through shadows tinted red by the glow of his cigar, as it does now, you remember that adage about abandoning all hope. “That boy of yours,” he says, “what’s his name? Judson? Yes, Judson. He certainly does his homework. You were very smart, Cantor, to take him on.” He lowers his cigar to flick ash into a polished chrome ashtray on the desk. His face is in full darkness now, and only his voice comes through. “Yes, that unfortunate college girl incident is the issue. But your Judson likely does not know the rest of the story, and it’s the rest of the story that the mayor and various members of the city council would like to remain hidden. They are concerned that any investigation into the murder of Eve Garraway would dig up that old dirt. It could expose a number of them as complicit in helping John Garraway make the scandal go away.”

  “Are you telling me City Hall wants Lieutenant Huber to lay off?”

  “That is what I’m telling you.” He takes another pull on his cigar, the glowing tip burning through the dark.

  Scary as that sight is, I like the news it rides on. I can’t squelch a smile, and I don’t want to. I’d give anything to have seen Huber’s face when word came down from the higher-ups ordering him to let go of a headline-grabbing, career-making murder case.

  Sig says, “I wouldn’t smile just yet, Cantor. Naturally, the lieutenant was not happy about it. No policeman likes to be pulled off a case by his superiors.” The word superiors comes through on a hiss. There’s probably a sneer under it, hiding back there in the shadows. “Now, I have it on good authority— well, let us not beat about the bush— I heard it from the mayor himself that Lieutenant Huber offered what he believed was his ace up his sleeve. He told them he would give them a killer they’d approve of. He told them he would give them you.”

  My joy at Huber’s just desserts just went out the window.

&
nbsp; But Sig answered the question he threw at me this afternoon: How many people hate you, Cantor? Right now I can think of one: Lieutenant Norm Huber.

  “I suppose I’ll have to watch my step,” I say.

  “No need,” Sig says as if dismissing something of no importance. “I have secured the guarantee of the mayor and the police commissioner that Lieutenant Huber will not pursue you in the Garraway matter.” He finalizes the statement with a deep puff on his cigar. It sends a red glow around his eyes again.

  I should feel relieved about Sig getting Huber off my back. Instead, it’s making every nerve in my body do somersaults. Sure, Sig has the power to call off the dogs, but he wouldn’t do it unless it has something in it for him. And what’s in this for him seems to be me. He’s not handing me to the cops; he’s handing me to him. “To what do I owe your generosity, Sig?”

  “The politicians may be content to let the Garraway matter drop,” he says, “but I am not. Having a killing take place that I did not sanction, especially the murder of a prominent person such as Miss Garraway, is a loose end I cannot let dangle. Independent operators are pests. They bring unwanted attention, which interferes with the smooth running of my business. So I want the Garraway murder solved, I want her killer found, and I want you to do it, Cantor. You can pursue the case more quietly than the police.”

  “Wait a minute, Sig. Okay, I understand why you want the Garraway killing cleaned up. But why me? You can blanket the town with your army of operatives and thugs who’ll make people talk. They’ll get results a lot faster than I will.”

  “Don’t underestimate yourself, Cantor. You have excellent contacts in Eve Garraway’s world.”

  “I’m not especially well connected to politicians. That’s your department.”

  “I’m speaking of your art people. Your clients, your collectors. Your curators. Miss Parkhurst Trent, for example.”

  That somersault-y feeling just turned into a cold grip on my spine.