Murder and Gold

by Ann Aptaker

  “Maybe you don’t need it, but you could do it. Or maybe you could hire it.”

  He stops at the cabin door but doesn’t answer me, just stands there, his hand on the doorknob. A moment later, he walks inside, slamming the door behind him.

  Red says, “Watch y’self with that one, Cantor. Snooty young bucks like him are just slick enough to be trouble.”

  • • •

  It’s nearly nine-thirty when I’m back at my Buick at Red’s berth in Brooklyn. A half hour later I’m across the bridge again and back in Manhattan. It rises in all its glittering splendor, the bright lights a veil obscuring the shadows where dirty deeds are done, where people like Sig Loreale get away with murder and people like the Atchleys get away with everything else, maybe murder, too.

  The Atchleys, mother and son, have given me a headache, and the murder of Alice Lamarr hurts my soul. I could use a drink and a little soothing.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Green Door Club combo’s rendition of “Be My Love” isn’t the popular Mario Lanza throat strainer but more in the mood of a candlelight seduction. Couples on the dance floor sway all over each other as I walk to the bar.

  Peg pours me a double Chivas before I’m even on a bar stool. “I heard about Alice on the radio,” she says when I’m seated. “News report said suicide.”

  “You believe that crap?”

  “About as much as I’d believe a peach tree back home could walk right down to Mr. Sam’s fruit stand and shake its peaches into the bin. You got anyone in mind who’s good for it?”

  “You don’t want to know, Peg.”

  “Afraid you’ll have to protect me?” she says through a light laugh.

  “Afraid you’ll try to protect me,” I say, through my own chuckle.

  Peg pours herself a short bourbon. She takes a sip, then says, “I’ve been reading about a bunch of our kind of folks who think it’s time to protect each other.”

  “You mean in that magazine you gave Rosie?”

  “Uh-huh. Articles in there say it’s time to get organized. You know, fight back against the Law and the raids.”

  “When the war starts, let me know,” I say, and finish off my scotch. “Just don’t make me wear a uniform.”

  “The war’s already on, Cantor.”

  “Well, let’s postpone it for tonight. I’ve been fighting for my life all day, and what I need tonight is a furlough. The kind that comes with whiskey and soft shoulders.” I put another buck on the bar and motion for Peg to refill my glass while I look around the room. Couples talk and kiss at tables, or sway and kiss on the dance floor where suits and ties press close to dresses and what’s inside them.

  But the unattached, the uncoupled, are at the bar. Some, lost in loneliness, look only at their drinks, others size up who’s who. A pretty brunette in a pale green dress she fills to the brim gives me a smile. I smile back, get off the bar stool, take my glass of scotch with me.

  “Hello, what’s your name?” I say to the pretty brunette.

  “Marjorie,” she says in a voice surprisingly flat for such a curvy body and sparkling blue eyes. But I’m not interested in her voice.

  “Well, Marjorie, would you like to dance?”

  She’s agreeable, so I take her arm lightly, lead her to the dance floor. The combo’s switched from “Be My Love” to “Tenderly,” a swoony number that Rosemary Clooney recorded in a silky rendition.

  We start dancing. Marjorie’s body fits nicely along mine. A good start to that furlough I mentioned.

  We dance, we sway. I start to drift from the ugliness of the day, drift away from guilt over not giving Alice that good-bye kiss, guilt over not protecting her, guilt over giving Lorraine the brush-off. I drift away from seeing a knife in Eve Garraway’s back, drift away from Sig’s threats and the Atchleys’ arrogance. I just drift in Marjorie’s arms. Let my body do my thinking, give my mind a rest.

  “You must lead quite a life,” Marjorie whispers in my ear. “I mean, those scars, and that cut at the corner of your mouth.”

  Her whisper might as well be a bugle call, waking me from my dreamy drifting, calling me back to my battlefield life.

  I stop dancing. “I’m sure you’re swell, Marjorie, but yeah, these scars on my face are the story of my life, and right now my life is calling.”

  “So you’re telling me you’re leaving?”

  “Sorry, yeah.”

  She shrugs like it doesn’t matter, or maybe I don’t matter, and walks off the dance floor.

  Just as well. The band’s taking a break, replaced by a jukebox tune, a rock and roll number with a booming beat and lyrics that sound like the guy’s gagging on every word.

  • • •

  The phone’s ringing when I walk into my apartment. I pick up the receiver, barely get through “Hello” before I hear Mom Sheinbaum’s, “So I’ve been calling and calling. What, you’ve been out carousing when a person should be home in bed at this hour? Such a life you lead.”

  “It has its charms. What’s on your mind, Mom?”

  “You asked me to noodle around about the Garraway dame’s goods. Well, I noodled. And I found out something maybe you should know.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Good. It seems an outta town auction house has been talking to Garraway’s lawyers about what happens to her collection now that she’s dead. The lawyers said they can’t discuss what’s in Garraway’s will, but they told that shifty butler, Desmond Mallory, to hang around in the house in the meantime. Y’know, like a caretaker.”

  “Makes sense,” I say. “The Garraway collection can’t be settled until Eve’s murder case is resolved. The stuff could be part of the evidentiary material.”

  “Sure, okay,” Mom says, “but that’s not what’s interesting. That auction house, it’s a Chicago outfit, Sterling Auctions.”

  “I know them. Very high line.”

  “Good for them. But it’s the money behind them that’s the story, Cantor.”

  My first thought is the Mob. My second thought is some powerful players like the Chicago equivalent of the Atchleys. But before I get those ideas out of my mouth, Mom is already supplying the answer: “It’s mister big shot Loreale’s money. Yeah, that’s right, Sig’s the biggest shareholder. Practically owns the place. Cleans up his dirty cash as good as one of those newfangled modern washing machines.”

  I should be stunned, but I’m not. I should be hopped up on anger at Sig manipulating me, but I’m not. Instead, a small chuckle sneaks out of me. It rolls into a rumbling deep-in-the-gut laugh, a laugh of choking grief over Alice’s murder, a laugh of cynical amusement over Sig’s sleight of hand.

  “Cantor?” Mom says. “This is funny? The guy’s running you around and you think it’s funny?”

  “Funny as a funeral,” I say, my laugh twisting down into a tight chuckle. “Thanks for noodling around.”

  I hang up, pour myself a short Chivas, have an enjoyable if useless daydream of making a midnight run to Sig’s place where I wake him up and slap him silly. I tell him I know his game to make me do his dirty work by hunting down Eve’s killer while Sterling Auctions gets the Garraway collection on consignment, no questions asked, auctions it off piece by piece, and Sig pockets a fortune.

  But it’s only a daydream. I just enjoy the scotch instead, and then another, and then I take Mom’s advice and go to bed.

  I turn off the bedside light. I’m laughing again, choking on it.

  • • •

  I’m on my way out to Pete’s Luncheonette for breakfast and Doris’s good coffee when Lieutenant Huber shows up at my door. He walks in uninvited, just pushes right past me into my living room.

  I say, “Well good morning to you, too, lieutenant. Come to arrest me for anything in particular today?”

  His hands are stuffed in the pockets of his brown tweed coat, which flaps like loose tree bark when he turns around to face me, his fedora low on his brow, throwing a shadow across his hooded eyes. He doesn’
t look happy. Then again, he’s never happy to see me. But he looks even unhappier on this Thursday morning, and it’s only eight o’clock. If his mood grows any more sour as the day moves along, by noon the guy might be downright homicidal.

  He says, “Alice Lamarr didn’t kill herself.” His gravelly croak through his bad mood is tough to take before I’ve had my coffee.

  I say, “And I didn’t kill Eve Garraway. Now that we’ve gotten those weights off our chests, we can move on to exactly what you’re doing here, lieutenant.”

  He doesn’t say anything, just looks at me, purses his thin lips, looks away, then looks back at me. Whatever’s on his mind, he came here to dump it in my lap but he’s not quite sure how to do it. He says, “I don’t like you, Gold,” to break the ice, I guess.

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  His tsk pretty much spits annoyance. “It’s back talk like that that’s part of the reason. And the way you live your life is disgusting, even if you weren’t a thief and a smuggler. You know, I could arrest you just for wearing that snazzy blue suit. There’s an ordinance against dressing like you do, peacocking around in the wrong clothes. Your whole life is criminal—”

  “Okay, lieutenant, you can cut the litany of my transgressions and just tell me why the hell you’re here. And by the way, you look like you could use a drink, or a good night’s sleep.”

  “What I need,” he says, adjusting his hat as if his head itches, “is for you to leave my precinct. Better yet, leave town. Take your sick life and criminal racket somewhere else. But I guess I won’t live to see that wish come true.”

  “I love you, too, lieutenant.” My delivery’s flat and dull as cardboard. “But that doesn’t mean I want you in my house, especially at eight in the morning, and before I’ve had my breakfast. So what the hell are you doing here?”

  “Very cute, Gold,” he says through an acid grin. “Look, the Lamarr case is all locked up. Nothing I can do about it.” He almost gags on every word. “You and I both know she didn’t kill herself, but the brass is sticking to that line. You were, uh, close to Lamarr,” he says in a way that makes me want to scrub his filthy tongue with a wad of steel wool, “so maybe you have an idea about why her case is slammed shut with that suicide line?” He looks at me like he’s using his eyes to drag an answer from of my throat.

  But it’s not worth my life to bring Sig’s name into it, at least not yet. There’s still the Garraway business with Sig, which just added another tangle after last night’s phone call from Mom. So my only answer to Huber is to shake my head.

  Huber’s pinched face doesn’t wear a smile well, and the smile he gives me now through his tobacco-yellow teeth makes me glad I haven’t eaten breakfast yet. “You’re lying, Gold,” he says. “You know more than you’re telling, but I’m gonna leave that alone. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

  “We, lieutenant?”

  He’s got that near-gagging look on his face again. “Y’know, Gold, even though I don’t like you, and it’s a sure bet you’re not too crazy about me, I gotta admit there’s one thing we have in common. We don’t like being pushed around.”

  The idea of having something in common with a cop, especially this cop, is about as comforting as having pins shoved under my fingernails. But I can’t argue with Huber’s point. I don’t like getting pushed around, and it doesn’t surprise me that an up-from-the-ranks cop like Norm Huber doesn’t like it either.

  He says, “Maybe we can help each other out.”

  I give that a grin that has more doubt in it than humor. “Well, that’s a new one,” I say. “I never thought you’d wave an olive branch in my face.”

  “I’m not any happier about it than you are, Gold. If I had my way, I’d lock you up for the Garraway murder just to get a wrong-dressing deviant like you off the street.”

  “That’s more like it, that’s the cop I know. You’d send me to the electric chair just because you don’t like my tailoring.”

  “Cut the smart mouth, Gold. I can still run you in.”

  “But that wouldn’t help you with whatever it is you came here for. Listen, lieutenant, stop dancing. Somebody’s pushing you around,” I say, keeping what I know about it to myself, “and you don’t like it. Well, I don’t blame you. But you said we could help each other. How about you fork over and tell me what the hell you’re talking about.”

  His face takes on the tight look of a guy searching for a last chance to change his mind. Finally, he says, “I don’t like having two unsolved murders.”

  “Lamarr and—”

  “Garraway. And you were right about there being no fingerprints on the knife. Whoever killed her wiped that fancy handle clean, or maybe wore gloves.”

  “So you’ve dropped the idea that I’m her killer?”

  He gives that a sideways smile. “Let’s just say I could be convinced. Oh, I still think you could be good for it, but other possibilities have, um, cropped up.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as it seems Garraway had a nasty past, a hushed-up killing of her college roommate. Funny thing, some interesting dirt landed on my desk. Dirt about Eve Garraway, Lorraine Quinn, and Alice Lamarr. You wouldn’t have any idea how it got there, would you?” If his eyes probed me any deeper, they’d come out the other side and burrow into my living room wall.

  “I guess someone did some good police work,” I say with a not-so-innocent shrug.

  “Uh-huh. Yeah, well, if Garraway had one skeleton in her expensive closet, maybe there’s others. Maybe there’s a skeleton some people don’t want dragged out of that closet.”

  “Powerful people who could squeeze the police brass, who then push you around?”

  He doesn’t like the sound of that, even makes him wince. It’s the first time in the years I’ve known him that his wince isn’t directed at me. This time it’s directed at whatever anonymous powers are pushing him around.

  If he only knew.

  He says, “I’ve had the Lamarr business shoved down my throat, and now the Garraway business is getting shoved under the rug. Strings are being pulled, Gold, strings I can’t see, but maybe you can. It’s too late about Lamarr, but maybe not about Garraway. Somebody, or maybe a lot of somebodies, wants the case to just disappear. That annoys my cop’s soul.”

  I want to say I didn’t know you had a soul, but insulting the guy could bring what’s turning out to be an interesting conversation to an end. So I say instead, “What’s my part in all this, Huber?”

  “Could be all that art in her collection is at the center of this. That’s where you come in. You have connections in that world. You can nose around there, see if anyone wanted her out of the way to get to her stuff.”

  “C’mon, lieutenant,” I say as if he tried to kid me and failed, “you know it’s not as simple as that. If someone killed for it, they’d have to move vast amounts of art and artifacts from Eve’s vault and move it through her house on the sly, which would be a helluva job. And everyone in the art game would hear about the heist, know the stuff was stolen, so it would be hotter than a five-alarm fire. Without a prearranged buyer, the thief or thieves couldn’t unload any of it. But like I said, you already know that.”

  “Sure, I know it, but I also know that not every thief is as slick as you, unless you’re telling me it can’t be done.”

  “Sure, it can be done. Anything can be done, as long as you make smarter arrangements.”

  “Okay, then use your connections to find out if someone is either stupid, or made those smarter arrangements.”

  I give him a thoughtful, “Uh-huh,” with more than a dose of distrust under it. “Okay, suppose I take you up on it and snoop around. That’s only half of our Devil’s bargain, lieutenant. You said you could help me out. What’s your end?”

  “I could get you off the hook for Garraway’s murder.”

  “I’m already off the hook,” I say.

  “For the moment.”

  That’s the problem with making
a deal with cops. You can’t trust deals with people who have the power to take your freedom.

  I feel my smile harden and my eyes narrow. But I force a more accepting expression. It may be a Devil’s bargain, but having Huber’s gun and badge in my corner is better than no bargain at all, and Sig won’t know a damn thing about it.

  Meanwhile, I need to know just how much Huber knows. I need to hear anything he has on the Garraway killing. “How deep have you dug into Eve Garraway’s life?” I ask. “Maybe figured any enemies besides the crowd involved in the college roommate cover-up?”

  “The daughter of Boss Garraway is bound to have enemies,” he says as if that’s an old story. “I’d be working that list all the way to my retirement. You have something to narrow the list?”

  “Could be. You know the Atchleys?”

  “The banking family?”

  “The same. Word has it they had a beef with Eve Garraway.”

  Huber lifts his chin, tilts his head back, his hooded eyes under the brim of his fedora narrowing to penetrating slits. “What kind of beef, and where’d you hear about it?”

  “Let’s just say I heard it around.” There’s no way I’m selling Vivienne out, not in this lifetime or any lifetime I might stumble into. “And the beef involves that favorite quartet for murder: money, power, jealousy, and revenge. Y’know, hell hath no fury like . . . well, you know the rest.”

  “You telling me Eve had a fling with the Atchley boy?”

  “Wrong Atchley.”

  It would surprise me if Huber looked surprised, but he doesn’t, because cops, like outlaws, have seen a lot and heard almost everything.

  “By the way,” I say, “I had a chat with James Atchley last night. He docks his yacht at Seventy-Ninth Street. He’s pretty protective of the Atchley name and interests, and the guy’s got a temper to boot.”