His square jaw, broad build, and clear blue eyes made him look like he’d just stepped off a recruitment poster. For the better part of the past twenty years, scores of gangsters and criminals had come and gone in New York City, but Chief Carmichael remained. Mostly because the other gangsters and criminals who took their place paid him off to stay in business.
I also knew he was every bit as tough as he looked, maybe even tougher. And being locked in the shithouse with him wasn’t exactly the way I’d planned on starting my night.
Carmichael gave me that cruel, crooked smile he usually got when he was in a playful mood.
I knew he fed off intimidating people, so I wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction. “Evening, Andy. I thought you gave up prowling men’s toilets years ago.”
But Carmichael ignored the insult. “Look at you. Little Charlie Doherty all dressed up for a night on the town. The very picture of elegance. And we know what happens to pictures, don’t we, Charlie?”
“Sure.” I went back to fiddling with my tie. It kept my hands from shaking. “Same thing we do to tyrants and crooked police chiefs. We hang them.”
He forced a laugh as he made a show of looking me up and down. “I’ve got to hand it to you, though. You’re the epitome of prosperity. Reminds me of something my dear, departed mother used to say: ‘Put a beggar on horseback and he’ll ride to hell.’”
The knot was coming along okay. “No horseback for me these days, Andy. If I ride to hell, it’ll be behind the wheel of a brand new Cadillac. The whole damned way. If I have to go, then I’m going in style.”
Carmichael’s smile faded. “You’re as smug as ever, eh, little man?”
“Smugger, if that’s a word,” I said. “Comes with the wardrobe. And the address.” I winked at him in the mirror. “Sixty-Third and Madison is a hell of a lot better than a third-floor walk-up in the Bronx.”
Carmichael started walking toward me. “It’s a shame what’s happened to you, Charlie. You used to be a good cop. A good man. A man of principle.”
Now it was my turn to laugh. “Come on, Andy. It’s just us girls in here. Save the good cop bullshit for the well-heeled dopes on the other side of the door, will you?”
“Fair enough,” he said. “I suppose I meant you used to be a wiser man. Wise enough to know you should never cross me.”
I pulled the ends of the tie out and was satisfied by the way it looked. “Is this a one-sided conversation, or are you going to tell me what you’re talking about?”
“The Fairfax case,” he said. “And don’t bother denying it, either. I know the widow hired you, and you were seen leaving her residence yesterday morning. You were later spotted talking to Dr. Matthew Blythe at the New York Athletic Club later that afternoon. And you were at the crime scene today.”
Not only did I have gunmen trailing me, but Carmichael’s shadows, too. That led my mind in directions I didn’t want it to go. Directions that led to him having a hand in getting that poor bastard killed.
I kept my anger in check. “You seem to know a lot. Your snitches tell you what I had for lunch yesterday? I forgot.”
“Crow,” Carmichael said. “Same thing you always eat. Sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong could get you hurt.”
But it got me thinking about something. “I take it those were your boys with the Tommy gun yesterday?”
“Not at all,” he said, “but we saw it happen. We see everything, Charlie. And the moment I want you dead, you’ll never see it coming.”
I watched him take a step closer to me in the mirror. He was a good half a head taller than me, and almost twice as broad. The uniform made him look even bigger. “But I don’t want you dead. I want us to be friends. We used to be friends, remember?”
“Sounds great to me. Say, I’ve got box seats to the Yankee game tomorrow night. You still seeing that Italian broad in Queens? I can get an extra ticket for her if you ask me nicely.”
Carmichael let out a heavy breath through his nose. He usually did that before he started swinging. He’d slugged me once. I wouldn’t let him do it again.
But instead of throwing a punch at me, he said, “I don’t owe you an explanation for anything I do, but this one time I’ll give you one. A lot of people in this town wanted that Fairfax business wrapped up tight and put to bed for good. The mayor. Business leaders. And blue bloods like the crowd Fairfax runs with. Suicide’s a nasty business that tends to raise a lot of even nastier questions. They wanted it to go away, so I made it go away. Wrote it off as an accident, even though everyone in their right mind knows different. All was right with the world. Damned thing was all but forgotten.”
He bent at the waist and spoke right into my ear. “Next thing I know you come out of your hole and start sniffing around, complicating things. Why is that, Charlie?”
Since he already knew so much, there was no point in denying it. I kept up my routine, straightening out my collar and flattening the lapels of my tuxedo. “I’m not complicating a damned thing. Just trying to help a widow find out why her husband killed himself.”
“That’s good. Since you’re working for her, you can tell her you looked into it and couldn’t find a thing. It’ll be an eternal mystery, just like it should be.”
“I already tried that. It didn’t take.”
“Why? And if you try to pull that client confidentiality bullshit with me, I’ll put you right through that fucking mirror.”
I knew he only used that word when he was desperate, and I needed to keep him as calm as possible. “She knows what you did for her, but still doesn’t think it was a suicide. She was running all over town, making a fool of herself. Some of her friends referred her to me and asked me to look into why he did it.”
“Friends of hers,” Carmichael repeated. “The Van Dorns, from what I hear.”
I ignored that. “I explained to Mrs. Fairfax that you did her a big favor at great personal risk, too. But this isn’t about you, Andy. It’s about her husband and why the poor bastard killed himself in his office on that particular morning.”
Carmichael stood up to his full height and folded his arms across his chest. “So that’s why you were talking to Dr. Blythe yesterday?”
“He was Fairfax’s oldest friend and personal doctor,” I said. I left out the part about Mrs. Fairfax’s list. Carmichael would have wanted to see it, which would’ve caused even more trouble. “I thought Fairfax might’ve had cancer or something and that’s why he’d killed himself. Turns out he was pretty healthy.” I had no intention of mentioning anything about the countess or the other women in Fairfax’s life. Carmichael only would’ve threatened me to leave them alone. The less he knew, the better off I’d be.
But Carmichael wasn’t a fool. “That’s all? Nothing else?”
“Quit playing innocent, Andy,” I said. “It doesn’t look good on you. If you already know I was there, you’ve already had Hauser and his boys talking to everyone who was working at the club. You know how long I was there, so you know I wasn’t there long.”
“The good doctor give you the idea to head up to Fairfax’s office and shoot the place up?”
“I didn’t even have my gun. But whoever shot up the office were probably the same people who’ve been following me since yesterday. Probably the same bunch that iced Dr. Blythe, too. You say you had me followed, so you probably already know who did it.”
Carmichael’s expression changed. Not enough for someone else to notice it, but enough for me to see it.
“I get it. You didn’t have someone following me all the time, did you? Your bloodhounds missed that one, didn’t they? What happened, Andy? Did I give them the slip? Who was it? That new guy who’s working with Hauser? Billy, I think his name was.”
I could tell by his expression I was right, but he’d never admit it. “You were the assignment, not Dr. Blythe.”
“Then you should be out looking for whoever killed him instead of in here pestering me.”
“I can pester anyone I want, especially material witnesses to a murder. Especially if there’s a good chance that witness could become a suspect in said murder.”
I turned to face him for the first time since he’d walked in. “I had nothing to do with that and you know it.”
“Maybe I do.” Carmichael shrugged. “Maybe I don’t. What I do know is that you found something in a safe in Fairfax’s office. That’s material evidence and I want it.”
“Why? The Fairfax case is closed. You said so yourself.”
He uncrossed his arms and flexed his fists. “Tell me what you found.”
“Nothing. It was empty.”
He punched the wall next to my head. I’d been expecting it, so I didn’t flinch. “Don’t lie to me.”
“Who’s to say I’m lying? Who’s to say rumors of a suicide note are true?” It was my turn to lean in a little closer this time. “And who’s to say Mrs. Fairfax ever has to find out you’re sitting on a suicide note left by her dear departed husband. And don’t tell me you burned it, because I know you plan on using it against them sometime soon.”
Carmichael backed off again and rubbed his sore hand. “You don’t make threats unless you want something. So tell me what you want.”
“It’s not a threat, Andy. Why would I threaten you, especially after all you’ve done for me over the years? We’re friends again. You said so yourself.”
The chief’s neck reddened. “Tell me what you want or I haul you in for questioning on Dr. Blythe’s death right now. They’ll love you in Central Booking, especially in that getup.”
I figured I’d pushed my luck as far as I could. “I want you to make sure I know everything about Dr. Blythe’s death as soon as you know it. Files, pictures, notes, autopsy results, everything. For that, you get my silence about the note and the cover-up about the suicide. I’m not looking to complicate your life, Andy. I just don’t want you complicating mine.”
Carmichael continued to rub his sore hand as he thought it over. “Okay, Charlie. You’ll get Kronauer’s report as soon as it’s ready. Raw as red meat, too. Nothing taken out.” He poked me hard in the chest with his knuckle. “But your silence isn’t worth that much, so here’s what you’re going to do for me. I know you’re on to something. People wouldn’t be trying to kill you if you weren’t. In return for my cooperation, I find out anything you do about whoever killed the doc. Understand?”
I decided to cut my losses and agree. “Done. I don’t know anything. Not yet. But I’m working on it.”
“Make sure you do.” The chief rapped me twice with his knuckle before turning to leave. “Just don’t make a fool out of me, Charlie. You know what happens to people who try. Hell, you’re the one who used to do it to them.”
He laid his hand on the door knob and unlocked it. “And I haven’t mellowed any in the years since.”
He opened the door and stepped outside. A flood of men in tuxedos rushed in to use the bathroom. I damned near knocked one of them over as I ducked into a stall and threw up.
Chapter 15
I left the bathroom after I’d washed out my mouth as best I could. The lobby had cleared out by then and everyone had gone up to the main ballroom for the party.
The ballroom was a pretty good size, not that I knew much about ballrooms, but it was as packed as a cross-town trolley at rush hour. The only difference was you didn’t see too many tuxes or evening gowns on cross-town trolleys.
While looking for the Van Dorns, I spotted Carmichael chatting up Mayor O’Brien and some other clowns who ran the city. O’Brien had been Tammany’s pick to become mayor after Jimmy Walker skipped town ahead of an indictment. The boys downtown called him Boo Boo because he always had a knack for saying the right thing at the wrong time. He’d learned about becoming mayor from a bunch of reporters waiting outside his house. When they asked him who’d be his second in command, he said, “I don’t know. They haven’t told me yet.” He was the perfect figurehead for this town.
I headed in the opposite direction of the city elders, threading my way through small packs of revelers until I spotted Mr. and Mrs. Van Dorn talking to some people at the front of the room.
The Van Dorns made a damn good-looking couple. Mrs. Van Dorn was in her late forties, but had managed to keep a youthful glow about her despite losing her daughter the previous year. Her hair was so blonde it was almost white. She was wearing a black gown and a string of small white pearls. It wasn’t the fanciest outfit I’d seen that night, but on her it didn’t have to be.
Mr. Harriman Van Dorn was the tall and dignified type, just north of fifty. His full head of dark hair was just beginning to gray at the temples, the way it should on someone like him.
Mr. Van Dorn spotted me, and signaled me to stay where I was as he left his wife to entertain the group they were talking to. When he reached me, we shook hands like old friends; maybe because, after all we’d been through together, we were.
“I got your message about Dr. Blythe,” he said. “I was so happy your meeting with Father Mullins went well, but I was devastated about poor Dr. Blythe. The whole room is buzzing about it. They’re saying it was a heart attack.”
Even though everyone within earshot was busy talking, I kept my voice down. “It was no heart attack, sir. Just made to look like one.’”
“I was afraid you were going to say that. Poor Matthew. I liked him. What do you think was the cause of death?”
“I won’t know for sure until the coroner’s report comes in, but my money’s on murder.”
“The timing of his passing was too convenient to be natural,” Mr. Van Dorn admitted. “And I’d wager the same people who attacked you and blackmailed Miss Swenson are responsible.”
“Agreed. Now all we have to do is find them.” That reminded me of something. “Who were those guys you sent over to my place, sir? I’ve never seen them before.”
“We’ll get to that later,” Mr. Van Dorn said. “Rest assured they’re competent men who have experience in this kind of thing. They spent the better part of today looking into the phone number and the mailing address Miss Swenson gave them.”
It was the first bit of good news I’d heard all day. “They get anything?”
“We traced the phone number to an office on West 47th Street. It’s nothing but an old desk and a phone. Used to be rented by a talent agency that went out of business a few years ago. The landlord said the tenant pays in cash on the first of the month like clockwork. Of course, the contact information the tenant provided is false. Still, we have someone watching the place, just in case they try to use it.”
It was something, but it wasn’t much. It was the middle of the month, so it would be weeks before we could grab whoever dropped off next month’s payment, assuming they sent anyone at all. But my first question remained. “Who’s ‘we,’ sir?”
“In time, Charlie. In time. The mailing address they gave was a post office box in Midtown. Postal Inspectors are watching it to see if anyone uses it. The box is empty now, but I’ll be notified if they receive any mail.”
I skipped all my questions about how he was able to get the postal police involved. I knew he’d gone to school with President Roosevelt, so maybe that’s how he’d managed it. I had more important questions, anyway. “How’s Miss Swenson?”
“She’s safe and so is her son,” Mr. Van Dorn said, “which may change things.”
“What do you mean?”
“Since the people behind this are no longer operating in the shadows, they’ll probably change their tactics. They failed to kill you or secure the contents of Fairfax’s safe. Chances are they will either get more aggressive, or they may fold up operations and go underground. There’s simply no way to tell, which makes talking to Countess Alexandra all the more important
since she’s our last possible link to whoever is behind this.”
“It’s looking that way, sir.”
“That’s what you’re going to confirm once and for all. Tonight. Look over my left shoulder.”
I looked where Mr. Van Dorn told me to look. I had no trouble spotting her, even in this crowd. I would have spotted her anywhere, even though she had a group of men around her three-deep.
Countess Alexandra von Holstein was an inch or so taller than me, with the longest, straightest, blondest hair I had ever seen. She had sharp features and high cheek bones that would have looked severe on another woman, but on her looked beautiful. Her skin was alabaster white, but just shy of pale. Her green eyes were deep set, piercing yet gentle.
For a guy who usually went for brunettes, I had to admit she was probably the most striking woman I’d ever seen. Not beautiful like Joan Crawford or Myrna Loy, but she had an attractive quality in the truest sense of the word. Even from across the room, she had a magnetism that literally drew me to her.
It had nothing to do with her being a woman, but who she was. It was an odd feeling I’d had only once before, back in France. A captain I’d served with at Belleau Wood had a way of getting us to follow him into combat like he was asking us to join him for a night on the town. It was a gift some people had, a gift Countess Alexandra obviously had, too.
It had nothing to do with lust or even affection. It was about persuasion. Control.
The same moment I thought it, she looked through the crowd of men around her and directly at me. It was almost as if she could tell what I was thinking. Maybe I’d been staring too long, though I didn’t think I had.
She smiled. My mouth went dry.
“Alluring, isn’t she?” Mr. Van Dorn sipped his champagne. “I’d like to tell you she’s as cold as ice, but she’s actually quite charming. Personally, I think it’s the accent that puts it over, but that’s just me. She manages to make a German accent sound gentle.”
The Fairfax Incident Page 13
