by Tom Bradby
Martha was lying on a bed. A smile played on ripe, barely parted lips. Her hair was tousled and her legs and arms were stretched languidly across the satin sheet. Quinn glanced at the discarded jersey suit beside her and the neat triangle of dark hair that showed tantalisingly beneath her garter belt.
He slipped the picture into his inside jacket pocket, where it burnt his chest. He loosened his collar and breathed in deeply. He stood, momentarily unsteady, then stepped into the corridor.
Martha gave him a nervous, vulnerable smile. ‘You okay, Joe?’
‘Yes. You?’
‘Fine. Just fine.’
‘You sure?’
Her brow furrowed. ‘Sure.’
Moe’s voice boomed from the landing. He burst into the corridor. His stomach, framed by a pair of wide red suspenders, poked through a starched white shirt undone at the belly button. His nose was broad and his skin pockmarked, but his face lit up when he laughed and, since he liked to think of himself as everyone’s favourite uncle, he laughed often. ‘Joe and Martha! My two favourite kids!’ He slapped Quinn on the shoulder and pushed past him into Matsell’s office.
He rifled through the cupboards on either side of the desk, couldn’t find what he was looking for and led Quinn down to the far end of the corridor. He pulled a bottle of bootleg whisky from beneath his own desk, poured a couple of large slugs, shoved a glass into Quinn’s hand, and gulped from the other. Quinn hadn’t seen him since his mother’s funeral six months ago and noticed that he had aged considerably. His eyes had lost their sparkle. ‘Jesus, Joe.’ He reached for a brass ashtray and lit a cigar. ‘He didn’t deserve it. I mean, Christ! None of us does.’ Moe glanced out at Martha in the corridor and closed the door.
‘Didn’t deserve what?’ Quinn asked.
‘To end up like that!’
A third man entered the room. His cool green eyes rested steadily on Moe. The newcomer was tall and slim, with a thin, angular face and a nose filled with hair. ‘Dick Kelly,’ he said, without offering his hand. ‘Charlie was our partner.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Quinn said.
‘We might hold the department responsible for a great deal, Detective, but we can hardly blame you for his suicide.’
‘Did you have any idea—’
‘What gets into a guy’s mind? What makes him scared of his own shadow? It’s kind of a sickness, right?’
‘So you thought he might do something like this?’
Quinn had directed the question at Moe. Since he was now studying the floorboards, Kelly picked it up. ‘We didn’t, but maybe we should have.’
‘Why was that?’
‘Once a guy goes a little crazy …’
‘A little crazy?’
‘He tortured himself with threats that didn’t exist.’
‘What kind of threats?’
‘He thought someone was out to get him.’
‘Someone in particular?’
‘We should have gotten him to a doctor.’
‘He mention anyone by name?’
Kelly shook his head. ‘He figured he was being chased by his own shadow.’
Moe leant forwards. ‘You know how it is, Joe, better than any of us …’
Quinn didn’t answer. He pulled over a chair and picked up the overnight edition of the Sun that lay on it. ‘TIGER, ON OFFENSIVE, RIPS LA GUARDIA’, ran the banner headline. ‘TAMMANY OPENS GUNS ON HISTORY OF GOP NOMINEE’. He glanced at the photograph of Babe Ruth above Moe’s desk.
‘Hell, there’s an exception to every rule!’ Moe laughed. ‘You don’t have to be a Yankee to admire the bambino!’ Moe had been a lifelong Giants fan.
‘Has McGraw seen it?’ Quinn asked.
‘He’d forgive me.’
John J. McGraw had been the Giants manager during their glory years, but he’d also owned a billiard parlour next to the old Herald building, where Moe had been a pool-table hustler. Maybe he still did. Moe had once taken Quinn there to witness Rothstein’s legendary thirty-four-hour battle against Conway, which McGraw had finally closed out at four in the morning.
‘Moe, why did you say Matsell didn’t deserve it?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘It was the first thing you told me when I walked in here. “He didn’t deserve it. None of us does.” ’
‘Hell, it was just an expression.’
‘But why did you say, “None of us does”?’
‘Joe … I told you already. Who in hell wants to end up like that?’ He paused. ‘You’re at Headquarters now?’
‘Yes.’
‘When did you start?’
‘Last week.’
‘Didn’t I say you’d make the big-time?’
‘Moe—’
‘Dick, the kid’s smart. Always was. Crazy in the head and as reckless as a lion cub but smart, like his mother. He and Martha made a hell of a pair! The kid and his shadow …’
‘Moe—’
‘That was before she grew into a goddamned swan to torture us all!’ He hitched up his pants and wiped his nose on his sleeve. ‘But, sure, it’s ba-ba-boom time for you, Joe. Headquarters is big bucks. You know that.’
Quinn tried not to think of how Moe used to stick his stubby fingers down Martha’s pants.
‘You want to end up a pauper, like your old man?’ Moe asked.
‘It’s a good thing he’s not listening to you say that, Moe. I’ve got to do a report, so I need to know if Mr Matsell was upset about something.’
Moe Diamond shoved the fat stub of his cigar between his bloated lips. He had recovered a little of the old self-confidence. ‘Charlie was kind of secretive, Joe. He did his work. He was good at hooking in new clients. But outside of meetings we didn’t see too much of him. He wasn’t one of us, if you know what I mean.’
Kelly nodded in agreement.
‘Was there something on his mind?’
They shrugged.
‘Did he seem like he was depressed?’
‘Not that we could see. But, you know, Joe, sometimes it’s hard to tell.’
‘Did he have trouble with a broad?’
‘We all got trouble with broads, Joe.’
‘I mean … a particular girl?’
Moe frowned. He looked at his partner and they shook their heads.
‘Did he get on with Martha and the other girls in the typing pool?’
‘Hell, Joe, you name a man on this earth who doesn’t like Martha!’
Quinn bit the inside of his cheek. ‘Was he close to any of them?’
‘There are only two broads in that office and Charlie dealt with Martha.’
‘Who’s the other?’
‘Stacey. She was real upset at the sight of the body so we sent her home.’
‘It’s not possible that he was—’
‘C’mon, Joe … Stacey’s like Martha and if you think I’d let one of the guys fool around with your little shadow …’
Quinn bit back his response. He looked around. This place was a sign of how far they’d all come: pool-table hustling had become Wall Street broking. He’d missed a large part of Moe Diamond’s life. ‘How come you guys got together?’
‘Dick and I set the place up. Charlie had just arrived in the city from Minnesota and had a bankroll. I’d seen him up in Saratoga in the old days, so I knew he was on the level.’
‘Did you help him lose his bankroll?’
‘Hell, no! Joe, I told you at your mother’s funeral, you want to tip me the wink, I’ll make you a rich man. That’s guaranteed.’
Quinn recalled the conversation all right, but every fix and venture Moe had ever entered into was ‘guaranteed’. ‘Why do you figure he might have wanted to jump, Moe? I need to put something down here.’
For a while, neither man spoke. Then Kelly said, ‘We don’t know what to think. Other than running away from his shadow, he didn’t have a reason in the world to kill himself.’
‘It’s always hard to tell, Joe,’ Moe said. ‘You know that better
than—’
‘Did you see him outside of the office?’
‘No.’
‘Was he married?’
‘No.’
‘Did he have a regular girl?’
‘Not that we knew of.’
‘Did he … ?’ Quinn hesitated. ‘He and Martha weren’t close?’
‘Joe, c’mon … What’s eating you? I already said—’
‘You just said she’s a beautiful woman. So maybe he—’
‘Joe,’ Moe said, ‘Martha’s family, you know that. We take care of her. You shouldn’t listen to your father. He can’t keep her locked up until she’s an old maid.’
‘Charlie gambled,’ Kelly said. ‘That’s all we’ve been able to come up with. We thought maybe he’d got himself in too deep somewhere.’
‘Who did he play with?’
‘We don’t know,’ Moe said. ‘It was just what we heard.’
‘Where did you hear it?’
‘That’s kind of private.’
‘Did he know Rothstein?’
They shrugged, which meant the answer was yes.
Quinn moved to the window. It had stopped raining and he watched a few thin rays of sunshine glimmer on the water by the pier. ‘Moe, did Charlie Matsell have any visitors this morning?’
‘None that we knew of.’
‘Did you see him go up to the roof?’
They shook their heads again.
There was a knock and Caprisi nudged the door open. ‘You got a minute?’
Quinn stepped into the corridor.
‘Charlie Matsell had a visitor,’ Caprisi told him. ‘The man came in around nine fifteen, just after the rush-hour. The security guard at the front desk recognized him. Apparently he’d been here before. He was a real fancy guy in a fifty-dollar suit. He stayed about half an hour.’
‘He left before Matsell fell off the roof?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You figure he could have been a broker calling the guy in?’
‘Maybe, but Schneider won’t want that in the report. He told me it would be best if it turned out Mr Matsell’s girlfriend had left him.’ Caprisi raised his eyebrows. ‘We’d better go. They’re moving the body now and he’s hovering. He wants us out.’
CHAPTER THREE
THEY EMERGED AS THE CORPSE WAS BEING LOADED INTO THE BACK OF a van, so Quinn took hold of Martha’s arm and guided her to the passenger seat of the Gardner. It was a brand-new black sedan, with a sleek hood and gleaming headlamps, but she didn’t appear to be impressed. She glanced up at a huge poster plastered across the wall beside them, which carried La Guardia’s latest advertisement written in the manner of a newspaper headline: ‘GOP Slams Building Scheme, Challenges Mayor Walker on Tammany Receipts’. It had been repeatedly defaced. The Democrats’ New York party machine still had plenty of defenders.
Quinn watched a seaplane turn in towards the city. The pilot circled once and dropped onto the choppy waters of the East River. The engines roared as he swung around tightly in front of a car float inbound from Jersey City. The sun shimmered through broken rainclouds over the staid residences of Brooklyn Heights on the bluff. A group of boys kicked their legs against the stone jetty and watched the fishing smacks and scows plough upriver, apparently immune to the discordant cacophony of blasts and whistles from the nearby steam shovels.
Quinn fired up the Gardner and swung it onto South Street. The road was thronged with sailors in pea-jackets, workmen in dungarees and shabby drifters who hung about the warehouses in the hope of finding work. He sounded the horn to clear them out of the way and eased his foot down on the gas pedal. Rain began to fall again, blown in waves off the river and pelting the Gardner’s windscreen.
Caprisi lolled back in the rear seat, eyes closed.
Martha adjusted her hat and stared intently at the truck ahead. ‘There’s nothing you could have done,’ Quinn said.
‘There’s always something that could have been done.’
‘Not this time.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There were two sets of footprints on the roof. The set closest to the edge faced backwards.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘His heels had dug in. I’d say he was pushed.’
There was a long silence. ‘That’s impossible.’
‘Why?’
She didn’t answer.
‘He had a visitor this morning. Do you know who?’
Martha seemed mesmerized by the rivulets of water running up the windscreen. ‘Joe, do you mind if we don’t talk about this now?’
Quinn turned into Seventh Street and let the Gardner ride to a halt. Old women wove along the sidewalk beneath battered umbrellas and stall-keepers crowded beneath the shelter of narrow awnings. Two sparrows picked at manure left by the old clothes man’s horse. Grandpa Santini, dressed in droopy pants and an old country undershirt, watched them mournfully and tugged at his long moustache, while his tall, curly-haired grandson shouted a familiar curse from inside the hood of the family’s new covered van: ‘Sonamabeetch!’ He gave its side panel a good, hard kick.
‘I’ll take you up,’ Quinn said. He turned to Caprisi. ‘Give me a minute.’
Martha’s eyes were on wisps of smoke that billowed from the hat factory at the end of the row. They drifted, stagnant in the damp sky, before bunching together to ride the wind over to the Jersey shore.
Fall had come late this year, but now the jingling ices wagon, with its coloured bottles, had disappeared and the ice-box man had pulled on his beanie and put on thick boots. Butchers hung the grey, stretched bodies of hares in their windows, while the warm-skinned fruits of summer had given way to cool apples and round purple Concord grapes heaped in slatted baskets. Pretty much everyone in the tenement used the grapes to make wine and the acrid aroma oozed down the stairwell.
‘Let’s go,’ Quinn said.
She didn’t acknowledge him, so he got out of the Gardner and went to open her door. She muttered something inaudible and, before he could dissuade her, set off down the sidewalk to the butcher’s on the corner.
The store was warm and light, its shelves stacked with glistening entrails. Behind a giant meat-grinder, hearts and livers hung from hooks on the ceiling. Martha was served by the man with bushy eyebrows who looked like the huge cop in the Chaplin movies. ‘You want breast?’ he asked her. ‘Me too, tsotstele.’ It meant ‘cutie’, but today Martha wasn’t in the mood to smile.
Quinn took her arm as they emerged onto the sidewalk. He gripped it tight.
‘Joe, you’re hurting me. What’s wrong?’
He eased the pressure.
‘I’m all right,’ she whispered.
Despite the rain, Mr Roth sat in his usual place on the stoop, in dark, shapeless pants and a collarless shirt, buttoned up tight to his throat. He patted the shiny old derby on his head, but Quinn ignored his attempt at conversation and guided Martha up the stairwell. The doors to each apartment would have been wedged open in the summer to draw cool air from the stone landings, but now they were shut tight against the anticipated onset of winter.
As they climbed higher, Yosele Rosenblatt’s ululations drifted through the air. Quinn wondered if Mr Herman, who lived in the apartment below them, ever took the recording off his Victrola. They reached the top floor and Quinn let Martha into their apartment. He took off her coat, shook it carefully over the mat and hung it on the stand in the corner. They moved to the front room and listened to the rain fall upon the roof. The furniture smelt of lemon-oil polish and the curtains had been newly starched. As his mother had, Martha kept the place immaculate.
She took off her cloche hat, hung it on the rail by the bathtub and shook out her wavy dark hair, which had been cut fashionably short. She was wearing a pleated skirt and a jersey top which bore an uncomfortable resemblance to the one Quinn had seen discarded in the photograph in Matsell’s desk.
‘Was this guy Matsell a friend?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘You didn’t like him?’
‘Not much.’
‘You weren’t close?’
‘No.’
She tried to move past him, but he held her arm. He could feel her breath on his cheek. ‘You sure about that?’
‘Certain.’
A tap dripped. A dog barked and was quieted with a fierce command. Martha freed herself from his grasp and sat, head in her hands, in Ma’s old wooden chair.
Quinn edged closer.
‘You’d better leave me, Joe.’
He didn’t move.
There was a crash from the courtyard. Quinn went to his bedroom and opened the door to the iron stairwell. He stepped out as skinny Sarah clambered past him on her way to the roof. Sarah was a lithe eleven-year-old, whose favourite trick was to steal from a woman downstairs who was too fat to chase her around the stairwell’s tight corners. The woman hammered a saucepan against the railings in protest and demanded Quinn pursue the girl.
It was only a few paces to the roof, but by the time he got there, Sarah had long since skipped over the brick partition and set off down the block. She was supposed to be in school, or at least at the orphanage, and had no intention of sticking around for any kind of argument.
Quinn watched her go. As a child, this had been his domain, a playground of black tar and low brick dividers, which ran all the way to the end of their stretch of Seventh. He walked to the edge. The image of his mother lying face down on the street was as crisp as the day it had happened.
He went back to the iron stairwell, where the window to his father’s apartment banged in the breeze. He stepped in to close it against the rain. He had not been inside his parents’ bedroom since the day his mother had jumped and his father had moved to the box-room. Everything was as neat and tidy as she would have wished; the white linen cloth over the small iron bed, the enamel wash-bowl, the crucifix on the wall.
The room smelt of detergent. The old man had scrubbed the floors and walls clear of the stench of stale booze. The air was still. The room was dominated by a photograph of the couple on their wedding day. His father’s steady eyes seemed to follow Quinn as he moved. He looked at his mother. She gazed back at him.
