The Topless Tulip Caper

by Lawrence Block

  The next two customers showed up together, and neither of them was Haskell Henderson, so I lost the place and show money too. They were Simon Barckover and Maeve O’Connor. Maeve looked bubbly and radiant and beautiful and Barckover looked pissed off.

  “What’s this all about?” he demanded. “I’m a busy man. I’ve got things to do. Who does this Leo Haig think he is? Where does he get off ordering me to come here?”

  There were just too many questions so I didn’t answer any of them. I told him he was absolutely right which gave him pause, and I led the two of them into the office and showed them to their seats. They looked at Glenn Flatt and he looked at them, and then he went back to his newspaper and Barckover sat staring straight ahead while Maeve went and looked at some fish.

  After that they all started to show up, and I kept scurrying back and forth from the door to the office, ignoring questions and mumbling inane replies and getting everybody in the right seats. First Haskell Henderson showed up, looking about the same as yesterday but twice as nervous. He’d changed from white jeans to dove-gray jeans, but the goatee was still scraggly and he was wearing either the same Doctor Ecology tee-shirt or one just like it. I no sooner got him parked than Gus Leemy came along with Buddy Lippa in tow. Neither of them said a word, and when I brought them into the office they acted as if they were entering an empty room. They took their seats without acknowledging the presence of any of the others in any way whatsoever.

  As far as that goes, there was a lot of mutual ignoring going on in the office. A lot of these people had I met before, but evidently they had managed to piece out the fact that Haig intended to expose a murderer, which meant that one of them was due to be the exposé, and I guess they didn’t quite know how to relate to that. It was fine with me, just so they stayed in their chairs and didn’t make waves.

  Jan Remo came next asking if she was late. I told her she was right on time, and as I was leading her to the office the bell rang again. I hurried her in and came back to admit Rita Cubbage. She wasn’t wearing the wig this time and her tight Afro cap was a significant improvement. “Much better,” I told her, taking a long look. “You ought to give that wig to the boss. Your boss, not mine. He’s bald as an egg and it might be an improvement. Did you remember what it was that you couldn’t quite remember last night?”

  “I dreamed something,” she said. She opened her purse and took out a slip of paper. “And when I woke up this was on the bedside table, but I don’t recall writing it down.”

  I took the slip of paper from her. On it, in a very precise handwriting that no one would be capable of managing in the middle of the night, she had written: “Some white boys can be fun to sleep with.”

  “I do wish I recalled that dream,” she said. “It must have been a good one.”

  “I wish I’d been there.”

  “Just might be that you were,” she said.

  I opened my mouth, and then I closed my mouth, and then I seated her and came back in time to open the door for Leonard Danzig. There was a man on either side of him, and they were the very same men who had taken hold of my arms the night before. I was trying to decide how to tell them they couldn’t come in when he turned to them and told them to wait outside, which made things a whole lot simpler for me.

  “Well,” he said. “Everything proceeding on schedule?”

  “So far.”

  “And your boss is going to make it all come together, is that right?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Well, if he makes it work, I’ll pay off on the spot.” He tapped the breast pocket of his suit, indicating that he’d brought the money along. “If I owe somebody something, I see to it that the debt is paid.”

  A sort of chill grabbed me when he said that. He was talking about money, about paying money if he owed it, but I had the feeling that I never wanted him to owe me something else. Like a bullet in the head, for example. Because I was sure he’d pay that debt just as promptly, and with the same kind of satisfaction.

  I took him into the office and parked him, and there were two seats left, one on either side of the second row. I went into the kitchen, picked up the phone and buzzed the fourth floor.

  “All but two,” I said.

  “Who hasn’t arrived?”

  “The twins. New York’s Finest.”

  “They’ll be here within five minutes. Buzz me when they arrive.”

  They were on hand within three minutes, and they were not happy to see me. “I don’t like any of this,” Gregorio informed me. “If Haig has something he should tell us. If he’s got nothing he should stop wasting our time. If he wants to put on a performance let him hire a hall.”

  “Sure,” I said. That’s his plan, actually. He’s going to play the title role in Tiny Alice. Let’s face it, you’re here because this case has you up a tree and you figure Haig’s going to hold the ladder for you. Either hell get your murderer or he won’t, and either way is fine with you. You wind up with a case solved or you get to see Haig fall on his face.”

  “I’d like that,” Seidenwall said.

  “You probably would but I don’t think he’s going to oblige you. Now you know the rules. You take your seats and you let Leo Haig run the show. This is his house and you’re here by invitation. Understood?”

  I swear the best part of my job is getting to talk to cops that way now and then. It makes it all worthwhile. They didn’t like to put up with it, but they knew they didn’t have any choice. I showed them their chairs, putting Gregorio on the far side of the room and Seidenwall nearest to the door. That way anyone who tried to leave in a hurry would have to go through Seidenwall, and I wouldn’t want to try that myself unless I was driving a tank.

  Let me go over the seating for you, in case you care. I don’t, but it’s one of the things Haig insists on.

  The desk was where it always was, with Haig’s chair behind it and mine in front of it and an armchair alongside of it, presently empty.

  Then two rows of chairs feeing the desk. In the first row, from the far side, were Leonard Danzig, Rita Cubbage, Glenn Flatt, Maeve O’Connor, and Simon Barckover. In the back row we had Detective Vincent Gregorio, Haskell Henderson, Gus Leemy, Buddy Lippa, Jan Remo, and Detective Wallace Seidenwall. I looked at them and decided they were a reasonably attractive group, well-mannered and neatly groomed. Leemy was wearing a business suit instead of a tuxedo so he didn’t look like a penguin today, and Buddy wasn’t wearing a sport jacket at all so he had nothing to clash with his slacks and shirt, but otherwise they looked about the same as always. I wished they would fold their hands on the tops of their desks and wait for the teacher to come and write something adorable on the blackboard.

  I buzzed Haig from the kitchen. Then I went back to the office and sat down in my chair, and a minute or so later our client entered the room. Our original client, that is. Tulip. She took the armchair alongside the desk without being told.

  Then Haig walked in and sat behind his desk and every eye in the room was drawn to him. Including mine.

  Seventeen

  FOR A LONG moment he just sat there looking at them. His eyes scanned the room carefully. I thought I saw the hint of a smile for a second, but then it was gone and his round face maintained a properly stern and serious look. He put his hands on top of the desk, selected a pipe, put it back in the rack, and drew a breath.

  “Good afternoon,” he said. “I want to thank you all for coming. All but one of you are welcome in this house. That one is not welcome, but his presence is essential. One of you is a murderer. One of you is responsible for one hundred twenty-five deaths.”

  There was a collective gasp at that figure but he went on without appearing to notice. “All but two of those deaths were the deaths of fish. The penalty which society attaches to ichthyicide is minimal. Malicious mischief, perhaps. Certainly a misdemeanor. The other two victims were human, however. One would be difficult to substantiate as homicide. While I am mortally certain that Andrew Mallard w
as murdered—”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Gregorio cut in. “If you’ve got any information on that you’ve been holding it out, and—”

  “Mr. Gregorio.” Gregorio stopped in midsentence. “I have withheld nothing, sir. I remind you again that you are here by invitation.” He scanned the room again, then went on. “To continue. While I may be certain that Mr. Mallard was murdered, and while I could explain how the murder was committed, no jury would convict anyone for that murder. Indeed, no district attorney in his right mind would presume to bring charges. But the other murder, that of Miss Abramowicz, was unquestionably a case of premeditated homicide. The killer is in this room, and I intend to see him hang for it.”

  He’d have a long wait. While Haig longs for a return of capital punishment, and thinks public hanging was a hell of a fine way to run a society, the bulk of contemporary opinion seems to be flowing in the other direction.

  “The day before yesterday,” he said, “Miss Thelma Wolinski sought my assistance. An entire tank of young Scatophagies tetracanthus plus her breeder fish had died suddenly and of no apparent cause. Miss Wolinski is possessed of a scientific temperament. She had a chemical analysis of the aquarium water performed, and the laboratory certified that the water had been poisoned with strychnine. Miss Wolinski could not imagine why anyone would want to kill her generally inoffensive fish. She concluded that the crime was the work of a madman, that an attack upon her fish represented hostility toward her own person, and that she herself might consequently be in danger.”

  “She should have called the police,” Seidenwall said.

  Haig glared at him. “Indeed,” he said. “No doubt you would have rushed to investigate the poisoning of a tankful of fish. Miss Wolinski is no witling.” Seidenwall winced at the word. “She came to me. She could scarcely have made a wiser decision.”

  That sounded a little pompous to me, but nobody’s hackles rose as far as I could tell. I looked at Tulip. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She looked beautiful, and quite spectacular, but then she always did.

  “Of course I agreed to investigate. That was quite proper on my part, but it also precipitated a murder. That very evening Miss Mabel Abramowicz was murdered. Some of you may know her as Cherry Bounce. She was killed while performing at a nightclub. Your nightclub, Mr. Leemy.”

  “Not my fault I run a decent place.”

  “That is moot, and a non sequitur in the bargain. Miss Abramowicz was also poisoned, but not with strychnine. She was killed with curare, a lethal paralytic poison with which certain South American savages tip their arrows.”

  Haig picked up his pipe again and took it apart. He looked at the two pieces, and for a moment I thought that was all he had and he was waiting for a miracle. We’d be out four grand and I wouldn’t get to write a book.

  “It was instantly evident that the deaths of the fish and the death of Miss Abramowicz were related. It was furthermore a working hypothesis that the same person was responsible for both outrages. Finally, it seemed more than coincidence that Miss Abramowicz’s death followed so speedily upon Miss Wolinski’s engaging me to represent her interests. Once I was working on the case, Miss Abramowicz had to be disposed of as rapidly as possible. Had the time element not been of paramount importance, the murderer would not have had to take the great risk of committing his crime in full view of perhaps a hundred people.

  “And it was an enormous risk, to be sure. But our murderer was very fortunate. While I have never met her, my associate Mr. Harrison assures me that Miss Abramowicz’s endowments were such as to make her the center of attention during her performance. Everyone watched her as her act neared its climax. No one saw—or, more accurately, no one paid attention to— her murderer.

  “With one exception, I would submit. Andrew Mallard saw something. He may not have known what he saw. He was clearly not certain enough or self-assured enough to make any mention of his observations to the police. Whether this testifies to Mr. Mallard’s lethargy and reticence or to the inefficiency of police interrogation is beside the point In any event—”

  “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” Gregorio said.

  “An excellent policy,” Haig murmured. “In any event, the murderer struck, the murder weapon was not recovered, and the murderer seemed to be in the clear.”

  The projectile, I thought. Not the weapon.

  “A surface examination would suggest that the murderer was irrational. Item: He poisons Miss Wolinski’s fish with strychnine. Item: He poisons Miss Abramowicz with curare. The two incidents cannot fail to be related, yet how are they linked in the mind of the murderer? I must admit that, after I learned of Mr. Mallard’s death, there was a moment when I entertained the hypothesis that the murderer was attempting to strike at Miss Wolinski by destroying everything associated with her—first her pets, then her roommate, finally a former lover. I dismissed this possibility almost at once. I returned to the fish. I decided to assume the killer was rational, and I asked myself why a rational killer would poison fish with strychnine.

  “The answer was that he would not. If he wished to kill the fish and make it obvious that he had done so, he might have tipped over their aquarium and let them perish gasping upon the floor. If he wished to make the death look accidental he could have caused their demise in any of a dozen ways which would not have aroused any suspicion. Instead he chose a readily detectable poison without having any grounds for assuming that Miss Wolinski would bother to detect it via chemical analysis.

  “The conclusion was obvious. The fish had been killed by mistake. The murderer did not put the strychnine into the aquarium.”

  Tulip frowned. “Then who did?”

  “Ah,” Haig said. He turned to her; a gentle smile on his round face. “I’m afraid you did, Miss Wolinski. Unwittingly, you poisoned your own fish.”

  Tulip gaped at him. I looked around the room to check out the reactions of the audience. They ran the gamut from puzzlement to disinterest. Seidenwall looked as though he might drop off to sleep any minute now. Gregorio seemed to be enduring all of this, waiting for Haig either to make his point or wind up with egg on his face. I tried to find a suspect who indicated that he or she already knew how the strychnine got in the tank. I didn’t have a clue.

  Haig opened a desk drawer and took out a paper bag that looked familiar. Gingerly he extracted the jar of wheat germ from it and peeled away the protective layers of paper toweling. He wrapped a towel around his hand and pushed the jar toward my side of the desk.

  “This is a jar of wheat germ,” he said. “I have found it to be an excellent dietary supplement for fishes. I am told it is similarly useful for human beings. I have no grounds for confirming or disputing the latter. Mr. Henderson. Do you recognize this jar? You may examine it closely, but I urge you not to touch it.”

  Henderson shrugged. “I don’t need a close look,” he said. “It’s Kretchmer, one of the standard brands. They sell it all over the place, supermarkets, everywhere. What about it?”

  “Do they also sell it in health food emporia?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “I understand you run a chain of such establishments. Do your stores carry Kretchmer wheat germ?”

  “I think so.”

  “You don’t know for certain, Mr. Henderson?”

  “As a matter of fact we do carry it. Why not? It’s a good brand, we move a lot of cases of it.”

  “Do you recognize this particular jar, Mr. Henderson?”

  “They’re all the same. If you’re asking did it come from my place, I couldn’t tell you one way or the other.”

  “I could,” Haig said. “On the reverse of this jar there is a label. It says ‘Doctor Ecology’ and there is an address beneath the store name. That label would tend to suggest that this jar of wheat germ came from one of your stores.”

  “Well, then it must have. What’s the point?”

  Haig ignored the question. He picked up the bell and rang it, and Wong Fat came in ca
rrying a two-quart goldfish bowl. There were a pair of inch-and-a-half common goldfish in the bow. Haig buys them from Aquarium Stock Company for $4.75 a hundred and feeds them to larger fish that have to have live fish as food. Wong put the bowl on the desk. I wondered if it was going to leave a ring.

  His hand covered with a paper towel, Haig screwed the top off the jar. He reached into the jar with a little spoon he used to use to clean the crud out of his pipes back in the days when he was trying to smoke them. He spooned up a few grains of wheat germ and sprinkled them into the goldfish bow.

  The fish swam around for a few seconds, not knowing they’d been fed. They weren’t enormously bright. Then they surfaced and began scoffing down the wheat germ.

  “Now watch,” Haig said.

  We all watched, and we didn’t have to watch for very long before both fish were floating belly-up on the surface. They did not look to be in perfect health.

  “They are dead,” Haig said. “As dead as the Scatophagies tetracanthus. As dead as Miss Mabel Abramowicz. I have not had a chemical analysis run on the contents of this jar of wheat germ. It does seem reasonable to assume that the wheat germ is laced with strychnine. Miss Wolinski.”

  “Yes?”

  “How did this jar of wheat germ come into your possession?”

  “Haskell gave it to me.”

  Henderson’s eyes were halfway out of his head. Alfalfa sprouts or no, he looked as though a coronary occlusion was just around the comer. “Now wait a minute,” he said. “You just wait a goddamned minute now.”

  “You deny having given this jar to Miss Wolinski?”

  “I sure as hell deny putting strychnine in it. Maybe that’s the jar I gave her and maybe it isn’t. How the hell do I know?”