“Well, I can’t blame you for feeling that way. I do blame myself, though, for what happened.”
“Why would you do that?”
“You got hurt while doing my job.”
“Hey, you’re paying me—you are paying me, aren’t you?—which made it my job.”
“All right,” I said, standing up, “we’ll talk about it. Take it easy for a while and don’t look to get out of here too soon.”
“It can’t be too soon.”
“Want me to call your boss?”
“I already did.”
“Hank, just add the medical expenses to my bill, all right?”
“The N.Y.S.R.C. will take care of it, Jack. Thanks for the offer.”
“Need anything?”
“Yeah, get me a nurse who looks like Debbie, will you?”
“Hell, if I find one like that I’ll keep her for myself. Take care. I’ll be back to see you.”
“Thanks, Jack . . . and don’t take the blame for this, okay?”
“Sure. See you.”
On the way to see Hocus I stopped at a coffee shop and bought several containers of coffee. I kept two and left the rest with the cop on the front desk.
“Here,” I said, holding one out to Hocus. He looked up from his desk and didn’t smile. He didn’t frown, but he didn’t smile, either.
“Thanks. Sit down.”
He took the coffee, and I took a seat and opened my own container.
“Is that the autopsy report on the girl?”
“Yeah.”
“You know, I was thinking on the way over here.”
“About what?”
“Well, that dead girl’s been in the water a long time, and all we have to go on are a couple of photos. What if it isn’t Melanie Saberhagen?”
He looked up at me and said, “Did you call her father?”
“This morning. He’s catching the first plane.”
“Then he’ll make the final I.D. on her.”
“What’s wrong with you today?”
“I don’t like murder,” he said, “and I don’t like P.I.’s who hold out on me.”
“What are you talking about?”
He pointed at me with a blunt index finger and said, “You shrugged me off this missing girl thing, had me thinking that you’d been beaten up because of the Knock Wood Lee case.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“And now she turns up dead . . . maybe.”
“How was I supposed to know that? I didn’t know who she was running with in New York.”
“What about this Brown guy?” he asked. He opened his notebook and added, “And Greg Foster, and—”
“Those are just students at the same school where she was studying martial arts.”
“Martial arts, like karate, right? Like the guy that worked you and Po over, right? The guy neither one of you seems to be able to identify.”
“You think we’re covering up for the guy?”
He jabbed the air with his finger and said, “If your client identifies his daughter, I’m putting out a wanted alarm on this guy Brown, who seems to like to beat up women.”
“She was beaten to death?”
“Yeah. We couldn’t see any bruises because she’d been in the water too long, but somebody did a number on her.”
“And you think it was Brown?”
“I’ll want to talk to him about it, yeah, but I don’t want to find that you and your friend Po have been there first.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, moving to the edge of my chair. “Hocus, what the fuck do you think I am, some comic book private eye out for revenge?”
“No, of course not,” he said, feigning a look of surprise. “You wouldn’t pull something like that, would you?”
“Of course not.”
“Sure, that Max the Axe thing, that was different.”
“Of course it was different,” I said, defending my actions when it came to the man who had killed Eddie Waters.
“And all this guy did was kill a young girl and beat up you and your friend Po.”
“We don’t know that—”
“Look, all I’m saying is don’t get in my way on this, Jack.”
“So all I’ve got to do is conduct my investigations without getting in your way or Vadala’s way.”
“I have nothing to do with Vadala’s case. I’m talking about this case,” he said, tapping the autopsy folder.
“Okay,” I said. “Besides, I don’t have any intention of looking for Melanie Saberhagen’s killer . . . if that’s her. That’s your job.”
“You’d better get out of here before the shit gets over my head,” Hocus said, “and take your shovel with you.”
I stood up, left my unfinished coffee on his desk, and headed for the door.
“Oh, listen,” I said, turning back to face him.
“What?”
“I’ll be bringing my client to the morgue when he gets here—”
“Bring him here and I’ll take him over.”
“Okay, sure, but you don’t mind if I tag along, do you?” He glared at me because I’d just said I wasn’t interested in the case, and I added, “I just wanted to make sure it’s her because if it is, my job’s finished.”
“You know,” he said, pointing at me with the pen in his hand, “you’re getting real good at this P.I. shit. You must be watching a lot of TV lately.”
Hocus protested a lot when we worked together, because he never wanted me to think I was getting my way too easily.
“My client should be in sometime today. I’ll see you in a while.”
“Ah, get out of here,” he said, pointing toward the door, fighting back a grin. I didn’t let him know that I’d seen it.
I turned to leave and walked headlong into Detective Vadala.
“Jacoby,” he said, managing to get a yard of distaste into my name. “What are you doing here?”
“Leaving.”
“Good.”
I thought I was going to make it, but I should have known better. When I reached the head of the stairs he called my name out again.
“Jacoby!”
“Yes?” I said, turning resignedly.
“I’ve got your friend in a box, Jacoby. I know you’ve been poking around, trying to find some way of getting him out, so I just want you to know something.”
“What’s that?” I asked, knowing that he wasn’t about to wish me luck.
“There’s plenty of room in that box for you, too.”
“I’ll remember that, Vadala.”
Twenty
I had told Saberhagen to check into a hotel when he arrived, and gave him Bogie’s number to call. I’d check in with Billy Palmer from time to time during the day. I was anxious to find out if the girl in the morgue really was Melanie. All that was really evident was that she was blond and young. For the rest, we’d have to wait for her father.
From the precinct I went back to my office and arrived in time to pick up the phone before my answer machine did.
“Jacoby,” I said.
“This is Piper. I understand you’ve been looking for me.”
“Leo Piper?”
“Have you been looking for another Piper?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to talk to you.”
“So talk.”
“Not on the phone.”
Silence.
“Piper?”
“I’m here,” he said, but that was all and I decided to wait him out.
It took several moments for him to come to his decision, during which time I listened very closely to his breathing. I could have been getting paranoid, but just before he spoke I switched my answer machine on to “record.”
“All right, Mr. Jacoby,” Piper said. “I will send a car to get you. Be in front of your building in a half an hour.”
“Listen, something might come up—”
“I hope not,” he s
aid, interrupting me, “because if it does, I may not make this offer again. It’s for a limited time only, as they say on television.”
Before I had a chance to answer, he hung up, leaving me with a dead line. I hung up, hoping that Robert Saberhagen wouldn’t call during the next half hour.
I had been standing out in front of my office building only five minutes when a black limo pulled up. As I approached, the power window opened.
“Are you Mr. Jacoby?” the driver asked. I had the impression that he was nothing more than he seemed to be, a professional chauffeur, and not one of Piper’s men.
“Yes, I am.”
“Shall we go?”
“Yes, of course.”
I opened the back door and got in, and he pulled away from the curb.
“Do you know Mr. Piper?” I asked after we’d gone a few blocks in silence.
“Sir?”
“Piper? Do you work for him?”
“I work for the limo agency, sir. I’m just following my dispatcher’s instructions.”
I believed him, and sat back to await our arrival at whatever our destination was.
He turned off Fifth onto Forty-ninth, took that to Eighth where he made a right, and then made another right on Fifty-sixth. We crossed Seventh Avenue and stopped halfway down the block in front of a bookstore.
“Here?” I asked, looking out the window.
“You’re to wait in front of this bookshop, sir. That’s what I was told.”
I shrugged and got out of the limo, wondering idly if one tips a limo driver. I decided that this one didn’t.
The bookstore was called the Mysterious Bookshop, and specialized in mystery fiction and nonfiction, judging by the material that was in the window. A sign in the window said that an author named Mallory was going to be there later in the week to autograph books.
I became aware that a man had left the bookshop and walked up the few steps to the street.
“Do you read mysteries?” he asked.
“No,” I said, turning to face him. “No, Mr. Piper, I don’t read mysteries. There are enough mysteries in real life to keep me occupied.”
“I read them voraciously,” he said, showing me that the bag he carried was full of books. “I’ve spent more money in this store than anywhere else since my arrival in New York.”
“Real mysteries,” I repeated, “like who killed Alan Cross.”
The name appeared not to faze him, but he stopped talking about books.
“Would you come with me, Mr. Jacoby?”
“Where?”
“Just next door, where we can talk.”
Next door—actually, a couple of doors away—was one of New York’s newest hotels, the Parker-Meridien. Piper didn’t speak again until we were in the elevator.
He was everything Lee had said he was. He was about my age, taller, well built, attractive. He was also very cool as he explained that he didn’t live here, but was simply using a friend’s apartment for this “little meeting.”
We rode the elevator to one of the top floors, which he said housed permanent apartments, and I followed him to a door with the number 2102 on it.
“Would you like a drink?” he asked me as he tossed his sack of books onto an expensive-looking couch. I could probably have bought a car for a lot less than that couch cost.
“No drink, thanks,” I said. “I’d just like to talk to you. I’ve been looking for you long enough.”
“Yes, I know you have,” he said, pouring himself a drink from behind what appeared to be a well-stocked bar. He straightened up with his drink in hand and said, “Why is that, Mr. Jacoby?”
“Alan Cross.”
“Yes, you mentioned his name earlier. He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“That’s right.”
“I guess that means I won’t be paid the money he owes me.”
“That’s right, too.”
“Is that what you wanted to know? Whether or not he owed me money?”
“That and how much.”
“How much?” he said, and then laughed. “Certainly not enough for me to kill him. No one owes me that much money, Mr. Jacoby. I wouldn’t allow myself to be put in such a position. That is the difference between Mr. Knock Wood Lee and myself.”
“I see. Is that the way you put it to his lady?”
“His lady? The lovely Miss Tiger Lee, you mean?” He laughed again, this time at something he really thought was funny, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that I’d never know what the joke was.
“She certainly is a lady, I’ll grant you that,” he said. “What she and I talked about is none of your business, however. In fact, all of my business is none of your business, Mr. Jacoby, but I will tell you this. Cross owed me, oh, close to ten grand, which is top limit with me. I get some real good regular customers, I may let them go higher, but right now that’s it, and that isn’t near enough to kill a man for, even if I was in the habit.” He sipped his drink and added, “And that’s all I’m going to tell you. I trust you won’t get lost on the way out.”
“Not so fast. Why’d you decide to see me after ducking me for so long?”
“That’s curiosity, Jacoby. It’s bad business to let your curiosity get the better of you.”
“I guess that means that you didn’t see me just out of curiosity.”
“Hardly.” He freshened his drink and then seemed to study a spot on the ceiling. “I simply wanted to stop hearing my name being bandied about the streets, Jacoby. You see, I grew up on the streets. Now I try to stay as far above them as I can, like in this apartment.” He spread his arms wide without spilling a drop of his new drink.
“That’s it, huh?”
He looked at me then and said, “That’s it—except for one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
He was holding his drink in his right hand and he uncurled his index finger from around the glass and used it to point at me.
“Don’t ever think that I was ducking you. If I was ducking you that would mean I was afraid of you, and if I was afraid of you I’d have some muscle on hand.” He spread his arms again and asked, “Do you see any muscle?”
As cool as he was, ego had succeeded in creeping into the conversation. I was grateful for that. It gave me some ammunition I might otherwise not have had.
I looked directly at him so there would be no mistake and said, “No, Piper, I surely don’t.”
It was nice of him to be concerned but no, I did not get lost on the way out.
The first thing I did when I hit the streets was to call Bogie’s and check to see if Saberhagen had arrived yet. He had, and was staying at the Waldorf, which figured.
The remainder of the day was occupied with meeting my client, bringing him to Hocus—who took a statement that included everything Saberhagen had told me and vice versa since I’d been hired—and then taking him down to the morgue to identify “the remains.”
He stared at the corpse without expression, and when we all went into Mahbee’s office he said, “How in the name of God am I to identify that for sure?”
Hocus and I looked at each other, but it was Mahbee who answered him.
“If you could give us some sort of medical information on your daughter, sir, that we could use to make a positive identification.”
“What do you suggest?” Saberhagen demanded. “I didn’t exactly bring her dental records with me.”
That remark got me a dirty look from Hocus, which I tried to ignore. I didn’t need to be told that there was something else I had forgotten to do that week.
“I think we can find something, sir,” Mahbee said.
Saberhagen and Mahbee put their heads together and came up with an appendix scar and a bone Melanie had broken when she was a child.
“Can we wait?” Hocus asked.
“If you like,” Mahbee said.
We waited in silence. Hocus was still too angry with me to talk to me, and I was feeling an odd sort of anger myself. Saberhagen seemed to
be in another world. I wondered if there might be an important business meeting he was missing for this.
Mahbee came out what seemed like hours later and gave us the confirmation. The dead girl was definitely Melanie Saberhagen.
Robert Saberhagen took it without expression. To my way of thinking, I took it harder than he did—hell, even Hocus seemed to take it harder.
“Detective, could you have someone drive me to the airport?” he asked. “I have a plane to catch.”
“Of course,” Hocus said, frowning, “but what about—”
“I’ve made arrangements, if that’s your concern. The body will be picked up.”
“I’ll arrange for transportation to the airport,” Hocus said.
“Thank you.”
Saberhagen turned to me then and I tried to keep my face as expressionless as his was.
“Mr. Jacoby—”
“I’ll send you a bill, Mr. Saberhagen.”
He simply nodded and then left with Hocus, who took the time to throw me a frown.
As I left Mahbee said, “That was kind of cold, wasn’t it?”
“Doc,” I said, “that man wrote the book on cold.”
From the morgue there was only one place to go and that was to the nearest bar. With a bourbon in front of me I decided that in order to be able to work effectively for Knock Wood Lee, I was going to have to consider the Melanie Saberhagen thing closed. Leave it to Hocus to find the killer, I told myself. That was his job. I only hoped that he’d have the man—or woman—before Henry Po came out of the hospital. That would keep Po from going after him, in which case I would feel obliged to help him. I couldn’t afford that and neither could Wood.
I finished the drink and debated the merits of ordering another one. Remembering the night before—and the morning after—I decided instead to go over to Bogie’s and have something to eat, after which I’d turn in. Come morning I’d think of nothing but getting Heck the evidence he needed to build a solid defense for Wood—right after I made out Robert Saberhagen’s bill and mailed it off to him.
As a good businessman, he’d appreciate my promptness.
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