Death of Riley

by Rhys Bowen

  I managed to attempt a normal conversation until we left Ryan outside his hotel. And when Gus asked me, “Molly, darling, is something wrong?” I replied that I must have drunk too much coffee and it had given me a headache. Then they were both most solicitous and insisted that I lie down in a darkened room with an ice pack on my forehead.

  I lay there, hearing their conversation and laughter coming up from the garden below. My thoughts were still in turmoil. How stupidly mortified I felt that I had believed Ryan might be attracted to me. Now I examined his behavior in the cold light of reason, I saw that he was equally friendly to everyone. To flirt, to put an arm around a shoulder, to kiss on the cheek were part of his nature. I had deceived myself in hoping for too much.

  Then I sat bolt upright, the ice pack tumbling to the floor, as something else occurred to me. If Ryan and Angus MacDonald had been more than friends, if he had been the person that Elizabeth MacDonald was going to cite as the co-respondent in the divorce case, then there was a powerful motive for stopping Paddy Riley from presenting evidence. J.P. MacDonald, the puritanical patriarch, might forgive his son a dalliance with a young woman, but he would never forgive what he perceived to be a terrible sin. He could easily have cut Angus off without a penny.

  I took this further: all three of them then had a motive. Angus, to prevent his disinheritance; old J.P. to prevent the shame and scandal from tarnishing the family name; and Ryan himself, who had just stated to me that a scandal like this could ruin his new play.

  I went to my purse and got out the little black book. There was no mention of Angus, nor, it seemed, of J.P. But there was that cryptic message about RO and LC at O'Connor's. I had no idea who LC might be, or how he was concerned with the case, but I now had a clear line of inquiry ahead of me. I must take every opportunity to probe into the movements of Ryan O'Hare and to uncover what might have happened that night at O'Connor's saloon.

  And so I attempted to turn myself into a social butterfly. I urged Sid and Gus to come with me to O'Connor's every evening. How could I hope to become a writer, I said, if I didn't have a chance to observe life? My upbringing in Ireland had been so sheltered that I knew nothing about human relationships at all. They were amused and, like all good parents, indulged me. So we became regulars at the saloon. Sid and Gus chatted with friends while I sat listening in to conversations, observing people around me. Ryan didn't show up for four infuriating days in a row. I hoped he'd complete his play quickly and come back into society. If not, I wasn't sure how I was going to get in touch with him. I could hardly go to call on him in his hotel room—that would be too forward, even for Greenwich Village.

  In the meantime, I made it my business to chat to his friends. This was not easy, given the noise level at O'Connor's most evenings and the fact that people were always coming and going. Every time I asked about Ryan, the reaction was the same—”Oh, well, you know, Ryan is Ryan. One of a kind.”

  Ryan was fun, Ryan was unreliable and Ryan thought of nobody but himself. Nobody suggested that Ryan might be dangerous.

  Then, one night, Lennie came in, beaming broadly. “Drinks all around,” he called to the bartender. “I've just sold a damned great painting. I'm fifty bucks richer!

  Everyone clustered around him, congratulating, slapping him on the back and making sure they were included in the free drinks. Only Sid and Gus didn't rise from their table. “Fifty dollars for a genuine Lennie Coleman! Cheap at the price,” Sid said, with sweet sarcasm, “What did you do, Lennie, put a gun to the poor soul's head and force him to buy it?”

  “It wasn't a he, it was a she, if you want to know. Her husband is making a fortune in steamships and she wants to set herself up as a patroness of the arts.”

  This produced an instant reaction, with ten other starving artists wanting to know her name and address. Myself, I sat lost in thought. I had just heard his surname for the first time. It had never crossed my mind before that this regular at O'Connor's was an L.C.

  Luck was in my corner that night. Lennie, tired of having to buy drinks for an ever-increasing circle of admirers, came to sit with Sid, Gus and me.

  “Gee, but it's tiring being famous,” he said. “I don't know how Ryan handles it.”

  “He laps it up,” Gus said. “Loves every second of it. Haven't you ever noticed—if he's not the center of attention, he sulks?”

  Lennie chuckled. “I hope to God this play he's working on is good. You know how he hates failure. He's unbearable when things go wrong.”

  “He's working hard, which is a good sign,” Sid said. “Earlier in the summer he was making flippant remarks about getting the cast to ad-lib the last act and create thenown ending.”

  “So what are you going to do with the fifty dollars, Lennie?” I asked.

  “Live a little longer, I hope,” he said, laughing. “Buy more paints. Pay the rent on my studio for a couple more months. Paint another damned painting to sell.” He seemed to notice me for the first time. “How would you like to be painted, Molly?”

  “Me?” I was thrown off-guard.

  “Sure.” Lennie was smiling at me. “I've got a yen to do more life studies. You'd make a perfect model with all that red hair.”

  I realized this was my opportunity, the chance to chat, one-on-one, with Lennie Coleman in his studio. If I couldn't unearth any useful facts during long painting sessions, then I wasn't much of an investigator.

  I gave him my most charming smile. “I'd love to, Lennie. When do you want to start?”

  It wasn't until I let myself in to the building on Tenth Street the next morning that I began to have misgivings. It was a long warehouselike structure, housing many artists' studios, and the inside hallway felt damp and cold after the muggy heat outside. My feet echoed up stone stairs. Not a sound in the whole building. No hint that it was occupied. “Saw RO with LC.” Paddy's words flashed through my mind. Lennie might look pudgy and benevolent, but I would have to watch every word I said. As I tapped on Lennie's front door, I reminded myself to watch my tongue. If he was the L.C. in Paddy's book, then he mustn't know that I was in any way connected to Paddy.

  In contrast to the cold, dark hallway, the studio itself was bathed in light from tall windows. It was a big room, half living area, half studio by the looks of it. On my left were a bare wood table holding the remains of a breakfast, a gas ring and sink and an unmade bed. On my right it was uncarpeted and unfurnished except for an easel with a new canvas on it, a table containing paints and a palette, a stool and another stool backed by cloth drapery.

  “Hi, Molly. Ready to get started then?” Lennie greeted me as I came in.

  “Indeed I am.” I looked around for a place to put my purse.

  “I hope it's warm enough in here,” he said. “You can go behind the screen to take off your clothes.”

  “Pardon me?”

  He pointed casually to the far corner, behind the bed, where there was a wooden screen. “You can go over there to get undressed.”

  “Now just a minute.” I heard my voice rising. “What kind of girl do you think I am? You lure me here on the pretext of wanting to paint me and then you start making indecent suggestions the moment I step in the door. Fm not staying another second.”

  He came across and grabbed my arm. “But I do want to paint you, you silly goose,” he said. “I want to paint you in the nude.”

  “In the nude? With no clothes on, you mean?”

  “Of course. I told you I wanted to practice life studies. That's what life study means—painting nudes.”

  “I couldn't possibly …” I began, but he started laughing. “You'll be perfectly safe, you know. I'm not at all interested in young women like yourself, except as models. And I'm a very trustworthy kind of guy. Ask anyone around the Village. Good old reliable Lennie. Come on, Molly, what do you say? How is an artist supposed to improve if he can't work with live models? And everyone else has posed for me—Sid, Gus, even Ryan.”

  “All right,” I said. I had forced my
self to take a good many chances recently. One more could hardly matter. I went behind the screen and unbuttoned my blouse with trembling fingers. Was it my imagination or was it very cold in that studio? My eye fell on my straw hat, lying on the chair. Swiftly I pulled out the hat pin that held the silk rose in place and wrapped my fingers around it. If he had been spinning me a yarn and he tried anything indecent, then I was going to be ready.

  I came out feeling horribly self-conseious. Lennie was standing at the little table mixing colors. “Go and sit on the stool, please. Watch out how you step on the velvet, won't you. It was horribly expensive.”

  I perched on the stool, wishing myself anywhere else but here. Lennie picked up his palette and stood behind the easel, eyeing me critically. “Swing to your left a little. Good. And let your hair fall over that shoulder, and maybe put your hand on your thigh. And don't look as if you're a Christian about to be fed to the lions. I don't see you as a woman, I see you as a design. You can chat away quite normally, only don't move.”

  I can't tell you how strange it felt to be sitting in the nude on a cold hard stool talking about the weather and how seasonable it was for the time of year. I almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all. But gradually I did relax, and remembered the point of my mission.

  “So tell me about Ryan O'Hare,” I said. “I find him fascinating.”

  “You and half the population of New York,” Lennie said.

  “You two are good friends, aren't you?”

  “I'm not sure Ryan has good friends. I don't think anyone knows the real Ryan,” he said. “Ryan plays the part that is expected of him wherever he goes. But I suppose I am as close to him as he lets anyone get.”

  “And you spend a lot of time together, don't you? You go to theaters and bars together?”

  “Sometimes,” Lennie said. “When he doesn't have anyone better to take him out. What Ryan really likes is to be whisked into the whirl of high society by the rich and the beautiful. Since I am neither rich nor beautiful, I am usually the last resort.”

  “Is Ryan often with the rich and the beautiful then?”

  “Whenever he finds a suitable love interest.” Lennie jabbed at his canvas.

  “Ryan told me he never stays in love for long,” I said. “Do you think he'll ever find his soul mate and settle down?”

  Lennie chuckled. “His soul mate would have to be very rich. Ryan has expensive tastes.”

  “So he doesn't have money of his own? I'd have thought, being a famous playwright, he'd be rich.”

  “He spends it as fast as it comes in,” Lennie said. “He

  needs another Angus MacDonald with an inexhaustible supply of cash. Actually”—he looked up with the hint of a grin—”I told him what he needs is a rich elderly widow. He could marry her, then feed her a steady supply of arsenic.”

  He started laughing. “We had a long, earnest talk along those lines, one night when we were both in our cups. We sat there discussing painless and undetectable ways to bump off old ladies.”

  “At O'Connor's, was this?” I asked.

  “Where else? Now hold still. You moved your head.” And he went on painting.

  I tried to hold still, but I couldn't wait to get off that stool. Maybe this was what Paddy had overheard at O'Connor's that night. Ryan and Lennie had been joking, but Paddy had taken their plans seriously. In which case the overheard conversation had nothing to do with his death after all. In which case I was wasting my time sitting on a cold hard stool!

  Twenty

  I was stiff and numb by the time Lennie announced that he had painted all he could for one day. He was pleased with the result, though. “Another session and I think we'll have something marketable here,” he said, but he wouldn't show me the canvas. “I never show anyone until it's finished. It's bad luck.”

  So I agreed to come back the next morning and walked home briskly, trying to restore the circulation to my legs. In a way I was relieved to have solved the mystery of the overheard conversation and to know that Ryan and Lennie were not involved in Paddy's death. It would appear, then, that his death had nothing to do with Ryan, for which I was glad. But that meant that I didn't know where to go from here. If either Angus MacDonald or his father had hired a killer, then I couldn't go delving into the New York underworld to unmask him. This made me realize how useless I was as an investigator. Paddy would have known where to go and whom to question. He had contacts in all the gangs. He moved on both sides of the fence, as Sergeant Wolski had said. He was lucky to have that facility. On the other hand, it might have been the cause of his death.

  So it looked as though I would have to leave the investigation of Paddy Riley's murder to the police. From my brief conversation with Daniel a week ago, he had hinted that he had been looking into the case himself, and that a dangerous element might be involved. I told myself I was well out of it. If I started probing around, asking questions about gangs and hired killers, I might well wind up dead myself.

  I stopped at the post office on my way home, to see if any letters had come for Paddy. I had asked the post office to hold any mail, but until now nothing had shown up. So I was surprised to find two letters. One contained a check for a hundred dollars, along with a note in slanted green ink apologizing for the delay in paying the fee. The other was from a Mrs. Edna Purvis of White Plains, asking him to call on her at his earliest convenience to discuss a matter of extreme delicacy. A new divorce case, obviously. I was tempted to call on Mrs. Purvis myself and take on the case as the junior partner in the firm. Then I reminded myself that I hadn't been at all successful in solving Paddy's murder. I had better stop these foolish aspirations right away and find myself a sensible job I could do well. At least I now had contacts in the Village. Sid and Gus knew everybody. And if everything else failed, I could always make my living as an artist's model.

  That night I woke from a deep sleep with a jolt. I had been dreaming again about Paddy's coat. “It's too big for me. You take it,” he was saying. I lay there, shaken, and unable to sleep. Was there something I had missed? Had I been too quick to dismiss Ryan and Lennie's little joke? Now that I analyzed it calmly, I had to admit that the scenario did not ring true. Paddy was an experienced, streetwise detective. He had lived on both sides of the law. Overhearing two men discussing how to poison an old woman would not have upset him to that degree, and it wouldn't have been a case he couldn't handle either. All he had to do was see Daniel and pass on his suspicions to him. Whatever Paddy had overheard that night at O'Connor's, it was something quite different.

  The next day, after my session with Lennie, I went to see Paddy's former landlady.

  “I'm glad you turned up again,” she said. “I want to get that room cleaned out and the first of the month is coming up.”

  “I'll help you,” I said. “I'll see what things I'll need to carry on the business and you can have the rest.”

  “Carry on the business?” She looked alarmed. “You're never thinking of carrying on Paddy's work, surely? That's no job for a woman—dirty, dangerous. I can't tell you how many times he told me about narrow escapes he'd had. What's more, I can't tell you how many times I had to patch up cuts and bruises when he got himself into a fight. You find yourself a nice husband, dearie, and leave that kind of work to the men.”

  “All the same, I'll take his disguises, in case someone else wants to take over the business,” I said. I didn't let on that his office building had burned. I took down the box of wigs and makeup, some items from his desk, including the roll of film and the negatives, and the long flowing cape. It might come in handy if I ever needed to disguise myself as a man. I helped Mrs. O'Shaunessey put the rest of his stuff into boxes and watched the gleam in her eye as she worked out how much she could get from the usedclothing merchants.

  Then I carried my bounty home. As I passed O'Connor's I saw Dante and Hodder crossing the street toward the saloon.

  “Hey, Molly. Drinks all around tonight. Ryan's finished the play,” Hodd
er called.

  “He appeared, pale and wraithlike, but still alive, saying that it's the best thing he's ever written—a work of utter genius,” Dante added with a grin, “and he expects all his friends to be at O'Connor's to tell him how clever he is. Typical Ryan. Never get the medal for modesty.”

  “So tell the girls, will you?” Hodder said. “Ryan will want them there, I know.”

  I hurried on home and was exhausted by the time I dropped the packages on my bed. Why had I bothered to bring all this stuff? Fake beards and noses and eyeglasses—when would I ever need them? The cape, though, might be very welcome this winter. I remembered how cold I had been last winter and the cape was of good wool, with only a few moth holes in it. I put it on, looked at myself in the mirror and twirled around, watching it fly out. Then something bumped against my leg. I felt for pockets, reached in, and my hand closed around something hard and square. It was Paddy's camera.

  I stood turning it over in my hands. I knew I should hand it over to the police, but I didn't want to. If there was a vital clue in one of those pictures, then I wanted to know about it first. I'd have the film developed, then I'd hand over the pictures when I'd looked at them. After all, the police had searched Paddy's room. If they hadn't been clever enough to find the camera, that was their hard luck.

  I ran out again and asked around until I located a photographer's studio. Its proprietor agreed to develop and print the film for me. I should come back in a week. Never having been the most patient of souls in my life, I begged, pleaded and urged for him to do the developing on the spot, but he refused. He was booked solid with important clients for the next few days—clients who paid good money. My litde job would just have to wait.