by J. J. Murphy
The bell rang again, and two more men entered. They sat down in the booth closest to the door.
The fat cook came out from the back and approached the man sitting at the counter. “What’ll it be, bub?”
“Seltzer.”
The cook called to the two men at the booth. “How about you fellas?”
“Give me a seltzer, too.”
“Orange juice,” said the other man.
As he grabbed a seltzer bottle and some glasses, the cook addressed the man sitting at the counter.
“Something to eat?”
“What do you have?”
“How about some nice liver and onions?”
“Nah. Just the seltzer.”
Dorothy and Benchley resumed their conversation as the cook went through the same rigmarole with the two men in the booth, who also turned down the chef’s special.
She said, “I don’t like the way that Captain Church talked about our little pal Mr. Sherwood. We’ll have to warn Sherwood that they’re looking to bring him in for a round of twenty questions.”
“Agreed,” Benchley said. “Constable Orangutan made it sound like Mr. Sherwood physically threatened Bud Battersby on the steps of the station house. It was nothing of the sort.”
“Bob Sherwood wouldn’t lay a hand on Battersby,” she said. “I don’t care how many Germans he killed in the war.”
Her statement hung in the air a moment.
“Besides,” she said quickly, “even if Sherwood is a bloodthirsty killer, as the captain and the detective seem to suggest, then he wouldn’t bother with a hired gun, would he? He’d do the job himself.”
“Now you’re talking sense.”
“But what worries me is Billy Faulkner. If he doesn’t turn up soon, I’ll really start to worry. Then again—”
“Then again, if he does turn up and we don’t inform the police, as they very clearly told us to do, then we’ll all be in some very serious hot water.”
The bell on the door jingled yet again, and another pair of men entered. They didn’t look at the other men, and they didn’t look at Dorothy and Benchley. They didn’t linger in the doorway either, but sat down right away beside the first man at the counter, like schoolchildren late for class.
“Now, what fresh hell is this?” Dorothy whispered. She looked at a grimy electric clock on the wall. It was nearly four-thirty in the morning.
The fat cook waddled along behind the counter. “Evening, boys. Would you like to hear about our special of the day?”
“Just coffee, thanks.”
“Me, too.”
The cook frowned and shuffled once more toward the battered coffee urn.
After observing this short exchange, Benchley turned back around to face Dorothy.
“Popular place all of a sudden,” he murmured. “What do you say we go somewhere a little less crowded, like a downtown bus at rush hour?”
“Now you’re talking sense,” she said. But as she began to slide out of the booth, one of the men looked at her. His expression was ominous. She sensed that the other men were suddenly alert, like a flock of birds ready to take flight.
She stopped. She turned toward the cook behind the counter.
“Can I trouble you for some cream for the coffee?” she said.
The cook handed her a tiny ceramic pitcher filled with thick white cream. She sat back down in the booth, intentionally not looking at the men. She poured the cream in her coffee and stirred it. She lifted it to her lips, but she didn’t drink it.
Over the cup, she whispered, “I’m in no mood for any more questions and arguments, are you?”
Benchley understood. “No, indeed. It’s both too late and too early for any more of that.”
Unobtrusively, she reached into her coat pocket for something. She placed it on the table.
“Can you ask our worthy innkeeper if you could use his telephone?” she said. “Dial that number. Tell the man who answers to come here. Tell him I want to see him now.”
Benchley glanced at the slip of paper. He stood up. The man who had glared at her now stared menacingly at Benchley.
At that moment, the bell tinkled and the door opened. Two more men in long dark coats entered. They halted and looked intently at Benchley. For a long moment, no one moved.
Finally, Benchley timidly turned to the cook. “Excuse me. Can I use your ... your water closet?”
“In the back, on the left,” the cook said.
Benchley went through the doorway in the back.
The two men who had just entered now glanced at Dorothy. They seemed to be sizing her up. Despite their stony faces, she could almost tell what they were thinking: This little lady wouldn’t go anywhere without her gentleman escort, and the escort was too much of a gentleman to leave without her. Slowly, they sat down in the only open seats—in the booth adjoining hers.
The fat cook had finally realized that there was something odd about having a full house at half-past four in the morning. He addressed everyone in the place. “What is this? A trench coat convention or something?”
The men ignored him.
The cook spoke to the two men who had just sat down. “Let me guess. You’ll have a glass of water and a plate of nothing.”
“Root beer.”
“Me, too.”
“Fine,” the cook said, exasperated. “Two root beers, coming up.”
“On second thought,” Dorothy spoke, and her voice sounded high and tremulous to her own ears. The cook and the other men seemed frozen in expectation. “On second thought, give us a couple plates of the liver and onions after all. We’re not going anywhere for a while.”
She sensed that this had a calming—or at least a delaying—effect on the seven menacing men. But it had the opposite effect on the cook. He was ecstatic.
“You will?” He beamed. “Two plates?”
She nodded. He nearly danced his way to the griddle behind the counter and seemed to bop to a silent jitterbug as he warmed it up.
Benchley returned and sat down.
“What did I miss?”
“I ordered us the liver and onions. I hope you have some money.”
“I wouldn’t worry about paying,” he muttered. “If this gang of thugs doesn’t get us—”
“Then the liver and onions will. Very funny. So, were you able to place the call?”
“Yes, but it was a bad connection. I’m not sure if he understood what I was saying, and I didn’t want to raise my voice, of course.”
“Of course,” she said. “So I guess we’ll wait and see.”
Several long minutes ticked by as they waited. The men at the counter and in the booths occasionally shot them dark glances but otherwise did nothing. The men didn’t even talk. Dorothy and Benchley found this unnerving.
Benchley decided to break the silence.
“My niece informs me,” he said loudly, “that a friend of hers at Yale ran off with the track coach.”
“Sounds like she put her heart before the course,” Dorothy obligingly replied. Then she added, “Well, that’s a Yale girl for you. If all those sweet young things were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”
One of the men in the next booth tittered, and he clapped his hand to his mouth. She could see his shoulders silently shudder as he tried to keep from laughing.
“That’s one good thing about a girl who goes to college,” Benchley continued. “She has an open mind.”
“Sure,” Dorothy replied, “her mind is so open, the wind whistles through it.”
Now the other men strained to keep from laughing. The strain to keep silent, she knew, made them want to laugh all the harder.
Benchley changed the subject. “So, that was quite a visit we had earlier.”
“What visit?”
“We met a police captain with one leg named Church.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “But what was the name of his other leg?”
Two of the men laughed openly. A few of the
others bit their tongues and hissed in exhalation as they tried to hold it in. Benchley surely guessed that they knew of Captain Church. A joke at the policeman’s expense was the final straw.
“Here you are,” the cook said, carrying two plates to their table. “Special of the day.”
Benchley looked at the leathery slice of liver and the pungent, greasy onions. “If this is the special, I’d hate to see the average.”
Dorothy said, “I’d hate to see the sick horse this liver came from.”
“Don’t look a sick horse in the mouth,” Benchley said.
“In the mouth? I can’t even look at it on my plate.”
“Hey,” the cook yelled from behind the counter, “take that back.”
She held up her plate. “Only if you return the favor.”
The men laughed again. Above the laughter, the bell rang once more.
A sharp voice called out, “What’s so damn funny?”
The men went silent immediately. At the door stood a very handsome man. He wore a fur-collared coat and a top hat on his head. He had a walking stick—a knobby, silver-tipped shillelagh—in his hand and an angry scowl on his face. He strode forward and his face brightened, but his voice still held menace.
“I like a funny joke.” The man had a faint Irish brogue, but it was more guttural than lilting. “Tell me, now. What’s so funny?”
The other men didn’t respond. They looked away—at one another, at their shoes, at the clock—they looked anywhere but at the newcomer. The man now grinned maliciously, his ice blue eyes alight, gazing sideways at Dorothy and Benchley as he came closer. This was certainly not who Benchley had called, Dorothy thought.
“You telling jokes, are you? Go on, tell us a joke, then.”
He took off the top hat. His hair was ginger red. Now he stood over their table. The man was devilishly handsome, Dorothy thought, except for his teeth, which were yellow, crooked and foul. Looking into his mouth was like looking into a rusty can filled with a jumble of old, ivory mah-jongg tiles. Even his gums receded, as if to get away from those decrepit teeth.
“Go on.” He grinned, his eyes flashing. “Tell us a joke.”
Benchley said the first thing that came to mind. “What’s black and white and red all over?”
“Hmph,” the man said, disappointed. “A newspaper.”
“Nope,” Benchley said. “A zebra with eczema.”
The man’s smile disintegrated. “I said I like a funny joke.”
“Try the liver,” Dorothy said. “You’ll feel funny in no time.”
The red-haired man smiled. “Now, that’s a joke. So, let’s say you two come with us. We’ll have a drink, share some more laughs, and have a nice little chat.”
“Chat about what?” she said.
“Your friend Mr. Dachshund. I hear you’ve been talking about him to the police. They’re looking for him, I know. But I want to find him first.”
She didn’t like his smile. She had a sinking feeling in her stomach, and it wasn’t from the liver.
“Thanks for the invitation,” she said, “but it’s late, and we each have liver to eat.”
“It wasn’t an invitation. Let’s go. Or you’ll have lead to eat.”
“What if we put up a fight?”
He threw his head back and erupted in laughter. “Put up a fight? Oh, now, that is funny. You are too funny, miss. Put up a fight, will you?” Tears rolled down his cheeks as his laughter subsided. The menace returned to his eyes and his voice. “You and what army?”
The bell tinkled again.
She exclaimed, “Well, if it isn’t my old friend Jack Dempsey! And you brought some friends!”
The square-shouldered boxer entered calmly, confidently. Behind him, extending out the door, was a gang of a dozen other tough-looking men. Probably fellow boxers or cornermen, Dorothy thought.
“Mrs. Parker,” Dempsey said, ignoring the red-haired man as he stepped by him. “Ain’t that a kick in the head to see you here. Talk about a coincidence. Why, my pals here were just walking by on our way to find a cocktail. Would you like to join us?”
“Delighted,” she said, scrambling out of the booth.
The redheaded man stepped forward, his blue eyes raging. “Why don’t you make plans to meet Mr. Dempsey later? It’s not healthy to eat and run, don’t you know?”
Benchley shoved away his plate. “It’s not healthy to eat in here, period.”
“Hey, take that back, too,” the cook yelled from behind the counter. Everyone ignored him.
Dorothy wouldn’t be intimidated. She started toward the door.
The red-haired man stood in her way, holding the shillelagh to block her path. He spoke between his clenched yellow teeth. “I’m telling you, it’s not good for your health. You’ll live longer if you take your time.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
She brushed by him. Dempsey stepped aside to let her pass, and although she wanted to run, she calmly strolled out the door, followed by Dempsey’s gang of boxers. Benchley jumped up, threw a few bills on the table, and quickly joined the group.
Outside, it was still dark on the nearly deserted city street. Dempsey walked beside her.
“That was pretty gutsy of you,” he said.
“Gutsy of me?” she gushed. “You came to our rescue.”
“Don’t sweat it. That hoodlum wouldn’t touch me, especially with my chums here. But he could knock down your door anytime, and there’s not much I can do about it unless I just happen to be nearby, like I was tonight when your friend Mr. Benchley called.”
“Strange men knocking down my door?” she said. “Sounds like an average Saturday night.”
Dempsey placed his large hand on her sleeve. “Hold on, now. You do know who that was back there, don’t you? Only one of the most ruthless gangsters in the city.”
“Was it? I confess I didn’t catch his name.”
“That was Mickey Finn.”
Chapter 24
The Sunday afternoon sun slanted through her bedroom window and warmed her face. She sat up in bed. The sunlight felt good, and she realized she felt good. She felt alert and ready to go.
This was unusual. Most Sunday afternoons, she woke up hungover and irritable.
The good feeling was short-lived, though, as she recalled the night before ... the long grilling by Captain Church and Detective O’Rannigan. The close call at the greasy spoon with Mickey Finn and his henchmen. Then Jack Dempsey had informed her that he wasn’t really up late drinking cocktails. He was up early and on his way to the gym. He said he hoped to see her again; then he and his pals left. Benchley had walked her back to the Algonquin; then he, too, toddled off to the train station to spend the day with his family.
She kicked the blankets off. She lit a cigarette and exhaled fiercely. The hell with all those men!
Woodrow Wilson hopped up on her bed and nuzzled under her arm. The poor dog needed a walk, she knew. But would she be safe if she took the dog for a stroll by herself? She imagined a long black limousine pulling up alongside her, a pack of men in long coats jumping out, grabbing her, dragging her inside.
The dog laid its head on her lap.
The hell with Mickey Finn! Who was he to cage her up on such a brilliant, sunny day?
“Come on, Woody. Let’s go for a walk.”
The dog jumped down from the bed with a bark. He seemed to make a playful bow. His forelegs stretched out, his backside went up in the air, his stubby tail wagged expectantly and his snout curled almost in a grin.
While she got dressed, she tried to catch the thread of a nagging thought. Several things about the previous night bothered her, but there was something in particular. Something about someone Church had asked about ...
Was it something about Frank Case? Could the hotel manager have murdered someone in his own hotel to make headlines? That bothered her, true, but that wasn’t it.
Was it something about Robert Sherwood? Sherwood had certainly killed men in the
war; that was a fact. But Sherwood, even if pushed far enough to kill, wouldn’t have murdered Mayflower in so cowardly a fashion. No, her mind was certain about Sherwood. But, she remembered something else. Church and O’Rannigan wanted to pull Sherwood in for questioning. She’d have to warn him. But, still, this wasn’t the thread she was trying to get hold of.
Was it something about Woollcott? Perhaps. O’Rannigan had said Mayflower went behind Woollcott’s back to land the Saber fountain pen endorsement contract. That had surprised her. Had Woollcott seriously wanted that endorsement deal? Would it compel him to murder with the very item in question? Hmm. Something didn’t add up there. Mayflower had been appearing in the Saber ads for months now. But on the day he was murdered, Mayflower had contacted Woollcott to brag about some new accomplishment.
That wasn’t quite it, but that was closer to the thought she was trying to recollect. Something about Mayflower. Something else that she didn’t know—
Yes, that was it! Mayflower had a lover. Everyone seemed so desperate to catch Mayflower’s killer, yet no one seemed to give a damn about Mayflower himself. Perhaps she could go talk to the man—what was his name? Aloysius Neeley; that was it. Perhaps she could go talk to Mr. Neeley to learn a little bit more about Mayflower. Maybe, somehow, she’d learn of a connection between Mayflower and the Sandman. Maybe this would get the cops and the gangsters off her back, which in turn might bring Faulkner out of hiding, and then the whole lousy mess would be over with. Maybe.
Hell, it was worth a shot.
She was starting to feel better again. In the elevator, she cheerfully greeted old Maurice. “Good morning!”
“It’s afternoon,” he grumbled.
“Says you.” She smiled.
She walked the dog through the lobby. Sunday afternoons were always quiet. She realized she was hungry, but it was well past lunchtime. The Vicious Circle did not gather for lunch on Sundays.
“Oh, Dottie,” called a sultry female voice.
She turned around. Neysa McMein approached her, looking considerably worse for wear. Neysa wore the same slim black dress she had worn when Dorothy saw her at last night’s poker game. Neysa’s beautiful half-lidded eyes drooped more than usual.
