Lydia

by Howard Fast

  “Sure. Four hundred sixty feet. Do you know how much that is? Can you grapple for something at that depth?”

  “I would think that in a small pond, you could.”

  “You would think that—because you don’t know a damn thing about it. Don’t you think I wanted that car? Sure, there’s an outfit in Boston that could do it. Special truck, five hundred feet of steel cable, special winch, special crane. You don’t drag at that depth. You go down, trust to luck and go down again. The road ain’t wide enough for the truck, so we got to scrape it and surface it for over a mile. The special outfit with three men to service it comes at two hundred dollars a day. They guarantee nothing. The road job is estimated at seventeen hundred dollars. Suppose they come out and grapple for ten days—thirty-seven hundred dollars, and mind you, you are not dragging, you are grappling blindly, and then at the end of that time, you got nothing. We’re a small town, mister, and that kind of money just ain’t to be found or spent. What do we gain? We knew the kid was dead. There was no demand from her family that we recover the body—she had no family as far as we could make out. She was a stranger. So we left it alone. What else could we do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well, when you do know, mister, come back and tell me.”

  I thought about it, driving back to New York, but it didn’t get me anywhere. Then I thought about what I intended to do with the fifty thousand dollars. That kind of thinking was an indulgence, but it helped to pass the time.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SIX TWENTY-SIX PARK AVENUE was one of those large, redbrick-front apartment houses that were built between 1920 and 1925. One floor equals a floor and a half of modern structure, and according to Homer Clapp, the doorman, the smallest apartment was seven rooms and the largest a fourteen-room duplex.

  When I arrived there, at nine-fifteen on Wednesday morning, the handyman had just finished washing the sidewalk in front of the building, and Park Avenue had that aristocratic, empty, dead look that is evidently one of its major attractions. Clapp, who wore a green uniform and a kind of unaggressively stupid expression on his wide, flat face, was nursing a small dog on the end of a leash. A dog is better than the weather for starting a conversation, and when I guessed that it was a Pekingese, he looked at me in disgust and informed me that it was a Pomeranian, as anyone could see. That is, anyone who had been doorman at a Park Avenue apartment house. He also let me know that there was absolutely no basis of comparison between a Pomeranian and a Pekingese, since the Pomeranian is gentle and lovable and the Pekingese is mostly a vicious little bastard that the whole world owes a living to. There were four of the stinking Pekingese in the building but only two Pomeranians.

  “No people?”

  He considered that for a while before he replied, “That’s funny, you’re a comedian.”

  “I’m an insurance investigator,” I told him, “My name is Harvey Krim.” I spoke respectfully and smiled, and in turn he told me his name and we were on the way toward mutual trust and respect. He was lonely and he hated dogs. He felt that his relationship to dogs was destructive to his self-respect. He did not put it in precisely those words, but that was the gist of it. He told me what he was paid each month, and asked me how anyone with a wife and three kids could be expected to live on what he was paid? He imparted this information not all at once, but between opening and closing the door and dashing over to open and close various cab doors, since the outgoing trade in his building was brisk between nine and ten o’clock. I agreed that with the prices of things the way they were, it was not to be expected.

  “So I depend on tips, which is humiliating. It’s got to be humiliating. What are you, a private cop or something?”

  I explained about the Sarbine necklace.

  “What are my vices?” he asked me. “I don’t tank up. I don’t run around with no floozies. Once in a while I put two dollars on a horse. Is that a crime?”

  I assured him that I didn’t consider it a crime.

  “So I depend on the lousy tips. You know something, Mr. Krim, as soon as you showed up, I spotted you for the Sarbine necklace. I’d like to help you.”

  “For how much?”

  He shrugged and spread his hands. “You know—a guy lives, if you call it living.”

  A heavily built, bull-necked man in his middle fifties came through the door. He was wearing a black suit, light topcoat, black homburg, and he had pale, cold blue eyes. I stood to one side while Homer flagged down a cab for him. When Homer had sent him off, he continued to look after him thoughtfully, while he observed that quarter of a million dollars was a nice piece of change to hang around a broad’s neck. “I guess he can afford it,” Homer said.

  “Who?”

  “Sarbine. That was Sarbine.”

  I thought about it for a while, and then I explained to Homer that the company didn’t lay out any money in the cause of friendship, or even approve of it. “It comes from my own pocket,” I told him, taking out two tens. “What will this buy?”

  “Body and soul,” Homer smiled, folding the two tens carefully.

  “Let’s say everything remains between you and me.”

  “You bought it.”

  “Good. What about them?”

  “The Sarbines?”

  “That’s right. The Sarbines. Start with how long they have been here.”

  “Three years—maybe nearer four. I got to think about that.”

  “How many of them?”

  “That was all in the papers.”

  “I like it fresh,” I smiled, “and from a reliable source.”

  “You bought it. Him, wife, cook and maid.”

  “Mark Sarbine, Helen Sarbine—what was the maid’s name again?”

  “Lydia Anderson.”

  “That’s right—Lydia Anderson. And the cook?”

  “Hilda something. She’s an elderly Kraut, so who knows if she even got a tag on the other end? This Lydia, however, is a filly of another stable.”

  “White or colored?”

  “White, with a southern accent you could cut with a knife. Poor white trash from Texas—”

  “Never mind the sociological labeling, Homer. She’s a girl from Texas. How old?”

  “In her twenties. And if she latched onto the necklace, she got it made. Only I think she’s stupid. I think she’s too stupid to pull a job like that.”

  “And the wife, Homer?” I continued, after he had opened a door or two.

  “Mrs. Sarbine? Class. Strictly class. In her thirties—”

  “Blonde, wears it high, one dark mink, one light, diamond bracelets, about five feet eight inches?”

  “You know her?”

  “I am just familiar with class,” I said. “Look, Homer, I bet she’s real kind to you, but I bought a piece of your soul, so let’s keep all this between you and me. How about it?”

  “I told you you bought it.”

  “Good. Now Sarbine’s out—when does he come back?”

  “Four, five, six—I go off at four.”

  “And the big blonde?”

  Homer shook his head and said that he didn’t like that kind of talk. He explained that it was a class house without any tramps in it.

  “I’m sorry, Homer. Mrs. Sarbine.”

  “She goes out somewhere between twelve and one, and sometimes she’s back while I’m still on duty but mostly not. Now look, Mr. Krim, I’ll do what I can for you, but I got to live on this job. It ain’t like I’m the only one on the job; there are the boys on the elevators and the relief crew, so maybe if you can spare another ten dollars, I’ll spread it around where it will do the most good.”

  “What?” I cried indignantly.

  “All right, don’t blow your stack. It was just a suggestion.”

  I gave him five dollars more, and he told me that he considered me to be very generous, and I didn’t argue with him and try to persuade him that I was stupid, not generous. It was enough that I knew it. I left him there, hanging onto the P
omeranian, and I walked over to the precinct house, which was only a few blocks away. I was no stranger there, for you could safely say that at least twenty-five per cent of the important jewel robberies in Manhattan were in the district the precinct served, the hot little heart of what New Yorkers call the “golden rectangle,” an area to the east of Central Park, bounded by Ninety-sixth Street on the north and Fifty-seventh Street on the south and stretching eastward to the river. Here is concentrated more wealth than in any other area of equal size anywhere on earth, and like any good miner, the crook searches for his metal where the lode is richest.

  At the desk in the station house, Sergeant Adrian Kelly regarded me without either devotion or hospitality and wanted to know what had kept me. “Or don’t you care?” he said.

  “I depend on such sterling characters as yourself.”

  “That’s sweet, Harvey. It’s always nice for a cop to know that he’s liked.” He picked up a phone then, asked for Lieutenant Rothschild, and told him I was there. “Go on up,” he sighed. “The lieutenant can’t wait to see you.”

  Rothschild was a small, dyspeptic, non-smiling man in his late forties. He was as short as a policeman can be and still make the regulations; his face was as blank and hopeless as a method actor’s, and his speech was grammatical Brooklynese. The only sign of sentiment or humanity I had ever recognized in him were the pictures of his family he kept on his desk, a smiling, pretty wife and three bright-faced kids. He displayed them obviously as proof of membership in the human race, although why he ever desired such recognition, I did not know.

  When I entered his office, he demanded to know why I hadn’t knocked and was I raised in a stable, the way I went in and out of doorways like some kind of hoodlum?

  “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I knew you expected me, so I didn’t knock.”

  “Next time knock.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant, sir.”

  “And give me one more of those goddamn wisecracks, yes, Lieutenant, sir, and out you go! Out for good. You got business with me, show a little respect for the force.”

  “All right,” I agreed. “I’ll show respect.”

  “Now close the door behind you.”

  I closed the door behind me.

  “Sit down. Make yourself comfortable.”

  I stared at him for a long moment; then I nodded and sat down and made myself comfortable. He, in turn, studied the cream-yellow walls of his office, plainly trying to remember who I was and why I was there. When it came to him, he demanded to know why I hadn’t waited another week before I decided to stroll around and deliver my compliments to the police?

  “Well, you know—”

  “I don’t know one damn thing, Harvey. Are you going to pay off on the policy?”

  “I suppose so. That’s our business.”

  He stared at me gloomily and waited.

  “Of course, we’d like to get the necklace back.”

  “Sure,” he nodded. “That’s why you’re breaking your back. That’s why you’re here two hours after the robbery.”

  “I don’t like to interfere with the police,” I said gently and politely. “The police know their job. They’re experts at their job and well-equipped to do it—”

  “You give me a pain in the ass,” he interrupted. “All you guys who know so much more than the cops. The cops are stupid. The cops are a bunch of paranoiac hoodlums on the take. But if we turn up that bauble, there’s not twenty cents in the dish. How much do you stand to make, Harvey?”

  “You know the company doesn’t pay any finder’s fee.”

  “Nuts. Your lousy company will pay off and protect any cheap crook who wants to do business with them, and you know it. Don’t argue with me. I just want to know one thing—do you know where the damn thing is?”

  I shook my head.

  “Are you dealing for it? Are you talking to any fence? Have you been approached? You come clean with me, Harvey, or I swear I’ll make life so hard for you you’ll leave this business and go shine shoes.”

  “The answer is no to everything, Lieutenant. I have nothing. Absolutely nothing. I came here because I was hoping you would tell me about it.”

  “What’s to tell? It’s an idiot robbery, and that’s the worse kind. You been informing yourself a little about the Sarbines?”

  I nodded.

  “All right. Sunday evening they had eight people to dinner, ten including themselves. Three couples and two singles—all eight connected in some way with the theater. That’s the Sarbines’ latest kick, the theater. They put a few dollars in a show and they’re angels, and they can invite the director to dinner, Jack Finney and his wife. The producer, Abel Martin and his wife. Joseph Hartman, another backer, and his wife. Sadie Klinger—you heard her name? The dress designer?”

  “Yes—I think I met her once.”

  “That makes seven. The eighth was another investor, an old gentleman, name of David Gorman—” He stared at me curiously, and I asked him whether I was supposed to know something about Gorman. He shrugged. “Do you?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  Rothschild opened the drawer of his desk and took out a cigar. He rolled it in his fingers a moment, and then asked me did I want a lousy, cheap ten-cent cigar. I told him I don’t smoke cigars, and for some reason that struck him as being humorous, and he permitted himself a thin and short-lived smile. He lit the cigar and said,

  “You’re an interesting young fellow, Harvey.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  “All right. Eight respectable dinner guests. A cook, a maid. While they’re having cocktails, someone asks the Sarbine woman why she is not wearing the necklace. She says it bores her—she is tired of ‘the damn thing’ to use her words. Talk about the necklace. Only Hartman and his wife have ever seen it, and the others are curious. So she marches them into the bedroom—”

  “All of them?”

  “All except the Hartmans. They remain with Sarbine in the living room. The others follow her into the bedroom. She takes the case out of a drawer in her dresserone of the flat, black, leather-covered cases—and opens it and shows them. They all look and admire. She closes the case and tosses it onto her bed—big status gesture. You know what kind of a dame this Sarbine woman is?”

  “Sort of—a rough outline.”

  “So you get the gesture. What the hell’s a quarter of a million to her? Then they troop out, and the evening continues. The guests don’t leave until almost midnight, and by that time all of the women have been in and out of the bedroom again and maybe all the men. The phone is in the bedroom. There are calls during the evening for Gorman and Martin. They got other extensions, but Mrs. Sarbine tells them to use the bedroom, it’s private. Off the bedroom is her dressing room and toilet, where the ladies primp. Hartman’s wife feels rotten. They give her a couple of aspirin and she lies down for half an hour on a lounge in the bedroom. Mrs. Finney goes in and spends a few minutes with her—in and out, in and out—the goddamn bedroom is like Grand Central Station that evening. Then, after they leave, Mrs. Sarbine picks up the box to put it back in the drawer. It feels light. She opens it—no necklace.”

  “It’s a beauty,” I agreed.

  Rothschild puffed his cigar, watched the smoke and sighed. “Sure it’s a beauty, Harvey,” he said. “I been a cop the best part of my life and I never ran into such a beauty as this before. It’s the perfect crime—the perfect idiot crime.”

  “What about the maid and the cook?”

  “The cook’s room is behind the kitchen and pantry—two small rooms there, one is the maid’s and the other is the cook’s. The cook is an old party, and she never left the kitchen section during the evening. To get to the master bedroom, she would have had to go through the dining room and living room and she didn’t. So the cook is out of it. The maid was in and out of the bedroom half a dozen times, answering the phone, getting this and that—she had plenty of opportunity to pick up the beads, but she was still in the apartment when we got th
ere that night. Never stepped out of the place.”

  “She could have hidden the stuff. Did you search?”

  “No, Harvey, we didn’t search. We waited for you to come and ask us. Sure she could have. Everyone could have.”

  “What about the maid?”

  “What about her, Harvey? A stupid kid from the South. Her name’s Lydia Anderson, and she comes from a town in Texas, place called Huntingdon. She’s been with them eight months.”

  “And the others? You’ve questioned them all?”

  “No, we didn’t question them, Harvey. We don’t do one damn thing until you suggest it. Tell me something, Harvey, when you got upright, substantial citizens like this—what in hell good is it to question them? They’re not jewel thieves, even if they lifted the beads—they’re psychos. Take a look at this.” He handed me a sheet of paper, a list of names as follows:

  “Jack Finney—93,000.00

  Abel Martin—112,000.00

  Joseph Hartman—69,000.00

  Sadie Klinger—47,000.00

  David Gorman—41,000.00”

  I nodded and said that I supposed it was the income of each for the past year.

  “Exactly—as far as we can determine. Income, Harvey, not net worth. Hartman, for example, is worth a million and a half, and none of the others are exactly in want. Sarbine keeps rich company. What do I do, Harvey, go to them and ask them what made them turn crook? Or, did you lift the beads for a gag? For kicks?”

  “There’s just one name missing from the list,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “Sarbine.”

  “Smart, Harvey,” Rothschild nodded at me. “You really got a head on your shoulders. You figure maybe Sarbine grabbed his own diamonds so he could collect on the insurance.”

  “It’s been done.”

  “Everything’s been done if you go look in the books. How much was that necklace actually worth?”

  “We would have written a policy for three hundred and fifty thousand.”

  “All right. I got there Sunday night, Harvey, and they were both sick. I never saw two people take losing something so hard. The dame was hysterical, and Sarbine was trembling with rage and frustration. If they pulled the job, they’re better actors than you got anywhere in the theater downtown.”