New York Nocturne

by Walter Satterthwait

  “Certainly. But we love New York City, both of us. We’ve no plans to leave. In fact, you know, I’ve actually been considering the idea of talking to the newspapers myself.”

  “Yeah?” said Becker. “What about?”

  Miss Lizzie took a sip of tea and carefully set down her cup. “About certain police officials,” she said calmly, “who attempted to browbeat a frightened sixteen-year-old girl into confessing to a crime she never committed.”

  Becker opened his mouth. Miss Lizzie raised her arm and pointed her finger at him. Her face was flushed again, and her gray eyes, always slightly protuberant behind the pince-nez, now seemed to bulge. “No,” she said.

  To my surprise, Becker closed his mouth and sat back.

  Miss Lizzie, as I said, was formidable.

  She settled back into her seat, sipped at her tea, and lowered the cup to its saucer. “About an interrogation,” she continued in the same calm voice, “which lasted for hours, without legal counsel, without food, without any charge being brought against her. Your name, of course, would figure prominently in this account. Yours and that of Mr. Vandervalk, the police commissioner.”

  Becker shook his head. “Won’t cut any ice with anyone.”

  “Will it not? Perhaps you, Lieutenant, are indifferent to public scrutiny, but does Mr. Vandervalk share that feeling? And there’s another detail you might wish to consider. I suspect that any decent reporter would demand to know why two such stalwarts as you and Mr. Vandervalk would focus their attention on a young girl. To that, I could offer only my suspicions—that you did so at the behest of important criminal figures in this city, people like Larry Fay and Owney Madden and Arnold Rothstein.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  Miss Lizzie smiled. “Perhaps so. But, as you suggest, for good or for ill, my name is recognized. If I speak to the newspapers, they will quote me. I very much doubt that those three gentlemen would enjoy seeing their names associated with yours. And I very much doubt that Mr. Vandervalk would enjoy seeing his associated with theirs. I can do all this, Lieutenant. And I will. On the other hand . . .”

  She sipped her tea again.

  Becker’s glance flicked to Mr. Cutter then returned to Miss Lizzie. He tilted his head slightly backward. “On the other hand what?”

  “On the other hand, I can continue to do what I’ve been doing. That is to say, continue my effort to learn why John Burton was murdered. If I do learn anything, I shall provide the information to you, to do with as you see fit.”

  Another bleak smile. “What’re you? Sherlock Holmes?”

  “Simply a concerned citizen.”

  “Uh-huh. Cutter here helping you out?”

  “Along with several others.”

  “You know he’s a button man. A killer.”

  She nodded. “We all have our flaws, Lieutenant.”

  I glanced at Mr. Cutter. Without moving any other part of his body, he smiled.

  Becker lowered his arms, locking his fingers together on his lap. “What’ve you got so far?”

  “Have we an agreement?”

  He shook his head. “I want to know what cards I’m holding.”

  She told him about the conversations with Daphne Dale, Mr. Fay, and Mr. Madden. She did not mention the death of Sybil Cartwright, the conversation with Mrs. Norman, the events of Central Park, nor the safe that Miss Dale had placed in “Jerry Brandon’s” library.

  When she finished, Becker said, “Not much.”

  “No.” She smiled. “But what is mine, as they say, is yours. Have we an agreement?”

  “What’s your next step?”

  “Sooner or later, I must speak with Arnold Rothstein.”

  “Rothstein?” He laughed. “You want to talk to Arnold Rothstein?”

  “From things I’ve heard, I suspect that Mr. Rothstein is somehow involved in all this.”

  He laughed again. “What things have you heard?”

  “Enough to suggest that I ought to meet with him.”

  Grinning again now, he said, “Rothstein will fit you with a pair of cement shoes.”

  “Cement shoes?”

  “Before he tosses you in the river.” He shook his head. “Playing around with Madden and Fay isn’t a great idea. But playing around with Arnold Rothstein is just plain stupid. You’ll be dead.”

  “Then at least one of your problems will have been solved.”

  He looked at her for a moment and he grinned once more. “Okay.”

  “An agreement, then?”

  He reached for his hat and tamped it onto his head. “Yeah, sure. An agreement.” He stood up. “I want one telephone call a day. You give me everything you get.”

  “Certainly.”

  “But listen. You leave town, the deal is off. We grab the kid and bring her in. Doesn’t matter where you take her, I’ll find her. Personally. You follow me?”

  She smiled wearily. “Like a shadow,” she said.

  He nodded and then turned to Cutter. “Like to give you a try sometime, Cutter.”

  “Pick a time,” Cutter whispered.

  “One day, I’ll do that.” He turned back to Miss Lizzie. “I’ll see my own way out.”

  “Lieutenant?” said Miss Lizzie.

  “Yeah?”

  “How did you learn who I was? Where I was?”

  Another bleak smile. “You got your secrets, lady, I got mine.”

  He turned, walked across the room, and opened the door. Without looking back, he slammed it shut behind him as he left.

  “Miss Lizzie,” I said, “you were great. You were really fantastic.”

  She glanced toward the door. “The man’s a poltroon.”

  “He came here for money, didn’t he?”

  “Of course. That and power are all he understands.”

  Mr. Cutter whispered, “Why give him Rothstein’s name?”

  “I had no choice, really. I had threatened him in front of two other people. It was important to provide him with a way to regain his authority. And to provide him with information he could use.” She poured herself some more tea.

  “He gave in pretty quickly.”

  She nodded. “He believes, no doubt, that if I keep him informed of our progress, he can maintain some level of control over us. And perhaps provide information to other people. Like Mr. Rothstein.”

  Mr. Cutter smiled. “You’re not going to keep him informed.”

  “Not with any great accuracy, no.”

  I said, “Does that mean we’re staying?”

  She turned to me. “For a short while. I don’t want that man coming after us. But we haven’t much time.”

  “You’ve got five minutes,” said Mr. Cutter. “By then, Rothstein will know all about you.”

  “I’m sure he already does.”

  “How?”

  She raised her cup and sipped at it. “We know from the woman who cleaned John’s apartment that Mr. Rothstein had some connection to John. We’ve spoken to at least one associate of his, Mr. Madden. To two of them if we include Mr. Fay, and I’m inclined to do so. It seems almost certain that someone has informed Mr. Rothstein of our presence.”

  “Becker’s right about one thing,” said Mr. Cutter. “Madden, Fay, and Rothstein. You don’t want to fool around with any of them. Especially Rothstein.”

  “I do not intend,” she said, “to fool around.” She smiled. “But I should like to ask you a favor.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  We drove downtown in a long brown Packard, neither new nor old, faintly musty with the smell of old cigarette smoke. Mr. Cutter told us he would be using the car until his Lincoln was repaired.

  At Miss Lizzie’s request, he had made a phone call before we left the hotel and arranged for someone to pick up
our luggage and move it to the Plaza. She had then telephoned Mr. Lipkind and told him we were moving. She had not mentioned the name of the hotel.

  “Do you remember where we met?” she asked him. “There.”

  Miss Lizzie then called Mrs. Parker and told her that we were moving. She used a similar code to tell her where: “The place where you met the man with the amusing hat. Don’t say it, but you do remember? Him, yes. There. I’ll telephone you this evening.”

  We had then packed and gone downstairs, where Miss Lizzie settled the bill before we left with Mr. Cutter.

  On our way south through the city, Mr. Cutter explained what had happened to the men in the park. Two had still been alive. Both had refused to say who sent them.

  “They probably don’t know,” he said. “They’re street soldiers.”

  “What happened to them?” I asked. “The ones who were alive.” I sat with him in the front seat, the two of us separated by his black sport coat draped over the seat’s back. Miss Lizzie was sitting in the rear.

  “We filled up the car for them,” he said. “They drove it away.”

  “Filled it with the other men, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The police never appeared?” asked Miss Lizzie.

  “No.”

  “Curious,” she said.

  “Are you in trouble now?” I asked Mr. Cutter. “For helping us, I mean.”

  He had faintly smiled that small cold smile of his. “No.”

  Later, farther south, I tried to learn more about the man himself.

  “Do you have a first name, Mr. Cutter?”

  “James.”

  “And how did you get into . . .”

  “Amanda,” said Miss Lizzie.

  “That’s okay,” said Mr. Cutter to the rearview mirror. “This line of work?” he asked me.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I picked up some things in the army. Some skills.” He turned to me. “Seemed a shame to waste them.” He looked up at the rearview mirror, his forelock trembling, then looked out at the road ahead.

  “What sort of skills?”

  “Amanda?” said Miss Lizzie.

  “Sorry,” I told him.

  Again, he looked at me and smiled. Then he turned back to the traffic.

  Miss Daphne Dale lived in a small four-story townhouse on Morton Street in Greenwich Village. The walls were made of spotless pink brick, each brick looking so fresh that it might have been slipped from the kiln only moments before. Flowers in red window boxes trembled brightly at every ledge. A gleaming black front door held an ornate brass knocker at its center. The closely cropped grass in the tiny, tidy yard was emerald green. Enclosing the yard was a fence of black wrought iron, glistening with a coat of black enamel paint.

  As we drove past it, I wondered whether Miss Dale, like her heroine, received regular packets of cash from the South.

  Miss Lizzie may have wondered the same thing. “It does not look,” she said from the backseat, “like the house of someone in desperate need of a thousand dollars.”

  We parked about two blocks from the brownstone. Mr. Cutter reached beneath his seat and slid out his pistol. He leaned forward, stuck the muzzle behind his back into his slacks, and then lifted the sport coat from the seat and slipped his slender arms into it.

  I had seen more guns in the past few days than I had seen, before this, in my entire life.

  We walked back toward Miss Dale’s brownstone, Mr. Cutter a few steps behind us. I noticed that his shoes made no sound as they met the sidewalk.

  When we came to the house, he whispered, “I’ll be out here. I hear anything, I’m coming in.”

  Miss Lizzie nodded. “Very good. Thank you.”

  She opened the gate and we stepped into the yard, went up the cement walkway, and climbed up the stoop. She lifted the big brass knocker and let it fall.

  Nothing happened. I turned to look down at Mr. Cutter. He stood with his back to us, his arms loose at his sides, his head slowly turning left and right. In the sunlight, his hair was as black and glossy as a raven’s wing.

  Miss Lizzie lifted the knocker and let it fall again.

  A few inches above the knocker was a small glass peephole circled with more gleaming brass. For a moment, the glass darkened.

  “She’s in there,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  She raised the knocker, smacked it down once, then again, more sharply. She raised it again and the door swung open, pulling the knocker from her hand, to reveal Miss Dale, her face flushed.

  “What?” she said. “I’m working.”

  Her face was perfectly made up: mascara, eyeliner, lipstick, and rouge. She was wearing a pair of pink silk harem pants, red ballet slippers, and a gauzy red top with balloon sleeves and a floppy opened collar. On her head, holding in her ringlets, she wore a pink silk bandana tied behind at the nape of her neck.

  “I apologize for interrupting,” said Miss Lizzie. “But we need to speak with you.”

  “You don’t understand,” said Miss Dale. “I’m hot right now. The words are simply pouring out of me. This is the best thing I’ve ever done.”

  “Ah,” said Miss Lizzie. “Good for you. I’ll simply ask my lawyer to serve you with a subpoena.”

  I had no idea whether this was possible and neither, apparently, did Miss Dale.

  “A subpoena?” she said.

  “We really do need to get to the bottom of all this, Miss Dale.”

  She glanced at me, looked back to Miss Lizzie, then looked around her, down the front steps. “Who is that man?”

  “Our driver,” Miss Lizzie told her.

  Miss Dale took a long deep breath and let it out. “Oh, fiddle,” she said. “All right. Come on in.”

  She led us into her living room.

  I did not know, back then, exactly what an Oriental bordello might look like, but I suspected that it would look rather like this. The walls were covered in glossy red silk. Round white paper lanterns dangled from the ceiling. A low red silk divan crouched against one wall. Two red silk ottomans squatted opposite. There were several small black lacquered tables. There was a squat black lacquered chest and an upright folding screen painted with cranes soaring over a mountainous landscape. In the air was the smell of sandalwood.

  “Have a seat,” said Miss Dale. She added, “Please.” Perhaps talk of a subpoena had nudged her Southern hospitality awake.

  She nodded toward the divan and sat down on one of the ottomans. Miss Lizzie, with some difficulty, lowered herself to the divan, keeping her hands on the crook of her upright walking stick. I sat beside her.

  “I can get you something,” said Miss Dale. “If you’re thirsty? I’ve got some champagne. And there’s water if you want.”

  “No, thank you,” said Miss Lizzie and I repeated the same.

  Miss Dale looked back and forth between us then slipped her hands between the ottoman and her hips. She crossed her legs atop the silk and leaned forward, gaminelike. “So,” she said to Miss Lizzie, “what is it?”

  “Miss Dale,” Miss Lizzie said, “you lied to us.”

  Miss Dale’s eyebrows rose. “Lied?”

  “You told us that you didn’t know about the safe in John’s library. This was a particularly foolish lie, because you included that safe in your description of John’s library, in your book.”

  “Miss Cabot, that was a piece of fiction. A work of imagination.”

  “You described John’s apartment exactly,” said Miss Lizzie, “down to the bric-a-brac in the living room. You installed your fictional safe in precisely that section of the bookshelf occupied by the real safe. No, Miss Dale. You knew. My question is, why deny the knowledge?”

  Miss Dale looked back and forth once more. She took another deep breath, slipped her hands free, and crossed her
arms beneath her breasts. “I was in shock.”

  “Shock,” Miss Lizzie repeated. She adjusted her pince-nez.

  “At Johnny’s death,” said Miss Dale. “I’d seen the poor man on Friday, only two days before. We’d been close once, extremely close, as you know, and we were still the very best of friends. I was horrified to hear he was dead. Absolutely horrified.”

  “It was shock that compelled you to lie.”

  “I wasn’t lying, exactly. I just didn’t want to deal with it—with Johnny’s death, I mean.”

  “You didn’t wish to become involved.”

  Leaning forward, she placed the palms of her hand flat against the ottoman. “No, no, it wasn’t that. It’s just that—in a way, you know?—if I didn’t think about things, didn’t linger over them, then I wouldn’t have to realize that Johnny was . . . gone.” She lowered her head.

  “Was that why you lied about the money?”

  She looked up, confused. “What money?”

  “The money you said you wanted to borrow from John.”

  “But that was the truth. I needed that money.”

  “For what?”

  “I told you. An investment opportunity.”

  “Which investment opportunity?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not at liberty to say. Honestly, I’m not. It was confidential.”

  Miss Lizzie looked at her for a moment then said, “Why is it, Miss Dale, that you never mentioned John’s connection to Arnold Rothstein?”

  She blinked. “Who?”

  Miss Lizzie’s face was suddenly a bright red, nearly the color of the divan. Swiftly, she raised the walking stick and slammed its rubber tip down against the floor: thump. Her fingers curled around its crook, and she leaned over it, her eyes narrow now, her jowls trembling. “You silly girl! You moronic little twit! Even you can’t be that impossibly stupid. Do you really expect me to believe that you’ve never heard of Arnold Rothstein?”

  Although I had seen Miss Lizzie’s anger before, the outburst startled me.

  It startled Miss Dale, too. She snapped back on the ottoman as though struck in the face. “I . . .” She shook her head and leaned forward again. She uncrossed her legs and put her feet on the floor with her hands on her lap. Her mouth went firm. “I don’t have to sit still for this.”