19
RETURN—AND A STREET BALLET
Before going to bed on Wednesday, Reuben Frost had changed his plane reservation. He had been scheduled to fly out from Portland at six-fifty in the morning. He had once been able to keep such a schedule, flying to Portland, staying up half the night with Earle Ambler, and returning, with barely any sleep, to New York the next day. No longer, he decided. He should, of course, get back and report his findings about Gerald Hazard to Bautista. But then he remembered that Bautista had planned to go to Syracuse on Thursday. That decided him; he rebooked on the Northwest flight at eleven o’clock.
That morning, after an ample breakfast at the Benson Hotel (though the fresh orange juice to which he was accustomed was not available), he took a cab to the airport. This time the plane was full, and the aisle seat next to him was occupied by a young man he took to be a salesman. (At least that is what he guessed from peeking over at the sheaf of “call sheets” his companion was working on, atop an attaché case that served as a portable desk, complete with pencils in various colors, a pocket calculator and a stapler.)
Once again the stewardess in the first-class cabin pressed a drink on him. Neither he nor the hardworking salesman accepted her offer; Frost, after his large breakfast, declined any form of sustenance, knowing full well that the routine would later be repeated after the plane’s intermediate stop in Minneapolis.
Instead, Frost decided to go to work himself. He took out a yellow legal pad and a supply of pencils from his carry-on suitcase and rested them on the meal tray in front of him. He turned the pad sideways and divided the page into four columns which he labeled “NAME,” “MOTIVE,” “SOURCE OF CASH” and “ACCESS TO WILSON.” Then, on the theory that his seat-mate might be a peeker too, he changed the word “motive” to “motivation”—surely a respectable and noncontroversial word in traveling salesmen’s circles.
Frost entered the obvious names: Turnbull, Mattison, Maywood, Teresa Holt, Navikoff, Petersen—and Hazard. He was especially reluctant to include the last two, but felt that objectivity required it. Then he tried to describe the motive, or motivation, of each, the likelihood of each coming up with $24,000, and the possible ways each might have made contact with Jimmy Wilson. When he had finished, the chart looked like this:
NAME
MOTIVATION
SOURCE OF CASH
ACCESS TO WILSON
Turnbull
Hatred of H.; desire to run NatBallet—mentally unbalanced?
Inheritance
Son Mark?
Mattison
Public expos. of plagiarism
Book advance
?
Maywood
H. a threat to career; jealousy?
Perf. fees
?
Teresa Holt
Pent-up hatred
Money fr. Clif.
?
Navikoff
Fear of being cut out of will
Borrowed?
?
Petersen
Artistic advancement
Savings?
?
Hazard
Artistic advancement
Perf. fees
?
Frost looked at his handiwork. The big gap was the link of each of the suspects to the actual killer. He could see only one link, and that was pure supposition based on his instant dislike of Mark Turnbull. But hadn’t Bautista said that access to Wilson, or some other petty crook willing to commit murder, was easy? He remembered well Bautista’s eloquent speech that the law-abiding and criminals coexisted almost side-by-side in New York. If Bautista was to be believed—and Frost saw no reason to doubt him—no one got crossed off the chart simply because Frost could not make a link to Wilson.
As for a motive, and access to the key $24,000, all seven of those listed had both. Frost shook his head in discouragement. The list, after his Portland excursion, was getting longer, not shorter. Ah, well, time for a nap.
The Northwest plane touched down at Minneapolis/St. Paul for forty-five minutes. Frost did not get off, but continued his nap. Once the 727 was back in the air, he felt revived and accepted a martini, followed by, once again, a steak dinner. His salesman seatmate had gotten off in Minneapolis and had not been replaced, so Frost was able to drink and eat undisturbed. Then he slept again until shortly before the plane landed at LaGuardia.
It was raining when Frost came out of the terminal in New York, approximately on time at eight-thirty. The line at the taxi stand was long, and there was not a single cab in sight, so he decided to take the Carey bus to Manhattan. He could get a taxi at Forty-second Street or the subway uptown to Sixty-eighth Street.
The weather had not improved when he got to Manhattan; nor had the taxi situation. So, overnight bag in hand, he took the Lexington Avenue local subway at Grand Central.
As he came up the stairs at Sixty-eighth Street, it was approaching ten o’clock and he headed on foot up Lexington Avenue to Seventieth Street. The rain had by now turned into a gray mist, more annoying than unpleasant. As he turned into Seventieth Street, he suddenly realized that the sidewalk, darkened with the foglike mist, was deserted except for three adolescent figures coming toward him.
Unlike many who walked about at night in New York, Frost was not frightened by the prospect of occupying the block solely with three teen-aged strangers. He had never had anything approaching trouble in his neighborhood and had never given his own safety there a second thought.
Then, without warning, the three boys were upon him. The smallest, who could not have been more than thirteen or fourteen, held a knife at his groin. The biggest stood over him. The third—was he an apprentice learning the technique or a lookout?—alternately watched the confrontation and the street beyond.
“Gimme your wallet, man!” the big one said.
Frost hesitated.
“Quick, man, quick! We ain’t got all night!”
“Better give it to him,” the little one with the knife said. “If you don’t, I’ll cut you good.”
Frost looked incredulously at the whelp with the knife, barely out of knee-pants and blinking out of Coke-bottle glasses.
Thinking fast, Frost reached in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled mass of bills. He did not carry his money in his wallet, but loose in his pocket. He held the bills aloft, asking “Isn’t this what you want?” and the big one grabbed them.
“What’s in there?” the big one demanded, pointing to Frost’s overnight bag.
“Dirty underwear,” Frost answered.
“Yeah, well, we’ll take that too, Gramps,” the big one said. He grabbed the bag, and Frost did not resist. Instantly the three marauders were running toward the corner and disappeared around it.
Frost’s instincts were to give chase, but then he realized how foolish that would be—a seventy-five-year-old man taking on three athletic kids. No, it was not time to play either Rambo or Rocky. He did shout “Thief!” twice, but his clarion fell on an empty street.
Satisfied that there was nothing more he could do, he walked on to his house and let himself in. He was not particularly frightened—the whole encounter seemed to have taken seconds—but he did feel relief—oddly, not so much that his life had been spared, but that his wallet had. Endless complications with the credit-card companies would not follow.
And he secretly had to admire the finesse of it all. He had been robbed, a felony had been committed, in a brief street ballet that could have been choreographed—one, two, three and done—such was its speed and efficiency.
As he thought of the word “choreograph,” a vision of Clifton Holt being stabbed in the Zacklin alley flashed into his mind and the horror set in. He had lost perhaps $200, but Holt had lost his life. Both in attacks by punks. But Holt’s killer had been hired. The street creatures he had just encountered surely had not been. That was right, wasn’t it? he asked himself. There was just enough doubt as to the answer to that question that Frost was sweating massively as
he achieved the sanctuary of his own house.
20
GRIDLOCK
“Hello, dear!” Cynthia called out to her husband as he came up the stairs to the living room. “Welcome back!” She got up from the sofa, came over to Reuben and kissed him.
“Reuben, you’re out of breath,” she said. “And where’s your suitcase?”
“To answer your questions in order: I’m slightly out of breath because I’ve just been robbed by three young men on the street. And second, I don’t have my suitcase because the same young men took it.”
“Good grief, Reuben! Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine. No damage done. They got two hundred dollars and some dirty clothes,” Frost said.
“What about your wallet?”
“No, I saved that. I waved around the loose bills from my pocket and that—plus the overnight bag—satisfied them.”
“Did they have a gun?”
“No, just a half-blind little pipsqueak with a knife pointed at my groin. Which was practically eye level for him.”
“Look, sit down,” Cynthia said. “Let me get you a drink.”
“Excellent idea. Scotch and soda.”
“Now, tell me exactly what happened,” Cynthia said, once she had fixed drinks. Reuben recounted the episode for his wife.
“Reuben, I don’t want to alarm you, but let me ask one thing,” Cynthia said when he had finished. “Are you sure these were just juvenile delinquents at play—not more Jimmy Wilsons?”
“Oh, God, Cynthia, I thought of that. But it can’t be so. They had plenty of time to kill me if that’s what they had in mind.”
“Or maybe they just wanted to scare you?”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“I was only asking,” Cynthia said. “We’re paranoid, and it’s going to get worse if Clifton’s murder isn’t solved soon. I know, I was paranoid last night.”
“Why do you say that? What happened?” Reuben asked.
Cynthia told him about the figure in the shadows when she had come in.
“You couldn’t identify him?” Reuben asked. “It wasn’t nice Mark Turnbull, was it?”
“It could have been. But I couldn’t really tell,” Cynthia replied.
“Have we heard from Bautista, by the way?” Frost asked.
“Oh, heavens, I forgot. He called from Newark Airport just before you arrived. He’s on his way here now. He claims he’s got news.”
“Interesting. It may surprise you, but so have I,” Reuben said.
“News from Portland?” Cynthia asked.
“Yes, news from Portland.”
“Like what?”
“Earle Ambler sends his love.”
“Oh, I know that,” Cynthia said. “But you said you had news, which I took to mean news about the murder.”
“Well, if you’d be still long enough to listen, I do,” Frost said. He told his wife about Ambler’s description of Gerald Hazard’s odd behavior the night Holt was killed.
“How awful. Poor Gerald, making an ass of himself like that.”
“Ass of himself, indeed,” Reuben said. “For my money he made himself a suspect in Clifton’s murder.”
“Gerald?”
“Yes, Gerald. He apparently was so exuberant nothing could contain him when he learned about Holt’s death.”
“But surely if he’d hired the killer, he would have concealed his emotions?” Cynthia asked.
“That’s true if he were in New York, with everyone watching him. I’m not sure it’s true at all if you’re two thousand, three thousand miles away.”
“Perhaps. God knows Gerald felt frustrated and held back by Clifton, but I’m not sure it’s a reason to kill him.”
“Look, Cynthia, none of the motives of anybody we suspect should be a ‘reason to kill him.’ But for someone, the motive was strong enough to push that person over the edge. And it could be Gerald just as well as anyone else.”
“I suppose so. I know Gerald feels under great pressure, with those two boys to educate. I remember he asked me once, ‘Cynthia, do you think I’ll be strong enough, or last long enough, to dance for those boys’ tuition at Harvard or Yale?’ Gerald probably has more family obligations than almost anyone in the Company; that’s why he’s always traveling around guesting to pick up a few extra dollars.”
“And I guess there’s no question, is there, that his guest fees would be higher if he were a principal dancer at NatBallet rather than a soloist?” Reuben asked.
“No, there is no question. He could get much higher fees, and better engagements, as a principal,” Cynthia said.
“So he did have a motive for getting rid of the man who would not promote him?”
“But Reuben, it’s so unlikely.”
“No more so, I would have thought, than with some of the others we’ve talked about,” Frost replied.
The front doorbell rang while the Frosts were arguing about Gerald Hazard. Reuben went to answer it and returned with Luis Bautista.
“Did you get mugged coming in here?” Cynthia asked, as the detective came into the living room.
“Mugged?” he asked, looking puzzled.
Reuben described his street encounter, and also the episode involving Cynthia the night before.
“Did you call the police, Reuben?” Bautista asked.
“Frankly, it never occurred to me. I assumed it would be hopeless,” Frost said.
“Let me do it now. The perps are probably long gone, but you never can tell. What did these kids look like?”
“One was pretty tall, six feet I’d say. One was shorter, say five feet six, and one was tiny, not even five feet.” Frost was rather proud of the precision of his description.
“Color?”
“All black.”
“Light-skinned or dark-skinned?”
“I would say light, but it was a little hard to see.”
“All of them?”
“Yes.”
“What were they wearing?”
“I don’t remember, exactly. Blue jeans, I think.”
“Blue jeans, and knitted caps and sneakers, perhaps?”
“That’s right. They all had these knitted caps. And white sneakers.”
“Good. I’m glad they were wearing the standard mugger uniform,” Bautista said. “I’d hate to think any of them was setting a new style trend.”
“What do you mean, Luis?” Frost asked, chagrined. The detective was pulling his leg.
“Only that all muggers wear blue jeans, knitted caps to cover up their hairstyles and white sneakers for moving around fast. And unfortunately, most of them are black. Or sometimes Hispanic. Or once in a great while, plain old vanilla white.”
“So you’re saying I was right, it really would be hopeless to call the police.”
“Probably. But I’m going to do it anyway,” Bautista said.
“While you’re on the phone, let me get you a drink,” Frost said.
“Anything that doesn’t have apple juice in it,” Bautista said. “Bourbon and water would be fine.”
When he reentered the room, Bautista told the Frosts that a patrol car would cruise around the neighborhood looking for Reuben’s assailants—and his overnight bag.
“I doubt that you’ll get your money back,” Bautista said. “But you might get your dirty clothes.”
“Luis, Reuben and I were talking before you got here,” Cynthia said. “Are we just being very foolish to think that what happened to us last night and tonight might be connected with Clifton Holt’s death?”
“Offhand, I don’t think it’s very likely. But you can’t ever tell. Maybe someone is trying to scare the two of you,” Bautista said.
“As far as we know, Jimmy Wilson’s little secret is not publicly known. Isn’t that right?” Cynthia asked.
“That’s right,” Bautista said.
“And why would anybody pick on us, anyway?” Frost asked.
“Because we were with a police officer at
the ballet the other night,” Cynthia observed. “And most of our suspects knew it. Remember Arthur Mattison and Andrea Turnbull both found out that Luis was a policeman. Arne Petersen knew who he was too, and Veronica Maywood saw him backstage and may have recognized him from the hospital.”
“We’ve got to solve this,” Frost said. “We’ll both be as jumpy as hens on a wire until the guilty party is found. And God help us all—and NatBallet—if the whole affair does become public.”
“As I told you, Cynthia, I’ve got some news,” Bautista said. “It may even bring us closer to solving the crime.” The detective then recounted his day in Syracuse, and Robert Lucas’ theory about Emery Turnbull’s death.
“Lucas may be completely loco for all I know,” Bautista concluded, “though he seemed sensible enough to me. But I think we’ve got to start investigating your Mrs. Turnbull very, very carefully.”
“I agree with that,” Frost said. “But I’m afraid I’m going to add to your work.” He then told the detective about Gerald Hazard’s reported behavior in Portland the night of the killing.
“Tell me about Hazard,” Bautista asked. “Why would he want to have Holt killed?”
Cynthia explained Hazard’s domestic situation and the pressures on him for money.
“Sounds like another candidate to me,” Bautista said, writing in his notebook. “How many does that make now? Let’s see: Mrs. Turnbull; the widow; the ballerina, Maywood; Navikoff, the producer; the newspaper guy, Mattison; that fellow Petersen. And now Hazard. That’s seven in all.”
“Lucky seven,” Frost said.
“Yeah, some luck,” Bautista replied.
“You know, on the plane this afternoon, I made a chart with all these lucky seven listed,” Frost explained. He pulled the chart out of his coat pocket and let Bautista and his wife examine it. “Now,” Frost went on, “even though I added to this list myself, I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere chasing after seven people when it’s obvious that one stands out as the most likely suspect, either because she’s absolutely cold-blooded or because she’s crazy. I think, Luis, you should concentrate your attention on Andrea Turnbull. The others? What we’ve got is pretty vague. Take Teresa Holt, for example. I have down there that her motive was ‘pent-up hatred.’ That’s mighty weak stuff. I think we’ve been a bit too imaginative for our own good and we shouldn’t be distracted from proving that Andrea Turnbull paid the killer.”
Murder Takes a Partner Page 20
