‘I see!’ she said, a pleased expression on her face, ‘you are looking for material for a book. I always said she would make a good story. Such a colorful woman!’
I didn’t contradict her, letting her interpretation stand. ‘How well did you know her?’
‘Not awfully well. She lived right down the hall in apartment 6C.’
I was surprised. ‘In this same building?’
‘Oh, yes. But she lived here for a long time—six or eight months—before I met her. Such a colorful girl. So theatrical-appearing! It wasn’t until after she had stopped working, in shows I understand, that we used to come up in the same elevator occasionally. First we nodded, then we spoke, and finally we’d stop in for a little visit once in a while. I had a feeling she was a very lonely girl...’
I looked around Mrs. Burke’s apartment. With its address, size, convenience, I estimated the rent to run high. ‘Were you ever in Rose’s apartment?’
‘A number of times.’
‘Was it just like yours?’
‘Nearly,’ she said. ‘But as I recall, she didn’t have a dining room.’
‘Are these apartments rented furnished?’
‘Oh, no.’
‘What kind of furniture did she have?’ I was trying to imagine the apartment, picture the setting, the way it looked when circumstances were first beginning to twist themselves from out of Rafferty’s hands.
Sarah Burke’s face mirrored for just a moment her disagreement with Rose Pauli’s choice of decoration. ‘Well,’ she said slowly, ‘I don’t believe that Rose took too much time, or trouble, in selecting her things... I think, you might say, it was rather modern.’
‘What do you remember about it?’
‘Mostly just individual things. All together it had a... well, a rather jumbled air. I recall she had some tables in a white bleached wood... and some in ebony... all extreme in design. And the sofa was in a peculiar striped material... something like zebra, but it wasn’t zebra. And then there was a very large, tall lamp... oh, the shade was extremely tall and narrow in a bright red color... you couldn’t help noticing and remembering the lamp. It sat on a little table, and appeared far too large for it...’Mrs. Burke slowly tucked invisible pleats in her skirt with restless fingers. ‘But,’ she added with an air of unstinted admiration, ‘she had the most gorgeous mink coat I’ve ever seen.’
‘It must have been a very expensive coat?’ I said.
‘Oh, yes! Very...’ She stopped.
I could see she hesitated to say more, although she was anxious to continue the conversation concerning the coat. I prodded her gently. ‘There was something else about the coat you remember?’ I asked.
‘Well... yes. Rose was very proud of the coat. And once—just once—I tried to make a little joke, and she suddenly became very angry. I was so sorry... and apologized immediately. Then she laughed, and... that was all there was to it.’
‘Please tell me about it.’
‘Occasionally I go up to Westchester for the week end, to visit my daughter who’s married and lives there. Mr. Burke, my husband... passed away a number of years ago. And sometimes, it gets very lonesome on week ends.’ She paused. ‘When I go... I usually leave on Friday and come home Monday. I had been to see my daughter the week end that Rose bought her coat. I stopped in Monday evening to say hello to Rose, and she had the coat... and showed it to me. My, it was really beautiful! And she was so proud of it! She put it on, and pretended she was giving me a little style show. She was very happy.
‘Well, while I’m away, my papers are still delivered... and usually when I get back, I read them carefully... just to see what’s happened while I’ve been gone. Rose told me she had gotten the coat Saturday. And in Saturday’s paper was a little story about a furrier’s on Fifth Avenue which had been robbed Friday night. One of the robbers was captured in a little pick-up truck, but the other one had been shot and killed down the alley trying to escape from the shop. All the furs had been recovered—which were in the truck—except one very expensive coat which was still missing. The police thought the thieves might have dropped it, and it had been found by somebody.
‘I know I shouldn’t have done it, but I showed the story to Rose. I didn’t mean to infer anything by it... and I was going to make a joke about holding up the store to get the coat. But she became so angry I didn’t have a chance to say anything more. So I just apologized.’
‘Do you happen to remember the name of the fur shop?’
‘Only vaguely... it had a name sort of funny... and yet appropriate at the same time. Something... well, like Fox Furs... or on that order.’
‘Were you here... when all the trouble started?’
‘No,’ she replied, ‘that was quite a bit later. I went to California that winter. It happened while I was away. When I returned to New York, Rose had given up her apartment and moved away.’
A few minutes later, I thanked her and left. I caught a taxi uptown, and then called Swanson. ‘Could you tell me something?’ I asked.
‘I’ll try,’ he said.
‘Could you find out if Emmet worked on a case, it was probably in ’44, regarding a stickup and shooting of a fur shop on Fifth Avenue. The name of the store was probably Fox Furs.’
‘Call me back late this afternoon. If I get time, I’ll see what I can find.’
I had the afternoon ahead of me, and I decided I’d try to locate the other woman, a Viola Vane, who had known Rose. I called her number, but the phone had been disconnected, and no number was listed for her. Her last address, listed with the phone, had been on the lower West Side of Manhattan, and I made the trip to a cold-water tenement building, which had long been condemned but was still filled with families. Inquiries were futile, as no one remembered a woman named Viola Vane and there was no building superintendent. A janitor who handled the building, along with some four or five others in the same row, thought vaguely that a woman with bright red hair might have lived there before.
The combination of bright red hair and the improbable name of Viola Vane convinced me that the woman could have been a show-business friend of Rose. I caught a cab back uptown to Actors’ Equity Office, the union of actors and actresses, but no person of that name had ever held a card. An additional query at Chorus Equity, the union of chorus singers and dancers, was equally discouraging, but the secretary, a pleasant woman, suggested that, if Vane worked exclusively in night clubs, she might possibly have joined AGVA—the American Guild of Variety Artists.
At AGVA, I was successful... to a degree. Viola Vane was a member of the union. But they could not, or would not, give me her address. I tried desperately to impress on them that I wanted only to speak with her, that I held no ulterior motives in seeking to meet her, and that I was not representing a bill collection, lawsuit, or the police.
I did find out, however, that she was still in New York, and the AGVA office offered to forward a message to her. They suggested that I drop her a note, with my name and telephone number, and they would mail it to her. Then, if she wanted to get in touch with me, she could call. There was nothing for me to do but agree. The office gave me a sheet of paper and an envelope, and I hastily scribbled a note.
Dear Miss Vane,
I’m anxious to see you regarding a former friend of ours. I should not need more than half an hour of your time, and I will be willing to pay you for your trouble. Please call me.
I signed my name, and added the telephone number. Sealing the note, I put a stamp and special delivery on the envelope and left it at the office.
It was now the middle of the afternoon, and I had eaten no lunch. I walked over to the Lambs Club, ate a light luncheon, and spent the rest of the afternoon in the reading room. At a few minutes before five, I called Swanson.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘There was a stickup, in November of ’44. A fur store called Biever’s on Fifth Avenue. Emmet worked on the case, all right. He was the guy that spotted the job and broke it up.’
‘The
case was in the papers?’
‘Could be. A little space maybe. The case wasn’t important.’
‘Would the cops in the case have been named or quoted?’
‘I doubt it... why?’
‘It isn’t likely then that Rafferty received any publicity out of it?’
‘No. If he had, I’d probably have seen it.’ He cleared his voice. ‘We cops can read, too. I read to see what people on the force are doing. Sometimes I see the names of men I know. I don’t remember anything about Rafferty on this one. It wasn’t important. Just one of those things.’
‘Remember what you told me about a gun disappearing?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Wasn’t there an expensive mink coat missing on the Biever job?’
Swanson was silent for a moment. ‘Maybe it was talk,’ he said finally.
‘Perhaps,’ I agreed.
‘Sometimes these retail guys... they claim a lot of stuff is missing... jack up their losses... to get the insurance.’
‘That’s possible. What did the report say about it?’
‘There wasn’t much of a report. The whole case was pretty cut and dried. Emmet made the report out. Perhaps the coat was reported missing later. He didn’t mention it.’ Swanson had the report with him and he read it to me over the phone.
After he was finished, I went back to the reading room, but I was restless. Finally I made a visit to the bar and ordered a drink. I took my glass to a table and sat down. I remembered the Judson case with the disappearing revolver, and a vague story of five thousand dollars. Was there any more truth in the Biever robbery? The report Swanson had read me was straight-forward enough. But Rose Pauli had owned a fabulous mink coat. With all the facts, as reported by Rafferty, it might have gone like this...
Rafferty was seated next to Dave Lewis. It was a brisk November night, and they were returning from Medical Center Hospital, where a man named Amundson had just died from knife wounds inflicted at the hands of a frightened mugger. The squad car cruised at a steady pace down Fifth Avenue, in the midnight hour of the Friday night. In the upper Fifties they passed a small, panel delivery truck parked before the door of a darkened fur shop, on the opposite side of the street. Fifth Avenue, at that time of night, was not completely deserted; some traffic rolled along the street, and a number of pedestrians were on the sidewalks.
Lewis flicked an eye at the truck as they passed it. ‘See that?’ he asked Rafferty.
‘Yes,’ said Rafferty. ‘There was somebody in it.’
‘No parking on Fifth in this block, day or night...’
‘Better take a look,’ Rafferty said. The squad car pulled to the right lane, halted briefly at the intersection, then swung around in a wide U-turn. As they approached the truck, it shot away from the curb, accelerating quickly in the traffic. ‘Nail him!’ Rafferty commanded. ‘I better take a look at the shop.’ Lewis slowed momentarily as he passed the shop, and Rafferty swung from the car to the street, then the squad car continued in pursuit of the truck.
Rafferty approached the shop cautiously, his revolver drawn. At his touch, the door swung open into the darkened shop. Quickly, now, he stepped inside the door, closing it swiftly behind him. In the blackness he stood listening, his ears straining for a sound. His eyes were becoming accustomed to the dark, and light filtered into the room from the metal barred night windows. In the rear of the shadowy showroom, he discerned another door, opening to rooms beyond. Brushing aside the drapes, he entered a narrow hallway. Walking toward him, from the opposite end of the hall, a man’s figure stirred against the darker blackness of the room beyond. Rafferty spotlighted him, flooding the brilliance of his flashlight full in his eyes. The man froze... blinking, holding a number of fur coats in his arms, but only for a split second. He dodged quickly back into the room behind him, and Rafferty could hear the sound of his feet... running and stumbling in the room.
‘Hold it!’ Rafferty shouted and ran down the hall. He heard the solid thump of a door flung open, and saw the burglar running from the back of the store. The rear entrance opened in a fire well, a space perhaps thirty feet square, and was connected to the rear of the next building with a narrow passage scarcely wider than a man. As Rafferty leaped through the back door, his feet became entangled in a heavy coat which had fallen from the arms of the running man. Momentarily he stumbled, then regained his balance and continued the pursuit. The pursued man dodged into the passage, the sound of his running feet pounding hollowly in the darkness, and Rafferty followed the sound into the well of the adjoining building.
The quarry was waiting now, trapped by the impregnable walls of the building. Twenty stories above his head, there was freedom and space and the light of the navy blue sky... or a passageway, just wide enough for one man, blocked by his enemy, the law. He dropped the single remaining coat he was carrying, and it fell noiselessly to his feet. Drawing his gun, he stepped away and faced the passage.
Rafferty saw the glint of light on the barrel and fired, the roar of his revolver blasting and reverberating in the confined space of the brick walls. The man with the gun fell and died beside the fur coat. Rafferty approached the quiet figure carefully. When he stood beside it, he washed it in the rays of his flash. It was all over. There was nothing more to be said or done.
The coat lay on the cement, a delicate, lovely thing. A thing of beauty and pride, an object of great value and consummate desire. Slowly, stiffly, with an exaggerated, almost wooden, mechanical gesture, he replaced the gun to his shoulder and bent over... picking up the coat. He stood with the coat in his hands and looked up above at the velvet heavens funneled to him by the sides of the stone and steel buildings.
Rafferty turned on all the lights in the store, and located a phone at the manager’s desk. He called the department and reported the shooting. While he was waiting for the squad to appear and for Lewis to return, he located the manager’s home address and telephone, and he called him and asked him to come down to the shop immediately.
Within a matter of minutes a medical officer, the photographer, and two additional men from Homicide arrived. They were followed immediately by members of the burglary detail. While Rafferty led the Homicide people into the back well, retracing his steps to the body, the men from the burglary squad quickly located the cut in the alarm system. They efficiently checked the looted shop, picking up discarded and dropped furs and coats which were strewn around the floors. A call came through to Rafferty that Lewis had captured the truck and its driver, and they were returning to the shop.
By the time Mr. Morris, the manager, and Mr. Biever, the owner who had been notified by Morris, arrived, Lewis, assisted by two traffic men, had returned with the driver, a man named Dodge, and the truck containing twenty-two expensive coats.
The coats were quickly identified as belonging to the Biever shop, and all merchandise was accounted for except—Mr. Morris insisted—one blue patina mink coat. A thorough search of the premises, the back well, the adjoining passage, and the well of the next building where the shooting had occurred, was made.
‘Are you positive?’ asked the sergeant from the burglary squad.
‘Positive!’ Morris was emphatic.
Mr. Biever was equally assertive about the missing coat, although he admitted he did not take as active a part in the business as formerly, leaving details of the operation to Mr. Morris. ‘We made the coat on a special order... it was the only one like it in the shop. Isn’t that right, Morris?’
‘That is absolutely right,’ Morris agreed.
‘Well, it isn’t here.’ The sergeant turned to Lewis. ‘While you were chasing this mug, did you see him try to get rid of anything?’
‘No.’
‘Did the back door of the panel truck fly open at any time you know of?’
‘Could be,’ said Lewis. ‘I didn’t see it happen, but it might of. The bastard was driving like hell and taking corners on two wheels. I wasn’t on his tail every minute.’
The burglar
y man turned to Rafferty. ‘Lieutenant, did you notice any coats laying on the sidewalk... where they might have been dropped being carried out to the truck?’
‘I don’t recall seeing any,’ said Rafferty.
The sergeant shrugged, and returned to Morris. ‘Was the coat covered by insurance?’
‘At wholesale price,’ said Morris. ‘But not retail.’
‘I got an idea you better settle for your insurance. That coat was probably picked up in the street someplace. I don’t think we’ll ever find it. But go ahead and give me a description of it; maybe if somebody tries to sell it, we’ll pick it up...’
Morris was unhappy. ‘I don’t know when we can get together another coat like that…’ he began.
The burglary man was impatient. ‘You haven’t lost anything,’ he said. ‘You’re damn lucky. If the lieutenant hadn’t been passing by, you’d really have something to cry about.’
At noon, the next day, my phone rang and it was Viola Vane. She had received my note and wanted to know why I wanted to see her. It is always difficult to convince a stranger over a phone, and I felt that perhaps a combination of the truth and fiction might intrigue her enough to agree to meet me. Consequently, I explained that I was a writer and working on a book... entirely fictional, of course... but it was in some ways similar to an actual case, and possibly she could give me some information. I hastened to add that I would gladly pay her for her time.
‘Who do you want to talk about?’
‘Rose Pauli’ I replied.
‘All right,’ she said. Her quick agreement surprised me.
‘Do you want to meet me for lunch?’ I asked.
‘I’m just getting up,’ she replied, ‘and I’ve got some things to do this afternoon. I don’t have to be to the club until eight tonight, so I could meet you downtown around six or so.’
I told her that would be fine, and we agreed to meet in the Astor bar. She informed me that she had red hair and would be wearing a leopard coat, and I assured her that I would recognize her.
Rafferty Page 8
