by Peter Quinn
Von Vogt’s last entries were two letters and responses filed on January 30, 1933. The first, from Rev. F. Roland Grovesnor Phelps, at 9 Route Kaufman, Shanghai, raised the possibility that maybe Crater really had taken a slow boat to China. Von Vogt let the Reverend down gently, thanking him for his inquiry and informing him that Judge Crater didn’t fit the description of a “rotund, notably garrulous fellow fluent in several of the Oriental languages”; the second, from C.S. Weatherholt, director of the Malay Archipelago Expedition, called attention to a local river pilot who claimed “he’d been a judge in New York.” Von Vogt wrote back requesting more information.
After leaving Missing Persons, Von Vogt bounced around the department for several years before being shuffled off to a job at the Police Academy. His oldest boy, Alexander Jr., was killed at Anzio in 1943; the next oldest, Carl, died at Iwo Jima in 1945. In October 1946, Von Vogt, a widower with his remaining boy gone off to college at M.I.T., retired from the Department after a thirty-two-year career with only a single blemish. According to Crow, “He never again uttered another word about the Crater case or Connie Newberry, and we all knew never to bring them up.”
Finished reading the files for the day, Dunne made his first foray to interview the players in the case who were still alive and available. He began at the beginning, with Patti Leroche (neé Bernadette Larocca), one of the last two people to see Crater alive. The Standard’s info was bare bones: she’d been married to a grocery store magnate but was now separated, went under the name Pat Roche, worked as a salesgirl at A&S in downtown Brooklyn. Lived on Union Street. No listing in the phone book.
He rode the subway to Fourth Avenue and walked up Union toward Prospect Park. A brisk wind blew what he took at first for a small snow flurry but soon realized was incinerator ash from the apartment buildings atop the hill. Miss Leroche’s address turned out to be a rooming house, one in a row of dowdy brownstones with room-to-let signs in the front window. Another neighborhood awaiting the wrecking ball.
He went up the stoop and rang the bell. The curtain on the front window parted enough to signal somebody was home. He waited for whoever it was to open the door. Nobody did. Rang again. Nothing. He held down the button on the doorbell with his thumb until the door opened with an angry jerk. A squat, muscular, middle-aged woman in a bulky, gray, loose-sleeved sweater and black tights stood before him with folded arms. “Rooms are all rented. If you’re selling something, we don’t want it.” Her voice was deep and gravelly; her black hair was closely cropped, like a boy’s.
“I’m looking for Pat Roche.”
“She moved.”
“Where?”
“She didn’t leave a forwarding address.”
He gestured over her right shoulder to a row of brass rectangular mailboxes. “Name’s still there.” A bluff. He couldn’t read the names.
“I forgot to take it off. Thanks for reminding me.”
“I need to talk to her. That’s all.”
“Wish I could help, but can’t. So long.”
He planted his foot on the door sill. “Make it worth your while.”
Her right hand rushed up the left sleeve of her sweater and withdrew a letter-opener-sized knife, with a shiny blade that looked as if it could double as an ice pick. “Move that foot or else you’ll be sorry you ever rang my bell.”
Stepping back, he put up his hands. “Hey, no need to …”
“It’s all right, Maria.” Behind him, a woman carrying a bag of groceries came up the stoop. Topped by a brown beret, her long, olive-skinned face was vaguely suggestive of an acorn. She stepped past Dunne and handed the bag to Maria. “I’ll take it from here. Why don’t you get dinner started?”
“Want this, Pat?” Maria held out the knife. “He tried to stick his foot in the door.”
“I don’t need it, do I, Mister …?”
“Dunne. Fintan Dunne. You Pat Roche?”
“Let’s talk about it inside,” she said. “It’s cold out here.”
He followed her into the closet-sized vestibule. Maria went through the inner door without another word, the knife handle accessibly sticking out of the top of the bag.
She took a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her blue pea coat and looked him up and down. “You’re not a cop, obviously. Maria would be in handcuffs if you were. No book bag or sample case, so you’re not a salesman.” He accepted the cigarette she offered, shared the flame of her gold lighter. “The gas man doesn’t wear a suit, and if you were wearing a better suit, I’d say you were a lawyer. If you had a partner, you might even be one of those holy rollers in search of converts, but you’re solo. Only one other possibility. Private investigator.”
“You should be in the business.”
“Except girls aren’t allowed, are they?”
“No such rule.”
“Not in writing, just in practice. I know why you’re here.”
“Why?”
“Marty sent you.” The cigarette tip flared like a tail light in the dimness. She exhaled and drew the smoke up her nose. “Marty the Grocery King wants to verify I’m living in Park Slope with another woman. ‘Boston marriage’ is the polite term. ‘Dyke duet’ is less polite but more popular.”
“Don’t know Marty.”
“Look, let’s drop the disguises. Tell his highness he can have his annulment, divorce, whatever. He should feel free to go ahead and marry the virgin martyr he’s chosen to serve as consort for the chief of the Delfino Foods Corporation. Tell him he doesn’t have to waste his money on a detective. He doesn’t have to pay me a dime so long as I never have to see or hear from him again.”
Down the stoop, by the curb, in a lone square of earth, was a frail, wasted sapling. The bark at its base was stripped away. A car attempted to parallel park and backed into it. She opened the door and stuck her head out. “Hey, asshole, watch the tree!” She turned and looked at him. Her pupils were the color of dark chocolate. “Do me a favor, will you? Tell Marty, that miserable cocksucker, I’d rather take my chances on the meanest street in this borough than spend another minute in the same room as him.”
“I don’t work for him, Miss Roche. Here on another matter entirely.”
“And that’d be what?”
“Crater case.”
Her long, thin face was severe and glum. No makeup. But clear, smooth skin. The remnant of an angular beauty. “You’re not kidding, are you?”
“Just a few questions. No notes. No quotes. I won’t bother you again.”
She dropped her cigarette on the black-and-white tiled floor, covered it with the toe of her shoe and pirouetted. “Who gives a fuck about Joe Crater anymore?”
“My client.”
“Who else besides your client?”
“That’s his business. Mine is to look for leads that might’ve been overlooked in the original investigation.”
“Nothing was overlooked. Crater was a greedy, crooked politician and all-around prick. Problem was there were so many leads and so many suspects with so many good motives, cops could never narrow down the field to a manageable number.”
“You and Sam Hechtman were the last to see him alive.”
“We were never suspects.”
“What were you?”
“Ask the cops. I said all I have to say on the subject twenty-five years ago. You like ancient history? Go buy a shovel and dig for dinosaurs in Prospect Park. Meanwhile, I have to help Maria get dinner ready.”
“Was Hechtman your boyfriend or your pimp?”
She turned around and unlocked the inner door. “Fuck you, Dunne.”
“Look, I appreciate you were in a tough spot back then.”
“No, you don’t. You can’t know what it was like. More and more girls, fewer and fewer shows. That summer, something like 2,000 showed up to try out for Earl Carroll’s ‘Vanities.’ He made them audition nude. Earl’s motto was ‘Women don’t want to be loved. They want to be taken, ruled and raped.’ He was true to his word.”
“You worked for the Schumann Organization, no?”
“The Schumann brothers weren’t any different. Tryouts for their ‘Artists & Models’ review wasn’t show business. It was a slave market.”
“What part did Hechtman play?”
“Sam wasn’t the worst. For starters, he preferred boys to girls. But as chief lawyer for the Schumanns, his job was keeping judges and pols well disposed. You know the old saying. ‘Better to know the judge than the law.’ Crater wasn’t the only one. I got set up on a couple dates with Judge Traglia. A certified caveman.”
“Was Sam setting you up with Crater that night?”
“No way. I bumped into Sam earlier. He asked me if I wanted to grab a bite. He was as surprised as me when Crater walked in, especially since we’d just been talking about him. Sam had told me Elaine Dove, my ex-roommate, was in the hospital with the clap. He guessed Crater gave it to her. The guy was a dirt bag. Handed out infections like Santa’s candy canes. Some girls couldn’t take it. One committed suicide.” She slipped the key out of the lock and stepped from the vestibule into the hallway. “All on the record, Dunne, and has been for twenty-five years. If I was you, I’d get another client.”
“What about the cab Crater got into?”
“What about it?”
“Anything.”
“Tan, like lots of other cabs.”
“Could it’ve been waiting down the block for Crater to leave the restaurant?”
“How would I know? Ask the cabbie.”
“What do you remember about him?”
“Who?”
“The cabbie. You told the police you saw the back of his head.”
“He wore a cap. Didn’t turn around.”
“Nothing else?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, it was dark. It wasn’t like Sam or me was soaking up every detail because we had an inkling Crater was about to vanish from the face of the earth.”
“Thin neck or thick? Shape of head?”
“Maybe his ears bent. Or maybe it was just his right ear. There. Are you happy?”
“Bent how?”
“Stuck out. At least that’s the impression I had. I can’t be sure. I could only see one side of his head. Tell you what, stop by in another twenty-five years and I’ll tell you what else I can remember.” She closed the door. The lock snapped into place with a metallic click.
Dunne called Nan Renard when he got back to his room. She’d left for the day. He had her home number but didn’t try. He rang Mulholland. No answer. He ordered dinner from room service and ate by himself. Instead of watching television, he had several Scotches, smoked, stared out the glass doors at the graceful, generously spaced city above the cheek-to-cheek hodgepodge of people and buildings below: crenellated towers, spires, temples, glass conservatories, electric glow of their windows hanging like stars in the black, motionless sky. From here, New York was serene, graceful, imperial, no sign of Crow’s (and Dante’s) citta dolente, Gene Halloway’s mortal stab wound, Alexander Von Vogt’s broken heart, Pat Roche’s well-earned bitterness.
He went out on the terrace, rested his forearms on the ledge and looked down. Banked by the park wall on one side and buildings on the other, the reassuring hum of traffic was interrupted by honks, occasional screech of brakes, distant siren whine. A fragment from the Salve Regina came to him, a prayer they said every morning at the Protectory, the only one he ever found comfort in: To thee do we cry … mourning and weeping in this vale of tears.
Crow’s reluctance to pry open the Crater case was understandable. A city with sufficient mourning and weeping as it was. No need to add old tears to new. But the relatively short time he’d spent filling in the background was enough to convince him an answer wasn’t out of reach. No crime was a riddle beyond solution, a mystery with no answer. The culprit or culprits had the answer all along. The phantom cab and the thoroughness with which Crater disappeared made it probable that more than one person was involved. His gut told him they weren’t all dead or moved away. The only question was whether it was too late to gather the pieces to the puzzle, as well as how far those with the answers would go to stop the poeple trying to find them.
The room felt overheated when he came back inside. Too much Scotch didn’t help. He put the bottle away, turned on the TV and fell promptly asleep in a wing chair. Awoke in the morning with a stiff neck. He finished his usual breakfast of coffee and toast, and remembered he hadn’t talked to Roberta since he arrived. He had the hotel operator place a long-distance person-to-person call.
The operator connected him. “Honey,” he said, “sorry I didn’t call sooner.”
A male voice on the other end, foreign sounding, said, “Roberta is not here, Mr. Dunne.”
“Who’s this?”
“This is Felipe.”
“Who?”
“Felipe Calderon, your dance instructor.”
“Where the hell is Roberta?” He hadn’t intended to sound annoyed.
“The store. She says if you call while she is gone, I am to answer and tell you to try again tonight.”
He looked at the clock: just after nine. “What store?”
“Food.”
“Breakfast?”
“No, no. Food for the excursíon.”
“The what?”
“You know, the, eh, picnic. The class, we are all going to the park by the river. I am driving Roberta.”
“Tell her I phoned.” He moderated his tone. “I’ll try again later.”
Soon as he hung up, he called the front desk and had them send up the masseur, a hulking Norwegian who worked with slow intensity to erase the pain in his neck that had grown worse during the brief phone call. He took a hot shower when the massage was finished and lay down for a few minutes to enjoy its effects. Wouldn’t say he was upset that Felipe answered the phone. Surprised, that’s all. Probably Roberta’s way of letting him know she was peeved he hadn’t called earlier. Couldn’t blame her.
He schlepped to the Bronx on the IRT. First appointment was with Robert Emmet Murphy, a retired cop living in Parkchester with his ninety-year-old mother. Crow set it up. Murphy had been transferred from the Traffic Division to Missing Persons in the early days and weeks of the case, he explained, “to work under Allie Von Vogt. Allie would go out with two or three of us. We’d concentrate on a certain neighborhood, follow up all the reports of Crater sightings. And believe me, there was no shortage. Seemed Crater had Santa Claus’ knack for being everywhere at once. Then Allie would sit down and go over them. Anything that showed any possibility, he’d personally revisit.”
Murphy didn’t mask his skepticism about the odds of turning up anything new. “The man to talk to is Von Vogt. Best cop I ever worked with. He had more than his share of tragedy, poor guy. But nobody was smarter or better informed on the Crater case. Problem is, I know Allie and there’s no way he’s ever going to talk to you.”
He took a cab to Kingsbridge to have lunch in a German restaurant on 231st Street with Bernie Sampson, who’d been Crater’s law secretary. A retired Municipal Court judge and former Democratic district leader, thin and smartly dressed, Sampson went short on food and long on drinks. Sampson liked to talk and was filled with amusing stories, the predictable M.O. of a widowed jurist who lived alone and missed delivering monologues from the bench. Didn’t have anything new to add about the case, except he wasn’t ready to rule out the possibility Crater had engineered his own disappearance.
“He was sighted all over the country. Not that it meant anything in the Depression, since if a reward was involved, people would’ve reported seeing King Kong on their neighbor’s roof. On the other hand, maybe they weren’t all making it up. He became a kind of cult figure among the hoboes and all those who joined them on the road in the worst of those years. They actually sang a song about him, ‘The Ballad of Judge Joe.’ It had a verse that went, ‘Was a wife, a life left you weary/ Judge Joe, Judge Joe, you’re forever free.”
Last time he saw Crater w
as when he stopped into his chambers the morning he disappeared. “He looked depressed. Strike that. He looked o-ppressed. The possibility of an investigation, money, women, work, all the usual baggage weighed on him. And, remember, those weren’t happy days for anybody.” Sampson ordered his fourth martini. “He was a very smart man—don’t let anyone try to tell you differently—and entirely capable of masterminding his own escape.” He gazed out the window of the restaurant. “Wouldn’t that be delicious? Us stuck in our routines and him ‘forever free.’ If that’s the case, then I say, ‘Good for you, Joe.’ At least somebody got away.”
Traveling downtown on the Broadway subway, Dunne got off at 149th Street to visit Fred Kipps at Melancthon Manor, the Lutheran old people’s home where he’d been living for the last few years. He found the five-story brick building a block west of Broadway, the outside grimy and worn, inside spic-and-span bright. The head nurse, a tall, starched blonde with Shirley Temple dimples, was friendly but inquisitive. What was his connection to Mr. Kipps? Did he know any of his family? How long since he’d last seen him?
Dunne didn’t bring up the Crater case nor mention that though their careers on the NYPD had overlapped for a few years, he and Kipps never met. Said he was an ex-cop who lived in Florida now. On a visit to New York. Staying at the Savoy Plaza. Let her fill in the rest.
“You’re the first of his police acquaintances to stop by,” she said, “and you might be somewhat surprised by his appearance. He had a stroke two years ago, and I’m afraid his condition has deteriorated dramatically. As I’m sure you know, he was shell shocked in the First World War, which hasn’t helped.”
“I honestly can’t remember the last time I saw him.”
“Mr. Kipps doesn’t have many visitors. His only daughter lives in L.A. It’s been quite some time since she came to see him. She phones at Christmas and Easter, but Mr. Kipps can no longer speak. Until very recently he could scratch a few words on a pad with his left hand, but lately he’s stopped doing even that.”
“I won’t stay long.” He wished a ready excuse for backing out of the visit came to mind, but it didn’t. “Just pay my respects.”
