Rose-colored Glasses

by Downing, John

  “They ought to be wondering anyway,” Langley said bitterly.

  “They ought to,” Wickersham said, “but they’re not.”

  It occurred to Langley that he and Wickersham had been speaking as though there was no longer any doubt regarding Burden’s innocence. In his own mind, certainly, there was none.

  “When did you become a true believer, Harry?”

  Wickersham rose, took off his overcoat and tossed it on the couch. “Let me fill you in on what I’ve found out. But first I could use something hot to drink.”

  “Coffee?” Fay suggested.

  “As black as you can make it.”

  Fay left to make the coffee, and Wickersham and Langley settled into chairs by the window.

  “After you called me yesterday,” Wickersham said, “I went to the Arsenal, in Central Park, which is where the Parks Department’s personnel files are kept. I remembered your telling me Burden had been transferred in September. It occurred to me to wonder how he came to be transferred‌—‌I mean, the way you told it to me, he seemed to be content where he was in Red Hook‌—‌and why to the Lincoln Road playground in particular. I slipped one of the clerks a sawbuck to look into Burden’s records. She tried to reach me last night with her findings, but, as you can imagine, I was busy. I didn’t get back to her until this morning. It turns out Burden was recommended for the transfer. It’s even fair to say pressure was imposed to effect the transfer. I’ll give you one guess as to the name of the person from whom the pressure came.”

  Langley didn’t have to guess. “His brother, who hadn’t seen him in nineteen years, who didn’t know he was still alive.”

  “You’re marrying a smart man,” Wickersham told Fay, who had returned from the kitchen to join them.

  She smiled.

  “Not so smart,” Langley said. “I should have figured this out weeks ago.”

  “Last night, O, you were blaming yourself for being too gullible. Now you’re saying you were not gullible enough?”

  “Burden told me he thought his brother was behind all that’s happened.”

  “When did he tell you that?” Wickersham asked.

  “Yesterday.”

  “And yesterday you sent me to investigate the connection between DeBrough and Luray.”

  “I should have smelled a rat when you told me DeBrough and Luray had been at Columbia together.”

  Wickersham shook his head. “If anybody’s at fault, O, it’s me. I’m the investigator. It’s my job to dig this stuff out.”

  “It’s my job to believe my client.”

  “No, it’s not, O. Nobody in his right mind would have believed Burden’s story. You still have nothing that’s usable in a court of law.”

  “You have proof that DeBrough lied to you,” Fay said. “Maybe you should confront him with his lies.”

  “Oh, I will,” Langley assured her. “But it’ll be when I have him on the stand, under oath. Until then, I won’t let on that I’m on to him. I want to catch him off guard, if I can. Catch him in a lie, ideally. ‘Mr. DeBrough, when is the last time you saw your brother?’ ‘Nineteen years ago.’ If he’s dumb enough to add, ‘I didn’t even know he was alive until I read in the paper‌—‌’”

  “He’s not that dumb, O,” Wickersham said.

  “No, I don’t suppose he is. Even so, he’s going to have a hell of a time answering the questions I have for him. ‘Mr. DeBrough, you say you hadn’t seen your brother in nineteen years. How did you know where to locate him?’ I’d like to hear the answer to that one myself. ‘Why did you arrange your brother’s transfer to the playground by Lincoln Road? What gave you the right to have him transferred without his knowledge or approval? Why that playground in particular? Was it because Charles Luray worked in that playground? You did know that Luray worked there, didn’t you? No? But you do know Charles Luray, don’t you, Mr. DeBrough?’ If he says no, I produce evidence that he and Luray knew each other at Columbia. All I have to do is plant the seed of doubt in the mind of one juror. That’s how we’ll win the case. Not by proving Burden innocent, which is an impossibility. But by getting one juror, just one, to start wondering, Hey, wait a minute here. This guy DeBrough went to college with Charles Luray; he had an affair with Laurel Rose…”

  He saw that Wickersham was frowning. He knew what he was thinking, that it was unlikely Burden would live long enough to see the inside of a courtroom.

  But Wickersham had other things on his mind. “Don’t underestimate DeBrough, O. He will have an answer ready for every question you ask him. Some of his answers may even be true.”

  Langley was incredulous. “You’re still not convinced Burden is innocent?”

  Wickersham said, “I’m ninety-five percent convinced he is.”

  “What’s the missing five percent?” Langley asked.

  “Motive. DeBrough didn’t kill Laurel Rose on a whim. Can you offer a reason‌—‌a believable reason‌—‌for him wanting to kill her?”

  “Why don’t you guys see if you can figure one out?” Fay said.

  Wickersham shrugged. “Why not? Where’s that coffee?” he asked Fay.

  “Coming,” she said, and headed for the kitchen.

  “Maybe the first thing we should do,” Langley said, “is try to determine who DeBrough’s real target was: Burden or Laurel Rose.”

  “Well, since Laurel is dead,” Wickersham said, “I vote for her.”

  “DeBrough went to a hell of a lot of trouble to frame Burden for her murder.”

  “It’s possible he wanted to get them both,” Wickersham said. “Remember my idea that Burden and Laurel had hatched some kind of scheme to get at DeBrough. What better way for him to get back at them than to kill Laurel and frame Burden for her murder?”

  “What scheme?” Langley asked.

  “What have you come up with?” Fay asked, returning with a tray set with three cups of coffee and some cookies.

  Langley realized that they had come up with zero. But then, he remembered, neither had Burden come up with anything‌—‌and he had been contemplating the question for three weeks.

  “I put this question to Burden just yesterday morning,” he told Wickersham. “He couldn’t offer even a guess as to what DeBrough’s motive might be.”

  “He could’ve been holding back, O. If he and Laurel were involved in some kind of extortion scheme, he would understandably be reluctant to admit it.”

  “His life is on the line, Harry. I can’t see him holding back.”

  “Not yet it isn’t, O. It’s still early in the legal game. Preliminary hearings haven’t even begun yet. When it gets closer to zero hour, maybe he’ll be more willing to ‘fess up.”

  Was Wickersham right? Did this whole thing revolve around some seamy little swindle concocted by Burden and Laurel Rose, a swindle that had blown up in their faces?

  “You’re wrong, Harry. In all my hours of talking to Burden, I still haven’t caught him in a single lie. Whatever else he is, he’s not a liar. He’s also not an actor. I tell you, he genuinely has no idea what’s behind this. I tried him on all the possibilities I could think of: that Laurel Rose was blackmailing DeBrough, that maybe she was carrying his child, that when they split up one of them was not willing to let the other go.” Langley shrugged. “Those possibilities sounded as absurd to Burden as they do to you and me.”

  “Did you ask him about the possibility that Laurel had something that DeBrough wanted?”

  “Like what?”

  “Do you remember me mentioning that Laurel’s apartment was burgled about the same time she was getting herself murdered?”

  “You’re suggesting the events are connected?” Langley said. “You think DeBrough burgled Laurel’s apartment?”

  “Remember my theory about coincidences, O.”

  “What could Laurel have had that DeBrough wanted?”

  “Whatever it is,” Fay said, “why didn’t DeBrough just take it? Why
was it necessary to kill Laurel Rose?”

  Good question, Langley thought.

  “Because…” Wickersham said slowly, in the manner of one thinking as he spoke, “he was afraid of not finding it and‌—‌”

  “And then,” Langley said, “Laurel would know the extent of his desperation: that he had broken into her apartment to try to get his hands on it.”

  “Which seems to suggest that Laurel was using the thing, whatever it is, to blackmail DeBrough.”

  “Which brings us back to: What is it?”

  “A photograph,” Wickersham suggested. “A photograph of DeBrough and Laurel in flagrante?”

  Langley wasn’t so sure. “DeBrough would have told Laurel to go to hell and take the photograph with her. No reputable publisher would print such a photograph. Even the scandal sheets wouldn’t touch it.”

  “Suppose she threatened to go to his wife. DeBrough might have feared getting hit with divorce papers. There goes his shot at the mayoralty.”

  “Maybe,” Langley said. “But Laurel would have had to work awfully fast.” He explained to Wickersham his theory that Laurel Rose and DeBrough had met at PrestonPierce. “She worked at PrestonPierce starting in early February. Days later Greta Mueller catches the two of them together, ending their ‘romance.’ Which doesn’t leave much time for Laurel to set a trap and lure DeBrough into it. And besides, she hadn’t even met Burden yet.” He told Wickersham about the phone call from Magruder.

  “Is it possible that while Laurel was working at PrestonPierce she came upon some papers that, well, compromised DeBrough?” Wickersham asked. “Perhaps he was in some kind of legal difficulty, under investigation for something, and his lawyer‌—‌ ”

  “Left the incriminating documents lying around where the hired help could read them?” Langley asked. “I hope not, Harry. I hope no legal office is run so unprofessionally. Even if there were such papers, I doubt Laurel was sophisticated enough to know their significance.”

  “Which,” Wickersham said, “brings us back to where we started.”

  “You guys could do this all day,” Fay said.

  “This was your idea,” Langley told her. “Do you have any idea what DeBrough might have been looking for when he broke into Laurel’s apartment?”

  “No,” Fay said. “But I think I can suggest a better tack for you to try.”

  Oh, really. “What might that be?”

  “Did DeBrough find what he was looking for?”

  Wickersham and Langley looked at each other.

  “This girl’s smart,” Wickersham said. In a more sober tone he added, “If DeBrough found whatever it was he was looking for, we’ll never know what it is.”

  “So,” Langley said, “let’s assume he didn’t find it. Which leads logically to the next question: Where is it now?”

  “The police found it when they searched Laurel’s apartment after her death.”

  “No. DeBrough’s not going to go to the trouble of arranging Laurel’s murder and framing Burden for it, so that he could break into her apartment and come away empty handed. If it was in the apartment, he found it.”

  “‘If’ it was in the apartment?” Wickersham said. “Where else would it be?”

  Where, indeed? Langley wondered. Suddenly, in one of those leaps of logic that happen once or twice in a lifetime, he knew exactly where it was.

  “The boyfriend has it.”

  Did that make sense? Yes. They’d been assuming the boyfriend vanished because he didn’t want to be involved in any way, shape or form in a murder case. Well, suppose the real reason he ran was because he had the thing DeBrough was looking for.

  Wickersham nodded. “If he doesn’t have it, he knows what it is.”

  “He has it,” Langley insisted. “And he knows that DeBrough killed Laurel Rose.” Suddenly he was too excited to sit still. He jumped to my feet. “We’ve got to talk to this guy at once, before DeBrough gets to him.”

  “Or before he gets to DeBrough,” Wickersham said. He explained. “DeBrough doesn’t have to kill Ricky to shut him up. He has the money now to meet his price, whatever it might be.”

  “Well, what are we waiting for?” Langley said. “Let’s go pay Ricky a visit.”

  While Wickersham finished up his coffee, Langley went to get his coat.

  Fay helped him on with the coat. Handing him his scarf and gloves, she said, “Be careful, Owen.”

  “I’ll be fine,” he assured her and, impulsively, he kissed her.

  “Are you familiar with the good cop/bad cop routine?” Wickersham asked him as they headed out the door.

  “I am,” he said. Hadn’t he had a taste of it just last night with Bannerman and Forbush?

  “Which do you want to be?”

  “Definitely the bad cop,” Langley said.

  CHAPTER 14

  But on the way they did some refiguring. Ricky didn’t know either one of them from the lamppost. As far as he knew, they could be anybody. They could even be working for DeBrough. They decided a new strategy was called for. They would play it, at least initially, bad cop/bad cop.

  Wickersham had left a man to watch the building where Ricky was holed up. He was waiting for them on the corner. When Wickersham’s DeSoto pulled up to the curb, he slipped into the back seat.

  “That house,” he said, pointing to a three-storey brick across the street. “Basement apartment. Our guy went out earlier. Around nine o’clock. He made a phone call and then he went right back to his hole. He’s inside now.”

  Wickersham thanked him. “Hang about, will you, Jerry. I may need you. Let’s go, O.”

  They got out of the car and started across the street. He should, Langley thought, be nervous‌—‌they were, after all, walking into a situation in which they had no idea what to expect‌—‌but he felt perfectly calm.

  As though reading his mind, Wickersham said, “Be on your toes, O. We’re dealing with a cornered rat, and cornered rats tend to fight back.”

  The entrance was under a low stoop. To reach it, it was necessary to descend several steps. Underneath the stoop, they were hidden from the sight of anyone who might be watching from the street.

  There was a buzzer in the wall next to the door, but Wickersham ignored it. Reaching into his coat, he brought out a tool Langley didn’t recognize. Using the tool, Wickersham began monkeying with the lock.

  “I don’t want you to get in trouble, Harry,” Langley began. But already the tool had done its job; the lock sprang open with a click.

  “Remember what I said about being careful,” Wickersham said, and pushed the door open.

  It gave onto a small room measuring about twelve feet by twelve feet. In addition to the front door, there were two other doors. Wickersham stepped quietly up to the first and swept it open: a closet. Langley pushed open the other door and found himself looking into the bathroom. It was empty. Above the toilet, an open window spilled cold air into the room.

  In two strides he crossed to the window. He looked out. Just beneath the lip of the window sill ran a narrow alley. Down the length of the alley to his left, the snow had been freshly trampled.

  Wickersham had come up behind him to peer over his shoulder.

  “Go after him, O,” he said. “I’ll try to head him off.”

  Using the toilet seat as a springboard, Langley boosted himself out the narrow window. He landed on his elbows and knees, the snow cushioning his pratfall. Scrambling to his feet, he followed the trail marked by the broken snow. At the end of the alley, the tracks turned left down another alley and then to the street. Reaching the street, Langley looked left, saw Wickersham chugging toward him, then right, just in time to see a figure disappear around the corner. Not waiting for Wickersham, Langley took off after it.

  By the time he reached the corner, the figure had gained the next corner over. It turned to glance back over its shoulder, and Langley recognized the swarthy young face described by Burden. The
act of turning to look back had cost Ricky a few yards off his head start. Now, moving to his left, he slipped around the corner and once again he disappeared from Langley’s line of sight.

  This time when Langley reached the corner, there was no one to be seen. About ten yards ahead the street dead-ended. Had Ricky ducked into one of the houses? Was he hiding behind one of the cars? A set of footprints led directly to the dead end barrier. After checking over his shoulder that Wickersham was there to back him up in case Ricky should try to slip past him, Langley walked up to the barrier.

  Beyond, the ground sloped steeply down to a kind of gulch. A river? There was no river in Brooklyn. The snow along the slope had been disturbed. Whatever was down there, that was where Ricky had gone.

  Huffing and puffing, Wickersham joined Langley, walking the last several paces up to the barrier.

  “What’s down there?” Langley asked him.

  “Railroad tracks. A freight line that runs from the Army Terminal to‌—‌I don’t know where. Which way did he go? Left or right?”

  “Left.”

  “He’s going to have a harder time climbing out of there than he had sliding in. You go after him. I’ll go get the car and see if I can cut him off up ahead.”

  Using the back of his overcoat as a sled, Langley slid down the slope, landing in a tangle at the bottom. The snow, which had drifted deeper in the trench than at ground level, helped to brake his descent.

  Now that he was down here he could see what it was. Despite the depth of the snow, two parallel mounds delineated the railroad tracks; even the ties were faintly discernable. He looked for Ricky. The gap separating them had opened to a block and a half, maybe two blocks. So that he wouldn’t have to worry about tripping over the ties, he stepped to the side of the tracks and took off after Ricky.

  After they had gone several blocks, it occurred to Langley that he could pursue Ricky all the way across Brooklyn. The same thought had apparently occurred to Ricky, who made a sudden dash for the right wall of the trench and started climbing. He had got about half way up the embankment, when he slipped and slid all the way back to the bottom. All that he had accomplished was to allow Langley to close the gap between them. But then he could afford to. Instead of being two blocks back and not gaining, Langley was now one block back and not gaining.