The Apostrophe Thief

by Barbara Paul

  Bleary-eyed and fuzzy-headed from insufficient sleep, Marian kept out of Murtaugh’s way the next morning. The captain was caught up in the aftermath of a restaurant fire on Ninth Avenue that had been set deliberately. Four people had died, thus taking the case out of the hands of the Bomb and Arson Squad; the investigation was demanding all of Murtaugh’s attention for the moment.

  It was just as well. Marian felt sure the captain would not have approved of her socializing with what he considered four murder suspects. DiFalco would have approved; he’d see it as a chance to worm something incriminating out of them. But Marian had happily ignored police protocol to join her old and new friends for a few hours of relaxation. She was confident they were, mostly, what they appeared to be: decent people who were only too aware that a man had been murdered, a man who was a stranger but whose life had touched briefly upon theirs.

  Kelly’s suggestion that they go dancing had been unanimously voted down; they’d ended up at Sonderman’s again, with its big circular booths that could seat six people. Good food and drink and good company had in time eased away their tensions; even Holland had lost his brooding look, eventually. When he’d dropped her off in the wee hours, he’d merely said to call him when she’d decided. She’d repeated that she would not decide anything until the Nordstrom case was wrapped up. He’d smiled sardonically and driven away.

  John Reddick was the only question mark of the bunch. Marian couldn’t see John as a murderer; but as long as he had any kind of “collection” at all, she couldn’t scratch him off the suspects list. At one point when Kelly and Abby had gone to the Ladies’, Marian asked him about his collection. He invited her to come take a look; she accepted. She wanted to see for herself that he didn’t collect things such as velvet jackets that had once been worn by theater legends like Sarah Bernhardt.

  A reply had arrived from the French Sûreté; Gene Ramsay’s receipt for the jacket checked out. The French official had thoughtfully worded his reply in English, apparently aware from past experience that New York cops were not fluent in the language of Racine and Hugo. Marian stepped out of Lieutenant Overbrook’s office just as Perlmutter was getting up to leave. She asked if Captain Murtaugh had told him to show pictures to the doorman of Ernie Nordstrom’s building, to try to get an identification.

  “Yeah, but I’m going to have to take some pictures first,” he said, holding up a Polaroid. “I got publicity photos of all the actors, and of the director and the producer and … who else? Oh yeah, the playwright. But I got no pictures of the backstage crew. I have to track all those people down.”

  “For the time being, just get Leo Gunn’s picture,” Marian said. “If the doorman can’t identify anyone, then go back for the rest of the crew. But right now, don’t waste time on it.”

  “You think Gunn’s the one?”

  She shrugged. “He has a ‘collection’—of sorts.”

  Perlmutter scowled. “Sergeant, if one of these people knocked off Nordstrom, he’s not going to admit to having a collection. He’d lie about it, keep it hidden.”

  “Believe it or not, I did think of that,” Marian said dryly.

  “But you know damn well I’ll never get warrants to search all their homes on the chance that they might have a secret collection that might have something to do with Nordstrom’s murder. We’ll have to do it this way. Show the doorman the pictures.”

  “Right.” He gathered up his things and left.

  Marian called Gene Ramsay’s office to check on his alibi for Tuesday night, but the producer wasn’t in yet. And Captain Murtaugh wasn’t in his office, either, when she went to see him. Marian left a note saying she was going to the Zingones’ shop and then to John Reddick’s apartment. But she cheated a little; she stopped off on the way and had a big breakfast.

  Feeling better, she was prepared when the Zingones didn’t want to buzz her in. The voice coming over the crackly intercom was as unintelligible as ever; Marian finally got them to open the door by shouting the word “warrant” several times.

  Upstairs, only Matthew and Luke were on store duty. Matthew peered at her over his glasses and demanded to see her warrant.

  “I said I’d get a warrant if you didn’t let me in,” Marian told them blandly. “You really should get a new intercom system.”

  They weren’t interested in that. “You lied to us, Sergeant Marian,” Matthew said. “We read about you in the paper. You never told us you were a cop.”

  “Yeah, you took the sails right out from under us,” Luke added.

  “Ernie Nordstrom is dead,” Marian said. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  The brothers exchanged a look. “Sure, that means something,” Matthew said. “It’s scary. Ernie wasn’t what you’d call a friend, but somebody murdering him … that’s scary. What’s going to happen to his stuff?”

  So much for Ernie. “It belongs to the city now. There’ll be an auction announced in the legal notices section of the newspapers—I don’t know when.”

  Luke asked, “Do you know who killed him?”

  “Not yet. That’s where you can help.”

  “After you put the wool in our eyes? Why should we help you?”

  “To avoid being arrested on a charge of receiving stolen goods,” Marian said bluntly. “You guys were hot to deal with Ernie for the Broadhurst loot yourselves. I’m willing to bet you can’t prove prior ownership of ninety percent of the stuff you’ve got here. Shall I get a warrant to examine your books?”

  They both glared at her. “I don’t like threats,” Matthew said.

  “And I don’t like making them. So how about it? Do I get a little cooperation or not?”

  Heavy sighs. “What do you want us to do?”

  She took the list of missing items out of her bag. “Keep an eye out for any of these things. We recovered everything taken from the Broadhurst except—”

  “A jacket once owned by Sarah Bernhardt?” Matthew interrupted, reading the list. “A jacket once owned by Sarah Bernhardt!”

  Luke’s eyes were big. “Wow … that has to be worth thousands!”

  “Twenty-two of them,” Marian told him. “You hadn’t heard about the jacket? Kelly Ingram wore it in the play.”

  They shook their heads in unison. “Sarah Bernhardt!” Matthew exclaimed. “My god, Luke, we’ve never had anything of hers, have we?”

  “Never,” Luke agreed.

  “Well, I doubt that anyone will waltz in here and offer the jacket for sale,” Marian said dryly. “Or any of the other items, either. The killer’s no fool … he’s not going to peddle something that’ll place him at the scene of the crime.”

  “Then what do you want of us?” Luke asked.

  “I want you to get in touch with your contacts. Ask them to get in touch with their contacts. Whatever network you belong to, put it to work. Tell them to keep an eye out for all the items on that list. The killer had to unload them somewhere.”

  “The river, probably,” Matthew said.

  “Or garbage cans,” Luke added. “Dumpsters.”

  “That’s a possibility,” his brother said. “We know several people who regularly check the garbage in the neighborhoods where celebrities live.”

  “Good!” said Marian. “That sounds promising.”

  The doorbell rang; after some shouting into the intercom, Luke buzzed the customer in. “Matthew, you start calling people—I want to take care of this dude myself. He thinks he’s a Sondheim collector, but he doesn’t know his ass from a hole-in-one.” He moved away to meet the customer.

  Marian couldn’t stand it; she had to ask. “Why does he do that? Why does Luke talk that way when the rest of you speak perfectly good English?”

  Matthew looked puzzled. “Talk what way?”

  Arrgh. Not worth trying to explain. “Matthew, call me if you get anything. And the next time you see Augie Silver … tell him I’m sorry.”

  Matthew gave her a wry smile and a thumbs-up.

  Marian took t
he IRT to Times Square and walked to Gene Ramsay’s building on West Forty-fourth; a phone call from the lobby revealed he still wasn’t in. Then she took the Forty-second Street shuttle to Grand Central; John Reddick lived only a few blocks uptown.

  He was up when she got there, and talking on the phone.

  “Have a seat, Marian, I’ll be with you in a moment.” No Larch-Tree today. She sat down and looked around. The apartment was comfortably cluttered, as if the inhabitant didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to his surroundings. A few unpacked crates stood in corners; evidently he hadn’t lived there very long.

  John was back on the phone. “It isn’t that I don’t respect his work—I do,” the director said. “He’s always got something to say that’s worth listening to. But the man has no ear for natural speech. His characters talk in essays, not dialogue. Going from Abby’s lines to his … it’s too big a jump.” John listened for a while and then said, “Oh, all right, all right—I’ll read the script. But I’m not promising anything, Gene.”

  “Is that Gene Ramsay?” Marian asked. “I want to speak to him.”

  “Hold on, Gene—Marian Larch wants a word.”

  She took the receiver. “Gene—hello. The word is ‘alibis’ and I’m collecting them. Mind giving me yours for Tuesday night?”

  A mild chuckle. “And if I do mind?”

  “Then I have to go into my tough-cop mode, and it’s still too early in the day for that.”

  “Um, we can’t have that. Alibi, let’s see. You’re in my alibi’s apartment right now.”

  “John?”

  “Uh-huh. Some of us went out for a drink after the performance, and John got to moaning over Kelly and had a few too many—well, you’ve seen what he’s like when he’s in that state. I had to take him home.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Oh hell, I don’t know—well after midnight. One or two.”

  “Can you pin it down a little more than that?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t,” he said apologetically. “Nobody was paying attention to the time.”

  “How long did you stay here?”

  “In his apartment? Just long enough to get him in bed. Then I went home and tucked myself in.”

  “Okay, Gene, thanks.” She hung up. “He says he was out drinking with you Tuesday after the performance.”

  John squinted his eyes as an aid to memory. “That’s right, he did join us later.”

  “Later? How much later?”

  “Oh, after midnight, I think.”

  After midnight. “He says he brought you home and put you to bed.”

  The director grinned sheepishly. “Somebody did.”

  John had been in Captain Murtaugh’s line the night before, so Marian didn’t know the details. “Who else was there?”

  “Oh, Leo Gunn. Mitchell Tobin. Ned Young, the properties manager.” He squinted his eyes again. “That’s all—until Gene came along later.”

  “How’d he know where to find you?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe I told him earlier, I don’t remember. Why?”

  She frowned. “You and he both are a bit vague about exactly where you were during the crucial period. Do you remember what time you left the bar?”

  “Marian, I don’t even remember leaving the bar.”

  How convenient. Marian let it go, thinking there were three other drinkers she could check with. “Now—how about this collection of yours? Are you going to show it to me?”

  “Oh, absolutely. Walk this way.” He did a John Cleese Ministry-of-Silly-Walks amble that made her laugh. The collection was kept in what was meant to be a small bedroom.

  One glance was enough to tell her that John Reddick was a “paper” collector. A few posters and signed photographs on the walls, but everything else was stacked in piles or collected into plastic crates. Old playscripts, notebooks, sketches for scene designs, even musical scores. He showed her programs for plays she’d never heard of, plays with titles like Hollywoodn’t and A Blot on Rorschach’s Name. One fire-resistant box was reserved for reviews of shows that had closed after only one performance.

  But his pride and joy was his collection of correspondence. “Letters from directors to producers, to playwrights, to scene designers and costumers,” John said. “Gossipy letters to friends and family about rehearsal problems.” He sighed. “You know, people don’t write letters now the way they did in the last century, or even in this century before the Second World War. Now they just pick up a phone and take care of business that way. All those conversations that could tell us so much about the way directors like José Quintero or Joshua Logan worked—they’re all gone.”

  “What a pity.”

  “Yes, it is. Once in a while you can track down people who were on the other end of the line, but try getting some old codger to remember word-for-word a telephone conversation that took place fifty years ago. It’s impossible.”

  He went on talking, as much to himself as to Marian, rearranging stacks of papers, occasionally going off on a tangent when a note or a Playbill reminded him of something. John Reddick clearly loved his collection, the same way he loved his work. There was no sign anywhere in the room of costumes or stage props or actors’ personal belongings, none of the sort of thing that had been taken from Ernie Nordstrom’s apartment.

  As Marian listened to him, she found herself thinking an unprofessional thought: she earnestly hoped that John Reddick was not the killer she was looking for.

  16

  Perlmutter’s news was bad. “The night doorman at Ernie Nordstrom’s building is a washout.”

  Captain Murtaugh glared at him. “Why?”

  “He couldn’t identify any of the pictures I showed him. At first I thought that just meant the killer was one of the stage crew I didn’t have pictures of.”

  Marian said, “I told him to skip them for the time being, except for Leo Gunn.”

  Murtaugh nodded. “Go on.”

  “I thought I might as well check some of the other tenants,” Perlmutter said. “Nobody could identify anyone in the photographs, either, but they did tell me the night doorman had a habit of wandering off for a quick snort or two. Sometimes he’d be gone as long as forty-five minutes. Four tenants told me separately that they’d complained to the management about him. But if he was off wetting his whistle Tuesday night, the killer could have come and gone without ever being seen at all.”

  “Christ,” said Marian, disgusted. “That was our best shot.”

  Murtaugh looked equally disgusted. “So what’s our next-best shot?”

  “We don’t have one. We do have a couple of vague alibis Perlmutter could check out, all right?” Murtaugh said yes. “Four of the men were out drinking Tuesday night after the play,” Marian went on, “John Reddick among them. Gene Ramsay joined them later, and later still took Reddick home when Reddick was sailing three sheets to the wind. Both Ramsay and Reddick claim they don’t know the times involved, so check with the other three.” She wrote their names down on a piece of paper. “We need to know exactly what time Ramsay got there, exactly what time he and Reddick left, and exactly how much longer the others stayed on in the bar.”

  Perlmutter took the list. “Leo Gunn again, huh? Who’s this Ned Young?”

  “Crew. The properties master.”

  “Who’s the third?” Murtaugh asked.

  “Mitchell Tobin. If nothing else, we ought to be able to eliminate those three.”

  “Okay, I’m on it,” Perlmutter said, getting up to go.

  “Leave the photographs,” Murtaugh said.

  “I’ll get ’em.” Perlmutter went out to the squadroom.

  Marian looked a question.

  “I want you to show them to Vasquez,” the captain said. “Wait until Campos gets back from lunch to interpret for you and then have another go at him. Vasquez has to know more than he’s telling us. Find out what it is.”

  “Yes, sir. But I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know who the killer is.” />
  “‘Pretty’ sure isn’t good enough, Sergeant. Make damned sure.”

  Marian said she would. She went back to Lieutenant Overbrook’s office to wait for Sergeant Campos and spent her time stewing over a couple of details that didn’t quite fit. Gene Ramsay hadn’t mentioned he’d joined his fellow imbibers at some unspecified later time; he’d merely said they’d gone out drinking—the implication being that he was with the others all along. It was John Reddick who’d told her that Gene hadn’t come until later. Was Gene counting on John’s alcohol-befuddled memory not to mention that little fact? Unfortunately, it was the kind of sloppiness of detail that characterized most statements made to the police by guilty and innocent alike.

  Or had John Reddick got it wrong? If he’d been drinking heavily, he might easily have gotten Tuesday night mixed up with some other postperformance toot he’d been on. Or perhaps John wasn’t drunk at all; perhaps he was acting. So instead of Gene using John as an alibi, it was the other way around? John could have feigned intoxication as an excuse to leave the bar and … Well, the other three in the bar could clear up those details; Perlmutter would get the answer.

  The other detail that bothered her was the fact that the Zingones hadn’t known Kelly was wearing Sarah Bernhardt’s jacket in The Apostrophe Thief when the play first opened. Gene Ramsay said he’d had her wear it for its publicity value; but what kind of publicity was it when even the Zingones hadn’t heard about it? The Zingones knew everything going on in the world of collectibles, according to Augie Silver. And they had known about the burglary at the Broadhurst before the story appeared in the papers. But either the Zingones weren’t as knowledgeable as they liked to think, or Gene hadn’t publicized the jacket after all.

  Gene Ramsay. But as Captain Murtaugh had said, why would a man steal his own property? The most obvious reason was for the insurance. But it seemed such a petty scam for a wheeler-dealer like Gene Ramsay.

  “You need me?” a voice said from the doorway. Campos was back from lunch.

  “I do indeed,” Marian said, getting up. “Let’s go.”