by Parnell Hall
Steve sighed. “All right, Mark. Call off your men. Bradshaw’s given us a retainer and now he’s taken it back. I don’t know why he did it, but I don’t care. The hell with him.”
Mark Taylor nodded. He couldn’t have agreed more.
But Tracy Garvin couldn’t have agreed less.
9.
TRACY GARVIN SAT AND STEWED. Wasn’t that just her luck. The whole thing had been too good to be true. It figured that just when things got to be interesting, something would come up to spoil it. And didn’t it just figure that that something would be named Steve Winslow?
Tracy could understand why he’d done it. It was frustrating that Bradshaw had taken his money back. And Tracy could understand Steve not wanting to work for nothing.
But still.
As she sat at her desk with nothing to do, Tracy’s mind wandered away from Winslow and Bradshaw and her job, and back to the problems that had been obsessing her before the whole Bradshaw thing started. What to do now? She’d given notice, and she needed a job. When was she going to look, on her lunch hour? Damn. Why the hell’d she thrown out the Sunday Times. That was stupid. Didn’t she want to get a job?
She realized, of course, the answer was no. Who likes looking for work? Getting a job was one of the worst experiences in the world.
But it was more than that. She didn’t really want this job to end. She didn’t really want to quit, to give up, to admit it was hopeless.
But there was no help for it. Two more weeks. She’d have to find something fast. Her lease was up in three months, which meant a rent increase. And she was just getting by now. She couldn’t afford to miss even a week of work. Then she’d really be in trouble. She might even have to take in a roommate. In a one-bedroom apartment, that meant giving up the living room. And sharing the bath. And the bathroom was off her bedroom, not off the hall. Which meant her roommate would have to come tromping through her room every time she wanted to use it. Jesus, what a nightmare. What a hell of a—
Tracy’s thoughts were interrupted by the plop of the mail falling through the slot. She looked up. Two letters were lying on the floor by the door. Two. Wow. Big day. Tracy got up from her desk and plodded mechanically over to pick up the mail.
Steve Winslow looked up from his paper when Tracy Garvin appeared at the door. He figured that she was just reaffirming the fact that she had given notice, and was ready with some sarcastic comment, but the look on her face stopped him.
“What is it?” he said.
Tracy held out a letter. “Another one.”
“Another letter?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t tell me there’s another retainer.”
“There is.”
Tracy handed Steve the envelope. He reached in and pulled out the torn half of a dollar bill.
“Son of a bitch,” Winslow said.
“There’s a letter with it.”
“Don’t tell me,” Steve said. “This is my change from the ten grand, right?”
“Not quite.”
Steve pulled out the letter, opened it, and read it aloud.
“Dear Mr. Winslow: I realize that my first letter failed to establish any means by which I could prove my identity. Enclosed find half of a dollar bill. In the event that I am in need of your services, I will present you with the other half of the bill. In the meantime, please remember that this is a matter requiring the utmost tact and delicacy.”
Steve looked at Tracy. “Jesus Christ.”
Tracy eyes were gleaming. “Yeah. Why would Bradshaw send you that letter?”
Steve shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense. First Bradshaw sends me a retainer. Second, Bradshaw steals the retainer from my safe. Third, Bradshaw sends me the letter.”
“Maybe it’s the other way around.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe he sent the letter before he took the money back.”
“The letter is postmarked today.”
“That’s true, but he could have mailed it yesterday. He might have dropped it in a mailbox, and the mail wasn’t picked up until today.”
Steve shook his head. “He was in my office at three-thirty in the afternoon. If he’d mailed the letter before then, it would have been picked up. And he wouldn’t have mailed it after he’d been to see me.”
Tracy frowned. “I see the point. But that’s what he must have done.”
“All right, then we come back to why.”
Tracy shook her head. “You’ve got me. There’s no reason on earth why he would send that letter.”
“Exactly,” Steve said. “If he stole the money, he wouldn’t have sent the letter. And we know he stole the money.”
“So who sent the letter?”
Steve sighed. “How the hell should I know? All right, Tracy, take this letter down to Mark Taylor and tell him pass it on to his expert to see if it was typed on the same machine.”
Steve snatched up the phone and called Mark Taylor.
“Got your men pulled off the job yet, Mark?”
“Uh huh. You need them again?”
“I don’t know, but I may. Be ready to go into action. In the meantime I’m sending Tracy down with another note for your expert.”
“Bradshaw again?”
“That’s what I want to find out. But it sure looks like the same typewriter.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. Don’t tell me there’s another retainer with it?”
“Uh huh.”
“You’re kidding. Don’t tell me it’s another ten grand.”
“Not this time, Mark.”
“No? What’d you get this time?”
“Half a dollar.”
10.
STEVE WINSLOW TOOK A CAB home. For Steve, cabs were a luxury. After years of driving them himself, he loved riding in cabs instead of always taking the crowded subway. Even though, he had to admit, the trip from his midtown office to his Greenwich Village apartment was actually almost quicker by subway than it was by cab.
Particularly at rush hour. And it was rush hour now. Steve had stayed in his office the whole day waiting for something to happen. And nothing had. Except for Mark Taylor calling back to confirm that the two letters had been typed on the same machine, the place had been dead. And yet he’d stayed. And he realized, the reason he’d stayed was that, despite everything he’d said, his feelings about everything that had happened were just the same as those of Tracy Garvin: he found the whole thing fascinating and he couldn’t wait to see what happened next.
And nothing had. And now he was stuck in a traffic jam on Seventh Avenue with a taxi driver who smoked like a chimney and who kept the radio blaring.
“Fire swept through a two-story building in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, early this afternoon—”
Steve Winslow was sure one had. Fire swept through a building somewhere in New York City every day of the year. And it was tragic, of course, but Steve didn’t want to hear about it. Not at that volume. And yet he didn’t feel like telling the cabbie to turn it down. Because he sympathized with cab drivers, even obnoxious ones. He leaned his head out the window, away from the cigarette smoke and into the exhaust fumes of a bus.
The radio was still blaring. “In a surprise move, the Nassau County District Attorney’s office secured an order for the exhumation of the body of Phillip T. Harding, the wealthy oil magnate, who died last month at the age of sixty-three. A preliminary report from the autopsy surgeon indicates that the cause of death, originally attributed to coronary thrombosis, was in fact due to arsenic poisoning. The D.A.’s office would issue no statement on the matter, but indicated that the police were making a thorough investigation and that the true facts would be forthcoming shortly.”
“Cabbie!” Steve yelled over the radio. “Cabbie!”
“Yeah?” the cabbie yelled back.
“Turn the radio down. We’re going to a new address.”
It took nearly twenty minutes for them to get out of traffic and reach Bradsh
aw’s apartment building.
Winslow got out of the cab a block away. As he hurried to the building, he kept a sharp eye out to see that the place wasn’t being watched. He saw no one.
It was a four-story brownstone in the middle of the block. A narrow alley cut through the block to the right of the building, making the apartments on that side more desirable in terms of light and ventilation. Beside the front door of the building were a row of buttons and a call box, which Steve interpreted correctly as indicating that the front door was locked. Having no desire to talk to Bradshaw on the call box, Steve took a plastic credit card from his wallet and inserted it in the crack in the door. He couldn’t help grinning—just like on television. The spring lock slid back easily, and Steve slipped in the door and climbed the flight of stairs. There were two apartments on the second floor. Steve located apartment 2A, knocked on the door, and waited. There was no answer. Steve tried again, louder this time, then put his ear to the door and listened. There was not a sound from the apartment. Cursing the fact that he didn’t have a set of passkeys, Steve inspected the lock. He jiggled the doorknob, and to his surprise it clicked open. He hesitated a moment, then opened the door.
The body of David C. Bradshaw lay face down on the floor in a pool of blood. The handle of a large carving knife protruded from between his shoulder blades. Bradshaw’s head was twisted sideways, and his eyes, in the glassy stare of death, seemed to be glancing over his shoulder, as if he were preparing to ditch one last shadow.
Steve couldn’t help recoiling. It was, after all, his first dead body. He drew back, took a couple of deep breaths, and shook his head to clear it. Then he looked at the body again. No, it was something he’d never seen before, but something he’d visualized many times. The tableau, he realized, was exactly like the one Sheila Benton had described to him, in his other, his first, his one and only murder case—the dead man lying on the floor, the knife sticking out of his back. He knew now a little bit how Sheila must have felt. And this wasn’t even his apartment, as it had been hers. God!
Steve snapped himself out of it. Time to think about it later. Right now, what do you do?
Steve stooped and checked for a pulse. As expected there was none. But the body was still warm, indicating that Bradshaw had been dead for a very short time.
Steve stood up and surveyed the apartment. Apparently there had been a terrific struggle. Chairs were overturned, a night table was smashed, and the phone was lying on the floor with the receiver off the hook.
On the desk in the corner that had not been touched was a small portable typewriter. Steve walked over and looked at it. It was a Smith Corona.
A police siren sounded outside in the street. Steve ran to the front window. A police car was pulling up in front of the building. Steve whirled, looking for a way out. Apartment 2A was the corner apartment, with windows on both East 3rd Street and the side alley. Steve raced to the side windows and looked out. There was no fire escape in the alley. Hell, it was too risky anyway. If they caught him trying to flee he’d be dead. Steve hurried back to the desk, grabbed a piece of paper, shoved it into the machine, and typed, “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.” He tore the page from the typewriter, then whipped out his handkerchief and polished the typewriter keys. He thrust the handkerchief back in his pocket, crumpled the paper into a ball, ran to the side window, opened it, and hurled the paper into the alley. As he did so, Steve heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Steve closed the window quietly, tiptoed across the room, and settled back on the couch just as an imperative knock sounded on the door.
“Come in,” Steve called.
Two officers entered the room and stopped short as they saw the body on the floor.
A woman behind the officers said, “He may be quiet now, but when I called—” She broke off as she saw the body.
Then she screamed.
Then the officers spotted Steve Winslow. One officer drew his gun. The other officer followed suit.
“All right, buddy,” said the first officer. “Hold it right there.”
Steve Winslow smiled and put up his hands. “All right,” he said. “You got me.”
11.
FRANK SULLIVAN COULD HAVE BEEN at peace with the world. He had his collar—Steve Winslow; he had his paper—the Daily News; and he had a comfortable chair. The only thing intruding upon his tranquility was in the form of a 250-pound, fifty-five year old spinster named Miss Dobson, who happened to be the landlady of the building and who took exception to having her living room used as a holding cell.
“I don’t see why you can’t keep him in Bradshaw’s apartment,” she persisted.
“I told you, lady,” Frank said, without glancing up from his paper. “We’ve sealed the place off. Nobody goes in there until homicide gets here.”
“Why not?”
Frank grimaced as if he’d been stung by a bee. This time he looked up from the paper to give Miss Dobson the full effect of his sarcasm. “Homicide doesn’t like to have murder suspects hanging around the scene of the crime. Homicide’s funny that way. They have this theory that people who commit murder might also be so unscrupulous as to tamper with evidence if they were given an opportunity to do so. Of course, I don’t believe that for a moment, but homicide seems to think so, so I try to humor them.”
Frank returned to his paper.
Miss Dobson cast a sideways glance at Steve Winslow, who was seated on her couch. “I don’t want a murderer in my apartment.”
“I’m sorry to inconvenience you in this manner,” Steve said.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” she snapped. “I was talking to the officer.”
“He’s trying to read the paper. Why don’t you give him a break?”
“He’s trying to read my paper. I haven’t even seen it yet.”
Frank sighed. “Sorry, ma’am. You want your paper?”
“No. What I want is for you to put it down and pay a little attention to your prisoner. You’re supposed to be guarding him, aren’t you?”
Frank merely grunted.
“That’s right, read the paper. Leave me alone with a murderer to deal with.”
“Lady, he’s handcuffed. What could he possibly do to you?”
“I could kick her in the stomach, drop my shoulder, and slam her up against the wall,” Steve said promptly.
Miss Dobson gave a little gasp. Her lips moved soundlessly, and she sank into a chair.
Frank looked at her, grinned at Winslow, and said, “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” Steve said.
There was a knock on the door. Miss Dobson started to get to her feet, but Frank beat her to it. He opened the door and ushered Sergeant Stams into the room.
“All right, where is he?” Stams said. “Where is—” He spotted Steve Winslow and stopped short. “Son of a bitch.”
Sergeant Stams, a stolid, impassive, plodding and unimaginative homicide officer, knew Steve Winslow well. Stams had had the misfortune to arrest him once before. At the time, Stams had thought he’d cracked the Sheila Benton case. He’d taken a good deal of ribbing in the department when it had turned out he’d actually arrested Sheila’s attorney.
Stams’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I was just about to ask you the same thing,” Steve said.
“I happen to be in charge of this investigation.”
“Oh? I thought Lieutenant Farron was in charge of homicide.”
“Farron’s on vacation. I’m in charge.”
“Congratulations,” Steve said.
Stams snorted. “Yeah.” He turned to Frank. “Why didn’t you tell me it was Winslow?”
“Who’s Winslow?”
Stams pointed. “Him.”
Frank shrugged. “Means nothing to me.”
“That’s ’cause you don’t know him. If he’s here, it means something all right. Where’d you find him?”
“In the room with the corpse, sitting
on the couch with his legs crossed. We knocked on the door and he called ‘Come in.’“
“You’re kidding.”
“No.”
Stams frowned. Thought a moment. “Did you search him?”
“Sure did.”
“In my bedroom,” Miss Dobson said indignantly. Stams ignored her. “You make a good job of it?”
“Sure. Took his clothes off and searched him to the skin.”
“Find anything?”
“Nothing. He’s clean.”
“Did he make any objection to being searched?”
“Not at all. In fact, he insisted on it.”
“Insisted on it?”
“That’s right.”
Stams turned to Winslow. “You insisted on being searched?”
“You’re damn right I did.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think? So you couldn’t claim I took anything out of that apartment.”
Stams wheeled on Frank. “You sure he’s clean?”
“Absolutely.”
“Any chance he could have ditched something on his way down here?”
“Not a chance. We had him handcuffed.”
Stams frowned. “I don’t like it. I think he took something out of that apartment.”
Steve smiled. “Thank you.”
Stams eyed him suspiciously. “For what?”
“Not disappointing me.”
Stams took a breath, blew it out again. “All right, Winslow. Let’s have it straight. What were you doing in that apartment?”
“He told you. Sitting on the couch.”
“I don’t need any of your lip. This is a murder investigation. I want some answers. Why did you go there?”
“To see Bradshaw.”
“What about?”
“I had a matter I wanted to discuss with him.”
“What matter?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s privileged information.”
“Involving a client?”
“Naturally.”
“Who’s the client?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Was Bradshaw the client?”
“I can’t tell you.”
