Too Soon Dead

by Michael Kurland

  There were few pieces of furniture in the room. A desk with an old battered typewriter against one wall, and an ancient mimeograph machine a couple of feet from the other wall, gave one the feeling that the apartment was not used as a domicile. There was a sort of couch between the two doors across the room. Hanging from a nail over the couch was a badly lithographed calendar with an illustration of a portly German in leather pants saluting the World with a large stein of beer. Underneath the picture was a motto: “We Are Too Soon Old and Too Late Smart.” Below that hung the month of March, with about half the days x-ed off.

  Lying partly on but mostly off the couch was Billy Fox, who would no longer get any older. The last we’d heard of him, he was going off to follow our fat purveyor of pornography. Was this where the fat man had led him? I looked up at the calendar. Too soon dead, I thought. I didn’t want to look down again, but I couldn’t help myself.

  His head and one arm were on the couch. His throat had been cut. And the blood had drained out of the wound onto the couch, and thence to the floor below, where it formed a clotted black puddle about two feet across.

  He was wearing a brown suit and neatly shined brown shoes. From the way his right leg had twisted I could see that there was a hole the size of a nickel in the sole of his right shoe. I wondered about the other shoe. I wondered about the piles of paper with mimeograph printing on them that I saw scattered about the room. I went over and knelt down to get a look at one without touching it. For a second I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t read it, and then I realized that it was in German. That was understandable. This was on the edge of Yorkville, a major German area in Manhattan.

  I wondered how many Germans lived in Yorkville. I wondered what the papers said, and who had used the room as a printing office.

  I stared at the bloody dead thing on the couch that had yesterday been a friend, an occasional drinking companion, and a professional comrade, and wondered what had happened to him. And why. And where I could go to quietly throw up without annoying the men working in the room.

  5

  Brass stared silently at Fox’s body for a minute, and then walked around the room carefully, peering through doorways, poking into corners, and looking over the shoulders of the technicians dusting the room for fingerprints. After roaming about what the police like to call the crime scene for far longer than I thought necessary, he returned to the corridor and I gratefully followed.

  “Okay,” Raab said. “Give.” The skinny detective standing next to him, whose name was Greene, pulled his notebook out of the pocket of an overcoat that looked about two sizes too large for him.

  “His name is—was—William Fox,” Brass said. “He worked as a reporter for the World. Legman on the city desk.”

  Inspector Raab looked as though he’d just tasted something sour. “I knew that when I called you,” he said. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “I thought perhaps you wanted proper identification,” Brass said.

  “We’ll let his mother do that,” Raab told him. “What was he doing here?”

  “I have no idea,” Brass said.

  “Ben Ogden, your city editor, tells me otherwise.”

  “He’s not my city editor,” Brass said sharply. “I have a syndicated column; I am not employed by the World.”

  Inspector Raab smiled an unsympathetic smile. “Aren’t we testy this morning,” he said.

  Brass sighed and nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I am annoyed—principally at myself. I sent Fox out, perhaps to his death, on what was essentially a whim.”

  Greene made his first note. Inspector Raab pulled a pack of Old Gold cigarettes from his jacket pocket and stuck one in his mouth. “Let’s hear it,” he said, patting his pockets in an unsuccessful hunt for a match. Greene pulled a Zippo lighter out of his pocket and lit his superior’s cigarette before the quest could degenerate into a comedy routine.

  “A gentleman came to see us yesterday,” Brass said. “He wouldn’t give his name. He offered to sell me some pictures. He was not specific as to what they showed, but assured me that I would find them interesting. I refused to deal without seeing the merchandise first. He refused to show the pictures until I had paid for them, which put us at an impasse. He left in a huff. I called the city room and arranged for Fox to follow the huff, so I could discover who the gentleman was and where he came from. I did not hear from Fox again.”

  Brass paused while Greene struggled to get the words down in his notebook. I stared at Brass with silent admiration. Among the attributes of his that I admired, I would now have to add that he could lie like a trouper. But why would he bother?

  “Do you want me to repeat any of that?” Brass asked Greene.

  “No, I’ll get it, just give me a moment to catch up,” Greene said, flipping over the notebook page and continuing to write.

  “You really should have your men take courses in shorthand,” Brass told Raab.

  “Sure thing,” Raab said, tapping his cigarette ash onto the linoleum floor. “You never saw the man before?”

  “Never.”

  “He didn’t tell you what the pictures showed?”

  “Not a hint, except that I would consider them worth the money.”

  “How much did he want for them?”

  “Two thousand dollars.”

  “That’s not much for the World to pay, if they were any good,” Raab commented.

  “I keep telling you, I am not the World. The money would have come from my pocket.”

  Raab nodded. “Just what I was thinking,” he said. “If the pictures were newsworthy, why didn’t he take them to the city desk? Why you? And why wouldn’t he show them to you? If they had any value, looking at them wouldn’t eliminate it, it would merely verify it.”

  Brass shrugged. “Some people have very strange ideas,” he said, “of which they refuse to be disabused. Elderly gentlemen approach me regularly with plans for perpetual motion machines. One otherwise unexceptional banker is convinced that small people from under the Earth are going to invade upper Broadway through the subway system. He believes this because he has noticed a scarcity of nickels, which he reasons are being hoarded by the underworld creatures for use in the subway turnstiles.”

  Raab stared unblinkingly at Brass for a minute and then shifted his gaze to me. “Did you see this shy visitor?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” I told him.

  “What did he look like?”

  I tried to look at Brass without seeming to, to see if I could get any clue as to how he wanted this question answered. Brass was looking impassively at Inspector Raab. Having an indistinctive dislike of lying to the police, I took a deep breath and described the fat man to the best of my recollection.

  Raab turned to Brass. “Do you agree?” he asked.

  “Quite an adequate and accurate description,” Brass said. “Young Morgan would seem to have an eye for detail.”

  “Have you anything to add?”

  Brass considered. “The man’s shirt collar was soiled, and there were stains on his hands,” he said. “Principally on his right hand.”

  Raab took a last drag on his cigarette, dropped it on the linoleum floor, and twisted it out with the sole of his shoe. “One of the great unwashed, eh? What sort of stains?”

  Brass shrugged. “Ink stains, dye stains—I didn’t get that close.”

  Raab stared morosely at the shredded cigarette on the floor. “I’ve got to stop smoking,” he said. “You think this fat man did this—killed Fox?”

  “If you just want an opinion, then no, I don’t think so. He didn’t seem like the sort of man who would solve problems in such a violent and foolish manner, although of course I can’t be sure. But if you are asking whether I think Fox’s death is related to my sending him to tail the fat man, how can I think otherwise? I am culpable, I admit it.”

  “Don’t get overly dramatic,” Raab said. “You didn’t slit his throat. And whoever did, we’ll get.”

  Alan Shi
ne, a small, balding man who was the World’s ace crime reporter, stuck his prominent nose around the corner of the stairs and followed it onto the landing. “Inspector Raab,” he greeted. “Brass. DeWitt. A hell of a thing to wake up to. Is it really Billy Fox?”

  “Yeah,” Raab said, gesturing with his hand. “In there. Don’t touch anything.”

  Shine went to the door of the apartment and looked in. A World photographer we called The Peanut because he stood something under five feet tall appeared on the staircase and lugged his Speed Graphic over to the doorway. After giving one long, expressive whistle he screwed a flashbulb into its holder and went into the room. Flashes of light brightened the doorway as he captured the death of a New York World reporter on film.

  For a long moment Shine just stood by the door, watching The Peanut at work, and then he took his hat off and turned away. “Shit!” he said. “He owed me twenty bucks. I guess I’ll have to write it off.”

  “That reminds me,” Brass said. “Was Fox married?”

  “Yes,” Shine said. “Cathy. A little blonde. She worked as a hatcheck girl at the Hotsy Totsy Club before Legs Diamond was knocked off and the place closed. As a matter of fact, you once did a piece on her. You called her ‘the moxie girl.’”

  “Oh, yes,” Brass said. “A cute kid. Wanted to be a singer. I wondered what happened to her.”

  “She gave it a try. Singing, I mean. She’s been working at night spots around town. Right now she’s working at some club way downtown in the Village. Shit. Someone will have to tell her.”

  “Cathy Wild,” Brass said. “I’ve heard her sing. A little joint in the Village. The Blue Lamp. About a year ago. I was there with Winchell. He was furious when the owner—Fat Bess, her friends called her—wouldn’t pick up the tab, and he stormed out. I stayed and paid. It was worth it; she has a good voice, really sells a song. I never realized she was the same girl.” He shook his head. “I’ll take care of telling her about, ah, this,” he said, turning to Raab. “Thank you for calling me. I wish I could tell you more.”

  “Yeah, well,” Raab said. “Maybe the tail job he was doing for you had nothing to with it. Maybe someone else he owed twenty bucks to caught up with him.”

  “Say, Inspector—” Shine said, stepping forward.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” Raab said, holding his hand palm-up like a stop sign. “Just a little humor.”

  “Well, you ain’t funny,” Shine said.

  He stood there for a minute twisting his hat in his hands as though he expected to wring truth from the felt. “Listen, Inspector, if you need any help on this—you know…”

  “Yeah,” Raab said. “I know.”

  Brass turned and trotted down the stairs, and I followed after muttering good-bye to those on the landing. When we reached the street Brass turned west and walked quickly down the sidewalk, his hands shoved deeply into his overcoat pockets. By the end of the first block he had entered what I thought of as his walking fit. Walking served as a release for Brass, and a way of focusing his thoughts, and he did a lot of it. But sometimes when he walked he shut everything else out and just walked and thought, or brooded, or whatever you would call what was going on inside his head. At these times his pace was rapid and he was just aware enough of his surroundings to avoid running into any moving objects. When a walking fit was on Brass it was hard for me to keep up with him.

  I had some questions I wanted to ask him, but they would have to wait until he slowed down, a sign that his concentration was broken and he would again be aware of the world. He turned left on Madison Avenue and headed downtown and I followed. I wished I could tell how long the fit would last. I would just as soon take a cab to wherever he was going to end up and meet him there. Maybe I could have some breakfast or at least a cup of coffee while I was waiting for him.

  On Fourteenth Street and Fifth Avenue he stopped. I was about half a block behind by this time, and it took me half a minute to catch up with him. He, I noted, was breathing normally. Aside from a pronounced flush on his face, that pallid visage upon which the sun seldom shines, there was no sign that he’d just walked three and a half miles at a speed usually reserved for soldiers on a field exercise. I, on the other hand, was breathing heavily, and I could feel my heart beating under my white broadcloth shirt.

  “Did you eat breakfast?” he asked.

  “Not today,” I told him.

  “Come on,” he said. “We’ll go to Kohl’s. My treat.”

  Five minutes later, and not a moment too soon, we were seated at a back booth in Kohl’s Delicatessen on Sixth Avenue. Maxine, our aging, plump waitress, who was possessed of the broadest smile I’ve ever seen on a human being, and who used it indiscriminately on all her customers, was filling our coffee cups and taking our orders. Below her blue waitress uniform she wore bedroom slippers that flopped when she walked. She never wrote out a check; she didn’t need one.

  “I have a question,” I told Brass as Maxine flopped off to the kitchen to yell our orders to the chef.

  “I’m sure you do,” Brass said. “I have an answer. Let’s see if they match.”

  “Why did you lie to Inspector Raab about the fat man? I’ve known you to refuse to tell the police something you wanted to withhold, but never before to just lie about it.”

  Brass leaned back into the corner of the booth and surveyed his surroundings. “What would you have had me tell him?” he asked.

  “Well, for one thing, we have this bunch of photographs in the office safe that just might have had something to do with Billy’s murder, in some indirect fashion,” I said.

  “Sarcasm becomes you,” Brass said. “You wear it like a shield before the armor of your righteousness.” He took a deep breath and stared at me intently for a minute. Then he said, “Consider the consequences of what you propose. The photographs might well have something to do with William Fox’s murder. No, I’ll make it stronger—they almost certainly do. But what they also would definitely do, with no doubt at all, is ruin the lives of half a dozen prominent people.”

  “I’m sure that Raab would agree to keep quiet about the pictures,” I said.

  “Of course he would. And he would mean it. And I trust him to do his best. But if the pictures are evidence, then he would have to log them in, and someone else would have to see them—probably several somebodies. Certainly his bosses would take a look. And somewhere in that chain someone would take them aside just long enough to make copies, maybe to sell, maybe just to enjoy in private—although I’d lay five to one that they’d be for sale. And probably within two days. Remember how I get a lot of those exclusives that keep me and you and Gloria off the breadlines.”

  “I didn’t think of that,” I told him. “But couldn’t you have just refused to tell him anything?”

  “I’d like to have just turned the photographs over to Raab and washed my hands of the business,” Brass said. “But I can’t. If I refuse to give him information that he knows I have, he’ll keep after it. He might even get a search warrant for my office safe. I don’t know how those gentlemen, and that lady, managed to get themselves photographed in their sporting attire, but I should make some effort to find out before I blithely ruin their lives.”

  “You’ve got a point,” I said. “So what are we going to do?”

  “For the moment,” Brass said, “we’re going to eat breakfast.”

  For the next half hour I reaffirmed my discovery that a breakfast of smoked salmon, which the local intelligentsia calls “lox,” and eggs is, in itself, a sufficient reason to leave Ohio. Over our second cup of coffee I remembered something else. “Tell me about the moxie girl,” I said.

  “The—oh, yes.” Brass stared thoughtfully into the sugar bowl. “It must have been five or six years ago. Jack Diamond, who was not called ‘Legs’ to his face by anyone who wanted to see the sun rise, owned the Hotsy Totsy Club on Fifty-fourth Street, off Broadway, and one of the hatcheck girls was Cathy Wild, whose real name was, if I remember correctly, Karen Weli
kof, and who wanted to be a singer. Jack put the make on Cathy; told her that he could help her singing career, maybe find her a nice rent-paid apartment. And all he wanted was what you think he wanted. He put the proposition to her one night at his usual table in the corner next to the bandstand. And there, right in front of God and everybody, including an assortment of his gangster buddies, she slapped his face. Hard.

  “The place froze. Even the waiters, trays in hand, remained motionless. It was like a set piece in a Broadway farce. Jack Diamond slowly rose to his feet and glared at Cathy for an eternity—maybe ten seconds—and then he said, ‘Sister, you’ve got moxie.’ Everyone started to breathe again. Then Jack continued, ‘I got no use for moxie.’ Again everyone froze.”

  Brass looked up from the sugar bowl, but he was seeing the showroom of the Hotsy Totsy Club five years ago. “What happened?” I asked.

  “The damnedest thing. The girl started to laugh. Not hysterical, but as though someone had just said something funny. And then Jack started to laugh. And then everyone started to laugh. I put it in my column the next day, and Cathy became the moxie girl.”

  “I guess she really did have moxie,” I said.

  Brass nodded. “I hope she still does,” he said. “She’s going to need it.” He fished a nickel out of his pocket and slapped it on the table. “There’s a pay phone in the corner,” he said. “Call the city room and get Fox’s address.”

  I did so and returned. “You’re lucky,” I told Brass. “He lives—lived—in Manhattan. Two-thirty-five East Fifty-fourth. No phone.”

  We took a cab uptown. Brass stopped briefly at the Manhattan Bank on way. He banked there, he had once explained to me, because it was founded by Aaron Burr, a true American hero. It was statements like this which made me think that we must have used a different history book in Ohio. It was only eleven-thirty in the morning when we knocked on Cathy Fox’s door. I could have sworn that at least three days had passed since Brass had picked me up, but it had been less than four hours.