Too Soon Dead

by Michael Kurland

  “Deported,” Grosfeder said.

  “The German police would make up lies about you?” Brass asked, looking around at his guests. “I have always heard that the German police are among the most competent and efficient in the world.”

  “The German police will do what the German government tells them to,” Grosfeder said. “Obedience to authority is one of their finest traits. And the government of Herr Hitler and his cronies does not encourage dissent.”

  “So I have heard. You want me to intercede for you with the police in their investigation of Max von Pilath?”

  “Yes,” Grosfeder said. “That is it.”

  “We want you to tell the investigators that Max could not have done this,” Schulman said, his protruding eyes round with the earnestness of his words. “And further, that Sebastian Velo is a Fascist.” With each of these assertions Schulman stabbed the desk repeatedly with his ring finger, causing an impressive staccato of thumps.

  “Sebastian Velo?”

  “The man who runs the Madrid Travel Agency, which is located in the building across the street from our office,” Eisen said. “The man who swears to having seen Max and Mr. Fox together. The man who found the knife. He is a Spanish Fascist. And the Fascists and the Nazis have been known to do each other favors. For thirty years there was a dry-cleaning establishment in that shop. Then, eight months ago the Verein für Wahrheit und Freiheit rented an apartment to use as an office, and six months ago the dry cleaner went out of business and this Fascist moved in.”

  “And on occasion,” Keis added, “a man is sitting in the window of the shop with a very expensive Leica camera, taking pictures of everyone who goes in or out of our building.”

  “This is what we know,” Grosfeder said. “We do not know who killed Mr. Fox, but we believe that the Nazis are using the opportunity of his death to discredit us. They would rather kill us, and may get around to that, but this will suffice for the moment. In the process, of course, the truth of the death of Mr. Fox will be lost.”

  “Von Pilath refuses to say where he was when Fox was killed,” Brass said. “Do you know?”

  They all looked at one another. Professor Eisen leaned forward. “If the information is essential, we must share it. We have an apartment some blocks away that is our”—he searched for the word—“safety house. Most of the members know we have it, but only a few know where it is. Max was there.”

  “Alone?”

  “He was helping a family get settled into it, which is where they will be for the next few weeks.”

  “Then why don’t they come forward and say so?”

  “They are not in this country legally. They would be sent back to Germany. Besides, who would believe them? They would obviously say anything for the man who saved their lives.”

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Their lives?”

  Keis turned to look at me. “They are wanted by the Gestapo.”

  “The whole family?” I asked.

  “The Gestapo does not make fine distinctions,” Keis said.

  “Did you get von Pilath a lawyer?” Brass asked.

  “Not yet,” Grosfeder said.

  “Well, you’d better do that next.” He stood up. “Thank you for coming,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  They accepted dismissal gracefully and, after a few final words, they all stood up, put their hats and coats on, and filed out of the office. I followed them to see them out the door. They began a conversation in German while waiting for the elevator, and by the time it arrived their voices were raised and their hand gestures had become emphatic.

  I returned to Brass’s office. Gloria and Cathy were putting the extra chairs back against the wall, and Brass was staring out the window. “They’re as nutty as fruitcakes,” I said.

  Brass turned. “You think so?”

  “Sure. What else? I don’t think they had anything to do with Bill’s murder, but they’re not making much sense about it. You’re spying against them, I’m spying against them. The police are in league with the Gestapo. The guy in the travel agency is sneaking pictures of them through the window.” I dropped into my chair. “Paranoid.”

  “All of them?” Brass asked.

  “Why not?” I asked. “Maybe they attract each other.”

  “I thought they were very sincere,” Cathy said. “And they didn’t seem crazy, just frightened.”

  Brass turned to Gloria. “What did you think?”

  “They convinced me,” she said. “They’re afraid of something, and it’s very real to them. I think we ought to tread carefully.”

  “I think I’ll tread downstairs and get a little lunch,” I said. “Unless you need me for something?”

  “A good idea,” Brass said. “Go to Danny’s and bring back sandwiches and coffee for everyone. Put everything on my tab.”

  Being the amanuensis of a world-famous columnist offers a wide variety of exciting job experiences. I took out my notebook. A pastrami on rye with a side of potato salad for Brass, egg salad on white for Cathy, a cup of naked tuna fish and a tomato for Gloria. I left.

  10

  Danny’s Waterfront Café occupies the southwest corner of Tenth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street, two blocks from the water. It moved two years ago from its original location fronting the water, but Danny decided not to change the name. The café was opened in 1901, which makes it thirty-four years old. Danny was born in 1902. Manny, her father, opened the café during his wife’s pregnancy and named it after his impending son. When his son turned out to be a daughter, he shrugged, smiled, and named her Danette. Manny still works there occasionally, but Danny runs the place, and he’s gradually turning over the ownership to her. She now owns, as she puts it, all of the chairs and most of the tables. The place is open until at least two in the morning every day but Sunday, and many a night Brass and I have grabbed a late-night meal before Brass went off to some early morning cabaret and I went down to one of the Greenwich Village coffeehouses I sometimes hang out in, or, more often, home to bed.

  I straddled a stool by the cash register and yelled my order to Danny, who was balancing five or six plates of food on her way over to one of the tables. The rule in the place was that everyone did whatever had to be done, and that included the owner. There were no separate waiters or busboys. Everyone waited tables, bussed tables, cleaned, mopped, and insulted the customers equally.

  Danny nodded, mouthed a kiss in my direction, juggled the plates onto the table, and disappeared back into the kitchen. About five minutes later she emerged with a large brown bag and handed it to me. “Give my love to your boss,” she said. “I don’t see him much anymore. He talks about the Copa and the Sky Room in his columns, but he doesn’t come here.”

  “You want a mention?” I asked her.

  She shook her head. “No way,” she said. “I’m happy with the customers I got, and I don’t think that the ones who would come because of a mention in ‘Brass Tacks’ would do anything but crowd the place. But I like talking to Mr. Brass. He’s got an interesting head. Why don’t you and him come in some evening, late, so I’ve got time to sit down and argue with Mr. Brass. I’ll fry you a couple of steaks.”

  “I’ll drag him down myself,” I promised her. “But you’ll have to forgive him the nightclubs. They’re a dreadful duty that he must perform to do his job. Just ask him.”

  I told Danny to put the bill on Brass’s tab and ran back across the street clutching the paper bag. Gloria and Cathy were not in the office when I got back, having run over to the bank to deposit Cathy’s fortune, and Brass was staring at his typewriter in a splendid imitation of work, so I set the bag down and retreated to my own office. I hadn’t sharpened more than half a dozen pencils when the girls returned.

  We all gathered in Brass’s office to eat. Brass, as usual, read tear sheets from one of the news wires while he ate—he had an insatiable curiosity about what was happening everywhere else. Gloria was reading a book: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. I asked her
what it was about, and she said, “China,” so I went back to my sandwich. Anyone who doesn’t recognize a conversational ploy when it is waved in front of her nose is not worth talking to. Cathy ate her egg salad and drank her orange juice staring into space, but she did eat, and that was a good sign.

  After a minute Gloria closed her book. “What’s ‘Tacks’ going to be about today?” she asked.

  “Celebrities,” Brass told her. “I talked with a couple at the Stork Club last night, and they gave me enough material to write a few thousand words without serious thought. Which is good, because I’m not sure I’m capable of serious thought today.”

  “Who’d you see?” Gloria asked.

  “Jimmy Durante and Mae West.”

  “Together?” Cathy asked.

  “No. Durante was at a table with a few of his cronies, telling bad jokes at the top of his voice—well, considering his voice, it was probably somewhere around the middle—to an ever-increasing circle of diners who looked thrilled to have their meals interrupted by a precocious, middle-aged, loud-mouthed imp.”

  “Don’t be malicious,” Gloria said. “Be satirical. Remember, you’re the word slinger who skewers his victims with barbs of satire rather than cleaving them with the meat ax of malice.”

  She was quoting a recent Time magazine profile that Brass had found more than usually offensive.

  Brass grinned. “I like Jimmy,” he said. “I will neither skewer him nor cleave him. As a person. He’s friendly, loyal, reasonably honest. It’s as an entertainer that I can’t stand him, but that’s not his fault. And I am obviously in the minority.”

  “I met him once when he played at the Hotsy Totsy Club,” Cathy said. “He was a gentleman.”

  Gloria sniffed. “At the Hotsy Totsy Club a gentleman was any man who didn’t molest the help.”

  “There is that,” Cathy agreed.

  Brass said, “Jimmy came by my table on his way back from ‘taking a whiz.’ His words. He asked me why I haven’t mentioned ‘Jimmy da man—Jimmy da Human Bean’ in my column for the past six months and four days—not that he’s counting. I told him to say something funny so I can quote him.”

  “Did he?” Cathy asked.

  “He did his whole act for me right there. One of his sidemen wheeled a piano in and he plunked himself down at it. He sang two choruses of ‘Jimmy the Well-Dressed Man,’ and continued with half an hour of nonstop Durante. He said he figured there has to be something funny in it; people were laughing. And they were. Everyone in the place gathered around in a big circle, the center of which was Durante and his piano. And after a couple of minutes his manic energy transmitted itself to the crowd, and they were clapping and singing and stamping their feet along with him. I felt like I was watching Aristophanes, and I was the only one in the room who didn’t speak Greek. They all got it; I didn’t.”

  “That’s a good story in itself,” Gloria said.

  “I know,” Brass said. “After Durante left a silence seemed to settle on the room, like the aftermath of a hurricane, when everyone’s too exhausted to talk just from having been close to this great force of nature.”

  Gloria turned to Cathy. “He’s writing his column as he speaks,” she said. “You can tell by the similes. Any second he’s going to branch out into onomatopoeia.”

  “Tell us about Mae West,” Gloria said.

  “She was having dinner quietly in a corner with two very pretty young men.”

  “Good for Mae!” Gloria said.

  “She told me she’s writing a play.”

  Gloria nodded. “She writes a lot of her own material.”

  “She’s going to produce it herself,” Brass said.

  “I can guess what it’s about,” I said.

  “You’d be wrong,” Brass told me. “Miss West thinks that love, in all its infinite varieties, is worthy of respect and public inspection. Her play is a love story about homosexual men.”

  “It’s a what?”

  Brass smiled at me. “But of course you knew that.”

  I was speechless. Brass broke my silence by saying, “I have to put out a column to support this ménage. I won’t mention Miss West’s proposed story line or it will never make it to opening night.” He gathered the paperware detritus from lunch on the desk and tossed it in the wastebasket. “While I do that, I have jobs for the three of you.”

  I took out my notebook and put it on my lap and fished in my pocket for a pencil.

  Brass considered for a moment. “Before I give you your assignments, I want to state a few ground rules. We are going to take this very seriously and proceed very carefully. You must at all times consider your own safety and the necessity of keeping the identities of our athletic friends in the photographs a secret.”

  “You’re worried about our safety?” I asked him. “Are you buying what those krauts were saying?”

  “No,” Brass said. “I’m buying the death of a reporter who thought he was just following a harmless fat man. And you would hone your writing skills more if you think of ways to insult people that do not involve racial or national epithets. How would you like it if someone called you—whatever the hell you are?”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “The pictures must not be discussed—must not be mentioned—outside of this office. We’ll have to come up with consistent cover stories for whatever investigating we do. Gloria, you and Cathy will spend the next few days getting complete background workups on each of our subjects. Start with the files from the morgue and work outward from there. Talk to friends, business associates, the hired help, anyone who might know anything.”

  “What are we looking for?” Gloria asked.

  “A good question. What we really want to know, we can’t ask. I don’t know what you can ask that will lead us where we want to go. Past or present lovers or mistresses or girlfriends, if you can find out without making any waves. Any place they go, any people they see, any signs that they’re being blackmailed; although what those signs might be, I can’t suggest.”

  “If any of them have accounts at the Manhattan Bank,” Cathy suggested, “we could ask Mr. Mergantaler to look over their checks. From the way he treated me, I have the feeling that he would do just about anything you asked.”

  “A good idea,” Brass said. “Start by making up a list of twenty names that include our eight, for a little protective coloration, and find out how many of them have accounts at Mergantaler’s bank. Don’t go further with it until I tell you.”

  Gloria nodded.

  “You’ll type up your reports daily, when you can, in this office. If you can’t for any reason, you will wait until you can. Whatever you find out is to be kept here and nowhere else. We’ll put everything we have about this case in the special file every night.”

  “The special file?” Cathy asked.

  Brass got up and went to the closet, which held his liquor cabinet. “As I wander through the various levels of New York life,” he said, opening the closet door, “picking up information here and there for my column, I find out many things that I can’t print. Some items I don’t have enough information on yet or can’t yet prove, like grafting politicians, cops on the take, or other examples of city, state, or federal malfeasance. If stories like that ever come together, I will use them. Some of it, like husbands cheating on their wives or wives cheating on their husbands; or the criminous secrets of certain notorious hoodlums, told to me in confidence at a corner table in Momma Lenora’s on Sullivan Street; or the drunken revelations of several famous poets and writers in the back room of The White Horse Tavern in the wee hours of a Sunday morning—these are secrets for the ages which should be recorded but not revealed for decades to come.”

  He fiddled with two of the shelves in the closet, and a section of the right-hand wall opened on silent hinges to reveal a four-drawer file cabinet set into the wall. “This file cabinet is supposed to be fireproof,” he said. “But I hope we never have to make the experiment. It’s not exactly burglarproof
, but it is hard to find. The assumption is that a burglar would go for the safe, which should take a while to open, after which he’ll be too anxious to get out of here to go banging on closet walls.”

  “It’s like one of those movie serials,” Cathy said. “‘Radio Men From the Moon’ or something. They leap out of windows yelling ‘Into the air!’ and fly off with this gadget strapped to their backs. They always have secret cupboards that conceal the controls.”

  “Controls to what?” Gloria asked.

  “You know. Flying things that look like sausages and can see inside your house and blow up if you touch them. That sort of thing.”

  “I’m afraid I cannot reach the heights, of imagination to which the writers of those movies ascend,” Brass said. “If I leap out of the window I will fall to my death, and you couldn’t repeat what I’d be yelling in mixed company.” He closed the closet wall and the closet door and returned to his desk.

  “About our subjects,” I said. “I think what we should look for is intersections. Things that they might have in common. Do they, for instance, all play golf at the same country club, or all use the same barber?”

  “Another good thought,” Brass said. “Okay. Gloria and Cathy, you two work up the files on each of our notables. Look for points of correlation between them, anything that will give us a handle.”

  “What about me?” I asked.

  Brass fished the packet of pictures out of his pocket and tossed them across the desk to me. “There’s a man named Southerland Mitchell,” he said. “Used to work for the Daily Graphic. He invented the composite picture. Started ‘recreating’ crime scenes and ‘love nests’ by staging the scene and grafting the heads of those involved onto the bodies of his actors. They were very big on love nests. He left the Graphic and now has a studio on MacDougal Alley, where he takes pictures of loaves of bread and calls it art.”