“You’re a smart one, Lanie. I have to hand it to you. You have these dicties eating out of your hand.”
“You’re not doing so bad yourself.”
“Oh, I’m not in your league—not yet. I’ve got to admit you’re pulling a slick one with this Esther Todd business. Handle it right and the sky’s the limit.”
I inclined my head. “I don’t follow you.”
“Get off your high horse. You don’t care about the case any more than I do. It’s the story you’re after, the Big One that every reporter dreams about.”
“Selena–”
“C’mon, I know what you see when you close your eyes at night. Headlines: ‘Negro Reporter Breaks Case that Stymied Police,’ ‘Lanie Price Solves Historic Heist.’”
“You’re—”
“You see the Times coming to your door. You see yourself at the Nation maybe, or the Courier. You see yourself at a real paper, not this rag.”
“You’re wrong, Selena. All wrong.”
“Well, if I am, then you’re a fool. Nobody sticks their neck out for someone they didn’t know. Not unless there’s something in it for them. Maybe I’m wrong about the job, but I’m right about everything else. You’re in it for yourself, Lanie Price. And you’d be better off admitting it.”
She flounced off. Within a few minutes, she was talking to Louis Squire, the conductor. I just looked after her and shook my head. Where was the humanity? I wondered.
Everyone headed for the Sugar Cane Club. The folks had a rousing good time there, but it was simply the first stop in a party that went until nine o’clock in the morning, when Mrs. O’Neil invited us all to breakfast at Eddie’s.
The winter sun was peaking over the horizon when I got home. I kicked off my shoes and fell into bed, fully dressed. When I woke up hours later, I had a mouth full of nasty cotton and an evil pounding in my head. I rubbed my temples, annoyed with myself—and even more annoyed at the politicians who’d pushed for Prohibition. That law hadn’t done a damn thing about stopping the flow of liquor. It just made criminals out of ordinary citizens. You were either a bootlegger making cheap liquor or a sucker drinking it.
I made a pot of hot chocolate with a dash of mint, Hamp’s recipe for a hangover. Then I ran a hot bath and sweated it out. Another hour or so was spent working on my face and hair, repairing the damage.
At around one o’clock I dragged myself to the newsroom. Along the way, I paused at a newsstand to take a quick look at the special edition of the Chronicle. The two pieces were there, just as promised, right above the fold. It was strange seeing them, strange seeing my name attached to anything but fluff. Strange, but nice.
I should’ve phoned Ruth, warned her. She would be calling the paper, seeking an explanation. It would’ve been smart to phone Hilda and Mabel, too. Ruth needed assurance and Mabel would be happy to hear about the money.
I resolved to make those phone calls immediately, but the minute I walked in, George Greene dashed over.
His news gave the Todd case a whole new spin.
Chapter 31
Reporters were camped out in front of 250 West 57th Street. Uniformed cops had set up barriers to keep the area in front of the building free. A wagon from the medical examiner’s office was parked at the curb, along with several police cars. It took a while, but I convinced one of the cops to call upstairs to Whitfield's office. The cop escorted me to the elevator and then returned to his post at the front door.
Upstairs, office workers buzzed about the outer office door, with one guard holding them back. He let me in, but the guard just outside Whitfield's door needed extra convincing. I was fussing at him when the door behind him opened and the words died on my lips.
Whitfield's office was lousy with people—uniformed cops, a photographer, a medical examiner and a plainclothes detective. A flash bulb threw the whole group into a merciless bright light. Everything was black and white and shades of gray, with a frozen tableau of men dancing around a dead guy in a three-piece suit.
Whitfield sat upright in that huge chair of his, his head slumped to the left, his eyes open. His left arm hung over the armrest; his right rested in his lap. Blood spattered the right side of his face. It had run down from his nostrils and dripped into his open mouth. Blood had also soaked the left side of his collar. The ME, a bony man named Cory, was examining him.
I started forward. The cop put a restraining hand on my elbow.
“Let her in,” a voice called.
The patrolman glanced over his shoulder, saw who’d given the order and stepped aside.
Blackie had caught the case. He was an all-right guy in his mid-forties, with thick, beetle black eyebrows and muddy brown eyes. He stood next to Whitfield's desk, smoking a thin cigar. Blackie had a weakness for expensive smokes. He nodded at Whitfield.
“Not a pretty sight, but I’ve seen worse.”
Whitfield's right eye was swollen and bruised, but that wasn’t the worst of it. A bullet had opened up his right ear. The edges of the wound were star-shaped and blackened. The fingers in his lap were loosely curled around the handle of a Colt .45.
Cory lifted Whitfield's head. “Entrance through right ear, exit through lower left jaw.”
I started to ask a question, but Blackie laid a light hand on my forearm, looked past me and spoke to Cory, who was busy scribbling on a form.
“So doc, how long’s he been dead?”
Cory answered without looking up. “At least twelve hours.”
“So you’d say around midnight?”
“Thereabouts.”
“Suicide?”
“I’d say so. Gunpowder traces on his hand.”
Blackie turned to me. “Seems like your column did the trick. You should be proud of yourself.”
I’d never been accused of driving a man to suicide before. Blackie made it sound like a compliment.
“Would you be?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
A fly darted around Whitfield's open mouth. Where’d a fly come from in the middle of winter?
“You talk to him yesterday?” Blackie asked.
“Around three.”
“How was he?”
“As you’d expect. Angry.”
“You’re lucky he didn’t shoot you, instead of shooting himself.”
The fly crawled inside Whitfield's mouth. I wondered, idiotically, if it would get stuck in there, in the thickened blood. I turned away, having seen enough.
“Lanie, you don’t need to be here.”
“No, that’s okay. I … I wanted to ask—was there a note?”
Blackie nodded. “He mentioned your column.” He watched me to see how I took that bit of news. “You ain’t got nothing to feel bad about.”
“Who says I feel bad?”
“Aw nuts, Lanie. We go back a long way. I remember how you were when the Todd case first broke. You sank your teeth into it and you were never gonna let go. Then that thing happened with your mother and, well … I know what the case means to you. I talked to Bellamy and I know that—” He caught himself.
“Know what?”
His mouth turned hard. “I know that without your column, this guy would’ve walked. I remember when Bellamy and Ritchie had their little talk with him.”
Shocked, I said, “When they what?”
“I wasn’t in on it, just heard about it. They found about his connection to the Todd girl, came down here and had a little chat. Everything was on the QT, given who he was and all.” At my expression, he said, “Didn’t you know?”
“I had no idea.” I’d asked Bellamy, asked him directly about the tax collector, and he’d lied to me. Why?
“So, what happened?” I asked Blackie.
“Nothing. Whitfield buttoned up tight. Wouldn’t say a word about the night Todd disappeared.” He shrugged. “Of course, then it didn’t matter.”
“How so?”
“Bellamy and Ritchie found out that Whitfield had an alibi.”
&n
bsp; “The arrest in Jersey?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Oh, you know about that?”
My gaze went back to the gun. “The Colt. It’s definitely his?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Who found him?”
“The secretary in the next office over. About an hour ago. She dropped by to chat with Whitfield's secretary, but she wasn’t here. So the girl knocked on his office door. It swung open and she found him.”
I’d forgotten about Hilda. I could kill him, she’d said. Just shoot him dead. Had she done just that? I wanted to believe that she was at home, checking the job ads—or at the hospital, watching over Mabel.
“You’ve met her?” Blackie asked.
“Who?”
“The secretary?”
“Yeah.”
Blackie read something in my eyes. “Look Lanie, this was definitely a suicide and, despite what Whitfield told you, he was definitely guilty.”
Something in his tone said he wasn’t operating on general suspicion.
“What’ve you got?”
He reached into a pocket and pulled out a folded handkerchief. He laid it in his palm and opened it. I suspected what he was about to show me.
“We found this with the note.”
Esther’s long-lost earring: It lay sparkling in his hand.
Chapter 32
I stopped at a pay phone and started to call Hilda, but then decided against it. If she had anything to do with Whitfield's death, then I was doing the investigation a disservice by warning her. The news about Whitfield's reparations toward Mabel would have to wait.
I made another call, one that wouldn’t hinder Blackie’s inquiry—and was definitely necessary for mine.
“Blackie already called,” Bellamy said. “I got to say, you did a mighty fine job.”
“Think so?”
“Don’t you?”
“Why’d you tell me you’d never heard of him? Why did you lie like that?”
Bellamy was quiet. Ragtime played softly in the background. “Look, we tried. We watched him. Tailed him. But we just couldn’t chase him down.”
“So you figured fresh pressure would–”
“It was a win-win situation. If Whitfield was the perp, then he got exposed. If he wasn’t then …”
“Then what?”
Now, my stomach wasn’t just uneasy. It was churning.
“You knew he didn’t do it. You knew he was in jail.”
“He made good bait, Lanie. He made good bait.”
He waited for me to say something. I was too angry to trust myself to say anything. Bellamy had lied to me. He’d had me chasing my tail.
“Lanie,” he said, “The letter writer, remember? He said she was cheating on him. Maybe Whitfield was the guy this creep thought she was cheating with. So even if we were wrong about Whitfield, we could be right about the writer. He’s still out there. And this column of yours could’ve draw him out. But we weren’t wrong about Whitfield, were we? He was a piece of shit.”
I hung up, feeling ill. Maybe Bellamy honestly thought he was making me feel better. But he’d made me feel worse. I’d set up Whitfield as a target. The only good thing about that notion was that it offered an alternative to the idea that Hilda Coleman shot him. Either way, Whitfield was dead and my column had set in motion the forces that killed him.
I went to see Ruth. She already knew. Had heard the news on the radio. Guilt washed over me at the look on her face. She sent Job into his room, and closed the door after him. Then she came back down the hall and rounded on me, her face tear-stained, her voice bitter.
“I begged you. Begged you! Go to the police, I said. They could’ve arrested him. Made him tell them what he did with Esther. Now, we’ll never know. There’s no way we ever gonna find out.”
“Ruth, I’m sorry. I—”
“I asked you to help. But you just made things worse. I have to see Mama at the hospital. I don’t think I can tell her. And you, you stay away from her. Stay away from us both.”
* * *
I returned to the newsroom. Sam waved me into his office. He was eating a sandwich. The smell said tuna. He chewed rapidly and swallowed.
“Thank goodness we formulated that so-called ‘clarification’ as carefully as we did. He nearly hoodwinked us.”
“I’m not so sure.”
About to take another bite, he stopped. “Sure about what?”
“His guilt.”
He looked as though he didn’t believe his ears. “But the note. The earring.”
“They were planted.”
He put the sandwich down and wiped his hands on a napkin. Folding his arms across his chest, he gave me his full attention. “Talk to me.”
My throat was tight and I felt faintly nauseous.
“Lanie, what is it?”
Choosing my words, I began. “The night I wrote the column, I was attacked.”
“You were what?”
I explained.
His face grew paler with every word. “I can’t believe this. That son-of-a-bi—Why didn’t you tell me? Why’d you keep it to yourself?”
“Is it important? Do we have to discuss it right now?”
“Yes.”
“My not telling you has nothing to do with Whitfield.”
“It has everything to do with you going it alone. You could’ve been killed.”
“Sam—” I raised a hand. “Please, listen. The man who attacked me, I thought he was Echo. I mean, he actually said that he wanted to kill me, but that Whitfield—he even said Whitfield’s name—that Whitfield wanted me to have a second chance. So I thought Whitfield had sent him. But then, I started to wonder. And now I don’t think it was Echo at all.”
“Why not?”
“It was the way he spoke. Echo has this odd habit. He refers to himself in the third person. This guy didn’t.”
“That’s it?”
“No. The attacker was right-handed. He had me face down, so I couldn’t see him. But when he put the knife to my throat, it was to the right side.” I brushed my fingertips over the spot. “And I’m pretty sure Echo’s a lefty.” I paused. “And their build was different. Everything … was different.”
As the meaning sunk in, his expression changed. It went from hot anger to cold calculation, and caution. “You sure about this?”
“Yes.”
“There’s no way it could’ve been the same guy?”
“I don’t think so. No.”
Sam drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I should’ve never let you go after this.” A muscle in his jaw worked. I’d never seen him so angry. From the street outside came the sound of a fire engine screaming as it sped to the rescue. Sam cleared his throat. “Is there more?”
“The gun was in Whitfield's right hand.”
“Are you telling me he’s a lefty, too?”
“I saw him marking up documents. He was using his left hand.”
Doubt flickered in his eyes. “Maybe he was ambidextrous.”
“Maybe. But I saw his body, Sam. I saw the way he was holding that gun. It was all wrong. I’ve seen suicides before. Their hands sort of freeze, real tight around the handle. His fingers were curled around it. Just like someone had placed them there. And then there was the way he was shot. The bullet went in through his ear and traveled down and came out the other side of his jaw. He would’ve had to hold his arm up at some weird angle to shoot himself like that. I’ve been trying to imagine it and … well, it just doesn’t sit right.”
Mentally, I was back in Whitfield's office. “Somebody shot him, Sam. They stood on his right side, slightly behind him, and pulled the trigger.”
Sam licked his lips.
“What do the cops say?”
“Well, Blackie was there. He said it was a suicide.”
“You think you know better than the cops?”
I felt sick. “I know. Me thinking I know better than everyone else is what got us into this mess, but … ” I took a
deep breath. A knot of anxiety was making it hard for me to breathe. “Sam, I got a man killed today.”
“Lanie, don’t—”
“Do you honestly think Whitfield would kill himself after going through everything we put him through yesterday?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
I slid forward on the chair. “Whitfield was shot last night. Whoever did it didn’t know about the articles coming out. They didn’t know that he’d decided to fight rather than fold.”
I told Sam about Bellamy’s theory, and he got angry all over again.
“So Bellamy used you. He used this paper. Shit.” He muttered under his breath. Then he looked at me. “This guy who sent Esther the letters ... you think he’s the one who attacked you?”
“It makes sense.”
Sam pushed the sandwich away, leaned on the desk and wiped his face with his hands. “But why would the letter writer kill Whitfield? After all these years, why now?”
“Because he’s still jealous. He didn’t know the identity of Esther’s lover, but when my column came out, he did.”
“So you’re telling me we painted a bull’s-eye on Whitfield's forehead.”
“Not you,” I said quietly. “Me.”
A pause, and then: “Have you told the police any of this?”
Before I could answer, Sam’s office door opened and Canfield barged in, carrying a copy of the paper. He slammed the door behind him. His face was ashen. His eyes flashed with anger.
“So, are you two satisfied?”
“Please sit down,” Sam said.
“I don’t want to sit down,” Canfield snapped. “I want to make you understand what you’ve done. Who cares if he had troubles with women? The fact is, he did more good for our community than you two combined. Do you know how many men can feed their families because Sexton Whitfield got them jobs, made a phone call? Do you even care?”
“Mr. Canfield,” Sam started.
“You’re to blame,” he told Sam. “You could’ve stopped this whole business, stopped it cold, before it got started. Now, look what’s happened.”
He held up the newspaper. “As for this—this clarification you promised us—not only was it too little, too late. It’s the worst piece of muckraking I’ve ever seen.”
Goodfellowe House Page 19
