City of Sharks

by Kelli Stanley

  There it was again … louder.

  A small click and more scuffling. Then the soft, unmistakable hiss of the pneumatic door swinging open and rubber-soled shoes treading softly—hesitantly—into the room.

  They stopped once inside, waiting for the door to close again.

  Miranda bit her lip. The gun was slippery with the sweat on her palm and she hoped she could hold it steady.

  Her left hand held a flashlight.

  More scuffles, a skidding sound. Getting closer. A flashlight switched on suddenly, stabbing the darkness and probing it.

  Miranda almost gasped, swallowed instead. No view of under the desk, thank God she’d arranged the chairs to block the angle …

  The light skimmed the top of the desk, hovered for a moment, then swung back to the other side, where the safe was.

  The footsteps, louder and more assured now, grew closer.

  Sound of a cloth bag hoisted on the ledge, soft grunt. He pulled it open.

  She could barely make out thin sticks, like fireworks, held in a hand.

  The sonofabitch was planning to blow up her safe.

  She shimmied out from under the main part of the desk, toward the window, his preparations loud enough to mask the sound. With an effort of her stomach muscles, she pulled herself upright without a grunt, using the wall as a brace.

  He was setting up the dynamite.

  Miranda took a breath and raised the gun with her right hand, switching on the flashlight with a flick of her left thumb.

  The dark-clothed figure froze with a stick of dynamite in his hand, outlined in white light, pinned against the safe.

  Her voice was somber.

  “Set the dynamite next to the safe, Roger. The book’s not there.”

  * * *

  He turned slowly, arms not raised, one hand still holding his flashlight, the other, a stick of dynamite.

  Thin, dark, narrow face, handsome once, before it became twisted with envy, with jealousy, with misplaced ambition and failed creativity.

  He plastered on a smile, hideously forced.

  “Miss Corbie—Miranda—I know this must look strange—but believe me, there’s method in my madness—”

  She took a step forward, .22 pointed squarely at his stomach.

  “Spare me the Shakespeare. Quoting the Bard doesn’t make you a writer. Neither does murdering Smith and taking credit for his novel. I said to set the goddamn dynamite aside. And drop your flashlight.”

  Sharp inhale. With a sudden twist, he flung the flashlight at her, but this time—the second time in two days—Miranda was ready.

  She ducked sidewise toward the window and squeezed the trigger.

  The sound richoted, around and around, cannon fire in Spain, Martini’s blood and brains on a bathroom wall, but the .22 was lighter than the Astra, didn’t throw her backwards, and she saw Roscoe bend, clutching his stomach, body blinking red and yellow in the reflected neon.

  Miranda, breathing hard, raised the flashlight.

  “It’s over, Roger. Don’t move or I’ll blow your fucking head off.”

  The writer slid like jelly, back against the file cabinet, sinking to the floor.

  The hand on his stomach was wet and red.

  “I’m walking to the light switch and turning it on. Move and I shoot.”

  He said nothing, breath harsh and rasping, while she backed up toward the office door.

  Miranda reached a spot near the light switch, flashlight tucked under her right arm, hand holding the pistol sideways, and groped with her left until she could flick on the overhead light.

  She blinked rapidly, letting the flashlight fall with a clank.

  Roger jerked against the wall at the sound but made no other movement. Blood was seeping between his fingers.

  She walked quickly to the desk, gun still trained on him.

  “I’ll call the cops and get an ambulance.”

  He shifted position, thin face stretched in agony as though he couldn’t tolerate being seen.

  “Operator? Need an ambulance pronto. There’s been a shooting and attempted burglary. Fourth floor, Monadnock. Miranda Corbie. Hurry.”

  She hung up and said: “I’m sorry about the pain. They’ll be here soon.”

  He looked up at her, blue eyes tortured and voice cracked.

  “Don’t you want to know why?”

  Miranda looked down at him, voice softer. “Sure, I do. Why don’t you tell me about it.”

  He was gasping now, writhing like an ant under a magnifying glass.

  “I deserved better. I’m … I’m a great writer. I’m intelligent, I’m, I’m educated … I deserved better. Far better.”

  Miranda lit two cigarettes and crouched down near Roger, placing one between his lips, pistol still aimed at his chest.

  “Better than what? Than how Alexander treated you? Why didn’t you change publishers?”

  He jerked, inhaling the cigarette gratefully. Sirens started to wail in the distance and he twisted his head toward the window.

  “Not much time. You need to understand. I signed a bad contract.”

  “But your agent—”

  “My agent was incompetent.” He snapped it out with sudden force, spittle on his lips. Caught his breath and glanced up at her, calmer. “And then it was too late. Don’t you see? I was trapped. I wrote beautiful books—literary books, books that could be the equal to Fitzgerald and Steinbeck. But Niles rejected them, held me in chains like the moon, doomed to repeat, tide in, tide out, what he thought the public wanted … and what the public mostly wants is drivel, sensationalized and mindless.”

  “If that were so, Roger, then Steinbeck and Fitzgerald would never have been published.”

  He met her eyes, ghost of a smile, remnants of charm and charisma clinging like a tattered cape, last vestiges of a gentleman.

  “Hemingway, Steinbeck, Lewis, Hilton … the lucky few. No, Miss Corbie, I’m no Marxist, but the man had his points. Our opiates are Fibber McGee and Molly and The Saturday Evening Post and the latest Blondie picture, and books—books written by low men, fit for morons—books that betray the beauty of the tree that was cut down to make them. Those were the kind of books that Niles made me write…” He squirmed again, as the siren wail started to fill the room.

  “You could have refused.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t understand. Publishers are supposed to give the public what the public needs, not what it wants. They’re educated men, men with taste. The truly great publishers support writers that matter, that … that make a difference, that should be read. That must be read. But Niles made me write doggerel because doggerel paid and then he let Smith, the imposter Smith, write the books I should have written. I did write them … you’ll see. You’ll see when you find my library.”

  The sirens were below the Monadnock now, flashing lights revolving around Miranda’s office, red and white, red and white.

  She looked down at the blood still seeping through Roger’s fingers.

  “Roger. The ambulance and police will be here in just a couple of minutes. I want you to know … you didn’t succeed in killing Louise. She’s all right.”

  His eyes opened wide and he sucked on the cigarette, cheeks forming hollows.

  “I never—God, I didn’t really want to kill her—but that Alcatraz story … thank you for telling me. And let Sylvia know—please let her know—that I truly did love her.”

  He doubled over suddenly. “Oh God—it hurts—”

  Instinctively Miranda bent closer and Roger suddenly twisted upright, last surge of strength, grappling with her for the gun.

  Surprised, she fell backwards, right hand flung back, and the writer, panting with effort, lunged, holding her wrist with both hands and in a desperate, dying effort pried it loose.

  She scrambled to her feet but he waved it at her, smile twisted with pain, still clutching his stomach with his left hand.

  His words came out in shuddering gasps, eyes still sharply lit a
nd focused.

  “No, no, dear lady. This is my scene. My book, my play. ‘I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play have, by the very cunning of the scene, been struck so to the soul that presently they have proclaim’d their malefactions; for murder, though it have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ.’”

  Heavy footsteps in the hall. Roger kept his eyes on her.

  “You are the organ of truth, Miranda Corbie, my last reader and my last audience. What would you do, had you the motive and the cue for passion that I have? You would drown the stage with tears. Let it be so … I was a writer. I was wronged. There is no play to ease the anguish of a torturing hour.”

  Heavy banging on the door. “San Francisco Police—Miss Corbie, you there?”

  He held her eyes, brown eyes steady. “I have immortal longings in me.”

  Roger Roscoe held the pistol up to his head and fired.

  A uniform broke the door open and rushed to where Miranda was standing, staring down at the dead man.

  * * *

  She sat with Fisher over a bowl of chop suey at Sam Wo. He shook his head.

  “You really think that’s how it played out?”

  Miranda shrugged. She picked at the vegetables, trying not to see the last ten seconds, over and over, movie reel stuck in place … Roger Roscoe blowing a hole in his skull with her .22 pistol.

  “You’ll know for sure when you get something out of Sylvia other than a physician’s note from her attorney. I figure she wrote the letters, initially, and Roger used that fact as a springboard for his idea.”

  “Which was to kill Alexander.”

  “Which was to kill Alexander and frame Louise for it. He retyped Sylvia’s letters on Louise’s machine—remember, he lived nearby and probably glommed a key early on and had a duplicate made—and scared her with fake murder attempts so she’d call the cops. He never intended to kill her at that point—just set her up. Remember the chocolates?”

  The burly cop crunched on an egg roll. “But she called you instead. That probably worried him—an unknown quantity. It’s pretty easy to figure out how cops will react.”

  She grinned. “Some—not all. He figured if the evidence looked like Louise was lying about the murder attempts, no one would believe her claims of innocence over the eventual murder. So he steals the cyanide from Sylvia—which she bought as part of her previous threats to kill herself. We’ve got that much from Acme Drug. I suspect that once you’ve given Jerry Alexander a thorough grilling, he’ll admit to having seen the cyanide around the house. Sylvia—at least at first—liked to act as though she was going to off herself at any minute. Once the family got used to it—which didn’t take long, considering how self-involved they were—they realized she was crying wolf. That’s probably when she started cutting herself, to up the score, taking more drugs, too. And probably when she wrote Louise the letters, focusing on a pretty blonde as the reason for her misery and neglect.”

  Fisher snorted. “‘Misery and neglect’? With all that money? Jesus Christ, with people hopping trains and living in shacks—”

  “I know, Inspector, I know. But it was the only reality she knew. And I can’t help but think that Roger married her so quickly because in case she realized the cyanide was missing—”

  “She wouldn’t be able to testify. Makes sense.”

  The strains of a Chinese violin wafted through the open window, and Miranda turned toward it, light breeze ruffling her hair.

  Fisher said: “So Roscoe was after a different manuscript the entire time—Alcatraz had nothing to do with it.”

  She shook out a Chesterfield. “Mind if I smoke?”

  He shook his head. “Go ahead. I’m nearly done.”

  She clicked the Ronson One-Touch and lit the stick.

  “No, that was the clincher. The motive we had wasn’t the real motive, and Roger ran with it. He intended to kill Niles, of course, but if he could pass off one of Smith’s books as his own to Bunnie or another publisher … well, to his sick mind he was the one who should’ve written it in the first place. Sylvia probably mentioned something Niles said about Smith’s book in the safe, and Roger assumed she meant the novel, not the Alcatraz book, which he could never hope to appropriate. He came in and opened the safe—the combination would be easy to pry out of Sylvia, especially with how hopped-up he kept her—and brought the bottle of poisoned gin with him, planning to pour it into Alexander’s desk bottle and frame Louise with the cyanide he planted in her desk. Then Alexander walks in early, surprises him, they struggle. Roscoe throws the gin at him to distract him—I know first-hand how ‘distracting’ thrown objects can be—and clubs him over the head with the sculpture. He probably intended to steal the money, too, to hide the theft of the novel, but got rattled.”

  Miranda sipped her tea.

  “I don’t think he expected or wanted to get physical—he preferred murder from a distance—and killing Niles shook him badly. He was insane already but that made it worse.”

  “So he gets home and realizes he has the wrong book. And then we arrest Louise.”

  “He probably just saw Howard’s name and figured it was the detective novel he wanted so badly, the one he was pretending to work on. Alexander was building it up along with the Alcatraz book—a novel that would make Howard Carter Smith a literary celebrity, which Roger desperately wanted.”

  The inspector grunted. “And Blankenship leaking the whole Cretzer-Kyle thing … I guess that’s when Roscoe figured he could throw everyone a curve ball by playing into the Alcatraz motive, plus buy himself time to hunt for Smith’s other manuscript.”

  Miranda nodded.

  “Exactly. That’s why there were two notes. I figure he first broke into Louise’s apartment while she was with you at the Hall. He tampered with the gas, didn’t notice the cracked window, and left the first note—the one that made Louise look like she killed Alexander in some kind of love triangle. Then—when the papers came out—he realized the Alcatraz motive was even better cover.”

  Fisher shoved the plate aside and lit an Old Gold, taking a deep drag.

  “Crazy sonofabitch. He took a lot of chances with that nutty milkman getup.”

  “He was on a high. Like a drug, Inspector, playing for an even bigger hit of what he wanted most: fame, attention, literary recognition. Luckily, I’ve got a contact at Goldstein’s, which clinched him for the milkman.”

  She exhaled, tapping ash in the chipped glass tray.

  “Part of me can’t help but feel pity for him, you know. He had charm, maybe even talent once upon a time. Before he shot himself, he said we’d find his magnum opus in his library. My guess is he hasn’t been able to write anything for a while. You find any books?”

  “Not a one. Notes, ramblings, half-finished, half-baked and all crazy. At least you had the evidence lined up good, if the sonofabitch hadn’t shot himself.” He shook his head. “But how in the hell was he expecting to get by Louise?”

  “She was supposed to be dead, remember? He miscalculated the amount of gas and didn’t know about the window. He was damn lucky she was so out of it she couldn’t place him right away … and of course, he was wearing makeup. I noticed that when he came to see me afterward—it was one of those things that stuck in my mind and made me realize we were looking at everything the wrong way.”

  Fisher frowned. “He was lucky, all right. Same way with Smith. Calling him from a pay phone—why the hell from Schwabacher-Frey, I wonder?”

  “Probably bought a magic trick from them. He performed one at Gump’s that night.”

  “Figures. Magicians and actors—can’t be trusted. And I guess we’ll add writers to that list. What do you figure he told Smith?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe that he had a lead on who took the Alcatraz manuscript, complete with a phony message to meet up at Bekins. Roger had a key to Alexander’s offices, remember. He probably found out about Smith’s little storage-cum-manuscript-room and figured the novel might be there.
Or he might have just followed Smith to Bekins and snuck in and surprised him. Either way, he had ample time to kill him, burn the Alcatraz manuscript just enough to destroy it, and steal all the drafts of the novel … the one Smith brought with him and the one in the box marked ‘new.’”

  Fisher’s brow wrinkled. “Why’d Smith bring the manuscript from his apartment?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe Roger disguised his voice, threatened Smith with a firebomb—the old Sherlock Holmes trick would’ve appealed to Roscoe. Then Smith dashed out with the most precious thing in his apartment—his new book—and rushed to secure it at Bekins. He had it in his study—that’s where I found the fragment.”

  “Ah yes, the famous fragment. And that one word—‘license’—told you everything.” He shook his head again. “Hell of a lucky guess, Miranda.”

  “When you’re a PI your license is everything. And I had a little help from a mirror.”

  He looked at her quizzically and she gave him half a smile. “Look, I’ve got to get home. I’ll type up everything so you have it all nice and neat, but I can get it done sooner if you open my office up again. Speaking of which, don’t forget to finish with Sylvia and Jerry and Louise—she’ll be out of Dante’s very soon. And there’s Bunny Berrigan, too—she deserves the full story.”

  Fisher met her eyes. “The full story … the Alcatraz story. Dullea is breathing a sigh of relief, I’m still working in homicide and Hoover—well, who the hell knows what he’s up to. Guess it’ll never come out. Not now.”

  Miranda stood, muscles sore and tired. Her eyes glowed green.

  “Never say never, Inspector Fisher.”

  * * *

  She slept for a couple of hours and spent the rest of the day on the phone, reassuring Meyer she was all right, catching up Allen on the night before, planning dinner with Bente, arranging for the promised exclusive to Herb Caen.

  She left four messages for James.

  The late-afternoon sun was filtering through the living-room windows when the phone rang.

  His voice was tired but better than when they’d last spoke.

  “Ducks? Just off the wire with the BOP. Bennett’s involved. You can hold off on that interview.”