Harry Lipkin, Private Eye

by Barry Fantoni

  It was a big admission. It kind of took the life out of her. She was a small size to start with. Now she seemed to be hardly there.

  I stood up again and could see Mrs. Weinberger climbing out of the pool. It was time to let Maria off the hook and let her get on with toweling water off Mrs. Weinberger’s body.

  “Thanks, Maria,” I said. “That will be all for the time being.”

  A couple of tears slid down Maria’s cheeks. She wiped them away with the end of her apron and took a deep breath. “Thank you, Señor. For your understanding.”

  She stood and without another word ran to the pool. Only a young gazelle ran more gracefully.

  · SIX ·

  Harry Meets the Butler

  I watched as Maria helped Norma Weinberger climb from the steps at the shallow end of the pool. She climbed easily for a woman her age. A lot more elegantly than she swam. Even without Maria I guess she would have made it to dry land in style. I moved through the French doors to get a better view of my client.

  She had put on a pair of buttercup yellow sunglasses with rims the size of truck wheels and was in a backless lime green number with a double fronted bodice and side ruching in a material they called Lastex. Jantzen labeled the swimsuit Water Star and it would have cost sixty dollars when it went on sale in 1954. Sixty dollars, ninety-five cents to be exact. I know about swimsuits. I had an uncle who sold them. Uncle Enoch. He talked a lot about them. To me. To everyone. Uncle Enoch talked about nothing else.

  The pool led onto the lawn and there were clusters of high-crowned long-ago-planted palms everywhere. The palms dwarfed the row of low buildings that rimmed the horizon. These were a different style from the house. Newer. The place where Mrs. Weinberger lived was mainly a single story that snaked its way around the flower beds. To the right were stables but no sign of any horses. Maybe they were sleeping. It was a good time to be asleep. Hot. Exhaustingly hot. Even for Miami.

  I walked back to air-conditioned comfort and sat on the piano stool. I looked at my notebook and thought about what I had written.

  So far I had spoken to the chauffeur and the maid. That left the gardener and the cook and the butler. Any friends that called I could forget. My guess was they were all as wealthy. Some more. And I didn’t see some old Jew risking a busted neck climbing over the wall in the middle of the night just to steal a pillbox. What would be her motive?

  When someone commits the crime of theft the motive is nearly always money. And for a professional there is no other. He steals a famous painting. A Rembrandt. From a gallery in Idaho where someone left the back door unlocked. He takes it to a fence who pays him cash. On a Rembrandt the fence sells for ten million the thief will pocket ten grand. Only hungry people steal food and only people who need mental help steal from compulsion.

  Maria Lopez might need extra money to help her father back in La Paz. So might Rufus Davenport. I’d make some inquiries about both. Ask around boxing gyms. The Immigration Department. City Hall. I finished reading through my notes to the sound of a polite cough. The butler was standing discreetly behind me.

  “I am Lee,” the butler announced. “We met briefly, earlier, you may recall, when you arrived.”

  “Hello,” I said. “Nice to meet you again.”

  “Mrs. Weinberger said you wished to see me.”

  “Only a few routine questions,” I said. “Okay with you?”

  His head moved. I guessed it meant yes.

  “That’s my man,” I said. “Grab a seat. Ease the dogs.”

  He remained motionless. He was in a white jacket that had never seen a crease and black pants that knew a white jacket to live under when one came along.

  “If it is all the same to you, sir,” he said, “I feel more at ease when standing.”

  “Fine by me,” I said. “But if I stand for more than ten minutes I get pains in my legs and my blood pressure goes up. I have even been known to pass out if I am on my feet too long. Avoid a long line. That’s my motto.”

  I had hoped a little personal confession might warm the butler up. Maybe get a smile. I was wrong. His face had features. Eyes. A nose. A mouth. But they showed less expression than a plate of pickled smelts. And they stayed that way.

  “Do you live here, in the house?” I asked.

  He was standing with his back to the window. A cloud moved slowly across the clear blue sky behind his head. In the distance was the thin buzz of someone driving an electric mower over grass.

  “All the staff live here,” he said. “We have our own quarters.”

  The butler made a half turn and gestured to the low buildings at the far end of the lawn. “Mrs. Weinberger has grown less independent in recent years. Lately, she has asked me to retire in the main house. To be near if I am required.”

  “So you have pretty much the run of the place?” I said. “Come and go as you please. Just like you were one of the family?”

  Mr. Lee’s slender eyes did something. At the back. And only for a split second. Something dark.

  “I am Mrs. Weinberger’s butler,” he said. “It is my duty, as well as my desire, to aid Mrs. Weinberger whenever I am needed. No matter what hour of the day.”

  “Devotion,” I said. “Rare to find these days. Worth paying a lot for.”

  The butler said nothing.

  Sitting in front of the piano keys I thought I might try a few bars of “Chopsticks.” To sort of lighten up the mood. Then I thought. Harry. “Chopsticks” after eighty years? Without practice?

  Instead I asked the butler another question.

  “When Mrs. Weinberger discovered someone had been stealing from her, did she tell you?”

  “Naturally,” Mr. Lee replied. “Last week she said a pillbox had gone missing. Then she said some house keys and a cheap fan were taken.”

  “And you saw no one suspicious around the house at the times these items were taken?”

  The butler shook his head. More of a twitch than a shake.

  “I was only informed of the missing item later.”

  “So you could have been quite near to the thief, or right at the other end of the house? You could have been just about anyplace?”

  His eyes didn’t like me. Or my questions. Or the implied accusation.

  “That is most possible, sir,” he said. “But also most unlikely. I seldom fail to observe any actions that take place in the house that might be considered irregular.”

  I looked at my watch. I had still to see the cook and the gardener once he got through with his mowing.

  “Thank you, Mr. Lee,” I said.

  He bowed. “Will that be all, sir?” he asked.

  “From you,” I said. “For the moment. Now I have to talk to the man in charge of rolling knaidlach.”

  “You are referring to the chef, I assume?”

  “The very man,” I smiled. “Will you kindly point me in the direction of the cookhouse?”

  “Follow me, sir,” the butler said.

  We were about to move off when some thoughts started connecting in my head. It was like in the old days when they turned on the lights in Times Square. The lights came on in a line. One after the other. Fast. That is what was happening in Harry’s cranium. They connected like this. “Chopsticks.” The sound of Mahjong tiles. A stack of blue chips. A winning post. Some thoughts connecting up and a good old-fashioned hunch to hold them together. Every detective needs one. A hunch. Like he needs his .38. His license and his gumshoes.

  I called to the butler by his name.

  “Mr. Lee.”

  “Sir?”

  “Horse racing,” I chimed. “The track. A very popular sport. Here. Everywhere. Compulsive for some. You couldn’t keep my Uncle Benny away. Gulfstream is under an hour’s drive. A dollar buys a hundred when the information’s right. Hard to resist. A place you might go?”

  The butler stiffened. A response given away outside his usual tight control. And he knew it. And he knew I knew. And he didn’t like it.

  Mr. Lee l
ooked at his fingernails to cover. As if they suddenly bothered him. They were trimmed close to the skin and buffed hard. Clean as hubcaps on a showroom automobile.

  Then the stiffness went and he looked me straight in the eye.

  “Mrs. Weinberger’s chef is a busy man, sir,” Mrs. Weinberger’s man said. “We must not keep him waiting any longer.”

  · SEVEN ·

  Harry and Mr. Lee Walk to the Kitchen

  The cookhouse was a schlep and a half. The butler walked ahead of me. Slow. In keeping with my pace.

  “The kitchen was refurbished last fall,” Mr. Lee explained as we shuffled over the fancy tiled floor. “It is fully equipped with all the latest in culinary conveniences.”

  “So there is a lot to keep the chef occupied?” I said.

  He nodded.

  “And there’s the Kosher food side of it all to take care of,” I carried on. “I guess the cook fixes that?”

  The butler turned and waited for me to draw level.

  “There is a high-class Kosher delicatessen in Fort Lauderdale,” he said. “They deliver once a week, so the chef has no need to shop. My duties as Mrs. Weinberger’s manservant include the supervision and purchase of all edible goods brought into the house. I also ensure they are in exact accordance with Mrs. Weinberger’s strict religious observances. In the unlikely event something should go wrong, it is my duty to put it right.”

  None of the information mattered. It was either handed out to kill time or throw me off the scent, except that there wasn’t any scent. Not yet.

  “That is all very interesting,” I said in a way to show it wasn’t.

  There was a short silence while I made a few more feet.

  “Mr. Lee?” I said when I drew level. “I hope it doesn’t bother you but I got to ask. It has been on my mind right from the get-go. How come you talk English so good?”

  The butler left it a second. Like he was about to give an estimate for replacing the air-conditioning. Then he told me. Matter of fact. Without a hint of sounding smug.

  “I learned English in England,” he said. “I was educated in a town called Newbury. It is regarded as one of the world’s centers for breeding Thoroughbred racehorses. The stud farms of Newbury are second to none. There, I met men who were highly knowledgeable. Professional men. As you have already quite impressively deduced for yourself, I practice the skills they taught me at the Gulfstream Park Racing & Casino racetrack. And I do so, if you will forgive the slight immodesty offering such information entails, most successfully.”

  There was another short silence. It was there for me to file his story. Then we walked on.

  And on.

  And on.

  “How long is this passage?” I asked. “We must be in Tallahassee.”

  “Not much further, sir,” the butler replied soothingly. “And it might be worth noting, sir, that Tallahassee is north from here. We are walking in the opposite direction.”

  The south-bound passage hit a fork. We took the left lane.

  “The kitchen has a view overlooking the Atlantic,” the butler continued. “As I am sure you have already observed, this house is very close to the sea. The beach is just below the cliff on which the foundations were originally laid, more than a hundred years ago.”

  “No kidding,” I slipped in. “That long ago?”

  “You can feel the breeze most days,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “A breeze that brings with it a sense of distant lands and their distant peoples. The far off which is ever present.”

  “You sure have a swell turn of phrase, Mr. Lee,” I said. “Imaginative and philosophic. I’ll try to incorporate that last thought of yours into a haiku when I get a spare moment.”

  He left it. Then brought it back.

  “It is the Japanese who compose haiku. The Chinese occupy their minds in more useful ways.”

  Suddenly, Mrs. Weinberger appeared from a sliding door that led onto another passage that led onto a room next to the lounge.

  She’d got Maria to help her into a pair of pale linen slacks and a plain silk top with faux jet buttons. In one hand she was holding a tall glass of seltzer swamped with fruit salad and a straw. In the other she clutched a paperback.

  “You may leave us,” Mrs. Weinberger told her butler. “I shall take care of our guest from here.”

  Mr. Lee marched off. When he was out of sight she held up the book for me to see.

  “I have been reading all about you, Mr. Lipkin,” Mrs. Weinberger said and sucked on the straw.

  I looked at the cover. The Killer Wore Black. The title in embossed silver took up half the page. The rest of it was split between the author’s name and a picture of a blonde in a low-cut blouse screaming. It was one of a hundred Edward J. Macey had reeled off over the years. The Killer Wore Black. The Killer Wore Plaid. The Killer Wore Silk. The Killer Smoked Cigars. The Killer Ate Pretzels.

  “Me?” I asked, going along with her train of thought.

  “Not you exactly, Mr. Lipkin,” she laughed. “No. Your methods. The way a private investigator operates. For example, in chapter ten, when Elliot Sterne discovers the corpse of Charles Billington in the garage, he only tells his brother, so that when his twin sister arrives to identify him, it is clear they never met in Denver after all. Her alibi was already under suspicion.”

  “That’s the way to do it,” I said.

  She sucked some more seltzer.

  “I can’t wait to hear what you have found out so far,” she said.

  There wasn’t a lot to tell her. It was too early. Most clients only know detective work from what they see on TV. Or read in pulp fiction. Over in half an hour or a couple of hundred pages. Real life? It can take months to check a single clue. I told Mrs. Weinberger what I told all anxious clients.

  “I am getting warm,” I said. “The noose is tightening and I am hot on the trail.”

  “Any minute, then, Mr. Lipkin. And we will nail the culprit.”

  “Any minute, Mrs. Weinberger.”

  She gave a deep sigh and pointed. “The kitchen is to the left.”

  · EIGHT ·

  Harry Meets the Chef

  When Mr. Lee told me about Coral Gables’s kitchen he called it fully equipped. He might be spinning a line about his skills as a punter but he was bang on the nail about the room where Mrs. Weinberger had her meals dished up.

  There were machines for slicing carrots, shredding cabbage, extracting juice, pressing oranges, dicing gherkins, crushing ice, kneading bread, boiling rice, frying potatoes, halving avocados, pitting olives, mixing mayonnaise, shelling peas, and whisking eggs. If there was a cement mixer, it wasn’t on show.

  The cook was over by the sink running water over his hands. He was tall and slender. There was a chef’s hat on his head and a red spotted scarf tied loosely under his chin. His skin had the sheen of polished ebony.

  “My name is Harry Lipkin,” I called over.

  The cook wiped his hands dry on the apron covering the front of his blue checkered pants.

  “Amos,” he called back. “Amos Moses.”

  I found a stool next to a worktable and perched.

  “I understand Mrs. Weinberger told you I would drop by?” I said. “I need to ask a few routine questions. About some thefts that have taken place here in recent weeks.”

  Amos Moses picked up a tray of cream cheese blintzes and put them in the oven.

  “Dinner’s due,” he said, turning up the heat. “Can we talk while I fix it?”

  I nodded.

  “Tell me about what you did before you got a job baking blintzes for Mrs. Weinberger,” I said.

  “Anything in particular?”

  “Whatever comes to mind.”

  “There’s not a lot to tell. I left my country when I was sixteen. Ethiopia. Somalia one side. Sudan the other. And Kenya’s not far away. Lions here. Malaria over there.”

  “Did you come to the States direct?”

  There was a yolk in a large bowl half full
of flour. He started beating it with a whisk.

  “I went to Italy first. Then I spent a year in Paris.”

  He poured milk into the mixture. “Paris is where you learn to cook the world’s great dishes. Caille en Sarcophage with truffle sauce. Cream cheese blintzes.”

  The young cook had a nice style. Direct, but not rude. And funny in the ways Jews are funny. Self-deprecating on one hand. Arrogant on the other. If Amos Moses hadn’t told me I would have said he came from the Lower East Side. I could hear his bubba telling him, “Amos. Listen to your grandmother. Jews own restaurants. They don’t cook in them.”

  “And after Paris, Amos?” I said taking out my notebook and pencil. “What then?”

  He put the mixture in the icebox and came and stood across from me.

  “I worked my way over on a boat. I found this job through an agency.”

  I wrote it down. “When was that? Roughly.”

  “That would be about two years ago. Mr. Weinberger was still alive. He had a big appetite. Even though he was old and pretty sick he ate more chopped liver than anyone I ever met.”

  I put down when Amos started working for Mrs. Weinberger. I didn’t bother with Mr. Weinberger’s eating habits. The kitchen was warm. More than warm. It was very hot. Even with the windows open. It must have showed.

  “You look like you could use a drink, Mr. Lipkin,” Amos said. “I could do fresh pineapple?”

  “A drink would be just dandy. But not pineapple. They have acid and I got reflux. Acid and reflux. Bad medicine.”

  I rubbed my chest to make the point.

  “Then I’ll do you peach juice,” the cook said and picked out a peach from a dish full of fruit. “No acid in peaches.”

  Amos worked fast with the knife and the fruit. Halved it. Pitted it. Peeled it. He did a handful the same way. Put the flesh into the extractor. Poured in some fresh cream. Spun it. Poured the juice into a frosted glass. Threw in some ice. Stuck in a couple of straws. And there it was. All done in under a minute. Peach juice. Fresh. I took a sip. It was cold. Sweet. Smooth. I put down the glass and picked up my pencil.