The Reformers might’ve been dreamers, but they weren’t fools. Carmichael had to prove his new loyalty by purging old ties to the Tammany Tiger. They demanded that he repent for his sins. I was the oldest tie he had. I was his oldest friend.
I was part of his penance.
Carmichael had been every bit as crooked as me, but he had rank to protect him. All I had to bank on was the detective shield Doyle had pulled strings to get for me and forty years of friendship with the chief. Friendship turned out to be mighty poor currency. Reform was the coin of the Roosevelt realm, and I had empty pockets.
The Reformers had demanded my badge at first. They wanted to arrest me and put me on trial for a career of corruption and bribery. But Carmichael knew I had enough dirt on him and half the department to put them all behind bars for a very long time.
So Carmichael cited friendship and managed to save my job. Not for my sake, but for his. He kicked me off his special detail and banished me instead. He vowed to put the Tiger in the cage and pledged to clean up the department.
But Carmichael had been smart enough to only tease the Tammany Tiger so much; feeding the Reformers low-hanging fruit from the poisoned tree to get in their good graces. It was vintage Carmichael: playing both sides against the middle.
It had been all wine and roses between the Chief and Albany from then on. And with Roosevelt having a good shot at the White House, Carmichael’s bet was looking like it might pay off. I hadn’t complained when the dirty money rolled in and things broke my way. I knew I had no right to kick now that things turned against me. But it still burned, and burned bad. Yes, I’d gotten myself into this mess.
And I was the only one who was going to get myself out of it.
Something told me this dead girl could serve as my own kind of penance for all the times I’d looked the other way. Well, maybe not all of it, but some of it anyway. Guys like me couldn’t get greedy. We had to take what we could get.
I knew the daytime detectives wouldn’t work overtime looking for her killer. I knew what they’d say: people who got themselves killed in places like The Chauncey Arms usually had it coming.
Maybe finding her killer could be my redemption. Carmichael had gotten his. Why not me? Or maybe this was just the pipe dream of a desperate hack looking for a new start. I didn’t know what it was, but I was damned well going to find out. For the girl’s sake. And for mine.
THEY CALLED New York “the city that never sleeps” for a reason. Sure, the Depression had made it drowsier than normal, but never sleepy. I knew the best place for gossip at five in the morning was The Stage Left Bar, commonly known as Lefty’s. It was a small speakeasy tucked away in an alley on Forty-Sixth Street and Broadway. Even back when times had been good, Lefty’s always drew a hard-luck crowd. Stage hands, press agents, bit players and acting types; all on the down-swing looking for work, just like everyone else.
Nobody ever went to Lefty’s for the ambiance or the floor show. The place had neither. People went there to swill bad booze and run their mouths about their troubles. If misery loved company, it was never lonely at Lefty’s. My kind of place.
When I got to Forty-Sixth and Broadway, I stepped over two drunks at the mouth of the alley bickering over a bottle. They stopped fighting long enough to think about jumping me. But when they saw the holster under my arm, they went back to fighting over the bottle. There wasn’t much light in the narrow alley, but I knew where I was going. I found the steel door leading to the place and pushed it in. There’d been a time not too long ago when even a place like Lefty’s could afford to have a doorman, but those days were long gone. For Lefty’s. For everyone.
Lefty’s was nicer than The Chauncey Arms, but not by much. It was a dank, humid little joint with low ceilings and sticky floors. The bar itself was just some two-by-fours nailed together for posts and some wooden planks to cover the front. Even on its best day, it reeked of watered-down gin and desperation, but on a humid August morning, it smelled even worse.
The lack of décor didn’t faze the stagehands and other drunks who’d ambled in from the playhouses along Broadway. Most of the poor bastards were out of work and hoping for their luck to change, like everyone else in this town. But it never ceased to amaze me how they somehow managed to scrape enough dough together to go in there and drink every night. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
The regulars usually eyeballed me when I walked in the place. They knew who I was, and what I used to be. The looks they gave me were always far from admiring. But on that particular morning, the regulars were distracted by a fairer sight in the back of the place. And when I saw who they were looking at, I couldn’t blame them. She happened to be talking to the man I’d come to see. Sometimes my luck wasn’t all bad.
Wendell Bixby was perched in his usual spot: back table near the phone booth. He had his head down, scribbling in a notebook, while a tall blonde whispered to him from across the table. Bixby was the only one in the place not looking at the girl.
Her name was Alice Mulgrew and I’d known her for a long, long time. Even sitting down, it was easy to tell Alice was something to look at: tall and trim with a hell of a figure. She was Harlow-blond and wore a black, off-the-shoulder number that showed plenty of skin. Even in the dingy light of the bar, she glowed. Or maybe she glowed because of it. I never could figure out which.
Too bad Bixby was more interested in the dirt she was spilling than how she looked spilling it. You see, ‘Bixby’s Box’ was one of the most popular gossip columns in the country, thanks to the Hearst newspaper syndicate. One mention in his column either made you or broke you, depending on who you were and how Bixby decided to write it on that particular day. Socialites, businessmen, politicians, philanthropists, philanderers, actors and actresses were all fair game. No one was beyond the influence of Bixby’s pen.
Of course, he could always be inspired to write — or not write — whatever he uncovered for the right amount of cash. Money had always been Bixby’s muse. Some people paid him off, most didn’t. Just about the only thing worse than being mentioned in ‘Bixby’s Box’ was not being mentioned at all.
Alice stopped talking when she realized I was standing there. She looked me up and down, and I could tell she didn’t think much of what she saw. I didn’t mind. It was tough to pin down exactly what it was that made Alice so irresistible to men, but whatever it was, she had it in spades. Her deep brown eyes were so warm and inviting that a man could forget his troubles just by looking into them, at least for a little while. The city was littered with guys who’d tried doing just that.
“Hello, Alice,” I said. “It’s been a while.”
She gave me a half-hearted smile as she stubbed out her cigarette. She didn’t seem thrilled to see me and I couldn’t blame her. After all, I was cutting in on her payday. Bixby finally looked up from his notebook. He was about my size, maybe a little smaller, with wisps of brown hair pushed across the top of his head. His thick round glasses made his beady eyes look bigger than they really were.
“Well, well, well,” Bixby said as he set his pen aside and grinned up at me. It wasn’t a nice grin. It was lopsided and cynical, like everything else about him. “If it isn’t the Prodigal Policeman. The Merchant of Avarice himself.” Bixby looked at Alice. “You’re a lucky lady, my dear. I’d like to introduce you to something before it goes the way of the dodo bird—and by way of the dodo bird, I mean extinct. This is Detective Charles Doherty of the New York Police Department. He used to be a bag man for the boys downtown, not to mention a damned good source of information for me once upon a time.”
Alice was justifiably unimpressed. “I’ve known Charlie for years, Wendell.”
Bixby looked me over. “Then you probably remember when he used to be somebody. Now he’s just another two-bit cop, crossing off days on a tiny calendar nailed to the wall next to his icebox, waiting for retirement.” He sucked his teeth. “How many days is it now, Charlie? And don’t tell me you’re not the type who co
unts.”
I didn’t let him rile me. The bravado was for Alice’s benefit. He’d be gentle as a lamb once she was out of earshot.
“We need to talk, Wendell. Now.”
Bixby looked at Alice again. “Now, how do you like that? I haven’t seen him in over a year and he expects me to just drop everything and talk with him?” Then he looked at me while he motioned to the girl. “Can’t you see I’m entertaining a lady friend, Charles? Why don’t you wait at the bar until…?”
I shifted my jacket to my left hand and made a fist with my right. “You’re starting to annoy me.” I heard the boys behind me scramble further down the bar. Like I said, they all knew me.
Bixby made a big show of sighing. “Alice, be an angel and give me a few minutes with Charles. We’ll get back to your story very soon, I promise.”
Alice frowned and she suddenly wasn’t so pretty anymore. She had that kind of face. “But what about my money?”
“When you come back, darling,” Bixby patted her hand. “Now, run along like a good girl, but not too far, mind you. I’m still very interested in what you have to tell me.”
Alice gathered up her bag, slid out of the booth and stood in one swift movement. Like a girl who’d had plenty of experience being asked to leave conversations between men. When she stood, she was almost half a head taller than me. But I wasn’t complaining about the view.
She said, “I heard you and Theresa split up. I was sorry to hear that. That’s rough.”
I shrugged it off. “I broke the first rule of law enforcement: don’t marry the women you arrest. I knew what she was when I married her.” That sounded far more bitter than I’d intended, and I covered it as quick as I could, “Heard you’re not singing at The Bronze Peacock anymore.”
“That’s because The Bronze Peacock closed a year ago, dopey,” she said. “I’m over at The Tangiers now.”
“The Tangiers?” I smiled. “I didn’t know it was still open.”
“It is. Barely.” That frown again. “Maybe you ought to get out more, Charlie.”
“Maybe I should.”
With that, she made her exit and drew every eye in the place doing it. She had the kind of walk that deserved to be watched, and she knew it. Bixby watched her too, but with a different kind of admiration. “I love that girl, Charlie. She does some very undignified things with some very dignified people.”
I slid into her place in the booth and pushed her drink out of the way. It smelled like Scotch, or something like it. The seat was still warm from her body. Despite how hot it was in the place, I didn’t mind. I could still smell her scent: rose water and bath soap. “She still seeing Danny Stiles?”
Bixby laughed. “No one’s seen Danny Stiles in weeks. He seems to have gotten himself into some trouble with Sally Balls again. Owes him a fair amount of money from what I understand. At least enough to send poor Danny into hiding.” He paused to watch Alice again as she walked out the front door. “Alice got herself some new playmates now that I’m much more interested in.”
“You always did hang around with the best people, Wendell.”
“True,” Bixby admitted. “Alice, and all the other Alices out there, keep my column stocked with juicy tidbits that keep readers interested and my publisher happy. Without people like her supplying information, I’d have to stop coming to beautiful places like this. Now, what’ll it be? Coffee or gin?”
I’d worked up a hell of a thirst on the walk up there. I knew what I wanted, and I knew what I should have. I noticed the coffee cup in front of him, but I also knew Bixby liked to drink his gin out of coffee cups. It kept people guessing. I decided to let fate choose for me. “Whatever you’re having is fine.”
Bixby motioned to the bartender, who brought over another cup and a pot of coffee. I smiled. The fates had spoken. “Now that it’s just us girls,” Bixby said as he poured us coffee, “how about telling me what brings you down here at this ungodly hour. Things down at the Missing Persons Bureau getting tedious?”
“You’re slipping, Wendell. I’ve been out of the Bureau for over a month. They’ve got me working Homicide now. Graveyard shift.”
Bixby winced. “Gory, perhaps, but I’m sure the dead are a better class of people than you were used to in Vice.” Then the reporter in him woke up. “Say, why aren’t you working Vice anymore, anyway? Why all the crummy assignments lately?”
I drank my coffee. Answering that question could’ve taken the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon. I didn’t have that kind of time, so I kept it simple. “Bad case of guilt going around the department. Whole lot of amnesia, too.”
“Oh, that’s just silly,” Bixby stabbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. “No one gives a damn about corruption anymore, Charlie. The plight of the working man is all people care about now. The legions of unemployed, rallying in the streets, rioting for justice against the greedy corporations. That and avenging poor Baby Lindbergh’s death, of course. Haven’t you heard? Or don’t your bosses read the papers?”
Bixby was right. Every day, the newspapers were full of two kinds of stories: riots and marches by people out of work, and The Lindbergh Kidnapping. They’d chased all the corruption stories right off the front pages. And why not? Riots and marches made great headlines. And when the infant son of a bona fide American hero gets kidnapped from his mansion in the dead of night, it’s news. The story had everything: famous wealthy family, a missing baby, suspicious household staff, the works. Newspapers from coast to coast were filled with stories, theories and rumors about who took the kid and where he was being held. The public cared about nothing else from March — when the kid was snatched — until May, when a truck driver taking a leak on the side of the road found the poor little bastard dead with his head caved in. But now it was August, and anti-corruption stories were back in fashion.
“I don’t make the rules, Wendell,” I said. “I just live by them.”
“But why did Chief Carmichael single you out?” Bixby said as he lit another cigarette. “Everyone was on the take, from the good mayor himself all the way down. Carmichael included.”
I knew he was working me, and I let him. It was the price I had to pay for letting me bend his ear about Silas Van Dorn. Nothing was ever free with Wendell Bixby. “I didn’t come here to tell my tale of woe,” I said. “I came here for information.”
Bixby sat back slowly in the booth. “Information? From me? Now, that’s a switch. I can remember when I used to pay you for information.”
“Times are changing. Or don’t you read the papers?”
“Touché.” Bixby toasted me with his coffee mug. “What would you like to know?”
“I came across a name tonight,” I said. “A name I ought to know, but I just can’t place it. I thought you might.” Bixby’s left eye twitched like it always did when a new bit of dirt came his way. “Does it have to do with a case you’re working on?”
I nodded.
He flipped the pages in his notebook to a clean page. “A homicide case?”
I nodded again.
“Well, in that case…” He began to write, but I grabbed his hand.
“This stays off the record until I say otherwise. It’s that, or nothing. If this turns out to be something, I’ll get you some kind of exclusive down the road. But for now it stays between us.” I let him pull his hand away. I knew the gossipmonger lived for dirt, whether he could print it or not. He needed secrets the way a junkie needs a fix. I knew I had him hooked and he was too curious to do anything but play along.
“Fine. What’s this name you can’t quite place?”
“Van Dorn. Silas Van Dorn. Ring any bells?”
Bixby’s eyebrows rose slowly. “A chorus of them.”
I tried not to let him see how important it was to me. “Then sing.”
“He’s a Van Dorn,” Bixby began, “but, of course, you knew that already. The name would mean something by itself in certain circles. The kinds of circles who pay me very well to keep t
heir names out of my column, although it’s not like they ever do much that’s interesting, anyway.” Bixby cleared his throat and leaned forward on the table. “You see, the Van Dorns are one of those old-time clans that everyone’s heard about somewhere along the line but no one knows much about, except that they’re rich.”
The history lesson was beginning to bore me. “Beautiful. Let’s skip to Silas Van Dorn.”
“He comes from a very long line of very old money,” Bixby went on. “One side of the family came over on the Mayflower. The other side goes back to when the Dutch first ran this town. Needless to say, they’re beyond loaded. They’re one of those families that seem to quietly keep getting rich almost out of force of habit. Even in trying times such as these.”
I didn’t know if I’d just gotten lucky or hit a dead end. I’d known all along that the Van Dorn name didn’t belong anywhere near the register of The Chauncey Arms. Now I knew why. All I had to do was talk to Silas Van Dorn, and maybe this thing would start coming together. “Any idea where I might find this guy?”
Bixby shook his head. “Quid pro quo, Charlie. I answered your question, now you answer one of mine. Why do you want to know who he is?” Bixby had lived up to his end of the bargain, so it was time for me to live up to mine. Besides, he knew what I’d do to him if he printed any of it. “A girl was found dead in the Chauncey Arms in a room registered in Silas Van Dorn’s name. I know it’s probably not him, but somebody used that name on purpose because it’s the only name in the register I can read plain as day.”
Bixby blinked hard. The thick glasses made it look like he blinked even harder. “Silas Van Dorn? At The Chauncey Arms?” He blinked again. “When did he supposedly register this room?”
I saw no harm in telling him this either. “Yesterday morning around ten or so.” I didn’t like the look on Bixby’s face. “Why?”
Slow Burn Page 3
