by Zelda Popkin
"I won't…. Have they taken her away yet?"
"Not yet. She likes the place. We're getting her a lease off the landlord."
The fog lifted. "The landlord," Mary repeated. "Who was the landlord of this place?"
"That ain't important." Johnny Reese shook his head emphatically. "That back door was open. Anybody at all could've gotten in. Whoever it was, he left his calling card. Here." He opened his fist. In his outstretched palm lay a snubnosed three-quarter inch piece of lead. "A thirty-eight," he said. "Cut it out of the wall. Just back of the place where the stains in the floor commence. One bullet. Through the body. Into the wall. That's how it was. We don't need no landlord. This'll do." He turned the bullet over, delicately touching the dark brown pin points that looked like specks of rust, the minute grooves and scratches.
"There's the murderer's name and number," Johnny Reese said somberly. "No gettin' away from that."
Chapter VII
Inspector Heinsheimer stood in the kitchen doorway and snickered at the detectives under the nude ailanthus tree.
"Lovebirds!" His accent was sardonic. "Mighty pretty picture. Would it aggravate you too much, Reese, if I was to say this ain't no time or place for romance?"
The scar on Johnny's cheek reddened, but he answered lightly: "Romance! Your mistake, Inspector. I was only inquirin' of the lady what the hell she thought she was doin' here."
"I'll bite. What is she doing here?"
Mary said: "Phyllis Knight was my friend. I staked my claim in this case last fall. That's when I got to know your Mister Reese. Maybe you can get along without me, but I'm not going to give you the chance to find out."
"Excuse me, Inspector." A blue-coat touched Heinsheimer's sleeve. "There's a man here. He wants to know is there a reward. He's the one found the body. He's got some things."
Mr. Lobel, his moon face bloated with importance, took off his hat, said: "How, do, Inspector. I'm the wrecker. George. I'm the one found it. I'm the one put in the call."
"Y'are, hey? O.K. You're the man we want to talk to. Come in here." Inspector Heinsheimer led the way back into the kitchen. He hoisted his haunches up on the sink drainboard. "What you got for us?"
Mr. Lobel looked crestfallen. "I give the cops the pocketbook awready," he complained. "I give them the shoes and . . ." He thrust his hands deep into his coat pockets, throttling the last vestiges of his acquisitive expectations.
The Inspector saved him from immediate sacrifice by demanding: '"Where'd you find the shoes?"
Mr. Lobel put off the debate with his instincts: "Them shoes? Oh, they was on the cellar stairs. One near the top, one near the bottom. Now the pocketbook. Some guys findin' a thing like that, corpse or no corpse, they'd help themselves to what was in it and they wouldn't be asking no questions. But not me. A responsible businessman. I'm a responsible businessman. A citizen, see. I see it laying there on the floor, and I say to myself, that's a funny thing, a swell pocketbook like that, in a cellar. But I didn't touch the dough. Not one penny. Just the way I found it, I give it to the cop. I'm not askin', but if there's a reward comin', who has a better right? I jus' been talkin' to a feller down the street, and he says: 'Lobel, you were honest to give that to the cops, they had ought to appreciate it -'"
"Oh sure, sure," the Inspector interrupted. "Who has the bag now?"
A detective came forward with Phyllis Knight's handbag.
"Contents listed?" the Inspector barked. "O.K. Give it here."
Mr. Lobel's gaze pivoted to the dusty bottle of Scotch, still erect on the table. He read the label, thought how excellent was that brand. He hunched his back in resignation. None of this was any longer his. Everything belonged to the cops. Everything that wasn't nailed to the walls and floor. A cadaver in a furnace had changed everything. He drew out, reluctantly, the metal flashlight, the broken spectacles and the little revolver.
"I guess you got to get all these things, too," he said sadly. "I found 'em on the floor when I come in."
The Inspector glared. He balanced the trinkets lightly in his palm. "You handled 'em, I s'pose. Smeared 'em all up."
Mr. Lobel was hurt. "I handled 'em. Sure. Why not?"
The Inspector snapped the gun open. "Been fired," he said briefly. "Somebody playin' cops and robbers!" He made a wry face. "That kind of thing. A guy don't even get a license for a thing like that. Buys it at the candy store to liven up a picnic. You could hurt somebody with one of those but them dopes don't know it. Where'd you find the junk?" He hopped down from the drainboard.
Mr. Lobel motioned him across the room, to the passageway between kitchen and front door.
"Over there, hey? Where we found the thirty-eight? Put 'em back where you found 'em."
Mr. Lobel put the little pistol on the right side of the hall, just beyond the threshold, the flashlight on the left, the spectacles between the two, a foot further back. He stepped off, admired his work, said: "Nobody'd know I even touched 'em."
The Inspector sank down clumsily on his padded knees. His flash beam swept the floor. The detectives, standing in a semi-circle around him, watched him scrape a few slivers of glass up with a card, drop them into an envelope, saw him nod with satisfaction as he picked a dark crumb out of a corner and ran his beam up and down the woodwork.
"That's all."
Johnny Reese helped him to his feet.
"Here it is." The Inspector opened his palm to show a tiny lead pellet. "Nicked the woodwork in the right hand corner. Let's have the other, Reese."
The two bullets, lying side by side in the Inspector's cushioned hand, made a dramatic contrast - the one three-quarters of an inch of lethal lead, the other a futile grain of metal.
"Gun battle," the Inspector grinned. But his face sobered. "That glass. If I ain't wrong, it's a broken eye-glass lens. A guy wore glasses and dropped them, before or after he fired his gun, and a bum shot at that." He arched his spine, rubbed his back. "Must be coming down with lumbago. Can't crawl around on the floor like I used to. O.K., let's go. Now, let's pull this thing together. Here, right on the other side of the sill, here's where the stains begin. There's a regular mess of 'em. Listen, Carner, if you can't take it -"
"I'm all right, Inspector," Mary pleaded. "Won't I ever live it down?" she thought.
The Inspector looked at her sharply, went on: "The way I put it together, the Knight woman and whoever was with her - maybe it was the guy that owned the little gun and specs - came in through the front door, using the flashlight although what they came for nobody knows - yet. They must have had a key. That lock wasn't broken till this fellow," he pointed at the housewrecker, "sawed it apart this morning. Whoever came in knew his way around. Knew how to open up that front entrance. They must of come along this hallway here, past the dining room, where they don't see nobody, and here, in the doorway, they stop and see this party, sitting at the table. Now the party, whoever it is, is pretty surprised to see them, too. Those four guys sitting down to a nice little supper in a house that don't belong to them, they're not expecting company. Maybe they think it's burglars. Maybe they think it's the police. Whoever it is, they're surprised. Look at the way they pushed back their chairs. I never saw chairs look so surprised in all my life. And they let go with the gun."
"Whoever he was," Johnny Reese said, "he was a wonderful shot. Right through the heart."
Mary's throat tightened, but she managed to add: "Then it was here she fell…across the threshold, face forward, into the kitchen…. That stain, that brown stain in the floor …."
It was a wide stain, deep brown in the center, lighter at the edges, as though life had gushed from the little body in one explosive spurt. Twelve inches along the kitchen floor it became a trickle, single drops, one following after the other.
The Inspector followed the trail to the cellar door. "The way I dope it," he declared, "they carried her from here straight down to the furnace. She couldn't have been a load." He flashed his light along the wall. "They left a mark. Could've figured how
tall they were if we hadn't smeared it all up going down. But we'll take scrapings anyway." He peered down the staircase. "How's it coming, Doc?"
"All set…. Bringing her up in a minute."
The detectives marched somberly back into the kitchen.
Mary said: "Will you come over here to the table, Inspector, please? What do you make of that red smudge at the end of that cigar, there?"
Inspector Heinsheimer bent over the table to study the butt. "If it was on a cigarette, I'd say lipstick."
Mary nodded. "And on a cigar, I'd still say lipstick."
"You mean one of them?" He put his wrist on his hip, cocked his head in a mincing imitation of the effeminate male.
Mary answered, "I figured the other way around. A woman who smoked like a man."
The Inspector looked approving. "Could happen. Could happen. It's been heard of. Take 'em down-town, Clancey…. Reese, get under the table, will you? You can take the bending exercises better'n I…. Bands…Cellophane wrappers…. Give them here." He examined the dirty blue and white bands critically. "Ramon Allones! That'll help, too. Class, my lads. Wait a minute…. Here comes the girl friend."
Two policemen, carrying a mortuary box, shuffled up out of the cellar stairwell. A policewoman, in uniform - the New York Police Department's concession to the niceties that must be preserved, even after death - walked decorously behind the casket.
"Put it down, boys," the Inspector commanded. He raised the lid, turned back the tarpaulin.
Mary Carner dug her nails into the palms of her hands, her teeth into her lower lip. She squared her shoulders, stepped to the casket. At first, it seemed to her as though there was nothing but cloth and hair in the box. The golden braids lay dark and lustreless, in a tumbled mop, almost as though they were no longer part of the ensemble of woman and costume which had been Phyllis Knight. The Medical Examiner had spread a cloth over the desiccated face.
There had been some attempt at seemly disposal of the dead. The garments had been smoothed; the jacket closed over a blouse whose collar was gray with dust, whose bosom brown with blood. Arms had been folded across the chest. A wrist watch stretched around the brown bones of a wrist. Its glass was cracked, its tiny hands close together, pointing to thirty-seven minutes after eight.
Mary felt an arm across her shoulders. She looked up into Johnny Reese's face and said: "Those are the clothes she wore when she went away. But it isn't Phyllis. It's bones and cloth and hair and a watch. Did you see the time? The watch died at eight thirty-seven - when Phyllis died. . ." She touched the hem of the dead woman's skirt. "The cloth's singed. There's a hole in it as big as half a dollar. What stopped them? Why didn't they finish the job?" She wheeled around. "Inspector, do you know anything about the house next door? The house at fifty-seven. When was there a raid on those premises?"
The Inspector stared. "You sure get around," he said. "'S more'n I know…. Me, I'm only Homicide."
"Thought you might've heard. It was the big event in the neighborhood. Last October sometime."
"Y'see. That's why I let her hang around these places." His voice had a lilt of admiration. "The kid's clever." He patted her head, as if she were his child or puppy. "Now, listen, Reese, two jobs you got to do right away. Number one: Get a list of the owners of this house, and the two houses both sides - fifty-seven, fiftynine, sixty-one. The Bureau might be closed - this is Saturday. If it is, get Willie Deegan at his house. He lives out in Queens. Get him to open up for you. And second, hop over to the Station House and find out what's about this raid. Who's on the desk at this Precinct now?"
"MacKinoy, sir," a blue-coat spoke up. "Lieutenant Mitchel MacKinoy."
"I remember." A frown ruffled the Inspector's brow. "Sure, I remember MacKinoy. Used to be up in Harlem. He'll give you the dope on the raid. Tell you what, Reese. Hop right over there. Use his phone to get Deegan. Step on it. You don't have to worry about her." He waggled a thumb at Mary. "She and I get along fine…. Take it away."
The policeman folded back the tarpaulin, pushed down the casket lid. Inspector Heinsheimer followed them to the front door. He crooked his arm to the reporters behind the grille. "O.K., boys. You can come in now. And keep your hands in your pockets, mind."
When the reporters had scuffed up the dust in the basement and cellar, had stamped, with policemen at their heels, through all the echoing, empty rooms above; had grimed themselves liberally with plaster and dust, had churned the backyard into mud, had hopped back and forth through the loose boards of the fence, had stood awe-stricken before the ghostly banquet table, had asked innumerable questions and written the answers down, and the press photographers had taken many pictures, Inspector Heinsheimer carried the four dusty chairs of the phantom supper into the front room of the basement. He set them in a circle before the green tiled mantelpiece. He motioned to Mary Carner to seat herself in one chair, invited to another a newcomer, a slim, dark, brightlooking, nervous young man with a toothbrush mustache, who came from the District Attorney's office; and to a third, a police stenographer.
Outside in the hall, the reporters milled noisily, falling over the feet of the police. The Inspector shut the door, closing up the stifling airlessness of dust and damp.
The young D.A. ripped the cellophane from a pack of cigarettes, passed them around. He was apologetic. "Came as fast as I could, Heinsheimer. Saturday's a bad day in our office. Short handed."
"Taking it easy since you put Nardello away?"
The young D.A. raised his chin. "The District Attorney's office never takes it easy," he said stiffly. "We never rest on our laurels."
"O.K. O.K. The D.A.'s office never did get itself a sense of humor. Forget it. Let's go to town. We ain't so much ahead of you. Just got the dirty work done. Now, here's the picture and if your office tells me they ever saw a prettier one, I'll eat my badge. It's the Knight dame all right. The boys knew it the minute they saw the hair and buck teeth and the get-up. And her pocketbook besides. The identification ain't official yet. The cadaver's gone downtown. We'll get her father over to make it official. Miss Carner, here, was her friend. Her identification's O.K. too. There ain't no doubt at all it's her. In case you forgot, she was the lady lawyer that walked out of her office in October or November. There was a big time over it in the papers. Remember the exact date, Miss C?"
"Yes. She was last seen on October nineteenth when she left her office saying she was going to the movies. Her disappearance was officially reported ten days later."
"Well, she's found now all right. Cause of death: bullet through the heart. We've got a slug. We think it's the one. Thirty-eight. Sure it's the same calibre as ours and I'm not saying it doesn't look like one of ours. But we ain't the only ones use thirty-eights. Dug it out of the plaster in the hall. Back of the kitchen entrance. Ain't found the shell yet. We dope it the bullet was fired from a height of about five feet. Took a downward course, through the body into the wall. Make it a tall guy doing the shooting, see. Somebody taller'n the girl anyway. And that ain't hard to be."
"Approximate date of death?" the assistant D.A. asked.
Mary said: "She was wearing the clothes in which she disappeared. As far as we know they were the only ones missing from her wardrobe. Light suit. For mild weather."
"Figure on October nineteenth or around that," the Inspector supplemented. "Been in this house all winter more'n likely. Her watch stopped at eight thirtyseven. The body was carried down to the cellar and dumped in the furnace."
"Dismemberment, Inspector?"
"None. Sure, these old-fashioned hot air furnaces could hold a body easily. Not a guy my size, but a little dame. An attempt seems to have been made to burn the body but the fire went out. Whoever it was didn't know too much about starting a fire in that kind of a furnace. Or else had to leave before it got going right. All the flues were open and the draft probably carried the stink up the chimney. That's why nobody in the neighborhood never reported nothing. Now inside, in there in the kitchen, somebody was having a
party. They must have got in from the back door that the housewrecker - he's the guy found the corpse - says was open. They had an electric wire strung along the fence from next door to give them light."
"Who occupied the house next door, Inspector?"
"We're working on that. Give us time, will you? Now it looks like these guys, whoever they were, were sitting down to the party. They'd just lit up their cigars when this dame, alone, or whoever was with her, came in through the front door and knocked them off their seats. Somebody didn't like her looks, or didn't like the idea of being caught by anybody and he blazed away. We think there was somebody came in with the girl, somebody that carried a flashlight and a little pistol and wore silver specs and dropped them all in the hall before he beat it…. The little gun was fired, nicked the woodwork…. That's the set-up. Now, all we got to do is find out when the girl was killed and who was having dinner here that night."
There was a tap on the door at that moment, and without waiting for the "come in," Johnny Reese's cheerful face appeared in the opening. "MacKinoy wasn't there," he reported. "Said he was sick. Said he was going home. The boys looked up the dope on fifty-seven for me. Listen, this'll slay you: the Police Department practically saw the murder of Phyllis Knight! I ain't kidding. Listen to this." He took his notebook from his pocket, flipped the pages. "On Wednesday, October the nineteenth, at eight forty-five," he spoke slowly, as if savoring the impact of his words, "the vice squad raided the premises at fifty-seven, and arrested Flo Gordon, white; Bessie Jackson, colored; Billie Montrose, white; Evelyn La Rue, white; Gloria Clark, white. Booked 'em at the station house and took 'em to the Women's Court for arraignment on October twentieth. Don't tell the papers, but the police were practically on the spot when the deed was done."
