Time Off for Murder

by Zelda Popkin

  Sophie's broad Slavic face shone with pleasure.

  "Sit down, please, Sophie."

  The girl sat awkwardly in the opposite seat of the breakfast nook. She took up her orange juice in silence, waited for Mary to help herself to eggs and toast and offer it. At last she said: "You look so worried. Is some trouble?"

  Mary nodded.

  "Over me?"

  "Oh no," Mary hastened to reassure her.

  "Breakfast is not good?"

  "Breakfast is very good. It's a joy to have someone prepare it."

  The girl sighed. "I like it here very much. Maybe I can stay here. Cook for you. Do for you."

  "I wish it were possible. But I'm out of a job, too. Oh, you'll stay for the present, Sophie. Till we find you a good place. Sophie, did you ever meet a woman named Flo Gordon? Don't look so frightened, for heaven's sake."

  "I know Flo Gordon," Sophie said. "She is the woman come for me with the car and bring me to New York."

  Mary's cup splintered in its saucer, splashing coffee. Sophie jumped up, reached for a dish-towel.

  "Don't bother with the cup, Sophie. Answer me. When did you see her last?"

  "See her?" The words were a gasp through bloodless lips. "I do not see Flo Gordon. Not since I run out of the car. Only in my sleep I see her. She is always coming for me. She is coming to grab me."

  "Sophie, did you leave this apartment last night?"

  "Me?" The girl's bewilderment was evident and honest. "Where I go? I have no place to go."

  "All right. That's settled. You needn't worry about Flo any more. She's dead. She was found murdered this morning."

  The girl crossed herself. "Holy Mother," she whispered. Her terror changed to gleeful malevolence. "I am glad. Who killed her?"

  "We don't know."

  "Was some girl kill her?"

  "We don't know. She was drowned in the sea"

  The girl shuddered. "Is too good for her," she said. "Such a woman like that is to be cut in small pieces and give to the wild animals to eat. Miss Carner." A dam of memory had burst. Bitter words poured out. "You do not know how terrible that woman was. She is big and strong like a man. So strong she could kill somebody. She smokes cigars like a man. She uses terrible words like a man. She has no feelings like a woman. No pity for anybody. It is so good she is dead now."

  Mary shook her head. "Not so good for us. If she were still alive, she might have told us who killed Phyllis Knight." She paused, struck by the echo of a phrase. "She could kill somebody." She thought: "Could it have been Flo Gordon? Oh no. It couldn't. She was in jail. She was in prison in November. But was Phyllis killed in November? We think so…. We only think so. But we don't know when she died. We don't know anything positively, except that she went to the movies."

  Terry Cayle had used her connections. She had telephoned to motion picture exhibitors whom she knew. She had pleaded and to do Miss Cayle a favor, one of them had arranged for Miss Cayle's friends to see the six month old newsreels of the arrest and arraignment of racketeer Rockey Nardello.

  At half past ten o'clock Mary Carner and Sophie Duda sat in the dark of a stuffy, private projection room, in an office building high above Broadway.

  "I'll have to run the whole reel," the operator explained. "Don't know exactly where the Nardello stuff cuts in. You let me know where you want me to slow up."

  Out of the darkness, yesterday flickered in gray and black. German lorries rolled over Czecho-Slovakian highways; Nazi soldiers goose-stepped in the streets of Prague before the silent, saddened multitudes; British nursemaids gazed in wonder at the trenches in their beloved parks; the American fleet manoeuvred, guns swinging, monolithic, into the camera's eye, massive projectiles sending up spouts of sea and smoke, airplanes deploying over-head; New England surveyed its hurricane ravaged forest, Long Island cleared the wreckage from its gale-swept shores; players crouched on college gridirons; toothy damsels twirled their hips, displaying what the well-dressed coed would wear to the football games. All of it had an aura of embalmed quaintness.

  "New York's District Attorney Seeks Big Game…. State prepares for trial of Rockey Nardello," an announcer declaimed.

  Sophie gripped Mary's arm. "It commences now."

  "Please run it slowly," Mary asked the operator. "As slowly as you can."

  First, they saw the dapper District Attorney, taut as a marionette on wires, looking full into the camera's face, resolute eyes, forthright chin, tight lips, a voice pitch black, faintly tinged with venom, reading from a sheet of paper: "This is more than the trial of an individual. We hope to demonstrate to the people of this city, and of the nation, the vicious thralldom in which a racket can enslave an indifferent populace. Crime flourishes when the people are not vigilant. Master criminals believe they stand above the law…."

  Next, the announcer's mellifluous tones: "First and biggest game to be bagged by New York's doughty District Attorney is far-famed Rockey Nardello. Arrested early in September and arraigned in the Magistrates Court, Racketeer Rockey Nardello . . ."

  Sophie's fingers dug deeply into the flesh of Mary's forearm…. "You will see…watch for him."

  Now, Rockey on the steps of the court building, stocky, swarthy, a furred beast in camel's hair topcoat, fedora cocked over one temple, small pig's eyes in a wellfed, heavy-jowled, self-confident, self-loving face, waving a plump cigar, gesticulating with easy familiarity to the camera-men and the crowd.

  Eugene Vigo stood behind him, trying to shield his face.

  "Is that the man you meant, Sophie? The one behind Rockey?" Mary whispered.

  "No. Not yet. Wait. He is inside."

  Rockey stood before the judge's dais, contemplating with arrogant boredom the Stars and Stripes on the wall behind the judge's black-robed back.

  "Now, there. There, he is in the front row. Him. His hand is on his knee. He is listening to every word."

  Mary saw him plainly. The man's face was away from the camera. But his profile was clear and sharp. But there could he no mistake. Amazement became dismay; dismay, fear.

  Mary's hands and feet turned to ice. Her heart constricted. She struggled to find the voice in her throat.

  "Please print me stills of that courtroom scene. As quickly as you can."

  The whirring projector was silenced. The lights flared.

  Sophie Duda stared at the ashen face of the young detective. "So you know him, too," she said.

  When they came out onto the garish, crowded pavements of Broadway, brasslunged newsboys were hawking an extra. At every street corner they were shouting: "Wuxtree. Read all about it. Father Confesses Daughter's Murder. Read all about it."

  Mary dropped three pennies into a newsboy's hand. She scanned the lurid headline. "It can't be," she said. "It simply can't be true."

  Yet there it was in appalling black and white:

  "Lyman Knight, aged father of Phyllis Knight, socialite attorney, who was found shot to death in the furnace of an abandoned mid-town dwelling on Saturday, confessed this morning to the murder of his daughter. Summoning reporters to his dwelling on Washington Square, Mr. Knight read to them a long hand-written document in which he accused himself of the murder of the brilliant young lawyer, and declared that he had entrusted Agnes Ramsgate, his housekeeper, with the task of disposing of the body. He maintained that he had done away with his daughter in order to prevent her from bringing dishonor on the family reputation. The confession was made in the presence of Inspector Augustus Heinsheimer of the Homicide Division who ordered Mr. Knight placed under arrest and sent to Bellevue Hospital for observation. The full text of Lyman Knight's confession follows."

  Lunch-hurrying stenographers jostled Mary Carner. Sophie, at her side, tapped the pavement impatiently. A street vendor set up a tripod at the curb. "Here y'are, ladies and gents. The household delight, combination vegetable parer, orange and lemon squeezer. One little handy gadget that makes housekeeping easy. Only ten cents, one dime. A tenth part of a dollar. Greatest household inventio
n since the safety pin…. Step right up…. Offering it today under the cost of manufacture…. Today only…. One dime. Yes, sir, here you are, sir. The gent knows a bargain."

  A gathering crowd encircled Mary Carner, pushed her, stepped on her feet. She could not take her eyes from the newspaper. She read:

  "The ways of wickedness are past human comprehension. Evil springs from the inner nature. And there is nothing - I care not how many Bible scholars will prate to me of repentance and Divine mercy - there is nothing any man or woman can do to eradicate it. I know this because I have wrestled long and hard with the Devil and his works. My knowledge does not come from books, but from long years of struggle with human wickedness. Wickedness incarnate in the person of a single creature. That creature was my daughter Phyllis. She came into this world solely to do harm. Her birth took the life of a noble and beautiful woman, the sainted Marianna who was my beloved wife. A being of dazzling loveliness and goodness unequaled on this earth. Marianna was my sun and moon and stars. She brought light and sweetness into my life - into the lives of all who knew her. She did no harm, by word or even thought, to any human creature.

  "Yet this Fiend Incarnate, this creature whom the world called my daughter, took the life of Marianna, in order that she herself might live. A tiny infant. A tiny baby who was the Dark Fiend. It was my tragic fate to be left alone with this child of death. I watched it grow. I saw it, day by day, growing more willful, more cruel, more versed in the ways of sin. I, and I alone recognized in this Phyllis, the Devil, come to torment me in my loneliness. Yet she was my child and for long years I suffered her to remain under my roof, hoping always that one day the miracle would happen and the evil genius be driven out.

  "Many times I thought of killing her, and ridding myself of the curse upon my unhappy house. Many a night I approached her bedchamber with a knife in my hand. Yet always my sainted Marianna walked at my side and stayed my hand, and said: 'Forgive her, forgive her, she knows not what she does.' She went out into the world. I heard rumors of the things she was doing, the places to which she went, the activities in which she was engaged and I shuddered. If only she does not dishonor my house. If only she does not dishonor my name.

  "I come of a proud lineage. I can show you the portraits of governors, of generals, of distinguished men and proud women who were my forebears. Our name has never been dragged in the mire. But this child of hell, in her evil ways and her evil associations, had brought infamy on our honored name.

  "One night I called in my faithful Agnes. She served my beloved Marianna, and she has been loyal and faithful to her house. I said: 'Agnes, I cannot endure this creature under my roof. Marianna would not wish her to stay here any longer.' That night I killed Phyllis as she slept. And Agnes took her away. Agnes always does what I tell her to. I don't know where she took her. But my house was free again. I told Marianna what I had done. First she was a little sad. She said: 'You will have it on your conscience, Lyman. It will torment you and make you sad.' But when I convinced her that I was no longer sad but very, very happy at last, she too was glad…."

  Someone nudged Mary Carner's shoulder. She looked up into a policeman's face. "This ain't no public library, lady. Got to move on. Can't block traffic. Come on, you guys." The gadget vendor had folded his stand, evaporated. "Break it up. Break it up."

  Mary slipped the newspaper under her arm. "Come on, Sophie."

  The girl trotted obediently at her side…. "Where we going now?"

  "To Police Headquarters…. No, not you, Sophie. Don't look so scared, for heaven's sake. Nobody's going to bother you. You're going back to my apartment. You're going to wait there till I come home. It'll be around dinner time. Do you want to fix a little bite for us? I'll be busy this afternoon. Very busy."

  Johnny Reese, a trifle pale, and speaking nasally, greeted her in Inspector Heinsheimer's office.

  "Gee, I'm glad to see you."

  "How's your cold?"

  "I'm afraid I'm gonna live through it. Didn't worry me none. I was more worried when I heard you had a falling-out with the boss."

  "Where is he?"

  "Over to Bellevue. They took old man Knight there. Dja hear about the confession?"

  "I've just read it."

  "Isn't it the goddamdest thing? What do you make of it?"

  "Pure, unadulterated red herring."

  "You mean you think the old man's screwy and that's all there is to it?"

  "I mean that Lyman Knight kept wishing his daughter dead until he convinced himself that he had killed her."

  Johnny shrugged. "Can't sell the Inspector that bill of goods today. He's down at the hospital, sitting on the old man's bed, trying to get him to tell him how he got hold of Lieutenant MacKinoy's gun."

  "The Inspector's had a bad scare. He got snooty about picking up Flo Gordon, and the Atlantic Ocean dumped her in his lap. He's not passing up any bets now. Were you there when the old man confessed?"

  "In person."

  "Tell me."

  "Not much to tell. The Agnes woman called up and said Mister Knight had something important to talk to the Inspector about. And we hopped into the car and ran over. It was like that Sunday last fall when you and I were there. All the newspaper boys and girls lined up and the old man sitting in that big armchair, as if he were giving a party. He read the thing out loud, and then, while we were catching our breaths, he hands the paper to the Inspector and says: 'Now you may place me under arrest and conduct me to the electric chair.'"

  "I'll be damned."

  "Such language from a lady!"

  "But when they asked for details, the thing fell apart, didn't it?"

  "Why no, that's the crazy part. It didn't. The Inspector hammered at him. He said: 'Now listen, Mister Knight. The department knows that Phyllis was killed by a bullet from Lieutenant MacKinoy's gun.' And the old man just lifted that mane he calls eye-brows and said, cool as a cucumber: 'Lieutenant MacKinoy was a good friend of mine. He did me a good turn.' And there's MacKinoy six feet under in the cemetery where he can't tell us yes or no."

  Mary shifted from foot to foot. "Then I'm wrong. My first reaction was that the old man had made a confession of wishes and hopes. Now I'm beginning to wonder. How about Agnes? What has she said?"

  "Her? Not a word. She's as screwy as the old man. When he was reading that thing, she stood alongside, wagging her head, saying 'yes, yes, yes,' to everything he said. She put up an awful holler when they took the old man away. Wanted to go along with him. Scared they're going to hurt him."

  "Where's she now?"

  "They got her downstairs. Talking to her like Dutch uncles."

  "Has she told them anything?"

  "Naw. All that's on her mind is how the old man is…." His words were thick with catarrh and disgust.

  "But Lyman Knight couldn't have murdered Flo Gordon, no matter what he may or may not have done to his own daughter."

  "Check and double check. But Gordon's murder could've had nothing to do with Phyllis Knight's. Ever think of that?"

  "No. I haven't. And I don't intend to start thinking it."

  "What's on your mind, sister?"

  "My hat."

  "Come on, now. That's no way to act. You're working with us, ain't you?"

  "No." She shook her head decisively. "I'm working alone. The department and I can't seem to get together."

  "Getting temperamental, aren't you?"

  "No, Johnny, I'm not. I've just gotten an idea. And I think the idea will work out best if I work alone."

  "Your friend Phyllis had the same idea, and see where she got."

  "I'm not going into any dark basements. You can be sure of that."

  "Where you going?"

  "That depends."

  "Won't talk, eh?"

  "You catch on fast."

  The door opened. An attendant came in. "There's a man outside," he announced. "He says the Inspector left word for him to come down here yesterday, but he was outa town. Name's Weinstein."

 
"Swell." Miss Carner rose from her chair. "He's the neighbor. The tenant who went away for the weekend."

  "Send him in," Johnny Reese said. "I'll talk to him now."

  A suntanned young man, carrying a briefcase, came in briskly, greeted Johnny Reese: "Inspector Heinsheimer?"

  "Thanks for the compliment. I'm Detective Reese. This is Miss Carner. The Inspector's out just now. Didn't want to keep you waiting."

  "Very thoughtful of you. Took my lunch hour to run down here. Understand the Inspector wished to talk to me."

  "Very much," said Johnny Reese. "I tried to page you Saturday. Have a seat."

  The young man put his briefcase on the Inspector's desk. "In connection with that suicide in our building on Saturday, I suppose?"