City of the Dead

by Herbert Lieberman

  On past the steam tables, through the swinging door, and into a huge kitchen in the back. More barred windows, these so high you cannot see out them. Scullery and cupboards, big, old gas ranges, zinc-lined walk-in refrigerated lockers, their doors hanging open. Then aisles of cabinets full of cheap white crockery, much of it cracked; shelves from floor to ceiling, with still an occasional pan, skillet, poacher—all battered, punctured, deemed even unworthy of common pilferage.

  A sudden bang. Flynn wheels in time to see a board clatter to the floor and a huge gray rat wamble off into the shadows.

  Now a dormitory, that saddest of rooms. Here numberless people, strangers all, lay down together for a night or two of rest. Aisles of rusty steel cots. Rusty springs. Mattresses thin as pancakes, with urine-stained ticking, rolled up neatly at the foot of each cot. An old shoe on the floor beneath a cot; a moldering suit jacket hanging limp and disembodied on a wire hanger. Naked light bulbs depending from long, frayed wires. At the head of the room a large plaster crucifix; an infinitely sorrowing Christ, His nose broken off, His toes nibbled by rodents, gazes down upon the scene.

  The place still has the sour, fetid smell of the flophouse. Strong disinfectant, human perspiration, and filth. Flynn fancies he can even hear the endless hacking coughs through the night, the stifled cry of bad dreams or delirium tremens. He moves on, drawn ever upward into the thickening shadows.

  Why am I here? he asks himself. What do I expect to find? This alleged Salvation Army figure seen by several shopkeepers as well as a resident of the neighborhood? They’d all said the same thing. They’d seen such a person going in and out of the shack near Coenties Slip. How in God’s name was he to find this person? And even given the miracle of turning up such a person, it was highly improbable that this would be his man. If such an individual did actually exist, then most probably he was a legitimate Salvation Army officer who’d stumbled inadvertently into that desperate little warren of outcast men and tried in some small way to help them.

  No, the man he was looking for was undoubtedly one of the residents of that shack. One of the desperate, harried men who cowered there through the long, dismal winter months, feeding on scraps, panhandling an occasional pint of muscatel, and waiting for a break.

  There must have been at least a half dozen of them living there at one time, Flynn speculates. They’d found at least that many sets of separate and distinct fingerprints. Starving, freezing to death in that unheated little shack, without sanitary facilities, no doubt they became increasingly desperate, quarrelsome, ultimately preying upon one another for small treasures—a crust of bread, a few coins. At a certain point they fought. Two of them were unlucky. Those were the two poor bastards they’d exhumed from the mud along the river. After the awful thing was done, the others must have then fled. Each going his own separate way.

  So the man he was looking for, he was reasonably certain, would be an itinerant, a drifter. A man with no address, no next of kin, and a record of arrests ranging from common vagrancy right on up to assault and manslaughter. He’d seen enough of such men in his time to know the type.

  Upstairs, on the fourth floor, he stumbles into an old music room and startles a fat, sleek grackle that had, no doubt, entered through one of the numerous broken windows. The frightened bird rises, the awful drumming of its wings whirring past the detective’s shoulder, and soafs upward to the high, pitched ceiling where it bats about, making its awful chugging sound and skirling beneath the eaves. Finally it comes to rest on an overhead pipe and, perching there, turns its yellow beady eyes down upon the detective. They stare at each other for a while, as if carefully taking the measure of each other. “Sorry, pal.” Flynn chuckles softly and waves at the bird. “Didn’t mean to disturb you.” He shrugs and turns. He really hadn’t expected to find anything there. But after days of checking fingerprints, studying mug shots, checking out leads that invariably terminated in dead ends, he was ready to try anything.

  Out in the corridor once again, he starts down through the gloom, his slow, descending steps reverberating on the floors below.

  Curious, how ghastly noise sounds in a deserted place where none should be. Especially one’s own noise, as if the mere sound of it made one suddenly vulnerable. Flynn tries to step more lightly, to go down more slowly, to reduce his own noises.

  Down he goes, and still there is that sound of dripping water, loud, regular, and echoing through the cavernous structure. But here, on the third floor, it seems loudest of all.

  Inexplicably he veers toward the sound, never having intended to, drawn toward it as if tugged forward on some invisible leash. For Edward Flynn is a finicky man. Parsimonious and rather compulsive. The sort of man who straightens wall pictures and turns out electric lights in unoccupied rooms. The dripping, profligate water tap needs his immediate attention.

  His steps lead him past a succession of small, cell-like rooms, austerely furnished but better appointed than the dormitories. Better beds, thicker mattresses, a small bureau, a night table, a standard mail-order lounging chair, and a floor lamp in each. Identically furnished; one indistinguishable from the next. And each with its own private lavatory.

  Undoubtedly staff quarters, Flynn reasons, and enters one of the lavatories. A sink, a wall mirror, a toilet, a stall shower. All very correct, utilitarian. All as uniform and unimaginative as the bedroom. Smiling, he gazes at the dripping faucet, as if he, the detective, had tracked the criminal to his lair. He walks slowly toward it. The spigot is cold and clammy to the touch, beaded with sweat. “Washer’s shot,” he murmurs to himself, twisting back hard on the faucet handle as far as it will go. Still he cannot get the drip to stop.

  Although he’s late now, due to report back to the precinct within the hour, the drip has nevertheless become something of a cause for him. He stands there, scratching his head, pondering a solution. If only he had a wrench—

  In the next moment he twists the faucet full on and a rush of clear cold water gushes noisily into the sink.

  “Now that is odd,” he muses, turning the spigot off so that it settles once more into its steady drip. Not the gush, of course, but the fact that the water in a building shut up for ten years has never been turned off. And something more—that clear cold gush of water. Taps that have gone unused for a decade are invariably rusty. When first turned on, they tend to cough and spit. And the first water to flow out of them is usually rusty, full of sediment, and putrid.

  “Odd,” he murmurs once more, suddenly seeing his own gray, puzzled face peering back at him from a mirror above the sink. The mirror is the door of a medicine cabinet. Jerking it open, he sees a half-dozen roaches disporting themselves on the back wall of the cabinet. The sudden intrusion of light sends them all off in different directions, scurrying for cracks.

  Left there now are three dusty glass shelves with a meager scattering of abandoned toiletries—old bottles of prescription medicines, an eyecup, a mug of shaving cream, an injector razor, a beaver-brush applicator, and a toothbrush.

  It is the injector razor that first attracts Flynn’s eye. Not that it is in any way an unusual inject razor. The model is a fairly common well-known brand name—a Gillette Trac II. Ordinary enough, but not the kind of razor one associates with a decade ago. This, to Detective Sergeant Edward Flynn, has a fairly current ring to it. Also, the blade is by no means rusty. On the contrary, it looks rather fresh.

  And then, the beaver-brush applicator. Damp, rather wettish to the touch. Now that is odd, he thinks.

  Shortly after he leaves the old South Street shelter, clapping shut the big brass padlock on the front gate, Flynn ducks into a coffee-shop phone booth. In the next moment or so he is talking once more with General Pierce at the Army’s division headquarters. Had the Army made any provision for keeping a watchman on the premises of the old shelter at night, he inquires of the General, and is promptly informed that no such provision is now or, indeed, was ever in force.

  »48«

  “You Haggard
?”

  “Right.”

  “Sid Fox. Wershba told me you were coming.”

  “On? Did he way what for?”

  “Just a little. Come on in. We’re holding three of ’em over in the mail room of the First National.”

  2:00 P.M. PAN AM BUILDING, 45TH STREET ENTRANCE

  Patrol cars. Fire engines, Mobile TV vans. Throngs of people milling about the entrance of the building. Police cordons. The sound of sirens converging on the spot. Thrown about the 45th Street entrance, a large semicircle of patrol cars, doors open, dome lights rotating. More patrol cars nosing their way slowly up through the cordoned-off street between Vanderbilt and Lexington Avenues.

  The door of the patrol car slams behind Haggard as he and Sergeant Fox push through the crowds, preceded by a flying wedge made up of a half-dozen patrolmen running interference.

  “How come you got ’em in the bank?” Haggard asks over his shoulder. “They try to bust the pace?”

  “Nope—just happened to be convenient. Right up ahead there through the lobby, Lieutenant. Ground floor on your right.”

  They spin through revolving doors. Several firemen speed past—men in helmets, bright-red riot jackets—hauling buckets of sand, lines of fire hose.

  “How many of ’em you say you got?” asks Haggard.

  “Three. There are two more up there. Got ’em pretty well sealed off between the thirty-fifth floor and the rooftop. Pulled around a half-dozen bombs out of the place already.”

  “Where’d you find ’em?”

  “Trash cans. Mail chutes. Stairwells mostly. They were seeding the joint.”

  “Think you got ’em all?”

  “Don’t know. It’s a big building. We’re scouring the place from boiler room to rooftop. Got a restaurant up there. Caught a lot of people eating lunch.”

  “Get ’em all out?”

  Up ahead a patrolman swings a pair of heavy glass doors open before them.

  “That was easy.” says Fox. “Manager wasn’t all that happy about it. Wanted us to wait and let ’em have their dessert so he could charge ’em full price.”

  They swing on through the glass doers of the First National City Bank, located just below the mezzanine. Inside the bank the hum and buzz of disrupted enterprise going on amidst a semblance of order. Bombs or no bombs, it is business as usual at the bank. Unsuspecting clients bustle in, wanting to cash checks, make deposits, negotiate loans. They’re suddenly caught up in the subdued chaos of the place. Hordes of police, frightened sellers, harried bank officials scurrying about, red in the face, talking in whispers, calming, soothing, reassuring both clients and personnel.

  “Right up this way, Sarge.” A patrolman waves them on through a small corridor leading to the back.

  “Get anything out of them yet?” Haggard asks.

  “Nope. Shut tight as clams.”

  Haggard sighs, pushes on through a heavy walnut door and then another door with a pane of frosted glass, the words MAIL ROOM stenciled in gold letters upon it. “All right—let’s take ’em one at a time.”

  Beyond the glass door a large mail room. Boxes, cartons, U.S. Post Office canvas wagons, Pitney-Bowes franking machines, an immense wall of pigeonholes, each crammed with envelopes, more bundles of letters waiting to be sorted. And the place crawling with patrolmen and detectives.

  Off to one corner, three white youths sit. Somewhere between the ages of eighteen and twenty. They wear identical outfits consisting of fatigue jackets, combat boots, berets. They sit dazed and sullen, slumped in chairs against the wall, while a beefy Irish patrolman named O’Doyle hovers above them, pad and pencil in hand, apparently questioning each.

  “Okay, O’Doyle,” says Fox, marching up, “I’ll take it from here.”

  “Right, Sarge.” The cop shoots a disapproving scowl at his charges.

  “Get anything out of ’em?” Haggard asks.

  “Not a thing, Lieutenant. They’re nasty little beggars.” O’Doyle shoots another scowl toward the three youths, speaking suddenly quite loud. “If they give you any smart-ass, Lieutenant, just let me know. Particularly that little mouse-eared bastard over there. Thinks he’s a tough one.”

  O’Doyle juts a stubby finger in the direction of a small, pallid, intense youth, more sullen, obviously more defiant, than the other two. “Just lemme know if he gets funny with you, Lieutenant.”

  “Righto,” Haggard murmurs softly, his restless, searching blue eyes already recording, assessing, evaluating. “Leave that one here for me. You can take the other two out with you.”

  The big patrolman lumbers swiftly toward the youths. “On your feet, you two.” He turns then to the small, sullen youth left behind. “Hear that, sonny?” O’Doyle snaps. “You smart-ass the lieutenant here, I’ll tear your nose off.”

  A few of the other patrolmen chuckle, then move out behind O’Doyle and the two boys.

  For a long while after they’ve gone Haggard ignores the boy. He studies some notes, gazes thoughtfully around the room, chats quietly off to one side with Fox, letting the youth stew a bit.

  Then suddenly he turns, marches back, coming abruptly at the boy, taking him by surprise. “Stand up.”

  “What?” Startled, the boy gazes up only to see those two small pebbly blue eyes boring down upon him.

  “Stand up, I said.”

  The boy continues to sit, an impudent little smirk creeping slowly across his face. In the next moment he is jacked straight to his feet, hauled up unceremoniously by the collar, and rammed up hard against the wall.

  “When I say stand,” Haggard snarls between gritted teeth, “I mean stand.”

  “Hey, now look, man—”

  “Man?” Haggard’s eyes bulge from his head. His voice booms like a clap of thunder. “Man? Who the hell are you calling man? My name isn’t man. When you address me, it’s Lieutenant, or sir, or your Lordship. None of this man crap. Get it?” He crowds the boy up harder against the wall, twisting the collar tighter around his throat, so that he makes a gagging sound. “Get it, sonny?”

  Red-faced and gasping, the boy nods with some difficulty, while Haggard’s huge paw tightens its grip on his collar.

  “Now, what’s your name?”

  This time the youth, cheeks flared red, eyes tearing not from hurt but inner rage, swallows hard.

  “Name?” Haggard says once more.

  “I refuse to answer any questions until I’ve had benefit of counsel,” the boy says, bristling with defiance. He’s obviously educated. Middle class. And with that snotty, well-fed, never-deprived manner, that you-can’t-do-anything-to-me attitude of a youth brought up in a comfortable suburb who’s never had to contend with anything more than his own boredom.

  “Benefit of counsel.” Haggard whistles, and calls over his shoulder at Fox. “I take it he’s been apprised of his rights.”

  “He has, Lieutenant. Name is Douglas Mears. Seventeen years old. Comes from Greenwich, Connecticut, according to identification in his wallet.”

  Haggard’s beady eyes pin the youth back hard against the wall. “Don’t you have anything better to do with your time, Douglas, than making a goddamn pain in the ass of yourself?”

  “I refuse to say another word until I’ve had the benefit of legal counsel.”

  “Endangering the lives of a lot of innocent people? Dressed up in that silly costume—a beret and a fatigue jacket? Like a road-company Fidel Castro.”

  “I refuse to—”

  A sharp crack across the jaw from Haggard’s open palm stifles the rest of the reply.

  “He call his lawyer?” the detective asks.

  “His father’s his lawyer.”

  A slow, mean grin widens Haggard’s features. “That so, Douglas?”

  “It damned well is,” the boy hisses. “And you’re gonna be sorry you used your hands on me.”

  “Me? Sorry?” Haggard laughs out loud. “That little shot’s given me more pleasure than I’ve had all week.”

  Fox lifts a heav
y section of lead pipe and walks it slowly across the room to Haggard. “Caught him with this little beauty in a stairwell on the thirty-second floor.” Haggard takes the device, now safely deactivated, and studies it. It’s a pipe bomb of a fairly typical sort—center filled with about a pound of gelignite, simple wire fuse. A fairly crude thing. A child might have easily assembled it.

  “Pretty stupid for a smart boy like you, Douglas.” Haggard slowly shakes his head from side to side. “Getting caught like that, holding all the goods. Hope Papa’s a good lawyer.”

  Haggard and Fox both laugh spitefully. In the next moment, the boy’s cockiness appears to melt a bit. Suddenly his eyes seem puzzled and not a little frightened. “Like I told the other pig—”

  “Pig?” Haggard wheels and peers hard at him.

  “That’s right.” The boy sneers. “That pig cop.” He thrusts a finger at Sergeant Fox.

  “Hear that, Fox,” Haggard calls over his shoulder. “Douglas here calls you a pig.”

  “That’s a lie,” Fox says, deeply aggrieved. “I’m a Democrat.”

  “That was very unkind of you, Douglas,” says Haggard sorrowfully. “The sergeant here is a very fair man. A Democrat. A husband. A father. Would you call his children sucklings?”

  “I’m sorry,” young Mears stammers, obviously baffled. “I didn’t mean—I meant only him. That guy.”

  “What guy?” says Haggard, staring around as if he saw no one.

  “That guy.” Once again the boy thrusts his finger at Fox.

  “Oh, you mean the sergeant?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well then, Douglas, say that. Say ‘the sergeant.’”

  “Yeah—like I told him.”

  “Not him, Douglas—the sergeant. Say ‘the sergeant.’”

  “The sergeant—like I told the sergeant.”

  “That’s better,” Haggard says gently.

  The boy’s face is flooded with exasperation. “I was just standing around—”

  “In the stairwell?”

  “Yeah—in the stairwell.”

  “Do you always stand around in stairwells, Douglas?”