I waited near the entrance until a slender man wearing a long white apron came from behind the bar and approached me. He was polishing a wine goblet with a cloth.
“Sir?” he said.
“I’m meeting a gentleman,” I said. “Perhaps I’ll take a table and have a drink while I’m waiting.”
“Very good,” he said, looking around. “How about the corner?”
So that’s where I was seated after I had hung up my coat. My back was to the wall, and I could watch the entrance. A waiter came over and I ordered a Scotch and water.
I had taken only one sip when a tall black man came into the Cheshire Cheese and looked around. He took off his coat and hat, stowed them on the open rack, and came walking directly toward me with a light, bouncy stride. I struggled out of my chair to shake his hand.
“Mr. Bigg?” he said. “I’m Stilton.” As he shifted the free chair from my right to sit opposite me, the waiter scurried over to move the pewter serving platter, napkin, utensils, and water goblet in front of the detective.
“Waiting long?” Stilton asked.
“Just got here,” I told him. “I’m having a drink. Something for you?”
He ordered a dry martini straight up, no twist or olive. It arrived with lightning speed.
“All right?” I asked him.
“Just right,” he said. “How long have you been a Chief Investigator?”
He smiled at my shock. I managed to regain composure.
“Two years. But I was an assistant for two years before that. To a man named Roscoe Dollworth. He was with the Department. Did you know him?”
“Dolly? Oh hell yes. He was some kind of a cop before the sauce got to him. He still alive?”
“He’s retired and living in Florida.”
“I think we better order,” he said. “We can talk while we’re eating. I’ve got maybe an hour before the loot starts getting antsy. I know exactly what I want. Roast beef on the bone, very rare. Yorkshire pudding. Whatever vegetable they’re pushing. And a salad. And a mug of ale.”
I had a steak-and-kidney pie, salad, and ale.
“About this Kipper thing,” Stilton said abruptly. “You say your interest is in the insurance?”
“The claim,” I said, nodding. “We have to justify the claim with the company that insured him.”
“What company is that?”
“Uh, Metropolitan Life,” I said.
“That’s odd,” he said. “About a week after Kipper died, I got a visit from a claim adjuster from Prudential. He said they had insured Kipper.”
He looked at me steadily. I think I was blushing. I know I couldn’t meet his stare. I may have hung my head.
“You don’t mind if I call you Josh, do you?” Stilton asked gently.
“No, I don’t mind.”
“You can call me Perce,” he offered. “You see, Josh, two years in this business, or even four years, aren’t enough to learn how to be a really good liar. The first rule is only lie when you have to. And when you do lie, keep it as close to the truth as you can and keep it simple. Don’t try to scam it up. If you do, you’re sure to get in trouble. When I asked you if your interest was the insurance, you should have said yes and let it go at that. I probably would have swallowed it. It’s logical that lawyers handling the estate would be interested in a dead man’s insurance. But then you started fumbling around with justifying the claim, and I knew you were jiving me.”
“And I didn’t even know the name of the company,” I said sadly.
He put his head back and laughed, so loudly that the other diners turned to look.
“Oh, Josh,” he said. “I don’t know what company insured Kipper either. No claim adjuster ever visited me. I just said Prudential to catch your reaction. When you collapsed, I knew you were running a game on me.”
Our food was served, and we didn’t speak until the waiter left the table.
“Then you won’t tell me about the Kipper case?” I said.
“Why the hell not?” he said, astonished. “I’m willing to cooperate. It’s all a matter of public record. That boss of yours, the guy with the fish, could probably even get a look at the file if he pushed hard enough. How’s the steak-and-kidney pie?”
“Delicious,” I said. “I’m really enjoying it. Is your roast beef rare enough?”
“If it was any rarer, it would still be breathing. All right, now let me tell you about the Kipper thing. I went over the file before I left the office, just to refresh my memory. Here’s what happened…”
As he spoke, and ate steadily, I glanced up frequently from my own plate to look at him.
I guessed him to be in his early fifties. He was about six feet tall, with narrow shoulders and hips. Very willowy. He was dressed with great care and polish, in a double-breasted blue pinstripe that closed at the lower button with a graceful sweep of a wide lapel. His shirt was a snowy white broadcloth with a short, button-down collar. He wore a polka-dot bowtie with butterfly wings. He had a gold watch on one wrist and a gold chain identification bracelet on the other. If he was wearing a gun—and I presumed he was—it certainly didn’t show.
His color was hard to distinguish in the dim light, but I judged it to be a dark brown with a reddish tinge, not quite cordovan but almost. His hair was jet black and lay flat on his skull in closely cropped waves. His hands were long, fingernails manicured.
His eyes were set deep and wide apart. His nose was somewhat splayed, and his thick lips turned outward. High cheekbones, like an Indian. He had a massive jaw, almost square, and a surprisingly thick, corded neck. Small ears were flat to his head.
I would not call him a handsome man, but his features were pleasant enough. He looked amused, assured, and competent. When he was pondering, or trying to find the right word or phrase, he had the habit of putting his tongue inside his cheek, bulging it.
I think I was most impressed by the cool elegance of the man, totally unlike what I envisioned a New York police detective would be. He really looked like a business executive or a confident salesman. I thought this might be an image he projected deliberately, as an aid in his work.
“Let’s start with the time sequence,” he began. “This happened on January 24, a Wednesday. The first call went to 911, and was logged in at 3:06. That’s P.M., the afternoon. A squad car was dispatched from the One-Nine Precinct and arrived at the premises at 3:14. Not bad, huh? Two cops in the squad. They took a look at what had happened and called their precinct. This was at 3:21. Everyone was doing their jobs. We don’t fuck up all the time, you know. The squeal came to the Homicide Zone where I work at 3:29. It didn’t sound like a homicide, but these things have to be checked out. I arrived at the scene at 3:43. I was with my partner, Detective Lou Emandola. We no sooner got in the place when the loot called and pulled Lou away. Some nut was holding hostages in a supermarket over on First Avenue, and they were calling out the troops.
“So Lou took off and I was left alone. I mean I was the only homicide guy there. There were plenty of cops, the ambulance guys, the Medical Examiner, the lab truck technicians, a photographer, and so forth. A real mob scene. I questioned the witnesses then, but they were so spooked I didn’t get much out of them, so I left. I went back again that evening, and I went twice more. Also, I talked to neighbors, the ME who did the PM, your Mr. Tabatchnick, Kipper’s doctor, and Kipper’s sons. After all this, it looked like an open-and-shut suicide, and that’s how we closed it out. Any questions so far?”
“Who made the first call to 911?” I asked.
“I’m getting to that,” Stilton said. “I’ve hardly started yet.” He paused, drained his tankard of ale, and looked at me. I called the waiter and ordered two more. The detective continued:
“Here’s the story…First of all, you’ve got to understand the scene of the crime, although there was no crime, unless you want to call suicide a crime. Anyway, that townhouse is a palace. Huge? You wouldn’t believe. You could sleep half of East Harlem in there. It’s six
floors high and it’s got a double-basement, plus an elevator. I never did get around to counting all the rooms. Thirty at least, I’d guess, and most of them empty. I mean they were furnished, but no one lived in them. A terrible waste of space. The top floor, the sixth, is one big room fronting on the street. It runs halfway back the depth of the building. The rear half is an open terrace. The room up front is used for parties. It has a big-screen TV, bar, hi-fi equipment, movie projector, and so forth. The rear terrace has plants, and trees, and outdoor furniture. Sol Kipper took his dive from that terrace. It has a wall around it thirty-eight inches high—I measured it—but that wouldn’t be hard to climb over, even for an old guy like Kipper.”
He paused again to take a swallow of his new ale. I used the interruption to dig into my dinner. I had been so engrossed in his story, not wanting to miss anything, that I had neglected to eat. He had finished most of his beef and was now whittling scraps off the rib, handling his knife with the dexterity of a surgeon.
“The nearer the bone,” he said, “the sweeter the meat. All right, here’s what I found out: At 2:30 P.M. on that Wednesday, there were five people in the townhouse. Sol Kipper, his wife, Tippi—she’s a looker, that one—and the three servants. Sol and Tippi were in their bedroom, the master bedroom on the fifth floor. The servants were on the ground floor, in and around the kitchen. Tippi was expecting a guest, a Protestant minister named Knurr. He was a frequent visitor, and he was usually served a drink or two and some little sandwiches. The servants were setting up for him.
“Mrs. Kipper came downstairs about ten minutes to three to make sure everything was ready for the Reverend Knurr. Now we got four people downstairs, and only Sol Kipper upstairs—right? In the back of the townhouse there’s a patio. Most of it is paved with tiles, and there’s aluminum furniture out there: a cocktail table, chairs, an umbrella table—stuff like that. Farther in the rear is a small garden: a tree, shrubs, flowers in the summer, and so on. But most of the patio is paved with tiles. There are two ways of getting out there: one door through the kitchen, and French doors from the dining room.
“A few minutes after three, the four people hear a tremendous crash and a big, heavy thump on the patio. They all hear it. They rush to the kitchen door and look out, and there’s Sol Kipper. He was squashed on the tiles. That was the thump they heard. And one of his legs had hit the umbrella table, dented it, and overturned it. That was the crash they heard. They ran out, took one look, and knew Sol Kipper was as dead as a mackerel—no joke intended.”
Stilton finished his dinner. He pushed back his chair, crossed his knees, and adjusted his trouser crease. He lighted a cigarette and sipped at what remained of his ale.
“Instant hysteria,” he went on. “Mrs. Kipper fainted, the cook started bawling, and right about then the front doorbell rang.”
“The guest?” I said.
“Right. Reverend Knurr. The butler went to the front door, let him in, and screamed out what had just happened. I gather this Knurr more or less took charge then. He’s a put-together guy. He called 911, and he got Tippi Kipper revived, and the others quieted down. By the time I got there, they had found the suicide note. How about some coffee?”
“Sure,” I said. “Dessert? A brandy?”
“A brandy would be fine,” he said. “May I suggest Rémy Martin?”
So I ordered two of those and a pot of coffee.
“I’ve got a lot of questions,” I said tentatively.
“Thought you might have,” he said. “Shoot.”
“Are you sure there were only four people in the house besides Sol Kipper?”
“Absolutely. We searched every room when we got there. No one. And the witnesses swear no one left.”
“The time sequence you gave me of what happened—did you get that from Mrs. Kipper?”
“And the servants. And Reverend Knurr. All their stories matched within a minute or so. None of them sounded rehearsed. And if you’re figuring maybe they were all in on it together, forget it. Why should they all gang up on the old guy? According to the servants, he treated them just right. A fast man with a buck. The wife says the marriage was happy. None of them showed any signs of a struggle. No scratches or bruises—nothing like that. And if one of them, or all of them wanted to get rid of Sol, it would have been a lot easier to slip something into one of his pill bottles. You should have seen his medicine chest. He had a drugstore up there. And, of course, there was the suicide note. In his writing.”
“Do you remember what it said?” I asked. “Exactly?”
“It was addressed to his wife. It said: ‘Dear Tippi. Please forgive me. I am sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused.’ It was signed ‘Sol.’”
I sighed. Our coffee and cognac arrived, and we sat a moment in silence, then sipped the Rémy Martin. Very different from the California brand I drank at home.
“Did you check the wall on the terrace?”
Stilton looked at me without expression.
“You’re all right,” he said. “Dolly did a good job on you. Yes, we checked the terrace wall. It’s a roughly finished cement painted pink. There were scrape marks on the top where Kipper went over. And there were crumbs of pink cement on the toes of his shoes, stuck in the welt. Any more questions?”
“No,” I said, depressed. “Maybe I’ll think of some later, but I can’t think of any now. So it was closed out as a suicide?”
“Did we have any choice?” Detective Percy Stilton said almost angrily. “We have a zillion unsolved homicides to work on. I mean, out-and-out, definite homicides. How much time can we spend on a case that looks like a suicide no matter how you slice it? So we closed the Kipper file.”
I took a swallow of brandy, larger than I should have, and choked on it. Stilton looked at me amusedly.
“Go down the wrong way?” he said.
I nodded. “And this suicide,” I said, still gasping, “it sticks in my throat, too. Perce, how do you feel about it? I mean personally? Are you absolutely satisfied in your own mind that Sol Kipper committed suicide?”
He stared at me, bulging his cheek with his tongue, as if trying to make up his mind. Then he poured himself more coffee.
“It’s trade-off time,” he said softly.
“What?” I said. “I don’t understand.”
“A trade-off,” he said. “Between you and me. You tell me what your interest is in how Sol Kipper died and I’ll tell you what I personally think.”
I took a deep breath and wished I had never asked Mr. Tabatchnick if I could tell the detective about Marty Reape. Tabatchnick had definitely said no. If I hadn’t asked, I could have traded with Stilton without a qualm. I pondered where my loyalty lay. I decided.
“It means my job,” I said, “if any of this gets out.”
“No one will hear it from me,” Stilton said.
“All right,” I said. “I trust you. I’ve got to trust you. Here it is…”
And I told him all about Marty Reape. Everything, beginning with his telephone call to Mr. Tabatchnick, then my call to him, my meeting with him, what he said and what I said, the decision to meet his price, and how he died Wednesday evening under the wheels of a subway train.
Stilton listened closely to this recital, not changing expression. But he never took his eyes off me, and I noticed he chainsmoked while I was speaking. He was about to light another when I finished. He broke the cigarette in two and threw it down.
“I smoke too damned much,” he said disgustedly.
“What do you think?” I said, leaning forward eagerly, “about Marty Reape?”
“Your boss could be right,” he said slowly. “Reape could have been a cheap chiseler trying to pull a con.”
“But he was killed!” I said vehemently.
“Was he?” Stilton said. “You don’t know that. And even if he was, that doesn’t prove he had the information he claimed. Maybe he tried to pull his little scam on some other people who aren’t as civilized as you and your boss, and they
stepped on him.”
“But he knew the size of the Kipper estate,” I argued.
“Doesn’t that prove he knew the family or had some dealings with them?”
“Maybe,” he said. “And maybe Sol Kipper told someone what’s in his will, and maybe that someone told Marty Reape. Or maybe Reape just made a lucky guess about the size of the estate.”
It was very important to me to convince this professional detective that my suspicions about the death of Sol Kipper had merit and justified further investigation. So, having come this far in betraying Mr. Tabatchnick’s trust, I felt I might as well go all the way.
“There’s another thing,” I said. “On the morning of the day Sol Kipper died, he called Tabatchnick and set up an appointment. He said he wanted to change his will.”
Stilton had been turning his cigarette lighter over and over in his long fingers, looking down at it. Now he stopped his fiddling and raised his eyes slowly until he was staring at me.
“Jesus,” he breathed, “the plot thickens.”
“All right,” I said, sitting back. “That’s my trade. Now let’s have yours. Do you really think Sol Kipper committed suicide?”
He didn’t hesitate.
“That’s the official verdict,” he said, “and the file is closed. But there were things about it that bugged me from the start. Little things. Not enough to justify calling it homicide, but things, three, to be exact, that just didn’t set right with me. First of all, committing suicide by jumping from the sixth floor is far from a sure thing. You can jump from a higher place than that and still survive.
“That’s why most leapers go higher up than six stories. They want to kill themselves, but they don’t want to take the chance of being crippled for life. This Kipper owned a textile company. He was semiretired, his sons run the business, but Kipper went there for a few hours three or four days a week. The office is on the thirty-fourth floor of a building in the garment center. He could have gone out a window there and they’d have had to pick him up with a blotter.”
“Perce, what actually killed him when he went off the sixth-floor terrace?”
The Tenth Commandment Page 8
