An Accidental Corpse

by Helen A. Harrison

  Alfonso and Ted embraced Lee, wrapping her in their protective blanket of concern. She greeted them gratefully, but with cool reserve.

  “Give me your suitcase,” urged Ted, relieving her of her hand luggage. “Where are your baggage claim checks? I’ll take care of collecting the bags.”

  “This is it,” Lee told him. “I sent my trunk back on the ship. It should arrive next week. Now please take me home.” Very efficient, very matter-of-fact, all under control. My God, thought Ossorio, don’t underestimate this woman.

  “Everything is arranged,” he told her as they walked to his Lincoln sedan. “The funeral is on Wednesday, at the Springs chapel. Paul told me that’s where you wanted it.”

  “That’s where Jackson would have wanted it,” she snapped. “His people are Presbyterian, although you wouldn’t know it. They’re actually against religion. But he insisted on a church wedding, so he’ll have a church funeral.”

  “The grave is in Green River Cemetery, as you requested,” Ossorio continued. “On that little rise at the back, near the woods.”

  “Jackson and I walked there often. He said that’s where he wanted to be buried, with the Bonackers. He respected them, I can’t imagine why. Bunch of inbred hicks.”

  Ossorio found that attitude offensive, since he considered the Springs natives to be honest, industrious people with deep roots in a community they loved, like the natives of his homeland, the Philippines. But he hesitated to contradict her. Now is not the time, he said to himself. She’s prickly even on her good days, and this is certainly not one of them.

  The return drive was made largely in silence. Lee sat alone in the backseat, dismissing Ted’s offer to join her. His well-meaning efforts at small talk were ignored, so it wasn’t long before he gave up and left her to her thoughts. He was coping with his own distress and sense of loss.

  Ted Dragon and Jackson Pollock had grown close in the winter and spring of 1949–50, when Alfonso Ossorio was away in the Philippines for several months. Ted had stayed behind in New York while Ossorio painted a mural for his family’s Roman Catholic chapel in Victorias. It was a painful separation for the young ballet dancer, so early in a passionate relationship that had to be kept secret from Alfonso’s stern father and deeply pious mother. Jackson had been unexpectedly sympathetic, comforting Ted in a brotherly way, even giving him a painting as a token of friendship. This was a side of Pollock—the kindness, the loyalty, the intuitive caring—that was invisible to people outside his close circle.

  For his part, Alfonso had taken courage from Jackson’s example, another misfit rebelling against expectations and conventions, struggling with self-doubt one minute and supremely confident the next. Despite their polar differences—Alfonso born rich and Jackson born poor, Alfonso gay and Jackson straight, Alfonso religious and Jackson a nonbeliever—they shared a subjective approach to art that relied on a different kind of faith: the conviction that the artist had something to say that would have meaning beyond his own narrow need to express himself in paint.

  But for Lee the loss went far deeper. The years of struggle to gain recognition in an indifferent art world fixated on the School of Paris as the only true innovators, the months of preparation for shows the critics were likely to hate and the collectors likely to ignore, the weeks when her own work was set aside so Jackson’s needs could be met, the days spent on the phone with anyone who might be persuaded to take an interest in his work, and the hours of worrying when he was off on a bender or out God knows where in the car.

  Fourteen years of all that—with a respite of only those two marvelous years when he was sober and brilliantly productive—had depleted her physically and emotionally, as well as professionally, since she had put her own career on hold to promote his.

  Why had she done it? For love, pure and simple. Love for him, and love for his work. And what did she get in return? Betrayal. Beneath her resolute exterior, her bitterness was palpable to empathetic friends like Alfonso and Ted.

  So was her guilt. Lee tortured herself with unanswerable questions. What would have happened if she had stayed home, forced his hand? Would he have come to his senses and chosen her over Ruth? Would she have been able to get him back on the wagon before it was too late? Would he have found his way out of the creative impasse that had stalled his career?

  Why had she abandoned him when he needed her more than ever? Why did he always drive so recklessly? Why did he have to throw his life away?

  Why, for God’s sake, why did he have to take another life as well?

  Twenty-two.

  Over iced tea on the cottage deck later that morning, while TJ played catch in the parking lot with one of the off-duty busboys, Nita and Fitz speculated on how events might have unfolded on Saturday night.

  “Where was Pollock coming from? He was driving back home from somewhere,” said Fitz. “I assume the local police will check his whereabouts, find out if anyone saw him and the women earlier that evening.”

  Nita opened up a line of reasoning. “Suppose they were at a party where someone got rough with Metzger, whether it was Pollock or someone else? Maybe she wasn’t dead, just unconscious, and he wanted to get her home to recover. Naturally he’d be in a hurry, even more so than usual. Probably a bit panicky, probably not sober. That would account for the speed, and the direction.”

  “If that were the case,” said Fitz, “you’d think someone who was at the party would have come forward. There can’t be a soul in the area who doesn’t know about the accident by now.”

  “Weren’t they supposed to be going to Ossorio’s? That’s what he told Dr. Cooper. Evidently they never got there, at least if Ossorio’s telling the truth.”

  “Why wouldn’t he?”

  “If he’s the one who strangled her.”

  “Ah. But surely some of the other guests would have seen them.”

  “Yes, that’s most likely, unless he headed them off before they could go in.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  Nita had a suggestion. “You remember he said he’s loyal to Lee. Suppose he had second thoughts about letting Pollock bring not one but two pretty young women to a concert where all his friends, and Lee’s, would see them. How would it look, Pollock parading his girlfriends like that? For all Ossorio knew, he was balling them both!”

  Fitz nodded. “I see what you’re getting at. Maybe he tried to call Pollock, tell him not to come, but they’d already left. So he waits outside for them to arrive, tries to persuade them to leave quietly, but Metzger makes a fuss and he’s afraid she’ll disturb the concert, so he grabs her by the throat. But he throttles her too hard. She passes out, and Pollock bundles her into the car and takes off, not realizing that her windpipe is crushed and she’s dying.”

  “Ossorio may be a pansy, but he’s a big guy. I’d say he’s strong enough to have done it the way you describe.”

  “Yeah, but on the face of it Pollock and Kligman are more likely. Maybe Kligman’s a lot stronger than she looks. Pretty hard to tell when she’s lying in the road semiconscious. If she was mad enough, and jealous enough, maybe she’d be capable. What’s the old saying, ‘Hell hath no fury?’”

  “That’s a scorned woman, not a jealous one,” Nita reminded him, “but it could amount to the same thing if Pollock was putting the make on Metzger without her approval. Which brings up another possible angle.” She checked to make sure that TJ was out of hearing range.

  “Sexual strangulation. What the medical examiner calls erotic asphyxiation. We had a case once, a few years back. Hector assigned me because the victim was female. Seems she liked her boyfriend to tie her up and tighten a rope around her neck until she almost passed out. For some reason, when the blood supply to the brain is cut off it heightens sexual pleasure.”

  Fitz’s eyebrows went up, and Nita hastened to add, “Don’t even think about it. It’s very dangerous. Too much pressure,
especially with a ligature, and it’s all over. That’s what happened to our victim, pretty little Puerto Rican girl. The boyfriend tried to cover it up, make it look like suicide, but we arrested him for murder. Fortunately for him she’d told a couple of her girlfriends about being a gasper—that’s what they call people who get off that way—and encouraged them to try it. They testified, the boyfriend changed his story, and the jury believed him.”

  Fitz’s imagination was working overtime. “Maybe Metzger was a gasper. Maybe Pollock was doing both women, Kligman the regular way and Metzger with a stranglehold.”

  Nita was skeptical. “That seems pretty far-fetched to me. According to Doc Cooper, Pollock was in really bad shape physically. I wonder if he was even capable of doing it the regular way.”

  “All the more reason why he might have been willing to experiment with Metzger,” reasoned Fitz. “It could be a real turn-on.”

  “Down, boy,” she cautioned. “Let’s not get carried away. I only suggested it as a possibility because she died of asphyxia. Obviously she was strangled, but why? And why were they headed home? Whatever happened must have happened somewhere else, but where?”

  As they pondered these questions, a messenger from the inn came to tell them that Fitz was wanted on the phone. “You can take it in Mr. Bayley’s office,” he said.

  The innkeeper was cooperation personified. “Please feel free to treat my office as your own, Captain Fitzgerald. The telephone is at your disposal, no extra charge. Harry Steele asked me to give you every assistance. He’s very grateful for your help on this case.”

  Bayley left the room as Fitz lifted the receiver, certain that the switchboard operator was listening in.

  “Fitzgerald here,” he said. “Who’s calling?”

  “Hello, Captain, this is Murphy at the Six. We got information on those two women you wanted us to trace.”

  He sat down at the desk and found a pencil and note pad. “Let’s have it.”

  “They were roommates, all right. Shared one of the four apartments in that building. The landlady insisted on getting the names and addresses of their families, in case they skipped out on the rent. Said she’d had a couple of bad experiences with single women doing a vanishing act. Anyway, if you’re ready I’ll give you the dope.”

  Fitz took down the details, thanked Murphy for the good work, and rang off. Kligman’s mother and sister lived in New Jersey, and Metzger’s mother and brother were in the Bronx. Apparently both fathers were either dead or missing.

  He fished Chief Steele’s card out of his shirt pocket, asked for an outside line, and dialed the number. The clerk put him through, and he relayed the information. He also mentioned that he was calling from the Sea Spray office, confident that Steele would realize the call was going through the switchboard.

  Steele took the hint and guarded his remarks. “Thank you very much, Captain Fitzgerald. Now comes the hard part. I hate to inform these folks over the phone, but I can’t spare anyone to go in person.”

  “If you’re agreeable,” Fitz suggested, “I’ll get one of my men to do it. Or a woman, if you think that would be better. Why don’t I come by the office and we can discuss it in person?” No way was he going to talk about Metzger’s death on an open line.

  He agreed to go at once, and returned to the cottage to tell Nita what was happening.

  “I won’t be long. If you and TJ want to run into the village with me, you can pick up some lunch at Dreesen’s while I meet with the chief. And I sure wouldn’t mind if you bought a bag of their homemade donuts. We can have them for breakfast tomorrow—if they last that long.”

  Twenty-three.

  “Maybe we should have walked,” said Fitz with dismay as he tried in vain to find a parking space on Newtown Lane. Both sides of the street were lined with cars, and the sidewalks were filled with shoppers and strollers. “Now I know where all the folks from Brooklyn and Queens go in the summer,” he observed drily.

  “Manhattan, too, including us,” added Nita. “Though the sidewalks here are just as hot as in the city. I prefer the cottage and the beach. The ocean is a natural air conditioner.”

  “I’ll get you back there as soon as I can,” said Fitz. He did a U-turn at the railroad tracks and headed back toward Main Street. Luckily for them a space opened up in front of the hardware store, and he pulled in.

  “Come to the police station when you finish shopping,” he told Nita. “If I’m done first I’ll wait there for you.”

  Fred Tucker showed Fitz into the office, where the chief thanked him for coming. “I really hate to impose on you like this, Captain Fitzgerald,” he said. “Not much of a vacation for you, is it?”

  “Please call me Fitz,” he replied, “and don’t think anything of it. I’m glad to help you out. After all, my men are doing all the legwork. I’m just the messenger boy.”

  “That’s mighty decent of you,” said the chief. “I’ll write out instructions for your officers so the families can get in touch with me to follow up. I think it would be advisable to send a female officer, if that’s possible. It’ll be hard enough on Mrs. Kligman to find out that her girl is in the hospital in bad shape, but nothing like as bad as it’ll be for Mrs. Metzger.”

  Fitz waited while Steele worked out some wording, adding his own name and number, Southampton Hospital contact information for Mrs. Kligman, and the funeral home for Mrs. Metzger.

  “From what you gave me,” he told Fitz, “there’s no Mr. Metzger in the picture, so maybe she’s a widow, or divorced. I hope the brother’s older, so he can take care of the arrangements. Unfortunately we can’t release the body until we figure out who killed her. Carolyn Williams will know how to handle it. She’s aware of the situation, but she’s not one to go blabbing. If she were the gossiping sort, Yardley and Williams would be out of business in a hurry.”

  Fitz used the chief’s phone and got through to the Sixth Precinct. “Is Officer Kelly on duty?” he asked Sergeant Murphy. “Good. Ask her to take the Jersey visit first. The Bronx one will be harder. Think she can do them both today? If not, Metzger can wait until tomorrow. No urgency there, I’m afraid.”

  “Any more word on Kligman?” asked Fitz after he hung up.

  “I called the hospital just before you got here,” Steele told him. “She’s in and out of consciousness, still sedated but apparently out of danger. Fortunately nothing broken, no organ damage, but she’s pretty banged up. Bruises all over her body, and a concussion. Doc Abel is keeping an eye on her. He thinks she’ll be coming around any time now.”

  “Nita will be available to question her whenever she’s ready. If we’re at the cottage or on the beach Mr. Bayley can get a message to us, and if we go anywhere else I’ll check in with you first.”

  “By the way,” said Steele, “thanks for tipping me about calling from the Sea Spray office phone. There’s no way Millie Dayton wasn’t listening in. If I call you there I won’t let anything slip.”

  “Nita and I were kicking around a few ideas,” Fitz told him. “Probably nothing you haven’t already thought of,” he added diplomatically.

  “Mind sharing them?”

  Fitz summarized their conversation, and the chief listened with interest.

  “You’re right, we did check on various places where Pollock and the girls might have been spotted earlier in the evening. Apparently they went straight back to Springs after they left the Brooks place in Montauk. It’s a nineteen-mile drive, and we canvassed all the shops and bars along the way. Nobody saw them. Earlier in the day Dreesen’s delivered groceries to the house, and it looks like they had dinner when they got back.

  “After that, any of the three possibilities you and Nita discussed could have happened. Pollock gets liquored up, makes a pass at Metzger, Kligman gets sore and goes for her. That’s the least likely, in my opinion. First of all, I don’t think Kligman’s strong enough to have kil
led her that way. Plus the only scratches on her face are on the right side, where her face hit the pavement.

  “And I’m not partial to the sex thing—not that I have any experience with a case like that. But let’s just say that’s what happened. She’d probably be naked, so they’d have to put something on her to take her to the hospital. But why get her all dressed up in underwear and a party dress? Why not just throw on a coat or a robe to cover her up? And if bondage is part of it, where are the rope marks, and for that matter where’s the rope? On top of that, they were driving toward home, not toward Southampton. No, I just don’t buy it.

  “The Ossorio idea, on the other hand, seems much more plausible. That would explain why they were headed north on Fireplace Road. They were taking her home, hoping she’d recover, but she died on the way. Doc Cooper says there’s no way to tell for sure how long she’d been dead before the crash, but she was alive long enough for bruises and petechiae to appear—they don’t come up after death, because there’s no blood circulation. He says with the degree of pressure used on her throat they’d show very quickly. It’s seven miles from The Creeks to the crash site. Even going fifty flat out all the way it would take him nearly ten minutes, plenty of time.

  “But however it happened,” he concluded, “Kligman will know. We have to assume she was there.”

  Twenty-four.

  By the time the Fitzgerald family returned to the cottage all three of them were wiping powdered sugar off their shirtfronts, and the number of Dreesen’s donuts in the bag had decreased from a dozen to six.

  Gorging on those treats had successfully deflected TJ’s attention from the investigation. Still in the dark about the details of Metzger’s death, he nevertheless was eager to know why his parents were helping the East Hampton Town police.

  Fitz explained that the women’s apartment was in his precinct, and told him about the chief’s request that Nita question Kligman when she came to.