Transgressions

by Ed McBain

“Because Lamarr’s murder was covered up.”

  “You said it was an accident.”

  “The facts were smothered, sent to Arizona,” Lawless said. “That’s enough for me.”

  “Enough for you to what?”

  “Walk the line.”

  The words chilled me in spite of my conviction to treat Lawless as an equal.

  “Are you working for someone?” I managed to ask.

  “For everyone. For the greater good,” Lawless said. “But now I’ve answered your questions. You tell me what happened when you saw Henry Lansman die.”

  “One more question.” I said.

  “Okay.”

  “Who is Captain Delgado to you?”

  “An ambitious man. Not a man to trust but someone to be used. He wants to advance in the department and he knows that I have a reach far beyond his own. We get together every month or so. I point him where I might need some assistance and, in return, he answers when I call.”

  “It all sounds very shady.”

  “I need you, Felix,” Archibald Lawless said then. “I need someone who can ask questions and think on his feet. Stick with me a day or two. I’ll pay you and I’ll make sure that all the problems that have come up for you will be gone.”

  “What is it that you’re asking me to do?” I asked.

  I thought I was responding to his offer of exoneration. But now, when I look back, I wonder if maybe it wasn’t his unashamed admission of need that swayed me.

  “Tell me about the death of Henry Lansman,” he said for the third time.

  I gave him every detail I remembered down to the waitress and the half-eaten meal.

  “We need to talk to at least one of these players,” Lawless said. “I want to know what’s going on.”

  “Which one?”

  “Lana Drexel I should think,” he said. “Yes definitely Lana . . .”

  He stood up from the table and strode back toward the living room. I followed. From under the fur divan he pulled a slender briefcase. When he opened it, I could see that it contained twenty amber colored bottles in cozy velvet insets.

  “These are the medicines that Dr. Meta has prescribed for me. Here . . .” From the upper flap of the briefcase he pulled three sheets of paper that were stapled together. “These are the instructions about what chemical I need in various manifest states. This last bottle is an aerosol spray. You might need it to subdue me in case my mind goes past reason.”

  “You want me to tote this around behind you?”

  “No,” he said. “I just want you to see it. I have a variety of these bags. If I start slipping all I need is for you to help me out a little.”

  Hearing his plea I felt a twinge of emotion and then the suspicion that Archibald Lawless was messing with my mind.

  11

  “Lana Drexel,” the anarchist was saying to me a while later. We were having a glass of fresh lemonade that he’d prepared in the kitchen. “She’s the most dangerous of the whole bunch.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Valerie Lox or Kenny Cornell are like nine-year-old hall guards compared to her.”

  “She’s the smallest,” I said, “and the youngest.”

  “She swallows down whole men three times her age and weight,” Lawless added. “But she’s fair to look at and you’re only young once no matter how long you live.”

  “Are you going to your meeting?” I asked him.

  “What meeting?”

  “The one with the woman you talked to through the door.”

  “Oh no,” he said, shaking his head. “No. Never. Not me.”

  ______

  I was thinking about our conversation when I entered the Rudin apartment building on East 72nd.

  Lawless had given me one of his authentic Afghan sweaters to make up for the sweater I vomited on. I looked a little better than I had before but not good enough to saunter past the doorman at Lana Drexel’s building.

  “Yes?” the sentry asked. He wore a dark blue coat festooned with dull brass buttons, a pair of pale blue pants with dark stripes down the side, and light blue gloves.

  “Drexel,” I said.

  The doorman—who was also a white man and a middle-aged man—sneered.

  “And your name is?” he asked as if he expected me to say, Mud.

  “Lansman,” I replied smugly. “Henry Lansman.”

  The doorman reached into his glass alcove-office and pulled out a phone receiver. He pressed a few digits on the stem, waited and then said, “A Mr. Lansman.”

  It was a pleasure to see his visage turn even more sour. I think, when he looked to me that he was still half inclined to turn me away.

  “Back elevator,” he said. “Twenty-fifth floor.”

  “What’s the apartment number?” I asked.

  “It’s the only door,” he said getting at least some pleasure out of my naiveté.

  The elevator was small but well-appointed, lined with rosewood, floored in plush maroon carpeting, and lit by a tasteful crystal chandelier. The doors slid opened revealing a small red room, opposite a pink door. This door was held ajar by a small olive-skinned woman who had eyes twice the size they should have been. Her hair was thick, bronze and golden of color. Her cheekbones were high and her chin just a shade lower than where you might have expected it to be. She was beautiful the way the ocean is beautiful. Not a human charm that you could put your arms around but all the exquisiteness of a wild orchid or a distant explosion. It was a cold beauty that you knew was burning underneath. But there was no warmth or comfort in the pull of Lana Drexel’s magnetism. There was only a jungle and, somewhere in the thickness of that hair, a tiger’s claws.

  She looked me up and down with and said, “You’re not Lansman.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “But he’s dead.”

  I had practiced that line for two hours. Lawless had given me the job of getting in to see the fashion model and of convincing her to come to his office and share what she knew about the other names on his list. It was my idea to pretend that I was the dead man. I also decided that shock might loosen her tongue.

  But if she was in any way alarmed I couldn’t see it.

  “He is?” she said.

  “Yeah. The people around thought that it was a heart attack but then the police arrested me and said something about murder.”

  “So he was murdered?” she asked.

  “I thought I’d come here and ask you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the police for some reason suspect me of being involved with you guys and your business. You see, I’m just a journalism student and I’d like them to leave me alone.”

  “Excuse me,” she said, still holding the door against my entree, still unperturbed by the seriousness of our talk, “but what is your real name?”

  It was her turn to frighten me. I thought that if she was to know my name then she could send someone after me. I lamented, not for the last time, agreeing to work for the anarchist.

  “I’m a representative of Archibald Lawless,” I said, “Anarchist at large.”

  Lana Drexel’s confident expression dissolved then. She fell back allowing the door to come open. She wandered into the large room behind her.

  I followed.

  I began to think that you could understand the strange nature of denizens that peopled Archibald Lawless’s world by their sense of architecture and design. The room I entered was as beautiful and intense as young Lana Drexel. The ceilings were no less than eighteen feet high and the room was at least that in width—and more in length. The outer wall was one large pane of glass. There was no furniture in the room except for the wide, cushioned bench that ran from the front door to the picture window. Nine feet up on either side were large platforms that made for rooms without walls. Underneath the platform on the right everything was painted dark gray. The room formed underneath the platform on the left was white.

  Miss Drexel threw herself down in the middle of the banquette. She was wearing
a maroon kimono that barely came down to the tops of her thighs. This garment exposed shapely legs and powerful hamstrings. Her toenails were painted bright orange.

  I sat down a few feet from her, near the window that looked south upon midtown.

  “What does he want?” Lana said covering her eyes with an upturned hand.

  “I don’t really know,” I said. “But he seems to think that you and Lansman and a few others are in trouble.”

  “Who?” She sat up and leaned toward me. The intensity of her stare was captivating and cold.

  “Valerie Lox, Henry Lansman, Kenneth Cornell, Benny Lamarr, and you,” I said. “Lamarr is also dead.”

  “How did he die?”

  “A car accident I think. He was with a woman.”

  “What was her name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The beauty lowered her face to her hands, causing her hair to fall forward. I could see her breasts under the mane of hair but somehow that didn’t matter much.

  “What does he want from me?” she asked.

  “He wants to see you,” I said.

  She looked up at me again. “Will you protect me from him?”

  “Yes,” I said without hesitation. My heart went out to her and I think I might have even challenged A. Lawless for her smile.

  12

  We reached the Tessla building at about two in the afternoon. There were various business types coming in and out. The guard sitting in front of the Joan of Arc mural was an elderly white man with a big mustache and a head full of salt and pepper hair.

  “Hello, Mr. Orlean,” he hailed. “Mr. Lawless is expecting you and the lady.”

  “He is?”

  “Yes sir.”

  The guard’s eyes strayed over to Lana. She wore a Japanese ensemble of work pants and jacket made from rough cotton. The color was a drab green but still it accented her beauty.

  “What’s your name?” I asked the guard.

  “Andy.”

  “I thought Lawless was in trouble with the building, Andy.”

  “No sir, Mr. Orlean. Why would you say that?”

  “It was something about the rent.”

  “Oh,” he said. Andy’s smile was larger even than his mustache. “You mean the owners don’t like him. Well, that might be true but you know the men in this building, the union men, they love Mr. Lawless. He’s a legend in unions all over the city and the world. The reason they can’t trick him outta here is that no real union man would ever turn a key on him.”

  In the elevator Lana stood close to me. When the doors slid open she squeezed my left forearm. I touched her hand. She kissed me lightly on the lips and smiled.

  In the six seconds between the door opening and our departure she raised my blood pressure to a lethal level.

  Archibald was waiting for us. He opened the door before I could knock and ushered us into chairs in the outer room.

  I was later to learn that Lawless never had anyone but his closest confidants in his office.

  “Miss Drexel,” he said, smiling broadly.

  Timidly, and leaning toward me on the hardback sofa, she said, “I hope that you’ll be kind.”

  “I’ll do you one better, lady,” he said. “I’ll be honest and I’ll be fair.”

  She shivered.

  I put a hand on her shoulder.

  Archibald Lawless laughed.

  “Let’s get something straight from the start, Lana,” he said. “Felix is working for me. He won’t jump, lady, so straighten up and talk to me.”

  Lana did sit up. The woman who met me at the pink door returned. She was self-possessed and distant, a European princess being held for ransom in a Bedouin camp.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “Why did you come?” he replied.

  “Because your employee told me that Hank Lansman and Benny Lamarr had been murdered.”

  Lawless smiled. I think he liked Lana.

  “Why would that bother you?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  He shook his head then shrugged his shoulders. “Someone in the government has gone to great lengths to hide the accidental deaths of your two friends. You got precious gems, hide away real estate, explosives, security, and a siren all mixed up together and then the hammer drops . . .”

  Lana’s eyes cut toward me for a moment then she turned them on the madman.

  “What are you in this for?” she asked.

  Walking the line, I said in my mind.

  “I’ve been hired by the insurance company to locate some property that has been—temporarily misplaced,” he said.

  I was lost. Every step along the way he had presented himself as a dedicated anarchist, a man of the people. Now all of a sudden he was working for the Man.

  Lana sat back. She seemed to relax.

  “How much will they pay?” she asked.

  “Five percent with a conviction,” he said. “Eight if I can keep things quiet.”

  “Four million is a lot of revolution,” she said. “But the full fifty could topple a nation.”

  “Are you worried about surviving or retiring?” Archibald asked the beauty.

  It was her turn to smile enigmatically.

  “Because you know,” Lawless continued, “whoever it was killed Lansman and Lamarr will certainly come to your door one day soon.”

  “I’ll die one day anyway,” she admitted with a half pouting lower lip. “But to stay alive you have to keep on moving.”

  How old was she? I wondered. Four years and a century older than I.

  “I ask you again,” Lawless said. “Why did you come here?”

  “No one says no to Mr. Archibald Lawless,” she opined. “Just ask Andy downstairs.”

  “What do you want?” Lawless asked Lana.

  “Hardly anything. Two hundred and fifty thousand will pay for my ticket out of town. And, of course, I expect exemption from arrest.”

  “Of course.”

  Lana stretched, looked at his murky eyes, and then nodded.

  “Who were you working for?” he asked after an appreciative pause.

  “Lamarr.”

  “To do what?”

  “To go with him to a party in the Hamptons,” she said sounding bored. “To meet a man named Strangman. To make friends with his bedroom.”

  “And did you?”

  Her stare was her response.

  “And then what?” Archibald asked.

  “I met with Lansman, told him where the hidey hole was and collected my fee.”

  “That’s all?”

  “I met with the other people on your list,” she admitted.

  “When?”

  “The morning after I spent with Strangman,” she said. “He was really a jerk.”

  “Where did you meet?” Lawless asked.

  “A vacant house that Val was selling. They wanted to go over the layout with me.”

  “And this Strangman,” Lawless asked. “He was in the same business that Lamarr was in, I suppose?”

  “I suppose,” she replied.

  “And was the operation a success?”

  “I was paid.”

  “By who?” Lawless asked.

  I wanted to correct his grammar but held my tongue.

  “Lamarr.” Lana hesitated. Her vast eyes were seeing something that had been forgotten.

  “There was a guy with Lamarr,” she said. “Normal looking. White. Forties.”

  “Was his hair short?” I asked.

  “I think so.”

  “With a little gray?”

  She turned to me, bit her lower lip, and then shook her head.

  “I don’t remember,” she said. “He didn’t make much of an impression. I thought that maybe he worked for Lamarr. Actually I’m pretty sure of it.”

  “So we have Stangman and a fortyish white man that might have worked for Lamarr,” Lawless said.

  “And Valerie Lox and Kenneth Cornell,” I added.

  The existentialist det
ective shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “Cornell made a mistake with a blasting cap yesterday afternoon and took off the top of his skull. Valerie Lox has disappeared. Maybe she’s just smart but I wouldn’t put a dollar on seeing her breathing again.”

  “What about me?” Lana Drexel asked.

  “You’re still breathing,” he said.

  “What should I do?”

  “Nothing you’ve ever done before. Don’t go home. Don’t use your credit cards. Don’t call anyone who has been on your phone bill in the last three years.”

  The young woman had a slight smile on her face as she listened to the anarchist’s commandments.

  “Do you have a suggestion of where I should go?” she asked.

  “Sure. I’m full of advice. You just wait out here for a few minutes while I give my operative here his walking orders. Come on, Felix,” he said to me. “Let’s go in my office for a minute or two.”

  13

  “She needs to be put somewhere very safe,” Lawless told me, his profile set against the New Jersey landscape.

  “Where?”

  “There’s a small chapel in Queens,” he said. “Run by a defrocked priest I know.”

  “A friend of Red Tuesday’s?”

  He turned toward me and smiled. “That’s why we’re going to get along, kid,” he said. “Because you know how to be funny.”

  “Do you want me to take her there?” I asked.

  “No. If I let her spend more than an hour with you the next thing I know there you’d be face down with a knife in your back in some back alley in Cartegena.”

  His swampy eyes were laughing but I knew he believed what he said. I believed it. Inwardly I was relieved that I didn’t have to accompany Lana Drexel to Queens.

  “No,” Lawless continued, “Lana can take care of herself and besides—I might have a little job for her.”

  “What kind of job?”

  “The kind I wouldn’t give you,” he said.

  “What should I do?”

  “Follow the same plan I laid out for Miss Drexel. Don’t do anything that you’ve done before.”

  “How can I not do anything I’ve done?” I asked. “I only have seven dollars on me. I don’t know anything but my routine.”