I stood and walked out.
Outside, I found Anna standing next to the phone booth, shivering in the snow. I called her a cab and when the taxi showed, I gave the driver a five and told him to make sure she got in the door.
Then I began the long walk home through the still-falling snow.
My ribs were killing me and I was pretty sure I’d rebroken at least one of my fingers. The adrenaline had run its course and left me cold and sore and shaking.
I felt better than I had in days.
CHAPTER 32
That was incredibly foolish. You should have called the police. You could have been seriously injured. You’re already seriously injured!”
And so on. This from Ms. Pentecost, who was berating me long-distance from her rented room in Nowhere, New York.
I traced circles on my desk with a splinted finger and waited patiently until she ran out of steam.
“I know,” I said. “It was foolish and dangerous and anyone with an ounce of common sense would have rung up the cops.”
I heard her take a breath to respond, but I barreled over her.
“But I’d like to point out that the two of us are blessed with a helping of uncommon sense. We both know what would have happened. The cops maybe would have showed. They’d have broken up the fight and sent the husband on his way. Maybe he spends a night in the clink. Then he’s back tomorrow. Or the next day. And this time he wouldn’t give Anna a chance to get to the phone.”
Silence from the other end.
“You realize your threat was a bluff,” Ms. P finally said. “We already called in that particular marker.”
“I know that, but Nowak didn’t.”
“He believed you?”
I thought about the look of terror in the man’s eyes as I crouched on top of him.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “He swallowed it.”
A pause and then…“Good.”
My boss and I shared a lot of things, and the pragmatic philosophy she’d mentioned that first day in her office was one of them.
Though I didn’t know what was pragmatic about spending another night up in Greene County. Orly Crouch had refused to see her for a second time, but Ms. P didn’t feel like giving up.
“Third time’s a charm?” I asked.
“I’m going to try another tack,” she said. “If I fail again, I will write the endeavor off as a lost cause and return home.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said. “You might be stuck up there awhile.”
Night was falling outside, and the snow was still piling up.
“The weather is not as bad here,” my boss said. “The locals I’ve spoken with don’t expect it to accumulate much.”
“Well, I hope you brought a book or three.”
“Do you have any further adventures planned during my absence?” she asked with only the lightest dash of sarcasm.
“Just one,” I said. “I have an idea and I want to test it out.”
I told her what I was thinking. I expected her to say something about not wanting me to take any more risks.
Instead, she reminded me, “It will be Sunday. You will need to be careful with your timing.”
Like I said—pragmatic.
* * *
—
By the time the bells at the church down the block from Belestrade’s chimed for the noon service, I’d been planted on the corner for the better part of an hour.
I’d made three forays down the block so far. Each time, staying a step behind groups of people, most of them kissing cousins of the Russian babushkas I’d seen the first time I was there.
Each time I passed number 215, I glanced at the windows. Each time, a light shone in a window on the second floor. On one trip I saw the shadow of a figure moving behind the curtain—tall, slender, male.
Neal Watkins. It had to be. He must have had his own room. Either that, or he was disposing of evidence. But if that was the case, I figured he’d be a little more subtle.
The last of the bells echoed out and the milling babushkas filed into the church. I decided I’d give it another hour.
The snow had slowed to a light flurry, but nearly two feet were on the ground. My feet had long turned to ice.
Also, I was self-conscious about my face. Running to help Anna the day before, I hadn’t had time to think about it. Now I felt like everyone’s eyes were on me when they passed.
There were Frankenstein stitches pulling my cheek tight, and while the swelling had gone down some, most of my face was still shades of black and purple with a few yellow highlights thrown in for variety. No amount of makeup was going to help. I’d pulled my hat down tight around my ears and wrapped a scarf around the rest so only my eyes showed.
One hour. Then I’d go home and beg Mrs. Campbell for some hot chocolate.
My patience paid off.
About twenty minutes after the service began, the door to number 215 opened and Neal Watkins stepped out. He’d traded his undertaker’s suit for a wool coat, a hat, and what looked from that distance to be a university sweater. He headed off down the street in the other direction with a canvas grocery sack swinging from one hand.
Grocery shopping. Which meant he could be gone for half an hour or ten minutes, depending on the day’s menu. I decided to chance it. As soon as he’d turned the far corner, I hurried through the snow to Belestrade’s front door.
I knocked loudly. “Delivery!”
Now if any neighbors glanced out, they’d think I was a delivery boy leaving a note.
From an inside pocket, I took out a long wallet filled with picks. A quick look in either direction, then I went to work on the lock. I was inside in under a minute. Not a personal best, but pretty good considering I was working with two broken fingers and a busted wrist.
I stepped inside the dead woman’s house.
What I’d come for was upstairs. But I couldn’t resist walking into the parlor. It smelled like a room where someone had been killed—blood and bowels and stale air. Nobody had bothered cleaning up after the cops had been through, and fingerprint powder was everywhere. With those black smears as a guide, it didn’t take long to locate all the gimmicks.
There were microphones secreted in strategic places, all of which led to a reel-to-reel behind a slab of fake books. It was a professional rig using magnetic audiotape, which wasn’t something you saw much of in those days outside of the military or certain government acronyms.
There were also dials that controlled the lights and hidden speakers that, I discovered after some testing, produced a limited variety of sounds: waves, wind, footsteps, and voices whispering words too soft to hear.
She really was no better than Madame Fortuna. It was comforting and disappointing at the same time.
After I was satisfied I’d located all the tricks, I went up.
On the second floor I found a bathroom, an office, and what I assume was Neal’s bedroom. The office had been picked clean by the police. The desk and filing cabinet were empty. Even the typewriter ribbon had been taken. All that was left were a few innocuous notes scribbled in a decidedly masculine hand.
I made my way up to the third floor.
There I found a lavish bedroom done in dark silks. It had an attached master bath that featured a claw-footed tub that could have fit three with room to spare. The bed was equally oversized—an enormous, four-poster, oak-framed thing that could have played host to an orgy.
It was exactly what I’d been hoping to find.
The incident at the Nowaks’ had put something Dr. Waterhouse had said in a new light and I wanted to test my theory.
There was no carpet on the floor. Not even a rug. Just the original hardwood. It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for—long, faint grooves leading in a semicircle out from the footboard of the massi
ve bed.
I bent down and discovered scraps of fabric tied to the four feet of the bed frame. I leaned against the footboard and began to push. It was as heavy as it looked, but the fabric allowed the massive bed to slide with relative ease.
The fabric didn’t stop it from making a loud rumbling—the sound Dr. Waterhouse had heard from two floors below. The sound I’d heard when Anna had moved the furniture away from the door to let me in.
Once the bed was angled out, I got down on all fours and examined the floor beneath. There I found a hidden compartment in the floorboards, not unlike what concealed the safe at our office, only more cleverly constructed.
In the compartment, I found a flat, heavy metal box. It was the type a paranoid millionaire might use to stash their greenbacks when they didn’t trust banks. There were scratches around the lock, and I wondered if I wasn’t the first person to go at it with a pick.
It took about ten seconds to crack.
The only thing inside the box was a single round metal case containing a ten-inch reel of magnetic audiotape. On the case was a piece of tape and the penciled notation: “A.C. 10/20/45.”
AC? Abigail Collins? And if the date was right, it was less than two weeks before the Halloween party.
The box had almost certainly held dozens of such tapes. Who had taken the rest? Why leave this single reel behind?
Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I slid the reel into the pocket of my coat, closed the box and its secret compartment in the floorboards, and moved the bed back into place. Once I was satisfied that everything looked more or less as I’d found it, I headed back downstairs.
As I hit the last step, I heard a key in the front door.
Damn! I’d been in there too long.
Hiding was no good. Who knew how long he’d be there. I decided to play it a different way. I hurried back into the parlor, found a chair facing the door, and sat down.
By the time Neal walked in, I was settled into what I hoped passed for nonchalance.
In his threadbare overcoat and university sweater, he looked more like the promising grad student he used to be than an archvillain’s assistant.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“Just following the invitation on the door.”
He looked confused.
“ ‘Seekers inquire within’? I was seeking, so I came in.”
“I’m going to call the police,” he declared, making a half-hearted start toward the phone.
“It’d be an interesting coin-flip to see whose side the cops take. The nosy detective, or the blackmailer.”
That set him on his back foot.
“I never blackmailed anyone,” he said, jutting out his chin. “I was just an assistant. I told the police that.”
“And the best researcher the history department ever saw, according to Doc Waterhouse,” I mused. “I wonder how much your boss relied on you to fill in the blanks on her clients. Did you get to listen to her tapes? Or were those for her ears only?”
He wasn’t even looking at the phone now.
“Like I said, I already talked to the police,” he said. “They’ve been through the whole place, top to bottom. They found no evidence of wrongdoing.”
“Sure,” I said with a dollop of sarcasm. “Just hidden mics and the trick lights and sound effects. But they didn’t find the stash of tapes, did they? Guess they didn’t bother looking under the bed. Was that your handiwork on the lock?”
Neal arranged his features into what he must have figured was a poker face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“I don’t know what game you’re playing, but if you’re thinking of picking up where your boss left off, I wouldn’t recommend it. You don’t want to get on Ms. Pentecost’s radar. With your boss dead, I think she’d settle for second fiddle.”
He threw his shoulders back and struck a pose. “If you and your boss want to come after me, go ahead. I’ve got nothing to hide,” he declared. “Not like some people.”
I gave him what my grandmother used to call a “send-’em-to-the-graveyard grin.” “What are you referring to, Neal? That I keep the company of women as well as men? Or that I saw Follow the Girls three times on Broadway? Because I’m only ashamed of one of them.”
I stood up and walked past him out of the parlor. I was reaching for the knob when he finally spoke.
“I don’t want any trouble, okay?” he said. “She gave me assignments. Specific assignments. I didn’t always know the details. So I don’t know anything.”
It was a good monologue. But he’d apprenticed with the best.
“I almost believe you,” I said, then walked out the front door and into the snow.
CHAPTER 33
I found a pay phone and called the office to check in. Mrs. Campbell answered on the fifth ring.
“Any update from the missus?” I asked.
“No, but there was a call for you. A Hollis Graham said to tell you he was back in the stacks today, whatever that means.”
“It means I’ll be out in the elements a little longer,” I said. “Hold the fort down.”
* * *
—
Despite the snow, the library was bustling. Every loafer or weekend bibliophile within thirty blocks was wandering up and down the stacks.
I bypassed the crowd and headed down to the basement archives, where I found my quarry sorting through a table piled high with magazines.
Hollis wasn’t much to look at. Short, squat, with a pair of thick cheaters perpetually sliding down his nose and a pile of bushy steel-gray hair sitting precariously atop his head. He was wearing his usual uniform of a painter’s smock and dusty boots. He would have preferred to dress up—I’ve been to his house and have seen his impressive collection of Savile Row suits. But he ends every day covered in the dust of disintegrating newspapers, many of them with his byline somewhere between the folds.
I peered over his shoulder at the magazines he was giving the stink eye.
“French?” I asked.
“Belgian.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Coinage, kings, landmass, history, and where they get filed,” he said. “I wouldn’t bother filing them at all, except they were part of a donation and— Moses on a broomstick, what happened to your face!?”
“You should see the other guy.”
“Was the other guy Sugar Ray Robinson?”
I gave him the rough sketch of the events. He shook his head, sending his steel-gray curls bouncing. “You gotta be more careful, girl. This city’s full of monsters, thieves, and assholes. And that’s just City Hall.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, waving off his concerns. “You got my message?”
“I did. I’m still catching up on the Collins stuff. I was down in Panama City Beach. They didn’t carry the New York papers. Can you believe it?”
“Heathens.”
“You have no idea. Anyway, what are you looking to find out?”
“Anything that you know that hasn’t made it into the record,” I said. “We’ve got a dead socialite who came to New York under a pseudonym. Whose husband up and shot himself for what most people agree was no good reason. Not to mention the blackmailing—now murdered—clairvoyant who may or may not have had a hand in picking the pockets of the Gramercy Park crowd.”
“Your boss doesn’t think this Wallace guy is good for it?”
“What my boss thinks, I couldn’t tell you. She’s out of town following strings of her own,” I said. “Speaking for myself, there’s a lot of blank spaces in this puzzle and I’d love to fill some in.”
He gave me a look I couldn’t decipher, then asked, “You eat lunch yet?”
I shook my head.
“Let’s get out of this dungeon,” he said. “I’l
l be down here all day and I’d like to see the sun. Also, I’ve got two assistants who are great at filing and better at eavesdropping.”
He unzipped his smock, revealing a wool sweater and trousers in complementary shades of blue, and swapped his dusty boots for a pair of brown leather brogues. He grabbed his coat and we made our way up into the light and cold, then trudged through the snow to a little Italian place on Forty-eighth that I’d passed but never eaten at. The maître d’ smiled and called Hollis by name before seating us at an isolated booth in a corner where we could watch the snow and talk without anyone’s overhearing us.
A waiter who looked like he could remember when the Brooklyn Bridge was still a pipe dream took our order. I went for the meatloaf; Hollis opted for pasta primavera. After delivering a glass of red wine for him and water for me, the waiter made himself scarce.
“Been here before?” Hollis asked.
“Never had the pleasure.”
“Good place. Good food. Same family running it since the turn of the century. Used to be it was the only place within twenty blocks that served a full menu until two in the morning and stocked something better than bathtub gin.”
“Must have been popular with the journos and the cops,” I surmised.
He shook his head. “Too pricey for working stiffs. During normal hours, it catered to the wannabe-titans-of-business crowd.”
“And during abnormal hours?”
“It was the first stop for anyone who was out late, could afford a ten-dollar meal, and wanted some privacy,” Hollis said. “I was here the first time I ever saw Al Collins close up. I was out to dinner with a friend who was treating. It was late—well after midnight. Place was full, though you wouldn’t have known it. All the booths had curtains back then, and there was a big upstairs room for private parties.
“Anyway, a couple of suits come in, three sheets in and laughing their guts out. I look over and catch the eye of one of them—tall, older, kind of grim-looking. He seems to make me as a reporter and he grabs his friend and hurries upstairs. I asked the friend I was with who that was. He says, ‘Oh, that’s Al Collins. You should keep an eye on him. He’s gonna be one of the string-pullers in this city one day.’ ”
Fortune Favors the Dead Page 24
