The Apostrophe Thief (14 page)

“A what?”

He gave her his big-toothed grin. “He makes aglets. And he's always crying about that, too. Says it's not the same, now they've switched from metal to plastic.”

“But what's—ow!” An elbow in Marian's side.

“Sorry,” a distracted woman said as she squeezed by.

“Is it always this crowded?” Marian asked.

“Not always,” Augie said. “But sometimes it's worse.”

Four or five rows of tables away, a short chubby man in a plaid jacket was waving his arm and calling out something that was lost in the general hum and babble of the room. Marian looked behind her to see whom he was calling to, but no one seemed to be paying any attention. She looked back; he waved again and grinned. Marian pointed to herself:
me?

The man in the plaid jacket nodded vigorously and disappeared into the crowd. Now what was all that about?

Marian and Augie inched along the row of tables, asking about scripts, pausing to look at some piece of memorabilia that caught their eye. Several of the tables had playscripts for sale. Marian went through the motions of looking through them, mostly for Augie's benefit; but of course
The Apostrophe Thief
wasn't there. But scripts seemed to be of minor interest here; most of the buying and selling involved personal items that once belonged to celebrities. Augie himself bought a bow tie worn by Anthony Quayle in
Sleuth
. Marian stared incredulously at an old Kleenex with a touch of lipstick on it; the dealer claimed it was Jessica Tandy's, from the time she was doing
A Delicate Balance
. Suddenly, Holland's voice saying
Voyeurism
spoke in her head; musing that he just might be right, Marian moved away.

Sitting behind the second-to-last table was the one female member of the Zingone clan; she was accepting money from a beaming customer, a man in his forties dressed in tattletale gray who was clutching a yellowed play program encased in a plastic bag. The dealer glanced up and saw them. “Hiya Augie, and … Marian?”

“Right. And you're Janet.”

She nodded. “People, I want you to meet Dudley. Dudley collects play programs.” She seemed to be trying not to laugh. “But only programs for plays that start with the letter
H
.”

Augie stared. “
Only
with
H
?
”

“That's right,” Dudley crooned happily. “And Janet just found me one I didn't have.” He held up the program; the play was titled
Half a Widow
, and the date was 1927.

Janet grinned wickedly. “Why don't you tell them some of the plays you have, Dudley?”

“I got
Hair
and
The Hairy Ape,
” he said happily. “I got
The Homecoming, Harvey, How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, Hotel Universe, A Hatful of Rain, The Heiress, Hopalong Freud, The Happiest Millionaire, High Spirits, Huckleberry, Hellzapoppin, Hello Dolly
, and
Hello Solly
. I got fourteen
Hamlets
and three
Hedda Gablers
.”

“Uh, I think I see somebody who, um.” Augie started edging away.

“I got
Here Be Dragons, A Hole in the Head, Hunter's Moon,
” Dudley went on. “
Hay Fever, The Humbug, Home, Hope Is the Thing with Feathers
, three
Henry
IVs, two
Henry
Vs,
High Tor, How to Be a Jewish Mother, How a Nice Girl Named Janet Contracted Syphilis
.”

“Thanks a lot,” Janet said dryly. Marian cast a longing glance after Augie, who by then had made his escape.

“I got a lot of ‘House' programs. I got
House of Flowers, House of Bernarda Alba, House of Atreus, House of Rothschild, Heartbreak House, The Housekeeper, The House on Cristo Street, Houseboat on the Styx
.…”

Would this never end? Marian interrupted his spiel: “Well … Dudley. That's an impressive list, that is. Um, what do you plan on doing with all those programs?”

Dead
silence. Dudley stared at her with a mixture of shock and scorn, and then said passionately, “What do I plan on
doing
with them? Is that what you said? I plan on
having
them, that's what I plan on
doing
with them! You think maybe I'm going to plaster the walls with them?” In a huff, he turned and shouldered his way through the crowd.

Janet was laughing. “That is the one question you never ask a collector. Not ever.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Marian said. “Well. So, where are your brothers?”

“Oh, Luke's in Indiana, Mark's minding the store, and Matthew's cruising here, looking for bargains.”

“What's Luke doing in Indiana?”

“Attending a private auction. Movie memorabilia.” Janet looked thoughtful. “You know, the people who started collecting seriously back during Hollywood's Golden Age are all getting on in years now. And whenever one of them dies, the heirs almost always put the collection up for auction. A lot of good items are available now that have been out of circulation since the thirties. This man in Indiana—he specialized in horror movies. Bela Lugosi's cape, things like that.” She smiled at the thought of the goodies Luke would be bringing back, but then shifted her attention to Marian. “Anything new on the
Apostrophe Thief
loot?”

“I had a line on it, but it didn't pan out.”

Janet smiled sympathetically. “Luke told us what happened. About how Augie's big mouth spooked that guy, the one you were calling Rocky? I'm sorry you lost your lead.”

“Well, I'm not sure he knew Ernie Nordstrom's address anyway,” Marian said. “But Vasquez would know, wouldn't he?”

“Oh, sure.” Janet's eyes narrowed. “They're a strange pair. Vasquez never talks and Ernie never shuts up. You think they're the ones who ripped off the Broadhurst?”

“Don't know. I think Luke thinks so.”

“Luke is convinced of it. If you find Vasquez, how about giving us a call? One of my brothers or I would like to go along.”

“The scripts are mine.”

“Absolutely. But the other stuff—you're not interested in that, are you?”

“Nope.”

“I didn't think so.” Janet picked up a card from the table. “Here's our number. You let us in on it, we'll return the favor.”

Marian took the card. “I don't mean to be naive, but aren't you afraid of getting into trouble? Receiving stolen goods, like that?”

The other woman pooh-poohed the notion. “The police have more important things to keep them occupied than what they see as just a bunch of souvenirs. If it doesn't have to do with drugs, they're not interested.”

So that's how they see us
, Marian thought. Just then she caught sight of an arm waving in the air; it was the chubby man in the plaid jacket again. More irritated than curious, Marian told Janet Zingone goodbye and moved away from her table; she didn't relish being stalked by either collector or dealer, whichever he was.

No sign of Augie. Marian briefly considered looking for him, but she'd never find him in that constantly moving mob of people. Maybe he was waiting outside. She started working her way toward the stairs.

“Hundred twenty-five is as high as I'll go,” a man examining a woman's scarf was saying. “Come on, you're not going to do any better'n that … who collects Ann Rutherford?”

Marian climbed the stairs and glanced around; no Augie. She went outside the church and looked both ways along the sidewalk, but couldn't spot her erstwhile guide anywhere. Well, no matter; she was finished here anyway. She started off toward the nearest subway station.

“Marian!”

She turned and looked; it was Chubby Plaids.

“You are Marian, aren't you?”

Wondering, she nodded.

He puffed his way up to her, grinning happily. “You're a hard lady to catch,” he wheezed, and stuck out a meaty hand. “I'm Harley Wingfield. I hear you're looking for Elvis?”

The next morning Marian stood outside of Captain Murtaugh's office, waiting until he finished giving instructions to two detectives investigating a jewelry store robbery. Murtaugh glanced up and saw her through the glass part of the door, and waved her away: This will take a while. Marian nodded and went back to Lieutenant Overbrook's office.

While she waited, she got to thinking about Wadsworth the Aglet-Maker from Passaic. Overbrook had a dictionary on his shelves; it told her an aglet was the little sheath on the end of a shoelace. Marian half moaned, half laughed. This was a
profession?
And Wadsworth was moaning over the switch from metal to plastic? Shoelace tips! As the old song said, little things mean a lot.

The phone rang; it was Murtaugh summoning her to his office. As soon as she'd gone in and closed the door, he said, “Tell me what kind of man Captain DeFalco is.”

“Political animal,” Marian replied without hesitation. “Smart, but doesn't strain himself in the ethics department. More interested in hearing his name on the news than in nailing the right perp. Steals credit for work done by others. Selective memory. Lies to his own people, when it suits his immediate purpose.” Marian sighed. “He's active—not afraid of confrontations or challenges, but he'd sell out his grandmother for a momentary advantage. He knows how to run a good investigation up to a point, but then he jumps to conclusions from the flimsiest of evidence. Also, he lies a lot.”

Murtaugh was silent a moment. Then: “If all that's true, why do you stay in his command?”

Marian grinned ironically. “I thought I was in your command.”

The captain thought that over. “You're not going back to the Ninth Precinct, are you? Have you put in for a transfer?”

“No.”

Then he understood. “You're going to resign.”

“Not until this business at the Broadhurst Theatre is cleared up,” Marian told him. “I promised Kelly Ingram I'd see it through.”

“But then you're going to quit? Because of one captain in one precinct?”

Marian shook her head. “DiFalco's just the final straw. This has been coming a long time, Captain. Why did you ask me about him?”

But Murtaugh wouldn't be diverted. “I don't know what brought you to this point, Sergeant, but I hope you'll reconsider. You know how to run an investigation, and you're a self-starter. If I had an opening here, I'd offer it to you. It couldn't have been easy for you, earning that gold badge you carry. Don't throw it away.”

Marian remained silent.

Murtaugh nodded. “All right, you're not going to talk to me about it. I asked you about DiFalco because he wouldn't let me borrow Gloria Sanchez until I gave him my word his precinct would be credited for whatever collar you and she make.”

Marian laughed shortly. “What did you tell him?”

“I told him he could have the collar—I just want to clear the case. He's sending Sanchez over for a briefing this morning, but she has to go back and work out the rest of the day for him.
And
we pick up her overtime, for tonight at The, ah, Esophagus.”

Just then Perlmutter stuck his head in through the door, a look of wonder on his face. “Captain, you aren't going to believe this,” he said in awestruck tones, “but Whoopi Goldberg's here to see you.”

Marian sighed. “That's Gloria.”

“Send her in,” said Murtaugh.

Perlmutter went to get her, and then lingered when he'd shown her in. Gloria Sanchez was wearing what she called her cool duds, meaning she had on nothing that could be ordered from a catalog. She'd fixed her hair in tiny ringlets, hundreds of them that hung down around her ears and stuck up and out in a few places and even hid her eyes, almost. In an odd sort of way, she did look a little like Whoopi Goldberg. Gloria peered out from under her hair long enough to wink at Marian before she said, “Captain Murtaugh? I'm Detective Sanchez. Captain DiFalco says you got a job for me.”

Murtaugh stood up to shake her hand and then pointed to a chair. “It'll mean overtime tonight. Any problem with that?”

“Noop.” Gloria sat down next to Marian.

“Is this the Broadhurst thing?” Perlmutter asked. He'd brought the theater's cleaning crew in to look at mug shots, with no results, but it gave him a kind of stake in the case.

“You know about the burglary at the Broadhurst Theatre?” Murtaugh asked. Gloria nodded. The captain proceeded to summarize what Marian had learned, ending with, “This Vasquez is our best bet for finding out where Ernie Nordstrom lives. The trouble is, Vasquez speaks little or no English. And since he's bound to be on his guard, it'd be better if he were approached in a ‘friendly' environment … and by another Hispanic.”

Everyone looked at Whoopi Goldberg.

“Do you have any idea,” Gloria said heavily, “how
long
it took me to fix my hair this way?”

Murtaugh's eyes crinkled into a smile. “We'll need some plausible reason for you to strike up an acquaintance with him.”

“Why not just bring him in for questioning?” Perlmutter asked.

Marian said, “He may already have been warned.” She told about losing Kevin Kirby, alias the hunk, and added, “If Kirby was that cautious, Vasquez will be even more so. We can't go at him straight on. We need something decidedly underhanded.”

“So you sent for me,” Gloria said wryly.

They tossed a few ideas back and forth, but nothing struck anyone as particularly workable. “She can go in as a groupie,” Perlmutter said, “that's easy enough. But what reason would a groupie have to ask for Ernie Nordstrom's address?”

“None,” Murtaugh said. “But what if she's looking for something Vasquez knows Nordstrom has, some part of the Broadhurst haul?”

Marian pulled out her list of stolen items. “Scripts. Costumes. Small TV, notebook computer, radios and so forth. Two paintings.”

“Paintings,” said Murtaugh.