The McBain Brief (8 page)

T
he girl slumped at the desk just inside the entrance doorway of the small office. The phone lay uncradled, just the way she'd dropped it. An open pad of telephone numbers rested just beyond reach of her lifeless left hand.

The legend on the frosted glass door read
Gotham Lobster Company.
The same legend was repeated on the long row of windows facing Columbus Avenue, and the sun glared hotly through those windows, casting the name of the company onto the wooden floor in shadowed black.

Mr. Godrow, President of Gotham Lobster, stood before those windows now. He was a big man with rounded shoulders and a heavy paunch. He wore a gray linen jacket over his suit pants, and the pocket of the jacket was stitched with the word
Gotham.
He tried to keep his meaty hands from fluttering, but he wasn't good at pretending. The hands wandered restlessly, and then exploded in a gesture of impatience.

“Well, aren't you going to
do
something?” he demanded.

“We just got here, Mr. Godrow,” I said. “Give us a little . . .”

“The police are supposed to be so good,” he said petulantly.
“This girl drops dead in my office and all you do is stand around and look. Is this supposed to be a sightseeing tour?”

I didn't answer him. I looked at Donny, and Donny looked back at me, and then we turned our attention to the dead girl. Her left arm was stretched out across the top of the small desk, and her body was arched crookedly, with her head resting on the arm. Long black hair spilled over her face, but it could not hide the contorted, hideously locked grin on her mouth. She wore a tight silk dress, slit on either side in the Oriental fashion, buttoned to the throat. The dress had pulled back over a portion of her right thigh, revealing a roll-gartered stocking. The tight line of her panties was clearly visible through the thin silk of her dress. The dead girl was Chinese, but her lips and face were blue.

“Suppose you tell us what happened, Mr. Godrow,” I said.

“Freddie can tell you,” Godrow answered. “Freddie was sitting closer to her.”

“Who's Freddie?”

“My boy,” Godrow said.

“Your son?”

“No, I haven't any children. My boy. He works for me.”

“Where is he now, sir?”

“I sent him down for some coffee. After I called you.” Godrow paused, and then reluctantly said, “I didn't think you'd get here so quickly.”

“Score one for the Police Department,” Donny murmured.

“Well, you fill us in until he gets back, will you?” I said.

“All right,” Godrow answered. He said everything grudgingly, as if he resented our presence in his office, as if this whole business of dead bodies lying around should never have been allowed to happen in his office. “What do you want to know?”

“What did the girl do here?” Donny asked.

“She made telephone calls.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes. Freddie does that, too, but he also runs the addressing machine. Freddie . . .”

“Maybe you'd better explain your operation a little,” I said.

“I sell lobsters,” Godrow said.

“From this office?” Donny asked skeptically.

“We take the orders from this office.” Godrow explained, warming up a little. It was amazing the way they always warmed up when they began discussing their work. “My plant is in Boothbay Harbor, Maine.”

“I see.”

“We take the orders here, and then the lobsters are shipped down from Maine, alive of course.”

“I like lobsters,” Donny said. “Especially lobster tails.”

“Those are not lobsters,” Godrow said indignantly. “Those are crawfish. African rock lobster. There's a big difference.”

“Who do you sell to, Mr. Godrow?” I asked.

“Restaurants. That's why Mary worked for me.”

“Is that the girl's name? Mary?”

“Yes, Mary Chang. You see, we do a lot of business with Chinese restaurants. Lobster Cantonese, you know, like that. They buy the Jumbos usually, in half-barrel quantities for the most part. They're good steady customers.”

“And Miss Chang called these Chinese restaurants, is that right?”

“Yes. I found it more effective that way. She spoke several Chinese dialects, and she inspired confidence, I suppose. At any rate, she got me more orders than any Occidental who ever held the job.”

“And Freddie? What does he do?”

“He calls the American restaurants. We call them every morning. Not all of them each morning, of course, but those we feel are ready to reorder. We give them quotations, and we hope they'll place orders. We try to keep our quotes low. For example, our Jumbos today were going for . . .”

“How much did Miss Chang receive for her duties, Mr. Godrow?”

“She got a good salary.”

“How much?”

“Why? What difference does it make?”

“It might be important, Mr. Godrow. How much?”

“A hundred and twenty-five a week, plus a dollar commission on each barrel order from a new customer.” Godrow paused. “Those are good wages, Mr. . . .”

“Parker, Detective Ralph Parker.”

“Those are good wages, Mr. Parker.” He paused again. “Much more than my competitors are paying.”

“I wouldn't know about that, Mr. Godrow, but I'll take your word for it. Now . . .”

A shadow fell across the floor, and Godrow looked up and said, “Ah, Freddie, it's about time.”

I turned to the door, expecting to find a sixteen-year-old kid maybe. Freddie was not sixteen, nor was he twenty-six. He was closer to thirty-six, and he was a thin man with sparse hair and a narrow mouth. He wore a rumpled tweed suit and a stained knitted tie.

“This is my boy,” Godrow said. “Freddie, this is Detective Parker and . . .”

“Katz,” Donny said. “Donald Katz.”

“How do you do?” Freddie said.

“Since you're here,” I said, “suppose you tell us what happened this morning, Freddie.”

“Mr. Godrow's coffee . . .” Freddie started apologetically.

“Yes, yes, my coffee,” Godrow said. Freddie brought it to his desk, put it down, and then fished into his pocket for some silver which he deposited alongside the paper container. Godrow counted the change meticulously, and then took the lid from the container and dropped in one lump of sugar. He opened his top drawer and put the remaining lump of sugar into a small jar there.

“What happened this morning, Freddie?” I asked.

“Well, I got in at about nine, or a little before,” he said.

“Were you here then, Mr. Godrow?”

“No. I didn't come in until nine-thirty or so.”

“I see. Go on, Freddie.”

“Mary . . . Miss Chang was here. I said good morning to her, and then we got down to work.”

“I like my people to start work right away,” Godrow said. “No nonsense.”

“Was Miss Chang all right when you came in, Freddie?”

“Yes. Well, that is . . . she was complaining of a stiff neck, and she seemed to be very jumpy, but she started making her phone calls, so I guess she was all right.”

“Was she drinking anything?”

“Sir?”

“Was she drinking anything?”

“No, sir.”

“Did she drink anything all the while you were here?”

“No, sir. I didn't see her, at least.”

“I see.” I looked around the office and said, “Three phones here, is that right?”

“Yes,” Godrow answered. “One extension for each of us. You
know how they work. You push a button on the face of the instrument, and that's the line you're on. We can all talk simultaneously that way, on different lines.”

“I know how it works,” I said. “What happened then, Freddie?”

“We kept calling, that's all. Mr. Godrow came in about nine-thirty, like he said, and we kept on calling while he changed to his office jacket.”

“I like to wear this jacket in the office,” Godrow explained. “Makes me feel as if I'm ready for the day's work, you know.”

“Also saves wear and tear on your suit jacket,” Donny said.

Godrow seemed about to say something, but I beat him to the punch. “Did you notice anything unusual about Miss Chang's behavior, Mr. Godrow?”

“Well, yes, as a matter of fact. As Freddie told you, she was quite jumpy. I dropped a book at one point, and she almost leaped out of her chair.”

“Did
you
see her drink anything?”

“No.”

“All right, Freddie, what happened after Mr. Godrow came in?”

“Well, Mary started making another phone call. This was at about nine-thirty-five. She was behaving very peculiarly by this time. She was twitching and well . . . she was having . . . well, like spasms. I asked her if she was all right, and she flinched when I spoke, and then she went right on with her call. I remember the time because I started a call at about the same time. You see, we have to get our orders in the morning if Boothbay is to deliver the next morning. That means we're racing against the clock, sort of, so you learn to keep your eyes on it. Well, I picked up my phone and started dialing, and then Mary started talking Chinese to someone on her phone. She sits at the desk right next to mine, you see, and I hear everything she says.”

“Do you know who she was calling?”

“No. She always dials . . . dialed . . . the numbers and then started talking right off in Chinese. She called all the Chinese restau . . .”

“Yes, I know. Go on.”

“Well, she was talking on her phone, and I was talking on mine, and all of a sudden she said in English, ‘No, why?' “

“She said this in English?”

“Yes.”

“Did you hear this, Mr. Godrow?”

“No. My desk is rather far away, over here near the windows. But I heard what she said next. I couldn't miss hearing that. She yelled it out loud.”

“What was that, sir?”

“She said ‘Kill me? No! No!' “

“What happened then?”

“Well,” Freddie said, “I was still on the phone. I looked up, and I didn't know
what
was going on. Mary started to shove her chair back, and then she began . . . shaking all over . . . like . . . like . . .”

“The girl had a convulsion,” Godrow put in. “If I'd known she was predisposed toward . . .”

“Did she pass out?”

“Yes,” Freddie said.

“What did you do then?”

“I didn't know what to do.”

“Why didn't you call a doctor?”

“Well, we did, after the second convulsion.”

“When was that?”

“About . . . oh I don't know . . . ten, fifteen minutes later. I really don't know.”

“And when the doctor came, what did he say?”

“Well, he didn't come,” Freddie said apologetically.

“Why not? I thought you called him.”

“The girl died after the second convulsion,” Godrow said. “Good Lord, man, she turned blue! Why should I pay a doctor for a visit when the girl was dead? I cancelled the call.”

“I see.”

“It's obvious she was predisposed toward convulsions, and whoever spoke to her on the phone frightened her, bringing one on,” Godrow said. “He obviously told her he was going to kill her or something.”

“This is all very obvious, is it, Mr. Godrow?” I asked.

“Well, of course. You can see the girl is blue. What else . . .”

“Lots of things,” I said. “Lots of things could have caused her coloration. But only one thing would put that grin on her face.”

“What's that?” Godrow asked.

“Strychnine poisoning,” I said.

When we got
back to the squadroom, I put a call through to Mike Reilly. The coroner had already confirmed my suspicions, but I wanted the official autopsy report on it. Mike picked up the phone on the third ring and said, “Reilly here.”

“This is Ralph,” I said. “What've you got on the Chinese girl?”

“Oh. Like you figured, Ralph. It's strychnine, all right.”

“No question?”

“None at all. She sure took enough of the stuff. Any witnesses around when she went under?”

“Yes, two.”

“She complain of a stiff neck, twitching, spasms?”

“Yes.”

“Convulsions?”

“Yes.”

“Sure, that's all strychnine. Yeah, Ralph. And her jaws locked the way they were, that grin. And the cyanotic coloring of lips and face. Oh, no question. Hell, I could have diagnosed this without making a test.”

“What else did you find, Mike?”

“She didn't have a very big breakfast, Ralph. Coffee and an English muffin.”

“Have any idea when she got the strychnine?”

“Hard to say. Around breakfast, I suppose. You're gonna have a tough nut with strychnine, Ralph.”

“How so?”

“Tracing it, I mean. Hell, Ralph, they sell it by the can. For getting rid of animal pests.”

“Yeah. Well, thanks, Mike.”

“No trouble at all. Drop in anytime.”

He hung up, and I turned to Donny who had already started on a cup of coffee.

“Strychnine, all right.”

“What'd you expect?” he said. “Malted milk?”

“So where now?”

“Got a check on the contents of the girl's purse from the lab. Nothing important. Lipstick. Some change. Five-dollar bill, and three singles. Threatre stubs.”

“For where?”

“Chinese theatre in Chinatown.”

“Anything else?”

“Letter to a sister in Hong Kong.”

“In Chinese?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“That's it. Oh yes, a program card. She was a transfer student at Columbia. Went there nights.”

“So what do you figure, Donny?”

“I figure some bastard slipped the strychnine to her this morning before she came to work. Maybe a lover, how do I know? She called him later to say hello. She talks Chinese on the phone, so who can tell whether she's calling a restaurant or her uncle in Singapore? The guy all at once says, ‘You know why you're feeling so punk, honey?' So she
is
feeling punk. She's got a stiff neck, and her reflexes are hypersensitive, and she's beginning to shake a little. She forgets she's supposed to be talking to a Chinese restaurant owner. She drops the pose for a minute and says ‘No, why?' in English. The boyfriend on the other end says, ‘Here's why, honey. I gave you a dose of strychnine when I saw you this morning. It's going to kill you in about zero minutes flat.' The kid jumps up and screams ‘Kill me? No! No!' Curtain. The poison's already hit her.”