Time Off for Murder (13 page)

  There had been some attempt at seemly disposal of the dead. The garments had been smoothed; the jacket closed over a blouse whose collar was gray with dust, whose bosom brown with blood. Arms had been folded across the chest. A wrist watch stretched around the brown bones of a wrist. Its glass was cracked, its tiny hands close together, pointing to thirty-seven minutes after eight.

  Mary felt an arm across her shoulders. She looked up into Johnny Reese's face and said: "Those are the clothes she wore when she went away. But it isn't Phyllis. It's bones and cloth and hair and a watch. Did you see the time? The watch died at eight thirty-seven - when Phyllis died. . ." She touched the hem of the dead woman's skirt. "The cloth's singed. There's a hole in it as big as half a dollar. What stopped them? Why didn't they finish the job?" She wheeled around. "Inspector, do you know anything about the house next door? The house at fifty-seven. When was there a raid on those premises?"

  The Inspector stared. "You sure get around," he said. "'S more'n I know…. Me, I'm only Homicide."

  "Thought you might've heard. It was the big event in the neighborhood. Last October sometime."

  "Y'see. That's why I let her hang around these places." His voice had a lilt of admiration. "The kid's clever." He patted her head, as if she were his child or puppy. "Now, listen, Reese, two jobs you got to do right away. Number one: Get a list of the owners of this house, and the two houses both sides - fifty-seven, fiftynine, sixty-one. The Bureau might be closed - this is Saturday. If it is, get Willie Deegan at his house. He lives out in Queens. Get him to open up for you. And second, hop over to the Station House and find out what's about this raid. Who's on the desk at this Precinct now?"

  "MacKinoy, sir," a blue-coat spoke up. "Lieutenant Mitchel MacKinoy."

  "I remember." A frown ruffled the Inspector's brow. "Sure, I remember MacKinoy. Used to be up in Harlem. He'll give you the dope on the raid. Tell you what, Reese. Hop right over there. Use his phone to get Deegan. Step on it. You don't have to worry about her." He waggled a thumb at Mary. "She and I get along fine…. Take it away."

  The policeman folded back the tarpaulin, pushed down the casket lid. Inspector Heinsheimer followed them to the front door. He crooked his arm to the reporters behind the grille. "O.K., boys. You can come in now. And keep your hands in your pockets, mind."

  When the reporters had scuffed up the dust in the basement and cellar, had stamped, with policemen at their heels, through all the echoing, empty rooms above; had grimed themselves liberally with plaster and dust, had churned the backyard into mud, had hopped back and forth through the loose boards of the fence, had stood awe-stricken before the ghostly banquet table, had asked innumerable questions and written the answers down, and the press photographers had taken many pictures, Inspector Heinsheimer carried the four dusty chairs of the phantom supper into the front room of the basement. He set them in a circle before the green tiled mantelpiece. He motioned to Mary Carner to seat herself in one chair, invited to another a newcomer, a slim, dark, brightlooking, nervous young man with a toothbrush mustache, who came from the District Attorney's office; and to a third, a police stenographer.

  Outside in the hall, the reporters milled noisily, falling over the feet of the police. The Inspector shut the door, closing up the stifling airlessness of dust and damp.

  The young D.A. ripped the cellophane from a pack of cigarettes, passed them around. He was apologetic. "Came as fast as I could, Heinsheimer. Saturday's a bad day in our office. Short handed."

  "Taking it easy since you put Nardello away?"

  The young D.A. raised his chin. "The District Attorney's office never takes it easy," he said stiffly. "We never rest on our laurels."

  "O.K. O.K. The D.A.'s office never did get itself a sense of humor. Forget it. Let's go to town. We ain't so much ahead of you. Just got the dirty work done. Now, here's the picture and if your office tells me they ever saw a prettier one, I'll eat my badge. It's the Knight dame all right. The boys knew it the minute they saw the hair and buck teeth and the get-up. And her pocketbook besides. The identification ain't official yet. The cadaver's gone downtown. We'll get her father over to make it official. Miss Carner, here, was her friend. Her identification's O.K. too. There ain't no doubt at all it's her. In case you forgot, she was the lady lawyer that walked out of her office in October or November. There was a big time over it in the papers. Remember the exact date, Miss C?"

  "Yes. She was last seen on October nineteenth when she left her office saying she was going to the movies. Her disappearance was officially reported ten days later."

  "Well, she's found now all right. Cause of death: bullet through the heart. We've got a slug. We think it's the one. Thirty-eight. Sure it's the same calibre as ours and I'm not saying it doesn't look like one of ours. But we ain't the only ones use thirty-eights. Dug it out of the plaster in the hall. Back of the kitchen entrance. Ain't found the shell yet. We dope it the bullet was fired from a height of about five feet. Took a downward course, through the body into the wall. Make it a tall guy doing the shooting, see. Somebody taller'n the girl anyway. And that ain't hard to be."

  "Approximate date of death?" the assistant D.A. asked.

  Mary said: "She was wearing the clothes in which she disappeared. As far as we know they were the only ones missing from her wardrobe. Light suit. For mild weather."

  "Figure on October nineteenth or around that," the Inspector supplemented. "Been in this house all winter more'n likely. Her watch stopped at eight thirtyseven. The body was carried down to the cellar and dumped in the furnace."

  "Dismemberment, Inspector?"

  "None. Sure, these old-fashioned hot air furnaces could hold a body easily. Not a guy my size, but a little dame. An attempt seems to have been made to burn the body but the fire went out. Whoever it was didn't know too much about starting a fire in that kind of a furnace. Or else had to leave before it got going right. All the flues were open and the draft probably carried the stink up the chimney. That's why nobody in the neighborhood never reported nothing. Now inside, in there in the kitchen, somebody was having a party. They must have got in from the back door that the housewrecker - he's the guy found the corpse - says was open. They had an electric wire strung along the fence from next door to give them light."

  "Who occupied the house next door, Inspector?"

  "We're working on that. Give us time, will you? Now it looks like these guys, whoever they were, were sitting down to the party. They'd just lit up their cigars when this dame, alone, or whoever was with her, came in through the front door and knocked them off their seats. Somebody didn't like her looks, or didn't like the idea of being caught by anybody and he blazed away. We think there was somebody came in with the girl, somebody that carried a flashlight and a little pistol and wore silver specs and dropped them all in the hall before he beat it…. The little gun was fired, nicked the woodwork…. That's the set-up. Now, all we got to do is find out when the girl was killed and who was having dinner here that night."

  There was a tap on the door at that moment, and without waiting for the "come in," Johnny Reese's cheerful face appeared in the opening. "MacKinoy wasn't there," he reported. "Said he was sick. Said he was going home. The boys looked up the dope on fifty-seven for me. Listen, this'll slay you: the Police Department practically saw the murder of Phyllis Knight! I ain't kidding. Listen to this." He took his notebook from his pocket, flipped the pages. "On Wednesday, October the nineteenth, at eight forty-five," he spoke slowly, as if savoring the impact of his words, "the vice squad raided the premises at fifty-seven, and arrested Flo Gordon, white; Bessie Jackson, colored; Billie Montrose, white; Evelyn La Rue, white; Gloria Clark, white. Booked 'em at the station house and took 'em to the Women's Court for arraignment on October twentieth. Don't tell the papers, but the police were practically on the spot when the deed was done."

  What had Chris said that October evening while the T-bone steaks were on the fire? Murder could happen under your nose in New York and nobody notice. "Phyllis might be dead this very minute." Chris had tried to be clever. Unaccountably, a shiver raced down Miss Carner's spine.

  Johnny Reese was finishing. "That's all now, Inspector. I'm meeting Willie Deegan at the Queensboro Bridge in ten minutes. See you all later."

  "Flo Gordon." The assistant District Attorney repeated the name. He scratched the side of his nose, thoughtfully. "I ought to know that femme. Flo Gordon? Why, sure I do. I remember her now. I remember her well. Big, brassy, hairylipped female, slick as a greased pig. Sure…. Oh sure…. We were interested in that raid. . . I remember now…. We had an idea Flo was working for Rockey Nardello, that the place was one of his. Flo ran it, and from what I could learn, ran it darn well. Swanky clientele. Girls no better than run of the mill - and the same risk but Flo knew how to put on the spiff: good liquor, silk-cushions, soft lights, filthy movies. Some of our best citizens patronized the joint. We had to keep Flo's guest book in the safe, or there'd've been divorces all over town…. I talked to Flo myself…. Tried all the tricks to get her to sing. All we got out of her were some high class sneers. We tried the other palookas in the house, too. But they were dumber than average."

  Mary Carner interrupted: "What was Phyllis Knight's connection with the District Attorney's office?" she asked. "It was mentioned the time she disappeared."

  The assistant District Attorney blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling. "Give me a minute. I'll remember." The ashes of his cigarette dribbled to the floor. "I've got it now. " He hunched forward. "She came down to see us in October. As I recall she hadn't much to tell us we didn't already know. And her information pertained chiefly to the vice racket, in which we were only mildly interested, and not to policy which was the indictment against Nardello. Her source of information, I believe, was a girl she had defended in the Bronx on a homicide charge, a poor Polish kid, who had been victimized by some of Rockey's crowd."

  "Sophie Duda?"

  "That's the name. As I recall it now, the girl had given some hints that she knew who some of the important people were behind the Nardello rackets. Miss Knight asked us not to contact the girl, to let her try to get it out of her alone said the girl was too scared to talk to anyone else." He sighed. "But it turned out to be just one of these things. People running in and out of the D.A.'s office with hot tips all the time and never delivering. Phyllis Knight never phoned us again and nothing ever came of it…. Oh well." He smiled with reminiscent satisfaction. "We got our verdict anyway, as you may recall."

  "But Miss Knight tried to phone your office the day she disappeared," Mary said. "I was told she couldn't, for some reason or other, reach the District Attorney."

  "Wouldn't surprise me. Our phones were awfully busy all that day. Trial opened next morning."

  "If she had reached you, perhaps - "

  "Perhaps she'd not be dead. That what you meant to say?" His brow wrinkled. "I don't know…I don't know what the tie-up is - unless," his tone grew sharper, "unless you believe she was murdered by the Nardello gang?"

  Inspector Heinsheimer stretched his legs. "We don't believe anything at all," he said. "Our minds are so open, there's a draft." He yawned. "'Scuse me. It's stuffy in here. Smoke's so thick you can weigh it on the scales by the pound. How much time d'you think the judge gave the Gordon woman?"

  "Flo?" the D.A. answered. "Not much. Not more than a hundred and twenty days, if that. And if she had a good lawyer, and she would have, believe me, sixty days. She didn't get off without time. I'm sure of that."

  "Would you figure Flo knew what was going on next door to her?"

  "If they were using electricity she paid for, she'd know. You can bet on that."

  The Inspector rose, strolled to the mantelpiece. "One thing's nice about this murder. We got plenty of witnesses. Four guys and maybe a spare saw it done; a house full of women next door and the police department and half the neighborhood on the doorstep before the body was cold."

  "And not one has said a single word in a half year," Mary Carner said. "That's a new high in secret keeping. Unless it didn't happen that way at all and there weren't any witnesses. We're taking a lot for granted. We know Phyllis disappeared on the nineteenth. We know there was a raid next door on the nineteenth. And we're assuming that on the same evening there was a dinner party here and Phyllis broke in on it."

  "Sure," said the Inspector. "Know anybody to call us a liar?"

  "How about the man who lost the eyeglasses?" the District Attorney put it. "When was he here and why did he come? And who was he?"

  "Take it easy. We'll find that out too." The Inspector took the eyeglasses from his pocket. He held them up. "Cheap frame," he said. "This guy didn't like to spend his dough - or didn't have it to spend." He squinted through the unbroken lens. "Strong," he commented. "Makes my eyes hurt." He took the envelope of broken glass from his pocket, put the spectacle frame inside it, went over to the door and beckoned to a plainclothesman. "Here, Menzel. Get Lydon. The two of you take these specs to every optician in New York…every guy that makes eyeglasses. I mean every one. Find out what the prescription is and if anybody remembers making it up and for who."

  The detective called Menzel whistled. "There's hundreds of them guys, Inspector."

  "And what difference does that make?" Inspector Heinsheimer said coldly. He returned to his chair.

  While he was at the door, Mary Carner had been rummaging through the blue leather handbag that had belonged to Phyllis. In her lap were spread the personal belongings of the dead woman, two dainty hand-rolled, monogrammed handkerchiefs, a powder compact, a pair of reading glasses in their case, a silver pencil, a pocket comb, a box of throat lozenges, a little book of addresses and telephone numbers - hairdresser, laundry, doctor, dentist, chiropodist, dry cleaner, broker, friends - a folded checkbook, a bunch of keys, the smallest a toy of gilt, a bill fold, change purse.