Epitaph For A Tramp (13 page)

I didn’t answer him. “The rest will be pure speculation, Pete,” he said. “You can cut it there.” He jerked his tie lower across his shirt. “I hate to begin hot days with guesswork, Harry. But you might as well.”

“No premeditation,” I said.

“Meaning?”

“He was looking for the money, not trouble. Maybe he thought he could talk her out of going to anybody else about it, I don’t know. Anyhow all he wanted was more conversation on the subject. And probably she had the stuff in her hand when she walked back to the guy’s car. I don’t know in what, but the guy’d seen it when she first went to him.”

“Canvas sack.” Brannigan motioned and I saw it on the floor at the side of the desk.

“All right, she’s carrying that. He wants it, and bad, but this time she tells him to make his pile some other way. Maybe
this sets it off, maybe something else, but either way it’s quick, so probably they’d had the start of an argument about it before. And then they’re not arguing anymore. The guy grabs the sack but at the same time he sees that she’s not dead. He panics, but he hasn’t got the guts to stab her again. So what does he do?”

“You’re telling it.”

“Okay, I am. So he sees her get up and make the bell, and a minute later he hears the buzzer. He gets out of there like a shot.”

“With the money?”

“Sure with the money. But he’s probably not even shifted into third before it hits him. A fat lot of good it’s going to do him to scram if she’s lived long enough to talk. For all he knows she could have come up to borrow a Band-Aid. Hell, she may live to be ninety, and either way he’s damned sure got to find out. He comes back and watches the place. I come out twice, and the second time I take off in the MG.”

“And he comes over and walks in. Through the door you’ve conveniently forgotten to lock.”

“Hell, Nate, I left the keys under the rubber for Dan.”

Brannigan didn’t say anything.

“So what else?” I said. “The minute he gets inside he knows he’s done murder. He also knows that if she’s talked you’ll have him on it so fast it will make him nauseated. But if he plants the money here it’s my word against his—and I’m the one with the dead horse in the bathtub.”

“Fine,” Brannigan said. He had taken out a cigar. “But if she hasn’t talked he’s throwing the money away.”

“Wouldn’t you? You going to take the odds that she didn’t spill? Standing here with the body on the floor and me possibly on my way to the police at that very moment? You leave the coin, Nate. You leave it and you pray like hell at the same time
that she didn’t talk so you’ll be out of it completely. You can’t get a much better bargain for the price.”

Coffey had gone to the bottle. “You’ve got the killer’s impulses figured out pretty clearly for pure speculation, Fannin,’’ he said sarcastically. “Any of this based on anything you know and haven’t told us, maybe?”

I let the sarcasm ride. “It’s based on what didn’t happen.”

“Namely?”

“Namely that the guy didn’t come up and try to take me out myself while I was still here. A pro wouldn’t take the chance that I could tag him for it. It’s got to be somebody who didn’t intend to do it to start with, and who chickened out fast after it happened.”

“How do we know he saw her get up?” Coffey said. “Suppose she lay there a minute. Suppose the guy drove off and left her for dead?”

“Say what you mean. You mean there wasn’t anybody out there at all.”

“I didn’t say that, Fannin.”

I turned to Brannigan. “Look, Nate, if there’s anybody else in it but me it’s got to be my way. He sees her come in because he comes in himself. If the guy drives off like Coffey says then there’s no point in putting him out there to start with, because it means I’ve got the dough all along. It kills the motive for anybody else. It means I knife her on my own doorstep and then come back up and wait while she crawls up after me. She’d do that. And I’d leave the loot stashed away with my sweat socks. I’m clever like that. Just like I’d have Dan call you. Hell, I’d call the papers, too. I’d print invitations. Come see Fannin electrocute himself. One wire in his ear and the other up his back. Free smoked mussels for everybody.”

“Fannin, I didn’t accuse you,” Coffey said.

“Who the hell did you have in mind, W. C. Fields?”

“Look, Fannin—bug off. The body’s in your apartment. The money’s here. The victim’s your ex-wife. So you come back three or four hours after you should have, tossing off some story on pure spec, and you get touchy if I question any part of it. Well, you can shove your touchiness, friend. You greasy private Johns give me a swift pain anyhow. If I made a list of every time one of you meddlers make us take three weeks to do what we could have done in three hours the department wouldn’t have enough paper to type it on. For my money you still got a lot of scrubbing to do before you stop smelling bad.”

If Brannigan hadn’t been there Coffey probably would have spit on the carpet. He sat there eyeing me like something in the gutter he’d stepped in on the way to work.

“Funny,” I told him, “I’ve got a list, too. Not as significant as yours, Coffey, just something I think about when I run out of comic books. People who’ve given me kicks, added an extra dimension to my prosaic life. Guys like, say, Einstein, Gandhi, Adlai Stevenson, Toscanini, Willie Mays—people like that, you know? And you know something else? There ain’t a cop on the list. Not one.”

“You’re funny as sick people, Fannin. Be funny, what I said still goes. Who the hell are you that I got to wear kid gloves? You somebody’s favorite nephew all of a sudden? Chew nails, huh?”

It wouldn’t get any pleasanter so I let it drop. His wife had to live with it, not me. Probably some of it was my own fault anyhow. They weren’t setting any departmental records to get her off the floor over there. The room was still for a minute.

“You girls about finished?” Brannigan said.

Coffey grunted.

“Take a drink,” I told him. Mine was on the floor near me and I picked it up and stared at it.

Brannigan made a clicking noise with his teeth. “All right,
it’s as handy as we can establish for now.” He turned to the stenographer. “Pete, get out that description on Sabatini first of all. And run a check on that Adam Moss, too; see if there’s any file on him just in case. You might as well get started now. Call in on the way and put through the stake-out for that Perry Street address, my authority.”

“Right, Captain.”

“And take the money in. Report the recovery of it, but tell the insurance mob it’s impounded indefinitely. They’ll probably be on your neck in four minutes. And put through the pick-up on that cousin of Sabatini’s in Troy.”

“Yes, sir.” I watched him load the satchel. He threw a half salute like a scarecrow flapping in a breeze and when Brannigan returned it he went out. Brannigan got up and walked into the kitchen. Water ran into a glass.

“So it all hinges on who she’d go to,” he said when he came out. “Whose doorbell she’d push when she found herself in a jam. No family besides the mother and sister?”

“None.”

“Then I suppose we check with the Kline girl first, get a list of everybody she can tie in with the deceased.” He stared at Cathy for a minute, then at me. “It’d seem like there’d be a fair-sized list of names.”

“And no-names.”

“One-night stands?”

“Something like that.”

He cursed once, chewing on the cigar. It wasn’t burning. “You want to call the Kline girl?”

“I’m working with the department?”

“You don’t think maybe it’s about time?”

“Nuts,” Coffey said.

“You got a problem, Art?”

“Damn it, yeah. There’s nothing in the book says we got to
play potsie with some hot-shot peeper just because he used to be married to the dame.”

“Report me,” Brannigan said. “I haven’t had a reprimand in fourteen years. The commissioner probably stays up nights worrying that I’m getting complacent. You going to make that call, Harry?”

“Right now,” I said. I dug out the slip of paper with the Gramercy Park address and number. My hand was no more than six inches from the phone when it started to ring.

“Let me,” Brannigan said. “If somebody’s checking on what happened to his investment it might just relax him into a slip or two later on if he figures you’re not running loose.”

He lifted it as it started its third ring. He said, “Brannigan, Homicide,” and then nothing else. All of us were close enough to hear the click and then the dead buzzing.

He stood there for a minute, holding the receiver and looking at the chewed end of his cigar. “Don’t you just love a son of a bitch who’d tease like that?” he said then.

CHAPTER 11

Sally Kline said on the phone that there were only two or three people Cathy had seen with any regularity. One was a writer on Bank Street in the Village named Ned Sommers. Another was a photographer named Clyde Neva who had a live-in studio loft on East 10th Street. She said Neva was a pretty blatant homosexual.

“But gosh, Harry, I hope I don’t sound as if I’m suggesting that either one of them might have—”

“It’s just routine,” I told her. “One of them might remember something, or know things you don’t. Anymore?”

The only other one she could tag was an Arthur Leeds. She thought he was a musician and she gave me another Village address, on Jones Street this time. I told her to get some sleep.

Coffey had been checking the addresses in my directory when I repeated the names. “No women, huh?” Brannigan said.

“There wouldn’t be.”

“This Kline girl. She came home at eleven, was there all night until she called you?”

“For crying out loud, Nate—”

“Just asking. She’ll have to make a statement anyhow, this
afternoon will be good enough. I’ll see her then.” He took the phone and dialed headquarters about something. I went into the bedroom and dug out a .38 Police Special and a shoulder holster to replace the empty Luger sheath. Dan followed me in.

“I got all the time in the world if you want anything,” he said quietly.

I’ll call you.”

“Be at the office. Don’t strain it, huh, fella?”

I stood there a minute after he went out. I took out Ethan J. Spragway’s card and looked at it. Spragway spelled backward was Yawgarps. I stuck the card in a drawer. The sour-faced plainclothesman from outside was just coming up when I went back out front.

“The wagon will be here any minute, Waterman,” Brannigan told him. “Stick around after it leaves. You’ll be called about relief. And take that MG when you go in. Give him the keys, will you, Harry?”

I tossed them over. Waterman dropped them. He bent to pick them up with the same sick-of-it-all expression that he probably had when he made love to his wife. Brannigan had turned to Coffey.

“All right,” he said, “Fannin and I will check out those three intimates, but first we’ll take a look around that Perry Street place, give it a run-through for address books, mail, all the rest. I want that Moss kid seen again, and I want his alibi authenticated. Pete’ll know pretty quick if there’s any local sheet on him. I also want to know if Bogardus is still telling the same story he told this morning. After that you can start checking the hotels up near where that MG was parked on Broadway. I want all of them for three blocks in every direction. A clerk just might remember Sabatini going out for smokes and the girl ducking out five minutes later. Maybe she said something, asked a question, looked scared. You can pick up a partner first, anybody
who’s unassigned. If it looks like you’re going to have to waste a day waking up off-duty clerks call in for an extra team. Keep Pete posted on the desk every hour or so.” Coffey grunted in acknowledgment. Maybe in disgust, it was an ambiguous sort of sound. He was leaning against the wall near the door, sucking a flat toothpick.

“You got any questions or are you just learning to like it here?”

“Nuts,” Coffey said. He started for the door, threw Brannigan a salute which could just as easily have been translated into an obscene gesture as anything it was supposed to mean, and went out. The toothpick lay on the carpet where he’d been standing.

I looked at Brannigan. He was still working the unlighted cigar and he did not say anything.

“What the hell is all that?” I asked him. “You guys give him white mice to play with when he wants them, too?”

“Tell you later,” he muttered. “Let’s go, huh?”

I stood there a minute after he was gone, then I knelt next to the door and lifted the raincoat away. Woodsmoke would have had more color than her face. Waterman was watching me. I went downstairs.

The stenographer had taken one of the cars. Coffey was just pulling out in the second one and Brannigan was waiting at the third, one without insignia. “Counting Waterman it looks like three vehicles for four men,” I said when I got in. “Evidently the whole departments gone soft.”

Brannigan looked at me, made a face, then finally got rid of the decimated cigar. “Guys who came with Coffey and Pete have been checking out every apartment on this block for an hour and a half,” he said almost indifferently, “trying to rouse up somebody who might have had insomnia and been staring out a window when the deed was done. I’ve once in a while been
known to give a legitimate P.I. his head, Harry, but I don’t particularly sit on my butt and read Ralph Waldo Emerson while I’m letting him run. Four other officers are out pulling hack drivers out of bed to see if any of them noticed that red MG on the streets last night, or any red MG, and where, and every patrolman who was on duty is being asked the same thing. We’ve already talked to everybody in your building, and it may also interest you to know that your office has been pulled apart and put back together again, just in case you might be working on something that could have tied in with this, or for that matter to see if you’d had any communication from the deceased lately which you might not want to mention. Also I used your phone to call and check the figures on that Troy heist. You can bill us on it, I suppose. You got anymore questions or are you beginning to like it here, too?”