Found in the Street (25 page)

“What're you thinking about, Mr. Sutherland?” asked the Homicide man.

Jack took a breath. “Two things. That a man must've—Well, it took some strength—those blows. And I was wondering where the brick came from.” Jack still spoke barely audibly, hoping that Amelia was not listening. “I suppose it doesn't matter much.”

“We know where it probably came from. Just about ten yards from the door. Couple of ashcans there with débris on top of 'em.”

“In which direction?”

“Direction?” asked the Homicide cop.

“From the door of the house.”

“Oh, downtown. South,” the Homicide cop replied. “The ashcans were downtown direction.—Mr. Sutherland, have you any idea—­suspicions who could've done this?”

Jack wiped away sweat with his palm. “No. I don't know her crowd. Her circle. I'd like to help. My wife and I were very fond of Elsie.” Jack stood up nervously, impatient with what struck him suddenly as close-mouthedness in the two, a sudden blind­alley atmosphere.

“We'd like to speak with your wife,” said the Homicide cop. “You know when she'll be back? Or where she is now?”

Jack didn't know how much to tell them, or why he should hold back, or if he should. “Exactly where she is, I don't know.”

“She knows about this?” asked the other cop.

“Sure.” Jack said in a near whisper, “I told her around—” He thought of his Linderman visit. “—when I got home from Marion's this afternoon.”

“But you don't know where she went tonight? Maybe to ­Marion's?—She knows Marion?”

“Yes.” What had Marion said about Natalia? “Matter of fact, she went off to see—to see what she could find out about Elsie,” Jack said, still softly. “She went to St Vincent's first.”

“Did she?” said the Homicide man. “Your wife's very concerned then.”

“Yes. Everyone loved Elsie. Everyone.” Jack did not sit down again. He wished they would leave, get on with the business of finding the killer.

“You saw a lot of her?” said the Homicide man.

“No-o. My wife and I invited her to a couple of parties we went to.”

“Were you in love with her, Mr. Sutherland?” The question from the Homicide man was in a flat and polite tone.

“No,” Jack said.

“Easy to be, I'd think,” said the other cop to his colleague, smiling.

“Will you—” The Homicide cop pulled a card from his clipboard. “—get in touch with us when your wife comes back? You expect her tonight.”

“Oh, sure.”

They were getting up. Jack opened the door. Amelia was not in sight. The Homicide cop gently closed the door again, almost, so they were all inside the bedroom still.

“There was a lesbian relationship between the victim and the girl Marion. You knew about that?”

“Oh, yes, I'd heard,” Jack said.

The Homicide cop started to put his cap back on and didn't, then opened the door, and they all went out.

“You work here?” asked the other cop, looking around as if for the first time.

“Yes,” Jack said.

“Dad-
dee
!” Amelia was suddenly out of her room, but now it didn't seem to matter. “Where're the robbers?” She advanced toward Jack. “Have you got a lot of parking tickets?”

One cop laughed. The other cop wanted to see Jack's workroom. They all went down the hall, the cops commenting on Jack's handgrips, asking him how he reached them, and Jack obligingly jumped for them and brought them down to convenient height for turning flips, though he didn't turn one.

“You keep in good form,” said the cop who was not Homicide.

Jack pulled back the half-parted curtain of his workroom. There was his painting-in-progress, not on the easel but on his work-table, because he preferred the light there sometimes. His brush lay to the left, pink paint drying on it. The smell of turpentine hung in the air, and Jack poured a bit of turps into a tin can and stuck the drying brush in.

“Workin' on something?”

Jack gestured. “This was when the phone rang. Marion.” He led the way out.

“Isn't that—” said the Homicide cop, going toward the two or three photographs of Elsie thumbtacked to drawing boards on the right side of his table. “That's the girl, isn't it?”

“Yes,” Jack said.

“She's a beaut. Was,” the non-Homicide cop said, shaking his head.

Jack scowled at this cop and wagged a finger near his lips. Amelia stood in the hall, listening, and Jack wondered how soon she would pick up what had happened. He sensed his little daughter's antennae all out.

“Thank you, Mr. Sutherland,” said the Homicide cop firmly at the doorway. “Your wife can call us any time tonight—if we don't see her first.” He smiled a little. “You going away somewhere?” He had glanced at the suitcase in the hall, its lid propped against the wall.

“Yes, in a week or so. My wife and I.—Yugoslavia,” said Jack, thinking of the tickets in his passport case. Would Natalia still want to go?

When the door closed, Jack reproached himself for not having asked them some questions. Had Marion mentioned Fran, for instance? Jack pressed his hands against his damp face, then went to the kitchen in quest of cool water.

“Have you got parking tickets, daddy?”

“Lots of 'em!” Jack said. “But the cops were very nice about it.”

“You have to pay a lot of money.” Amelia said it as if it were a fact.

“Yes. Yes, that's true.”

“How much?”

“They haven't even figured out yet.” Jack shook his head sadly.

Amelia ran off.

He heard the TV set come on, and went into the living-room. “No TV tonight, honey. Cut it off. Time to go to bed.”

“It's not even
ten
!” Amelia had a Swatch wristwatch.

“No argument. Brush your teeth and let's go.
No
foolin'!” He took her hand firmly.

His firmness worked.

Jack went into his workroom and cleaned all the pink out of his brush, because he didn't want to see the pink tomorrow. Then he looked around for something to read, knowing he would not be able to sleep for a long while.

The telephone rang an hour later, when Jack, after another shower, was lying atop the sheets with a book. He picked up the phone on Natalia's side of the bed.

“Hi, Jack, this is Marion,” said Marion's voice calmly. “Natalia's here. Want to speak with her?”

“Well —she's okay?—What's new?”

“They've got Fran. They're talking with her.”

“Really!—You're sure? The police're sure?”

“Oh, she's got some half-assed alibi.” Marion sounded a bit slurry, either tired or a little drunk. “One of her shitty friends called up
here
—threatening
me
, the fuck.”

“The police are charging her?”

“I don't know about that, but they're interested.”

“Good,” Jack said, feeling a surge of satisfaction. “What's Natalia doing?”

“Natalia's been wonderful.—She's sitting on the bed—having an iced coffee. Christ, what a night! It's not over.”

“When is she coming home? Or is she?”

“I don't know. You'll have to ask her.—Natalia?”

Natalia came on. “Hello, Jack . . . Oh, I'm all right, never mind,” she said in a tone of impatience. “
Yes,
I saw her . . . Just by asking,” she said in response to Jack's question.

Jack heard the cool self-assurance that could cover fury in Natalia, and which he had seen make strong people cringe. “Marion says they're onto this Fran. What's her last name?”

“Dillon. She uses a couple of names.”

“Are they really holding her?”

“Could be. I gather they've got her at some station, and she's full of POP or something tonight.”

“The cops said that?”

“M-m—implied. And one of her girlfriends called up Marion tonight, pretty high on something.”

Jack gathered that Marion had gone back to Greene Street around 7, after the police had seen Marion again at Myra's, as Marion had given the police Myra's number. So Natalia had been able to reach Marion at home. Then “a thug chum” of Fran's had called up to curse Marion out, because Marion had given Fran's name to the police as possible killer, and Marion had been able to name a girl at whose house Fran might be staying, and Fran was. Then the police had come to see Marion again, and had left just ten minutes ago—whether the same pair who had visited him, Jack couldn't tell and didn't ask. Natalia said that she and Marion had also telephoned Elsie's parents in upstate New York.

“The police had already told them,” Natalia said. “They're coming tomorrow morning.”

“Christ!—That must've been awful!” Jack said.

“The father sounded pretty steady, the
mother
was upset.—Well, my
Go
d
!—l
got a hotel room for them for tomorrow.”

Natalia was staying the night at Marion's, she said, because it would be awful for Marion to be alone here, and the police wanted to know where she was, and were giving her some protection, a guard on the street. And both of them were exhausted.

After he hung up, Jack lay with his eyes open, staring at the corner of white walls and ceiling.
Genevieve called up,
Natalia had said at the last.
It's on the radio and TV. In the papers already. Don't buy any, it'll make you sick.
In the papers. He supposed the papers would seize on the fashion photos of Elsie.

Around midnight, Elaine Armstrong called. They had just been to a movie, and they had seen the headlines when they came out. Did Jack and Natalia know? Yes. Natalia was with a friend of Elsie's now, Jack said. And no, they weren't yet sure who had done it, but they had a suspect. Who?

“Some hoodlum,” Jack said.

32

At about the same time, Ralph Linderman, on duty at the Hot Arch Arcade, and standing to the right of the entrance, inside, caught sight of the tabloid held by Willy Shapiro across from him on the other side of the wide entrance. The girl in the big photo on the front page resembled Elsie, and Ralph at once moved toward it. Yes,
Elsie,
with her blond hair pulled back, her full underlip, black dress in this picture, and the bold black headlines above said: MODEL SLAIN!

Ralph seized one side of the paper, open-mouthed.

“Hey, Linderman, what the hell're you—” Startled, Willy Shapiro yanked the paper back.

“That girl! I just want to see the—”

“Well,
ask
to see it!” Willy yelled. “'S matter witcha, heat's gotcha?” Willy, a half-owner of the Arcade, a plump, balding man much shorter than Ralph, got off his stool, defending his newspaper, which Ralph had already torn.

“I know that girl! I want to know if she's dead!” Ralph yelled back, furious himself.

“This one? You know
her
?—
Says
here she's dead!” Willy again swung the paper out of Ralph's reach.

Ralph had a longer reach and got the paper, had just time to read Elsie Tyler's name below the big photo of her with earrings and a champagne glass near her lips, when he felt a punch in his abdomen. Ralph bent for an instant, more with shock than pain.

“
That
for your goddam rudeness!” cried Willy Shapiro, scowling with defiance and pride at having hit a bigger man. “You're cracked, Linderman! You're a nut!”

“Go back—” Linderman gasped “—back to Israel, you greasy little kike!”

“I never was in Israel, you fuckin' Nazi! An' you're fired! You hate this place anyway, and as of this minute, you're fired!—Hey, Eddie!
Eddie
!
”
Willy Shapiro's voice blasted down the Arcade, louder even than the juke boxes, arresting for a few seconds the human din around them. “
Eddie!
Give this guy the bum's rush and pronto!”

“What d'y'mean?” Eddie was a taller fellow than Ralph, a gangling man who emptied the slot machines for Willy and was therefore able to take care of himself with his fists.

“He's fired and I want him out! Now!”

“No sweat,” Ralph said to Eddie and to Willy. He added to Willy, “Bye-bye, Artful Dodger.”

Unknown attacker
. . .
multiple blows with a brick
. . . were some of the words Ralph had just glimpsed below the picture of his lovely Elsie. In his state of shock, the image of John Sutherland came—and his wrath gathered. He got his jacket from his locker in a room behind the cash register. Eddie hovered, looking not so much hostile as puzzled, but Ralph said not a word to Eddie. Ralph moved steadily, doing what he had to do, signing himself out at 00.22 in the book. Ralph quit the Hot Arch Arcade without a word or a glance at anyone.

He bought a copy of the tabloid Willy Shapiro had been reading from the next vendor on Eighth Avenue, and read it under a streetlight. It had happened in the afternoon around 4. In the very doorway of her apartment house on Greene Street! In broad daylight! . . .
fractured skull
. . . There were two more photos on the inside pages. Beautiful she was, shining like a light! Ralph trembled.

The wily Sutherland had come to see him just minutes after the deed, and in a sweat of guilt! Sutherland asking
him
where he'd been in the afternoon! Asking him in order to try to nail the crime on him! Plain as day, Sutherland's tactics! Sutherland was in love with Elsie, and either jealous of another man whom Elsie preferred, or afraid that Elsie would tell his wife the extent of their—their doings, maybe. Had Elsie refused to marry Sutherland? Or to go away with him somewhere? Had she possibly been pregnant? Revolting thought!

Oh, the price she had paid for her loveliness!

He would tell the police about Sutherland. And maybe the police knew already, maybe they had Sutherland at this minute. Which police station should he speak to, the one in the Greene Street area or the one nearest his place of residence? Ralph was then walking toward the subway entrance, but seeing a policeman on the sidewalk, he veered toward him.

“Excuse me, officer. I want to report something in regard to a murder. This murder, this girl.” Ralph pointed to the front page picture on the tabloid. “Or do you know if he is already caught—Sutherland.”

The youngish cop shook his head. “I don't know.”

“Can you take the name down? He's the man who killed her!”

The cop looked uncertain, even uninterested. “Where d'you live, mister? Got a fixed address?”

“Certainly. I live on Bleecker Street.”

“Well, you go to your nearest precinct station down there and tell 'em what you have to report. Okay?” The cop walked on.

Ralph rode homeward on the subway, a raincoat over his arm, a bulging plastic bag in hand with muffler and rain boots and the sandwich and fruit that he had brought for his snack around midnight or 1 a.m., a sandwich he had made before Sutherland's visit, and which he intended to throw away. He saw at least three other copies of the same tabloid being read by passengers in the subway car, and more on the platform where he switched at Seventy-second Street to an express train. At Fourteenth Street, he took a local to the Christopher Street station, then walked straight to his house. His nearest precinct station was at Tenth Street and Hudson, he saw in the telephone book.

Ralph dialed this Sixth Precinct number, and heat rose again to his face as he envisaged policemen calling on John Sutherland on Grove Street in perhaps less than a quarter of an hour from now.

The station answered, and Ralph gave his message: in regard to the murder of Elsie Tyler on Greene Street, he, Ralph Linderman, wanted to inform the police that John Sutherland, and Ralph spelt the name and gave Sutherland's address, should be considered a number-one suspect as killer.

“We'll note it down, sir. If you want to come in and see us, you can.”

“Thank you.”

Ralph aired God first. God had been quite surprised to see him at this hour and had been leaping about, barking in his repressed way, nuzzling against Ralph's knees. God got a short but happy airing, and Ralph promised him a longer one later.

At the precinct station, Ralph repeated his statement, gave his own name and address, which the officer at the desk did not write down. The officer kept bumping the end of his ballpoint pen on the blotter in an absent way, and he looked as if his mind were partly on something else.

“I know this girl who was killed!” Ralph repeated. “This man Sutherland came to see
me
around five-thirty or six today—or yesterday now. He asked me what
I
was doing at the time Elsie was killed. Can you—can you—”

“Can I what?”

“Can you call up the people who're handling this? There must be a homicide squad, no?”

“Several.”

“Can you please telephone the one who's handling this and ask them if they've talked to Sutherland? Maybe they have him already! I'd like to know.”

“Are you any relation of this girl who was killed?”

“No.''

The man moved, but slowly, as if he were debating whether to pick up the phone. He dialed, spoke to someone in unintelligible monosyllables, asked Ralph his name again, then said “John Sutherland,” much to Ralph's satisfaction.

Long wait.

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh.—I see.—Yep. Well, it's something!” Here he laughed. “Yep, thanks, pal.” The round, tanned face of the policeman looked up with more interest. “Yes, they know about John Sutherland. They've been in touch with him.”

“Then you've got him?” Ralph's brows concentrated, his lips were ready to smile in triumph. “He's in jail?”

“Well—I was told Sutherland was called up by this girl's friend just after the girl was killed. Right after.” The cop nodded. “Thanks for your information, sir. We're handling it.”

Ralph stood motionless. “You're fooling me, because it isn't proven yet. All right, but—”

“No, sir. Now look, I just went to the trouble to check this out. Sutherland was called up by the girl who lives with the—the murdered girl. Now get that through your head. G'night, sir.”

“Good night. Thank you,” Ralph said with a cold politeness. He left the station, unconvinced, and went in quest of a
Times,
though since the crime had occurred around 4 in the afternoon yesterday, he doubted that the
Times
had reported the events on Greene Street.

Ralph got his
Times
and bought also the 4-star
Daily News,
and looked first at the
Times
under an inadequate streetlamp, found on page two a short item headed
Young Model Slain.

Elsie Tyler, 21, died minutes after being assaulted by a person or persons unknown on the doorstep of her apartment house on Greene Street. The young woman whose family lives in upstate New York had been a model for fashion photographers in the last months. Police are following leads on suspects.

Ralph looked down Seventh Avenue, thinking of the spot of light on the left side of the avenue, out of sight from where he stood, the coffee shop where Elsie had used to work. She had risen in life, to be sure, she had started to earn more money, and for how many months. Six? Maybe only four? She had glowed like a comet—or like a yellow rose—and someone had smashed her!

Who else but Sutherland?

At home, Ralph perused the tabloid, looking for police leads (none, the account was brief, with nothing at all about a suspect), looking for anything about the kind of life Elsie had been leading. There were no details, but the phrases “strikingly attractive” and “popular model of young women's fashions” and “the sophisticated young siren who made it” implied a fast life to Ralph. He could imagine.

He imagined Elsie in the Sutherlands' circle, moneyed people, the leisure crowd, the jet set, people who would keep Elsie up all night and ply her with drink and drugs.

Ralph convinced himself that he should lie low for another twelve hours, wait for more news from the radio (he had no TV and wanted none) or newspapers. He ate his salami sandwich and banana after all, while slowly pacing his living-room. God watched him, looking uneasy, hoping for another walk. Yes, he would wait for more details, little things that might point to Sutherland, and if he found them—Sutherland would be clever in trying to wriggle out, of course, but there was too much against him. Sutherland was a good runner, and could have done the murder and got back in time for the telephone call from Elsie's friend Marion, if that telephone call was to be believed. Or were Sutherland and Marion in cahoots? That was a possibility that Ralph would keep in mind. The latest tabloid had said that “another young woman” with whom Elsie shared the apartment had telephoned a hospital and then “a man friend” for assistance, but the victim had died within seconds of the fatal blows. Ralph imagined attacking Sutherland with a similar weapon, just a brick maybe, smashing
his
skull, and though he himself might be caught for it, the price he might pay—several years in prison—would be well worth it. Yes.

Ralph did air God again, walked him west on Grove (the Sutherlands' lights were out) and through Bedford and Barrow to Bleecker again, to Seventh and down to the coffee shop where Elsie had used to work, and which was now shut and dark as if in mourning. He went on downtown to Houston, but did not cross it. To walk past Elsie's house on Greene Street would be too horrible. And maybe journalists, “the press,” would be standing around outside, photographing, trying to extract titbits from neighbors.

He went to bed at nearly 4, exhausted by his thoughts, though he could not sleep. He did not have to go to work tomorrow, he'd been fired. Good! Ejected from that filthy hole run by a pair of two-legged rats who sucked money from the depravities: prostitution, drug-dealing, gambling, idleness, and the pickers of pockets. Good riddance to Shapiro and company! Let them give him a “bad reference” too! Ralph felt sure of his ground,
ground,
sounder than that of the Hot Arch Arcade! He turned and twisted. He could sleep tomorrow as long as he liked, he reminded himself. That was small consolation.

The ringing of the telephone awakened him. It was just past 8, Ralph saw. “Hello?”

“Hello. Am I speaking to Ralph Linderman?”

“Yes.”

“This is Police . . .” The rest of the statement was lost on Ralph.

The important thing was that they wanted to talk to him. “Yes, I am home. Yes—
sir
.”

“Good, because we're just around the corner.”

Ralph dressed in haste, and closed the door on his small bedroom. His living-room looked presentable, so Ralph started making his coffee. Then his doorbell rang, and Ralph answered at once with the buzzer—necessary or not, he never knew in this house. And what would the people in the house think of cops traipsing up? They could just as well think he'd summoned the cops to complain about the noise, as that the police had come to get after him about something!

There were two policemen. Ralph offered them chairs, but only one sat down, while the other looked around, looked also at the PREPARE TO MEET THY DOG card. Asked for his place of employment, Ralph gave the address of the Hot Arch Arcade, because that had been true until so recently, and the firing business was of no relevance, he thought.

“You were a friend of Elsie Tyler's?”

“I knew her as a neighbor,” Ralph replied, “when she lived near here. Lived on Minetta Street for a while.”

“When is the last time you saw her?”

Ralph thought hard. “Could be—six weeks—No, more than two months, I'm pretty sure.—Who told you to talk to me? Mr. John Sutherland?”