Gentle Murderer (14 page)

Again she turned from him. “Tim, read something to me, please. Not what you wrote if you don’t want to. But something that’ll sound like it. Something you like.”

He got up and went to his room for the books eagerly. Katie breathed deeply of the night air. There was a little smell of fish on it and a soft dampness. There were so many things he said that she did not understand but that she was content in his saying in her presence. When he returned and sat beneath the lamp turning the pages of the beok until he found the passage he wanted, she chose a darker corner of the room from which she could watch him, her face in the shadows.

“We’ll save Shelley for the flowers,” he said, “or maybe Keats. But this is the stuff that storm is made on.” His voice gained strength from the words, and she thought, while she listened to more words that she understood only to be beautiful, of the jeering cries on the street corner … “Why don’t you get a man?” There would never be anyone more of a man to her than this dear, quiet one who loved her only with his eyes. Tim read:

Who lit the furnace of the mammoth’s heart?

Who shagged him like Pilatus’ ribbed flanks?

Who raised the columned ranks

Of that old pre-deluvian forestry,

Which like a continent torn oppressed the sea,

When the ancient heavens did in rains depart,

While the high-danced whirls

Of the tossed scud made hiss thy drenched brood …

He was still reading when Mrs. Galli returned two-hours later and remarked that if she had known he was going to read aloud she would not have gone to the movies. “It sounds just like music,” she announced, and Katie smiled happily.

I
T WAS NOT MUCH
later that evening that Sergeant Goldsmith was reading the same poem from the collection of Francis Thompson that he had taken from Dolly Gebhardt’s apartment. He reread and marked a passage where the page bore the marks of much reading:

And so of all which form inheriteth

The fall doth pass the rise in worth;

For birth hath in itself the germ of death,

But death hath in itself the germ of birth.

It is the falling acorn buds the tree,

The falling rain that bears the greenery,

The fern-plants moulder when the ferns arise.

For there is nothing lives but something dies,

And there is nothing dies but something lives.

Till skies by fugitives,

Till Time, the hidden root of change, updries,

Are Birth and Death inseparable on earth;

For they are twain yet one, and Death is Birth.

Goldsmith laid the book aside and looked at his watch. Liza Tracy would be starting her midnight stint in a few minutes. He went into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of cold coffee. The place was already a mess although his wife had left only that morning for two weeks in the country. He was glad that the invitation had come when it had, he was home so little now. But he was also glad to get out of the empty house a few minutes later.

He timed himself to be in the club as Liza went off, but not where she would see him. He scanned the patrons at the bar and spotted one instantly he would have taken bets was Dave Albright. The man was sweating profusely—the sweat of an alcoholic in any temperature. His hand trembled as he reached for his glass and emptied it. He slouched off the bar stool and started for the dressing rooms. Goldsmith intercepted him.

“Albright?”

“Yeah.”

“You handle Miss Tracy?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ve got a proposition for you.”

Albright pulled himself together with visible effort. “Liza? Nice little routine she’s got. That girl’s coming. In a big way.” He listed a little toward Goldsmith. “Did you see Weston’s column yesterday? Something, huh?”

“Maybe. Got a few minutes?”

“I got to look in on Liza. Can you wait a couple of minutes?”

“I’ll meet you at the Shamrock across the street.”

He watched the agent’s attempt at briskness down the passageway. He turned to find the m.c. beside him, smiling. “Hard guy to find, isn’t he?”

“Maybe I don’t look in the right places,” Goldsmith said, starting to go.

“Why don’t you book her out of here? We got prestige. Make a deal: we’ll give her another week here to build …”

Goldsmith interrupted. “Build her another week. Then we’ll talk.” He broke away from the man, knowing the next question would be on his connections, his house. A deal, he thought, make a deal, everybody was making a deal, looking for another ten per cent from Liza’s measly take.

Albright arrived at the Shamrock five minutes later, at best fifteen dollars richer. Goldsmith waved him back to where he was sitting, and showed him his identification.

“Homicide,” the agent said. His wizened face turned a shade paler. “I thought …”

“I know what you thought,” the detective said. “You’ve just got a one-track mind. Where did you find her, Albright?”

“Mahoney’s Place. Eighth Avenue.”

“You just happened by there, caught her act. The greatest little singer you ever heard. Just right for going places …”

“That’s right.”

“When did you sign her in here?”

“Six weeks ago.”

“Why? She’s gone as far as she’s going and she knows it. So do you. Why did you bring her down here?”

“I needed dough. So did she. That’s why.”

“Maybe that’s her reason. But it’s not yours. You were doing somebody a favor, Albright, a big favor, somebody who had a great big heart and a friend going downhill. She liked doing things anonymously, and she knew a lot of anonymous people. You’re one of them. Why you’d want to do her a favor—that’s none of my business. Her murder is.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No? A ten per cent cut from Liza’s legitimate. Maybe you get twenty. But the commission comes a lot higher in her friend’s business. And it’s smart to keep the talent happy, high-class talent like that. That’s reason enough for a big favor.”

“You shouldn’t have any trouble proving that, Sergeant.”

Goldsmith smiled. His voice softened. “I don’t want to prove it. It’s out of my line. Let the vice boys worry about it. I’m philosophical about the facts of life. And I know a good turn when I get one. I never forget it. Want a drink?”

Albright studied him a moment. “Okay.”

“Bar whisky?”

“Anything better would choke me.”

The detective called out the order to the bartender. When they were set up he got the drinks himself and brought them to the table. He watched the trembling of Albright’s hand as he lit a cigarette.

“The way I see it,” Goldsmith said easily, “Liza’s friend, Dolly, didn’t understand the variety of agents there can be—theater, literary, vaudeville—she didn’t understand the distinction. To her, an agent knew the right people for any talent. Did she ever ask you to see what you could do for a poet?”

Albright sipped his drink. Each taste seemed to have a distinct flavor of its own. “I don’t think I’ve got the right act for you, Sergeant.”

Goldsmith lit a cigarette. Albright was not going to commit himself if he thought his information didn’t weigh enough to guarantee the detective’s silence on his pimping.

“Let me look at it. Even if I can’t use it, I’ll buy.”

“Okay, if that’s the way you want it. But I’m warning you, Sergeant, I don’t look much maybe, but I got a lot of friends.”

“I didn’t threaten you, Albright. Let’s not put it on such a low level.” His words had an easy flow that belied his anger.

Albright shrugged. “It’s over five years ago. She started working on me, working hard. She wanted me to read his stuff. What the hell would I know if I did read it? I didn’t want any part of it. ‘Meet him,’ she says. ‘Introduce him to somebody. You’re always introducing me to somebody.’ There was an answer to that one and I gave it to her. I never met the guy. I never read his stuff. I can’t even tell you his name. Now do you see the pig in a poke you bought, Sergeant?”

“I’ve bought skinnier ones. Where was Dolly living then?”

“Right where she was last week.”

“Where did she live before that?”

Albright shrugged. “I picked her up on Eighth Avenue.”

“You do all right on Eighth Avenue.”

“Gold dust and fool’s gold, sometimes you find them side by side.”

“Yeah,” the detective said. “All you got to do is keep digging in the dirt.”

The little man threw down the rest of his drink, curling in the last traces from his lips with his tongue. He grinned and looked for all the world like a bulldog trying to be coy. “Funny, you should say that, Sergeant.”

“Why?”

“When she was trying to sell me on him—‘He’s a country kid,’ she says. ‘The city’s killing him. He needs a break, Dave.’ ‘Look, baby,’ I said, ‘the best break you could give him is to send him back to the farm.’ It turned out he didn’t want to go. He was scared.”

“Scared of what?”

Albright shrugged. “Maybe bulls,” he giggled, “like the rest of us.”

Goldsmith studied his cigarette. He detested that slang reference to police more than any other. “The stuff she wanted you to read,” he said coldly, “had any of it been printed?”

Albright rubbed his chin. “Yeah. Wait a minute. Wait a minute now. She had a handful of the stuff. All I saw was writing, but she took a page out of it. ‘Look at this one,’ she said. ‘It’s even printed. Like in a magazine. It’s called
Mother
.’ ‘That’s all, baby,’ I said. ‘You keep him. I’ve never been a mother myself. I wouldn’t appreciate it.’“

“Y
OU GAVE ME AN
awful start, Father, a terrible start seeing a priest.”

“I’m awfully sorry. I should have called you before coming.”

“I was afraid something happened to my husband. Will you come in or sit here on the porch, Father?”

Father Duffy motioned to the porch chairs. A cat hopped from one of them and stretched. “Your husband is ill, Mrs. Grosvenor?”

“Not a day in his life. I wouldn’t sit there if I was you, Father. The cat’s shedding now and his hair’s all over everything. It’s the construction he works on is dangerous. Mr. Grosvenor’s a carpenter. He’s English, you know. A convert. He turned when he married me. A nicer man you never met for an Englishman.”

Father Duffy smiled. “You met him in this country?”

“I did not. I met him in Dublin. He likes to say he had the pick of all the roses in Ireland and picked me hisself. We’ve no children, you see, and it makes us closer than some. I was the oldest of six girls, and glad I was to be picked. Some isn’t picked yet and the youngest would have been better off not.”

“As a matter of fact, Mrs. Grosvenor, it’s one of your sisters I came to inquire about—Mary Brandon.”

The woman did not speak for a moment. Her small blue eyes searched his face. “That’s a queer thing for you to be asking me, Father,” she said then.

She spoke as though by mere virtue of his being a priest he should know about her sister. Either that, or Mary Brandon had been so much in the news, she was common knowledge, he thought. In view of the event that had brought him halfway across the country to talk with this volatile, middle-aged woman, he suspected the latter reason. And yet there was no chagrin in her response. She was sitting, mild and comfortable, waiting for him to explain.

“Mrs. Grosvenor,” he said, “I’ll be frank with you. I’m trying to trace your sister. I can’t tell you why. But I’ve come here from Marion City, Pennsylvania. When she left there over fifteen years ago, it was your address she gave to the parish housekeeper.”

“She didn’t give it,” the woman said. “She sent it.”

“Yes. I know that. She left Marion City after her husband’s death. It was a year later that she sent it.”

“Do you know why she sent it at all, Father?”

“Why?” he said, wanting to hear her version of it.

“Mary had a son. Not much of a one, to my thinking, but he was all she had. If you’re coming from Marion City, I don’t need to tell you what her husband was like. I’ll never forgive our father for that. There’s no woman needs marrying as much as to send her to the likes of him with the bargain made ahead of her. Mary was always delicate. Even in the old country she was ailing one day to the next. Her life was a misery …”

She rocked in her chair a moment thinking about it, and it occurred to Father Duffy that he was being prepared in her telling for some final tragedy that had befallen Mary Brandon.

“You were telling me why she sent your address to Marion City,” he prompted gently.

“It was the son.” She cocked her head at him, as with a sudden thought. “Is it the boy you’re inquiring after, Father? Has he been found?”

“I didn’t know he was lost,” the priest said.

“He came out to the preparatory school for the priesthood in Fort Grayson, Indiana. That was a year or two before Tim Brandon died. And never the word did his mother hear from him after the first year he was there, and after her giving her youth for him. She was pining so after him when she came here to me and Mr. Grosvenor, I took her to the parish priest. We thought maybe it was one of them cloistered orders. Well, our priest made inquiries. The boy just up and left the seminary where he was studying. He was working one day in the summer out in the fields with a team of horses, and when night came, the horses came home by theirselves. It near broke Mary’s heart, hearing that, what was left of her heart for breaking, that is. From that day to this, there’s been no word of the boy. It was her thought he might be lying dead in the fields, but the whole seminary had turned out looking for him when the horses came home.”

“Didn’t they send word to his mother?”

“They did, and the letter went back to them. She was gone then from Marion City, you see, and it was before she sent our address.”

Father Duffy turned his hat around in his hands. He was no closer to Tim Brandon than when he had left Marion City. Indeed he had been closer to him in New York, for there it was a possibility that the man would seek him out again, having once found courage in his presence.”

“And Mary Brandon, Mrs. Grosvenor?” he said.

“She took the blame for his failure on herself, Father. And in the end it was right what she did according to her own lights.”