Gentle Murderer (8 page)

“L
OOK, I WAS CRUISING
down Madison. I was thinking to myself if the damn buses wasn’t lined up like a string of elephants I’d have a chance of picking up a fare. Then I sees her standing there, waving this fancy pocketbook. Like crazy she was waving it. ‘Break it up, boys,’ I says. ‘I’m coming through.’ But like I said, she could of got a dozen other cabs.”

“I understand that,” Lieutenant Holden said, having combed the drivers of the city. “But she did get you.”

“Yeah. She got me,” the cabbie said dismally.

“Do you carry a tool kit or tools of any sort?”

“Not me. When anything goes wrong I just sit till they come and get me. I ain’t mechanical on eight bucks a day. No sir.”

“Then you don’t have a hammer in the cab?”

“Look, Lieutenant, I wouldn’t be in here on my own accord like this if I had the hammer you’re looking for.”

A police stenographer in the back of the room changed pencils.

“Just answer my question,” Holden said. “Do you have a hammer?”

“Yeah. I have one. I keep it on the seat beside me. I got mugged once. Want to see it?”

“I think that would be advisable,” Holden said quietly. He motioned to a uniformed policeman standing at the door.

The cabbie looked around to see him depart. “You don’t waste no time, do you?”

“We try not to,” Holden said. “Now I’d like to hear the details of what happened from the moment you picked her up.”

The cabbie sat back in his chair and crossed his legs. He accepted the cigarette Holden offered him. “She jumped in. Didn’t waste no time,” he started. “Gave the door a good whack shut. I don’t get one out of ten can get that door closed themselves. Some day I’m gonna get a new hack. In the neck I’m gonna get it. Five thousand bucks. Anyway, ‘I’m late,’ she says. ‘Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street. Try and get there in a hurry.’ ‘I don’t aim going in second, lady,’ I says, ‘but we ain’t going to set any records this time of day …’”

Holden made a note of the address while the cabbie talked. So did Goldsmith, who sat at his desk throughout the questioning, listening although apparently absorbed in work of his own. Now he drew a map from his drawer and opened it.

“Well, I get all the way down to Twenty-third Street. I’m beginning to make time then and she leans up to me. ‘Driver, you’ll have to take me back.’ ‘Forget something?’ I says. But I take one look at her and I could tell she didn’t forget nothing she wanted to remember. That dame was sick. She looked good when she got in but right then that makeup on her face was like something stuck on, something that was going to fall off any minute. I made a U-turn and stepped on it. I don’t like people getting sick on me. If they’re real sick they can’t think about the fare, and I ain’t got what it takes to ask ’em for it. One time I damn near got a baby. You think that’s funny. Happens in the newspaper maybe, but let me tell you …”

“We’d better wait for that,” Holden said. “It took you about a half-hour to get to Twenty-third Street and back. Then what?”

“I pulled up in front of Her apartment—almost in front, that is, I thought the doorman would come and get her. Maybe she don’t want him. Maybe she figured she can’t wait. He was putting somebody in a private car. Anyway, she asks me to help her upstairs. Says she’ll make it worth my while. That suits me. I take the key out of the car, go around and give her an arm. She leaned hard and she wasn’t no lightweight. We goes in through the lobby. A couple of people look round at us. Maybe they think she’s drunk. I don’t know. The guy at the desk looks up. Says ‘good evening’ just like it was one. She don’t say a word. The elevator’s there. The operator says ‘good evening’ the same way. I think maybe she’ll let go of me then. No sir. If I’d tried to get away I’d had to leave her my right arm. Right to the door. She leans on the wall while she gets out the key. I take it from her and open the door. Then she grabs my arm again and says, ‘Help me into the bedroom, please.’ I don’t like that much, but I figure she’s got to sit down before she pays me …”

“Were there any lights on in the apartment?” Holden interrupted.

The cabbie thought about it. “Yeah. There was one on down there in the living room. We went through that hall there and she says the bedroom switch is on the wall. I turned it on.”

“Did you close the door to the apartment before helping her into the bedroom?”

The cab driver rubbed the back of his neck. “I just don’t remember that. It was closed when I went to go out again—I know that …”

“All right,” Holden said. “Take that when you get there. You helped her into the bedroom and lit the light. Then what?”

“She sits down on the bed and pulls off her earrings. I’m standing there waiting for my money. I don’t like asking her for it just like that, so I asks her if I can get her anything, maybe call up a doctor for her. ‘I’ll be all right,’ she says. ‘Just open that window for me.’ If I’d had a block and tackle I don’t think I could of opened it. I pulled and I pushed and the sweat rolled down my back. I couldn’t open it. ‘Let it go,’ she says. ‘Please give me my purse.’ I gave her that in a hurry.”

“Where was it?”

“Down at the bottom of the bed.”

“Open?”

“Not when I gave it to her. She fumbled inside it and pulled out five dollars. Looked hard to make sure what it was. Whatever was the matter with her, I don’t think she was seeing so good. ‘Is this all right?’ she says. ‘Want change?’ says I. ‘No.’ ‘That’s swell,’ I says. ‘You better call a doctor, lady.’ I figured she had advice coming, anyway.”

“What did she do with the purse then?” Holden asked.

“She tossed it over on the dressing table. It didn’t make it. Fell on the floor. I picked it up and laid it on the table for her.”

“Did you look around the room at all?”

“Just while I was waiting. It was kind of messed up.”

“As though someone had been through it?”

“Naw. Like she just threw things around getting dressed. Underwear and stuff.”

“Did you leave then?”

“Just about. I was just going when she says, ‘There’s something I wish you’d do for me.’ ‘What?’ ‘Go into the kitchen and make sure the latch is off the hall door there.’ ‘No, ma’am,’ I says, ‘I don’t like to do that. I’ll stop by the desk and ask ’em to send up the janitor …’ ‘Never mind,’ she says. ‘I’ll manage.’ I beat it then. Boy, did I beat it. There was something about the whole business I didn’t like. As soon as I got out in the hall, I felt like I’d been in there a week maybe. I poked and poked at the elevator bell. The chains were going up and down but no cage. Then I saw the stairs sign and I ran down them. I was right by the service door when I reached the first floor so I scrammed out that way. Somebody pushed my cab down a ways. I just hopped into it and beat it. I picked up a fare on Fifth Avenue going to Riverside Drive and Ninety-sixth Street. That’s all.” He put his cigarette out beneath his foot.

“And after the Ninety-sixth Street fare?”

“I hopped over to West End. I cruised down there to about Seventy-fourth. I got a couple of dames there going to the Alvin Theatre.”

“And then?”

“I stopped over at Kavanaugh’s on Eighth Avenue for a corned beef sandwich.”

“Keep going,” Holden said.

The cabbie drew his record book from his pocket. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “A couple of sailors. Frenchies. I took ’em to Pier Sixteen. That’s around Fulton. I headed back up through Chinatown. Figured I might get some slummers. No soap. I didn’t get nothing till I was up around Washington Square. That was ten o’clock …”

“Okay,” Holden said. “That’ll do it.” He swung around to Goldsmith. “Any questions, Sergeant?”

Goldsmith got up from his desk and went over to the cabbie. “You didn’t by any chance go into the kitchen to make sure that door was locked?”

The driver smirked nervously. “No sir. What I did do: going round to the stairs when the elevator didn’t pick me up, I tried that door just to make sure it was locked.”

“Or to make sure it wasn’t locked?” Holden snapped.

“No sir. If it wasn’t locked I was going right straight to the desk and tell ’em. Like I told you, I felt funny about being in that place. And I felt like I’d been in there a hell of a long time.”

“That often happens,” Goldsmith said easily. “Our imagination distorts time on us under some conditions.”

“Yeah, don’t it?” said the driver.

“Did you see anyone when you left by the back entrance of the building?” Holden asked.

“Not a soul. I waved at the doorman when I was going round the hack. I figured he moved it. But I don’t think he saw me.”

“If you’ll wait in the room out there,” Holden said, “the stenographer will type up your story. I’d like you to sign it.”

“Sure.”

The cabbie was at the door when Goldsmith called to him. “You said you did not get the window open. Is that right?”

“Right. I couldn’t budge it.”

Goldsmith nodded his thanks and the stenographer followed the driver out.

Goldsmith returned to his desk. “There’s a lush private club down in the neighborhood she was heading for. I wonder if she didn’t have a date there.”

“What kind of club?” Holden asked.

“Where the rich and the famous relax in private. The girls sing, dance a little maybe on order. It’s a very tête-à-tête sort of place.”

“Her kind of girl?”

“Nope. She’d be there on invitation, the invitation of her escort. Then afterwards …” Goldsmith shrugged.

“Where would the escort have met her?”

“That’s something else again.”

“If she had to stand him up there,” Holden said, “you’d think she would have called the club. You don’t disappoint people in her business. Not if you want a second call.”

“It may be that she just had the name of her host and the address. Her phone isn’t listed. I’d guess it that way and put somebody with a delicate touch on it. With the right approach you might get the name of her host.”

“You’re too busy, I take it,” Holden said with slight sarcasm.

“I’ll take it if you say so, but I don’t think I’m going in that direction otherwise.”

“We’ve got a few other delicate guys on the force.”

“Good. I’ll be up at Dolly’s place for a while if you’re looking for me.”

Holden picked up the inter-office phone. “You and Dolly,” he said to Goldsmith as the sergeant reached the door, “a couple of free-lancers.” Goldsmith tipped his hat.

T
HE SERGEANT HAD THE
apartment to himself for the first time. It looked well-beaten, he thought, as he closed the door behind him. There was not a pin in it unaccounted for. As he stood in the foyer, taking in the place generally, it occurred to him that somebody was going to get a very nice apartment one day soon—the sunken living room, the large bedroom, a kitchen large enough for table and chairs, a foyer that could be used for dinner when there was company. The right size for him and his wife. A convenient neighborhood, too. He threw his hat on the table. An inconvenient rental. Very inconvenient.

He looked at the door. One of the things he wondered about was why, with a kitchen entrance to the place, Mrs. Flaherty used this one. He went into the kitchen and examined that door. It was double-locked, the chain bolt now on. There was no such fixture on the. front door. That accounted for Mrs. Flaherty’s using it. There she could let herself in and out.

Dolly Gebhardt had expected someone the night she was murdered, and she expected him to come in the back door. The inside lock was to be left off for him. It was therefore logical to suppose that he had a key to the other lock. It might also be assumed that he had used it before, indeed often enough to have his own key. Since none of the staff recalled a frequent visitor, he probably used the back stairs, as had the taxi driver. Why?

Goldsmith refined the possibilities to two: the visitor was someone of such renown that he would be recognized in the lobby, or his person was so disreputable that he would be conspicuous and not especially welcome. Goldsmith favored the latter possibility since the subject fit the shirt collar.

There was some pattern, too, in the sort of visitors Dolly brought home with her. Very few visitors came that she did not accompany. Except for one “gentleman” who called every week or so, most of her visitors were young men. In their twenties, the clerk suggested, and presentable if not distinguished-looking. Very shy. Embarrassed. There were not many of them, and he had not recalled seeing any one of them twice.

The detective tried to open the kitchen window. With much pounding it yielded, He thumped it down again and moved into the bedroom. The window was still closed. Nor could he make it yield. He tried the living room windows then. Only one of them opened, and that after he was sweating for his efforts. However, he found what he had hoped for: several small circular marks at the top of the frame at the side. Someone had taken a hammer to loosen it. He stepped back with some satisfaction and wiped his hands and face in his handkerchief.

The phone rang behind him. He reached around and picked it up.

“Send it up,” he said after hearing the message.

A few minutes later the fur piece Miss Gebhardt had purchased on the day of her death were delivered. The delivery man watched with fascination while the detective signed for it.

Inside Goldsmith opened the box and examined the fur. “Not such a much,” he said aloud, picking it up. He doubted that his wife would wear its sort. But she wasn’t keen on furs of any sort. He called headquarters and reported its arrival to Holden.

“How much?” the lieutenant asked.

“Reduced. Two hundred and seventy-nine dollars cash.”

Holden named a furrier. “Is that the place?”

“That’s it,” Goldsmith said, looking at the box.

“She was alone when she bought it, Goldie.”

“I kind of figured that. She wasn’t going to show papa the price-tag. Just the fur. Then she’d say: ‘Only four hundred eighty-nine dollars. Want your change?’“

“Sounds reasonable.”

“A bargain at half the price. How I’d love to deliver this box to his castle—wherever it is. I bet his wife would love it. I’ll see you, chief.”

He hung up and took the box to the bedroom, flinging it on the pile of clothes already heaped there in inventory. He returned to the living room and pulled a footstool up to the one bookcase in the room. It had been obvious from the stack of magazines that Dolly liked light reading. That was why two volumes of poetry were so conspicuous among the Cinderella fiction, mystery and adventure. They were old books, the products of bargain stalls, one a student’s edition of Shelley and the other a cheap copy of the complete poems of Francis Thompson. It was too much to hope that they might be inscribed, Goldsmith thought, examining the front pages. There were only the price marks on them. If there were a clue to murder in them, it was in their contents and in the sort of person associated with Dolly Gebhardt who would be interested in them.