McNally's Gamble (18 page)

“Only the second,” I said. “I think.”

“Well, don’t touch anything. Wait for me outside on the sidewalk. I’m on my way.”

I thanked the bookshop clerk, returned to Windsor Antiques, and took up my station outside. It was a super day: warm sun, azure sky with a few shreds of clouds. The cool breeze had a nice salty tang. I felt sick.

The police car pulled up about ten minutes later, driven by a young officer I didn’t recognize. No siren. They didn’t want to offend the natives or scare the tourists. Both cops got out to join me on the sidewalk. Sgt. Rogoff was finishing the remnants of a folded slice of pizza.

“My lunch,” he said to me. “Thanks a lot. Where is he?”

I led the way to the back room. We stood looking down at the remains.

“Mr. Sydney Smythe,” I said, introducing the corpse.

“Is he dead?” the young officer asked.

“Nah,” Al said. “Just taking a nap with six inches of steel in his brisket. Now you go back to the car and call in an apparent homicide. Alert the crime scene crew, the ME’s office, traffic control, the brass, and so forth. Think you can handle all that?”

“Sure, sarge. Just like we were taught in training school.”

“Just like it,” Rogoff agreed. “Except in this school the guy doesn’t get up and go out for a beer.”

The officer left to alert headquarters.

“They say you’re getting old when cops start looking young,” I commented.

“How do you think I feel?” Al said. “The kid could be my son.” He squatted alongside the body.

The sergeant is limber enough. And fast? You wouldn’t believe. But he’s a heavy hulk with a squarish body and a big head. He has a truculent walk and some of his gestures look as if he’s pounding a tough steak. Despite the good ol’ boy persona he projects, he’s a closet balletomane—a secret shared by only a few friends but none of his colleagues.

“Crazy-looking shiv,” he said. “You got any idea what it is?”

“I know exactly what it is,” I told him. “It was part of Smythe’s stock-in-trade. He picked it up somewhere a few years ago and showed it to me then. I guess he was never able to sell it. It’s a Turkish Mauser bayonet, circa 1915. Ten-inch blade. The ring on the top of the guard encircled the muzzle of the rifle. That bayonet may have been used at Gallipoli.”

“Thank you, professor. It was kept with the other garbage in the front room?”

“Correct. When Smythe first showed it to me it was in a steel scabbard.”

“You buy a lot of stuff here?”

“No. One or two purchases a year. Occasionally I dropped by just to chat awhile. He was interesting. Knew a great deal about antiques.”

“Is that why you were here today—just stepped in to gab?”

I hesitated a beat. Then: “No, he phoned me around noon at the office. He said he wanted to see me as soon as possible.”

“Did he say why?”

“No. He started to explain but suddenly stopped speaking. I heard what sounded like his phone dropping to the floor. Then there was a louder thud. I presumed it was him falling. I hurried over fearing he might have had a heart attack.”

“How did he sound to you on the phone?”

This time I didn’t hesitate. “He sounded all right. Normal. I thought he might have acquired a rare bibelot he wanted me to see.”

“Bibelot,” Rogoff repeated. “Love the way you talk.” He stood up and dusted his palms although he hadn’t touched anything. “You think it’s possible someone was in the store while he was talking to you on the phone?”

“Yes, it’s possible.”

“How about this scenario: Someone was in the front room who spooked him. He was afraid of being robbed so he came back here and called you for help?”

“Why wouldn’t he call you or nine-one-one?”

“Maybe he wasn’t certain he was in danger and didn’t want to phone in a false alarm.”

“Yes, Al, that too is possible.”

The sergeant stared at me. “You wouldn’t be scamming a guardian of law and order, would you, kiddo?”

“Not me. I’ve told you what happened.”

“Uh-huh. Do you know where he kept his cash?”

“I remember once he made change from a tin box in the upper left drawer of the desk.”

Rogoff used one fingertip to pull the drawer open. The black tin box was in there. He lifted the lid with the point of a pencil. The box was empty.

“How much cash did he keep in there—do you know?”

“No.”

“Doesn’t make much difference,” he said. “These days you can be snuffed for fifty-nine cents.”

“You think that’s what it was, Al—a robbery?”

“Could be. A crime of opportunity. A wrongo wanders in. Nothing on his mind. No weapon. No plan. He hasn’t even cased the joint. Then he sees the bayonet, picks it up, slides the blade out of the scabbard. Nice. He realizes he’s alone in the place with the owner. Maybe he figures he’ll just threaten the old man. But then he hears Smythe phoning and he panics, figuring he’s calling the cops. So he sticks him with the bayonet, makes a quick search, finds cash in the tin box, grabs it and runs.”

“Is that what you think happened?” I asked him.

“No,” he said. “A panicky killer and crook wouldn’t waste time closing the lid of the tin box and sliding the drawer shut.”

We heard the sounds of several sirens and the blasting of horns and whistles.

“The troops are arriving,” Sgt. Rogoff said. “You’ll be in the way. Take off and I’ll contact you later. I’ll need a signed statement from you.”

“Sorry I spoiled your lunch, Al.”

“Anchovy pizza,” he reported. “I got to eat half of it. By the way, do you know Smythe’s next of kin?”

“No.”

“Do you know where he lived?”

“No.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know, isn’t there, buster?”

“Too much,” I admitted.

I walked back to the McNally Building, reclaimed the Miata, and drove to the Pelican Club. I found it packed with the luncheon crowd but I finally found space at the bar and asked Simon Pettibone for a Remy Martin.

“Before lunch?” he said. “Since when has cognac been an aperitif?”

“Since right now,” I said. “Due to serious trauma of the nervous system.”

“Have one of Leroy’s double cheeseburgers with bacon,” he advised. “It deadens all pain.”

“Splendid idea,” I said.

But the burger didn’t work; the pain persisted. Not pain exactly but sorrow. I could not stop brooding on the death of Sydney Smythe, trying to find meaning in what Al Rogoff had called a crime of opportunity, the result of chance and accident.

It had to be a stranger, maybe a druggie, who had wandered into Windsor Antiques, found himself alone with the aged proprietor, and decided to rip him off. Murder had followed when he thought he heard Smythe phone for assistance. I discounted what Rogoff had said about a panicky assailant not pausing to close the tin box or shut the desk drawer. How long would it take—a second or two? And the man might not have been panicky at all, but a cool villain moving steadily and deliberately.

I am a great believer in Occam’s razor, a principle which, roughly stated, holds that when more than one solution to a problem exists, the simplest and most obvious answer is likely to be the most valid. Ergo, Sydney Smythe was slain by a stranger, an intruder who acted from conscienceless greed.

I held to that belief throughout lunch and the remainder of the day. It was after dinner when I had retired to my aerie in the McNally manse that I attempted to phone Sgt. Rogoff, hoping the confused initial stages of the investigation had been concluded. I found him still at headquarters and inquired if any progress had been made.

“Some,” he said cautiously. Al doesn’t like to tell me all he knows and, as you are undoubtedly aware, I treat him in a similar fashion. “We found where he lived: a fleabag motel out in the West Palm boonies. The owner says Smythe had been a tenant for almost five years. The place looked to me like the last stop before skid row. We sealed his rooms until we can toss them.”

“Have you located his next of kin?”

“So far it looks like a cousin in England. Get this: the coz lives in a village called Thornton-le-Beans. How do you like that?”

“Intriguing,” I said.

“Yeah. Your favorite word.”

“Discover anything about his private life?”

“We discovered he didn’t have any—if you can believe the motel owner, which I don’t. Anyway, he claims Smythe never went out at night, never had visitors, had no friends, made no phone calls, and never talked about his past. Nada, zip, zilch, and zero.”

“Al, I still think he was killed by a stranger, maybe an addict, who just happened to wander in, found himself alone with a fragile old man, and decided to score—even a few bucks.”

“You believe that, do you?”

“It certainly looks like a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

“Not to me it doesn’t,” the sergeant said. “We found the steel scabbard you mentioned. It was on the floor in the front room. Looked like it had just been dropped amongst all the other junk. We dusted the scabbard and the wooden grip of the bayonet for prints.”

“Find anything?”

“Sure did. But not fingerprints. Gloves. Our wonk thinks the last person to handle the scabbard and bayonet was wearing pigskin gloves. Who in south Florida wears gloves unless he wants to cover his hands during the commission of a crime? Am I right? And if our desperado was wearing gloves it’s a clear indication of premeditation and planning. Isn’t that intriguing?”

“I guess so...” I said faintly.

He laughed. “There goes your random killing theory. Listen, I’ve got to cut this short and get back to work. Talk to you tomorrow or whenever.” He hung up.

Was I shocked by Rogoff’s suggestion of a premeditated and planned murder? I was not. Ever since I had discovered the crumpled body a tiny pilot light of suspicion had been burning. But I had willfully ignored it, deluding myself with the fantasy of a drugged stranger stabbing Sydney Smythe during a stupid theft.

But in view of what Rogoff had just told me, my re-creation of what had happened became a base exercise in self-deception. My scenario and my dependence on Occam’s razor had all been part of an almost irrational attempt to disavow the tiny pilot light. But now it was a large, consuming flame and I could no longer deny it.

Why had I striven so mightily to evade the truth? Because if Sydney Smythe had not been murdered by a thieving interloper, then it was possible, perhaps even probable he was killed by someone he knew—a category conceivably including Frederick Clemens and his inscrutable secretary, Felix.

If either or both of those men were involved in Smythe’s quietus the fault was partly mine. If not the fault, then certainly the guilt. For I had launched a ploy which, with an excess of hubris, I thought fiendishly clever enough to precipitate a crisis between Smythe and Clemens if the two were partners in a plan to swindle Mrs. Edythe Westmore.

My scheme had precipitated a crisis all right—resulting in one of the conspirators lying defunct on a scrap of carpeting with a Turkish bayonet thrust into him.

What evidence did I have of a conspiracy? Very little. I had Clemens’s description of the “surprise” in the Fabergé Imperial egg he was selling, which mimicked the imaginary surprise I had portrayed to Smythe. And I had the latter’s final phone call to me during which he spoke of a vexing problem and a need to see me as soon as possible. Could not his call concern the fairy tale I had spun about my invented egg being auctioned in New York?

Not a great deal to go on, I agree. But I surrendered to a conviction Clemens and Smythe had been acting in concert and my sly ruse had had a totally unexpected and tragic denouement. I could not escape my guilt in the death of Sydney Smythe. If he had served as a henchman of an immoral knave he had acted reprehensibly, true. But had he been so culpable as to deserve the ignoble end he earned? I didn’t think so.

I feared I might live the remainder of my life with the acknowledgment of my guilt in the slaying of an aged fop. But there was one way to make partial amends: conclusively identify the killer and bring him to justice.

If I could do that perhaps my self-reproach would fade with time and my egotism would regain its healthy vigor and thrive.

T
HE MURDER OF SYDNEY
SMYTHE
did not make blaring headlines in our local newspaper the following morning but it did earn a one-column story titled “Antique Dealer Slain”—leaving it to the reader to decide if the victim dealt in antiques or was an ancient merchant. In this case, both.

I read the article carefully. It stated: “Law enforcement authorities are investigating several leads”—journalese for, “The police are stumped and don’t know which way to turn.” But the account did give the name and address of Smythe’s motel. It also mentioned, “Windsor Antiques has been a fixture on Worth Avenue for almost twenty years.” I scissored the story from the newspaper, folded it carefully, and placed it in my wallet. Then I went to work.

The Real Estate Department of McNally & Son advises clients on the purchase or lease of residences, commercial properties, and raw land. For many years this section has been under the direction of Mrs. Evelyn Sharif, a jovial lady married to a Lebanese who sells Oriental rugs to the nouveau riche with nary a qualm about the prices he charges. But Evelyn was currently on maternity leave, having dropped twins, and real estate matters were temporarily being handled by her assistant, Timothy Hogan.

Hogan’s office was my first stop on Wednesday. I found him working on a large black coffee and two of the loathsome bran muffins available in our company cafeteria.

“Tim,” I said, “did you hear about the murder yesterday on Worth Avenue?”

“Yeah, I saw it on TV last night. A helluva thing. My guess is a dopehead did it.”

“Probably. You know, I’ve been in that antique store a few times. It looked like a rat’s nest, worse than a thrift shop. Never saw any customers in there. Never found anything expensive worth buying. Yet the newspaper report says the store’s been there for almost twenty years. How on earth did the owner manage to stay in business while paying Worth Avenue rents?”

Hogan took a gulp of coffee and then a bite of a bran muffin. “It’s an interesting story. The dealer had a twenty-year lease on the space with no option to renew. The lease is up at midnight on New Year’s Eve this year. I’m betting the rent will triple or quadruple or—what’s larger than quadruple?”