Slow Burn (5 page)

Of course, he could always be inspired to write — or not write — whatever he uncovered for the right amount of cash. Money had always been Bixby’s muse. Some people paid him off, most didn’t. Just about the only thing worse than being mentioned in ‘Bixby’s Box’ was not being mentioned at all.

Alice stopped talking when she realized I was standing there. She looked me up and down, and I could tell she didn’t think much of what she saw. I didn’t mind. It was tough to pin down exactly what it was that made Alice so irresistible to men, but whatever it was, she had it in spades. Her deep brown eyes were so warm and inviting that a man could forget his troubles just by looking into them, at least for a little while. The city was littered with guys who’d tried doing just that.

“Hello, Alice,” I said. “It’s been a while.”

She gave me a half-hearted smile as she stubbed out her cigarette. She didn’t seem thrilled to see me and I couldn’t blame her. After all, I was cutting in on her payday. Bixby finally looked up from his notebook. He was about my size, maybe a little smaller, with wisps of brown hair pushed across the top of his head. His thick round glasses made his beady eyes look bigger than they really were.

“Well, well, well,” Bixby said as he set his pen aside and grinned up at me. It wasn’t a nice grin. It was lopsided and cynical, like everything else about him. “If it isn’t the Prodigal Policeman. The Merchant of Avarice himself.” Bixby looked at Alice. “You’re a lucky lady, my dear. I’d like to introduce you to something before it goes the way of the dodo bird—and by way of the dodo bird, I mean extinct. This is Detective Charles Doherty of the New York Police Department. He used to be a bag man for the boys downtown, not to mention a damned good source of information for me once upon a time.”

Alice was justifiably unimpressed. “I’ve known Charlie for years, Wendell.”

Bixby looked me over. “Then you probably remember when he used to be somebody. Now he’s just another two-bit cop, crossing off days on a tiny calendar nailed to the wall next to his icebox, waiting for retirement.” He sucked his teeth. “How many days is it now, Charlie? And don’t tell me you’re not the type who counts.”

I didn’t let him rile me. The bravado was for Alice’s benefit. He’d be gentle as a lamb once she was out of earshot.

“We need to talk, Wendell. Now.”

Bixby looked at Alice again. “Now, how do you like that? I haven’t seen him in over a year and he expects me to just drop everything and talk with him?” Then he looked at me while he motioned to the girl. “Can’t you see I’m entertaining a lady friend, Charles? Why don’t you wait at the bar until…?”

I shifted my jacket to my left hand and made a fist with my right. “You’re starting to annoy me.” I heard the boys behind me scramble further down the bar. Like I said, they all knew me.

Bixby made a big show of sighing. “Alice, be an angel and give me a few minutes with Charles. We’ll get back to your story very soon, I promise.”

Alice frowned and she suddenly wasn’t so pretty anymore. She had that kind of face. “But what about my money?”

“When you come back, darling,” Bixby patted her hand. “Now, run along like a good girl, but not too far, mind you. I’m still very interested in what you have to tell me.”

Alice gathered up her bag, slid out of the booth and stood in one swift movement. Like a girl who’d had plenty of experience being asked to leave conversations between men. When she stood, she was almost half a head taller than me. But I wasn’t complaining about the view.

She said, “I heard you and Theresa split up. I was sorry to hear that. That’s rough.”

I shrugged it off. “I broke the first rule of law enforcement: don’t marry the women you arrest. I knew what she was when I married her.” That sounded far more bitter than I’d intended, and I covered it as quick as I could, “Heard you’re not singing at The Bronze Peacock anymore.”

“That’s because The Bronze Peacock closed a year ago, dopey,” she said. “I’m over at The Tangiers now.”

“The Tangiers?” I smiled. “I didn’t know it was still open.”

“It is. Barely.” That frown again. “Maybe you ought to get out more, Charlie.”

“Maybe I should.”

With that, she made her exit and drew every eye in the place doing it. She had the kind of walk that deserved to be watched, and she knew it. Bixby watched her too, but with a different kind of admiration. “I love that girl, Charlie. She does some very undignified things with some very dignified people.”

I slid into her place in the booth and pushed her drink out of the way. It smelled like Scotch, or something like it. The seat was still warm from her body. Despite how hot it was in the place, I didn’t mind. I could still smell her scent: rose water and bath soap. “She still seeing Danny Stiles?”

Bixby laughed. “No one’s seen Danny Stiles in weeks. He seems to have gotten himself into some trouble with Sally Balls again. Owes him a fair amount of money from what I understand. At least enough to send poor Danny into hiding.” He paused to watch Alice again as she walked out the front door. “Alice got herself some new playmates now that I’m much more interested in.”

“You always did hang around with the best people, Wendell.”

“True,” Bixby admitted. “Alice, and all the other Alices out there, keep my column stocked with juicy tidbits that keep readers interested and my publisher happy. Without people like her supplying information, I’d have to stop coming to beautiful places like this. Now, what’ll it be? Coffee or gin?”

I’d worked up a hell of a thirst on the walk up there. I knew what I wanted, and I knew what I should have. I noticed the coffee cup in front of him, but I also knew Bixby liked to drink his gin out of coffee cups. It kept people guessing. I decided to let fate choose for me. “Whatever you’re having is fine.”

Bixby motioned to the bartender, who brought over another cup and a pot of coffee. I smiled. The fates had spoken. “Now that it’s just us girls,” Bixby said as he poured us coffee, “how about telling me what brings you down here at this ungodly hour. Things down at the Missing Persons Bureau getting tedious?”

“You’re slipping, Wendell. I’ve been out of the Bureau for over a month. They’ve got me working Homicide now. Graveyard shift.”

Bixby winced. “Gory, perhaps, but I’m sure the dead are a better class of people than you were used to in Vice.” Then the reporter in him woke up. “Say, why aren’t you working Vice anymore, anyway? Why all the crummy assignments lately?”

I drank my coffee. Answering that question could’ve taken the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon. I didn’t have that kind of time, so I kept it simple. “Bad case of guilt going around the department. Whole lot of amnesia, too.”

“Oh, that’s just silly,” Bixby stabbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. “No one gives a damn about corruption anymore, Charlie. The plight of the working man is all people care about now. The legions of unemployed, rallying in the streets, rioting for justice against the greedy corporations. That and avenging poor Baby Lindbergh’s death, of course. Haven’t you heard? Or don’t your bosses read the papers?”

Bixby was right. Every day, the newspapers were full of two kinds of stories: riots and marches by people out of work, and The Lindbergh Kidnapping. They’d chased all the corruption stories right off the front pages. And why not? Riots and marches made great headlines. And when the infant son of a bona fide American hero gets kidnapped from his mansion in the dead of night, it’s news. The story had everything: famous wealthy family, a missing baby, suspicious household staff, the works. Newspapers from coast to coast were filled with stories, theories and rumors about who took the kid and where he was being held. The public cared about nothing else from March — when the kid was snatched — until May, when a truck driver taking a leak on the side of the road found the poor little bastard dead with his head caved in. But now it was August, and anti-corruption stories were back in fashion.

“I don’t make the rules, Wendell,” I said. “I just live by them.”

“But why did Chief Carmichael single you out?” Bixby said as he lit another cigarette. “Everyone was on the take, from the good mayor himself all the way down. Carmichael included.”

I knew he was working me, and I let him. It was the price I had to pay for letting me bend his ear about Silas Van Dorn. Nothing was ever free with Wendell Bixby. “I didn’t come here to tell my tale of woe,” I said. “I came here for information.”

Bixby sat back slowly in the booth. “Information? From me? Now, that’s a switch. I can remember when I used to pay you for information.”

“Times are changing. Or don’t you read the papers?”

“Touché.” Bixby toasted me with his coffee mug. “What would you like to know?”

“I came across a name tonight,” I said. “A name I ought to know, but I just can’t place it. I thought you might.” Bixby’s left eye twitched like it always did when a new bit of dirt came his way. “Does it have to do with a case you’re working on?”

I nodded.

He flipped the pages in his notebook to a clean page. “A homicide case?”

I nodded again.

“Well, in that case…” He began to write, but I grabbed his hand.

“This stays off the record until I say otherwise. It’s that, or nothing. If this turns out to be something, I’ll get you some kind of exclusive down the road. But for now it stays between us.” I let him pull his hand away. I knew the gossipmonger lived for dirt, whether he could print it or not. He needed secrets the way a junkie needs a fix. I knew I had him hooked and he was too curious to do anything but play along.

“Fine. What’s this name you can’t quite place?”

“Van Dorn. Silas Van Dorn. Ring any bells?”

Bixby’s eyebrows rose slowly. “A chorus of them.”

I tried not to let him see how important it was to me. “Then sing.”

“He’s a Van Dorn,” Bixby began, “but, of course, you knew that already. The name would mean something by itself in certain circles. The kinds of circles who pay me very well to keep their names out of my column, although it’s not like they ever do much that’s interesting, anyway.” Bixby cleared his throat and leaned forward on the table. “You see, the Van Dorns are one of those old-time clans that everyone’s heard about somewhere along the line but no one knows much about, except that they’re rich.”

The history lesson was beginning to bore me. “Beautiful. Let’s skip to Silas Van Dorn.”

“He comes from a very long line of very old money,” Bixby went on. “One side of the family came over on the Mayflower. The other side goes back to when the Dutch first ran this town. Needless to say, they’re beyond loaded. They’re one of those families that seem to quietly keep getting rich almost out of force of habit. Even in trying times such as these.”

I didn’t know if I’d just gotten lucky or hit a dead end. I’d known all along that the Van Dorn name didn’t belong anywhere near the register of The Chauncey Arms. Now I knew why. All I had to do was talk to Silas Van Dorn, and maybe this thing would start coming together. “Any idea where I might find this guy?”

Bixby shook his head. “Quid pro quo, Charlie. I answered your question, now you answer one of mine. Why do you want to know who he is?” Bixby had lived up to his end of the bargain, so it was time for me to live up to mine. Besides, he knew what I’d do to him if he printed any of it. “A girl was found dead in the Chauncey Arms in a room registered in Silas Van Dorn’s name. I know it’s probably not him, but somebody used that name on purpose because it’s the only name in the register I can read plain as day.”

Bixby blinked hard. The thick glasses made it look like he blinked even harder. “Silas Van Dorn? At The Chauncey Arms?” He blinked again. “When did he supposedly register this room?”

I saw no harm in telling him this either. “Yesterday morning around ten or so.” I didn’t like the look on Bixby’s face. “Why?”

“Well, it wasn’t him. That’s impossible,” Bixby said.

“Why?”

“We broke the story in last night’s Evening Edition,” Bixby said, “but you probably missed it. Silas Van Dorn died yesterday morning from a massive heart attack on Long Island. And he was eighty-four years old.”