The Girls in the High-Heeled Shoes (29 page)

And that was Madam Florintina’s only appearance in the pages of the
New York World
until her body was found in a parked car. I copied the date and names into my notebook and thanked Schiff.

“What I’m here for,” he said. “One to eleven every day but Monday.”

When I got back upstairs Brass was gone. He had left me a note, tucked neatly into my typewriter roller: “If you have anything, leave it on my desk. I have a date. See you tomorrow.”

I quickly typed my notes on Madam Florintina’s brush with the law and put the typed page and the photo of Lane & Vulpone neatly centered on Brass’s desk. Then I shrugged into my topcoat, grabbed my hat, and headed for the elevator.

It was still early, as such things are figured by we denizens of the night, so I thought I would head down to the Village, grab a bite of dinner perhaps at the White Horse, and hang out with my fellow writers and artists for a few hours.

I headed east toward the Eighth Avenue subway. As I reached the corner of Eighth Avenue and was turning downtown, I heard footsteps quicken behind me, and something hard and cold pushed into the small of my back.

“Stop walking. Stand where you are. Don’t turn around,” came the harsh whisper.

There were a couple of people in sight, about half a block away in various directions, but that was no help; none of them was paying attention to what was happening on the corner. I could yell. I could kick the guy behind me in the shins and run. I could drop and use a sweeping scissor kick to bring the man to the ground. Sure I could.

I had the impression that the voice was coming from below my ears, so my assailant was smaller than I. But a small man with a gun is still a man with a gun. I stopped where I was. I didn’t turn around.

A gloved hand holding an envelope reached around me. “Take this!” the voice ordered. “Give it to your boss.”

I took the envelope. It was a plain white business envelope with ALEXANDER BRASS printed on the front.

The man behind me suddenly hooked his leg around mine and pushed me violently forward from the shoulders. I flung my arms out and landed on the sidewalk on my palms and forearms and my left knee. My left elbow also seemed to be somehow involved in the landing.

I rolled to the side and sprang to my feet to chase the man, but two things interfered. First, he was a good half block away and sprinting like a champion, his raincoat flapping behind him. Second, my left leg didn’t want to work and brought me back to the pavement.

I rose, slowly and painfully, retrieved the envelope from where it had fallen, and limped out into the street to hail a cab.

Brass’s apartment was unoccupied when I got there, but the elevator man let me in. Sandra Lelane was presumably dancing across the stage at the Royal Theater, and Garrett was there guarding her from somewhere in the wings. Brass was out on what he said in the note was a date. I wondered whether he meant date as in appointment, or date as in young lady, flowers, dinner and dancing, and home for a nightcap. If so, I might not see him until very late. I checked over my bruises, and found myself basically undamaged, although my left knee was refusing to work properly and protested strongly when I made it do anything at all. I still hadn’t had dinner, so I raided Brass’s ice box and scrambled a couple of eggs and sliced some ham, and ate them at the kitchen table with a bagel and cream cheese and a glass of milk.

It’s funny about letters. I had just been given what was certainly a note from our kidnapper-extortionist telling us what to do next and I wanted to open it and read it, but it was addressed to Brass, and so I didn’t. I didn’t think Brass would mind, and suppose there was something that had a time limit? But still, it was addressed to Brass, his name neatly printed on the front with what looked like a thick-lead pencil, and so I didn’t open it.

I was asleep on the couch in the living room when the light was switched on and I heard Brass’s voice. “What happened, DeWitt? Did your landlady finally find out your true profession and kick you out?”

“No,” I said, struggling to open my eyes, “she doesn’t know I work for a columnist, she still thinks I play piano in a whore house.”

The three of them were standing together in the doorway, their overcoats still on. So Brass’s date had been with Sandra Lelane. Well, I couldn’t fault his taste, although it must have been a somber evening, what with Sandra still having no idea how her mother was or what was happening to her. And having Theodore Garrett as a chaperone would be enough to keep one sober in the best of times.

I swung my legs around and sat up. “We have a letter,” I told Brass.

“What sort of letter?”

“Hand delivered,” I said. I told him briefly how I had acquired the letter and handed it to him.

“You didn’t get a good look at your assailant?” Brass asked.

“I got hardly any look at all,” I told him. “By the time I got up he was halfway down the block and moving fast. I saw a flapping raincoat. I think it was black, but it might have been dark blue or brown or whatever.”

Brass ripped open the envelope and removed a folded sheet of paper. “Typewritten,” he said, unfolding it.

Sandra grabbed his arm. “What does it say?”

Brass read: “‘Central Park Menagerie at noon. By the bison. You will be called.’”

“Many are called,” Garrett intoned, “but few are chosen.”

We ignored him. “Is that where you bring the money?” Sandra asked.

“I presume so,” Brass said. “Notice the economy of language. It doesn’t say ‘Don’t bring the police,’ because he knows I can’t do that anyway. It doesn’t say ‘Come alone,’ probably because he doesn’t care who comes along. It doesn’t even say ‘Bring the money,’ that being taken for granted.”

“I’m coming with you,” Sandra said.

Brass thought it over for a second. “Why not?” he said.

“I’ll go an hour ahead of time and scout in the bushes,” Garrett said. “Find a place overlooking the location. See what’s waiting for you. Watch whoever comes.”

“Thank you, but I think not,” Brass said. “It says ‘You will be called.’ And I believe there’s a public phone booth on the path right by the bison enclosure, which is probably what our miscreant is referring to. Skulking in the bushes won’t accomplish anything.”

Garrett drew himself up, shoulders back. “I never skulk,” he announced. “I scout, I explore, I investigate, I observe; I do not skulk.”

“My apologies,” Brass told him. “An ill-chosen word.”

“Shall we make a plan?” I asked.

“We shall go to sleep,” Brass said. “It’s two-thirty in the morning. Plenty of time tomorrow, or make that later today, to make a plan. DeWitt, you might as well stay here, if you don’t mind the couch. Clean garments can be supplied in the morning.”

“Fine with me,” I said. I lay back down. In ten minutes I was fast asleep. Sometime during the night someone, probably Garrett, covered me with a quilt.

At eight o’clock, Garrett shook me awake. “Here’s a towel and a set of fresh underwear and socks,” he said. “They ought to fit. Use the bathroom at the end of the hall. I’ll have a shirt for you when you emerge. Breakfast in half an hour.”

I followed instructions. The clothes fit reasonably well, although the shirt had one of those collars that fastens with a bar passing under the tie; much too fussy a style for me. I don’t know where it came from, neither Brass nor Garrett ever wore such a thing. But borrowers can’t be choosers. When I appeared in the dining room for breakfast Brass and Sandra had already arrived, Brass in a dark brown suit sans jacket, and Sandra well wrapped in what appeared to be one of Brass’s more elegant bathrobes: a maroon job with scarlet satin collar and cuffs. We discussed possibilities over buckwheat pancakes and maple syrup.

It could be a trick, Brass noted, but it probably wasn’t. Our kidnapper could be planning to hijack the money and give nothing in return, but it would take a gang to get the money away from all of us, and Brass said he doubted whether the malefactor we were dealing with had a gang on hand.

“We have to make sure that Mom is okay,” Sandra said. “Don’t just give him the money without making sure that Mom is okay, and that he’s going to let her go!”

Brass looked at her thoughtfully, and then put his hand over hers. “He isn’t,” he said quietly.

Sandra stared at him. I stared at the two of them. “You must know something we don’t,” I said, breaking the silence.

“I could be wrong,” Brass admitted, “but I don’t think so.”

“Tell me,” Sandra said.

Brass paused to pick his words. “This attempt at ransom is a late development,” he said. “Mary was not taken for a ransom, but because of something she knows, or something her abductor thinks she knows. And now it’s clear that this is connected with the absence of Billie Trask. I refuse to believe that two separate bands of criminals have picked me to be the go-between in delivering payments for two distinct and unrelated events. But it is clear that the ransom demand for Mary is an afterthought. I might think it was an attempt at extortion by someone not actually involved in the abduction were it not for the evident connection with the missing bonds.”

Sandra nodded. Brass must have filled her in on all that during their date.

“Therefore it would seem that the abductor has a strong reason for keeping Mary hidden, and I don’t think he’ll let her go if we pay him the money. If you hadn’t heard from her, I would have thought she was already dead.”

Sandra stood up and paced around the dining-room table, her fists clenched, and the lines in her face showing the tightness of the underlying muscles. Walking instead of crying, I thought. Holding in the tears.

“I’m sorry,” Brass said. “I shouldn’t have been so direct.”

“No, no,” Sandra said. “I’m glad you’re telling me the truth. You think it’s possible that Mom may have been killed since the phone call?”

“My God!” Brass said. “No! I am sorry. I should have realized. No, I’m sure she’s still alive. The reasons her abductor had for keeping her alive in the first place, whatever they are, must still be good. But we’re going to have to work to keep her that way, and to spring her from wherever she’s being kept.”

“How are we going to do that?” Sandra asked.

Yes, I thought. How?

“By being nimble and quick-thinking and fast on our feet,” Brass said. “Our advantage is that he doesn’t know how much we know.”

“Just how much do we know?” I asked.

The phone rang.

We paused, and I could feel my heart pounding, while Garrett answered the instrument by the kitchen door. After a few seconds of conversation, Garrett waved the handpiece at Brass. “It’s for you. Alan Shine.”

“Shine? At quarter past nine in the morning?” Brass went over and took the phone. Sandra sat back down. I finished my pancakes and sipped at my coffee.

Brass returned to the table. “Shine’s a crime reporter for the
World
,” he told Sandra. “A man’s body was found last night,” he went on, emphasizing the word “man” so Sandra wouldn’t have a chance to think what she would otherwise think. “News of it came in on the A.P. wire about half an hour ago. When Shine went up to the research department to see if there was anything in the files about the victim, there was nothing there. But Schiff, the man who runs the department, thought to remark that DeWitt was asking for information on the same man only yesterday. Shine wanted to know if we were going in for clairvoyance, asking for information on a dead man before the body was found.”

“Doctor Pangell!” I said. “How did he die? Where was he found?”

“He was in a steamer trunk in the basement of his house in Quogue. He’d been dead for a while; they’re not sure how long, but at least a week. A real estate salesman who was preparing the house for sale found him. There hasn’t been an autopsy yet, but it looks like he was hit on the head with one of those blunt objects you hear so much about. The Quogue police say they’ve been watching the good doctor for some time. They suspect him of being one of those friends of the single girl that we hear so much about.”

“An abortionist?” I asked.

“Or so they think. I think they’re probably right.”

“Who is—was—Doctor Pangell?” Sandra asked.

“He’s the man who lived at Four-sixty-four Fenton Road. The address, we believe, that your mother wrote on that little note hidden in your stuffed animal.”

“This is getting stranger and stranger,” Sandra said.

“You’ve got my vote,” I told her.

Brass was staring at the wall. “It gets easier, you know.”

“What does?”

“Killing. It gets easier. You kill your first person and your heart is in your mouth. You’ve just murdered a fellow human being and surely God will punish you, and surely it will be written on your forehead for all to see and how can you get away with it for more than a few hours? And then the police don’t arrest you as you step out of your car or off the bus, and there is no official knock on the door in the middle of the night, and your courage gathers.

“You’ve never killed before because you’re afraid of the consequences, but the taking of a life doesn’t bother you morally. You’re one of those people who doesn’t see other people as human beings but only as objects to be manipulated. Now that you see you can get away with it, it gets easier. People are stupid, anyway. You’re so bright that they’ll never catch you, never even suspect you. It’s hard not to laugh in their faces as the police go around investigating these crimes. And, after all, each killing is a necessity. These people have to be eliminated to keep your secret.”

“What secret?” I asked.

“Ah,” Brass said, wiggling a finger at me, “that would be telling.” He turned to Sandra. “The Professor,” he said, “do you have his phone number?”

She nodded. “I do.”

“Call him. Ask him to come join us.”

“Now?”

“If possible.”

“All right. I don’t know whether he’ll be up yet, but I’ll give it a shot.” Sandra went to the phone.

“He’ll be right over,” she said, coming back to the table. “And he didn’t even ask why.”

“Good,” Brass said.

“But I will.” She came over to Brass’s chair and stared down at him. “Why?”