Thomas Godfrey (Ed) (78 page)

“No, I
can’t. He tore it up.”

“The
hell he did. Where are the pieces?”

“Gone.
He put them in his wastebasket. Will you come to the wedding?”

“What
wastebasket where?”

“The
gold one by his desk in his office. Last evening after dinner. Will you come to
the wedding?”

“I
will not. My heart is bleeding. So will Mr. Wolfe’s—and by the way, I’d better
get out of here. I’m not going to stand around and sulk.”

“You
won’t have to. He won’t know I’ve told you, and anyway, you wouldn’t be
expected—Here he comes!”

She
darted off to the bar and I headed that way. Through the door on the left
appeared Mrs. Perry Porter Jerome, all of her, plump and plushy, with folds of
mink trying to keep up as she breezed in. As she approached, those on stools
left them and got onto their feet, but that courtesy could have been as much
for her companion as for her. She was the angel, but Kurt Bottweill was the
boss. He stopped five paces short of the bar, extended his arms as far as they
would go, and sang out, “Merry Christmas, all my blessings! Merry merry merry!”

I
still hadn’t labeled him. My first impression, months ago, had been that he was
one of them, but that had been wrong. He was a man all right, but the question
was what kind. About average in height, round but not pudgy, maybe forty-two or
-three, his fine black hair slicked back so that he looked balder than he was,
he was nothing great to look at, but he had something, not only for women but
for men too. Wolfe had once invited him to stay for dinner, and they had talked
about the scrolls from the Dead Sea. I had seen him twice at baseball games.
His label would have to wait.

As I
joined them at the bar, where Santa Claus was pouring Mumms Cordon Rouge,
Bottweill squinted at me a moment and then grinned. “Goodwin! You here? Good!
Edith, your pet sleuth!”

Mrs.
Perry Porter Jerome, reaching for a glass, stopped her hand to look at me. “Who
asked you?” she demanded, then went on, with no room for a reply, “Cherry, I
suppose. Cherry
is
a blessing. Leo, quit tugging at me. Very well, take it.
It’s warm in here.” She let her son pull her coat off, then reached for a
glass. By the time Leo got back from depositing the mink on the divan we all
had glasses, and when he had his we raised them, and our eyes went to
Bottweill.

His
eyes flashed around. “There are times,” he said, “when love takes over. There
are times—”

“Wait
a minute,” Alfred Kiernan cut in. “You enjoy it too. You don’t like this stuff.”

“
I can stand a
sip, Al.”

“But
you won’t enjoy it. Wait.” Kiernan put his glass on the bar and marched to the
door on the left and on out. In five seconds he was back, with a bottle in his
hand, and as he rejoined us and asked Santa Claus for a glass I saw the Pernod
label. He pulled the cork, which had been pulled before, filled the glass
halfway, and held it out to Bottweill. “There,” he said. “That will make it
unanimous.”

“Thanks,
Al.” Bottweill took it. “My secret public vice.” He raised the glass. “I
repeat, there are times when love takes over. (Santa Claus, where is yours? but
I suppose you can’t drink through that mask.) There are times when all the
little demons disappear down their ratholes, and ugliness itself takes on the
shape of beauty; when the darkest corner is touched by light; when the coldest
heart feels the glow of warmth; when the trumpet call of good will and good
cheer drowns out all the Babel of mean little noises. This is such a time. Merry
Christmas! Merry merry merry!”

I was
ready to touch glasses, but both the angel and the boss steered theirs to their
lips, so I and the others followed suit. I thought Bottweill’s eloquence
deserved more than a sip, so I took a healthy gulp, and from the corner of my
eye I saw that he was doing likewise with the Pernod. As I lowered the glass my
eyes went to Mrs. Jerome, as she spoke.

“That
was lovely,” she declared. “Simply lovely. I must write it down and have it
printed. That part about the trumpet call—
Kurt!
What is it?
Kurt!”

He had
dropped the glass and was clutching his throat with both hands. As I moved he
turned loose of his throat, thrust his arms out, and let out a yell. I think he
yelled
“Merry!”
but I wasn’t really listening. Others started for him too,
but my reflexes were better trained for emergencies than any of theirs, so I
got him first. As I got my arms around him he started choking and gurgling, and
a spasm went over him from head to foot that nearly loosened my grip. They were
making noises, but no screams, and someone was clawing at my arm. As I was
telling them to get back and give me room, he was suddenly a dead weight, and I
almost went down with him and might have if Kiernan hadn’t grabbed his arm.

I
called, “Get a doctor!” and Cherry ran to a table where there was a gold-leaf
phone. Kiernan and I let Bottweill down on the rug. He was out, breathing fast
and hard, but as I was straightening his head his breathing slowed down and
foam showed on his lips. Mrs. Jerome was commanding us, “Do something, do
something!”

There
was nothing to do and I knew it. While I was holding onto him I had got a whiff
of his breath, and now, kneeling, I leaned over to get my nose an inch from
his, and I knew that smell, and it takes a big dose to hit that quick and hard.
Kiernan was loosening Bottweill’s tie and collar. Cherry Quon called to us that
she had tried a doctor and couldn’t get him and was trying another. Margot was
squatting at Bottweill’s feet, taking his shoes off, and I could have told her
she might as well let him die with his boots on but didn’t. I had two fingers
on his wrist and my other hand inside his shirt, and could feel him going.

When I
could feel nothing I abandoned the chest and wrist, took his hand, which was a
fist, straightened the middle finger, and pressed its nail with my thumbtip
until it was white. When I removed my thumb the nail stayed white. Dropping the
hand, I yanked a little cluster of fibers from the rug, told Kiernan not to
move, placed the fibers against Bottweill’s nostrils, fastened my eyes on them,
and held my breath for thirty seconds, The fibers didn’t move.

I
stood up and spoke. “His heart has stopped and he’s not breathing. If a doctor
came within three minutes and washed out his stomach with chemicals he wouldn’t
have with him, there might be one chance in a thousand. As it is—”

“Can’t
you
do
something?” Mrs. Jerome squawked

“Not
for him, no. I’m not an officer of the law, but I’m a licensed detective, and I’m
supposed to know how to act in these circumstances, and I’ll get it if I don’t
follow the rules. Of course—”

“Do something!
” Mrs. Jerome squawked.

Kiernan’s
voice came from behind me. “He’s dead.”

I didn’t
turn to ask what test he had used. “Of course,” I told them, “his drink was
poisoned. Until the police come no one will touch anything, especially the
bottle of Pernod, and no one will leave this room. You will—”

I
stopped dead. Then I demanded, “Where is Santa Claus?”

Their
heads turned to look at the bar. No bartender. On the chance that it had been
too much for him, I pushed between Leo Jerome and Emil Hatch to step to the end
of the bar, but he wasn’t on the floor either.

I
wheeled. “Did anyone see him go?”

They
hadn’t. Hatch said, “He didn’t take the elevator. I’m sure he didn’t. He must
have—” He started off.

I
blocked him. “You stay here. I’ll take a look. Kiernan, phone the police.
Spring seven-three-one-hundred.”

I made
for the door on the left and passed through, pulling it shut as I went, and was
in Bottweill’s office, which I had seen before. It was one-fourth the size of
the studio, and much more subdued, but was by no means squalid. I crossed to
the far end, saw through the glass panel that Bottweill’s private elevator wasn’t
there, and pressed the button. A clank and a whirr came from inside the shaft,
and it was coming. When it was up and had jolted to a stop I opened the door,
and there on the floor was Santa Claus, but only the outside of him. He had
molted. Jacket, breeches, mask, wig
...
I
didn’t check to see if it was all there, because I had another errand and not
much time for it.

Propping
the elevator door open with a chair, I went and circled around Bottweill’s big
gold-leaf desk to his gold-leaf wastebasket. It was one-third full. Bending, I
started to paw, decided that was inefficient, picked it up and dumped it, and
began tossing things back in one by one. Some of the items were torn pieces of
paper, but none of them came from a marriage license. When I had finished I
stayed down a moment, squatting, wondering if I had hurried too much and
possibly missed it, and I might have gone through it again if I hadn’t heard a
faint noise from the studio that sounded like the elevator door opening. I went
to the door to the studio and opened it, and as I crossed the sill two
uniformed cops were deciding whether to give their first glance to the dead or
the living.

Three
hours later we were seated, more or less in a group, and my old friend and foe,
Sergeant Purley Stebbins of Homicide, stood surveying us, his square jaw
jutting and his big burly frame erect.

He
spoke. “Mr. Kiernan and Mr. Hatch will be taken to the District Attorney’s
office for further questioning. The rest of you can go for the present, but you
will keep yourselves available at the addresses you have given. Before you go I
want to ask you again, here together, about the man who was here as Santa
Claus. You have all claimed you know nothing about him. Do you still claim
that?”

It was
twenty minutes to seven. Some two dozen city employees—medical examiner,
photographer, fingerprinters, meat-basket bearers, the whole kaboodle—had
finished the on-the-scene routine, including private interviews with the
eyewitnesses. I had made the highest score, having had sessions with Stebbins,
a precinct man, and Inspector Cramer, who had departed around five o’clock to
organize the hunt for Santa Claus.

“I’m
not objecting,” Kiernan told Stebbins, “to going to the District Attorney’s
office. I’m not objecting to anything. But we’ve told you all we can, I know I
have. It seems to me your job is to find him.”

“Do
you mean to say,” Mrs. Jerome demanded, “that no one knows anything at all
about him ?”

“So
they say,” Purley told her. “No one even knew there was going to be a Santa
Claus, so they say. He was brought to this room by Bottweill, about a quarter
to three, from his office. The idea is that Bottweill himself had arranged for
him, and he came up in the private elevator and put on the costume in Bottweill’s
office. You may as well know there is some corroboration of that. We have found
out where the costume came from— Burleson’s on Forty-sixth Street. Bottweill
phoned them yesterday afternoon and ordered it sent here, marked personal. Miss
Quon admits receiving the package and taking it to Bottweill in his office.”

For a
cop, you never just state a fact, or report it or declare it or say it. You
admit it.

“We
are also,” Purley admitted, “covering agencies which might have supplied a man
to act Santa Claus, but that’s a big order. If Bottweill got a man through an
agency there’s no telling what he got. If it was a man with a record, when he
saw trouble coming he beat it. With everybody’s attention on Bottweill, he
sneaked out, got his clothes, whatever he had taken off, in Bottweill’s office,
and went down in the elevator he had come up in. He shed the costume on the way
down and after he was down, and left it in the elevator. If that was it, if he
was just a man Bottweill hired, he wouldn’t have had any reason to kill him—and
besides, he wouldn’t have known that Bottweill’s only drink was Pernod, and he
wouldn’t have known where the poison was.”

“Also,”
Emil Hatch said, sourer than ever, “if he was just hired for the job he was a
damn fool to sneak out. He might have known he’d be found. So he wasn’t just
hired. He was someone who knew Bottweill, and knew about the Pernod and the
poison, and had some good reason for wanting to kill him. You’re wasting your
time on the agencies.”

Stebbins
lifted his heavy broad shoulders and dropped them. “We waste most of our time,
Mr. Hatch. Maybe he was too scared to think. I just want you to understand that
if we find him and that’s how Bottweill got him, it’s going to be hard to
believe that he put poison in that bottle, but somebody did. I want you to
understand that so you’ll understand why you are all to be available at the
addresses you have given. Don’t make any mistake about that.”