Too Soon Dead (17 page)

“And did he?” Brass asked.

“Oh, my, yes. And the chief of police threatens to close us down if we don’t clean up the show, which we have already done because the skin show was for one night only. It costs Bemie a twenty to get the chief to make this threat, but he comes through like a gentleman and the box office does not suffer. But then the morality guy comes back the next evening, and this time there’s no Bernie and no reporters. The day after that he is there for all four shows. And the day after that. It turns out he has developed a crush on Princess Alice, which is not her stage name, which is Fifi Delite, but is what we call her because she is so high-falutin’ she dislikes having to breathe the same air as the rest of the girls.

“Anyway, this gent, whose name turns out to be Lester, and who is a bank manager when he isn’t being moral and decent, can’t take his eyes off Alice when she does her number. I mean, there are a good number of men who can’t take their eyes off Alice, but not like Lester. Alice’s turn consists of coming out in an evening gown and slowly singing “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” while removing the gown and getting ready for bed—her set is a bed and a dressing table. When she is bereft of her gown and most of her undies, she slips into this nothing of a nightie, slides into bed, and blows the lights out.”

“Sounds like a provocative act,” Brass commented.

“It sure provokes Lester,” Bobbi said. “He works up his nerve to ask her out after the last show on the third night, and proposes to her that night. A week later he marries her. The good people of Cleveland, at least those good people who Lester is accustomed to associating with, are not amused. Lester loses his job at the bank, and his mother, with whom he is living, gives him the boot. So he and Alice move to New York and Mrs. Ardbaum gives him a job as accountant for the red circuit, which, incidentally, pays more than he was getting at the bank. The princess gives up burlesque and goes into radio. She does specialty voices for the daytime dramas. Mostly little children and dogs.”

We finished our coffee and left the restaurant, Bobbi heading for Seventh Avenue to shop for working clothes, and Brass and I office-bound.

I
nspector Raab was stretched out on the couch in Brass’s inner office when we arrived, his head on one armrest, his feet sticking out past the other. Gloria put her finger to her lips as we came through the front door and led us in to look at the sleeping beauty. Then she gestured us back out to the outer office, closing the door behind her. “Poor man needs his sleep,” she said.

Brass glared at his closed office door. “Presumably he has a home,” he griped. “Why can’t he sleep there? I need my office.”

Gloria smiled sweetly at him. “You used to be able to write anywhere,” she said.

“I can still write anywhere,” Brass told her. “That’s not the point. You can’t just let every Tom, Dick, and Harry wander into my office and sack out on the couch. He didn’t even take his shoes off!”

“Well, I’m sorry!” Gloria said. “It was my idea. He came in here looking for you, and I didn’t know how long you’d be, and he said he’d wait, and the poor man looked like he hadn’t slept since Groveley Day, so I told him to take a nap on the couch until you got here.”

I carefully hung my raincoat on a wooden hanger. “Groveley Day?” I asked.

“Just never mind,” Gloria said. “Sit here,” she told Brass, swinging the typewriter up from its compartment in her desk. “Write your column. Let the man sleep.”

Brass transferred his glare to Gloria, and then sighed a long-suffering sigh and sat behind the desk and rolled a sheet of paper into the typewriter. He stared into space for a minute and then poised his hands above the keyboard. A determined look came into his eye. He was going to prove to us that he was no sissy, that he didn’t need his overstuffed chair, his large desk, his shelves of reference books, his river view to write his column: He could write it anywhere. He typed a word. He paused for thought. He typed another word. He stared at the closet door. A smile formed on his lips and he began to type in earnest.

Gloria sat on the couch, a steno notebook in her lap, writing something. I worked my way around to the back of the desk, subtly, so as not to disturb Brass, to see what he was typing. It was:

I am writing these words on the typing machine in my reception room, as my office is in use at the moment. But that’s O.K. As master novelist Charles Dickens once said, “It is a far, far better thing I do…” Lying on my office couch as I write these words, fast asleep at a quarter to noon, is a detective inspector of the New York City Police Department, Homicide Squad. He is taking a short nap, and he deserves it. He has been up all night. He may have been up for several nights, I’m not sure. Homicide Squad detectives do not punch time clocks when they’re working on a murder, and neither does their boss.

Brass might have to suffer, but not silently. Twenty million people were going to know of his stoic heroism tomorrow morning over breakfast. I tiptoed away to my tiny office and sat down.

I worked on answering letters for about twenty minutes, when I heard the inner office door open, and Inspector Raab bellow, “Why the hell didn’t somebody wake me!”

Brass came into the hall. “Oh, have you finished your nap?” he enquired. “We didn’t want to disturb you.”

“How thoughtful,” Raab said. “Come in here, I want to talk to you.”

Brass returned to his office, and I was about two steps behind him. Raab was adjusting his tie, using the window as a mirror. “Coffee?” Brass asked Raab.

“Nah, it puts me to sleep.”

Brass settled in behind his desk and gave his chair a couple of easy twists from side to side. He leaned back. “I assume you came here for something other than to use my couch,” he said. “Not that you’re not perfectly welcome to sack out here any time you feel the need.”

Raab pulled a chair up to the desk and settled into it. “Perfectly friendly,” he said.

“What?”

“I want to keep this perfectly friendly. You and I have known each other for a long time. You’ve said nice things about me in your column. I’ve given you tips, when I could.”

“True,” Brass agreed. “And I you.”

“And now you’re hiding something from me, and I want to know what it is.”

Brass shook his head. “We’ve been through this, Inspector. If there was anything I could tell you, I would.”

Gloria came in and closed the door behind her. She stood there by the door, clearly prepared to referee if it came to a slugging match.

“Did you know,” Raab said, “that the back of Dworkyn’s building is connected by an alley to the back of the building that Billy Fox’s body was found in?”

“Yes. I figured that out last night.” Brass swiveled to face me. “I started to tell you at breakfast, but we got sidetracked. Oh, yes; that’s when Miss Starr sat down.”

“So you had breakfast with the stripper, eh?” Raab asked. “Both of you?”

“We met her at Lindner’s,” Brass said, sounding annoyed.

“Sure you did,” Raab said. “But that’s none of my business, what you do. Did you know that Fox was killed in Dworkyn’s studio and his body was carried through the alley to where we found it?”

“That was certainly one of the possibilities,” Brass commented.

“Well, it’s no longer a possibility, it’s what happened.”

“You’re sure?”

“There’s a trail of blood, sparse but followable. There are some footprints. There is a slight bit of fabric from his coat caught on a fence nail by the other building. I could probably dream up a scenario where this is all a coincidence, if you like, but I don’t think I could sell it.”

I noticed that Gloria had her steno pad out and was unobtrusively taking notes. Brass ran his hand through his hair and, as always, seemed annoyed that there wasn’t more of it. “Perhaps you should speak to Señor Velo, the oh-so-helpful travel agent,” Brass suggested. “His version of the event seems unlikely.”

“We thought of that,” Raab said. “The travel agency is closed, and Velo is nowhere to be found.”

“Perhaps he’s on his honeymoon,” Brass said. “Have you released von Pilath yet?”

“Not yet,” Raab said. At Brass’s look, he continued defensively, “Well, he might have done it, after all. Besides, we got a report through ICPB that he is wanted by the Berlin police for burglary.”

“And reeling and writhing and fainting in coils,” Brass said. “I was told that the Nazis might try something like this. Does he look like a burglar to you?”

“What does a burglar look like?” Raab asked sensibly. “And who told you?”

“Several of his associates in the Verein für Whosis.”

“Why didn’t they tell me?” Raab demanded.

“It should be obvious,” Brass said, leaning back. “You’ll inquire about them over ICPB and get back that they’re wanted for mopery or barratry or using a bratwurst for immoral purposes. According to them the present German government uses the police as an instrument of policy; a situation in which truth is not highly regarded.”

“Well, I’m not convinced that that’s true,” Raab said. “The Berlin police department has always had high standards, and I don’t think that they’d go along with any hanky-panky.”

“I hope you’re right,” Brass said.

“In any case,” Raab continued, “I don’t have to take notice of the ICPB filing unless someone formally asks for von Pilath’s extradition, which so far they have not done.”

“I don’t see where any of this is going to take us,” Brass said, “but I suppose information is always useful.”

“My point,” Raab said, waving his index finger at Brass. “That’s why I want you to tell me what you’re holding back.” He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, shook one out, and stuck it between his lips. Then he glared at the pack in his hand, as though wondering how it had got there, jammed it back in his pocket, took the cigarette out of his mouth, and crumpled it and threw it in the wastebasket.

He turned back to Brass. “Now look, we’ve been friends, of a sort, for a long time. I know you. The story you told about that fat man was bullshit when you told it and it’s still bullshit.” He turned to Gloria. “Excuse my French.”

“That’s okay,” she told him. “I work on a newspaper; I’m used to bullshit.”

Raab nodded. “The way I figure it,” he told Brass, “is the fat man came up here and showed you some pictures he wanted to sell. Either you bought them or you didn’t; if they were any good you bought them. That’s none of my business. But he wouldn’t tell you who he was, so you asked Fox to follow him. And Fox got killed. So now it is my business. I want to know what was in those pictures that a man—two men—would get killed for them.”

“You don’t want to know,” Brass told him. “Trust me.”

“When did you take charge of the New York City Police Department?” Raab asked, not quite shouting. “It’s not your decision! The First Amendment does not give you the right to withhold evidence, and you damn well know it!”

The two men stared at each other for a minute or so. Then Brass let out a long breath of air. “Let’s suppose—”

“Suppose nothing!” Raab snapped. “I want to know what was in those pictures!”

Brass contemplated the little Chinese god on the corner of his desk, his fingers drumming on the desktop while he considered. Then he contemplated Raab, who just stood there impassively waiting for Brass’s response. Brass sighed. “First I want to assure you that the next ten minutes are, as Mr. Roosevelt is so fond of saying, strictly off the record.”

Raab slammed his hand down on the desk. “Goddamn it,” he yelled. “I’ll decide what’s on or off the record, not you! I’m not going to promise to withhold evidence in a murder case, whatever it is!”

“You misunderstand me,” Brass said. He leaned forward. “The decision is yours.” He turned to me. “DeWitt, will you please hand Inspector Raab the packet of photographs?”

I unbuttoned the flap on my jacket pocket and pulled out the pictures. “Here you are,” I said, handing them to Raab.

“Hmph!” Raab said. He moved his chair over and turned on the floor lamp by the side of the desk. “So you bought them? How much?”

“Actually, he gave them to me,” Brass told him.

“Yeah? Then what the…”

Inspector Raab must have seen something interesting in the picture he was looking at; he stopped talking and peered closely down at the photographs, going slowly from one to the next. Brass and Gloria and I maintained the silence, which stretched out for a while.

“Shit!” Raab said after a while, with feeling. He looked up at Brass. “I recognize the senator and Judge Garbin. Are the rest of them—”

“DeWitt,” Brass said, “read Inspector Raab the list of names.”

I pulled out my little notebook. “Senator Bertram Childers,” I said. “Judge Gerald Garbin. Ephraim L. Wackersan, of the department store of the same name. Pass Helbine, friend of the poor, and of every politician in the city. Suzie Frienard; you may know her husband, Dominic, who builds things. Stepney Partcher, of Partcher, Meedle and Coster—he’s a lawyer. Homer Seinbrenner, he sells booze. Fletcher van Geuip, he writes books.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Shit!” Raab repeated.

Gloria appeared at Raab’s side and handed him a glass. “Cognac,” she said.

Raab stared at it, drank it down, and put the glass on the desk. “Damn,” he said. “Why’d you show those to me?”

“Inspector!” Brass protested.

“Yeah, yeah. It’s my own damn fault. You warned me. You think it’s blackmail? You think one of them killed Dworkyn and Fox?”

“I have no idea,” Brass said, “but I rather think not. It may well be blackmail, but I don’t think Dworkyn was the blackmailer. He claimed to be trying to find out who had taken the pictures.”

Raab got up and looked around the room. I didn’t know what he was looking at, or for. “If I take these,” he said, “there’s no way—I can’t even—Goddamn it!”

“Sorry,” Brass said.

“Yeah,” Raab said. He gathered the photos up and tossed the packet across the desk. “Put those away. This conversation never happened. I swallowed your cock-and-bull story about Dworkyn, and you never showed me the pictures. Right?”

“Right.”

Raab sat back down. “I don’t like looking like an idiot,” he said, “but I want to stay on the force long enough to collect my pension. I’ll go at it another way, although I’m damned if I see what way that is at this moment.”