Too Soon Dead (18 page)

“If I get anything, I’ll pass it on to you,” Brass assured him.

“Yeah,” Raab said. “And ain’t that a hell of a note? When I figure out which of them did it—if one of them did it—I’ll indict the son of a bitch, political pull or no. But if I try investigating all of them, the seven of them who didn’t do it will have my ass, not to mention my badge. Except for the writer; writers don’t have any political clout. Unless they all did it together. You think they all did it?”

“No,” Brass said.

“Yeah. Me too.” Raab hauled out his pack of cigarettes again, and tapped it against his hand, but no cigarette emerged. He stared balefully at the pack for a moment, then crumpled it and tossed it in the wastebasket. “Does anyone else know about those pictures?”

“The four of us in this room,” Brass told him, “and Cathy, William Fox’s widow, who is now working for me, and an expert I had examine them. He won’t talk; he never talks.”

“What’d he think?”

“They’re real.”

“Yeah.” Raab took a pad from his pocket and a fountain pen from another pocket and wrote down the eight names I had read to him. He didn’t have to ask me to repeat any of them. I don’t know whether that was a credit to his memory or the prominence of the names or the situation. “I can check these people to a certain extent,” he said. “I can have their whereabouts at the time of the murders established. There are ways of doing that without raising anyone’s hackles, or explaining just why we’re asking. Beyond that I cannot go without telling my superiors about the pictures. And they are all very political, which means they’ll be looking for someone to blame. Neither of us would like that.”

“It’s not a situation I’m particularly fond of either,” Brass said. “When we catch whoever did this, we’ll have to give him a stem talking-to.”

“You planning on doing the catching?” Raab asked.

“I will certainly ask for your assistance when there is something for you to assist in,” Brass told him.

“You do that,” Raab said.

I
nspector Raab was not a happy policeman as he left our office. I would not want to be a miscreant who fell into his clutches for the next few hours. As soon as Raab was gone, Brass pulled the page out of the reception desk typewriter and took it into his office to finish the story of the sleeping detective. I wondered how Raab would feel about that when he read it tomorrow.

I took the packet of pornographic photographs and put it in the special file in the closet behind the booze. He who steals our purse steals trash, but he who steals our dirty picture collection could make a lot of money blackmailing influential citizens. Then I retreated to my office with the day’s mail and began opening the envelopes and sorting the contents into different piles. I am particularly fond of the nut mail; the letters you can’t believe are real, but neither can you believe anyone made them up. A couple of milder examples from this morning’s mail will show you what I mean:

Dear Mr Brass
,

I rite you because of how you are always helping the littel people. I am a littel man & my wife to & I need your help. Could you send me about $80 woud be a grate help.

Sinserly George Wrantke

The letter was postmarked Chicago, but there was no return address. How he expected to get his money, I don’t know.

And:

Alexander Brass
The World Building
New York

My Dear Mr. Alexander Brass:

In one of your recent columns you spoke of the plight of the jobless people who still roam the streets of our major cities looking for work, and of the good work the WPA and other “alphabet” organizations started by President Roosevelt has done in helping these “unfortunates.”

I assume you mean well, but you have fallen prey to the propaganda of the Jew industrialists that are trying to turn our Republic into a Communistic state, as is written in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, their own document, for all to see. There is no secret about this except in the blindness of the citizens of our great democracy to see what is before their very eyes before it is too late.

The Depression was created by the Hebrew bankers to throw this great country into chaos so they could further their diabolical schemes. These people on the streets don’t even want to work. Go on and offer one of them a job, and see what happens. President Roosevelt, whose real name is Rosenfeld, it has been conclusively proven, is a conscious agent of this Jew-Freemason conspiracy.

I write you in the best of motivations, to remove the cloud from before your eyes. Don’t be fooled before it is too late.

Most Sincerely, your friend,
Karl Swendele
Ayer, Mass.

Ps. If you send me an envelope with some postage on it, I will send you some books to read that will really open your eyes.

He did include his full address, or at least a post office box number, and I was tempted to send him an envelope with some postage on it, but I didn’t.

I heard Cathy come upstairs from the morgue, where she had been gathering material on our eight photo pals beyond what was in their folders. “You know Mr. Schiff is a really nice man,” she said, “so helpful.”

Brass appeared in his doorway. “Have you found anything that would connect any of them to each other?”

“Not yet,” she said. “I’m making up a list of possibilities, but they’ll have to be checked out. Like, two of them went to Harvard, but one of them went to Princeton, and I don’t know where the others went. Stepney Partcher and Homer Seinbrenner are both members of the Thespian Club, but I don’t know if any of the others are.”

I had a stack of mail in my hand, which I continued to open while this conversation went on. I pulled a card out of its envelope and read it, and held it up in the air. “The princes of Serendip strike again!” I announced.

Brass smiled. “What stroke of serendipity have you stumbled upon?” he asked.

“You have here an invitation,” I told him, “to a dinner party in honor of Charles A. Lindbergh.”

“Well!” Brass said. “This, I think, will be Lindbergh’s first outing since the trial.”

He was referring, of course, to the trial of Bruno Hauptmann for the kidnaping and murder of Lindbergh’s baby son, for those of you who have been on Mars for the past few years. Hauptmann was still sitting on death row at the New Jersey state prison at Trenton.

“What has this to do with our problem?” Brass asked me.

“The party is at the estate of Senator and Mrs. Bertram Childers, at Deal, New Jersey.”

“Is it?” Brass took the card and read it, and then handed it to Gloria. “It is RSVP,” he said. “Call the senator’s social secretary and say there’ll be four of us coming. I don’t think they’ll complain; in order to snag a celebrity guest, one has to put up with his entourage.”

“I thought Lindbergh was the celebrity,” I said.

Brass was not offended. “They can use all the celebrities they can get,” he told me. “It’s one of those two-hundred-dollar-a-plate Republican fund-raisers.” He patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, we celebrities get to eat free. And we don’t have to tell them how we’re planning to vote.”

“It’s for Saturday,” Gloria said.

“So?”

“You’re speaking on Saturday,” she flipped through the pages of the appointment book, “to the annual dinner of the Society of Radio Broadcasters.”

“Call Winchell and ask him to go in my place; free food and an audience—he’ll jump at it.”

“All right.”

Brass looked at his watch. “It’s two o’clock, well past lunchtime,” he said. “Let’s go across the street to Danny’s; I’m buying.”

“What a prince!” I said.

“I’ll just stay here and work,” Cathy said. “I want to call the Harvard Club and see if any of our people are members. If they went to Harvard, they probably will be.”

“A good idea,” Brass said, “but you can do it after lunch.”

“Come on, Cathy,” Gloria said, “you’ve got to eat.”

“Actually,” she said, looking embarrassed, “I’ve eaten.”

“Oh? When?”

“Mr. Schiff invited me to share his lunch. He was telling me stories, and it seemed impolite not to—”

“Ah!” Brass said. “The old Schiff magic. Candles and wine? Did he break out his balalaika and strum a few tunes?”

“Well, yes.”

Brass patted her on the shoulder. “He’s harmless, although he’d kill me if he heard me say that, and he’s good for you. He really likes and respects women.”

* * *

Danny’s was not crowded; the last of the late-lunch crowd was just leaving as we arrived. There were a couple of
World
reporters taking a break at one table, and some men from the pressroom around another. They were not socializing; there is a strong pecking order in newspapers. Pressmen have a much higher status than reporters. They, after all, have a real union. We sat at the corner table near the kitchen that Brass always grabbed when it was otherwise unoccupied.

After a couple of minutes Danny appeared out of the kitchen. “Sorry,” she said, “there was a slight crisis involving fish.” She perched on the empty chair and poised her pencil before her order form. “Steak sandwich with mashed, pastrami on white with fries, and what would you like, my dear?” The last addressed to Gloria.

“Do you have any fish you’re not having a problem with?” Gloria asked.

“Shad,” Danny told her. “The man brought me some wonderful Hudson River shad; I’ll broil you one. Mashed?”

“Rice?”

“Rice it is. And a salad.” She disappeared into the kitchen.

Gloria turned her chair to face Brass. “Well?” she asked.

“Well what?”

“Are we making progress?”

“We’re further along than we were yesterday,” Brass replied, “but it feels more like we’re being tossed ahead by the tide than like we’re propelling ourselves forward.”

“We know more about the pictures,” Gloria said.

“True. We know they’re not faked, or at least Mitchell thinks they’re not; that they were all taken in the same location, and that someone named Bird is somehow involved. And we are quite sure that someone thinks they’re worth killing for. But what’s the common denominator?”

“I’ve been thinking,” I said. “Our eight picture pals do have one thing in common, probably.”

Brass turned to look at me. Gloria smiled encouragingly. I suddenly felt like a sixth-grader who is about to give a report before the whole class.

“What’s that?” Brass asked.

“Well, they’re probably all being blackmailed. That is, I can’t think of anything else those pictures could be used for.”

“They’re certainly not art,” Gloria agreed.

“Yes.” Brass asked, “And what does that buy us?”

“Suppose we approach each of them as though we know they’re being blackmailed, and we want to help.”

“It’s an interesting idea,” Brass said. “The approach would have to be very delicately done; we don’t want to frighten anyone, and we certainly don’t want anyone thinking that we are the blackmailers. That’s a comedy of errors we could live without.”

“And there’s always the chance that they aren’t being blackmailed
yet
,” Gloria added. “In which case they’d wonder what we’re talking about and call the police.”

Brass nodded. In a deep voice he intoned: “‘Columnist Indicted for Extortion. “I was framed,” screams noted syndicated columnist Alexander Brass. While not wishing to prejudge the case, this paper will no longer carry Mr. Brass’s column so as not to offend the sensibilities of the unindicted.’ By God, Winchell would have a field day. Heywood Broun would stick up for me and put me down in the same paragraph. Alexander Woollcott would make a pun. By God, it’s almost worth it. Like Tom Sawyer coming to his own funeral.”

Danny appeared at the table carrying plates of food.
“Tom Sawyer
?” she asked. “I thought
Huckleberry Finn
was a better book; more stuff in it.” She put the plates down.

Danny stayed at the table and chatted with us while we ate. Which was a good thing: Besides being a welcome addition to any conversation on her own merits, she kept us from the topic that would have monopolized the meal. We discussed poetry and playwriting and fishing, with a few digressions into the meaning of life and the future of civilization. Aristotle was mentioned, and Anatole France; Nietzsche and nihilism. The only crimes we discussed were literary ones, and the only deaths, ones that had occurred years if not centuries before.

* * *

It was a little after three when we returned to the
World
building. We took the elevator to sixteen and were headed to the door of our office when a deep thump shook the corridor walls and floor ever so slightly. The vibrations quickly damped out, and an acrid, sort of burned smell filled the corridor. Brass suddenly shouted, “Damn!” and threw himself toward the office door. Gloria and I followed, perhaps a little more hesitantly. We made it through the door just in time to see three men emerge from the hallway to the inner office. When they saw us they charged, fullbacks breaking through the line to the open space of the hall beyond. Two of them were built like football flayers, and the third was thin and wiry, but he could move fast enough. They all wore blue knitted caps, which they pulled down past their chins as they charged us.

In an instant, the three were past us and down the hall to the stairway. Brass and I were knocked to the floor, and Gloria was shoved up against the door, from which she slid to the floor on her own. As we lay there, we could hear our assailants rapidly clattering down the stairs.

I was not in pain but a warm feeling was spreading over my face. I reached up to touch it, and my hand came away covered with blood.

Brass pushed himself to his feet, sort of doubled over with his hands wrapped tightly around his chest. “Damn!” he said.

“You said that,” Gloria said. She stood up and took a few steps, and fell into her chair.

Brass staggered to the edge of the desk and supported himself against it. “Are you all right?” he asked Gloria.

“I think so,” she said. “I need to catch my breath.”

Brass turned to me. “Are you—” He stared at me. “Migod! What happened?”