You Might As Well Die (33 page)

“Look,” Houdini said. “She’s carrying tickets.”

Dorothy could see only that Midge held a couple of slips of paper. “What kind of tickets, do you suppose?”

“Not theater tickets,” Benchley said.

“Not train tickets,” Houdini said. “Penn Station and Grand Central are uptown.”

“Then what?” Dorothy asked. “What’s south?”

“Liberty Island Ferry?” Benchley joked.

“Not with suitcases,” Houdini said seriously. “But what about an ocean liner? There are several ports.”

“Of course,” Dorothy said.

Snath muttered, “I never expected her to surprise us all and try to skip town with the money.”

Now Dorothy understood. “No. That’s what
you
hoped to do.”

Like a prudent lawyer, Snath didn’t answer that statement.

Clay and Midge walked several blocks farther. Clay didn’t seem to tire from carrying the suitcases.

But Dorothy and everyone else inside the ambulance began to grow weary. “What are they doing now?” one of the orderlies asked.

“Still walking and talking and tripping the light fantastic,” Dorothy said.

“This will take all day,” Benchley sighed. “Let’s just pull over already and give them a ride.”

“Not on your life!” Snath snapped. “That Clay is going to get what’s coming to him.”

Dorothy turned to the lawyer. “Did you give Ernie what was coming to him?”

“What do you mean?” Snath said, his voice rising. “His share of the profits? Sadly, I did not have the opportunity to remunerate him before his untimely death, and I don’t like your insinuation—”

“No,” she said. “I’m asking did you
cause
his untimely death?”

“Slander!” Snath shouted. “You all heard it. This viper just slandered me. You witnessed it!”

Dorothy turned to one of the orderlies. “Can you bandage his mouth?”

“How about stitches instead?” Benchley asked.

“Look,” Houdini said. “They’ve stopped. Clay is saying something.”

At a corner not far ahead, Clay seemed to indicate he wanted to go in a different direction. Midge looked south, the direction they had been headed. She pointed that way with the tickets in hand.

Clay shook his head, a playful smile on his face. He tilted his head toward the east.

Midge reacted with an equally playful stomp of her foot, then laughed. She linked her arm through his, and they turned east.

“What’s he have in mind?” Dorothy asked. “A surprise for her?”

The ambulance driver continued to follow them for two or three more blocks. “Water Street,” he said.

“Water Street?” Benchley turned to Dorothy. “Why does that ring a bell?”

She spoke quietly. “It was where Ernie’s body was found.”

M
idge and Clay continued along Water Street for a short distance. Then Clay stopped, put down the suitcases with a sort of ceremonious finality and gestured with his arms wide.

Midge shook her head. She didn’t seem to understand.

They stood in the shadow of a nearly completed skeleton of a building under construction. Clay threw his hands up as if to encompass the entire edifice, as if to show her all that he had done.

“It must be his skyscraper!” Benchley said.

“
His
skyscraper?” Dorothy and Houdini asked in unison.

“He’s the main engineer. He told me so himself.” Benchley looked up seventy stories toward the uncompleted top of the building. “A skyscraper is the embodiment of a man’s dreams, he said. Quite the poet.”

Dorothy and Houdini looked up as well. The latticework of steel and stone reached high in the blue sky, as though to obscure the sun itself.

Dorothy looked down to the sidewalk. “Damn! Where did they go?”

Across the street, Clay and Midge had disappeared.

She looked up and down the street, which was nearly empty of cars and foot traffic. They weren’t anywhere to be seen.

“Inside,” she said. “They must have gone inside the skyscraper.”

Benchley opened the ambulance’s back door and jumped out. Dorothy and Houdini quickly followed. They looked again across the street to the sidewalk where Midge and Clay had recently stood. And again up and down the street. No sign of them.

“Wait for me!” Snath said from the ambulance. “I must see this thing through.”

“The only thing you’re seeing is a hospital room,” Dorothy said, and turned to the orderlies. “Take him away, boys.”

But Snath moved with surprising speed. He got up from the stretcher and hopped out of the ambulance. He stood in his bandaged feet, arms folded, unwilling to be moved.

“You can’t force me to go to the hospital if I choose not to go,” he said.

The orderlies shrugged their shoulders. “He’s right,” one said.

“His feet weren’t hurt that bad,” the other added. “Not even first-degree burns.”

Snath nodded, as though this decided the matter. He turned to Benchley. “I’ll have my shoes back now, thank you.”

As Benchley reluctantly removed the blackened shoes, the orderlies closed the door and the ambulance drove away.

“We’re wasting valuable time,” Houdini said, pointing to the skyscraper. “Who knows what that madman is about to do to that defenseless woman?”

“I know exactly what he’s going to do to her,” Dorothy said, speaking with a calmness she didn’t feel. She had finally figured it out. “Clay’s going to shove her off the building. Like he did to Ernie.”

“Shove her off the building?” Houdini said. “I thought you said Ernie was hit with some large and heavy object.”

“That’s what Dr. Norris said.” Dorothy looked at the sidewalk in front of the building. Ernie’s body must have been found there. “Dr. Norris actually guessed that Ernie was hit by a big block of concrete. I suppose he didn’t figure that Ernie was the one to hit the concrete instead.”

The thought of it made her feel sick. She glanced at Snath, who had finished tying on his burned shoes. Benchley was back in his threadbare, dirty socks.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”

But all of a sudden, she was caught by surprise. A long white limousine blocked their way.

Mickey Finn got out. He looked annoyed—and dangerous. Lucy Goosey stepped out, too. She looked somewhat guilty.

“You’re going nowhere,” the gangster said. “Not until you pay me my fifty grand.”

Benchley seemed to find this preposterous. “Just a minute. How did you even find us?”

“That doesn’t matter a whit,” Finn said. “Point is, I found you.”

Lucy pointed at Snath. “We knew you’d be looking for him because of the paintings. So we went by his office, and we saw you get into the ambulance. Then we followed the ambulance here. No big mystery.”

Finn turned to her sharply. “How about I do the talking, since this is my business?”

Lucy bit her lip.

Dorothy and Benchley glanced at each other. They had never heard Finn speak roughly to Lucy before. Usually, it was the other way around.

“Now,” Finn said, stepping closer, holding up his silver-tipped shillelagh. “You know you owe me the money today. Where is it?”

Houdini spoke up, stepping closer to Finn. He wasn’t intimidated by the gangster at all. “The day is far from over, Mr. Finn. Please allow us to proceed with our very urgent business right now, and perhaps Mrs. Parker and Mr. Benchley will reimburse you later in the day.”

Now Finn took a step closer. They were almost nose to nose. He seemed to have lost his awe of the magician. “
Perhaps
they will reimburse me?” he growled, his rotten yellow teeth practically chewing on the words. “No perhaps about it. The bill is due now, and I’ve come to collect.”

Dorothy looked to Houdini. “How about a little magic?”

He turned to her, surprised. “What?”

“I’ve seen you make a horse disappear and even a five-ton elephant disappear. Why can’t you make this two-bit hoodlum disappear?”

“Aye,” Finn jeered. “Not so amazing now, are you? Tricks are easy on the stage. But out here on the street, it’s a different story, isn’t it?”

“This is hardly fair.” Houdini seemed to shrink in stature. “My arm is incapacitated.”

“But the impossible is your stock-in-trade,” Dorothy said. “Go on, make him disappear. Use your magic.”

Houdini began to sweat. But he didn’t back down from Finn.

The gangster laughed in Houdini’s face. “Aye, come, now. No tricks up your sleeve?”

Then Houdini smiled. “Just this. Your shoes are untied.”

Finn held back a laugh for a moment, but only a moment. “Haven’t heard that one since I was a child,” he burst out. “You expect me to fall for that one?”

“Yes,” Houdini said. “That’s exactly what I expect you to do.”

The magician backed away. Finn stepped forward—then he fell flat on his face, nearly bringing Lucy Goosey down with him.

“Did I say your shoes were untied?” Houdini called over his shoulder. “I mean, they are tied.”

Dorothy saw that Houdini was right. The laces of Finn’s expensive wingtips were tied together. Finn pulled his feet toward him and grabbed at his shoes and laces.

Dorothy didn’t waste another moment. She grabbed Benchley’s hand and they hurried after Houdini, who was already entering the skyscraper’s large main entrance. She heard Snath follow them.

“Come on,” she said to Benchley. “Clay killed Ernie. Now he’s going to kill Midge, too. We should have included him among our suspects right from the beginning.”

“But we didn’t know that Clay knew that Ernie was alive—”

“Clay didn’t know,” Dorothy said, “until he overheard us tell Midge the other morning. Remember how he jumped out of the closet like a jack-in-the-box?”

“And Ernie was found dead by the following morning.”

“Below this skyscraper!”

They pushed open the unlocked door and ran inside. Because it was Sunday, no work was being done and no workmen were about. The skyscraper’s lobby was quiet and spacious. No lights were on, but the afternoon sunshine poured through yellow-tinted glass windows, casting gleaming golden rectangles across the floor.

They crossed the lobby quickly and headed to the bank of elevators, which were highlighted with art deco touches of black, silver and gold. Dorothy punched the UP elevator button. All the elevators except one whooshed open.

“The top floor,” Dorothy shouted, and pointed at the one closed elevator. “They must have taken that one to the top. Let’s go.”

She raced into the nearest elevator and pressed the highest-numbered button: seventy. Benchley, Houdini and Snath followed her in.

“No elevator operator,” she said. “How modernized!”

There was a tense moment when they wondered if Finn might appear, but the doors closed silently and the elevator ascended quickly.

Dorothy had never been on such a fast elevator. She felt her stomach flip and her ears pop. To distract herself, she turned to Houdini.

“How did you manage to tie Finn’s shoelaces?”

“Yes,” Benchley said. “What magic did you use to do that?”

“No magic,” Houdini said with a proud smile. “Just amazing physical dexterity combined with hours of practice using my toes like fingers. I’ve called upon such skills to escape from innumerable traps and confinements. If you wish to call that magic, I shall not stop you.”

“You did the same thing at the séance,” Dorothy said. “You slipped off your shoes and used your toes to find that radio wire.”

Houdini made a slight bow.

Suddenly, the elevator stopped and the doors opened. Dorothy was taken by surprise when fresh air and afternoon daylight poured in.

She stepped out of the elevator. Not only were they on the very top floor; they were on the very top of the building. There was no ceiling, no walls, no windows. Just a flat expanse of unfinished floor under her feet and a spectacular, wide-open view of the city in all directions.

The city looked so perfect from such a height. To the north, Manhattan’s landscape of buildings stretched as far as the eye could see, broken only by the rectangle of Central Park, with its autumn trees awash in gold, red and orange. To the east, the Brooklyn Bridge spanned the glittering, brilliant East River. To the south, the Statue of Liberty appeared like a bronze toy in the vast green harbor. To the west . . . two figures were dangerously close to the roof’s edge, silhouetted against the afternoon sun.

“Mrs. Parker—” Benchley said, looking in the same direction.

“I see them,” she said. “Houdini, come on! It’s Clay. He’s going to push Midge off.”

D
orothy and Benchley ran. Houdini, distracted by the view, turned abruptly and followed them.

Dorothy couldn’t make out what Clay was doing to Midge. The bright afternoon sun was in her eyes. The two were close together and perilously near the building’s edge—she could see that much.

“Ouch!” Benchley yelled. He stopped and grabbed his foot. Dorothy looked down. He had stubbed his stocking feet into a scattered pile of five-inch steel rivets.

“Go on,” he yelled, waving at Dorothy to keep going.

Houdini caught up to her and they ran side by side, only a dozen paces now from Clay and Midge.

One of the figures was standing; one was crouching low. This didn’t look good at all, Dorothy thought.

Houdini gasped, and then suddenly went down. Dorothy paused to look. Houdini had stumbled and fallen inside a large, low wooden box—some kind of big tool chest. The impact of his fall brought the lid down with a bang. Houdini was shut inside as if it was a coffin.

The bang of the tool chest brought a soft cry of surprise. The cry sounded like Midge’s voice. Dorothy held up her hand to block the blinding sunlight. Just a few yards ahead, she saw Midge and Clay. But Midge was the one standing. Clay was on his knees.

“Don’t move another inch!” Dorothy said to them.