The Disappearing Body

by David Grand

  “They make the call to Dubrov and Collins before you put them out?” Benny asked as he swiveled back around in the chair to look out the window. A man and a woman sandwiched by two of Rudolph’s men were walking toward him down the narrow gravel path leading from Crown Crackers to American Allied’s front entrance.

  “Yeah, it’s all taken care of.”

  “What about their men?”

  “We got Feldman here. The others we took care of.”

  “Good. Tell Feldman what he’s got in store for him in the morning. Tell him he better make a good show of it.”

  “I think he’ll get the picture, boss.”

  “Make sure he gets it good.”

  As Benny hung up the phone, there was a knock on the door. The door creaked open and a man with a long chin leaned his head inside. “I’ve got ’em for you, boss.”

  “Send them in and wait in the hall,” Benny said from behind the desk. The man and the woman Benny had seen walking toward the warehouse just a moment earlier walked into Elias Eliopoulos’s dark office. “You disappointed me, Katrina,” Benny said as he looked at the man.

  “It weren’t Daniel’s idea, Benny,” Katrina Lowenstein said as she saw how Benny was looking over Daniel Greely. She shook her auburn hair out from underneath the hood of her coat and let the coat fall off her arms as she sat down on a small leather couch opposite Benny. “I put him up to it.”

  “I have no doubts.” Benny ticked his tongue as he shook his head between Katrina and Greely.

  “I mean, c’mon, Benny, what you expect?” Katrina went on, her tone flippant, her legs crossed, her slit skirt showing off her lean smooth thighs. “You left a small fortune in dope down in the cellar of my house. Daniel’s got a good picture to make, and, well, I figured . . .”

  “Yeah,” Benny said. “You figured wrong, kid.”

  “For what I been through, for what I’ve done,” Katrina snipped without losing her poise, “I figured I deserved to get a decent start, is what I figured.”

  “You’ve got quite a flair for the drama, don’t you. . . . You write a drama, Greely? With a role for the hard-nosed young dame with a lust for trouble?”

  “It’s a comedy,” the disheveled Greely said, shrugging his shoulders. “With a murder mystery . . . a sort of comedy of errors, sort of.”

  “And what’s she play?”

  “She plays the killer.”

  “The killer, hey?” With a nicely manicured finger, Benny tugged on some flesh from under his eye, and he looked at Katrina.

  “Who are you kidding, Benny? You ain’t mad. I can tell you ain’t mad at me.” Katrina stood up and walked over to Eliopoulos’s desk and sat on it. “I can tell you got a soft spot for me and Greely. So why don’t you just let us be on our way, huh? Think of it as a little extra something. I deserve a little extra something, don’t you think? I got you what you needed. I delivered Stillman, delivered a dead Janice Gould, kept an eye on Feldman . . .”

  “It wasn’t like I had to twist your arm to get you to do any of these things, sister.”

  “Sure,” Katrina conceded, “it was for a good cause and you and me we’ll have our revenge on Harry Shortz, but . . .”

  “. . . if memory serves me, you got yourself a handsome stack of cash . . .”

  “. . . but poor Greely here, he’s in love with me and he had to live with the idea of me and that sad Stillman together in the sack. Don’t Greely get his fair share for having to put up with that? He’s got a strong mind and a sensitive heart,” Katrina said, pointing to Greely. “He can’t stand the idea of me with another man.”

  “He better get used to it,” Benny said, looking over to Greely. “From what I can see, and I’ve seen my fair share, it won’t be the last time.”

  “So you’re going to let us go?” Katrina said, looking over to Greely with a smile.

  Benny was silent for a moment. “No,” he said. “I can’t do that.”

  Katrina slipped off the desk and walked back to the couch and fell onto her coat. Greely walked over and took a seat beside her. “What are you going to do with us?” Greely asked.

  “What did you expect to do with the dope?” Benny asked Katrina.

  “We were going to sell it.”

  “To who?” Benny asked Greely.

  “We were going to parcel it out,” Greely said. “On our way out west.”

  “Feldman,” Katrina said, “he was going to come with us.”

  “Was he?”

  “He had the list of the syndicate’s pharmacies. We were going to split the money three ways from the sales.”

  Benny nodded silently, then started tapping his finger. “Give Mr. Greely a kiss and say goodbye,” Benny said to Katrina.

  Katrina looked at Greely and then looked at Benny. “What are you going to do to him?”

  “Say your goodbyes, Mr. Greely. Go walk out that door and go show the man on the other side where to find your truck.”

  Greely gnawed on his lip as Benny told him what to do. He then turned to Katrina and looked into her eyes. Katrina started to say something, but Greely planted his lips on hers and then got up from his seat and walked out of the room.

  “What’s on your mind, Benny?” Katrina asked as if she still couldn’t grasp the severity of the situation.

  “I don’t like being deceived,” Benny coughed.

  “It wasn’t personal,” Katrina sighed. “Why do you make it sound like I was doing it to get at you?”

  Benny took out a handkerchief from his jacket pocket, spit out a little blood, and stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket. “You knew the dope had to be in the house. You knew we transferred the property into Shortz’s name. You knew . . .”

  “I knew you had more than enough on him to get whatever it is you need from him,” Katrina said, holding firm. “Knowing what little I know, Benny, I can see that. All you gotta do is replace those boxes with more boxes and that’s the end of it, and let us go about our lives, Greely and me.”

  Benny was quiet.

  “I know you don’t have it in you to get rid of us, Benny. You’d be forlorned for the rest of your life for killing us, full of regrets and nightmares.”

  Benny continued his silence. He leaned over his desk and rested his chin in his hands.

  “Besides, you can’t kill me twice, Benny. You can’t just kill me as Janice Gould and then go kill me as Katrina Lowenstein. Someone will figure it out.”

  “Don’t you know when to shut up?” Benny said to Katrina.

  “What’s so important about having Janice Gould dead anyhow?”

  Benny stretched out his face. “My client, he wanted a dead seductress.”

  “I ain’t anonymous,” Katrina said.

  “You’re right. Around these parts, you’re Janice Gould. If you turned up dead, you’d be Janice Gould.”

  “What about Greely?”

  “What about him?”

  Katrina’s boldness started to relent a little. She wouldn’t let herself look scared, but she was starting to look angered. She was starting to think unpleasant thoughts, and in her rage was wagging her finger at Benny.

  Benny stood up and walked over to the door. The man with the long chin was standing by. “Go do it like I said,” Benny said. “Make sure you juice her up good.”

  “Yeah, all right, boss.”

  Benny turned back to Katrina, “Go with him. He’ll take good care of you.”

  “Where’s he taking me?”

  “It was nice knowing you, kid.”

  “Where’s he taking me?”

  “You’ll find out when you get there.”

  Benny grabbed hold of Katrina Lowenstein, and with a firm grip on her shoulders he walked her into the dark hall and pushed her at the man with the long chin. As she was about to say something more to him, he shut the door and sat back down at Elias Eliopoulos’s desk.

  GLOBE METRO REPORT, MAY 17, 192–

  ACE GLOBE REPORTER SAM RAPAPORT

  FOUN
D DEAD

  MARTY VOLMAN

  West End—It is with great sorrow that we report the passing of one of our own. Sam Rapaport, whose inimitable voice filled the pages of the Globe’s Metro Report with vitriol and wit for more than 25 years, is dead at the age of 48. He was found this afternoon inside his West 34th Street apartment with a mortal gunshot wound to the head.

  Mr. Rapaport is survived by his 15-year-old daughter, Faith, who found her father at his desk, pistol in hand, empty bottle of bootleg whiskey at his feet, and in the typewriter a suicide note, which shall remain private.

  According to police, the cause of Mr. Rapaport’s death is still under investigation, but all evidence, they say, points to suicide.

  Sam Rapaport, whose contributions to the Globe can hardly be weighed in newsprint, will be sorely missed in these pages, and his shoes will most certainly never be filled. He reported what he saw, lived what he reported, and stood up for the truth in all its disguises. Sam Rapaport was the real McCoy, a legend in his own right.

  Memorial services will be held at the Blue Room tomorrow evening at 6 p.m. Open to the public.

  Chapter 19

  Some hours after the American Allied Pharmaceutical plant had been packed up and loaded onto trucks in the cargo bay, Faith Rapaport was in bed, asleep. She had been at the the Globe Building until two in the morning, finishing up a two-part story: an interview with Max Waters and Henry Capp about their alleged role in the bombing, and coverage of a meeting held by the Munitions Workers Union inside the basement of the St. Francis Cathedral in Long Meadow. As Gerald Kravitz had anticipated, the union voted to walk out on Monday morning if Fief didn’t meet their contract demands.

  Faith was so fast asleep she didn’t remember picking up the phone. But the receiver was in her hand, nestled into a soft pink pillow, and she was speaking to a man with a distinctly damp, guttural voice.

  “Is this Faith Rapaport?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “I’m calling East End nine four four. Is this East End nine four four? Faith Rapaport. I’m calling Faith Rapaport.”

  Faith dozed off.

  “Is this Faith Rapaport, Sammy Rapaport’s little girl?”

  “What time is it?”

  “Four, four-thirty in the morning.”

  “Sam’s dead. Dead a long time.”

  “Yeah, no kidding. That’s what I’m calling about.”

  “Anyone tell you you got a funny voice, mister? Sounds like someone’s got your little apple caught between their teeth. It sounds like it’s leaking.”

  “Aren’t you cute.”

  “Yes, yes I am.”

  Faith dozed off again.

  “Are you there?”

  Faith let out a grunt.

  “You own a car, Miss Rapaport?”

  “This is about my car?”

  “No, it ain’t about your car. It’s about you getting into your car and taking a drive. Like I said, it’s about your father. It’s about your father and it’s about the fact that the grand jury hearing you’re supposed to cover today ain’t going to be taking place.”

  “My father? My father’s dead.”

  “We’ve already been through this.”

  “Right. What’s this about the hearing?”

  “Now listen, girlie . . .”

  “Girlie, is it?”

  “Now listen here. If you want to know what happened to your father, if you want to know why Murray Crown ain’t going to make it to testify in court this morning . . .”

  “Murray Crown . . . my father . . . in court this morning?”

  “If you want to know why Murray Crown ain’t going to make it to court today, if you want to know what Murray Crown’s got to do with your father, you listen up. Don’t start thinking about nothing, don’t doze off, or you’re gonna lose your chance.”

  “Who is this?”

  “You just listen, don’t think no more, and wake yourself up. Open those soft misty eyes of yours and pull yourself together.”

  “What do you know?”

  “Your father, he weren’t no suicide, is what I know.”

  Faith was silent again, but this time she was awake, her eyes now open, staring into the darkness of her bedroom, into the part of the darkness that appears to writhe with life when you look at it with open eyes for a moment too long. “Who is this?” Faith asked again.

  “Southside Docks. Crown Crackers plant. Under the sign by the thruway, you’ll find a garage. The lock’s undone. Go on upstairs and take a quick look around.”

  “What am I supposed to be looking for?”

  “A key. On his desk, there’s a key.”

  “What kind of key?”

  “You’ll know it when you see it. Like I said, don’t you start thinking about this. You think for more than a few minutes, your time is up. You got less than an hour before the coppers get there. Get the key.”

  The phone clicked and the voice disappeared. As soon as Faith hung up, the phone rang again.

  “Yeah,” she said, “what is it?”

  “I’d recommend that you pull out whatever stories your father wrote on Victor Ribe’s murder trial.”

  “Whose murder trial?”

  “Victor Ribe’s. R-I-B-E. Ribe, Victor.”

  “What’s Victor Ribe, R-I-B-E, got to do with this?”

  The man hung up again.

  Faith pulled off the heavy blanket covering her body and groped around in the dark and yanked down on the cord to the lamp on her night table. The burning filament in the lamp’s bulb filled the darkness of the early morning as if someone had smothered wet plaster over everything. Without thinking too much about what she was doing, about what she would do when she got there, she started scavenging about through the clutter of her small room in search of a bra and her shoes. She threw on a sweater and a pair of wool pants she had draped over a chair piled with clothes, brushed out her black curls, laced up her boots, put on a heavy coat and olive fedora, then popped a Lucky into her mouth on the way out.

  She usually wouldn’t act on a tip like this unless it came from one of her regular sources. She didn’t mind getting her nose dirty. She liked to snoop, she liked even more to snoop into places she didn’t belong. This started early on, and ceaselessly got her into trouble with Marty Volman, her editor, who had played father protector to Faith ever since Sam’s death. Faith at the tender age of fifteen dropped out of school and became Volman’s protégée, and, right away, proved herself her father’s daughter: she was a natural at getting herself into the thick of dirty business. Her first big break came at age seventeen, when a story she wrote helped the police send Gorgeous Ziggy Lipskin to Farnsworth for murder. Pretending that she was a lovesick puppy wanting to catch Gorgeous Zig’s eye, she followed Lipskin door to door as he made the rounds through his protection racket. At 55 Bankhead Street, inside a South End jewelry store, Lipskin let a few rounds run from his gat and Faith saw where he threw the gun. For that, she got page one, and was then kicked to a desk for six months to work over copy. For being reckless.

  A trip to Murray Crown’s private warehouse entrance in the middle of the night had Marty Volman’s disapproval built into it as loud as a sign reading High Voltage, but Faith didn’t care, not when it touched such a dark, unanswered part of herself. Over the years since her father’s suicide, no one had so much as brought up Sam’s death, aside from the times when people recognized her as her father’s daughter and recalled with admiration what a beast of a reporter he had been. Otherwise, her father’s case was closed, and when it was open it was hardly even questioned. The police came and went. The medical examiner’s men took the body. Sam Rapaport was figured to have taken a bad turn and let himself have it.

  Faith, of course, never wanted to believe that her father would leave her to fend for herself the way he did. He was hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, bullheaded, moody, full of strong opinions, but he was equally sweet and tender and full of love for Faith. So when she came home from school
that day and found him shot through the mouth with his gun, she couldn’t believe that anything in the world could have gotten so bad for him that, if given the choice, he would choose to leave her. He had left her all alone in the world, no family—that is, no family other than a bunch of aging rummy reporters down at the Globe. Her mother lived life hard and ran out on her and Sammy not too long after Faith was born. She was her father’s daughter through and through, grew up in smoke-filled rooms, bars, backroom speakeasies, in the offices of politicians and councilmen, in the backyards of union leaders, socialists, mobsters, murderers, mayors. But there it was, a note written in her father’s scrawl, begging her forgiveness, saying that she had everything she needed in life, and that even though her mother had run off, once he’d gone, she’d make do with her good wits, good looks, that she had what it took to make a living; everything that he had given her—he wrote in his brief note—though not pretty, would serve her well.

  Faith rode the elevator downstairs to the dingy lobby of her apartment building, then drove her Hupmobile into the artificial crepuscular glow of Central Boulevard; passed shining window displays, brightly lit lobbies and mezzanines; she ran red lights, the whole time rubbing away at her eyes and at snowflakes of frost on the inside of her windshield.

  When she entered the far reaches of South End and started driving over rough-and-tumble cobblestone, the dim blue light that lit the rest of the City was suddenly extinguished and Faith could smell coming through her closed windows the smell of barge sludge and ocean brine. She drove under the Westbend thruway that ran parallel to the Southside Docks. When she cleared the underpass, she came face to face with the thick brick facade of the Crown Crackers plant, which was covered with a three-story Crown Crackers ad, a painting of Murray Crown (“The King of Crackers”), smiling and crunching into a handful of his famous Saltcrisp Crackers. The cracker pieces exploded around Crown’s tall shock of gray hair, making his head look like the tip of a lit sparkler.