by David Grand
As Faith left the building, Marty Volman’s phone started ringing. He listened to it ring as he poured himself another shot of bourbon. He slowly drank the bourbon down, and then answered the phone and without saying anything, he listened to the coarse wheezing voice on the other end.
“Have you started packing up the office, Volman?”
“Not yet,” Marty said. “I’ll wait for her to come back.”
“She’ll know everything by then. You sure you want to wait around?”
“I’ll wait for her to come back and then you’ll have everything you want.”
“Like I said before, Marty, if you don’t run it yourself, the others will.”
“It’ll be run, don’t you worry.”
“I want it out before five.”
“You’ll have it.”
“You starting to feel a little what it’s like to put the gun to your own head, Marty?”
“Don’t worry, I won’t give you that much satisfaction.”
“Don’t get me wrong, Marty, I ain’t looking for that kind of satisfaction. That’s too quick for satisfaction. I want you to feel it, feel it deep in your gut, in the marrow of your bones. I want you to see it in the faces of everyone who ever had an ounce of respect for you. Now, that’s satisfaction, Marty. That’s satisfaction.”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” Marty said deliriously. He pulled the receiver away from his ear and looked at it as Benny Rudolph continued to talk. “I’ll be sitting here, stewing,” he told the phone.
With the voice trailing away from him like the wake of a very loud boat, Marty pushed the receiver onto its resting place, poured himself another, then splashed the bourbon into the back of his throat.
Chapter 31
After Harry Shortz gave over his office to Tines’s men that morning, he decided he didn’t want to be there while they turned everything upside down. To avoid the reporters lulling about in the lobby, Harry took the back way out of the State Government Building’s South Tower and walked up the road to police headquarters, where he headed downstairs to the Medical Examiner’s Office and the city morgue. The dissection room was closed. A few orderlies leaned against the walls in their white lab coats and smoked cigarettes. The man who had been on duty when Freddy was by was no longer there; sitting in the ME’s chair was Dr. Ned Bromberg, who handled the homicides that fell into Narcotics’ jurisdiction. He had a nasal voice, pink complexion, and gray stubble thickly sprouting out the bottom of his chin.
“Afternoon, Harry.”
“Ned.”
“What brings you into the tombs?”
“Dead girl.”
“You got a name?”
“Gould. Janice Gould. She was brought in yesterday from the Beekman.”
“Gould . . .” Dr. Bromberg said as he slipped on his glasses. He opened a file drawer labeled G and fingered through the folders for a minute. “There’re Goulds, but no Janice.” Dr. Bromberg walked back over to his desk and moved aside a half-eaten bowl of soup and looked through some files on his desk. “You sure about the name?”
“What about Lowenstein, Katrina?”
“Same girl?”
“Yeah.”
Bromberg returned to the file cabinet and sorted through the L’s. “No,” Bromberg said. “You sure she’s here?”
“No one’s been brought in from the Beekman?”
“I’ve been here all day today and I haven’t heard of anyone. Who was investigating?”
“Two men from the Third. Didn’t get their names.”
Dr. Bromberg screwed his face up and scratched his chin. “Sorry, Harry. Hope it wasn’t anything too pressing.”
“No one out of the ordinary was in here today?”
“No one other than you,” Bromberg said with a wink.
Harry smiled placidly. He turned to go, then doubled back. “You mind if I use your phone?”
“Go right ahead. Here, I’ll give you some privacy. I’ve got to check on something.”
Harry watched Dr. Bromberg walk down the hall and turn the corner. When he turned the corner, Harry picked up the phone.
“Operator.”
“Beekman Hotel, please.”
“One moment, please.”
The phone rang.
“Beekman Hotel for Women.”
“The concierge, please.”
“Speaking.”
“Yes, hello,” Harry stammered. “Is this the concierge who was on duty yesterday afternoon?”
“Yes.”
“This is Commissioner Shortz calling.”
“Yes, hello, Mr. Commissioner. You left in a hurry yesterday. I hope everything is all right.”
“I was just wondering if you were able to find out the name of the moving company for me.”
“Hold on just a moment, Mr. Commissioner.”
Harry held on and looked over a bulletin board covered in photos of corpses in various states of decay and dissection. Some of the eyes on the bodies were open, staring at Harry.
“Mr. Commissioner?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“Yes, the moving company is Santini. U. Santini Moving and Storage. South End eight zero eight.”
“Thank you, you’ve been very helpful.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Harry hung up the phone and then lifted the receiver.
“Operator.”
“South End eight zero eight.”
“One moment, please.”
The phone rang.
“U. Santini,” a man answered. It was the confident voice of a man who moved heavy objects.
“Is this U. Santini Moving and Storage?”
“That’s right.”
“Tell me, were you the ones who did a pickup at the Beekman Hotel for Women yesterday for . . . ?”
“Who wants to know?”
“This is the super over at the Beekman. I was holding some things down in the basement for the resident and was wondering how I could have them sent over to you. Can you do a pickup?”
“No. The girl, she just came by not more than an hour ago and picked up her things,” the man said, his voice turning chatty. “She’s all paid up.”
Harry was silent for a long moment.
“You there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. Just so I know . . . just so I know I got the right girl, we’re talking about a redhead, good-looking, young—about twenty?”
“That’s her.”
“Her name was Gould?”
“No, Lowenstein’s the name I’ve got.”
“Katrina Lowenstein?”
“That’s right.”
“That’s the one. I was looking at the wrong room. . . . She leave a forwarding address?”
“No. She came by in a truck. With her fiancé. His name he told me, if I can only remember. A writer, he said he was.”
Harry reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his small notebook. It was still turned to that page. “Greely?”
“That’s right, Greely. Said he made movies, but I never heard of him.”
“And they didn’t give any hint as to where they were going?”
“They were heading out west, they said. The girl, she was gonna be in a picture. But I’ll tell you, they had a roll of cash as big as my fist. They could have been going anywhere in hell they wanted to.”
“You don’t say.”
“She gave me a nice tip. Nice young girl. Kind of funny, though.”
“How so?”
“Just funny like young girls tend to be. She left behind a package for someone to pick up, but said I could have it if he didn’t show. I asked if he knew it was here. She said no. I said how’s this person gonna know it’s here then? And she said she had a feeling he would find it.”
“Did she say who?”
“The name’s on the package.”
“Would you mind telling me? Someone was by here the other day looking for her and inquired about a package.”
“No, not at all. Just hang
on a second.”
Harry hung on. His heart was beating. Harry could feel his body pressing outward. Inflating with consternation and air. He could hear on the other end of the phone the man fumbling with the receiver. “Shortz,” the man said when he got on the phone. “Just like the commissioner.”
“You don’t say,” Harry said again like a nervous tic.
“Was that the name of the person who was by looking for the package?”
“As a matter of fact it was. I’ll get in touch with him right away and send him down. You’ve been very helpful.”
Harry took U. Santini’s address and hung up.
Harry hailed a cab outside the morgue and was driven to the warehouse district in South End. As they slowly moved over the thickening pack of snow, Harry wondered when the people behind this decided to break the news to the press about his affair, about the dope they would eventually find in the cellar of the Ten Lakes house, about the real reason he had released Boris Lardner that spring.
U. Santini stood in the grated shadows of the Eastbend Bridge two blocks from the river. Harry asked the cabby to wait for him and headed inside. He found standing over a counter piled in paperwork a short husky man in overalls, a fat wet cigar clenched between mustard-yellow teeth. Leaning up against the counter was a tall thin rectangular package wrapped in brown paper and marked Shortz. The second the man looked at Harry he grabbed hold of the cigar with his fingers and pointed the stub at Harry.
“Hey, I was just joking with the super at the Beekman that this package had your name on it.” He turned the cigar on the package. “What are the chances that the name on it actually was yours?”
Not wanting the man to recognize his voice from the phone, Harry didn’t say anything; he gave the man a self-important grin, signed for his package, and made his way back to the taxi. With the package resting on top of his shoes, he gave the cabby the address of his East End townhouse.
Beverly was sitting in the living room just off the front entrance reading the afternoon edition of the Herald and listening to the radio when Harry walked in. The boys were at her feet on the floor playing a quiet game of checkers. When Beverly saw Harry, she got up from her chair and shut the boys into the room. “The news,” she said quietly, taking hold of Harry, “it’s too much to take in.”
“Yeah,” Harry said listlessly. The feeling of Beverly’s arms hugging him underneath his coat suddenly felt more suffocating to him than anything he had experienced so far that morning.
“Father’s been trying to reach you at the office for the better part of an hour. He said he hasn’t been able to get through.”
“I’m sure he wasn’t the only one.”
“Shouldn’t you be back there?” Beverly let go of Harry.
Harry took off his coat and hung it on the rack beside the door. “Come with me,” he said. Harry took hold of his package with one hand and took hold of Beverly with the other.
“What have you got there?”
Harry walked Beverly upstairs to his study, set her down in his desk chair, leaned the package against the wall, and shut the door.
“What is it, Harry? You have such a pained look about you.”
Harry kneeled down in front of Beverly, took her hands, and looked over the fine lines that had etched their way into Beverly’s face in the twenty-two years they had known each other. “There’s something I need to tell you. Something I wished I never would have to tell you.”
Beverly took hold of Harry’s chin. “Whatever it is, you have nothing to fear from me, Harry. You look as though you’ve died and left me a widow.”
When Beverly said this, Harry broke away from her and stood up.
“Oh, Harry, come,” Beverly said in a tone obviously intended to diffuse Harry’s mood. She stood up and took hold of Harry’s waist again, looked up to his eyes. “I have to say—I’m always so happy I married a man from humble stock, but for Christ’s sake, sometimes you carry your life about as though you had a ton of coal weighing down on your back. If you hadn’t chosen to be a man of the law, you would have undoubtedly been destined for the robes of a priest. So serious.”
“I hope you’ll be able to laugh at what you just said in a minute.”
“I’m laughing already,” Beverly said, and then she craned her neck forward and laughed for Harry as though she were laughing politely at a bad joke told at a cocktail party.
“Just be a little serious for a minute.”
“Please, Harry, if you and I were meant for serious conversation, there never would have been a marriage,” she joked. “You married me because you knew I was frivolous, and don’t deny it.”
Harry could feel his mood lightening. He could feel the full effect of his wife’s gall take hold of him and fought against the feeling because he knew she didn’t really mean what she was saying. “Please, Beverly, just for a minute let me be grave and sullen, all right?”
“All right,” she relented. “Be a bore. Go on.”
Without pause, Harry blurted it out. “I was unfaithful to you, Beverly.”
Beverly’s face instantaneously transformed. The smile that had just radiated her face, the glint in her eyes, instantly deadened, and she let go of Harry. “When?”
“A long time ago,” Harry said as Beverly sat back down in his chair.
“When?”
“Shortly after we were married.”
Beverly took a moment with the news and looked down at her hands in her lap. “Were there any other times?”
“No,” Harry said. “I swear. But—”
“I don’t want to know details,” Beverly said, cutting him off.
Harry could feel Beverly drifting from him for a moment.
“This affair you had, was it with a woman named Lowenstein?” Beverly asked.
The pit of Harry’s stomach felt like a block of ice splitting apart.
Beverly stood up from her seat and gazed out the window for a moment, out onto the snowy street. “Why in the world bring it up now after all these years?”
“How did you know about it?”
“Don’t be silly, Harry,” she snapped. “How did I know? Do you really think a hard woman like that, a woman who was madly in love with you, would let you get away without first trying to wreck your life? Please. Are you really such a nincompoop? I thought you were a man of the world. You’re supposed to have the mind of a detective, for crying out loud.”
“How much do you know?”
“Everything.”
“Everything?”
“Every-thing.”
“How long have you known?”
Beverly turned on Harry. “I’ve been sending that woman money every month for almost twenty years.”
“You’ve done what?”
“Why in the world do you think you haven’t heard hide nor hair of her for all these years? Do you really think a sensible woman in her right mind would have let you get away with what you did . . . without wanting to at least torment you? Especially a man like yourself, with responsibility, with stature?”
Harry took the seat Beverly abandoned and looked at her with a dumb expression on his large masculine face.
“Don’t get mute on me now, Harry. I want to know why now. Why now is this coming up out of your mouth?”
“Because . . .” Harry said carefully.
“Out with it.”
“Because, in a matter of no time, everyone’s going to know about it.”
“Oh . . .” Beverly said as though the wind had been knocked out of her. She started shooing Harry with her hand, motioning that he should get up from his chair. Harry stood up and allowed Beverly to sit. When she sat, she looked mortified.
Harry maintained his respectful silence.
“Explain,” Beverly said strictly.
“I’m not sure I can, fully,” Harry said, now keeping his distance.
“Then explain what you know.”
And Harry did just that. He told her everything that he knew.
&
nbsp; My God,” Beverly said when Harry was through. “You just may be finished,” she continued, the weight of it all sinking in a little bit deeper.
Harry nodded in agreement. The room became quiet.
“Finished with you too?” Harry whispered a little pathetically after a thorough silence.
Beverly didn’t answer at first, then shook her head.
“You mean that?”
“I think so.”
“You’re certain?”
“Pretty certain.”
Harry slowly got back down on his knees. “Bev, why didn’t you ever let on that you knew?”
Beverly reached out and touched Harry’s face. “I just sort of wanted to let it go.”
“Do you think you can do it again?”
“I think so.”
“You’re certain?”
“Pretty much so.”
Harry paused. “There’ll be rough times.”
“They’ll be rough times with you, Harry. I can live with that.”
“I certainly hope so, because I know I couldn’t live with it any other way.”
“Then I guess we’re stuck with each other.” Beverly leaned forward and took hold of Harry’s broad shoulders. “As long as you got me, you’re a rock, Harry, and I’m not letting anyone take a sledgehammer to you.”
“What about your father?”
“What about him?”
“How will I break it all to him? How will I look him in the eye and tell him . . .”
“About the affair?”
“Yeah.”
“About that, well, he already knows.”
Harry leaned back on his heels away from Beverly’s arms.
“Where do you think I got the money to pay off Miss Lowenstein, Harry?”
“He knows.”
“He’s known from the beginning.”
Harry shook his head. “Well, how will I tell him the rest? He’ll be disgraced.”
“He’ll be more disappointed than disgraced,” Beverly said, looking Harry in the eye. She took a pair of scissors from Harry’s desk and reached for the package. “If you like, I’ll give him the news, soften the blow.”