The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues

by Ellen Raskin

  Grunting, Isaac turned his one eye on Dickory; his jerking hands pointed to himself and to the portrait. It was a slick Garson painting of a handsome, carefree young man. A large and muscular young man, as he had looked before the accident that had transformed him into Isaac Bickerstaffe.

  Isaac’s “ung-ung-ung” echoed through the basement as Dickory hurried after the exterminator. He was waiting in the front hallway, his equipment packed, trying to look composed.

  “I’m afraid I can’t pay you now,” she said, opening the front door.

  “You don’t have to,” he said, hurrying out of the house with his black case. “It’s all part of the contract.”

  Manny Mallomar and Shrimps Marinara were standing on the stoop.

  2

  “Hey, boss,” Shrimps shouted, darting behind Dickory. “The door to our rooms is open!”

  Counting on the fact that Shrimps hated to be touched, Dickory slowly backed down the hall, step by step, staring into the bulging eyes of her white-suited enemy. Step by step, Mallomar wobbled toward her, his fat hands outstretched like a clumsy child trying to catch a ground-feeding bird. “What’s that about a contract, huh, punk?”

  Unexpectedly the riser of the bottom step creased Dickory’s calf. Her knee buckled. Mallomar lunged. One hand grabbed her neck, the other clasped her wrists behind her back. Struggling, stumbling, she was dragged into the apartment and down the curved stairs by the iron-fisted fat man.

  “Get the rope, Shrimps,” he snarled as he forced Dickory into a straight chair. Dickory gave up her struggle, for each movement tightened the fat, manicured hand around her throat, pressing her chin upward until she thought her teeth would shatter.

  “What were you doing in my apartment?” He leaned over her, growling his question into her face.

  She tried to turn her head away from the foul breath. “The exterminator came and. . . .” Mallomar jerked her head up and back. Her teeth tore into her lip. She tasted blood.

  “Who’s paying you to spy on me?”

  “She works for the organization, boss, I keep telling you,” Shrimps muttered. “And she’s in with the cops.”

  Dickory tried to move her head to indicate “no.”

  “What’s your name, punk?” Mallomar loosened his grip slightly to allow her to speak.

  If the sound of her name really made people happy, now was the time. “Dickory Dock,” she croaked hoarsely.

  Mallomar tightened his grip on her throat and her wrists.

  “She’s lying, boss. The cop calls her Hickory. It’s a joke, like the nursery rhyme, you know:

  “Hickory Dickory Dock,

  The mouse ran up the clock,

  The clock struck one,

  The mouse ran—no, run. . . .

  “How does that go?”

  “Shut up, you idiot,” Mallomar barked. His fingernails dug into the side of Dickory’s neck. Blood from her split lip dribbled down her chin. Before her, Shrimps was winding a knotted cord around his hands, a garroting cord that, with one snap against her windpipe, would kill her instantly.

  “Let’s get this over with, fast,” Shrimps urged, walking behind her chair.

  Upstairs, the telephone was ringing.

  “One last time, you snooping brat,” Mallomar snarled.

  “Shrimps is getting impatient. Now, what did you say your name was?”

  “I am Christina Rossetti.”

  The cord whipped down before her eyes. Hard knots against her throat. A hollow cracking. Telephone ringing. Tin cans falling and bells chiming.

  “Oranges and lemons,”

  say the bells of St. Clements;

  The cord fell slack into Dickory’s lap.

  “You owe me five farthings,”

  say the bells of St. Martins;

  Afraid to look behind her, around her, Dickory ran to the door to the garden at the far end of the room.

  “When will you pay me?”

  say the bells of Old Bailey;

  Hands trembling, fumbling with the rusted bolt, she at last jiggled it open and ran into what she thought would be the garden. She was trapped. Dickory shook the iron bars of the tall fence that enclosed the small triangular patch of concrete. Trapped.

  “When I grow rich,”

  say the bells of Shoreditch.

  Sobbing with fear, Dickory ran back through the room, to the stairs, into the arms of. . . . She stared down at the colors: chrome yellow, chrome green, cadmium red, cobalt blue. “Potato,” she read aloud.

  At her feet lay the lifeless bodies of Manny Mallomar and Shrimps Marinara. Mallomar’s white suit was splotched with crimson; his popped eyes stared at the high ceiling.

  “Get out of here, hurry!” The tattooed sailor shoved her toward the door.

  Dickory stumbled on a curved step, scrambled to her feet, and ran out of the house. “Police!” she screamed, clutching the cast-iron newel. “Somebody get the police.”

  Someone came running. “I’m the police, what’s going on in there?” It was the blind man.

  “Murder,” Dickory whispered, sinking down on the concrete stoop, holding her bruised throat.

  Pulling a two-way radio from his pocket, the unblind detective called in his report. “Are you all right?” he asked Dickory, eyes on the front door.

  She nodded. She was not all right, but there was nothing anyone could do about it. Numb and hurting, she patted the German shepherd as the street detective, his gun drawn, stood guard at the entrance to number 12.

  3

  Screaming sirens wavered and died as four patrol cars screeched into narrow Cobble Lane. Car doors slammed, radios crackled; heads popped out of the muntined windows of the historic houses as the sharp commands of police sergeants echoed through the gathering crowd and bounced off the brick walls.

  “Are you all right, Hickory?” Chief Quinn asked.

  Still slumped on the stoop, Dickory raised her head on hearing the familiar voice and nodded unconvincingly. The derelict-disguised detective nearly tripped over her as he trotted down the steps. “Nothing upstairs, Chief. I’ll go check out the back.”

  “Do that, Dinkel,” Quinn said. He cupped his hand under Dickory’s chin and placed a finger on her bloodied lip. He raised her head and inspected the raw bruises on her throat. “The wounds aren’t serious, but they sure must hurt. Come, let’s go inside. Where’s Garson?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied weakly, staring at the curiosity-seekers who were pressing and swelling against the restraining arms of the uniformed police. The crowd looked exactly like the morbid mob that had stared through the windows of the pawn shop the night her parents were murdered. Rising, she turned her back on them and followed Chief Quinn into the house.

  “Now, go wash your face and comb your hair,” he said, treating his dazed eyewitness as he would a small child. “Then I want you to tell me everything that happened here. All right, Hickory?”

  “Dickory,” she corrected him.

  “Dock,” he replied to humor her.

  “Hickory Dickory Dock,

  The mouse ran up the clock,

  The clock struck five,

  He’s still alive,

  Just like Hickory Dickory Dock.”

  Washed and combed, standing on the balcony overlooking the downstairs living room, Dickory once again ached with the remembered fear and pain. She clutched the railing to steady herself.

  Cameras flashed. Photographers circled the black and white and crimson bodies like jackals around carrion. Then the detectives swooped down, like buzzards at a feast, and picked the bodies clean. A hand brought up a key ring, and a familiar-looking detective, the exterminator, hurried to the locked file drawer. Another hand passed a wallet to the blind man, who brought it to Quinn. The exterminator, the blind man, the derelict—all detectives. A lot of good they were, Dickory thought; she had almost been killed, right under their big noses.

  “What’s going on here?” Garson bellowed, barging through the police barricade. �
��Where’s Dickory?” He hurried to her side. “What happened? Are you all right?”

  Dickory pointed down to the ugly scene. She did feel better now that Garson was here.

  The detectives had moved away from the two bodies to search the room. A long, black overcoat lay open, exposing a mass of wires, tape recorders, and miniature microphones strung over Shrimps’ skinny frame. Mallomar looked as repugnant in death as he had in life.

  “The ugly dumpling and his mechanical man,” Garson said lightly. “Dead, I presume.”

  Dickory did not respond. She was staring down at Mallomar’s corpse. From a gold chain across his bulging white vest dangled an open enamel watchcase painted with roses. Its chimes had unwound into silence.

  Quinn ushered his trembling witness up to the studio floor, where Dickory related her terrifying tale. She described the scene as accurately as she could without mentioning blackmail, protecting Garson every step of the way. Garson sat with his head in his hands, uttering an occasional self-chastising moan. The chief listened attentively, his face impassive, his cigar still, even when Dickory told of Shrimps reciting the nursery rhyme.

  “They wouldn’t believe my name, so I said, ‘I am Christina Rossetti.’ ”

  Garson groaned and reproached himself for having put her in danger, for having left her alone in the house while he had gone to his health club for a workout.

  “Do you have any idea why Mallomar or Shrimps wanted to kill you?” Quinn asked.

  Dickory shook her head and slowly rose to answer the ringing telephone.

  “I’ll get it,” the chief said firmly. “Hello? Sorry, she can’t come to the phone. This is Chief of Detectives Joseph P. Quinn. Yes, I’ll take the message. . . . What? Who is this? . . . Who? Would you repeat that? . . . What’s your address? . . . What! Yes, indeed, I know where that is. Stay there, I’m sending someone over right away.”

  “Who was that?” Dickory asked.

  Quinn looked puzzled. “I’m not sure. He says he’s a friend of yours.”

  Dickory understood the chief’s bewilderment. “That’s his real name—George Washington.”

  Quinn smiled. “I’m glad to hear it; with a name like that, he’s got to be telling the truth. He’s been trying to reach you to tell you he remembers the name of the tattooed sailor who was blackmailing Mallomar.

  Dickory sank back into her chair shaken with pain, stunned by her near escape from death, and sickened by the fumes left by the exterminator and Quinn’s cigar. The name of the tattooed sailor was Rossetti!

  4

  “Hey, Dickory, isn’t that where you work?” Her brother Donald sat upright on the couch and pointed to the scene on the late evening news.

  Dickory was drawing on a sketch pad. “What?”

  “What do you mean, what? Isn’t that where you work, at that painter Garson’s house, where the murders took place?”

  “Murders, what murders?” Blanche asked excitedly.

  “I’d rather not talk about it,” Dickory replied.

  “What do you mean, you’d rather not talk about it?” Donald said parrot-like. He walked to the dining table and took the sketch pad from her hands. “Look at me, Dickory. Were you in any danger there?”

  Looking up she saw, not anger, but deep concern. Blanche sat down beside her and wrapped an arm around Dickory’s shoulder, drawing her close. “What happened, honey? Please, tell us.”

  Pulling her turtleneck high on her throat to hide the bruises, Dickory shrugged off their distress. “It’s nothing, really. It all happened downstairs of the place where I work, not in the studio.” She smiled to put them at ease. “It had nothing to do with me or Garson. The television reporters are making a big fuss over nothing. A gangland killing, that’s all it was. Besides, it’s over.” She had to reassure them several times more before her brother and sister-in-law were convinced that she was safe in Cobble Lane.

  “What are you drawing here?” Donald asked, realizing how little he knew about his kid sister.

  “Just a sketch for school,” she lied.

  “I think it’s very good, Dickory,” Blanche said, peering over her husband’s shoulder.

  “Well, it’s sure better than that mess with the black dot you did, and the one with the three black lines,” Donald said appreciatively. “At least this looks like something. What’s it supposed to be, a sailor of some sort?”

  “Sure, it’s a sailor,” Blanche said. “Can’t you see the earring in his ear and the tattoo on his arm?”

  “Oh yeah,” Donald said. “It’s one of those old-time sailors like you see in the movies. Pretty good, Dickory.” He handed back the sketch pad and yawned. “Think I’ll get me to bed. Come on, Blanche.”

  Refusing their offer to open the couch and help make the bed, Dickory mumbled “Good night” as she studied her sketch. It was not good, not good at all. The figure was awkwardly drawn; the man, lifeless. And Donald was right, the costume was out of a Grade-B Hollywood movie. Costumes, disguises, that’s all she had drawn, not the man, not even the actor beneath the disguise.

  The whole scene seemed like a bad movie—the sailor’s costume, blackmail, threats, underworld contracts, even the wild coincidence of two people using the name Rossetti. The tattooed sailor must have chosen the name just as she had done, remembering the story Garson had told her. NO! Her thinking was muddled; she would start at the beginning, slowly, methodically, like Sergeant Kod.

  Kod was Dock spelled backward, almost, like Noserag/ Garson. Huddled at one end of the couch, Dickory doodled around her sketch. She lettered Rossetti and tried it backward; Ittessor meant nothing, no matter how she fudged the letters. Start again.

  She had seen Rossetti twice, once on Eighth Street when he had handed her the letter; then, standing over the dead bodies. George had seen Rossetti at a café with Mallomar. Therefore, Rossetti was someone Mallomar knew and someone she knew—or why a disguise?

  Rossetti was a blackmailer, or was he a blackmail victim? A blackmail victim who murdered his blackmailer? No. Rossetti was not a murderer. He had threatened Mallomar just to get back the evidence against him. Rossetti was a blackmail victim, a Smith or a Jones, who had saved her life.

  Dawn filtered through the dirty windows, waking Dickory from her short sleep. She was still huddled on the couch, sketch pad on her lap. Bleary-eyed and aching, she tossed the drawing of the tattooed sailor to the floor and stretched out to return to forgetfulness. Suddenly she sat up with a start and picked up her pad. A doodled word had screamed out at her: Garson. Gar Son. Ed-GAR SON-neborg.

  Edgar Sonneborg, hidden by the large easel, was painting when Dickory arrived. From the studio doorway she watched the back of the canvas heave with the furious strokes of the master artist. Then the canvas was still. Sonneborg threw his crimson-dipped brush upon the pile of squeezed tubes on the messy taboret top, sighed deeply, and covered his canvas with the red velvet drape.

  “Hi, Garson,” Dickory said.

  Startled, Garson stepped away from the easel and stared at her with cold, questioning eyes.

  “I just got here,” Dickory said quickly, pretending she had noticed nothing. “I—I didn’t much feel like going to school.”

  Garson covered his alarm with a stream of talk. “I did ask for a quiet assistant, didn’t I? Poor kid, you probably didn’t get a wink of sleep. Neither did I, what with those dreadful happenings right in my own house. I still can’t believe it all happened. Honestly, Dickory, if I had any idea you would get involved in this filthy business, I—well, never mind. We’re going to find that Rossetti, you’ll see. I’m going to paint the most accurate portrait ever painted from eyewitness testimony.”

  “Garson, I’ve been thinking,” Dickory said. “Rossetti saved my life. Maybe you shouldn’t paint his portrait.”

  Garson did not seem to hear. “Shouldn’t paint his portrait? Of course, you are absolutely right. It is Inspector Noserag who will paint the portrait of Rossetti. Quick, Sergeant, the hats.”

&nbs
p; Still wondering how to get through to him, Dickory put on her helmet and opened a drawer of the inspector’s taboret. “Garson, please, it’s too late for games. I’ve—I’ve seen through your disguise.”

  Standing rigid as a statue, except for his trembling hand, Garson tried to read her haunted face. “Observant Dickory, I trained you too well, I’m afraid. The last thing in the world I wanted was for you to get hurt. If only I hadn’t told you the story of Christina Rossetti, all this might never have happened. If I hadn’t let those thugs live in this house; if I had been home; if, if, if. It’s all so complicated, I scarcely know how to tell you about it.”

  Dickory helped him along. “Why are your paintings kept secret—the Sonneborgs?”

  Garson gasped, then emitted a loud, hollow laugh that could have been a cry. Slowly his mask melted away, revealing a sensitive and anguished face, the face Dickory had occasionally glimpsed, the face and now the voice of the Kind One.

  “I never imagined you guessed that,” he said sadly. “Was it seeing me at the easel this morning?”

  “No, I knew before that, Garson.” She emphasized the name Garson to prove his secret was safe with her.

  “And do you know where the paintings are now?”

  “In the locked storeroom, I guess.”

  Garson nodded. “My lawyer has instructions to protect them, to destroy them if necessary. They must not be shown until all of the sitters are dead.”

  “But why, Garson?” Dickory argued. “They are great paintings; they must be, if they are anything like the one in the Panzpresser Collection.”

  “They’re better, I’m afraid. Better and crueler. Garson paints people’s dreams; Sonneborg shatters them. Shatters them so cruelly that the shards would tear their very souls. No one, Dickory, no one can be confronted with such terrible truth. No one deserves to stand naked and maskless before complete strangers, before the ogling world. ”

  “They are great paintings,” Dickory repeated.