The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues

by Ellen Raskin

  “The world can get along without them,” Sonneborg mumbled. “I should have destroyed them long ago. Vanity and greed.”

  Dickory studied the great artist, the compassionate artist, the guilty artist, with tenderness and awe. He was no real stranger to her. The blue eyes were still blue, but warmer; the waist was still trim. His right hand still shook. His blue jeans were still paint-smeared and the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up. She had not seen his sleeves rolled lately. She had not seen his bare arms lately. Dickory looked down at the open drawer of acrylic paints, paints which could be peeled off the skin, leaving no trace. Five tubes had been used: black (The Case of the Horrible Hairdresser), chrome yellow, chrome green, cadmium red, cobalt blue (the colors of Rossetti’s tattoo) . The upside-down tattoo, because the artist had painted it on his own arm—on his left arm, so no one would notice his shaky right hand.

  “Quick, Inspector Noserag,” Dickory shouted to Garson, who was standing before the easel, lost in thought. “We’d better hurry with the portrait of Rossetti so the police can get on his trail.”

  5

  For the first time in the partnership of Noserag and Kod, a portrait of the perpetrator was being painted. The moustache on the manikin was not large enough or dark enough, the striped jersey was the wrong color, the earring was silver, not gold.

  “You said Rossetti was thick around the middle, Sergeant?” the artist asked. Dickory had not padded the manikin.

  “Very thick. Flabby.”

  “And his hair and moustache were black?”

  “Naturally black, with highlights. Not a wig,” she replied with authority.

  “Congratulations, Holmes,” Chief Quinn boomed, arriving unexpectedly. “I see you have apprehended the suspect.” He pointed to the costumed manikin. “Hope you don’t mind the intrusion, the kindly police officer at the door let me in.”

  Noserag and Kod removed their hats. “Either the pipe or the cigar has to go,” Dickory said, trying to make light of their embarrassment. “This place has been fumigated enough.”

  “Speaking of fumigators, Quinn,” Garson said, “I thought exterminators needed search warrants these days.”

  The chief shrugged good-naturedly. “You know how it is, Garson; besides, Detective Finkel didn’t take anything. How do you expect us to nail a blackmailer if none of his victims will testify?”

  “You don’t,” Garson retorted. “And while we’re at it, how about vandalism—like introducing cockroaches?”

  “Somebody did that to you?” the chief exclaimed in mock horror. “Tsk, tsk. If I were you, I’d file a complaint with the authorities. Well, you look better today, Hickory. Let me see, what number are we up to? Six, isn’t it?

  “Hickory Dickory Dock,

  The mouse ran up the clock,

  The clock struck six,

  In came the dicks,

  To get Hickory Dickory Dock.

  “Dicks, that’s what they used to call detectives in the movies,” the chief explained.

  “I know that,” Dickory replied, “but I hope you don’t think I murdered Mallomar and Shrimps.”

  “Everyone is a suspect in a murder case, but don’t worry. I have good evidence that you didn’t do it.”

  “Thanks, I’m glad to hear that.” Dickory quickly regretted her sarcasm. They needed the chief on their side. “We’ve already started on the portrait of the tattooed sailor, Chief Quinn. By the way, what do you call this case?”

  “The Case of the Disguised Disguise.”

  “What?”

  “I said, ‘The Case of the Disguised Disguise.’ ”

  Chief Quinn had to admit that The Case of the Disguised Disguise was the most baffling case he had ever worked on. “Three things baffled me. First was the description of the tattooed sailor. Four witnesses agreed exactly.”

  “Four?”

  “Hickory, George Washington, the waitress at the café who saw him with Mallomar, and Detective Dinkel.”

  “Finkel?”

  “No, Finkel is the exterminator. I said Dinkel. Detective Dinkel, the derelict who slept across the street, the one following Garson.” Garson looked offended. Quinn apologized with a shrug. “How were we to know you weren’t the ringleader in the blackmail operation? After all, it was run out of this house. Here, take a look at this, Hickory; we had a police artist make a sketch of Rossetti.”

  Dickory was critical of the shaded pencil sketch. “It’s a clumsy drawing, no life to it, no depth.”

  “I’m not entering it in an art show,” Quinn replied. “Just tell me if this is what Rossetti looks like.”

  The crude portrait looked like any one of a million men in disguise. “That’s him, all right,” she said. “That’s Rossetti. But it doesn’t show his fat waist, or his tattoo.”

  “Don’t worry about the tattoo; we’ve sent a description to all the tattoo parlors in these parts. That’s the second thing that baffles me: the tattoo. Why would anyone want the word Potato tattooed on his arm?”

  “Maybe he’s a potato freak, like our pistachio-nut addict in The Case of the Face on the Five-Dollar Bill,” Dickory suggested. “Or maybe his name is Potato. That’s no stranger than George Washington.”

  Quinn was skeptical. “Why didn’t Rossetti cover up such an identifiable mark?”

  Garson answered that one. “He probably forgot it was there. I once painted a woman who had a four-inch scar on her chin. I asked her if she wanted the scar included in her portrait. ‘What scar?’ she asked. She had had it since childhood and no longer saw it in the mirror.”

  The chief shifted his cigar. “Why was the tattoo upside down?”

  Caught by surprise in the middle of a sip of coffee, Garson coughed and spluttered.

  “You know, Chief,” Dickory said quickly, “when I first saw that tattoo I wondered why all tattoos weren’t that way. I wondered why anyone would go to all the bother of having a tattoo needled into his skin if he couldn’t read it. I think Rossetti was pretty smart to have an upside-down tattoo that he could read. Maybe his girl friend was the one with the name Potato. Or maybe it was short for Sweet Potato. Come to think of it, the tattoo may have said Patootie.”

  An inch of ash dropped to the chief’s vest. “Thanks a lot, you’ve both been a big help. Now all I have to do is find a sailor named Potato, who doesn’t remember he has a tattoo he can read, who has a sweet patootie.”

  The third thing that baffled Quinn was Rossetti’s disappearance after the crime. “No one saw the sailor enter or leave the house, according to Detective Winkle’s report.”

  “Dinkel?” said Garson.

  “Not Dinkel, Winkle. Dinkel’s the derelict; Winkle is the blind man.” Quinn read from Detective Winkle’s report:

  “Garson left house at 2:30.

  Hickory arrived at 3:00.

  Finkel (exterminator) arrived 3:05, left 3:34.

  Mallomar & Marinara arrived 3: 34.

  Hickory ran out at 4:02.

  Police arrived at 4:03.

  Garson arrived 4:45.”

  “But I saw the sailor; I saw Rossetti,” Dickory insisted. “Detective Finkel is wrong.”

  “Winkle, not Finkel. Finkel is the exterminator,” Quinn replied impatiently. “Detective Winkle was probably at the other end of the block when Rossetti entered the house, either waiting for his dog to relieve himself, or soliciting money. He was more interested in how much he collected in his tin cup than in watching Mallomar.”

  “He owes me a quarter,” Dickory said.

  The chief sighed. “That Winkle is as bad as Dinkel. Dinkel’s been so busy playing derelict he actually fell asleep on the job a couple of times. You don’t know the problems I’ve had getting good street detectives these days.”

  “Maybe Dinkel didn’t see Rossetti leave for the same reason,” Dickory suggested.

  “Finkel,” Garson said, trying to confuse the issue.

  “Winkle,” snarled Quinn, biting down on his cigar. “You, Hickory, were on the front s
toop with Detective Winkle until the police arrived. Right?”

  Dickory nodded. “There’s a door under the front stoop.”

  Quinn would not accept that way of escape. “The door to the furnace room was bolted from the kitchen side. No one could have gone through that door and bolted it behind him. Besides, Winkle isn’t that blind. He would have seen someone leave from the door under the stoop.”

  “You mean the murderer is still in this house?” Garson asked, pretending fright.

  The chief smiled inscrutably. “Just wanted to hear your views on the problem. You see, I know how the sailor got out of the house.”

  “How?” Dickory asked. She remembered that Garson had arrived through the police barricade, so he could not have been hiding in the house, not with the police swarming through it.

  “How?” Garson asked. “I must admit I can’t imagine.”

  “It was a knotty problem, all right,” the chief replied, staring at Garson, “and partly my fault. Too many men with too many confused reports. I had to interview Finkel, Dinkel, and Winkle several times before I had an accurate picture of who was where when.”

  “Who was where when?” Dickory repeated, confused.

  “Who, which officer, Finkel, Dinkel, or Winkle, was where, in what place, at any given moment,” Quinn explained. “And do you know what it took to solve it? Humility. I, Joseph P. Quinn, had to question my own testimony and accept the conclusion that I was mistaken. You see, I saw Rossetti leave this house. And so did you, Hickory. And so did Detective Winkle. In fact, half the police force saw Rossetti leave.”

  “I was in sort of a daze,” Dickory said.

  “So was I,” the chief had to admit. “Remember when Detective Dinkel, the derelict, almost tripped over you coming down the front stoop? Well, I didn’t pay much attention, even when he said he was going to check the back of the house. You can’t reach the back of the house from the outside. And the real Dinkel was three blocks away at the time, waiting for Garson to leave his health club.”

  “You mean Rossetti disguised himself as Finkel?” Dickory asked, pleased with Garson’s genius.

  “Dinkel, not Finkel. Dinkel’s the derelict, Finkel’s the exterminator,” the chief explained once more. “The way I figure it, when Hickory ran out the front door, Rossetti ran upstairs to the costume room, put on a beard like the one Dinkel wears, pulled a torn lumberjack shirt and baggy pants over his sailor’s suit, and ran down the stairs and out the front door. In the confusion, everyone, including me, thought it was Detective Dinkel. That’s why I call this The Case of the Disguised Disguise.”

  “Very clever,” Garson said, “but I didn’t know there was a ragged costume like that upstairs.”

  “Rossetti deliberately ripped the shirt; and the pants were just too large. It wasn’t a perfect imitation, but good enough to pass unnoticed through a mob of police searching for a sailor. Detective Dinkel didn’t think that the derelict who went into the health club looked like him at all.”

  “Probably a different derelict, a real one,” Garson said. “There are plenty of derelicts around here these days. Too many. I’ve been meaning to speak to you about that, Chief.”

  “Busy place, that health club you go to, Garson. The sailor came out of there, too.” Quinn checked another report.

  “Sailor left at 3:50.

  Derelict entered at 4:10.

  Garson left at 4:40.”

  “What are you going to do with Rossetti if you ever find him?” Dickory asked, worried that Quinn was coming too close to the truth. “I mean, he’s not really a murderer, you know. He had to kill Mallomar and Shrimps to save my life. Isn’t that self-defense or justifiable manslaughter or something like that, Chief? Isn’t it?”

  Quinn ignored her question. “Another strange thing about this case is the murder weapon, or rather the lack of one. We figured the sailor took it with him. We searched that health club up and down, nearly took the joint apart piece by piece, looking for a blunt instrument. Found all sorts of things, like the derelict’s clothes, the sailor’s clothes, even the false beard.” He walked to the manikin and removed the moustache. “Everything but Rossetti’s moustache.”

  “Rossetti’s moustache was bigger and darker than that,” Dickory insisted.

  “Oh, and paint. We found fragments of acrylic paint in the shower drain.” Quinn fingered the tubes on the Noserag taboret top.

  “And the murder weapon?” Dickory asked, horrified.

  Quinn looked down from the window and brushed cigar ashes from his chest. “There was no murder weapon. Mallomar and Marinara had their heads bashed together. Their skulls were crushed against each other by a pair of large and very strong hands.”

  Garson did not have large and very strong hands, Dickory thought. And the last time he had threatened Mallomar he had ended up with a black eye. Now there wasn’t a scratch on him. She knew only one person strong enough to kill two men barehanded.

  Detectives Dinkel, Winkle, and Finkel entered the studio.

  Dickory ran to the radiator and banged it with the hammer, again and again.

  “Stop, Dickory,” Garson shouted. He was restrained by Winkle.

  She banged again. If the door to the basement was still bolted, Isaac would break it down to answer his call. She banged again and listened. Heavy footsteps thudded up the stairs.

  “I confess, Chief,” Garson said, extending his wrists in surrender. “I killed Mallomar and Shrimps.”

  “Garson didn’t do it,” Dickory shouted. “He did!” She pointed to the doorway at the huge man staring vacantly into space. “Garson is just protecting Isaac Bickerstaffe.”

  “Don’t bother with him,” the chief snapped at Detective Dinkel, who was about to handcuff Garson. “Handcuff the big man; he’s the dangerous one.” Isaac did look dangerous. He was grunting his horrible grunts, thinking Garson was being set upon.

  “Isaac wouldn’t hurt a flea,” Garson protested. “Besides, he couldn’t have committed the murder; the door to the basement was bolted.”

  “Bolted after the fact,” Quinn said. “By a man who called himself Rossetti.”

  “You know I’m Rossetti,” Garson argued. “You can’t lock that frightened creature in a jail cell, or put him away to rot in some stinking hole for the mentally retarded. It’s me you should arrest. I’ve already confessed to the murders.”

  “Sorry, Garson.” Quinn motioned to his detectives to take Isaac away. Dinkel and Winkle looked up at the huge, one-eyed monster and wished they had joined up with the fire department instead of the NYPD. To their immense relief, Isaac went quietly.

  “Let Isaac stay here in my recognizance,” Garson begged. “I’m the only one he can relate to; I’m the only one who can care for him.”

  “Can’t do that, Garson,” Quinn replied solemnly. “You see, you are under arrest, too.”

  “What?” Dickory shouted as Detective Finkel took Garson by the arm.

  “Garson, alias Rossetti, alias Frederick Schmaltz,” the chief continued, “I place you under arrest for conspiring with known criminals, possible extortion, accessory to murder, and anything else I can think of until. . . .”

  “Who’s Frederick Schmaltz?” Dickory cried in bewilderment.

  “One minute, please,” Garson said, unperturbed by the arrest. “Before I am incarcerated for my dastardly deeds, there is an important piece of information I must convey to you.” He had never sounded more calm.

  “You have a right to remain silent. . . .”

  “I am well aware of my rights,” Garson replied. “Chief Quinn, I am happy to announce that I have solved another case for you. Eldon F. Zyzyskczuk is not three men, nor is he two men. Eldon F. Zyzyskczuk is a shrewd forger of his own forgeries. He has sandy hair, wears glasses or tinted contact lenses, and writes with the wrong fingers so that his signatures will not be perfect copies. There is one, and only one, Eldon F. Zyzyskczuk.”

  “Quite right,” Quinn replied. “Now, if you would be so kind as
to accompany me to my car, I will take you to see him. But I’m afraid you will remain behind bars much longer than Zyzyskczuk will, once we dig up your basement.”

  “No,” Dickory shouted.

  Garson placed his shaking hand on Dickory’s shoulder. “Chief Quinn, there is no need to dig up the basement. I, Frederick Schmaltz, confess to the murder of Edgar Sonneborg.”

  ? ? ? ? ? ?

  The Case of the Confusing Corpus

  1

  Number 12 Cobble Lane was once again silent. Manny Mallomar and Shrimps Marinara were dead. Garson and Isaac Bickerstaffe were in jail awaiting trials for murder. Only Dickory remained. Clutching and twisting the red velvet now draped across her lap, she sat before the Sonneborg easel and studied the unfinished canvas.

  The painting was unsigned, but it was obviously the work of the same artist who had painted the “Fruit Peddler” in the Panzpresser Collection. The vibrant style was freer, the brushstrokes more confident, but it was an Edgar Sonneborg. Edgar Sonneborg had matured into a master.

  It was a self-portrait. A double self-portrait. Within the painting a harsh and distorted Sonneborg was painting a harsh and distorted portrait of Garson. Both faces had the same features; both stared out at Dickory—Sonne—borg’s face, twisted by cruelty; Garson’s face, arch and vain. In the blurred right hand of Sonneborg was a paintbrush dipped in alizarin crimson. In the canvas within the canvas Garson’s blurred right hand was covered with blood. That was what Garson/Sonneborg had been adding to the portrait when she had surprised him at the easel; he had been painting in the blood.

  Dickory understood the blood signified guilt, not murder. But would anyone else believe that?

  The light in the studio was fading rapidly. The blue of Garson’s turtleneck jersey deepened to purple; the vibrant colors faded to grays. Like a sleepwalker rising with a dream, Dickory rose and wandered aimlessly about the darkening studio, back and forth, back and forth, just like her brother Donald. (Must be a family trait.) She had wheedled and pleaded with her brother and Blanche, then just told them that she was going to stay in Cobble Lane. She had invited them to live with her, but Donald was too proud to accept charity. The house was hers now, to live in, to keep forever if Garson never returned; that’s what he had said before being driven off in Quinn’s car. The house, the furniture, the easels and taborets, the paints and costumes, all belonged to her now. Perhaps she would invite some of her friends to work in the studio with her; or she could rent out the downstairs apartment to George for a minimal fee, like cleaning her brushes and capping her paints. What happened to George? She hadn’t seen him or heard from him since Mallomar’s murder.