Murder in Midtown

by Liz Freeland

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “Miriam. I need your help.”

  CHAPTER 20

  I opened the door, and Miriam whisked inside. She leaned against the hallway wall, sucking in shuddering breaths. She eyed the brass duck warily and then noticed my eye. “Did Jackson do that to you?”

  The question threw me. She thought Jackson had hit me? I shook my head and put down the duck. “No, of course not. What’s wrong?”

  “He’s lost his mind. I told him I was leaving him. I think he’s going to do something terrible.”

  Something terrible like hit me? That didn’t make sense.

  I shut the door and took her arm. “Come sit down and tell me exactly what he said.” I turned on some lights and nodded toward the sofa. She gratefully went over to it and sank down, wiping her hands on the coat she hadn’t taken off. “When did you see Jackson?” I asked.

  “This evening. I shouldn’t have gone back to the apartment, but I needed some more of my things. When he saw me packing clothes, he started raving. He called me a”—she swallowed—“a name he never used to call me, or even use in my hearing. If he had, I’d have left him before tonight.”

  “Was he drinking?”

  “When isn’t he drinking now? Ever since the fire.”

  I nodded. “Guy’s death hit him hard.”

  An incredulous sound caught in her throat. “Anger and jealousy, that’s what hit him. It’s been eating him alive since we came north. That kind of bitterness is like termites—it just kept boring into him till there was nothing solid left of the old Jackson I knew at home. But ever since the fire, he’s turned all that bitterness on me.”

  He hadn’t treated her well before the fire, either. Not acknowledging your own wife wasn’t love. But maybe she didn’t realize how invisible she’d been to the rest of us.

  “And then I thought he was going to come to blows with a man at the apartment tonight,” she continued.

  “What man?” My mind immediately conjured up my old nemesis. “Ford Fitzsimmons?”

  “No, it was”—she frowned in thought—“Bob. That was the name. He came by when I was packing up my things. They talked. Yelled, sometimes. I was right in the next room.”

  “What were they saying?”

  “It was all about you. Something about you bothering Bob, and some money Bob had stolen and paid back, and how Jackson shouldn’t have told you about him.”

  I’d mentioned Jackson to Bob outside the precinct, I remembered now. I shouldn’t have done that.

  “That man, Bob, told Jackson, ‘She’s police now, and she’ll do anything to get McChesney off.’ ” Miriam frowned. “Then, as Jackson was pushing him out the door, Bob said, ‘You’ll be next.’ ”

  “Next?” I wondered aloud. “Next to what?”

  “He meant you’d be after Jackson next, ’cause you were making up all sorts of things to tell the police so you could free your old boss.”

  “I didn’t make anything up.”

  She shrugged. “The man didn’t seem in his right mind.”

  It no longer took a stretch of imagination to envision Bob going off his hinges.

  Miriam continued. “After he left, I came out of the bedroom with my suitcase and told Jackson that I didn’t want anything more from him, and he wasn’t to pester me at your aunt’s. I need that job.”

  “Aunt Irene wouldn’t hold Jackson’s rudeness against you.”

  “I don’t think she’ll have to. When I was at the door, Jackson said, ‘This is goodbye forever, Miriam. You won’t see me after tonight. No one will.’ So I asked where he was going. And he said, ‘If you really want to know, ask Louise. This is the end.’ ”

  Cold flooded through me.

  “Then he tore out of the house, and I went back across the park to your aunt’s. I was shaken, so I explained all that had happened, and she told me to come here right away.”

  I crossed the room to get my coat. “Jackson didn’t say anything else—just ‘Ask Louise’?”

  “And ‘This is the end.’ ”

  Jackson had told me his darkest fears, but not his own wife?

  The urge to run to help my old coworker gripped me, but tendrils of suspicion held me back. Something didn’t fit . . .

  But I couldn’t do nothing.

  I crossed to the table and scrawled a note, then folded it. “I’m going to look for Jackson,” I said. “If he is where I think he is, I need to hurry.”

  Miriam stood. “I should go with you. He’s unpredictable.” She narrowed her eyes on my face. “And it looks like you’ve already been through enough today.”

  She didn’t know the half of it. I jabbed a pin through my hat to secure it. “Don’t worry about that. I need you to—”

  Another knock at the door startled us. Miriam’s eyes went wide, and my own heart skipped a few beats before it dawned on me who it was. I opened the door.

  A big bouquet of chrysanthemums breezed across the threshold, followed by Otto. “Louise, you’re a wonder. If you hadn’t—” He noticed my coat and hat, and Miriam. Joy melted into worry. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m meeting someone, and I need you to take a message to Muldoon.” Belatedly, I introduced him to Miriam and handed him the note. “Give that to him.”

  Otto shook his head. “How on earth am I going to find Detective Muldoon?”

  “I don’t know. He may be at his precinct, or headquarters downtown. Try the precinct first. You remember where it is.”

  Of course he did. He’d spent an entire day there last summer.

  “But where will you be?” he asked.

  “Pier Twenty-seven.”

  Otto dropped his bouquet in the umbrella stand. “What’s down there? Shouldn’t I go with you?”

  “No—I need to go alone. But I can’t stay there with Jackson too long. If you can’t find Muldoon, bring anybody in a uniform.”

  Otto, bug-eyed with panic, dug in his heels. “I knew there would be trouble if you started investigating again.”

  I propelled him toward the door. “There’ll be less trouble if you find Muldoon. So hurry.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Miriam assured Otto. Her gaze sought mine. “I think I understand what’s going on.”

  “I hope you’ll explain it to me,” Otto grumbled.

  All three of us hustled out the door and parted ways outside the building. They headed toward Sixth Avenue, and I hurried in the direction of the river.

  Apprehension vibrated through me. A puzzle that had been niggling at the back of my mind for weeks was slotting into place. Maybe Crazy Cora was right—go over the past enough, it all did eventually become clear. For weeks I’d looked at the scant evidence from the fire, but of all the clues, the one I’d studied least was the one that I myself had left: a note telling Guy of a fabricated trip to the dentist.

  The waterfront seemed a lot like the Bowery with a nautical theme. I skimmed past men grouped outside taverns—some of which looked like blind pigs that served liquor with no license. West Street, facing the river, contained a hodgepodge of new warehouses and old brick buildings in various stages of dilapidation. Refuse from the day’s trade littered the cobblestones, including old fruit and grain that had jostled off loading carts. A feast for rats. Streetlights put out a feeble gleam, but between each there were long puddles of darkness. Maybe that was for the best. The air smelled of fish, a nearby tannery, and the Hudson, which was both a mighty river and, in places, an open sewer.

  No wonder swells lived on Fifth Avenue, I thought. It was as far as a person could get from the two rivers and their attendant seedy saloons and riffraff.

  And yet . . . The sound of water lapping against piers and the hulls of boats had a mesmerizing quality. From the dockside I spied barges and tugboats passing, plus a few crafts that appeared to be floating homes, with laundry lines of shirts, linens, and long johns flapping like flags. There were larger boats, too—one a sailing vessel with a towering mast. Ships and ferries
let out lowing hoots that I rarely noticed a few blocks over. And then there were the piers, man-made peninsulas jutting out scores of yards over the river. Even empty, they seemed to be awaiting activity, adventure. Despite everything, it didn’t surprise me that certain people were drawn here. There was something romantic about the gleam of the fat harvest moon on the river.

  I approached Pier Twenty-seven and stopped, eyeing the empty slip to see if I could spy Jackson there. He’d chosen his spot well: of all places I’d passed so far, it seemed the most forsaken. Fire had deprived the pier of its cover, and now the area was open with only a few vertical braces remaining, awaiting restoration. The half-demolished walkway of the pier had ropes across it, blocking pedestrians, and a sign warned DANGER: KEEP OUT. Across the street was an old warehouse and an empty lot, where a few lumps indicated men passed out. A desolate place. If one came across it in a moment of despair, the lure of oblivion the river offered would be hard to resist.

  Where was Jackson? Maybe he’d given up waiting.

  Perhaps I was wrong, and he’d actually jumped. “This is the end,” he’d told Miriam.

  But I doubted it. As I looked out over the deserted pier, I suspected this was less a mission of mercy than an ambush. Or perhaps it was one bitter man’s idea of a practical joke. I hiked up my skirt and picked my way over a rope barrier and down a step onto the lowered wooden planks of the pier. My footsteps echoed, and the cold breeze off the Hudson gave me a forlorn feeling. If Jackson were wise, he’d be out of the city by now. Flee, that’s what I’d do if I were him. A man could head west, or north to Canada, change his name, and perhaps never be tracked down.

  I turned to go and Jackson was there, between me and the sidewalk. He had on a dark overcoat and the same bowler hat I’d seen him wear to work for months. In fact, he looked more like his regular self than he’d seemed since the fire.

  “So you came,” he said. “Took you long enough.”

  “Miriam had to find me.”

  “And to convince you to come?”

  “I was ready to do that right away.”

  I didn’t like the way he blocked the walkway and my route of escape. The longer he stood, the more his calm manner unsettled me. He was composed, almost casual, with a sort of heedless slouch to his stance.

  “She told me you were distraught,” I said.

  “And you came to beg me not to jump.” He shook his head. “Don’t play innocent, Louise. I know you’re not. You’ve known all along that Ogden McChesney didn’t kill Guy. You realized today it wasn’t Bob. You even sent him to threaten me.”

  “Bob acted on his own—because he was furious with me.” I tilted my head so that my eye would be more visible in the moonlight. “He gave me this.”

  He seemed genuinely surprised. “So all that righteous anger was real?” He chuckled. “Strange that you could have made Bob, of all people, so angry.”

  “I had the wrong end of the stick.”

  “But now you’ve got the right one.”

  I swallowed. “I think so.”

  “What tipped you off?”

  “You did. Twice, you mentioned my going to the dentist the morning of the fire.”

  “So?”

  “I never went to the dentist, or had any intention to. That was a lie. I slipped a note under Guy’s door right before I left, while he was talking with Cain. Everyone else had gone home. So there was no way you could’ve seen that note unless you went into Guy’s office after Cain left.”

  He considered this, then shrugged. “Maybe I did. What of it?”

  “You never told the police you were in Guy’s office after Cain left, and you said the building was in flames when you arrived the next morning. So you couldn’t have seen my note then—it would have been ash.” I’d worked this out on my way over, but saying it aloud made my voice dry. I’d always thought of Jackson as a bore, an office martinet, but never a murderer. “How long did you wait that night to kill him?”

  He looked toward the river. “I’d been hiding upstairs, in the top floor storage room, where we kept all the old titles. It seemed forever before I heard Cain leave—I’d started to worry Guy would go back to the club with him.”

  “I’m surprised he didn’t.”

  “No, Guy had started staying later since his Jewess had flown the love nest. All his money problems and his guilt over his bastard son had begun to prey on his mind, making it less enticing to go home and face old Mrs. Van Hooten and play the favorite son. He’d cried into his whiskey glass over it all with me a few times. That’s why I thought it was a good bet he’d stay late that night. Not working, mind you. Just moping. Maybe he did have a shred of conscience in him somewhere.”

  “Not enough to make him marry Myrna, or acknowledge his own son.” I tried to use my dislike of Guy to keep Jackson talking. His confession was bittersweet vindication to me—I’d been right that Mr. McChesney hadn’t killed Guy. Unfortunately, there was no way Jackson would tell me of his guilt if he thought I would leave the waterfront alive. I needed to stall for time. “Guy was a scoundrel. You did—well, never mind.”

  White teeth flashed. “Go ahead, say it. I did the right thing. That’s what you meant, wasn’t it?” He sneered at my faint sound of denial. “Of course it was the right thing. Oh, I could tell you stories about Guy. He was always a callous bastard.”

  “He was your friend.”

  “So-called. I always clung to the idea of his being my friend. Back in college, he introduced me to a set I never would have been allowed into, and by hook or by crook I got him through Harvard. That was my purpose. I was too naïve then to realize I was being used. I’d never been good at attracting friends. Don’t know why. So I let myself be a sort of glorified friend-tutor. Of course, after university he had no use for me.”

  “Until you came to New York last year and looked him up. He helped you, gave you a job.”

  The control in his expression snapped. “You see? That’s what everyone thought! Wasn’t I lucky to know Guy Van Hooten? I was Guy’s pity hire.”

  “Not at all.” Who did he think “everyone” was? Jackson was hardly a man people around the office spent much time gossiping about.

  “But who did all the work around that place?” he said, as if I hadn’t spoken at all. “While Guy drank his life away and the old man malingered and fretted, and the others loafed upstairs, who was it who kept the wheels turning? You saw. I ran that company. But I wasn’t even given my own office—I had to share a room with the secretary and the office boy. And who did old man McChesney turn to after the fire?” He almost spat the name. “Bob.”

  “You had killed Guy,” I reminded him.

  “McChesney didn’t know that! And what about him? An arsonist who showed up and played the victim. Edwin Booth couldn’t have acted it better.”

  “You were pretty impressive yourself. Your shock at Guy’s death had me fooled.”

  My flattery hit its mark. “You noticed that, did you? Well, I can’t claim much credit for that. The fire’s what threw me. Just imagine the night I’d gone through—triumph at having seen Guy die by my own hand. Then, once I got home, frantic worry beset me. What had I done? How many clues had I left behind? I’d cleared away our glasses and thrown the poison into a trash can in the park. But the police have all sorts of detection methods now, don’t they?

  “I barely slept a wink. When I finally marched off to work, I imagined there would be a Black Maria waiting to cart me off when I arrived. But as I approached the building—flames! Beautiful tongues of fire erasing my crime entirely. It was hard to hide my jubilation. That was acting.”

  His excitement at his own luck sickened me. “Bravo, then.”

  “In the beginning I was sorry you weren’t there first. That would have made it seem more like a normal day. But I’d seen the note about the dentist and I knew you’d be late, so I was able to sit back and savor the sight of that fire as long as I dared without drawing suspicion.”

  And in so
doing, how many lives had he endangered? If the fire had spread, delay could have been fatal for the neighboring buildings.

  From the gleam in his eye, he didn’t care. He wouldn’t have minded if ten people had died, or a hundred. Covering his crime was the important thing. His own hide was all that mattered.

  He’d reached the end of his narrative—which might also mean the beginning of the end for me. I’d hoped Muldoon would arrive or that some means of escape would occur to me. But none of the options I could think of seemed likely to succeed. I could run . . . or take to the river. Jackson could probably outrun me, but he couldn’t swim.

  Yet that water looked dark and cold.

  “When you went down to Guy,” I said, backtracking, “after Cain left . . . How did you do it?”

  “How did I get Guy to drink cyanide, you mean?”

  At my nod, his lips turned up. “Like getting fish to swim. ‘Mix me a drink, General,’ he said. He called me General back in our Boston days, when I’d made him do his assignments. Which mostly meant I sat and watched while he copied what I’d written, you understand. Yet he dared to have contempt for me.”

  “And so you poisoned his drink.” I tilted my head. “Your apartment building has mice. Is that what gave you the idea?”

  “You do pay attention occasionally. I might have put too much in. Guy was violently sick.” The memory caused a shudder. “Revolting, but my biggest fear was that he’d purge all the poison. Apparently not.” His lips turned up in a smile. “It’s given me some comfort these past weeks to remember Guy died like a rat.”

  “And a man who kills his own friend . . . What is he?”

  It was too much. Jackson took a step forward. “Weren’t you listening? He was never my friend. He used me, and others, too. He treated women abominably and tossed them aside like soiled handkerchiefs. You think Myrna Cohen was an exception? I assure you, she wasn’t. He had nothing but contempt for all women. If Edith Van Hooten hadn’t controlled the family purse strings, he would have walked away from his own mother. He had no sense of loyalty, or duty.”