Death of an Old Sinner (The Mrs. Norris Mysteries Book 1)

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  “ ‘Tell her what you need,’ ” the General mimicked. He had hired her as a nurse for his son, and he was damned if he was going to have her turned into a nurse for him forty odd years later. She would right now be full of tears and self-recriminations for having let the boy down. The General could not resist giving a jab with the needle: “Your brother-in-law must have been highly entertaining last night, Mrs. Norris.”

  “He was not at home, sir. Indeed, it’s why I stayed. My sister was very worried when he did not come home from his work till long after his usual hour.”

  “Could he not have called at least?” said the General, remembering the wealth of telephones in Robbie’s establishment.

  “I think that’s a good question for all of us to ask ourselves, sir.”

  The General cleared his throat and named a few items she was to pack for him. Plainly he had walked into something foul yesterday, up at least to his pockets. And it was just as plain he had to get out of it quickly or else pull Jimmie in with him. He probably needed the help of a confidential investigator, and for that he needed money. He took the small bag of toilet essentials he kept at the club with him, got his dispatch case from the safe, looked to be sure the diary and ink were in it, and went to the Mulvany Hotel. The hotel arrangement was fine: a private club was not private enough for some transactions.

  He debated with himself while waiting the preparation of his room, which of his calls to make first and decided on Fowler. Having a dime, he made the call from a public phone. He caught the agent on his way out to lunch, and came directly to the point: “Augie, for one thousand dollars cash this afternoon, I am willing to sign over to you one half my interests in the diary.”

  There was a long pause before the agent spoke. “Where is the diary now, General?”

  “I will deliver it into your hands by five o’clock this afternoon.” Long before then, he thought, he could make the entries of his and Robbie’s composition.

  “Then I will make you a personal loan against the publisher’s advance on the property, General. However, the customary ten percent of your earnings on it will satisfy me.”

  “You are an honest man, Augie.”

  “In some things I suppose I am,” the agent said dryly. “See you at five.”

  The General decided he had better do his copy work immediately. There was an unsteadiness to his hand he did not like. With more stress it would not improve. He took a warm bath, came from it relaxed, satisfied as to his ability to do such exacting work, double-bolted the doors and set to the task. Only when it was finished did he turn to the other call he had to make. Flora seemed a very long time answering.

  11

  NOT FOR A MOMENT did Jimmie believe that the district attorneys of three counties were out to get him, and he told Mike Zabriski as much that afternoon. It was one thing to reopen an investigation for political purposes, but quite another to pin a murder on a man.

  “I wouldn’t say that was being done to you, young fella,” Mike said.

  “The afternoon papers come mighty close to it.”

  “Bread and butter headlines,” Mike said.

  “Mike, why was Judge Turner so determined to get me home by eleven last night?”

  Mike rolled a protruding lower lip even lower. “I guess the Judge would be the one to answer that, Jimmie.” He nodded toward the conference room adjoining his office. “Look here now, don’t get any notions like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like that the Judge had information that Rocco was going to be bumped off,” Mike said bluntly.

  “If I allowed myself to think that for an instant,” Jimmie said, “I would resign—if possible from the human race itself.”

  “That’s my brave young fella,” Mike said. He was once again proud of his candidate. He pointed to the phone on his desk. “Try the General again.”

  Jimmie swore softly and dialed the Mulvany Hotel. It was the third time he had tried to reach his father, having had to go himself directly to Mike’s office to a Party executive conference. Again the hotel switchboard reported that General Jarvis was not taking any calls. What really worried Jimmie was that his father might have been trapped into some sort of complicity either by flattery or the lure of money; he was always in great need of both. Jimmie shook his head.

  “I don’t see much point in doing anything till you get that straightened out,” Mike said.

  “There’s one thing needs to be found out if they don’t already know it,” Jimmie said, “what Rocco has been doing lately.”

  Mike nodded his head ponderously. “I guess you know I’ve got an informant in the D.A.’s office?”

  “I know such characters exist,” Jimmie said. He knew damn well Mike had inside information.

  “It’s a funny sort of business they haven’t really got hold of—it looks like he’s been running a protection racket for bookies.”

  Jimmie whistled. “No wonder they haven’t got hold of it. It’s too hot.” After all, who did bookies need most protection from? The police. Jimmie got up and rubbed his hands together. “Mike, do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to offer my services as a special investigator to the D.A.’s office.” Mike nodded approval. Jimmie asked: “What do you say we give that to the newspapers?”

  “Better see first what comes out of this meeting,” Mike said, getting up, checking his watch, and leading the way into the conference room.

  A hasty session of the Party executives in New York at the time had been called. They sat now, their eyes downcast. Jimmie wondered if he would be ditched there and then. But all that happened was that a policy chairman, pro tem, was elected, through which activities and news releases affecting the party must be cleared. In other words, Jimmie thought, from now on, he must live as though even moths and flies had camera eyes. How poetic a thought! His champion of the hour was Madeline Barker. And since, as well, she was put in nomination by Mike for the chairmanship, and the move to close nominations was made by the Judge, Jimmie certainly could not oppose her. But he remembered well her behavior at Albany. And Helene’s remark about blackmail…he had not had the chance to pursue that. Well, she might be a fragile Barker—Miss Madeleine, but she had got herself a convoy of some mighty sturdy old men-of-war.

  She approved his offering of his services to the District Attorney, but with one qualification: “unless your father—the old dear—is implicated.”

  If his father—the old dear—was implicated, Jimmie swore, taking a cab crosstown to the Mulvany, he intended to know it within the hour. The bags he had sent ahead were already in his and the General’s rooms. The old dear had answered his bell for that all right. Jimmie watched the clerk get him the key to 517. He was about to turn away when he saw the key lying in the next box. “Doesn’t my father have room 519?”

  “Yes, sir,” the clerk said, glancing at the box. “The General seems to be out at the moment.”

  “Without leaving a message for me?”

  “I’m afraid so, sir.”

  “Or word as to when he would return?”

  “No, sir, no word at all.”

  The villainous rogue, Jimmie thought, and then tried to restrain his judgment until he reached his own room and looked to see if there were a message under the door there. But there was none.

  Jimmie looked at his watch. It was almost five. He would have liked very much to get on with his investigative offer today, so he sat down to sweat out his father’s return. When the General had not returned by six, Jimmie called his club. He was not there. At seven Jimmie called Mrs. Norris. She had not heard from him. Jimmie promised to call her back. By eight o’clock Jimmie’s anger was being tempered by concern. The more he thought about it, the more he realized how little he knew of his father’s activities. He was reasonably sure the old man had a mistress, but both he and his father respected each other’s privacy. It was, Jimmie thought grimly, the only possible way they could live together. He wondered then if Mrs. Norris would know. She kne
w a good many things she considered unmentionable. He called her again.

  “Do you think he has a friend he might be with?”

  “A female friend?” Mrs. Norris asked.

  God, Jimmie thought, but the English language was ugly when used like a blunt instrument. “That’s what I had in mind,” he said.

  “If I have your permission I’ll go through his things and call you back,” she said.

  Jimmie thought of his father’s wrath at the discovery of that exploration. “I don’t think I’d better be a party to that, Mrs. Norris.”

  “Now and then,” Mrs. Norris said, “I’ve taken a call to him from a woman who said it was his broker’s office calling. I think it was her called this morning. Remember, I told you? She hung up when I said he wasn’t home.”

  “I remember,” Jimmie said dully. It was a matter he would have to drop there. “Did he take you to Brooklyn yesterday?”

  “He did not. I thought of that myself when I heard he was there. He didn’t want us to know where he was going.”

  “And obviously he doesn’t want us to know where he is now,” Jimmie said. “All right, Mrs. Norris. I’ll call you later.”

  “Mr. Jamie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you eaten your dinner?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You go out of that room this minute and have a nice warm meal. Mind me, now.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Jimmie said. “I can go downstairs and have them page me if he comes in.”

  “Do. And something digestible. Not too fancy.”

  But Jimmie was not paged throughout his dinner which he did his best to linger over, because the prospect of waiting in his room was too terrible. In fact, leaving the dining room at a quarter to ten, he made up his mind that he would have to take some action if he had not heard from his father by eleven. Jimmie stopped at the desk again. The Mulvany was a small hotel, elegant and intimate, such as had all but disappeared from New York, and it was very, very proper. There was suddenly a severe aloofness on the part of the clerk. Instinctively, Jimmie looked at the key box, room 519. His father’s key was not in it.

  Jimmie all but exploded. “Is General Jarvis in his room?”

  “He is, sir,” the clerk said frostily.

  “I asked to be informed…”

  “I beg your pardon, sir, you asked to be paged if he called. He was in no condition to speak to you, sir. Out of consideration for you, and our other guests, I thought it best to have him taken directly upstairs. He abused me horribly.”

  “That’s some satisfaction,” Jimmie murmured, and started for the elevator. “What time did he come in?”

  “An hour ago, perhaps,” the clerk said, glancing at his watch.

  He would never be governor, Jimmie decided in the elevator. Wherever he found them, he must call stupid men stupid, and all of them had the vote. Or, perhaps, thus would he come to office! When the only justice was poetic. He knocked on the door of 519. No answer. “Father, I’ve had enough nonsense,” he said, trying to make his voice carry without raising it. He knocked harder on the door. Still no answer. He tried the door. It was locked. He went around to the door of the bathroom which they shared. He hammered and all but kicked it in. To no avail. He called the desk then and asked the clerk to send up the pass key to 519, and when the clerk protested, Jimmie suggested that he send the house detective along with him; the old gentleman might have had a heart attack.

  He went out in the hall to wait. The house detective came, put his key in the lock and glanced up at Jimmie. If the door had been locked from the inside, the key was not in it. The detective turned his passkey, withdrew it, and gestured Jimmie to proceed.

  Jimmie threw the door open. The detective shone the beam of his flashlight about the darkened room. It caught the old man. He was awkwardly slumped over the back of a chair, as though he were hanging onto it, and yet in such a position that gravitation would seem to demand that he fall.

  Jimmie ran to him while the detective turned on the wall switch, flooding the room with light. The minute Jimmie touched him, the old man tumbled to the floor. He was dead.

  Dead, Jimmie marveled, wearing all the decorations befitting his rank and service. It was as though he had come upstairs and prepared himself for the next day’s duties before allowing himself to die.

  12

  THOUGH HE BEAR THE shame of it to his own grave, Jimmie had to admit to himself at least that, listening to the house detective call the Medical Examiner’s office, his first thought was: it’s too much to expect of General Jarvis, a plain, simple heart attack.

  Everyone, without saying so to him, seemed to share the view; men came from Homicide and precinct headquarters. Royalty could not have turned out more press representatives. Jimmie was glad, however, to see George Fallon, the District Attorney, and even more pleased to see in his company, his chief investigator, Jasper Tully, whom Jimmie trusted. Tully had served under him and many a D.A. before him and after him: he was forever shuffling his politics—easily shaking out the jokers for the next deal. A long, lean melancholy man, he had never to Jimmie’s knowledge raised his voice, though many a man he had set to screaming by his silent scrutiny.

  Jimmie shook his hand affectionately and then turned to the D.A. “You know, Fallon, I was only waiting to talk to my father, tonight. Then I intended to volunteer my services…on the Rocco business.”

  “Looks like charity can begin at home now, doesn’t it?” Fallon said, and then bethought himself that he was speaking to the dead man’s son. “Sorry, Jarvis, but damn it, man, we were waiting, too. Just to give you the chance to make the first move. We purposely quashed the information that your father got in our line of fire last night, and that’s trouble for us in some quarters, sitting on something worth a headline.”

  “Thanks,” Jimmie said. It struck him then that the old man would not again get into anyone’s line of fire, and the blow hurt.

  Tully understood. “He was always a swell target, the General.” He laid a bony hand on Jimmie’s shoulder.

  Jimmie gave him a wink and squared his shoulders. “Let’s talk some cold facts, gentlemen, just we three. I don’t know what my father was doing in Brooklyn—if he was there. Now I’ll have to take your word for it. I’d feel a lot better about that if I knew the full story on why the sudden interest in Johnny, The Rock. The truth, Fallon: was it politics?”

  Fallon, not much older than Jimmie, pursed his lips. “When you were in my shoes, Jarvis, would you have answered a question like that?” He didn’t wait for Jimmie’s answer. “I don’t mind telling you most of the truth. Won’t give you names though. A couple of public investigators, we’ll call ʼem, wanted to dig through the records. I’ve let people with poorer credentials search them. I knew by the dates what they were after, but I’ll tell you something, Jarvis, it hit both Tully and me between the eyes when they came up with the name Johnny Rocco. Johnny’s had his name bantered around a lot in our circles lately on account of some very large bookmaking. In Brooklyn, true. But that’s not far enough away for us to relax. They’ve been pulling raids regularly over there, the D.A.’s men, and getting peanuts. Peanuts for the monkeys. Now you and I know that no good cop likes to be made a monkey out of. Comprenez?”

  Jimmie nodded. He had got the same story from Mike: the suspicion of the police themselves, “That’s bad stuff,” he said.

  “That it is. So you can see, Jarvis, how it was that when they said ‘sick ʼim’ to me, I put my best hound dog on the trail. It was your friend Tully here who spotted your father last night. He was working out of the Brooklyn D.A.’s office. Fill it in from there, Jasp. I’d like to hear it again myself. Maybe it’ll make sense this time.”

  Tully gathered in his legs and folded his hands. You could perish waiting for his first word, Jimmie thought. “The D.A. had a couple of leads over there, so when I showed up to help they decided to stake ʼem out last night. Three of their boys and me were posted outside a littl
e one-arm restaurant called Minnie’s on Water Street.”

  “What time?” said Jimmie.

  “We set up about seven, figuring the collector would show before ten o’clock. And after the first hour we were dead sure we had something: in all that time one customer. Two roast beef sandwiches he took out with him. So we just sat, four of us outside, Minnie inside.”

  “Do they always go in fours over there?” Jimmie asked.

  “I don’t know that, but there was a couple too many of us all right as it turned out. The car wasn’t marked, and there was other cars, but this round-faced goon sure spotted us. It went off like a string of firecrackers. This fellow was coming to us on the run, don’t know where from, we picked up the sound of his feet hitting cement first, and I knew at the same time there was a car coming fast. When I open the window this cheese face hollers: ‘You want Johnny Rocco? Go get him!’ He was shouting because just about then the Jaguar goes by like a Jet out of hell. Our driver had his foot on the accelerator, but we never got any closer than the minute I got the license number, and it hit me right then maybe the car was the decoy, and the moon-faced guy the real collection man. By the time we got back he was gone, of course. Keystones, bloody Keystone cops they made of us.”

  Jimmie could see the famous melancholia settling on Jasper.

  “It was routine I put a tracer on that license number, Jimmie. I knew it was RO—Rockland County; in fact that’s what made me think we’d been decoyed.” Jasper scratched his ear. “Funny, RO—Rockland County. Ro, Rocco. He was a great guy for sport cars, too. He left a sweet little Austin-Healey in front of the bank last night.”

  Jimmie thought about those implications. “You never picked up The Rock’s trail at all then?”

  “Nope. Not till we saw him on a slab in the morgue this morning.”

  “Do you suppose your father could have been used as the decoy, Jarvis?” the D.A. asked.

  “Goddamn it,” Jimmie exploded, “he was a general in the United States Army!”