by Tom Bradby
‘Did you get a look at him?’
‘No. But it seems like he followed us from Wall Street.’
‘Everything’s under control here. Nothing stolen.’
‘I’ll come down and—’
‘Stay where you are. We’re okay. We’ll see you tonight.’
The call was terminated before Quinn could insist. He replaced the earpiece.
He lit a cigarette and watched the smoke drift up towards the wooden fan. Two boys from the safe and loft squad gathered around a wireless set.
Mae caught his eye, sauntered over and sat next to him. She’d had her blonde hair fixed up, he saw. ‘What’s that about?’ He gestured at McCredie and Schneider.
‘You know what they’re like. One day I swear they’ll kill each other.’ She watched them for a minute. ‘If you ask me, the boss wears it pretty well.’
‘How’s that?’
‘This is supposed to be his floor, isn’t it? Schneider seems to think that the man who controls the budget should control everything else, but what does he know about being a cop? I’ve no idea how the boss puts up with it.’ She smiled at him. ‘But he likes you and at least you got a run out this morning.’
Quinn offered Mae a swig of coffee, but she wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s different here,’ he said.
‘You don’t say.’
‘Over in the Bronx, everything was straight down the line. Here, it’s …’
‘It’s early days, Joe.’ She smiled. ‘It can only get better, right?’
O’Reilly rounded the corner, carrying a red bucket with a picture of a grinning Mayor Jimmy Walker plastered to its side. He rattled it under their noses. ‘Cough up, Detective.’
‘I’m supporting the major.’
‘Very funny.’
‘No, I am.’
There was warning in Mae’s eyes.
‘It’s five dollars minimum.’
‘I gave five dollars last week, and I’m supporting La Guardia.’
O’Reilly rattled the bucket. ‘Cough up, wise guy.’
Quinn reached into his pocket, peeled off a dollar and threw it into the bucket.
‘You’re new here, Detective,’ O’Reilly said, ‘and the boss likes you so I’m going to forgive your lousy sense of humour.’
Quinn chucked in a five-dollar bill.
‘We’ll expect your support on election day,’ O’Reilly said.
‘You only have to ask.’
O’Reilly moved away.
‘You shouldn’t rile him, Joe. He’s a bully-boy. And everyone is nervous La Guardia will win.’
‘He won’t.’
She leant forward. ‘What about the photograph?’
‘Which one?’
‘The one the newspapers keep talking about – the picture of the mayor and Rothstein standing together like bosom buddies. If they print that, Jimmy’s finished.’
‘What does the boss say? Does it exist?’
‘He says he’d like to think Jimmy Walker’s too smart to allow himself to be photographed with a man like that.’
‘But he’s afraid he’s not as smart as he looks?’
‘Exactly. He doesn’t have a very high opinion of our friends at City Hall.’
‘If they had it, the newspapers would have printed it already. And since Rothstein has been dead almost a year, I don’t see them getting their hands on it now.’
‘Mae!’ One of the other stenographers waved at her. ‘It’s Sullivan from Murray Street.’ Mae raised her eyebrows and went back the way she had come.
Quinn stubbed out the cigarette and drained his coffee.
CHAPTER SIX
DOC CARTER WAS A FOPPISH YOUNG MAN IN FANCY SHOES, GREY SUIT pants, a tennis shirt and sweater. He looked like he’d walked right out of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Quinn wondered why he wasn’t in private practice, then caught a whiff of his breath. ‘I was on a day off,’ Carter said. His eyes narrowed. ‘Have you been swimming, Detective?’
‘That’s very good, Doc. Why did they interrupt your tennis?’
‘Berkowitz is ill. It seems strange that he’s always unwell on a Monday, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I’ve never met him.’
‘Ah, I forgot, you’re new.’ Carter washed his hands and eyed him with suspicion. They had met only once previously, on Quinn’s induction day. ‘Why are you here?’
‘I wanted to take a look at the autopsy on the guy from Wall Street.’
‘Which guy?’
‘The uniform boys brought his body in about two hours ago.’
‘Oh, you mean the jumper.’ Carter shook his head. ‘I haven’t done him yet.’
‘When do you think you’ll get around to it?’
‘Later.’
‘Any idea what time?’
A thin sheen of sweat glistened on Carter’s forehead. ‘There’s no hurry.’
‘Doesn’t Schneider want it? He told us we needed to sign the report off by lunchtime.’
Carter waved a hand. ‘He’s got it.’
‘He’s got what?’
‘He has what he needs.’
‘So, you have done the autopsy?’
‘Not in full.’
‘But, Doc, you’ve either opened the guy up or—’
‘For God’s sake, Detective, I gave him what he wanted. Any fool could tell it was suicide. Schneider was in a hurry.’
‘Oh … okay.’ Quinn acted as if he understood all too well. ‘Mind if I take a look?’
‘I do, yes. I have a luncheon appointment and a couple of dead armed robbers to cut up.’
‘Humour me. It’ll only take a few minutes.’
‘Come back later.’
Quinn moved in the direction of the laboratory. ‘He’ll be in the refrigerator, right?’
‘Hey!’
Quinn ignored the warning and strode through the doorway. ‘What do you want to look at him for?’ Carter tried to position himself between Quinn and the iron door in the corner.
‘McCredie wants more detail. You know how it is. I don’t want to get caught between them.’
‘McCredie doesn’t think it’s a suicide?’
‘Sure he does.’ Quinn gave the doctor a reassuring pat. ‘I’ve just got to bang in some extra detail so we’re covered.’
Carter did not look convinced, but he helped himself to a slug of whisky from a coffee cup on the shelf and pulled an iron trolley out of the refrigerator. No one wanted to get caught between McCredie and Schneider.
Matsell seemed much bigger than he had on Wall Street, but maybe that was a trick of the light. Quinn checked the pockets again and flicked back the coat and jacket. Both had been tailored by a Jacob Zwirz.
Matsell’s nose was too big, his cheeks and lips bulbous. The back of his skull had been concertinaed in the fall. Quinn opened the shirt and checked the chest for bruising. He picked up a set of pincers and tapped the man’s incisors through his half-open mouth. ‘A lot of expensive gold crowns …’ He caught sight of something embedded in the back of Matsell’s throat, probed deeper and pulled out a thick plug of cotton wool. He held it up to his nose.
Carter’s face drained of colour.
‘You want to explain to me, Doc, why a suicide victim would have a ball of cotton wool soaked in chloroform shoved right down the back of his throat?’
Carter did not look as if he wished to know the answer to this particular question. ‘Perhaps he was trying to dull himself to the pain.’
‘Of what?’
‘He placed a pellet in his mouth just before he fell.’
‘Sure he did. But you might want to do the autopsy now. I’ll wait.’
‘I’m too busy.’
Quinn gave him a withering stare. ‘Doc, we can hold the line on your verdict, but this is unfinished business.’
Carter took a blood-spattered white coat from a hook behind the door. ‘This had better be a good idea, Detective.’ He put on his glasses, took down a long butcher’s knife and a hacksaw and set
to work.
Quinn forced himself to watch and was pleased that he only felt nauseous once, when Carter cut open Matsell’s head and shards of skull, with congealed blood, flicked against the white-tiled wall.
Out of the window Quinn could see blurred figures hurrying through the shadows below. The headlamps of passing automobiles occasionally cut through the gloom. He moved closer and pressed his nose to the glass. A small child struggled with an umbrella, and he remembered being picked by his mother to run down to the El station to await his father’s return, armed with an old Chinese parasol. He would kick his heels beneath the giant pillars with the other kids from Seventh and skip all the way home, singing out a hundred questions about life as a Headquarters detective. His old man would put an arm around his shoulder.
Quinn indulged himself with the memory of the father he’d once known. He tapped a nail against the glass and traced a rivulet with his index finger, reminded now of that summer on the covered porch at the kuch alein guesthouse on Coney Island where they had listened anxiously to the urgent patter on the iron roof until it ceased and they could head back down the boardwalk to the beach.
Carter stood before him with a glass tube and a syringe. His face was grave. ‘This is most unsatisfactory,’ he said.
‘What is, Doc?’
‘I was looking for a clear sign in the tissue that he’d been rendered unconscious shortly before his death. But whatever happened to this man, he was fully conscious when he came off that roof.’
‘So …’
‘The chloroform must have been administered after his death.’
‘He was killed before he fell?’
‘No, he certainly died in the fall.’
Quinn shook his head. ‘I’m confused.’
‘The plug of chloroform must have been placed in his mouth after he came off that roof.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘Illogical, but not impossible.’
Quinn took hold of the tube. ‘So … you’ve tested what? His blood?’
‘The tissue in his brain. There is no sign of chloroform anywhere in his system. Therefore he died before it was administered. Someone stuck the cotton wool in his mouth after the fall.’
‘Why?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Is it possible you’re mistaken?’
‘No.’
‘What’s the explanation?’
‘I don’t have one.’
‘Think of something.’
‘That’s your job. There’s no medical mystery to be unravelled. I have established the facts.’
‘So,’ Quinn said, ‘someone wanted to make it seem as though—’
‘I have no idea. It remains a suicide. I shall simply put—’
‘Doc, you can’t put this down as suicide.’
Carter flushed. ‘Be careful what you say, Detective. There was no interference with this man before his death. What may have happened afterwards is no concern of mine.’
‘But—’
‘That’s your job.’ Carter moved to the side and took another long slug of whisky. They stood together, staring at the body.
‘Thanks,’ Quinn said. ‘If you think of anything else, I’d appreciate a call.’
Maretsky sat behind a tall wooden desk in the basement, deep in a novel. He didn’t look up as Quinn approached.
‘Is Yan here?’ Quinn asked. Stefan Yanowsky was the friendly giant who ran the Criminal Investigation Bureau.
Maretsky glanced into the small back office and raised a heavily tufted eyebrow. ‘Have you been swimming, Detective?’
Quinn grimaced.
‘It’s hardly the weather for it. You’ll catch a chill.’
‘Good advice.’ Quinn paused. ‘Maretsky, you came from Shanghai, right?’
‘St Petersburg, which they now call Leningrad. If you’re not careful, they’ll take over Manhattan. People don’t believe it, but I tell you—’
‘I figure the commissioner has it in hand,’ Quinn said. One of Grover Whalen’s first moves as head of the NYPD had been to set up a Communist Squad to combat the Red menace.
‘The commissioner is a smart man. People should listen.’
‘But you lived in Shanghai?’
His face puckered. It made him look like a swamp rat. ‘It’s not a secret.’
‘And you worked in the police department there?’
‘I may have done.’
‘Did you know Caprisi’s brother?’
Maretsky shifted uncomfortably. ‘I’m not so sure.’
‘You’re not so sure he was there or you’re not so sure you knew him?’
Maretsky didn’t respond.
‘What was he like?’
‘Foolish. Impulsive.’ He gave Quinn a significant look. ‘Like all young detectives.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I heard Caprisi lost one brother in Chicago and another in Shanghai. He seems kind of intense. What happened in Shanghai might have had something to do with that.’
Maretsky slid from his stool and all but disappeared. ‘What did you come down for, Detective?’
‘I need to check if we have anything on a Charles Matsell.’
Maretsky shuffled away between the rows of box files. ‘You think the commissioner will survive if La Guardia wins?’ he asked.
‘La Guardia won’t win.’
‘You never know. People are tired of scandal.’
‘People never tire of scandal.’
‘Maybe they’re fed up with swell Jimmy and his crowd feathering their nests.’
‘Don’t count on it.’
‘That Major La Guardia is smart, you mark my words. From the way he’s talking about it, he has got this photograph of Jimmy and that hoodlum Rothstein together and he’ll whip it out just before the big day. Maybe that’ll convince people at last that Jimmy has his snout in the trough.’
Quinn listened to the Russian’s feet padding through the warren of shelves. Maretsky finally returned with a dusty red folder. The name ‘Charles Matsell’ was stamped on the front. Inside there were notes on two traffic violations, which had been discharged five months previously. Quinn turned the file over. It had been signed out more than twenty times. Among the names on the list were Schneider, McCredie and Commissioner Whalen. It had been taken out the previous day by Johnny Brandon. ‘That’s a lot of interest in a pair of traffic violations.’
The Russian stared at him.
‘You got any idea why, Maretsky?’
‘No.’
‘You want to take a guess?’
‘No.’
Quinn tapped the desk. ‘Check two other names for me, will you? Moe Diamond and Dick Kelly.’
Maretsky went back into the warren and returned a few minutes later. ‘Nothing.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yes.’
Quinn looked him in the eye. ‘Okay. Thanks.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
MOST OF THE OFFICE’S INHABITANTS WERE HUDDLED AROUND wireless sets. Caprisi was at his desk, hammering at his typewriter – the other detectives wrote out their reports by hand and passed them to the stenographers, but Caprisi preferred to do his own.
‘Can I take a look at your notebook?’ Quinn flicked through the pages. ‘Did anyone get close to Matsell after he fell?’
‘Just a cop. He went off to call the precinct.’
‘Who was he?’
‘I don’t have a name. Why?’
Quinn sat. ‘Charlie Matsell had a chloroform-soaked bud of cotton wool in the back of his throat. It was put there after he fell.’
Caprisi was clearly bewildered by this.
‘The bureau has a file on Matsell. It’s been signed out around twenty times – by Schneider, McCredie, even the commissioner. Johnny Brandon took it out only yesterday. All it contains is two traffic violations.’
‘Very interesting, Detective. But we can’t put any of that in the report.’
‘Why not?’
‘We just can’t.’
‘Aren’t you curious?’
‘No.’ Caprisi turned back to his typewriter.
‘That’s a shame,’ Quinn remarked. ‘I heard you were once a good cop.’
Caprisi spun around. ‘And I heard you were a maverick hothead who was real lucky to get his shot at Headquarters.’ He glared. ‘An ambitious maverick. That ought to be a contradiction, but I guess you figure you’ll end up as a top-dollar celebrity cop, like your father – or Johnny, the “Bull”, over there.’
Quinn glanced at the head of Homicide’s empty office. ‘I’m just trying to do a job, my friend.’
‘And so am I.’ Caprisi pulled the sheet off the roller. ‘Schneider wants to see us. Don’t breathe a word of this or you’ll screw us both.’ He marched over to the far side of the room.
Schneider’s office was larger than McCredie’s and more handsomely furnished. The deputy commissioner was seated behind a wide mahogany desk, adorned with a single photograph of his wife and two grown-up sons. Without his derby and overcoat, he was several sizes thinner. His dark hair receded across a wide forehead but his face was so narrow it looked as if someone had sucked air from it with a foot pump. Bright blue eyes sparkled behind rectangular steel-rimmed glasses.
The budget lists he used as a weapon to subdue the department were scrawled on giant boards across the wall. The word ‘Divers’ had been written in ominously large letters alongside today’s date.
He read Caprisi’s report slowly. ‘What did Dr Carter have to say?’ Schneider didn’t engage in small-talk.
Caprisi looked at Quinn expectantly.
‘He just confirmed what we already knew, sir.’
Schneider’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why did you feel the need to go see him?’
‘I was curious,’ Quinn said. ‘I figured there might be some extra detail to flesh out the verdict.’
‘And was that curiosity satisfied?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Dr Carter tells me you not only badgered him into performing tasks he considered unnecessary but also picked up a set of pincers and probed the body yourself. Is this correct?’
‘Well, sir, I—’