by Tom Bradby
‘Yeah.’
‘Anything else?’
‘I – I don’t know. I don’t think so.’
‘Did you see either of the men put something in the dead man’s mouth?’
The boy shook his head.
Quinn took out another dollar bill, pushed it across the table. ‘Thanks.’
CHAPTER NINE
OUTSIDE, THE CROWD HAD SWELLED. CAPRISI STOOD ON TIPTOE TO see what was happening by the Exchange but he still wasn’t tall enough. Quinn stopped in front of a brokerage window and peered in through the steamed-up glass at the prices being marked on the blackboard. Caprisi started walking again and they wound their way back through the crowd to number eighty. Caprisi headed to the guard at the front desk while Quinn slipped through to the back to check the stairwell. The door to the street was locked. He climbed the first flight of stairs and hung out of the window. Easy enough to drop out unseen, he thought, but no way in without access to the door.
He returned to the lobby, waited until his partner had finished, and then they rode the elevator.
‘He’s sticking to his story,’ Caprisi said. ‘He says no one left the building in the few minutes after the guy fell. He was in the doorway. They’d have had to shove right past him.’
‘The rear door’s locked, though it would have been easy enough to drop out the first-floor window. What did he say about the guy in the fancy suit who came in to see Matsell just before he was killed?’
‘He claims he doesn’t know who that was.’
‘Do you believe him?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘How come the cops didn’t arrive for twenty minutes?’
‘Everyone in the street assumes the uniform guy on the scene is going to call around to the precinct house, right? So nobody else does.’
‘Maybe.’
‘But he doesn’t.’
‘Hmm. I’ll check it out.’
They got out of the elevator and climbed the stairs to the mezzanine level. The office of Unique Investment Management was locked. ‘Maybe the guy downstairs has a key,’ Caprisi said.
Quinn tested the hasp. It was loose, so he put his shoulder to the door and shoved. On the second attempt, it gave. He flicked on the lights. There was a single overcoat on the hat-stand, a real fancy one. The label said it had been hand-tailored by Jacob Zwirz.
‘Moe?’
Caprisi was already at Matsell’s desk so Quinn went down the corridor to Moe’s office. The filing cabinet was packed with newspaper clippings, but apart from a pen, a pot of ink and a few paper-clips, the desk was empty. There were no memos or letters. In fact, no clues at all as to exactly what line of business Unique Investment might be in. Quinn rifled the filing cabinet again.
After a few minutes, Caprisi appeared in the doorway. ‘I checked in with the precinct. Nobody can remember who called in the incident.’ He held up a sheet of paper. ‘I found this bill next door. It seems our friend Mr Matsell lived in a suite at the Plaza.’ He slouched against the frame. ‘What do you figure this outfit does? What does your sister say?’
‘She’s only worked here a few months. She said it was a brokerage firm.’
‘But there are no clients, letters or bills …’ Caprisi pointed at the open drawers of the cabinet. ‘That’s the only storage in the place. Anything there?’
‘Newspaper clippings.’
Caprisi took a seat. ‘So, we’ve got a dead guy who lived at the Plaza and a company that doesn’t appear to do any business. You want me to go talk to your sister?’
‘No. And she’s – she’s not my sister. She was adopted when we were older.’
‘Your folks wanted a girl?’
‘It wasn’t that.’
‘So …’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘They’re the kind I like.’
‘Her mother lived in the cellar of our tenement.’
‘You stole her?’
‘No. She – I mean the mother – wasn’t a good woman. Martha is … She’s engaged to my brother.’
Caprisi whistled quietly. ‘Okay. Are you going to ask her about this?’
‘Of course.’
‘You sure it wouldn’t be easier to have me put a few questions?’
‘Yes.’
Caprisi raised his eyebrows. ‘Whatever you say, Detective.’ He lit a cigarette and threw the pack at his partner. ‘Tell me about this guy Moe Diamond.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Who is he?’
‘Moe’s not a killer.’
‘I didn’t say he was. But he has to be a suspect.’
‘He’s a hustler. He was a friend of my mother’s family back home in Ireland – he and she were second or third cousins. He came out on the same ship as us and we used to see quite a lot of him as kids. He worked the pool rooms at McGraw’s place. McGraw was the manager of the—’
‘I’m from Chicago, not China.’
‘Well, McGraw had a billiard parlour, next to the old Herald building. Moe used to take on all comers. He knew Rothstein and sometimes they played together, though Rothstein was the better shot. They ran a place after that in an old warehouse on Water Street, mostly dice games and poker.’
‘He was a friend of Rothstein?’
‘Associate. Rothstein didn’t have friends. They used to go on the train together up to the racetrack at Saratoga in the summer. After that, he kind of disappeared. I heard he’d made a pile of money and shipped out of town. No one knew where he’d gone. My mother said Cuba, but there were others who said Chicago or out west. The next time I saw him was at my mother’s funeral about six months ago. He offered Martha a job with good money.’
Caprisi stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. He moved to the edge of Moe’s desk and pulled open a drawer. ‘What do you figure he’s up to?’
Quinn scanned the room. He wondered if he’d been wise to admit he knew Moe. ‘There must be a safe. Moe was like Rothstein – always has a bankroll, so he’ll have somewhere to keep it.’ He checked behind the filing cabinet and the framed photographs along the wall. They shunted the desk aside and pulled up the rug on the floor. Then they worked through each office in turn, moving furniture and running their hands along every wall in search of a loose panel. They drew a blank.
Quinn seated himself at Martha’s desk. He opened the central drawer. There were a few bills and neatly typed stock reports, beneath which he found a photograph of his mother in her prime, long dark hair tumbling over slim shoulders. He put it carefully aside. There was a tangled collection of hairbands and makeup in the drawer to his left, all purchased at Wannamaker’s. Then he found a blue box, sealed with a lilac ribbon, and a letter addressed to him at Centre Street. He placed the box on the desk and untied the bow.
Inside, carefully rolled into a scroll, there was a collection of letters and mementoes he had sent her. She had kept the baseball cards he’d given her the first Christmas she spent with them and the picture of a snow wolf he’d drawn for her eleventh birthday. At the bottom of the pile was the letter of congratulation he had written on her engagement to Aidan.
It had taken two hours to complete, but ran to only two lines. Quinn stared at the words; they might have been written in blood. Then he picked up the envelope addressed to him. It had not been sealed.
Dear Joe,
It has taken me many hours to pluck up the courage to write, because I know the effect this will have. However, the tension between us has reached such an unbearable pitch that I can delay no longer.
You said in your letter that what happened two months ago was an expression of the most deeply held feeling, but you were wrong. It was just a kiss, an exhausted, half-crazed reaction to the tragedy of your mother’s death. I was tired and miserable, my mind not a little cloudy from the effects of your father’s home-brewed whisky. It was a moment of madness that must be forgotten.
You said that I do not love Aidan; that is not only untrue, but a statement of the most
breathtaking arrogance. How do you know what I feel? Upon what do you base this assertion? Aidan is kind and considerate. He is steady and loyal. He has looked after all of us these past few months in a manner that is above reproach. Your father, you, me: all of us have needed his care in our own ways. Without him, Joe, you should recognize that you would have done your best to pick a fight with God and pretty much anyone else you could reach. He is a good man, with a good job and good prospects. He is supportive of my work at the refuge and enjoys helping children whom, Lord knows, have little enough going for them. He is not concerned at the effect that some of my ‘political associations’ might have on his career. He has been very loyal to me through the past two months, which have been, on occasion, abjectly miserable. Not that you would have noticed.
Most of all, he is the man best placed to deal with the dark side of my experience.
Nobody wants to talk about that. Nobody should.
For this reason, I must insist that you forget what happened that night. It was complete madness.
Please let us never speak of it again.
Love, Martha
‘Are you all right, Joe?’
Quinn started.
‘Something spook you?’
Quinn folded the letter and slipped it back into the pile. ‘Just bills and stock reports.’
‘What do you want to do?’ Caprisi asked.
‘I …’
‘You want to leave it? Maybe we should head down to the Plaza, see what we can turn up there.’
‘No. Not yet.’
Quinn returned to Moe’s office. He gazed around the walls and put pressure on the floorboards. He tried to concentrate. ‘Moe has to have somewhere to hide his bankroll.’
‘Maybe he takes it with him.’
‘He’ll have hidden it somewhere he figures no one will think of.’ Quinn looked up at the ceiling. His mother had always concealed her valuables in the roof space; she’d claimed it was a trick from the old country. He took a chair from behind Moe’s desk and pushed at the panels. None would budge until he reached the corner. ‘Give me a hand,’ he said.
Caprisi moved over to the chair and Quinn clambered onto his shoulders.
‘You weigh a ton,’ Caprisi groaned.
Quinn fumbled in his pocket for a box of matches and lit one. ‘There’s something here.’
Three dust-laden boxes were hidden in the corner of the roof. He climbed in, dragged them over and handed them down to his partner.
The first box was filled with statements, all stamped ‘Bank of America’. Quinn didn’t have to look far. The top page listed a transfer of a cool two million dollars.
‘No wonder Matsell could afford a suite at the Plaza,’ Caprisi said. ‘We should go down, see what he left in his room. I’ll call them.’
Quinn sat at Moe’s desk and flicked through the statements. When Caprisi had hung up he flipped back to the top page and circled the entry for two million dollars. ‘This is their business. The cash comes in here. Then, over the next four or five weeks, it’s paid out in smaller amounts to this account, here. Four weeks later, it’s paid back. Except now it’s more than three million. Unique deducts a healthy commission, and some expenses, and the rest goes back to the original investor.’
‘That’s one hell of a trade.’
‘This must be the broker’s account.’
‘So what are they buying and how can we get some?’
Quinn’s eyes narrowed. Whatever they were doing certainly involved big sums, but there was nothing to prove it was illegitimate. He took a thick wad of statements, folded them and slipped them into his pocket. ‘They won’t miss these for a few days.’
CHAPTER TEN
AS QUINN GAZED OUT OF THE GIANT WINDOWS AT CENTRAL PARK, its colours still vibrant even in the fading light, he thought of his mother. What she’d have given to spend even one night in a suite like this. The hotel had been one of her obsessions. If she had been talking about rich people from overseas or out of state, they were ‘the kind who stayed at the Plaza’. A fancy girl disporting herself in a Fifth Avenue store was ‘the type who gets married at the Plaza’.
They’d once called his mother ‘the Princess’ because, rain or shine, she would never show her face on the street unless she was decked out in her Sunday best. It was an image he clung to, far removed from the incontinent, booze-soaked shadow lying on the sidewalk, nightgown askew, that haunted his dreams.
It was hard to mourn someone who had really died a long time ago.
Quinn adjusted his jacket and touched the edge of the photograph of Martha that still seared his chest.
The past pressed in on him. Close to the south-west corner of the park, children played among the fall leaves. One was eating an ice-cream of the kind Sergeant Marinelli used to buy them on the Sundays their father had promised to take them to Coney Island. Marinelli was from Vice and had dragged them around houses where the women wore a lot of makeup and told them they must be proud their dad was the most famous cop in New York.
‘It’s a swell room,’ Caprisi said.
Quinn turned. The Plaza’s English manager, Mr Templeton, stood beside him, arms crossed behind a perfectly tailored back. He claimed never to have spoken to Matsell, but was understandably nervous about word leaking out that one of his guests had been murdered.
The fifteenth-floor suite comprised a bedroom, bathroom and living room. A fire flickered in the hearth. ‘Do you have his registration card?’ Quinn said.
‘Yes, of course.’ The manager turned to an assistant, who produced a sheaf of papers. ‘These are his monthly bills.’
Quinn took them and sat at the desk. Charles Matsell had arrived on 1 November the previous year from Havana. ‘What was he doing in Cuba?’
‘I’m afraid I couldn’t say.’
‘How long had he been there?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Did he stay here before he left for Cuba?’
‘Not that I am aware of, but it was before my time.’
‘How long have you been here?’
‘Two years.’
‘Check your records, would you?’ Quinn smiled at him. ‘I’d like to know if he had stayed here before.’
Matsell’s monthly bills were unremarkable. He rarely used the telephone and never appeared to eat dinner in the hotel. The sole extra expense – apart from breakfast – was a nightly bar bill. ‘He was a regular in the bar?’
‘I understand he was fond of taking a whisky in his room.’
‘Alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he ever … entertain?’
‘I’m not quite sure I catch your meaning, Detective.’
‘Broads.’
The manager cleared his throat and tugged at one end of a slim moustache. ‘Mr Matsell was a valued guest. We would not have pried into his private life.’
‘So, the answer is no?’
‘Detective, I—’
‘Yes or no, sir. It’s a simple question.’
‘No. I do not believe he … entertained anyone in that fashion.’
‘Did you know him well?’
The manager seemed embarrassed. ‘We do have a number of long-term residents. Naturally, if he had had a particular concern, I would have been delighted to address it, but Mr Matsell wished to keep himself to himself. We respect that here at the Plaza.’
Quinn looked at him. ‘Mr Matsell was in a very lucrative line of business. It seems to us he could have bought the hotel. Do you have any idea what that business might have been?’
‘Naturally, we don’t make a habit of—’
‘Maybe you should go talk to your staff. We’d like to know what kind of visitors he had.’ The man’s face reddened. ‘In fact, better still, bring the guys on the front desk back up with you.’
‘What – all of them?’
‘Yeah. The telephonists, too.’
‘But I’m not sure if they’ll be in the hotel. I mean …’
Quinn
glanced at the clock. ‘It’s the same shift, right?’ The man turned away and Quinn waited until he heard the door click shut, then said, ‘Pompous ass.’
‘Doesn’t mind if his guests get stiffed,’ Caprisi said, ‘just as long as it doesn’t cause embarrassment.’
Quinn slipped through to the bedroom. Another door, which led back to the corridor, stood ajar. There was a brass clock by the bed, alongside a copy of the previous day’s newspaper and a well-thumbed dime crime novel, The Long Island Affair: A Detective Carraway Mystery. Quinn slipped it into his pocket. He checked the drawers, which were packed with shirts, underpants, suspenders and socks. The cupboard was filled with suits. In one, he found a roll of greenbacks, which he took out and counted. More than ten thousand dollars. He threw the money onto the bed.
Like Moe Diamond’s overcoat, all the suits had been tailored by Jacob Zwirz. The bedside cupboard was empty and the bathroom yielded only a set of expensive toiletries. When he returned to the window, Quinn noticed the corner of a brown leather suitcase above the closet. He threw it onto the bed, forced the lock and flipped back the lid: thirty thousand dollars in three bricks, and a large quantity of pornographic photographs. He picked up one of two girls together and another of a woman with two men. His throat was dry.
He sifted through the rest carefully. There were no pictures of Martha, half naked or otherwise. He turned one over and held it up to the light. It was just possible to make out ‘Delaware Photographic. 202 Westgate Avenue, Delaware’. Quinn took out the picture of Martha. The same wording was printed faintly on the back.
He picked up the telephone by the bed and instructed the hotel operator to put him through to Headquarters. He asked for Mae Miller. ‘I know it’s clocking-off time, but would you be able to put something down the wire to Delaware? Tell them I need to know about a company called Delaware Photographic. I figure it makes photographic printing paper and, if that’s right, I need a list of every studio it supplies in Manhattan.’