by Larry Karp
Clearly, the discussion was over, and so was Nell’s work day. She said a quiet, “Thank you, sir,” and left.
She stopped at her desk, picked up her purse, and walked down the hall toward the waiting room. Fannie looked her a question as she came past the reception desk. “I finished my work,” Nell said. “Mr. Tabor said he had nothing else for me to do, and I should take off the rest of the day.”
Fannie checked her watch. “It’s not even four-thirty. He gave you more than a half-hour off?”
Nell nodded.
Fannie snickered, then motioned Nell to bend down. “I say you better watch out,” the receptionist whispered. “Next thing you know, you’re gonna be up in that apartment of his.”
“I’ll be careful.” Nell waved, and walked out into the corridor.
She rode down to the main floor in an otherwise-empty elevator, stepped out to the sidewalk, and began to wind her way through the Broadway mob. If Tabor tried to get her up to his apartment, she’d give him a good—no, she wouldn’t. She’d play hard-to-get, that’s what she’d do. Easy enough to string along a wolf, and she was not exactly a little lassie, just out of school…wait a minute. Didn’t Fannie say Tabor had an eye for Birdie, and the girl was afraid Martin might catch the manager pinching her, and make a scene that would lose them both their jobs? Well, Martin was out of the office now, wasn’t he, and it was not past Nell’s imagination to see Tabor leading the girl to the apartment after work, then telling her in the morning to do whatever she’d like for the day, and when he came back after work, they’d have a swell dinner and go to the theater. And then, of course, another night in the apartment and a second day off, along with a hint that this might lead to a permanent arrangement.
Nell’s gorge rose. A man passing her gave her a queer look and a wide berth. She moved out of the foot traffic to stand against the green marble facade of an office building. What was the address Fannie had mentioned? 354 West Forty-ninth, yes. Apartment 2A. Nell sidestepped a man locked in place, head back, gawping up at the tops of the buildings. A Reuben, come to the big city for the visit of a lifetime. He’d better pay more attention to the bulge in the back pocket of his trousers.
354 West Forty-ninth was a small brownstone, five floors, probably two apartments to a floor. A nice building, clean-looking, but nothing fancy. She opened the street door, walked in, and up the flight of metal stairs to the second floor.
She stood for a moment in front of 2A. What would she say to Birdie? That the girl should be ashamed for frightening her mother while she enjoyed a little fling with the manager? For that matter, would Birdie even open the door?
One way to find out. Nell knocked, quietly at first, then louder. “Yeah, what is it?” came back at her. A man’s voice.
This was a mistake, a wild-goose chase. Fannie was such a dodo; she could have decided to have a little fun pulling Nell’s leg. She turned away, started for the stairs, but then heard the door open behind her. “Hey lady, you lookin’ for somebody?”
She turned back. The speaker was a young colored man with a nasty scar across his left cheek, wearing a shirt and trousers so bright, they hurt her eyes. Nell forced a bland smile. “I was looking for someone, but I guess I’m in the wrong place.”
“Somebody like who?”
“Mr…” She was going to say Tabor, but since the place supposedly was his, she threw out the first name that came to her mind. “Mr. Berlin.”
The man looked both suspicious and nervous. “Mr. Irving Berlin?”
“Why, yes. The songwriter. You’ve heard of him, then?”
Mistake. The man’s face tightened; he reached into his pocket. “I probably have the wrong address…” Nell’s voice failed as the man pulled a pistol from his pocket and pointed it at her. He motioned with the gun: come here.
She backed a step away, toward the stairs, but the man moved two steps out from the doorway. “Woman, get yourself on inside a there, and do it quick. I ain’t gonna tell you one more time.”
Was he bluffing? Nell decided not to test him. She walked past the man, and inside. He slammed the door, threw the lock.
She looked around. No one else in the room. To her right was a kitchen, to the left, a doorway that she thought probably led into a bedroom. The man still held the gun on her, standing just far enough away that he couldn’t miss hitting her if he fired, nor could she hope to grab his arm and wrestle away the gun—which was clearly a forlorn hope anyway, given the man’s size. “Okay, now, lady,” he said. “What is it you say you come here for?”
“You can put away the gun—”
“That ain’t for you to say. What is it you come here for?”
“Well, it’s a little embarrassing,” Nell said. “This is Apartment 2A? 354 West Forty-ninth?”
“What if it is?”
“That’s the address Mr. Berlin gave me. I was supposed to meet him here.”
“Yeah? That the truth?”
Nell nodded. “Yes.”
The man’s scowl deepened. He waggled the barrel of his gun toward an armchair. “Sit yourself down and stay sittin’, hear? Make one move, I gonna tie you in so tight you can’t even breathe. Move!”
Nell sat, smoothed her skirt.
The gunman walked across the room, pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket, then picked up the phone receiver and read a number to the operator, a number Nell recognized. Waterson, Berlin, and Snyder’s. As the man waited for the receptionist to pick up, he shifted from one foot to the other, all the while muttering under his breath. “Yeah, hello,” he finally growled. “I gotta talk to Mr. Berlin, it be real important…no, damn you, I ain’t tryin’ to sell him no songs. And don’t you go tellin’ me he ain’t there or like that. You don’t hook me right up with him, ain’t no way you gonna have you a job tomorrow.”
The man glanced at Nell; without saying a word, he warned her to stay put. Then he snapped to attention. “Oh yeah, hello. Mr. Berlin, sorry to be botherin’ you, but I got me a problem here. This woman, she knocked on the door and said she supposed to be meetin’ Mr. Irving Berlin…what she look like, you say?” The colored man stared at Nell. “I don’t know, nothing special. Medium-high, kind of old, she got some gray hairs…no, I didn’t get that, you want me to ask? Okay, hold a minute. The man lowered the receiver. “Woman, what you call yourself?”
“Eleanor Stanley. I work at Waterson, Berlin, and Snyder. That’s how I know Mr. Berlin, for heaven’s sake.”
“You hear that, Mr. Berlin? What? Hold on again, I’ll ask her.” He turned back to Nell. “He says what job you got at his place. He ain’t never heard of you.”
“I’m the new bookkeeper. I just started today.”
The man returned the phone to his ear. “You hear that?… Yeah, okay. I won’t let her outa the chair she be in. I got my rod on her, so she ain’t goin’ noplace. Yeah. ’Bye.”
The man hung up the telephone, settled into an armchair across from Nell, chortled. “Mr. Berlin be right on over, say he like to make your acquaintance.”
“I’ll be glad to meet him,” Nell said, then told herself she was foolish to waste irony on this man.
She was right. “I ain’t so sure about that,” he said.
“Can’t you at least put away the gun? It’s really getting me nervous.”
The colored man laughed again. “Long as you sit nice in that chair there and don’t do nothing to make me nervous, you ain’t got a thing to worry about. It all be up to you.”
Nell listened, then pointed toward the bedroom to her left. “Whoever you’ve got in there is crying.” She had a pretty good idea who that whoever was.
“What about it? Ain’t none a your business.” But Nell thought the man looked distressed, and the longer they sat and the longer the crying went on, the more uneasy he appeared. Finally, he got up, waved the pistol in Nell’s direction, then walked quickly to the doorway. “Something the matter?” he asked into the room. Nell couldn’t m
ake out the reply. “Well,” the man said. “I truly be sorry, but I can’t attend to you same time I got to be watching somebody out here. Wait’ll my boss comes, then I can loosen up your ties a little.” The man stomped back to his chair, his face like a storm cloud, and pointed the gun back at Nell.
“Why can’t you make that poor girl comfortable?” Nell asked. “Why do you need to be so cruel?”
The man exploded. “Damn you, woman! Didn’t I tell you, it ain’t none a your business? Now, shut up your mouth, you’re botherin’ me.”
Nell looked from the gun to the man’s face, tried not to linger on the scar. Better just sit quietly and wait to see what would happen when Berlin arrived. If the situation looked bad, she’d tell him her father knew she was here, and that Footsie Vinny was ready to go into action at any time.
Fifteen minutes passed. Nell heard a key in the lock of the door to the hall. The colored man also heard it—he went rigid, then jumped to his feet. The door swung open and a white man burst in, a pistol in his outstretched hand. The colored man’s eyes bulged. The white man fired once, twice. A look of wonder came over the colored man’s face. The gun dropped from his hand, then he swayed as if doing a grotesque dance, and folded onto the floor.
Nell flew out of her chair. “Mrs. Stanley,” the white man called after her. “Are you all right?”
But she was already in the bedroom, taking in the scene. Birdie, tied to a bed, directly beneath an open window. The girl’s face was wild with fear. “What happened, what happened?”
“It’s all right now.” Nell bent to undo the knot in the rope around the girl’s wrists, then, as Birdie rubbed her hands together, Nell whispered, “You’ve never seen me before, understand?”
Birdie nodded.
Nell untied her feet. As the girl swung around to sit on the edge of the bed, she noticed the white man standing in the doorway. Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, Mr. Tabor. What are you doing here?” She looked back at Nell, all questions.
Nell turned to Tabor. “Do you two know each other?”
Tabor smiled. “This is Birdie Kuminsky, Mrs. Stanley. Miss Kuminsky, Mrs. Eleanor Stanley. Our new bookkeeper.”
Birdie clutched at her throat. “But Martin’s the bookkeeper…oh no. No, no!” Screaming now.
“What’s happened to Martin?” Nell took her hand, squeezed it.
“I’ve got no idea,” Tabor said. “I haven’t seen him since he and Joplin ran away from the office after the murder.”
“Martin had nothing to do with that murder!”
Tabor coughed. “I don’t know whether he did or not, Miss Kuminsky. I only said that was the last time I saw him. And since we were without a bookkeeper or an assistant bookkeeper, I thought I’d better hire one.” He sucked at his upper lip. “As far as I know, Mrs. Stanley, there are no company books in this apartment that needed your attention. What are you doing here?”
“I was going to stop at the drugstore on my way home,” Nell said. And I happened to look up here, and I saw…Miss Kuminsky, is it? I saw her head sticking out the window, and as well as I could tell, she was calling for help.”
“Oh, yes. Yes.” Birdie practically jumped up and down. “I managed to get myself onto the end of the bed, and I thought if I could get somebody’s attention, maybe they’d get me out of here.”
Tabor’s face beamed with approval. “Smart girl.”
Oh boy, Nell thought. Smooth as silk. Young Niederhoffer’s going to have his hands full. “So, I came up and knocked at the door, and got more of a reception than I’d figured on.”
Tabor shook his head. “Whew. Another five minutes, and both Fannie and I would’ve been gone for the day. She ran into my office and told me someone was calling for Mr. Berlin, said it was very important, and would not take no for an answer. So I told her to put it through to me. Then, before I could even say my name, he was off and running, told me he had a woman up here who’d come to see Irving Berlin. I couldn’t imagine what was going on, but when he said he had a ‘rod’ on you, I thought I’d better come prepared. Good thing I did.” Tabor patted the bulge in his jacket pocket. “That’s no little popgun he’s got out there.”
During the last part of Tabor’s speech, Birdie’s eyes went wider and wider. When he finished, she charged full tilt into the living room. Nell and Tabor followed. The girl paused as she saw the colored man on the floor, then let out a wail, ran up to the body, fell to her knees, and threw her arms around the dead man’s shoulders. “You killed him,” she screamed back at Tabor. “What did you have to kill him for?”
Tabor snorted. “He was holding a gun on Mrs. Stanley.” Tabor nudged the pistol, on the floor, a few inches from Dubie’s outstretched hand. “You think I should have just let him shoot me? And her. And maybe you, too, while he was at it?”
“He wouldn’t have done that.” Birdie sobbed. “He just talked big.”
Tabor shook his head. “What the deuce is going on? Who is…was this guy? How did you get here?”
Nell reached a hand to Birdie, helped the girl to her feet, and over to the sofa. She rubbed at her wrists, then took a handkerchief from Nell and wiped at her eyes and face. “I don’t know. He got hold of me yesterday on my way in to work, pulled me behind the elevator and held a chloroform rag over my face. Next thing I knew, I was here. I was scared, ’cause I didn’t know what he was going to do, but then he got really nice.” The girl looked at Dubie’s body, started to cry again, noiselessly this time. “He called out for food for us, and we sat around, playing cards and talking. He said he was working for a big-time music publisher who was going to put out some of his tunes.”
“Did he say who?” Tabor’s tone was a jackhammer staccato.
She shook her head. “No.”
“That doesn’t help a lot.”
Enough, Nell thought. “Mr. Tabor, she can’t tell you what she doesn’t know. We need to call the police, but first, the girl is going to call her mother. The poor woman is worried sick.” Nell took Birdie’s hand, led her to the phone. “Tell your mother you’re all right, and that I’ll bring you home as soon as the police let us go.”
Birdie acknowledged the directive with a wan smile, then picked up the receiver and gave the number to the operator. She watched silently as Nell palmed a little slip of paper from the telephone table, and walked away. “Mr. Tabor…” Nell said.
“What?”
“I’m just wondering. How is it you have a key to this apartment?”
Tabor looked away, rolled his tongue against his cheek. “Well, all right, Mrs. Stanley, you’re a married woman. And working at W, B, and S, you’re bound to hear about it sooner or later. I keep this apartment because it’s convenient after I’ve gone to dinner and the theater. He cleared his throat. But I do have friends, and I get requests from them often enough that I keep an extra key. The day before yesterday, one of them asked whether he could borrow the room for a few days. I thought he was going to…well, you know.”
“I can imagine easily enough.”
“I think we have a problem, Mrs. Stanley.”
Birdie hung up the telephone.
“I think we do,” Nell said. And I think we’d better inform the police. Now.”
Tabor hesitated. “I’d hoped we might come up with a better idea. This will be terrible publicity for the firm.”
“I understand that. And if it weren’t for that dead man on the floor, I might go along with you. But I don’t think any of us should take the risk that one day we might need to explain why we tried to cover over a murder, even one so clearly justified. Now, will you call, or shall I?”
Tabor laughed, and walked toward the phone. “Mrs. Stanley, you make a strong argument.”
***
Detective Ciccone spent several minutes looking over Dubie Harris’ body, then straightened, stretched, groaned. “Floor gets lower every year, Charlie.”
Patrolman Flaherty produced a properly appreciative l
augh.
Great, Nell thought. We call the police and they send Weber and Fields.
Ciccone looked long and hard at Birdie and Nell, then turned up the intensity as he focused on Tabor. “You seem to be making a habit of coming across dead people. Two homicides inside of a few days, within a few blocks of each other, and the same man calls them both in. Quite a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”
Over Flaherty’s snicker, Tabor said, “Listen, Detective Ciccone—”
“That’s Sic-cone-E. Like the island, not something you put ice cream in. And I am listening, but I’m also thinking. You call in both murders. And Miss Kuminsky there gets a visit from me at home about the first one, and now she’s front and center at the second. You better watch it, Miss. You don’t want to be the feature attraction at the next event.”
Birdie sniffled, began to shiver. Nell wrapped an arm around her. “That’s not necessary, Detective. Not with what this girl’s been through the past couple of days.”
Ciccone treated Nell to a look that should have withered her, but she returned his glare with interest, and in the end it was the detective who looked away. “I’ll decide what’s necessary,” he said, but most of the starch was gone from his voice. “There are two men dead—”
“And one poor girl, kidnaped and frightened out of her wits,” Nell barked. “We all want to help you, but one more remark like that, and I’ll take Miss Kuminsky out the door and home. You will have to stop me by force.”
Ciccone chewed on his lip. “All right, Mrs. Stanley. Miss Kuminsky, I’m sorry I upset you. Please tell me what went on here. Start at the beginning.”
When Birdie finished, her account, Nell took over, and finally Tabor. Ciccone took it all in silently, here nodding, there raising his eyebrows at Flaherty. Then he addressed Nell. “Not that I doubt your word, Mrs. Stanley—but are you in the habit of looking two stories up as you walk along the sidewalk?”
“Of course not. But I thought I heard calls for help, and when I looked up to where they seemed to be coming from, I saw Miss Kuminsky, leaning out the window. She looked upset.”