by John Roeburt
Devereaux said, “It’s like being hit in the eye.” He found a straight chair and sat on the edge of it. The youth crossed the room, as if seeking the refuge of the farthest corner of it. He sat into an enormous gold-painted chair too deep for his size. Dust blew finely from the webbing below.
The youth said, “There is nothing I know to tell about Rocco. Why do the police come here to bother us about Rocco!”
Devereaux said, “He’s still missing. He’s your brother.”
The youth’s look disowned the blood-tie, but he said nothing.
Devereaux said, “The time that’s elapsed transfers the file from Missing Persons to Homicide. That’s my point of view on it.” His eyes fixed intently on Aldo’s face. There was no reaction; the youth accepted the thesis indifferently.
The detective continued, “Today’s questions proceed from a whole new tack. Rocco didn’t disappear as an independent and voluntary act. Something in his nature say, a quirk, a result of something in his private circumstance.” Devereaux shook his head. “There was nothing independent or voluntary about it. He was made to disappear. He was murdered, and his remains done away with.”
Aldo said, “What do you want of me?”
“Rocco’s life. Not the newspaper copy phase of it. But the intimate stuff only a brother and father can know. I want to know too.”
There was a lag in Aldo’s reply, and Devereaux said, “A motive for murder can be money, another motive can be hatred. You hated Rocco.”
There was a slight mocking lift to the brows. The youth said, “That’s never been a secret.”
“No,” Devereaux said. “It’s on record. Your attempt on him with a knife. But there’s no record of why. The why of your hatred for Rocco. The motive behind your violence against your brother. That was never gone into.”
The youth said, “It was gone into. At my arraignment.” A wan smile played. “Only I didn’t answer questions.”
“Answer them now,” Devereaux said. The tone struck the youth and he stared uncomfortably at the detective.
“Be stubborn, Aldo, and in the end you’ll lose. I’ve spent more than twenty years making questions produce answers. You can only cost me time. I won’t right now remark on the cost to you.”
The youth looked momentarily constricted, as if in sudden toils. A great vein broke the olive shine of his wide forehead and perspiration began to form. Devereaux watched it, intuitively seeking a gauge. Men, big men and sheerly masculine, were disturbing to this slight beautiful youth. Men were physical, gross, insensitive, rowdy, oppressive. More than to the sheer instance of Devereaux’s implied threat, the youth was reacting to remembered traumas, other encounters in his time and growth.
The detective watched the youth stamp down and control his emotion. After a while Aldo said, “Rocco was no damned good. He had the hatred; he hated us all. He stole from our mother; her grocery money so we’d go hungry. He struck her. At her burial, he came dressed in a loud sports jacket and a red tie. When the coffin was lowered and we all prayed, Rocco threw me into the grave. He laughed at the sacrilege. He ran at the Mourners laughing like a madman and tore the black bands off their sleeves. Rocco was big and strong, even as a boy, and people were afraid of him.” Aldo stopped, closed his eyes, and opened them again.
“Who had the hatred?” Aldo continued. He motioned a hand. “My father there in the kitchen. He was a bricklayer once. Up and down the scaffold; his legs were his life. Now his legs are sticks of wood. They won’t bend, they won’t move. They’ve been paralyzed for ten years. His spine was injured.”
Devereaux waited for the shocker. He could almost divine what was to come. Aldo said, “My father fell down a long flight of stairs. From our landing, to the fourth floor. An accident; he told the emergency ambulance people that it was an accidental fall. Too much wine, and a careless nearsighted man. My father told them it was an accident, over and over again, to the doctors, and the nurses, and to the police. He made me swear never to say it was anything but an accident. He’d cut me out of his heart, he’d take his life—I must never say anything else! I was made to swear on the Bible.”
Devereaux said, “Rocco was responsible?”
“Rocco threw my father down the stairs. My father had found a loaded gun in Rocco’s clothes. My father was on his way to see a Priest, to ask advice. Rocco was wild with anger.”
Devereaux said, “You make out quite a case against your brother.”
Aldo said, “The Tiger Man, the idol of the ring. People respected him, people worshipped him. What a joke.”
Devereaux studied the youth solemnly for a long moment. “No good marks?” he asked. “No good deeds, no better side to recommend him?”
Aldo said, “He left school at fourteen. He hated books, and people who read them. He tore up every book I brought home. I read by candlelight secretly; in the hall toilet. He was a bully and a thief. From fourteen until he began to box in Amateur Clubs, Rocco did errands for gangsters. He dreamed of becoming one. He idolized killers. He hung their pictures in his room. He stole cars, he drank, he gambled, he beat people for nothing—Any stranger he didn’t happen to like. He was accused of rape twice. The parents of the girls didn’t dare go to the police. They were afraid of Rocco. They came here, to my father, and my father went to the Priest. Rocco made one girl pregnant. He was sixteen then. He forced her to submit to an illegal abortion. Not by a doctor, but by a drunken janitress, a Mrs. Kusack.” Aldo paused, then added quietly, “Good marks, Mister? I’d only be lying.”
Devereaux said, “How about the later story of Rocco? When he found he could fight, when he found himself? He was up on top, a champion. Success, money, and applause—They sometimes change a man, mellow him. Make him want to atone for youthful sins.”
Aldo laughed shortly. “We’re in this tenement, where we’ve always been. My father needs constant medical treatment. I carry him in my arms, down five flights of stairs. I wheel him to the Free Clinic, twice a week. The papers say that Rocco’s purses totaled over a million dollars. We’re still in this tenement, Mister. I still wheel my father.”
“Rocco then never contributed any money?”
The question was superfluous, and there was no answer. Devereaux said, “Now about that assault with a knife six years ago.”
“My father had a fever. He would die, I thought. There wasn’t a penny; I’d lost my job. I sat here night after night with my father. Then I telephoned Rocco, to ask for help. He owed it to my father! Rocco wouldn’t come to the phone. He was packing to leave on an Exhibition Tour, his manager said. I went to Rocco’s apartment.”
“To kill him.”
The youth merely repeated, “I went to Rocco’s apartment. After that, Rocco had his revenge. He had influence, he was The Tiger Man. He pulled wires to get me the limit. I spent ten months in the Workhouse. My father spent ten months in a public hospital.”
Aldo closed his eyes, and then opened them. “You won’t have to beat or persecute me now. I’ve told you all I know to tell.”
Devereaux said, “How much of this is true, I wonder. And how much do you invent or hallucinate. In your characterization of Rocco, I mean.”
The youth looked at Devereaux queerly, but said nothing. The detective asked, “How do you support yourself and your father?”
The youth flushed. “Why do you ask me that?”
Devereaux’s brow drew shrewdly. “If the answer is going to embarrass you…”
Aldo said, “I can’t see where it is any of your business.”
Devereaux didn’t press the matter. He said, “Say Rocco is dead, it turns out that he’s dead. And without heirs, so far as you know. No wife, no progeny. Even no Last Will and Testament perhaps.” The detective’s eyes were close on the youth. “He’s made money; there might be an estate left behind. You and your father are next of kin. The money could pass to both of you. Would you take it?”
Aldo said, “I’d even fight to get it. I’d hire the best lawyer.”
<
br /> Devereaux smiled coldly. “I like honest, uninhibited answers. Now do the same for this one: did you murder Rocco?”
“No.”
“You had motive. Hatred from the cradle and since. The sacrilege at your mother’s grave. A lady I have no doubt you adored.”
“My mother was an angel, a beautiful angel.”
“And Rocco’s brutality toward you all those years. It had its effect on you, and having heard you talk, I know you’re bright enough to know it, Aldo. And then, the wanton crippling of your father, and leaving you the exclusive burden of it.” Devereaux paused, in a small awe before the motive of his next calculated remark.
“And that Workhouse stretch. The ten months. Rocco wanted justice, in full measure. You’d cut him up. But from what you’ve said today, other impressions I’ve received here, I guess Rocco to have had another idea in driving so hard for justice.”
Aldo seemed to contract and grow smaller in the great chair, as if he would vanish. Devereaux said, “Ten months in close confinement with men who were the dregs. The jokes at your expense, and the humiliation. You’d die every day, and Rocco knew it. He knew your sensitivity, your nature, what sort of an esthete was Aldo Starziani. It kept Rocco laughing out loud. It was probably the most fun he’d ever known. Motive to kill? You had the best!”
“All right, I murdered Rocco!” The vein in the wide forehead seemed to have an incandescent glow. “I dreamed of doing it. One dream, always the same. I decided to make it come true. Everybody has the right to one dream come true!”
Devereaux stared at the youth. It was the expected hysteria; the hour had taken its toll. Old ghosts returned, the sick yesterdays, and the remembered hurts…
The detective said quietly, “If you did murder Rocco, it will come out. But don’t wait on it, or on your luck. Come tell me about it, in a calmer time. You’ll save me time, and yourself pain.”
Devereaux got up to go. “I’m going to solve it, Aldo. The Tiger Man or his corpse—I’ll come up with one or the other.” His eyes held Aldo’s in a long look. “If I have to go the whole route, just to come back to you finally, you won’t find me this considerate. You’ll just be a killer who tried to get away with it. I’ll only think of you like that.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The huge picture window looked up to the Queensboro Bridge and down at the East River. It was twilight, in its infinite melancholia, and there were tints and splashes of purple in the sky like a slow spreading dye. The City was unusually still, as if observing a moment of silence. Automobiles on the bridge overpass drew a rigid line from Manhattan to Queens, as if a great power failure somewhere had stopped the Machine Age.
Devereaux watched a tugboat appear and pass, trailing its silhouette. It seemed to sail with an effortless grace, as if gliding over glass. It was black in the early shadows and his imagination painted it a vivid fireman’s red.
Her voice broke into his reverie. “Your drink, Johnny,” she said.
Devereaux took the glass held out to him. It was a highball. Her brows arched a question, and he took an experimental sip.
“Tastes fine,” the detective said. He smiled. “I wouldn’t know if it didn’t. I’m comparatively new to drink. New to vices generally.”
She looked a bit puzzled, and Devereaux had the sensation of. hanging foolishly on a limb. The lady was of an uncomfortably literal turn; his whimsicalities glanced off her.
She walked into the depths of the room, compact in her sheer hostess gown, ripe of figure, and very tall in platform slippers that had the shine of gold.
Devereaux found a chair across from where she sat. He set his drink down, carefully fixing a coaster under the glass, and turned to the business of his call.
“You’re a client, in a certain sense, Nina. So I’m here to make a progress report.”
She smiled at this. A brilliance of teeth, but her eyes unlaughing and impatient. Devereaux said, “My knowledge was slight, nothing virtually. The Tiger Man was a popular story, but somehow I hadn’t read it. So the best I’ve accomplished so far has been orientation. I know the popular story, I’ve begun to dig at the inside story.”
Devereaux saw her rapt interest and continued, “There’s a Hobie Grimes who managed Rocky Star. Hobie’s a sphinx who dotes on pain. He’s gone to pot, like a man in slow stages of dying. Why, what grief or guilt, I don’t know. I guess it to have to do with Rocky, but then, I’m only guessing.” The detective stopped with his eyes on Nina, straying over her. He was conscious of her flesh, the rich pneumasis, the whiteness of her skin. Her bosom was higher than the line of her gown, as if a hand in her bodice was cupping her breasts so that he could see and admire.
She saw his look, the line of it, and Devereaux had a guilty moment. But she smiled at him congenially, as if concerned more for his composure. There was no writhing of figure and adjustment of gown.
Devereaux continued his talk with the concealed hand in the bodice still cupping the breasts high for him to see and admire. “There’s a Max Toller whom I’ve yet to meet. Toller was The Tiger Man’s trainer. The story so far points up Toller as either very shrewd, or very insane. He’s kept Rocky’s apartment up, all these years The Tiger Man’s been gone. The apartment is as it was, everything in its place, not a pin moved. It’s a shrine, as if The Tiger Man is dead.”
Nina looked frightened, and Devereaux nodded understandingly. “I know. The Tiger Man dead is bad for you. Bad for your son. Verification of your marriage becomes tougher, maybe even goes out the window forever.” He stopped, wondering whether to rally her or speak his thoughts honestly.
She read his indecision and said acutely, “Johnny, don’t fib or equivocate, to spare me. No matter how hopeless it is for me, I want to know.”
“I have no basis for believing Rocky dead. No real basis.”
“But that’s what you think!”
Devereaux nodded slowly. “I do, because a detective must. A missing man is a will-o’-the-wisp, a wraith in the universe, a charade. Especially after five years. No crime’s been committed. Ostensibly, anyhow. There’s no fire under you; no great pressures to get out and do. You ask questions around politely; you say thank you to doubletalkers and liars. You bog down in futility, you put the file away, you move over to a new case.”
The detective continued, “But look for a corpse, and you can make out. There’s a difference, Nina; your investigation has muscle and gut. You shove politeness. You turn people inside out. And people expect it; every last principal in the circle. They act for you, they react for you. They’re disturbed, they’re involved, they’re guilty, they’re scared. You make time, you make headway. The magic word is murder!”
Nina’s eyes were intense. She was staring at him in a close examination. As if she now saw something in Devereaux that compelled her to. A seam had opened, and his deep insides were revealed. His force, the obstinate biting quality of it, and his rage, the remarkably personal nature of it.
Devereaux said, “Two suspects then, for my purposes. And there is a third suspect. Aldo Starziani, a brother of Rocky’s. He’s twenty-three, odd, at odds with the world. He had motive enough to do torture and mayhem, let alone kill. I won’t go into detail; you’d be depressed for weeks. It’s that sordid a story. Anyhow, Aldo did have a go at his brother once. With a knife. One try that failed. There could have been a second try that succeeded.”
A silence ensued and they sipped their drinks slowly, with patent relish, in a pretense at separate relaxation. But they looked at each other now and again, covertly and self-consciously, both of them. And when their eyes met, it was something as close as the first tingling moment of discovery and embrace.
Devereaux finished his drink in a gulping swallow, then stared into the bottom of his glass as if glimpsing tomorrow in the convex illusion of the base. He could hear his heart and feel his blood. He saw her face in the round frame of the glass bottom. The wetness glinted tints of rainbow color, and he was staring into a toy kaleidoscope. He cou
ld see her fragmented, like a teasing abstraction, all of her, her face and the brilliant white of her teeth, the cupped breasts, and her flesh, those parts of it he fondled in his mind’s eye…
He set his drink down and smiled across to her. She saw him too, in her own way, and Devereaux knew it. He could tell, by eye, by sense, and by the charge in the room. Their polite formality had been breached; the cold impersonal partnership in the venture they shared.
Devereaux said, “Anything you want to tell?”
She touched fingers to her brow, then closed and opened her eyes as if freeing her vision. She nodded slowly, “Yes, there is something.” A shadow crossed her face. “I’m still being followed. Everywhere I go, I feel eyes on my back. I try to see who. Catch one glimpse! I try to be very clever about it. I run suddenly, for half a block, then stand hidden in doorways. I turn corners, and stop and wait. On Department Store escalators…” She stopped, making a helpless sign.
Devereaux said, “There is somebody following you, on my instructions.” He watched her look of surprise. “An operative, to protect you. The roughing-up you got; those welts and bruises. I don’t want you hurt any more.”
She showed relief, and Devereaux said, “Even right now, there’s a man downstairs.” He smiled. “It’s day and night. You won’t have much privacy.”
Her brow creased and she started with a sudden thought. “Johnny, the cost!”
“Hardly anything,” Devereaux minimized.
“But an operative, day and night.” She looked to Devereaux narrowly. “And from what I know about you now, the thorough person you are—There are other great costs, other operatives, wages to pay.”
Devereaux said, “I’ve got money, gobs of money. I’m a pampered TV star. But don’t make me brag.”
He watched her go to her purse, and find a checkbook. Soon she pushed the check at him insistently. “I’m in the top brackets too, Johnny. Running parts, more calls than I can handle—I’m the pet of a half-dozen directors. And how the money adds up. But don’t make me brag.”