by John Roeburt
A beat later, Devereaux said, “The social worker’s outlook is fine, but for the social worker. The myth he creates gives him tenure on the job, and a nice sense of Christianity with his Friday paycheck. But it accomplishes nothing, confuses everything. Thugs, rapists, and plain killers become simple social unfortunates. We don’t deal with them…we’re too busy reaching for the crying towel. We get up maudlin probation reports on vermin that can make a Warner Brothers movie scenario without the change of a word. The criminal is a dog, but somehow also a hero. Ground down by watered gruel, tattered kitchen linoleum and a hole in his sock—He’s not to blame. Pity him only, let Society take the rap! Let’s be animals in one big cage. Never quarantine the sick, never put him to death for the greater good. Wallow, all of us, in the same pen, until the infection is universal…”
Devereaux paused and his eyes glinted hostilely at Solowey. The portly detective was denying Devereaux’s thesis by shaking his head. Devereaux said, “Saint Rocky! To me, his evolution from scum signifies only one thing. Rocky wanted to buy himself a night’s sleep. The sheer hunger for respectability wasn’t special to Rocky. It’s in all of us, to different degrees. Rocky wasn’t remaking his stamp. He was just making erasures, so his record wouldn’t look so bad.”
Solowey said, “A harsh judgment, Devereaux. In light of the things we’ve discovered about Rocky Star.”
“He bought Mamie Regan a gas station. He’d only widowed her! He walked out on Damon Marco. There I say Rocky merely tried to jettison an exploiter. I don’t see the gates of heaven opening, Solowey.”
“He endowed a Boys’ Club,” Solowey said unexpectedly and impressively. “This is the prodigious life credit I have unearthed! On the lower East Side, Devereaux. For all the Rocco Starzianis, of every race and creed. A fine building, with a gymnasium and a swimming pool.”
Devereaux gaped his absolute surprise and Solowey continued, “It was done covertly, without publicity or fanfare. The anonymous patron, so far as it could be. A one-hundred thousand dollar Foundation, administered by the firm of Gerhardt and Walsh, Attorneys.” Solowey’s gaze now was just a little blurred. A moistening on the eyes, like tears. “One hundred thousand dollars, Devereaux. The sum Rocky could have given Marco, to save his hands. Perhaps even…to save his fife.”
Devereaux asked, “Did the Foundation grant predate Marco’s demand?”
Solowey shook his head. “It postdated it. Rocky had one hundred thousand dollars at the time of his trouble with Marco. The Foundation arrangements were completed three months later.”
After a moment Solowey spoke again, gently taking Devereaux to task. “Sinner and Saint. It is Everyman, Devereaux. The good and the bad in one mixture. But you misjudge this one man, Rocky Star. You stand rooted in your bias. He wasn’t merely buying a night’s sleep, as you say. His wish for himself was greater. It was the wish for health, the health drive. The need to overthrow the bad, and enthrone the good. He found salvation in his fists. He found the power to become a human being.”
“Philanthropy, Solowey. But not a dime to a paralytic father.”
“In time,” Solowey said surely. “This immediate thing was hardest for Rocky to do. But he was already doing it, Devereaux, through these other deeds. In time, Rocky would give directly to his own people. In time, Rocky would not, need to obscure his motives from himself.”
Devereaux came out of a frowning silence. “I don’t give so much of a damn as this heat we’re generating. Who or what was Rocky, is beside the point. Where is Rocky is our job. A Cop becomes a philosopher, he grows fat on the brain. His hands fall off and his eyes go blind. He’s not in this world, he’s in a reverie. Now, are you up to practical talk?”
Solowey smiled for a moment as if savoring his next speech. “Practical enough even perhaps to solve the riddle of The Tiger Man.” He added quickly, “Not the metaphysical riddle, Devereaux, but the police riddle.”
Devereaux said in bridling tones, “If that’s so, why these ten awful minutes of cant? Dammit, Solowey, we’re not boys in the fraternity clubhouse.”
“We wait on time,” Solowey said mysteriously, fumbling in a waist-pocket. “You cannot up and go, no matter how the ants anguish your backside.” He produced a paper and unfolded it methodically. “You must wait at a designated telephone. The zero hour is 3:00 P.M.” He handed the paper to Devereaux.
Devereaux read the note. It said: Hobie Grimes will telephone Devereaux, 3:00 P.M., Corning 9-3400.
Solowey said, “My own handwriting, Devereaux. I got the message, among others, from my Telephone Service.” He read his watch. “A more than three-hour wait.” He smiled slightly. “We can be boys in the fraternity clubhouse, or detectives on tenterhooks. Choose.”
Devereaux stared at his partner. “Maybe solve the riddle of The Tiger Man, you said. Weren’t you wishing out loud?” He waved the paper. “This only means Hobie Grimes wants telephone contact with me.”
Solowey said significantly, “A hysterical Hobie Grimes, even more complicated than that day you descended on him and frightened him into flight. A man who howls into telephones like a dog baying at the moon.”
“How do you know that?”
“Hobie sought contact with you all day yesterday, through an outside person. He was told where to reach you. My telephone number was given.”
Devereaux guessed, “The columnist Brett Carter. Hobie called the Times-Herald. Carter spoke to him, then called you.”
Solowey nodded, and Devereaux said grinningly, “Poor Carter. He’s now probably got the hackles compounding his other miseries. He swore neutrality…to be neither friend nor foe of man or fish.”
Solowey said, “Carter has re-examined questions of personal safety.” He winked to Devereaux. “He now insists a guard be assigned to him. I confessed to him that the guard had never been removed. In thanking us, he called us a pair of double-dealing scoundrels.”
Devereaux fell into silence. He found his watch and wound it vigorously, as if to hurry the afternoon. A three-hour wait, from noon sharp to three. Here or elsewhere, but a three-hour wait. An agony of waiting, he knew. He could tell by the skin pulling unbearably tight at the sides of his temples…
He glanced over to Solowey. The portly detective had materialized a paper-covered book from somewhere, was deep in it, his brow absorbed and his body relaxed. Devereaux read the title. The Writings of Spinoza.
He conquered a need to seize the book and fling it.
He read his watch again. It was 12:01.
Part 2.
They formed a single file in depth. Devereaux inside the wallpapered bedroom, his still frame filling the narrow doorway, and Solowey to the rear of him in the outside hall. Behind Solowey, brushing closely against the massive wall of the detective, was a lady in a house-keeper apron. Her hair was white like silk from the cocoon, and her face was bony without flesh. Old, and frail, but she stood straight and tall. Her eyes sought into the room, as if through the bulk of Solowey, or around him. Then her hands and eyes importuned the detective as the querulous look she wore slowly became a look of dread.
Solowey tried to lead her down the hall, away from the door and the chance to view. And then, finding some resistance, he stood implacably beside her.
Inside the room, before Devereaux, was a Jenny Lind sleigh-bed with a crocheted spread on it. The bed held an occupant in uncanny arrangement. He lay across its width, flat on it bodily, the triangular toes of his shoes touching a wall. His head was off the bed, suspended in space over the floor, and impossibly loose as if his neck was broken. His eyes stood big, and the eyelids could not be seen. The angle of his head threw his mouth to one side, all of it in a line with one cheek. He was fully dressed except for his coat. He was Hobie Grimes. He was dead.
Devereaux craned forward, stooping slightly, with his nostrils scenting. The smell of poison was unmistakable. It reeked from the mouth, it was strong in the atmosphere.
He heard the heavy tread behind him and the whine of the f
loorboards. From his low position on the springs of his knees, he twisted to see Solowey try to fit into the room and close the door in successive and fluid maneuvers.
The cry in the outside hall was sudden and unnerving. A low cry it was, in the smallest breath, but lingering. As if sent through a long funnel.
The detectives found her prone in the outside hall. Still, with her face turned to the bedroom, and her eyes fixed on the face of Hobie Grimes.
Devereaux tried her pulse, and then other tests known to him. As he worked, his head was shaking from, side to side, telling the inescapable conclusion.
Solowey said in sick tones, “I was afraid for her. Her age. The shock of Hobie. Frail as she was, how strong could her heart be…”
Devereaux said, “She’s dead. A coronary attack. But I’m not a doctor…”
Solowey was on his way down the single flight of stairs. There was a telephone in the main hallway. The telephone stood on a Victorian whatnot. There were Dresden cherubs on the whatnot; And cherubs in Bisque. A gold cherub in aerial pose hung high on a main wall. A bronze cherub on a tall mahogany stand stood at the head of the staircase. There were ancestor portraits in circular gold frames everywhere on the downstairs walls and up the flight of stairs. The house was in Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn, New York. It was a bare century old. Its owner had been Martha Grimes, age seventy-six, widow and retired librarian. Martha Grimes, mother of Hobie Grimes.
Part 3.
The Buick slid through the streets that had seen and lost an ancient aristocracy of gentlemen and gentlewomen. There were old carriage-houses standing, with broken lanterns on their faces like dead eyes. Red brick they were, like the once fine homes around, but now gray with a mildewed look to them. The streets were asphalt, modern and ribbony smooth under the wheels of the Buick, but the cobblestone that had been was good too, good to remember and even cherish. There were people around, standing and moving on every street, and showing the proprietary airs of residents and owners. But with a new come-lately look to them and even some self-consciousness, as if in some deep and subtle understanding of it, they felt themselves intruders. They were men and the women of today and tomorrow, with chromium faces and assembly dress, with a fabric dream of prefabricated houses. In them to store their own custom and souvenir and memorabilia, from Woolworth’s and Saks and I. J. Fox. Here they were only caretakers of a tradition that was not truly their own.
The Buick quit Brooklyn Heights at its Fulton Street border and Devereaux read the arrow guides that routed traffic to the Brooklyn Bridge for the crossing into Manhattan.
Now in these other environs, talk between the detectives commenced as if the shift of geography had broken the spell of silence between them.
Devereaux said, “Strychnine’s my guess about the kind of poison. But we’ll wait on Chemical Analysis.” A shadow crossed his face. “The question we’ll have to answer for ourselves is tougher. Was the poison self-administered, or forced down Hobie’s throat?”
Solowey said, “The main door to the house secured by an inside lock. And Martha Grimes at the parlor front window. Stationed there as we ourselves found her when we came, Devereaux. No fire-escape in the rear, and no ladder. Ivy vines on the rear wall and a rose trellis too spindly for a footing-. And too far below Hobie’s bedroom window. A roof hatch, also locked from the inside.” He shook his head dubiously. “Only a human fly…”
Devereaux said impatiently, “The locked room is an idiot fancy I leave to fiction writers, Solowey. A killer finds entrances and exits. Like a rat finds a hole. I take that for granted, Solowey. Modus operandi can wait. I don’t make an intellectual exercise of murder. I don’t waste time searching for passageways, secret doors, and sliding panels. I look for the killer.”
“If Hobie Grimes has been murdered.”
“He had something to confess. He made that clear on the phone with me this afternoon. He’d had enough. Enough of hiding out, enough of his secrets. He was in a state. Somebody shut him up.”
Solowey said, “Or Hobie Grimes silenced Hobie Grimes.”
Devereaux said slowly, “That too could be.”
“Sick with something, as you know, Devereaux. And a man who had fallen from a high place, fallen from pride. A drunkard who had once made a passion of abstinence. It is a classical suicide pattern… Solowey stopped and unwrapped a parcel that lay on his lap.
Soon the portly detective resumed, “We can be sure of one thing, Devereaux. Whatever afflicted Hobie Grimes, it was not the guilt of murder.”
Devereaux nodded somberly. “I’m in agreement there. I don’t now think Hobie murdered his Champion.” He glanced over to the article Solowey was holding. It was a wide belt, handsomely ornamented and set with precious stones.
Solowey said, “A diamond championship belt.” He read an inscription, and then generalized it. “Awarded to Rocky Star, Athlete of the Year, by the National Association of Sportswriters.”
Devereaux said, “Hobie had it in a top bureau drawer. Along with a stack of pictures and news clippings.”
“Sentimental keepsakes. Close to his reach. So close to his reach, Devereaux. Like a shirt, or a tie.”
“A daily act of reverence.” Devereaux’s head nodded. “Hobie had his own shrine. A portable one, more compact than Toller’s. The diamond belt, and those snapshots and news clippings. Sentimental keepsakes, just as you say. And it all spells out one thing for sure. That Rocky Star is dead.”
They were in the middle of the bridge now. From below, down on the river, a steam whistle sounded. A tugboat, or a fireboat. It was deep-throated and mournful.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Part 1.
The wall had no summit and she stood on the other side of it. Now even more surely, for the hour they had passed. They were strangers, proving it through intimacy. And the halves of them that could never engage stood apart, looking on in cold examination.
Devereaux raised up on an elbow, sate yet urgent, both at once. She smiled up to him. An outside smile, not from the deep manufactory of her womanhood. And standing on her face for the moments that it did, it became the painted smile of caprice to Devereaux.
The silence grew, and the estrangement, and they drew close again, in a common shield against the embarrassment of it. And then, her mouth was eager, more than before. But not her need now, only her wish. That the whole of them could engage.
As Devereaux wished it too.
For all the things he was pushed to say, he said nothing. The woman close in his arms yet beyond him…the situation was new and old. Now only the urgency left over, to be locked away in reticence. And then back to himself, with the shell hard around him. And all of this forgotten, tomorrow after tomorrow. He had no desire to understand it, or fix the blame.
The self-flagellant finding his psyche with thrusting pins…it was not his style. And finding the woman in her own depths…no to that too. He had no zests for the enigma. Nor talent for the quest. Love cooled in research, talked to death. Don Juan in Bohemia making memoranda on Woman…love compressed into a brochure. Brain, and disembodiment…
The ringing telephone came as a reprieve to both of them. Devereaux found the light cord of a pottery lamp. He watched Nina sit up, pull the sheet to her neck and pick up the telephone on the nightstand beside her. After a moment she passed the receiver over to Devereaux.
“It’s for you, Johnny. It’s Mr. Solowey,” she said.
An expression flickered across the detective’s face. Annoyance, of a degree. And sensitivity, for Nina. It was 1.00 A.M. Solowey was a voyeur with the telephone his device for peeping.
Solowey’s account of the call acquitted him. There had been other calls first, with this one a last resort. The news was great, it could not wait. A corpse in an upstate marsh. The Tiger Man. Purportedly The Tiger Man.
Devereaux got busy with his clothes, glad to resume the role he played best, knew best.
At the door later, in a good-by, there was the merest regret in her look to hi
m. She wore the sheet over her in a loose drape, with a hand holding the opening fast. Her skin was dead white, in an unusual pallor for her. She was in bare feet, low to his eye, and now generally smaller and more like a girl than the womanly photograph of her he carried in his mind.
He could not smile good-by to her. He had a great fear the smile might look cavalier. He instead craned down to kiss her gently on the brow.
Part 2.
Crossbars of searchlights lighted the area. The lights were trained down to the bog from the heights around, and their hard blue light formed moons within moons. In the center of it where the marsh was deep and slimy, a complex of men in boots high to the thigh worked with the handicap of primitive tools and scoops. But they were remarkably efficient, for the improvisation, and their faces in the blue overcast were free of wonder and the eerie horror of it. They were men inured, trained to the job, and dispassionate. Around the rim of the marsh stood the officials, some local to the Catskill township, and others from the Metropolis that was more than one hundred miles away. One man impressed his authority over all. He was Anders, Captain Anders of the Homicide Bureau, Manhattan County, New York City. A short, wiry man with a nasal shout and Napoleonic arms. He stood on a box on the lowest plateau, not braving the marsh, only the splattering.
On a high reach remote from the activity, were Devereaux and Sam Solowey. From this perch, the complex in the distant below looked like a night chorus of zombies in some fearful ritualism.
Solowey said, as if the intelligence bore repetition here at the scene itself, “It was an anonymous tip, phoned in to Captain Anders.”
A moment later, Solowey repeated an earlier caution, “It’s Anders’ show tonight, and we’re outsiders, Devereaux. The Tiger Man’s an old canker with him. Rival with Anders here and now, he’ll explode.”
Devereaux nodded in understanding. The post-midnight police motorcade from Manhattan to Phoenicia proved Anders’ mood and motive. And even malice. Other anonymous tips through the years, across country or in the New York Hinterland, had been duly relayed to the locals in charge. This competition now, as much as it was, was the inevitable result of his, Devereaux’s, revitalization of a case once marked closed. Anders, a good policeman withal, was responding to a most normal human fear. Not to be shaded, or outshone, or overshadowed by a whilom colleague now free-lancing behind the dubious cover of the Sam Solowey private license.