“You’ve never killed before because you’re afraid of the consequences, but the taking of a life doesn’t bother you morally. You’re one of those people who doesn’t see other people as human beings but only as objects to be manipulated. Now that you see you can get away with it, it gets easier. People are stupid, anyway. You’re so bright that they’ll never catch you, never even suspect you. It’s hard not to laugh in their faces as the police go around investigating these crimes. And, after all, each killing is a necessity. These people have to be eliminated to keep your secret.”
“What secret?” I asked.
“Ah,” Brass said, wiggling a finger at me, “that would be telling.” He turned to Sandra. “The Professor,” he said, “do you have his phone number?”
She nodded. “I do.”
“Call him. Ask him to come join us.”
“Now?”
“If possible.”
“All right. I don’t know whether he’ll be up yet, but I’ll give it a shot.” Sandra went to the phone.
“He’ll be right over,” she said, coming back to the table. “And he didn’t even ask why.”
“Good,” Brass said.
“But I will.” She came over to Brass’s chair and stared down at him. “Why?”
“Because I’ve decided that you need an Uncle Andrew.”
“Oh,” she said. “Why?”
“I have a theory,” he told her. “And a sort of a plan.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“Wait until the Professor gets here. Then we can all go over it together.”
The Professor walked into the dining room twenty minutes after he was called. Sandra had retired to her bedroom to get dressed, and she rejoined us when the Professor came in.
“What’s the pitch?” the Professor asked, settling into the chair across from Brass by the head of the table and accepting a cup of coffee from Garrett. “Lucille tells me you need me to get her mom out of a jam. I figure I owe Amber a little something over the years, so here I am.”
“Let’s stick to one set of names,” Brass suggested, “it’s less confusing.”
“I like ‘Lucille’ better than ‘Sandra,’ the Professor said. “But then I’ve always been something of a traditionalist. So ‘Mary’ and ‘Sandra’ it is then. Hello, Sandra. Now, what’s the pitch?”
“Mary has been kidnapped,” Brass told him. “We need the help of someone bright and quick-witted to help try to keep her alive until we can find her. So here you are.”
“You want some buckwheat pancakes?” Garrett asked. “I still have some batter left.”
“I never eat before lunch,” the Professor told him. “But a jigger of cognac in this coffee would be welcome.”
Garrett produced a bottle of Martell and the professor held out his cup. Then he turned back to Brass. “Just what is it you want me to do?”
“You are to be Sandra’s Uncle Andrew.”
“Mary’s brother?”
“Presumably.”
“Fine. Why?”
Brass poured himself another cup of coffee and told the Professor what had happened, and what was about to happen by the bison enclosure in the Menagerie.
The Professor listened closely, and nodded thoughtfully when Brass finished the tale. “Do you have any idea of who’s doing this?” he asked.
“A very good idea.”
“Who?” the Professor asked. “And why?”
Brass thought for a second and then sort of nodded to himself. “It’s time,” he said. “Mind you, I have no proof to take to a jury, or even to the police, but I’m certain I’m right.”
“One person is doing all of this?” Sandra asked. “Killing people and holding my mother and demanding money and everything?”
“Even so,” Brass told her.
Sandra took a deep breath. “Who?”
“Our kidnapper and killer is almost certainly K. Jeffrey Welton.” Brass paused for a second and looked at each of us. “As to why, that’s complicated, but I think I have most of it figured out.”
Sandra started to say something, but then closed her mouth and just stared. Garrett and I just tried to look impassively wise.
“The kid producer?” the Professor asked.
“Himself.”
“You pretty sure of this? What makes you think so?”
“As I said, I don’t have enough to have him arrested. At the moment if I were to accuse him of anything in print, he could sue me for libel. But with your help, we’re going to fix that.”
“Yes, but why him?”
“You don’t have to convince a jury,” I told Brass. “Just convince us.”
“I wondered about him from the day he came to the office to tell us about the reward,” Brass said. “He was just too interested. But that didn’t prove anything. If curiosity were a sin, then the ferry across the Styx would carry boatloads of journalists. Which it may anyway, if you consider—”
“No digressions,” Sandra told him. “On with the story.”
“Right. I became convinced it was him when we went to his office to talk to him and his brother, Edward. It was two things: Foxy and the note.”
“Yes?”
“Foxy fit the description of the man who accompanied the woman when Mary’s apartment in Brooklyn was searched.” Brass turned to me. “Did you find a photograph of the team?”
“Yes,” I told him. “It’s on your desk at the office.”
“Is his partner a tall blond?”
“That’s right.”
“What about the note?” Sandra asked.
Brass closed his eyes. “‘I have your bonds,’” he recited. “‘Give ten thousand dollars to Alexander Brass—used money—he will be told where to go.’”
“Signed ‘Criminal at Large’,” I added.
Brass nodded. “He didn’t think it through,” he said. “There’s no backup allowed for.”
“What sort of backup?” Sandra asked.
The Professor nodded. “I see what you mean. Suppose you had turned it down?” he asked. “Refused to play? There’s no provision for that.”
“Anyone who didn’t know he was going to be there when the offer was made to me would have wanted to make sure that I’d take the job, or that he’d know right away if I turned it down,” Brass said. “The note would have said ‘Have Brass mention Mary’s name in his column if he accepts’ or ‘Put red stripe across poster outside theater’ or something. K. Jeffrey didn’t think of that because he’d be there when the offer was made. He was confident of his own persuasive ability, and besides, he would know immediately if I turned it down anyway, and he could make other plans. Someone who wasn’t there couldn’t.”
“Why did he want to use you in the first place?” Sandra asked.
“I can’t be sure, but probably because he was stealing from his own brother. He wanted somebody in the middle, between them.”
“So if he was the thief, what happened to Billie Trask, and why the reward?” I asked.
“Why not offer a reward that he knew he’d never have to pay?” Brass asked. “I’m afraid that Billie Trask is dead.”
“He killed that sweet girl?” Sandra asked.
“Probably not,” Brass said. “My guess is that a botched abortion killed Billie.”
“Doctor Pangell!” I said.
“Right. The scenario, as I see it, is that K. Jeffrey was Billie’s secret lover. Remember the way that letter from her friend Jemmy was phrased? ‘He sounds like a big boy who’s had a lot more practice with girls like you than you have with guys like him.’ That sounds like an older man. If it was a stage-door romance the other girls would know about it. But K. Jeffrey could insist that the affair be kept quiet for all sorts of seemingly logical reasons. My guess is that he got her pregnant, which is why she left the chorus and was moved to the front office. He couldn’t possibly marry her. What would the family think? He’d be disowned. So he arranged with Doctor Pangell for an abortion. Whether the doctor performed th
at service regularly or whether he was obliging Welton is something we’ll have to find out. The abortion went bad, and the girl died. I wouldn’t be surprised if we find her body somewhere on the grounds around Pangell’s house.”
“And Welton killed Pangell in a fit of rage,” I suggested.
“Probably Pangell tried to blackmail Welton. That’s the problem with being thought to be rich, people see you as a source of large sums of money.”
“How could Pangell blackmail Welton if he performed an abortion? He couldn’t tell anyone?”
“Well, one possibility is that he would claim that Welton brought the girl to him after Welton tried and botched the abortion himself. That may even be what happened.”
“And ever since then,” Sandra suggested, “he’s been killing people to cover up that first murder.”
“That’s it. Lydia, the roommate, must have known who Billie was dating; may even have known she was pregnant. Whether she threatened to tell, or made the mistake of assuring K. Jeffrey that she wouldn’t tell, she was a threat. And one of the girls must have consulted Madam Florintina the astrologist.”
“But what about the robbery?”
“Ah!” Brass said. “The robbery gave Welton an alibi: Billie Trask isn’t dead, she has run off with the box-office receipts.”
“But what about his brother’s bonds?”
“It was too good an opportunity to miss. A chance to score on his brother and to pick up a little extra cash to keep his show running.”
“I thought it was a hit,” Sandra said.
“That’s what he wants you to think. Welton’s been papering the house. If he can keep the show running for, oh, say two hundred performances, it’ll look enough like a hit to convince his family that he’s a success and, coincidentally, to convince future backers that he’s a producer who can make hits.”
“Why did he kidnap Mom?” Sandra asked.
“Because she knows, or he thinks she knows, the truth.”
“Then why not just kill her?”
“I think I have that figured out. She has him convinced that your ‘Uncle Andrew’ shares that knowledge with her, or possibly has a letter from her to open if she disappears. Something like that. He has to keep her alive until he can deal with ‘Uncle Andrew.’”
We thought this over. “You’re doing a lot of guessing in there,” the Professor said.
“True,” Brass admitted. “But it all hangs together.”
“It sounds to me like you have a gut feeling that this guy did it, and you’re pulling in all these reasons to show why you might be right.”
Brass considered that. “You might be right,” he said. “It did start with what you call a gut feeling.”
“Well,” the Professor said. “I’ve learned to trust gut feelings. What do we do now?”
“We go to the Central Park Menagerie and visit the bison,” Brass told him. “If I’m right, we’ll find out soon enough. If I’m wrong, well, we’ll find that out, too. Either way we have a good shot at catching a killer.”
“How?”
“I can’t give you an exact plan, that will have to await the event. But here’s what we have to do…”
20
The day was bleak and dreary, with a dark sky overcast with hints of impending drizzle. The gray of the apartment buildings blended into the gray of the horizon, until it all seemed equally distant and equally dismal. We entered Central Park at 59th and Sixth and walked the curved pathways east to the Menagerie. It was a few minutes before noon when we reached the path that fronted the bison enclosure.
Brass and Sandra and the Professor and I walked in a tight group, presenting a solid front against the unknown. Garrett was about a hundred paces behind, so that he could keep us all in view and see whether anyone we passed was taking an undue interest in us. What he intended to do to such a person, I have no idea, but it was somehow comforting to know there was someone guarding our backs.
The path fronting the bison enclosure ran north-south. The phone booth was on the right side of the enclosure, where a second path forked off to the east. We stood around the booth for less than a minute before the phone rang.
Brass answered with a cautious “Hello?”
“Yes, this is he… I have the money with me… Wait a second, there is one thing… Yes I can make terms, if you want the money… Mary’s daughter is with me, and her brother, Andrew. They need proof that Mary is alive and well before we pay you… Hold on, Andrew wants to talk to you.”
Brass passed the phone to the Professor, who took a deep breath and began: “Hello?… This is Andrew Cuttingham. I won’t ask who you are… Yes I am… Amber Bain, the woman you know as Mary, is my sister… Well, if you want the money I need to know that she is all right… I’m not going to mention any names, sir, but I know who you are and what you have done… Yes, I read the letter. I read it and burned it, so it is all in my head now. I have not told anyone of its contents. I will endeavor to keep your secret if and when you release my sister… You have my word that neither of us will reveal what we know if you release her… If you can prove to me that she is all right, and can guarantee that you will release her, I will personally double the payment… That’s right… I am Andrew Cuttingham of Cuttingham Basil and Brand, Two-twenty-six Broad Street. Everyone knows that my word is my bond, sir.”
The Professor stood silent for a long moment, and then hung up the phone. “He disconnected,” he said.
“Well?” Brass said.
“You were right, Mary evidently told him she had given me—Uncle Andrew—some kind of letter. He said he’ll think it over and get in touch with us. He sounded annoyed.”
“Did he say anything about my mother?” Sandra asked.
“He said he wasn’t prepared to bring her to a phone, but he’d have her with him next time.”
“Do you think she’s still all right?” Sandra asked.
The Professor patted Sandra on the shoulder. “I’m sure she’s okay.”
“The question is,” Brass said, “did he take the bait? Is he going to believe that you burned the letter?”
“Let’s hope so,” the Professor said. “In his arrogance, and his belief that no one else is as smart as he is, I think he’ll buy it. Is he going to try to kill me? I’d bet on it.”
“I thought you were going to give him your home address,” Brass said, “so we could stake it out.”
“This is better,” the Professor told him. “An active brokerage office with me sitting there in plain view. He won’t be able to resist.”
“Is that a real office address?” I asked.
“Well, not exactly,” the Professor told me, “but it sure looks like one.”
* * *
We left the park and took a taxi downtown. Two-twenty-six Broad Street was one of the imposing buildings built when it looked like the good times were going to go on forever, and there would never be any such thing as too much office space. It was probably much less than fully rented now, but in the ground-floor corner offices—which now called themselves Cuttingham Basil & Brand, Institutional Brokerage—there was no sign that there had ever been a crash.
“Well,” Brass said as we got out of the cab and admired the gold-on-black sign over the doorway. “So this is the big store.”
“The latest,” the Professor told him. “Let me show you around.” As we went through the door we were aware of a buzz of activity all around us. Telephones were ringing, teletype machines were typing, ticker-tape machines were ticking, a large black tote board across the back wall was registering constantly changing stock names and prices, and busy, well-trained people were engaged in their employment. The joint radiated competence, honesty, purposefulness, and a feeling of realized wealth. There were several well-dressed men and women who were certainly customers, a man in a chauffeur’s uniform patiently waiting for his boss on a bench along the wall, and a Western Union delivery boy obviously waiting to pick up a return message.
“Like it?” the
Professor asked.
“Where do I sign?” I asked.
Sandra did a slow pirouette. “It’s perfect!” she breathed. “However did you manage?”
“The previous tenant left all the fixtures and equipment when he jumped out the window,” the Professor said. “We just turned them back on and changed a few nameplates.”
“He couldn’t have jumped very far,” I said. “We’re on the ground floor.”
The Professor smiled a weary smile. “I spoke metaphorically.”
“Let’s get on with it,” Brass said. “No telling when he’ll show up.”
“Right.” The Professor strode to the middle of the floor and clapped his hands. “Ladies and gents,” he said. “Listen up! Here’s the pitch.”
The “office staff” and “customers,” a group of about thirty people, gathered in a cluster around the Professor. He explained to them what we were doing, told them it was for Two-Headed Mary, and that it might be dangerous. He said that he’d pay them the day rate if they stayed, but there’d be no score today, and that if anyone wanted to leave he wouldn’t blame them.
“What about the gent from Omaha?” someone asked.
“He probably won’t be in until tomorrow. If he does come in today, we’ll stall him. Percy can take him to dinner.”
Everyone laughed. I guess every profession has its in jokes.
Nobody left. They all went back to their assumed jobs and took up where they’d left off, and if anyone could tell that the place wasn’t a real, active brokerage office, he was sharper than I.
The Professor’s big office desk was pulled out to an executive location in the main office, and a man with a little printing machine in a suitcase made a desk plaque that said
ANDREW CUTTINGHAM
PRESIDENT
in a thin line, modern script.
We weren’t sure what Welton—if it was Welton—would attempt, except that his aim would be the demise of Uncle Andrew. We made sure the desk was out of view of the window, in case Welton was a marksman. Perhaps he’d come in to talk and bring a poisoned bottle of scotch. Perhaps he’d invite Uncle Andrew outside, where he could strangle him in privacy. Perhaps he’d stalk in and shoot and merely walk out in the confusion—a favorite of Mafia hit men.
The Girls in the High-Heeled Shoes Page 24