Dark Maze

by Thomas Adcock

  I entered the business about the Crown of Thorns in my notebook, and the matter of Halo’s trip—or trips—to the Horny Poodle. And the business of Halo’s six-for-five scam, no doubt the principal source of revenue at the Neptune bar; of Chastity finding Celia’s lost green hat where she had; of finding that Johnny Halo was not much of a one for bookkeeping.

  I read over these new items after I had them all written down. Then I flipped through the pages of my notebook and read all the old items, hoping a few things might begin to relate. Which they did not.

  How in the world had I managed such cockiness when Neglio asked about the progress of the case? “With one or two more breaks, I think I’m close.” A detective is nothing but a sloppy cop when he depends on luck, which is hoping a display of confidence will bump things along; I have never known of a fastidious detective outside of a detective novel.

  The subway pulled into the Seventh Avenue station in Brooklyn’s Park Slope district. Twenty minutes more, I thought, and I would be back in Manhattan, where I would have to decide on someplace to go to display some confidence.

  But I did not go directly to Manhattan.

  Instead, I got off four stops later, at the Bergen Street station in South Brooklyn, and walked a few blocks up to the Atlantic Avenue offices of Wendell Prescott Real Estate Development Company, Inc., having no notion of what I might do or say should I find the man in.

  But I suddenly did feel important purpose in being there on Atlantic Avenue that afternoon, relating to the fate of Coney Island and art and murder, and Johnny Halo’s question, “You know what Prescott would do if he put up casinos here?”

  Ruby had answered, “Hock, don’t you see? They’d tear down Picasso’s masterpiece.”

  On the outside, Wendell Prescott’s base of operations bore little more resemblance to his brother Daniel’s glitzy Manhattan skyscraper headquarters than my own tenement in Hell’s Kitchen. The company was located on the second floor of a two-storey brick and stucco loft building. The ground floor was called OK All-America Tile & Carpet Center.

  The inside was not much to speak of. I climbed a flight of rubber-padded stairs and found a large room at the top, full of desks and some drafting tables and guys walking around with white shirts rolled up at the sleeves and bad neckties. A lot of them smoked, some pushed pencils around on paper, some talked loudly on the telephone; they all drank coffee out of styrofoam cups. The place reminded me of a detective squad room on a quiet day.

  I asked one of the white shirts where Wendell Prescott kept himself. He pointed his thumb toward a glass doorway in back of him and said, “His secretary sits in there.” So I pushed through the glass door and found myself face-to-face with Eileen Cream, according to a plastic nameplate on the edge of her crowded desk.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  Her voice was thick from eating something, which I guessed was chocolates from an open Russell Stover box.

  “My name is Neil Hockaday,” I said. I showed her my gold shield. “I’d like to see Mr. Prescott.”

  “You don’t look like a cop. Where’s your uniform?”

  “I’m plainclothes.”

  “How come you’re not wearing a suit and tie?”

  “I’m very plainclothes. Could I see Mr. Prescott now?”

  She put on a pair of glasses and looked me up and down. “Hey, don’t I know you?” she said. “Aren’t you that cop in the newspaper? The one in charge of the big murder thing with the maniac running loose and all?”

  “That’s right. Now, I’d like to see Mr. Prescott.”

  “What for?”

  Inspiration finally came. “Because I’ve got good reason to believe the maniac is gunning for Prescott next,” I said. “Would you like to see your boss’s dead body all over page one of tomorrow’s Post?”

  “Do I get a choice?” She popped a chocolate into her mouth and chewed it lustily.

  I walked on past her toward the great man’s office and she did not seem to mind. But Prescott did.

  “Just who the hell do you think …”

  Wendell Prescott stood up from behind his desk as he said this. Except for their different haircuts, Wendell and his brother Daniel—The Dan—were twins. They both had puffy faces as white as Maine potatoes, small feminine lips, high-pitched nasal voices, and pointy little muskrat teeth.

  “Detective Hockaday,” I said, walking to him. I showed him my shield. He glanced at it the way most people do and then took a look at my clothes; he did not seem to approve. “Sir, I think we need to talk.”

  “I doubt if my lawyer would think the same,” he said.

  “Your lawyer? I come up here to warn you about a crazed murderer who’s probably after you right now, and what you do is you tell me about your lawyer?”

  Prescott’s puffy white face went even whiter. “Look, I …”

  “You want to call up your lawyer, that’s okay,” I said. “Maybe I should just forget about you. Do I look like I care if a rich real estate guy gets popped by some maniac?”

  By this time I was making a big impression on Prescott’s sense of self-preservation. He relented and allowed, “Well, maybe it’d be okay,” and he sank back into his seat and waved his hand around saying, “Make yourself comfortable.”

  Wendell’s private office was small but poshy. There was an Oriental rug on the floor, dark red with blues and beiges in it. And a large desk with a green leather top, some lithographs of old New York street scenes on one wall, a sofa and matching wing chair upholstered in soft navy blue corduroy and even a mahogany liquor cabinet. It was a room I would have liked for myself, except for a framed photograph on the other wall of a grinning George Bush dressed up in his inauguration tux and flanked by the Prescott twins.

  I walked up to the photo and said, “It’s really hard to tell you guys apart. I mean you and your brother.”

  “My brother and I are very different men,” Prescott said. There was a catch in his voice that reminded me of what Johnny Halo had said about the rivalry between Daniel and Wendell.

  “Well, you’ve got different hairdos,” I said.

  “Dan’s hair is too long and it’s all feathery, like he’s some heartthrob on a soap opera,” Prescott said, the catch rising. His own hair was cut in a standard corporate style. “And that’s the least of our differences.”

  “I like that one over there,” I said, pointing to the navy blue wing chair. “Would you mind if we sat down now, sir? And would you have something to drink?”

  Prescott looked at his wristwatch, so I looked at my own. His was a silver Cartier tank model. My brand ended in the letters ex, but not like in Rolex.

  To help him make up his mind, I said, “Have a heart, Mr. Prescott. It’s almost five and time for cocktails and I’ve been on my feet for hours out in Coney Island. I met a lot of people out there who don’t much like the idea of your tearing everything down in Astroland and shoving them aside just to maybe put up casinos. You might say they’re violently opposed to the idea.”

  I was then invited to sit in the blue chair. Prescott opened the liquor cabinet and asked if I might want a taste of his twenty-one-year-old Macallan’s single-malt Scotch whiskey.

  “Is the Pope Catholic?” I answered. He poured us each a jar and then sat down across from me on the blue sofa and regarded me with his cool, watery eyes as if considering me for a major role in the cement foundation of his next building project.

  “A lot of those people out in Coney Island,” Prescott said,”would like nothing better than for me to improve the neighborhood with casino gambling.”

  “What people? You mean that dwarf they call Big Stuff? What do you pay him to peddle your propaganda anyway?”

  “I don’t know if I like the turn this chat of ours is taking. Maybe I should call in my lawyer, Detective … Hockaday, is it?”

  But Prescott made no move for his telephone.

  “You know the name and you know exactly who I am,” I said. “But go call your lawyer. I�
��m not the one who’ll get his bill in the mail. Maybe the counselor can help us figure out our problem.”

  Prescott put back his drink and grinned at me. It looked as sincere as George Bush’s grin. As sincere as a cheap toupee.

  “It strikes me you’re the only one with a problem here, Hockaday. Which I think you’ve already solved, all by yourself. After all, here you sit drinking my whiskey and pumping me for God-only-knows-what on the pretext that I’m somehow on line to be the next tabloid murder sensation.”

  “Oh, that’s no pretext,” I said. “Murder and real estate have a way of finding each other in New York.”

  “Would you take another drink?” Prescott asked me. “Never mind, I know about the Pope.”

  He got up and fixed us two more. And when he sat down again, he looked ten years older. He shook his head and drank half his whiskey.

  “Hockaday, don’t confuse me with my brother, Dan. You and I have got no quarrel at all about him, ethically or aesthetically. I know that flashy operation of his over there in Manhattan never got started up by virgin birth, all right? But like I told you, we’re different men. I run a clean shop here. Just look around, man. Do I look like the kind of a guy they call The Wendell?”

  “You’ve got me on that, sir.” I tipped my glass to him and then sipped.

  Prescott shook his head sadly again. “There’s no way I’m winding up like The Dan. No way. First, you see, there’s no bimbo in my life like he’s got and my wife isn’t hiring any press agents or divorce lawyers. Second, you can see for yourself I’m not in any danger of going bankrupt like my brother from carrying too much expensive overhead. I do indulge myself in the very best whiskey, however.”

  “Indulgences must never be hesitant,” I said.

  Prescott now tipped his glass to me. Then said, “You know, Dan’s not actually a bad guy. At least he never was when we were growing up together, here in Brooklyn. He’s just stupid. You’d be surprised how many rich people are stupid. The world listens to them, though. Why, I don’t know.”

  I thought about that a minute and said, “In many cases, that’s how the rich get richer. Take that wife of your brother’s. How smart is she?”

  “Dumb as a hydrant.”

  “I read in the paper just the other day how some publisher is forking over a million dollars to put her name on a ghost-written novel all about the glamorous world of the rich and foolish.”

  “Well, there you are, and I expect the peasants will lap it up,” Prescott said. “Here’s to business in a rich and foolish country, long may her banner wave.”

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  “Maybe you understand why I want to invest in gambling casinos,” Prescott said. “It’s one of the first places fools go to part with their money.”

  There was a knock at the door, and Eileen Cream stepped in. “If you don’t need anything else today, I’m going home now, Mr. P.” Then she looked at me and asked, “So, the boss going to get hacked to death tonight, or what?” Prescott answered, “For heaven’s sake, Eileen, I’m going to be just fine. Detective Hockaday had his fun. Now run along home and try to save some of the gossip for the newspapers.”

  When she left, Prescott looked a little whiter in the face than usual. He asked me, “Well, what about it?”

  “Have you heard the news about the homeless artist the police are looking for in connection with all the murders lately?”

  “Of course I have. They call him Picasso.”

  “There’s a painting of his at Astroland.”

  Prescott cut me off. “I know all about that. When my office was out recruiting people in Coney Island to pass out handbills for casino gambling, this dwarf you’re talking about …”

  “Big Stuff.”

  “That’s him. Anyway, he came by here one day asking a lot of questions. And telling us all about Coney Island and what a great artist this guy called Picasso was. And I mean was, as in has-been.”

  “What kind of questions did he ask?”

  This put a little color into Prescott’s potato face. He said, “Oh, just a lot of things that weren’t any of his damn business. Which is exactly what I told him.”

  “Have you ever been out there to see Picasso’s painting? It’s on the front of a spook house called Fire and Brimstone.”

  “Sounds real scary, Hockaday. But the answer is no, I haven’t been out to see the great has-been artist’s handi-work. Why should I? I don’t own the Fire and Brimstone, or anything else in Astroland.” Then Prescott grinned like the president and added, “Not yet, anyway.”

  “I guess not. I hear you’ve got a competitor out there in Coney for the carnival property along the boardwalk. A guy called Johnny Halo.”

  Prescott laughed at that. Then he got up, poured himself another drink and offered one to me. I declined. He walked unsteadily back to the sofa and sat down heavily.

  He grinned again and told me something he might never have said if his lawyer had been with us, or if the whiskey were not so good. Or maybe he wanted me to know, maybe he was afraid. He said, “I know Johnny Halo. Halo’s no trouble to me, or my plans.”

  And I congratulated myself. I had come here on instinct and I had played Wendell Prescott by instinct, and with a little good luck and good whiskey I had now penetrated one of the important lies.

  “May I use your telephone, sir?” I asked.

  “So long as it’s local,” Prescott said, slurring his words.

  “Oh it’s local, all right.”

  I got up from my chair and stepped over to Prescott and said, “Maybe you ought to lie down. You look a little rocky.”

  “I don’t mind if I do.”

  He lay down and shut his eyes and by the time I was across the room to his desk he was snoring.

  I dialed Central Homicide in Manhattan. Captain Mogaill was still there. I asked him to arrange an immediate round-the-clock police guard for Wendell Prescott, both at his business premises on Atlantic Avenue and his home on Montague Street.

  Then I stepped out into Eileen Cream’s empty office. There was no shortage of records in the file cabinets off to the side of her desk. I looked through them long enough to confirm the lie.

  And then I sat tight for about fifteen minutes. A pair of Brooklyn uniforms arrived and took over custody of Sleeping Beauty on the blue sofa.

  Back at the Bergen Street subway station, I telephoned Ruby at the theatre while I waited on the platform for the Manhattan-bound F train.

  She was frantic.

  “Hock, this is too much!” Her voice was high, and on its way to a screech. “I’ve never …”

  “Take a breath, Ruby. Then tell me slow. What’s the matter?”

  I heard her trying to catch her breath.

  “Something came in the mail this afternoon,” she said.

  “And?”

  “Addressed to me, at the theatre!”

  “What?”

  “It’s a plain white envelope, Hock, with an upside-down flag stamp! Just like the one that came to your apartment the other day, the one with that Polaroid of a painting by Picasso.”

  “The painting of Dr. Reiser?”

  “Yes.”

  I heard Ruby crying now. And I started to think of the people who knew we were close, and who among them might have passed this knowledge on to Picasso; who among them knew where Picasso was.

  I asked Ruby, “Did you open it yet?”

  “No,” she said. “I was waiting for you to call.”

  “Open it.”

  Ruby put down the telephone. I heard her footsteps fade out, then fade back in.

  Then the sound of ripping paper.

  And Ruby, crying. “Hock! Oh my God, Hock! This is just horrible, horrible …”

  “Ruby, what is it? Take it slow and easy. Just tell me.”

  “It’s another Polaroid … horrible!”

  “A photo of another painting?”

  “Yes …” Her voice trailed off in tears.

  “Who’s
in the painting, Ruby?”

  “I can’t tell exactly. There’s a naked man … with some-hing like spikes in his head, and there’s blood running lown his face and his chest…. The blood, all the blood!”

  “Easy, Ruby.”

  She took a deep breath and said, “He’s hanging, from a vooden cross …”

  And I knew.

  “All right. That’s enough, Ruby. You can put the picture lown, you don’t have to look at it anymore.”

  My train pulled into the station. I would have to board it, t was the quickest way to get where I now had to be. There vere only seconds.

  “Listen carefully, Ruby,” I said. I gave her the number at Central Homicide, along with the address of the Crown of Thorns Holy Tabernacle in Times Square. “Talk to Captain Mogaill for me, tell him I’m on my way to the church. Tell him I’ll need a murder scene investigation unit to meet me here.”

  Ruby said, “Got it. And please, Hock, promise you’ll call ne later.”

  “I will. I’m going to need you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  A police photographer was snapping off shots of the blasphemy behind the altar. Logue was there with a small swarm of detectives, uniforms, and forensics officers. He was smoking a cigar. So was everybody else, except for a pale young fat guy sitting next to Logue in a red plush chair.

  The fat guy was dressed in a shiny black suit and string tie. His sandy hair was piled up in a double pompadour and hardened with spray. He held a white leather-bound bible in his lap and every so often he lunged forward and shouted, “Flaming fire shall taketh vengeance on them that knoweth not our Lord Jesus Christ!”

  One of the uniforms tapped Logue’s shoulder when he saw me come steaming in. Logue turned and waved.

  I was sweaty and breathless after running four blocks from the subway station at Sixth and Forty-second. Now the sight behind the altar—and the stink—was making me dizzy. Logue knew just what to do.

  “Here you go, Hock—you’re going to need one of these babies,” he said. He pulled a Dutch Masters panatella from the breast pocket of his suit coat and then lit it for me with a Zippo. “That poor sod hanging on the big stick there, he went and crapped himself up pretty good when he got the business.”