by Craig Rice
“O.K.,” Schultz said, “only I wish there was some cigars.”
“I’ll send up some from the lobby,” O’Brien said. “You just be sure nobody takes nothing out of here, that’s all.”
Schultz said, “O.K.” again, and added, “get all Havana.” The door closed behind the two plain-clothes men. Jake peered through the crack in the shower. Schultz waited until he was alone, then took the copy of Married Love out of the desk, unlaced his shoes, unfastened his collar, stretched out on the davenport, and began to read.
A quick dash might do it, Jake reflected. Through the bedroom, along the back of the other davenport, and then a rush to cover that last ten or twelve feet. But Schultz’s service revolver was within an instant’s reach, and these big, lazy-looking cops could move disconcertingly fast. Besides, he’d have to cover the distance, and then open the door. By that time Schultz would be chasing him, and the hotel corridor was no place in which to try to escape from a cop.
Dope! He’d forgotten about the bedroom door that led into the corridor. There was one, of course, so that the suite could be split up into individual rooms. It would be locked, but with the same spring lock as the other doors, opening from the inside.
He made sure that Schultz was still absorbed in his reading matter, and then slowly, cautiously, stepped out of the shower. He paused just long enough to mop his neck, and as far as he could reach under his collar with a bath towel. Then he began tiptoeing through the bedroom. He’d just rounded the foot of the bed and passed the chaise longue when the cold water that had been dripping down his back took effect. He sneezed. Loud.
Schultz automatically said, “Gesundheit,” without looking up from his book. A second later he leaped off the davenport and yelled, “Whozat?” as he started for the bedroom. Jake ducked, fast, back of the bedroom door. He knew, of course, that Schultz would immediately look back of the door. Schultz did. In the split second while they faced each other, a lot of things went through Jake’s mind. He didn’t like to do this. In the first place it was bad business to sock a cop. In the second place, he liked Schultz. He felt that Schultz was the brainiest one of the trio who’d searched the apartment. Brainy, and with a certain charm. Just the same, it had to be done. As Schultz reached for his revolver Jake swung, and connected.
7. Wildavine’s Whereabouts
Not much time had elapsed since the two plain-clothes men had left the suite, and elevator service in the St. Jacques was on the slowish side. O’Brien and Birnbaum were still in the corridor in front of an elevator door that was just opening when Jake stepped out of the suite. Jake called, “Going down!” and ran down the corridor. He stepped in, catching his breath and looking as unconcerned as he could. Then he took a good close look at the two men.
O’Brien had sandy hair, a red face, and eyes that were as blue and bright as marbles. He might have been a bartender, or a bookie, or a flyweight fighter, or a retired jockey. And yet he still looked like a cop. So did Birnbaum. No one, Jake reflected, had ever figured out a way of making a plain-clothes man look like anything but a cop. Birnbaum had a long, sallow face, dark hair that was thinning over his forehead, unhappy eyes with faint shadows under them, and a scar on his upper lip.
“Maybe I’ll get an Alka-Seltzer instead of Pepto-Bismol in the drugstore,” he said, “while you’re sending up Schultz’s cigars.”
“You just don’t eat right,” O’Brien said unfeelingly.
“I know I don’t,” Birnbaum said. “My wife is a lousy cook, that’s why.”
The elevator reached the lobby floor. Birnbaum headed for the drugstore, O’Brien for the cigar counter, and Jake for the sidewalk. His first thought was a taxi. Then he changed his mind. Even with the start he had on O’Brien and Birnbaum, they were in a squad car. The only driver Jake knew who could beat a squad car, in any traffic, was Helene. And at that maybe in this traffic—He reproached himself indignantly for holding such a disloyal thought, and headed for the subway station at Fiftieth Street and Sixth Avenue. There was a subway train roaring down toward the stop as he cleared the last few steps. He shoved through the turnstile, raced across the platform, and caught the train. It was crowded with the Saturday noon-hour rush; he squeezed in with difficulty and stood there, held up by the crowd.
Schultz had the right idea, good old Schultzy. Wildavine Williams had written that letter to Bertha. But it wasn’t Bertha who’d been murdered; it was some perfect stranger. Well, at least a stranger to the police and to him. Maybe Wildavine Williams could explain it all, if he got to her before the police did, and kept her out of the way of the police until he could ask her all the questions that were in his mind. Of course that wouldn’t be much good if O’Brien and Birnbaum had the correct theory, and she was insane. The letter, and especially its signature, did seem to bear out the theory.
Just as the train began to pick up speed beyond the Thirty-fourth Street station, an idea came to him, one that might possibly explain the presence of the unidentified beauty in Bertha’s bridal chamber, and some of the wording in the letter. Jealousy would be the motive. Wildavine Williams had arrived on the scene, murdered the unidentified beauty, and spirited Bertha away. That would be a simple, easy explanation. Only, in that case, why had the unidentified beauty been decapitated several hours after she’d been brutally slain and beaten in an insane rage? And besides, Bertha had had a bridegroom, Dennis Morrison. The simple, easy explanation didn’t fit at all with the fact that Bertha Lutts, in her thirties, and rich, who went to a reducing class and considered buying a new girdle important, had married Dennis Morrison, in his twenties, handsome and charming. Just how the hell did this business of Dennis Morrison’s dinner jacket fit in? Jake sighed, and wished that Malone and Helene were with him. He’d never tackled a problem like this entirely on his own before.
He got off the train at Fourteenth Street, hailed a taxi, and said, “Twenty-three Morton Street. Fast.” As the taxi turned into Morton Street, he looked around for a police car parked along the curb. There was none. He made a silent prayer that Officer Birnbaum had lingered awhile over his Alka-Seltzer, and that traffic conditions had been bad on the way.
Twenty-three Morton Street was a dingy, red-brick building set at an off-angle to the street, three stories high, and gable-roofed. There was a tiny triangle of decayed lawn in front of it, littered with wastepapers and soaked with April rains. Three steps led down to a mud puddle and the front door. A typewritten sign thumb-tacked to the doorjamb read, “Sublet; charming atmospheric garden apartment. Furnished. Two rms. and bath. 100% colonial. Wood-burning fireplace. Antiques. $150 mo. Ask Janitor.” The sign looked as though it had been there a long time.
In the vestibule was a row of doorbells, with name frames beside them. About half the frames were empty. Jake had located “Wildavine Williams” and pushed the button beside it before he noticed the sign reading, “Buttons don’t bell. Pleaz to knock. Joe, Janitor.” That sign, too, looked as though it had been there a long time. Joe, Janitor, was evidently in no hurry about fixing the bells.
Both the vestibule and the downstairs hall gave Jake a twinge of homesickness. They reminded him of that rooming house on upper Wabash where he’d lived while trying to land his first job on a big city newspaper. The same discolored, bilious-green calcimined walls, marred with dirty finger marks and pencil notations around the pay telephone. The same battered table where the postman left the mail, always littered with unforwarded letters, grocery-store circulars, and neighborhood giveaway newspapers. Even the same smell, a mixture of yellow soap (though nothing ever seemed to get washed with it), musty carpets, coal smoke, and the backyard garbage container. That rooming house on upper Wabash had called itself a studio building. This house advertised a “charming garden apartment.” He could picture the charming garden apartment without any strain on his imagination. Lots of Atmosphere, magnificent high ceilings, and fifty-year-old plumbing.
Wildavine Williams lived in 3-C. That would be the rear apartment on the top f
loor. Jake started to climb the stairs. Someone was practicing a Chopin Etude in the second-floor rear. Two people were having a loud, angry quarrel in the second-floor front. Jake started up the next flight, hoping Wildavine Williams would be home. He wondered, indeed, just what he would find. Not a homicidal maniac, in spite of O’Brien and Birnbaum’s quick and simple solution. Maybe he’d find Bertha Morrison, Maybe he’d learn the identity of the murdered woman. Or maybe he wouldn’t discover a damn thing. But, at least, he was here ahead of the police.
The door to 3-C was slightly ajar. Jake knocked on it. A thin, reedy voice called, “Come in,” and, as Jake opened the door, added, “If you’re the grocery boy, just set your box on the table.”
“I’m not the grocery boy,” Jake said. “I want to see Miss Wildavine Williams.”
“All right, just a minute,” the voice called. It came from behind a curtain hung across one corner of the room, hiding, Jake guessed, the kitchenette. The room was half dark, but he could make out a few of its details. The walls appeared to be painted a chocolate brown, and the paintings hung on the wall must certainly have been given to Wildavine by artist friends. There was no other way to account for them. A Paisley shawl hung over the fireplace. There wasn’t much furniture: a double-bed-size spring and mattress combination which tried to masquerade as a studio couch with the help of a slightly rumpled black sateen cover, a folding table and two chairs, enameled Chinese red, and a writing desk of the same color. There were cushions on the floor, in the corners, and heaped along the back of the couch. A sweet-potato vine was growing in an empty peanut-butter jar on the one window sill. There was Mexican pottery all over the place. A pair of pink rayon panties were draped over the back of one chair, evidently the day’s laundry. The only light came from two candles in Wool-worth candlesticks on the mantel and another one in a pottery candlestick on the table.
“Hurry up,” Jake called. He added, “What’s the matter, is your electricity off?”
Wildavine Williams came out from behind the curtain and said, “I never use anything but candlelight. Electricity seems to stifle me.” She was a medium-height, thin, stringy woman somewhere in her thirties. Her hair, as near as he could tell, was brown—what Helene called just plain hair color—and it hung down to her shoulders, with a limp bang in front. She had on rimless glasses and no make-up. She was wearing a batik smock, a pair of bright-orange pajama pants, and rope sandals.
Jake said, “I haven’t time to talk to you now. Get a coat on and come out of here quick with me. The police are on their way down here from Fifty-fifth Street, and I don’t want them to find you.”
He could see her eyes widen behind the rimless glasses. She said, “The police?” Her voice squeaked a little. Then she said, “Are you insane?”
“Not that I know of,” Jake said, “but the police think you are. They think you murdered that woman in Bertha Morrison’s bridal suite last night because they found the letter you wrote Bertha. So grab your coat and let’s scram.”
“Murdered,” she said, “who was murdered?”
“Nobody knows yet,” Jake said. “Listen, I told you there’s no time to talk, understand? Believe me, I’m here to help you. So just do as I say and don’t ask questions.”
She stared at him. “Who are you? What do you do?”
“I’m Jake Justus,” he said, “and I’m a writer.”
“Oh,” she said, “have you ever read any of my poems?”
“All of them,” Jake said desperately, “and I’m crazy about them. Now, look, we’ve got to get out of here before the cops arrive.”
“Did you like them?” she said. “What did you think of them?”
“The cops?” Jake said. “I liked them very much. I usually like cops and they usually like me, only now and then we don’t understand each other …”
“That isn’t what I mean,” she said. “Did you like my ‘Kaleidoscopic True-Views of the Heart at Eve’ that was printed in Fragmentaria?”
Jake said, “I adored it.” He wondered if he could knock her out, carry her down the stairs and into a taxi, and be out of reach by the time O’Brien and Birnbaum drew up at the curb. Then he decided it would not only be difficult and dangerous, but also untimely. It might raise unfortunate suspicions in Wildavine Williams’ mind. Besides, she looked fairly heavy.
“And my ‘Afterechoes of a Yestermath, at Ferry-boat in the Offing,’” she said excitedly, “what did you think of it?”
“I thought it was magnificent,” Jake said. “A great inspiration. And now listen to me. The police read something you wrote and they construed it as a threat, and they’re on their way down here to arrest you.”
“This all seems rather silly,” Wildavine Williams said. “What possible interest could the police have in me?”
Jake bit his tongue just in time to avoid saying, “What possible interest could anybody have in you?” and said instead. “Because of you I stood under an ice-cold shower bath for two or three hours, I knocked out a cop who was eight feet high and four feet wide, and I rode down here on a crowded subway train, two jumps ahead of a squad car, just to rescue you. Now get your coat and let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Do you know what I think?” Wildavine Williams said. “I think you’re suffering from a neurosis.”
“And I think,” Jake said, “you’re going to be in jail in about thirty minutes if you don’t do as I say.”
“But for what?” Wildavine insisted.
Jake sighed loudly and said, “Murder!”
“Whose murder?” Wildavine demanded.
“I don’t know,” Jake said. He stopped himself. The conversation seemed to have got back to its starting point. “Miss Williams, there’s no time to explain. You’ll just have to trust me. Please believe me, that I’m only trying to help you out of trouble.”
“But,” Wildavine said, “I’m not in any trouble.”
From down on the street came the unmistakable moan of a squad-car siren. It stopped in front of the door.
“Oh, aren’t you?” Jake said grimly.
Wildavine stared at him. There were voices in the vestibule and heavy footsteps. One of the voices—Birnbaum’s—said, “Maybe we should have brought Schultz in case she resists arrest.”
“Why,” she gasped, “you meant it!”
“For the love of Mike,” Jake said, “did you think I was playing twenty questions? Where the hell can we hide around here, fast?”
She blinked twice and then said, “Next door. Here.” She opened a door on the side of the room; it led into a room similar to hers, save that the walls were navy blue and the furniture orange and that a cheap India print covered the couch. She locked the door behind her. “This is Zora’s,” she whispered. “A friend of mine. She leaves the door unlocked so I can come in and feed the cat.” She pointed to a big, thin Siamese, the color of a mushroom, asleep on the bed.
There were footsteps on the stairs.
“Good,” Jake whispered. “Now, get this. They don’t have a description of you. Or me. They’ll probably come here to ask where Wildavine Williams is. Tell them—she’s gone to Jersey City, or someplace. Anything. Only don’t let them know who you are.”
She nodded. “Only why do they want me?”
“I told you,” Jake murmured, “there’s been a murder.”
“Yes. But what murder?”
“Please,” Jake whispered, “let’s not get into that routine again. Keep quiet and listen.” There was a knock on a door of the apartment they’d just left, then the door was opened. There was a faint murmur of voices. After a few minutes the voices came nearer. O’Brien and Birnbaum were evidently standing out in the hall.
“Well, we’ll try next door,” O’Brien said.
Jake cleared his throat, and said loudly, “And, madam, if you’ll take a three years’ subscription to the magazine no home should be without, The Household Friend, we will give you absolutely free of charge this magnificent five-hundred-page book of—”
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There was a thunderous knock at the door. Jake nodded to Wildavine, who rose and opened it. The two plain-clothes men came in. “Good afternoon, lady,” O’Brien said. “Do you live here?” When she nodded, he said, “We’re looking for a Miss Wildavine Williams.”
“She lives next door,” Wildavine said.
“We know she lives next door,” Birnbaum said. “We were just there, and she’s not in. Where is she?”
Wildavine looked blank for a minute and then said in a slightly quavering voice, “She said—she was going to Jersey City.”
“Where in Jersey City?” O’Brien asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What’d she go there for?” Birnbaum asked.
“She didn’t tell me.”
“When’s she coming back?” O’Brien asked.
“I guess—next week sometime,” Wildavine said weakly.
O’Brien fixed a cold eye on her. “If she’s gone to Jersey City and she ain’t gonna be back till next week, how come she left her door unlocked?”
“I don’t know,” Wildavine said. “She’s—very absent-minded.”
Jake decided it was time to help. He stepped forward and said, “Would either of you gentlemen be interested in a three-year subscription to The Household Friend? As a special introductory offer—”
“Come on, O’Brien,” Birnbaum said, “let’s get out of here.”
Jake began to breathe easier. Then he heard the sound of heavy steps hurrying—no, running—up the stairs. A voice called, “Hey! O’Brien! Birnbaum!” His blood froze.
A second later Schultz appeared in the doorway. He said, “Hey, listen, fellas—” Then he stopped and stared at Jake. “There he is,” he exclaimed. “There’s the son-of-a-bitch that socked me.”