Murder in Greenwich Village

by Liz Freeland

  “It’s a relief, to be honest,” I said. “The flat’s not exactly comforting right now.”

  “Of course.” He turned a curious, expectant stare on Ford. “You aren’t alone, at least.”

  “Ford Fitzsimmons.” Ford offered his hand and gave Jackson a firm shake. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr.—”

  “This is our editor, Mr. Beasley,” I said, worried he’d mistaken Jackson for Guy Van Hooten. As if Guy would ever grace the office with his presence on a Saturday morning.

  My coworker crossed to put his briefcase on his desk and removed his hat, his attention seizing on the large bouquet on my desk and the fact that his chair had been moved. The trespass caused his shoulders to stiffen. “Ford Fitzsimmons . . . that name sounds familiar.”

  “Mr. Fitzsimmons is an author,” I said. “He’s submitted his second book to us.”

  Jackson’s big dome of a forehead, which gained new territory every day as his hairline retreated, crinkled into a mass of lines. He wasn’t fond of authors—at least not our authors. In his university days he’d imagined hobnobbing with the literary giants of his age, not writers of books on the salutary digestive effects of pickle juice tonic and other gems like that.

  “His first novel was very promising,” I said. Please don’t remember that you hated it.

  Ford smiled at Jackson. “I’m mostly here as Miss Faulk’s friend.”

  “She needs friends, I think.” Jackson unfolded his newspaper, which featured another headline about the murder—this time with an accompanying picture of Otto’s sheet music on the front. My heart sank. Poor Otto. His big chance was being undermined by forces out of his control. It was so unfair.

  Ford’s lips turned down as he studied the front page. “ ‘My Tootsie from Altoona,’” he read aloud. “ ‘For Louise.’” He looked at me. “Aren’t you from Altoona?”

  “So is Otto—the songwriter.” My face heated, but I soldiered on. “We’ve known each other for years.”

  His expression clouded over. “I see.”

  He obviously didn’t. He looked almost angry, as if I’d led him on. “Otto worked for my uncle. The one I lived with.”

  “Even better,” Ford muttered.

  “Your uncle the butcher?” Jackson squinted at the paper. “The newspapermen are calling the barbarian who did the murder the Village Butcher.”

  “Otto might have been a butcher’s assistant, but he’s the gentlest soul you can imagine.”

  “Well.” Ford took a step back. “I suppose I should leave you two to your work.”

  I trailed after him, frustrated. Before Jackson had come in, it seemed that Ford and I understood each other. Now things were all muddled up again. From Ford’s expression you’d think I was the Village Butcher’s moll-accomplice.

  “I’ll read your novel soon,” I promised.

  He murmured a good-bye and headed out the door.

  When I turned back, Jackson was rolling his chair back to his desk. “Curious fellow.”

  “I wish he hadn’t left in such a strange mood,” I said.

  “Don’t worry your mind about that one,” he said. “Writers make the worst husbands.”

  I scowled. “I don’t think of Mr. Fitzsimmons as a matrimonial prospect.”

  He frowned at the paper. “I doubt songwriters are much better.”

  Oh, for Pete’s sake. “Can’t a woman just exist in the world, making friends and living her life, without everyone assuming she’s on the constant lookout for a husband?”

  Jackson’s brows arched toward that big dome of his. “What do you intend to do with your life, then?”

  “I’m doing it.”

  He seemed genuinely perplexed. “You want to be a secretary, forever and ever? That’s all?”

  No, that wasn’t all. But apparently it never occurred to Jackson that I might be capable of more. Of doing what he did, say. Most days I wasn’t even sure myself. I’d taken the job that was offered through my connection to my aunt—much as I’d accepted the work that my uncles had offered me in Altoona, managing accounts at their butcher and fish shops. Despite the fact that I’d just drifted into this job, I was essentially doing many of the same tasks Jackson performed. But I lacked a college degree, and I was the wrong sex.

  “Well, I suppose an exceptional woman might feel called to a profession as a man naturally is,” Jackson allowed. He gestured toward my typewriter. “But is that what you consider a calling?”

  Was it? I’d spent several months trying to believe it was. I’d worked hard, yet apparently those I worked alongside saw little value in what I did, at least compared to their own worth.

  Jackson sighed and pulled his chair up to his desk to begin his day. His eye fell on Ford’s discarded coffee cup. “Fix me a cup of coffee, won’t you, Louise?”

  * * *

  I never realized how exhausting the news could be. Back in Altoona, scanning my uncle’s Evening Mirror after he was done with it had kept me reasonably well informed. But in New York the newspaper business was a relentless hour-by-hour concern. No sooner had my fellow Manhattanites put aside their morning papers—they had about fifteen to choose from—than the afternoon editions hit the street. Editions were staggered, too, so that there was always a newsboy somewhere braying the latest headline. When I’d first arrived, the local obsession with being au courant seemed invigorating. Now as I scuttled past brass-lunged newsies shouting about the Village Butcher, my enchantment with the fourth estate was at an end. Forests in Washington were being reduced to stumps so hacks could spread lies about poor Otto.

  A slightly smaller group of scribes and gawkers loitered around our front door today. They swarmed me, but I was used to battling my way inside now. At the sound of my feet on the stairs, a door far above me opened. “Max? Max?”

  Lucia’s mournful wail tore at me, and I looked up to see her leaning over the banister, peering down the stairwell. “It’s me, Lucia,” I said.

  “Oh.” She disappeared and a short silence followed, heavy with disappointment. Max had not come back yet. “Buongiorno, Louise.”

  “Buongiorno.”

  Her door above clicked shut. Were the police still looking for Max? I supposed they were, which was why he could probably never come back until the true killer was caught and convicted. But what if they never found the killer?

  Poor Lucia.

  Callie and I had spent the night in the saxophonists’ second-floor flat, but it was empty now. I wandered upstairs to see if Callie had returned to ours. The saxophonists, we’d discovered, lived in primitive conditions. The apartment was the same layout as ours, but they used it in an odd way. The larger bedroom seemed to be where they stowed their musical gear, although with them on tour now it was practically empty except for an old saxophone that seemed to be used for spare parts and a trunk holding various brass fittings, tools, oils, solvents, and glues for repairing instruments. The small bedroom contained only one rather high bed. This puzzled us until we pulled back the moth-eaten wool blanket covering it and discovered three thin mattresses piled atop the bedsprings.

  “The boys must spread the top two mattresses on the floor each night and sleep that way,” I’d surmised after studying the mattress pile.

  “Do you think they draw straws every night for the bed?” Callie had wondered aloud.

  “Or maybe the real brothers get the bed and the fake ones are relegated to the floor.”

  Another puzzle was how they survived almost entirely without furniture. A few mismatched wood chairs littered the main room, none of them the slightest bit comfortable, along with three metal music stands. There was no table, yet we could tell that they cooked because the kitchenette boasted two battered pots, and grease and various food splatters created a disgusting varnish on the surface of the cook top, counter, and walls. A fine layer of dust covered the floor everywhere except a few patches where the mattresses were dragged out to the living room every night. Which didn’t make us any more enthusiastic about
sleeping on those mattresses, I can tell you.

  I laughed to think how I’d imagined myself combing through the place in the saxophonists’ absence, hunting for evidence that one of the Bleecker Blowers was a murderer. Nothing had been cleaned in the apartment in—well, perhaps forever. Any trace of the murder would have been obvious. Nor was it likely that evidence had been hidden in the apartment, for the simple reason that there was nowhere in the apartment to hide anything. There were no bureaus or wardrobes. The one small closet held a knee-high stack of old sheet music, two men’s overcoats, a box containing a jumble of bed linens and towels, all dirty but nothing bloodstained. There were no clues to be found in that apartment. No comfort, either. Perhaps one murderous saxophonist might have possessed the foresight to dispose of all the bloody evidence, but I doubted he could have managed to do that right under the noses of his roommates.

  As I entered our flat, a figure rising from the sofa startled me.

  “Otto! What are you doing here?”

  “I came in and no one was here,” he said. “It was so much bother getting in past the policeman, the reporters, and then crazy Wally, I decided to stay put until you came back instead of battling my way out again.”

  That made sense. My heartbeat slowed to normal again. “It’s not that I mind your being here, but you scared me silly.”

  “Sorry. Callie told me I could visit anytime,” he said. “She said the key was under the mat in the hall.”

  It was. It probably shouldn’t have been, but Callie had the bad habit of forgetting her key. She said no one in Little Falls locked their doors. Come to think of it, I couldn’t remember Aunt Sonja and Uncle Dolph’s house ever being locked, either.

  “Where is Callie?” he asked, peering over my shoulder as if I were hiding her.

  I flopped onto the sofa and slipped off my shoes. Not exactly delicate behavior, but my dogs were killing me. Besides, it was just Otto. “I’m not sure. When I left for the office this morning, she was still asleep. She must have gone out on some errand or another.”

  “I’ve been here an hour,” Otto said.

  So Callie had been gone at least that long. Worry gnawed at me.

  “You wouldn’t believe what happened to me today, Louise. I walked into a Kresge’s and in the music department they were playing my song.” He beamed. “Actually playing it without my having to ask them to.”

  “Really? I worried, with the headlines . . .”

  “That’s what I thought, but I asked the lady at the register about the song—not telling her I was the author, you understand—and she said they’d sold five copies already. Five! And that’s just in one morning, in one store.”

  “That’s good.” Perhaps the publicity hadn’t harmed him—or at least not yet.

  “If they keep on selling, I’ll be on my way. And then maybe—”

  Whatever he was about to say was lost. The door jerked open and Callie scooted in, slammed it behind her, and leaned back against it, panting. “He’s back!”

  “Max?” I guessed, dread filling me.

  “What?” Her eyes focused on me, confused. “No—the man who’s been following me.”

  “There’s been a man following you?” Otto asked, alarmed.

  “He trailed me all the way back from”—she gulped, then continued—“I worried he would walk right into the house after me.”

  “The man with the mustache?” When she nodded, I ran to the open front window and stuck my head out, peering at the smattering of people below. “I don’t see a man with a mustache . . . oh, except him.” I drew back and pointed him out to Callie, who was hovering at my shoulder. Behind her was Otto.

  Her breath hitched in frustration. “That’s not him.”

  “Who is following you?” Otto asked.

  “I don’t know. Some man.” She crossed the room and flung herself onto the sofa. “I swear I’m not imagining things. He followed me twenty blocks, at least, always a half a block behind. I even stopped at several stores and when I came out, he was still behind me.”

  “We need to tell the police,” I said.

  She let out a groan. “I’ve just been to the police this morning, to see about Ethel.” My confusion must have shown, because she explained, “Her body, I mean. I need to arrange for the burial, and tell Dora when to come.”

  “Did you mention the man following you to the police?”

  “No—at that point, I hadn’t seen him since yesterday. I was beginning to think I’d just imagined it. And then I wondered . . .”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Oh, nothing.” She rubbed her palms together, then blurted out, “Only I wondered if it could have anything to do with Sawyer. He always acts—acted, that is—so jealous.”

  Otto glanced from Callie to me. “Who’s Sawyer?”

  My God. Why hadn’t I thought of that? “You’re right. We should tell the police about him, Callie.”

  “No,” she said quickly. “Sawyer wouldn’t be involved in this. He knows having a shadow would frighten me. And drawing attention to himself is the last thing he wants now.”

  And why would that be? I frowned. Was I imagining things, or did something in her tone ring false? “We should talk to Sawyer, then.”

  “Who’s Sawyer?” Otto asked again, impatiently.

  Callie was shaking her head. “No, I told him it was over, and I won’t go knocking on his door now pestering him. It’s best just to forget about him.”

  As she spoke, Otto’s features took on a glum cast. “Oh, a beau.”

  “Not anymore,” Callie said.

  He brightened. “You gave him the brush-off?” At Callie’s nod, he said, “Then you’re right to forget all about him. Say, I was just telling Louise about what happened to me today. I was walking down a street and I saw a five-and-dime . . .”

  As Otto related his Kresge’s triumph again, my mind whirred. Was I mistaken, or was Callie holding something back? If there was even a possibility that the mysterious man was someone Sawyer had sent, wouldn’t she want to do something about it?

  Even if she didn’t, I did. Callie might be content to leave Sawyer alone, but I decided to pay a call on him just as soon as I could.

  CHAPTER 7

  Newsprint isn’t kind to the complexion. On Monday morning, seated on the crowded train on the way to work, I found myself staring back at me. Is this the Village Butcher’s “tootsie”? read the caption below my picture. One of the photographers had caught me on the stoop, and now I was gaping in outrage at commuters all over the city. My mouth was opened in an O of anger, and my face in black and white was mottled gray. The hat shading my eyes enhanced my dark, sinister look. One consolation was the probability that no one would recognize me, unless they went out of their way to read the Sun-Herald. And who did? It was obviously an inferior, gossipy rag.

  Oliver, our office boy, practically tackled me as he came through the door that morning brandishing three copies of the Sun-Herald. “Toots, you’re famous!”

  Jackson scolded him. “Her name is Miss Faulk to you.” But even Jackson was eyeing the photo with more than passing interest.

  “Aw, Louise doesn’t mind.” Oliver tossed the newspapers down on my desk and pulled a wax-paper-wrapped donut out of his pocket. “Do you, Toots?”

  “You can call me anything you want,” I told Oliver, “as long as you promise to get rid of those awful papers.”

  Jackson clucked at me. “You’ll regret those words.”

  Oliver hiked a hip onto the corner of my desk and inspected me with new curiosity. He was a boy of fourteen—the nephew of a friend of our proofreader’s wife. His tendency to pudginess, nut-colored eyes, and brown bristly hair gave him the look of an energetic woodchuck. “Who’d’ve guessed from looking at you that you’re sort of interesting?” he said.

  “Sorry to disillusion you,” I answered, “but newspapers lie. I’m not interesting, at least not in the way they’re insinuating. Otto is my friend, but only a friend. And he’s
not a murderer.”

  Oliver sagged in disappointment. For a few glorious moments, he’d been in the presence of a scandalous woman. “Well, you’re still the first lady I ever met who got her picture in the paper.”

  I leaned toward him and whispered confidentially, “Just between you and me and the desk lamp, it’s not the first time.”

  His eyes went wide. “No foolin’?”

  “No foolin’. I was plastered all over the front page of the Altoona Evening Mirror a few years back.”

  “How come?”

  “I won the elocution prize at the city’s all-school symposium.”

  When he realized he’d been had, he snorted with laughter. “Yeah, that fits. I bet your Hiawatha knocked ’em cold.”

  “Would you like a sample?”

  “Don’t you have work to attend to?” Jackson made shooing motions at Oliver, but I sensed the question was meant for me, too. “You’re dribbling crumbs everywhere.”

  Oliver hopped to his feet and lifted his half-eaten donut to his forehead in a mock salute. “Aye-aye, Cap’n.”

  After Oliver clomped upstairs—probably to hand newspapers around to the staff on the second floor—I informed Jackson that I needed to take a longer lunch break than usual that day. Jackson was not, technically, my boss. But since Guy Van Hooten’s absentee streak was still holding strong and even dyspeptic Mr. McChesney seemed uninterested in how anything was actually getting done these days, Jackson had assumed the role of de facto manager of everyone.

  He opened his mouth to question me and I cut him off with the ominous sounding, “Police business.”

  Mr. McChesney was just coming in the door as I walked out at eleven o’clock. His tall figure stooped slightly forward, so that his walking stick sometimes appeared to keep him upright. As always, he was impeccably, if slightly unfashionably, dressed, with dark tweed coat, vest, and a high, starched collar. He’d obviously shrunk since the clothes were new, because they now hung loose on his bones. A gold tie pin and the heavy watch fob spanning his waistcoat pockets were his two extravagances.