Murder in Greenwich Village

by Liz Freeland

  Muldoon was dressed in a dark suit and wore a snow-white collar. I wondered if he’d dressed with care that morning to visit Wall Street. He was just rising to his feet as I let fire with the questions. “Why is Max’s lip broken? And why are you holding him?”

  “She asks a lot of questions,” the policeman, still behind me, said.

  If I hadn’t been so focused on Muldoon’s face, I might have missed the barely perceptible twitch of his lips. “I know,” he said.

  “She just ran over and started talking to one of the prisoners.”

  Muldoon nodded curtly. “Doesn’t surprise me a bit.”

  “No doubt you’d prefer to hide him away so no one can see how you treat prisoners in your custody,” I said.

  Ignoring me—except for the stain of red that leapt involuntarily into his cheeks—Muldoon said, “You can leave us, O’Connor.”

  O’Connor backed toward the door but eyed me suspiciously. “I’ll be just outside, sir.”

  “Thanks.”

  Even before the door had shut, I repeated my question. “What’s Max doing here?”

  “You know the answer to that.”

  “Where did you find him?”

  “Officers were called to a brawl at a tavern near the Bowery. That’s where Max was found and arrested, and that’s where he got the knot on his head.”

  I folded my arms. “And the busted lip?”

  “He resisted arrest.”

  A likely story. “Max didn’t kill Ethel.”

  “Tell that to the man he knifed in the side almost five years ago.”

  “Five years ago,” I repeated. “Max has a wife and children now.”

  Muldoon let out a sputter of mirthless laughter. “Would you like a list of the men I’ve arrested for murder who have families?”

  “I’m not interested in those people. I’m thinking of my neighbor, Max.”

  “We’ve talked to his wife and been through his flat. Not the model husband and father, I’m afraid.”

  My certainty wavered. What did he know that I didn’t? “I’ve never heard him so much as raise his voice to Lucia. And as for that knife fight five years ago—was it unprovoked?”

  “It was a fight in a bar.”

  “Do you think Ethel and he were involved in a brawl?”

  “She was knifed to death, and Max ran.”

  “Because he was afraid of just this—that you would jump to conclusions. Tell me, did you find Ethel’s money on Max?”

  “No,” he admitted.

  “There.”

  “It’s been three days,” he pointed out. “He might have spent it, or hidden it.”

  “I assume you searched their apartment.”

  “Oh yes.” Again there was that infuriating knowingness in his tone—as if he wasn’t telling me something. “We’ll be holding Max Freeman for further questioning, and if we aren’t satisfied with his answers, in all likelihood we’ll arrest him for the murder of Ethel Gail. He’ll be transferred to the Jefferson Market Courthouse cells pending trial.”

  “You sound awfully certain of yourself. Friday you thought Otto was the murderer. Now Max. Who will it be tomorrow?”

  “If he’s guilty, it’ll still be Max.”

  His implacable confidence left me exasperated. “Am I going to have to arrange a lawyer for Max, too?”

  “You might not want to once you’ve heard all the facts. And seen them.” He paused to let the ominous note he’d struck sink in. “When we went to speak to Mr. Freeman’s wife and search the apartment, we of course came across the paintings in his studio.”

  “I’ve seen some of his canvases. They’re modern.”

  “Modern is one word for it. Your artistic neighbor has been paying his bills by selling pictures of nude women.”

  I gaped at him. Was he serious? “So has practically every artist from cave painters to Matisse. Didn’t you go to the Armory Show?”

  For a whole month that winter, the armory building on Lexington Avenue had been the center of an exhibit of the most modern art of Europe and America. Callie and I had gone through twice, exploring the endless mazes of paintings and sculptures that were by turns breathtaking and perplexing. Matisse’s blue nude had been one of the most shocking and daring of the whole exhibit—a great primitive reclining figure of a woman.

  “I heard about it.” Muldoon’s sneer told me all I needed to know of his thoughts on cubists, fauvists, or anything that wasn’t Washington Crossing the Delaware. “I’m not talking about so-called avant-garde art.” He held my gaze a moment before adding, “And, as far as I know, none of the painters at the Armory Show was using your roommate as a model.”

  He turned and lifted a piece of butcher paper from a frame in the corner leaning against a file cabinet. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now, with the paper gone, I saw Callie, draped across a chaise longue in the nude, her lips turned up in a lascivious, come-hither smile.

  Heat washed over me. I wanted to shout at Muldoon to cover the painting up. How many policemen had been sniggering over this since it had been brought into evidence? Yet, despite my instincts, I forced myself to eye it objectively. Lurid as it was, the painting was not badly rendered. The composition might be unimaginative, but the figure was realistically done.

  And yet not real at all. It was a dream of Callie—but not her.

  “Callie did not pose for that,” I said.

  “That’s what she told us.”

  Callie saw the painting? She must have been mortified.

  “Well, then,” I said, “she didn’t. But even if she hadn’t denied it, I would know she didn’t pose for Max.”

  “How?”

  “First, because it takes hours to model for a painting like that. I would have noticed if she’d disappeared for that long.” But even as I said it, I wondered, would I? She had been out of the flat often lately, but I hadn’t questioned where she’d been. I added, “And technically, that’s not a true likeness.”

  “Looks like her to me.”

  “Her face, perhaps, but the proportions of her body don’t look right. The”—I forced myself not to blush—“bust is exaggerated, and the legs are too plump. Callie is a dancer, and lithe. Also, she has a wine-stain birthmark on her hip.”

  Muldoon frowned at the peachy-smooth nude hip where I was pointing. “He might have painted an ideal instead of the reality. Isn’t that what you’d call an artist’s prerogative?”

  “I don’t care what you call it. If Callie said she didn’t pose, she didn’t. Max obviously just used her face. Why shouldn’t he?”

  “Or she might have modeled for him. And maybe while they were together, she mentioned the money her cousin had stashed away.”

  “No,” I insisted. “She wouldn’t have told Max about the money.”

  “Whether she did or didn’t, this picture indicates an obsession. Callie and Ethel Gail shared certain physical characteristics.”

  I caught his drift and dismissed it for the foolishness it was. “Any man obsessed with Callie wouldn’t have mistaken Ethel for her.”

  He eyed me steadily. “You sure seem to want Max to be innocent.”

  “I just don’t want Ethel’s killer—the real killer—to go free.”

  Muldoon leaned on his desk. “Do you know the killer’s identity?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then stop trying to thwart my investigation.”

  Calling what he was heading an investigation struck me as rich. And as for my thwarting it—that was a knee-slapper. “Is having Callie followed part of your investigation?”

  His jaw remained rigid, but the flicker of respect I detected in his eyes told me I’d guessed correctly.

  “I just came from Sawyer Attinger’s office,” I explained, unable to keep from boasting a little. “I assumed he was the one having Callie followed. But when he revealed that you’d just spoken to him this morning, I realized you could only have found out about Sawyer through Callie. And since Callie wouldn’t hav
e mentioned him to you, I knew that that brown-suited mustached man following her had to be one of New York’s finest.”

  He listened to me patiently, not at all impressed by my powers of deduction. In fact, by the time I was done he was practically vibrating with anger. “If you thought Sawyer Attinger was desperate enough to have your roommate followed, then why for the love of Mike didn’t you tell us about him from the very beginning?”

  I shifted, knowing how feeble my answer would sound from his point of view. “Callie asked me not to.”

  His anger vented in a gust of irritation.

  “If I’d suspected there was the slightest chance that Sawyer was guilty,” I said, “I would have convinced her to tell you. I swear it. But I saw Sawyer that night not far from our apartment. His clothes were neat as a pin. You remember the murder room. If Sawyer had just come from killing Ethel, he would’ve had blood on him somewhere, wouldn’t he?”

  His lips flattened. “Maybe, or maybe not. He might have changed clothes. There could be any number of reasons the results of the murder might have escaped your eagle eye. Sawyer might have hired someone else to do the murder. Did you ever think of that?”

  I was forced to admit I hadn’t.

  “But as it happens,” Muldoon continued, “Mr. Attinger was drinking in a bar called McGrath’s not long before he saw you on the street. The bartender and another witness confirmed his story, and the time he left. He would’ve had to be the world’s fastest killer to have managed to murder Ethel Gail in the short window of time between when he left the bar and when you saw him.”

  So the police hadn’t just taken Sawyer at his word. That was gratifying. Of course, they were probably all the more eager to dismiss him as a suspect knowing they now had Max in custody.

  “None of this changes the fact that you should’ve told us about Attinger from the beginning,” Muldoon said. “Instead, we wasted manpower having Miss Gail followed.”

  “For no reason,” I pointed out.

  “For the very good reason that I could tell you were both hiding something.” His eyes narrowed on me. “My question now is, was Sawyer Attinger the only one you were protecting, or are there others?”

  I wasn’t going to give up Ford’s name, especially now that I’d seen how Max looked in their custody. “Are you going to have me followed now?”

  He gave his head a derisive shake. “Why should I do that? You just keep coming here.”

  Very funny. “Of course you won’t have me shadowed,” I said. “You already have your case sewn up. You have Max.”

  “You seem awfully certain he’s innocent.”

  “Because there’s no evidence he isn’t. All you have is a coincidence or two.”

  “You’d be surprised how many murderers are tried and convicted on a few coincidences.”

  As if that was any comfort. “I wonder if that number has any correlation with the number of men who are wrongly convicted?”

  Muldoon’s face reddened. “Why is it you’re always eager to tell us we’ve got the wrong man but strangely reluctant to help us find the right one?”

  “Why do you seem so keen on arresting all the men we know? Why couldn’t the attacker be a stranger?”

  “Because we’re fairly certain it was someone familiar with your apartment—familiar enough to know when only one of you was home, and where to find a murder weapon.”

  “Knives are generally kept in the kitchen,” I said.

  Nevertheless, I thought about Sawyer, who had been in the apartment a few times. And Max. He had been there, too. That big butcher’s block was hard to miss.

  “You look worried, Miss Faulk.”

  “I need to get back to work.” Moreover, I needed to get out of Muldoon’s office. The thing I’d come to find out, I now knew. Sometime this weekend, Callie had met with Sawyer. What else hadn’t she told me?

  “Work is a good idea,” Muldoon said, seeing me to the door. “Attend to your typing and filing and leave detecting to the police.”

  Of all the advice he could have given me at that moment, that was the most injudicious. I left the station more determined than ever to find out who killed Ethel. And then, when I was done, some able, obedient police officer—maybe even Muldoon himself—could type up the paperwork and file it away.

  CHAPTER 8

  “Were you with the police all this time?” Jackson asked me when I returned.

  “Just about.” Amazing how easily little lies and half-truths were starting to come to me.

  Was that the case with Callie, too? All the way back uptown I’d pondered what could have been in her head, meeting Sawyer clandestinely again after the murder. What had been the purpose of the meeting, and why take such a chance? Of course, she hadn’t guessed that the police had been following her, so perhaps she’d assumed, as I had, that by speaking to Sawyer she would figure out who the mustached man was.

  My mind sifted through other problems. They were adding up. Max, for instance. Poor Lucia would be frantic. How would she and the children live if he ended up in jail? And there was that painting. I sent up a prayer that Wally and Mrs. Grimes hadn’t seen it before the police took it.

  Could Max have killed Ethel? Muldoon hadn’t convinced me. But my trip to the police precinct and Max’s bloodied appearance did persuade me that I’d been right not to mention Ford.

  On my desk lay his manuscript. At the moment, fiction seemed like a lifeline to sanity. I fixed myself a cup of tea and pulled the stack of papers out of the envelope. The novel was short enough that I would be able to finish it in an afternoon, especially since Mr. McChesney had left early, claiming his ulcer was acting up.

  I knuckled down to the task of reading the manuscript and put my worries about Callie, Max, and Lucia aside for a while. To be honest, it wasn’t difficult. I’d liked Ford’s first novel, but this one was even better. The prose was stripped down, direct, with none of the obvious flourishes and indulgences that had occasionally bogged down the other manuscript. The story about a young man from a patrician family in Boston who went down to work on the Panama Canal and fell in love with a local girl drew me in at once, and for a few blissful hours my worries drifted far away.

  I didn’t finish the book until six o’clock; then I stayed another half hour to type up a recommendation to Mr. Van Hooten. True, it might take weeks for Guy to actually see the report, but Jackson had nixed Ford’s first book, and I was sure Mr. McChesney would declare the spare style and daring material too newfangled. By the time I was finished, I was so wound up by the story that I almost dreaded going back to my own life, and to my troubled building. Instead, I jotted down Ford’s address and before I could talk myself out of it went straight to his house. After all, it was practically on my way home.

  Greenwich Village was a neighborhood of hardworking families of all stamps, but its affordable rents also attracted artists, freethinkers, and people who didn’t quite fit in comfortably in other neighborhoods. Even within my little patch of the neighborhood, its character changed from street to street, or even building to building. It wasn’t until I was climbing the staircase of Ford’s building that I realized I’d fallen into a seedy pocket. Empty liquor bottles were piled outside one doorway, and the reek of alcohol mixed with the other smells of poverty—years of boiled dinner odors, bad drains, and stuffy flats with too many bodies. In front of another door an unwashed little boy squatted, constructing a skyscraper out of matches. He must have been hoarding matches a long time, because it was already almost a foot high.

  “That’s impressive,” I said.

  “When I’m done I’m gonna light the whole thing up.” He made a sound to illustrate the coming conflagration.

  Oh dear. “That’s not a good idea. Fire is very dangerous.”

  Still concentrating on placing his matches, he merely repeated the noise.

  So much for safety lectures. “Do you know where I could find Mr. Fitzsimmons?”

  The dirt-smudged face looked up at me. “Who
?”

  “Ford Fitzsimmons. A young man with blond hair who lives here.”

  The boy’s eyebrows scrunched together. “The one with the typewriter?”

  “Most likely.”

  “He ain’t young.”

  “Well . . . not as young as yourself.”

  The boy puffed up. “I’m six.”

  “Imagine that.” Six, and already well on his way to a career in pyromania. “Where can I find the man with the typewriter?”

  He jerked his tiny chin in the direction of the stairs leading to the next floor. “He don’t like me to go up there. Maybe you shouldn’t, either. He walloped me once for going into his room.”

  “Thanks for the warning. I’ll try not to get walloped.”

  The boy lifted his shoulders in a suit-yourself shrug.

  I climbed another level, the worn wood of the old stairs groaning and protesting each step. At the top floor I stopped and caught my breath. Laughter came from beyond one door and I scooted past it to what I hoped would be Ford’s room. I knocked, and waited.

  And waited.

  “Mr. Fitzsimmons?” I called.

  Suddenly, the door I’d passed jerked open and the laughter from within rose in volume. Ford’s head poked out.

  “Louise! What are you doing here?”

  “Who’re you talking to, Fitz?” a gruff voice called from inside the apartment.

  Ford flicked a look back. “Never mind. Deal me out.” He closed the door behind him and, taking my elbow, steered me to the next door. “Come in.”

  His Spartan garret was covered in hideous wallpaper in brown and blue torn off in chunks in places, revealing bare boards beneath. The wide plank floors were warped, which made me peer up at the yellowed ceiling plaster overhead. Ford was neat—a thin blanket was pulled over the bed, and the only other furnishings—an old metal trunk, a table and chair, and a make-do shelf fashioned out of a board and two crates—were all tidily arranged. Yet there was no tidying up the shabbiness of it all.

  “I’ve christened it Xanadu,” he said with only mild embarrassment. “What do you think?”

  “I can’t believe you write such magnificent things in these shabby surroundings.”