*
Trowbridge, the Bishop’s neurologist, had recommended it, insisted on it, actually. A month after I first moved in, he’d gotten worried about the remote but real possibility of the Bishop’s paralysis suddenly spreading without warning.
“Your respiration could be impaired,” he’d told Regan, “and if it happens, it will be sudden. You’ll need immediate help or you could die.”
So Regan had me get a summoning device. I’d installed it myself, running the wire under the carpet between the two rooms. The sender was by Regan’s bed, the receiver by mine.
He’d loathed the sound of it. “I promise you, David, I shan’t use it for anything less than the ultimate emergency. That caterwauling would awaken the dead.”
That had been the last time I’d heard it. Until now.
*
Fumbling frantically, I finally got my bedside lamp on. (How long had he been buzzing before I woke up?) Swung my legs over the side of the bed. Tried — and failed — to find the unit to push the respond button. (Encouraging thought: if he could still buzz, he must still be alive.) To hell with responding, this was an emergency.
I burst across the hallway into Regan’s room.
And there he was, placidly sitting up in bed, bedside lamp on, signaling unit in hand, his disheveled hair the only out of place thing in the room.
A jumble of thoughts: he’s having a heart attack; he’s gone nuts; he’s playing a practical joke; this is chapter two of my Sarnoff nightmare. But Regan’s eyes were calm.
“Sorry to trouble you, David. Please sit down.”
I just stared.
The boss’s face showed irritation. “Sit down, David! Please! I want you to do something for me.”
I looked around, grabbed the one chair in the room, pulled it to the side of the bed and sat. Thinking, “This had better be good.”
It was.
His eyes were now higher than mine. He uses a hospital bed and now had it angled at nearly ninety degrees.
Beside the bed is his jungle gym, a set of pulleys and bars that he uses to get in and out of bed, and in and out of his wheelchair. It’s also what he uses for a half hour every morning at five, to do his exercises. His upper body is — well, you ought to see it. A hint: don’t ever try arm-wrestling him.
“Again, my apologies, David. But the answer to our puzzle — one of our puzzles — came to me in my sleep, and I was anxious to share it.” To brag, he meant.
Not that I wasn’t interested. And getting back to sleep was certainly out. Maybe forever. My pulse rate was probably still over one-twenty.
The Bishop explained. “That message on Miss Penniston’s palm. I now think I know what it means. Would you get the photostat?”
The photostat? I looked at him, shook my head and hustled back across the hall. I quickly put on slippers and robe, grabbed the sheet and hurried back.
We examined it together. I studied the G O S T, wondering what he’d come up with. The boss didn’t keep me waiting.
“Yesterday, Mr. and Mrs. Penniston gave us the two bits of information we needed, David.
“The first — that Miss Penniston wrote her numbers sloppily — was one. As I thought about it, I realized that the symbols we were taking to be letters might very well be numbers. Take a look.”
I scanned the writing again, through new eyes.
“Okay,” I said, nodding slowly. “I see what you mean. The G could be a six. O is zero. S is five.” I frowned, thought about it, and shook my head decisively. “But you can’t get a number out of T.”
Regan immediately raised a finger. He’d expected that. How lucky for him to have such a good straight man.
“That was what was troubling me, David, when I went to sleep last night. You’ll recall that we noticed that the upper cross bar of the T seemed to be separated from the vertical lower portion? That gap was very much on my mind when I went to sleep.” He paused, frowning. “Your description of Miss Norville writing a telephone number on her palm made me wonder if the four characters — be they letters or numbers — could represent a phone number. But how do you get a seven digit telephone number out of only four characters? This was troubling me as I went to sleep. One possible answer came to me in my sleep, just five minutes ago.”
“So what is it?” I demanded. “Have you got it?”
“Very possibly. The moment Mr. Penniston told us his daughter was a mathematics aficionado, I knew that was a key — to something. But I didn’t know what. Well, perhaps in my subconscious. There is a certain convention in mathematics which — how far did you progress in mathematics, David?”
I was pained. “You would have to bring that up. I struggled for a hard-won C-minus in high school algebra. If I never see another equation, it’ll be too soon.”
Regan was neither contemptuous nor amused. He’d already pulled a pad and pencil from his night stand. “Very well. Then try to attend.”
Regan wrote “3.333…” He looked at me. “Do you understand that, David?”
“Of course I do,” I said contemptuously. “Newton’s Grand Unified Theory of Relativity. Everyone knows that.”
He was patient. When he’s excited or proud of himself, he’s hard to irritate. When he’s both, forget it.
“Close, David,” he smiled. “But not quite a direct hit.
“No, it’s shorthand for an infinitely repeating decimal. The three dots imply that the digit immediately preceding is to be repeated to infinity.” I shrugged, but he didn’t even see me. He was too busy educating me.
“Alternatively, one could write it like this:”
Regan added symbols till the pad read:
3.333… = 3.3
He looked at my face for a reaction, got none and continued. “As the equal sign implies, the expression on the right means the same thing. Thus, the final three is to be repeated.”
I sat back down in the chair and thought about the implications. I got an idea and grabbed the picture of Laura’s palm. “So you think the T is a one with a bar over it to indicate repetition?”
“Precisely! Regan exclaimed. “I suspect it was her personal shorthand for any symbol to be repeated indefinitely. It’s the kind of shorthand a mathematician would use. I’ve used it myself.” He stared at me, waiting. I stared back. “I think,” he added significantly, “it leaves us with a certain telephone number we ought to look into.”
“Six-oh-five, one-one-one-one?”
“Yes, David!” He was triumphant — briefly. Then he frowned. “At least I think so. You should look it up in the Reverse Directory.”
For once, I was ahead of him. I was going through the door before the words Reverse Directory were out of his mouth, heading for my office.
As you probably know, the Reverse Directory is a phone directory — with a gimmick. Using a normal directory, you start out knowing the name of who you want to call and look up the number. The Reverse Directory is for when you know the number but not the name.
In my office I pulled it from the shelf and found the 605s. As I looked, I was giving odds on the name I’d find. Unlisted was the favorite at five-to-two (my normal pessimism); right behind that were the five suspects: McClendon, Donovan, Norville, Theodore and Stubbs. Not wanting to play favorites, I had them all at six-to-one.
I lost all bets. The entry opposite 605-1111 was “Jos. B. Ingram, Exp./Imp., 601 W.49.”
A definite downer. I double-checked by putting the tip of my finger under the number and tracing the little dots across the page. Old Joe Ingram it was, the export/import king of West Forty-ninth Street. No doubt about it.
But as I trudged dejectedly back up the stairs at about a tenth the speed I’d raced down, something began to niggle me about Ingram’s address. I’d seen 601 W. 49th, or something similar, not long before. But where?
Then it hit me, and my blood started racing again.
The bodies of Joy Foxworth and Laura Penniston had been found below the stoop of 603 W. 49th. Six-oh-one had to be th
e building right next door.
Maybe Mr. Ingram had something to contribute to this case after all.
33
It was nine o’clock Wednesday morning before I got anyone to answer 605-1111. Not for lack of trying.
When I’d got back upstairs at 3:22 A.M. and talked it over with the Bishop, we’d agreed there was nothing more to be done for the moment, and went back to bed. But not before he told me, “Look into it in the morning. If you get a lead, come up to the chapel and discuss it. I don’t want you going anywhere before you talk with me.”
I lay down in bed and tried to figure how and why Jos. B. Ingram, Exp./Imp. figured into the whole affair. And if. Next thing I knew, some newscaster was informing me about Gorby’s latest adventures in perestroika, wherever that is. Seven-forty-five in the A.M. My first reaction was to turn the damn radio-alarm off and go back to sleep. Then I remembered our breakthrough and was immediately wide-eyed, if something less than bushy-tailed. Breakfast helped. A little.
I tried the number at 8:30 and an answering machine provided another riddle. (Why can’t detective work ever be simple?) Getting answered by a machine wasn’t the puzzling part (these days, it’s puzzling when you’re not); the puzzling part was what the machine said. I took it down verbatim. A youngish male voice gave me the following message: “Rice Realty here. Your call is important to us. At the beep, please leave your name, time of call and phone number, and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. Please wait for the beep and have a nice day.” I didn’t wait for the beep. As to having a nice day, we’d see.
That had to be a wrong number, so I tried again, more carefully. Same result.
I looked up both “Ingram, Jos. B.,” and “Rice Realty” in the directory — the regular one, this time. Both were listed. Ingram at 601 W. 49, just like in the Reverse Directory; and Rice at 222 W. 58. Unquestionably, I hadn’t got the Rice number by mistake — even stone drunk, I couldn’t get 286-3000 out of 605-1111. Certainly not twice. The phone company seemed to have some crossed lines.
Before calling New York Telephone, I decided to wait till nine and try again. This time I got a human being. Feminine-type. Youngish. Lilting tones. “Rice Realty.”
“Seems I have the wrong number,” I said. “I’m trying to reach Joseph B. Ingram.”
“Mr. Ingram is on sabbatical…” (sabbatical?) “…Were handling his calls. May I help you?”
Well, at least I hadn’t misdialed. But what the hell was going on?
“Are you at the corner of Forty-ninth and Ninth?”
“Uh, no. We’re at — wait a minute, yes we are — they are. That is, Mr. Ingram’s office is.” She gave a little giggle. “Let me explain. In Mr. Ingram’s absence, he is offering the office for sublet and we’re the agent. So we’re having Mr. Ingram’s calls forwarded to our office — that is, during periods like now when there’s no subtenant in there. I’ll be happy to take a message for Mr. Ingram. He calls in once a week.”
“Oh, it’s not important.” I cradled the receiver. Before I said another word I wanted to think about it.
Ingram gone, office available for sublet. I had lots of questions to ask, but getting answers out of Rice Realty could be a problem. I needed a plan.
I reviewed the situation. About Joseph B. Ingram and his office I now had three hard facts and one strong maybe.
The three facts:
One. The office was in the building next door to the spot where Laura’s body and that of one other victim had been found.
Two. The office was under sublet, had been for some time, and was presently empty.
Three. It had a working phone, with a number (605-1111) listed under Joseph Ingram’s name.
The strong maybe: for some as yet unexplained reason, the office’s phone number had been on Laura’s palm when she was murdered. That conjecture rested on four assumptions: (a) Laura had had a habit of writing on her palm; (b) the Bishop’s interpretation of that T on the palm was accurate; (c) the number — assuming it was a number — was a phone number, not a social security number or safe deposit box number or God knew what; and (d) if it was a phone number, it was in the 212 area code. I.e.: New York. Not Hoboken or Wichita or Sydney, Australia.
A lot of assumptions. Still, its being a phone number for an office next door to where Laura Penniston’s body had been found supported the theory. Besides, I didn’t have any other line of reasoning to pursue.
I scratched my head. Since I was trying to reason like the Bishop, what would he think about next? For one thing, how about the questions left to be answered? I wrote down some questions. The more I wrote the stronger my feeling grew that the answers were inside the office of one Joseph Ingram, Exp./Imp.
First of all, what was the office like? Big? Little? A suite? Furnished? Was the phone in service the night Laura died?
Second of all, was it under sublet during the murders, especially during Laura Penniston’s murder?
Third, was Steven Sarnoff involved with it in any way?
Fourth, did anyone who knew Laura — Sarnoff or anyone else — have any connection with the office?
I came up with an approach that seemed to have a chance of getting me some answers. It was going to take some guesswork along the way, but I didn’t see that I had a lot to lose.
I called 605-1111.
“Rice Realty.”
I went with my deep basso, Richard Burton voice. No point tipping her to the fact that I was the same guy that’d called before.
“May I speak with the manager?”
“That would be Dan Rice,” said the voice, suddenly brisk and businesslike. “May I tell him who’s calling?” (Why can’t anyone just put you through?)
“David Goldman. I’m interested in the Ingram space.”
Within three seconds I was speaking with none other than Dan Rice. The same voice I’d heard earlier on the answering machine. A man desperate to know what he could do for me.
Decision time. I had a couple of options, neither of them, naturally, involving anything as simple as the truth. After all, I needed information. And nothing truthful I could tell Dan Rice was likely to be persuasive. Especially when I couldn’t tell him why I wanted to know. I made a snap decision. My favorite kind.
I dropped Richard Burton and became a prissy businessman.
“Ah, my good man. David Goldman here. I believe you know Mr. Sarnoff?” I held my breath. Three seconds of silence. “Well, do you or don’t you?” I was an impatient prissy businessman. “Mr. Sarnoff was telling me about that office. That is the one at Forty-ninth and Ninth, is it not? … Hello! Is anyone there?”
“Oh, sorry,” Rice said hastily. “Uh, yes, that’s our space. I only paused because, uh, I never actually met Mr. Sarnoff.”
Bingo.
I chortled aloud to buy time while my mind raced. Another footprint of the elusive Mr. Sarnoff. Was anyone ever going to admit to actually having seen the guy?
“Never met him, hmm?” I improvised, thinking furiously. “Well, Steven does have his little ways. He is a dear boy!” I chuckled again. “I suppose he insisted on the usual, payment with hundred-dollar bills.”
Rice seemed to relax. “Well, almost,” he chuckled back. “Twenties, actually, sent through the mail.” He clucked disapprovingly. “Rather poor business practice, that. I mean, where’s your proof you sent it, should a question arise?
“Of course, he did phone me to be sure I’d received the money. By the way, does Mr. Sarnoff have laryngitis?”
I filled the phone with words, while considering Sarnoff’s laryngitis. I didn’t want any uncomfortable pauses to roil the still waters of Rice’s current level of trust in me.
“Well, that kind of thing sort of runs in his family, don’t you know. His father used to be troubled…”
While I blathered on I was mentally fitting the pieces of a puzzle together. Sarnoff’s laryngitis was one piece; the strange voice of the Whisperer who’d called the Dispatch was another. Did they fit?
> “Steven, the poor boy,” I concluded, “tends to sound as though he’s, er, whispering — wouldn’t you say?”
“That’s it!” Rice exclaimed. “At first I couldn’t understand him. Finally I figured out who it was, that he wanted to be sure that the money he’d sent me was safe, and to arrange to get the key. Asked me to mail it to him. Of course, we don’t like to handle things that way, we like to see the people we’re doing business with, but he said he wasn’t feeling well, so he couldn’t come in. Asked me to mail him the key along with the lease.
“Anyway, since he’d paid in advance, I accommodated him. Does he handle all his business dealings that way?” I chuckled again and was about to ask another question when Rice added something.
“But I’m glad you called, Mr., er…”
“Goldman.”
“Ah, yes. Mr. Goldman. I’m glad you called, because we haven’t been able to get hold of Mr. Sarnoff. He was all paid up on his rent. But he had asked us to replace Mr. Ingram’s name on the door with the name of his company. I can’t think of it at the moment. Er…”
“Models for Hire?”
“Right! Models for Hire! Well, he told us to bill him for it. By the time we got around to billing him, he’d canceled the office. So we mailed the bill to him at that box number, but it came back, Moved, Left No Forwarding Address. Can you give me his correct address? We’ve offset what he owes us for it against his security deposit, but we’d like to settle up for our records.”
I nodded to myself. This guy Sarnoff was something else when it came to covering his tracks. But we were gaining on him.
“Quite,” I assured the realtor. “I may be able to help you with that. In point of fact, as I mentioned, I’m interested in the space myself. Could you be a good fellow and meet me there, say, in half an hour? Meanwhile, I’ll rustle up Steve’s current address and just bring it with me.”
I had another thought. “Oh, and say! Would you be so kind as to bring a copy of that sublease with you? I asked Steven to give me a peek at it, and he couldn’t find his copy.” I chuckled as prissily as I knew how. “I’ll take him another copy, and we’ll get this entire matter straightened out. Could you be so kind?”
The Fundamentals of Murder (Davey Goldman Series Book 2) Page 23