Night Work

by David C. Taylor

  “Then what?” Cassidy poured wine into her glass and took some for himself. She smiled in thanks.

  “Then what? Let’s see. I don’t like to sit around doing nothing, so Joe came into the kitchen and I told him I was going to get a cab back to the hotel and pack my things. He didn’t want me to go. He said it could be dangerous, that he’d buy me new stuff in Miami, but you know what? I know how that goes. Here you are, honey. Here’s a hundred bucks. See you around. Uh-uh. I had some nice things back at the hotel, and I wasn’t going to leave them. I figured, how dangerous could it be? They weren’t shooting women down in the streets, were they? So I went back down there, and the front-desk guy liked me, and he called someone at The Tropicana about the plane the next morning, and there you were.” She lit a cigarette and took a sip of the wine and waited for Cassidy.

  “Okay.”

  “You believe me.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  She smiled in relief. “Thanks.”

  “I’ll talk to Frank.” Would that be enough? He didn’t know. How much influence did Frank still have? He was getting out of the rackets. Other men were moving in to fill the power vacuum. They would be the ones who made the decisions on this.

  15

  When Cassidy rang the bell at the big limestone house on 73rd Street, the red setter came scrabbling down the marble-tiled hall and stood looking at him through the glass. Moments later a man appeared carrying a coffee cup. He opened the door and stepped into the vestibule and looked at Cassidy through the bars and glass of the big exterior door. The red setter followed him and stood at his knee. The man was in his early forties, tall, thin, already losing his sandy hair. He had a bony, patrician face and looked at the world through gold-rimmed glasses. He wore suit pants held up by dark green suspenders with embroidered silver whales, and a crisp white shirt with gold cuff links. He did not look like a man who had carried a two-hundred-pound corpse a couple of blocks to the park. He raised his eyebrows in question, and then nodded when Cassidy showed him his badge. When he opened the door, the red setter pushed its head through and sniffed Cassidy’s knee.

  “Come here, Lucky, that’s enough,” the man said and pulled him back by his collar. “Can I help you, Officer? I’m afraid I’ve already given to the fund. The precinct sent someone around about a month ago.” He had a soft, reedy voice and a mild, accommodating manner.

  “Are you Robert Hopkins?”

  “I am.”

  “Do you recognize this man?” Cassidy passed him the photograph of the dead man from the park.

  “Yes. Of course. Casey Allen. He’s been doing some renovation work here at the house. Why? What has he done, Officer?”

  “Detective Cassidy. When was the last time you saw him?”

  “About a week ago. He was supposed to finish up the work he was doing, but he didn’t show up. Very unlike him. He’s usually very reliable. If he can’t be here he calls. Then my wife and I went away for a few days. Casey has a key to the back door, and I assumed he would come in and finish up while we were gone, but when we got back last night, it was clear that he was never here. What exactly is the problem with him? Why are you asking about him?”

  “Is Mrs. Hopkins here?”

  “She is.”

  “I’d like to speak to her.”

  “Is that necessary?” A bit of steel showing through the soft exterior.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s dead. We’re trying to discover how and why.”

  “Dead. I see.” But if he was surprised, he covered it well. “I’ll go speak with her and see if she’s available.”

  “She has no choice.”

  Hopkins raised his eyebrows. “Yes, she does. She has a choice about when she speaks to you and who is with her when it happens. If you’d like, I can call our lawyer and he can clarify her rights for you.” More steel. Cassidy admired him for it even though it checked him, kept him from what he needed to know.

  “Does she have something to conceal?” Cassidy asked.

  Hopkins smiled and shook his head. “Oh, that’s a cheap ploy, Detective. If she doesn’t speak to you it’s because she’s hiding something.” He laughed at the absurdity. “Jane is not hiding something. She’s protecting something, her rights, her constitutional rights. You do remember those, don’t you? We have not yet become a jackbooted country where the police have the rights and the citizens have none. If you suspect her of a crime, state it, and we will get on with that. If you just want to speak to her about Casey Allen, there are better ways of approaching it than barging in here at eight in the morning demanding a meeting.” The red setter barked twice, upset by his master’s agitation.

  “All right. Let’s take a step back here,” Cassidy said. “You’re absolutely right. There is no need to bother Mrs. Hopkins right now. I can come back at a more convenient time.”

  “Please call first.”

  “Of course. Why don’t you give me your phone number here and at your office, and I’ll need Mr. Allen’s phone and address as well.”

  “Fine. Come in, and I’ll go write them down for you.” He opened the inner door, and Cassidy followed him into the front hall. The setter went with them. “I’ll be right back.” Hopkins went down the hall and into another room.

  The front hall was two stories high. Its wide floor was laid with black-and-white marble tiles like the ones in Leah’s apartment. A marble staircase with a dark red runner held by brass rods led to the upper floors. A large mirror in a carved gilt frame hung over a delicate cherry wood side table, one last look to see if the tie was straight, the hair combed, the lipstick on right before going out to face the world. Cassidy looked into the large living room off the hall. The fireplace was surrounded by a marble mantel. The furniture was expensive and comfortable. He recognized some of the paintings on the walls, a Picasso, a Matisse, a small oil of fruits in a bowl that he was pretty sure was a Cézanne. The house had been rubbed with money until it glowed.

  When he went back into the hall, the setter came to him carrying a leash in his mouth and sat down and looked at him expectantly. “Not me, boy. I’d like to, but you’re going to have to ask someone else.”

  “Ask about what?” Robert Hopkins came toward him carrying a piece of paper.

  “The dog and I were talking about going for a walk. I told him I couldn’t.”

  “I see.” No smile. Hopkins was impatient to see him go. “Here are the numbers. My office, the house, Casey Allen’s number and address.”

  “Do you walk the dog?”

  “On weekends. Jane walks him during the week. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m already late for work.”

  Cassidy took his dismissal and left. He crossed Fifth Avenue and found a place in the shadow of a big tree that grew near the wall to the park that gave him a view of the front of the Hopkins house. He looked at the piece of paper Hopkins had given him. It was a letterhead from Brown Brothers Harriman. Robert Hopkins, Vice President, was circled with a pen. The circle included his private number. Brown Brothers, Cassidy knew, was one of the largest private banks in America, and its officers were masters of the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington. Averell Harriman, the founding father, had been Franklin Roosevelt’s personal envoy to Winston Churchill during World War II, and had run unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1952.

  Was Hopkins trying to tell Cassidy that he was too well connected to fuck with? Probably. But the fucking with was unavoidable, because Hopkins had forgotten to ask one question. He had forgotten to ask how Casey Allen died. Did he not care, or did he already know?

  Casey Allen’s address and phone number were written in a tight, round, neat hand at the bottom of the page. He had lived in Queens.

  Cassidy was on his second Lucky Strike when a black Lincoln Town Car stopped in front of the Hopkins house. Cassidy made a note of the company name stenciled on the trunk. Robert Hopkins came out armored in a pinstripe suit, got into the car, and
went off to tend the money fields. Fifteen minutes later Mrs. Robert Hopkins was pulled out of the house by an eager Lucky, who dragged her to the nearest tree, lifted his leg, and sighed. She and the dog walked to the corner, waited for the light to change, and then crossed Fifth Avenue to the broad sidewalk that ran along the park. Lucky, maybe out of habit, turned south toward the nearest entrance, but she pulled him back and turned north, away from where Casey Allen had been found dead on a kitchen chair.

  Cassidy followed.

  Jane Hopkins was a tall, slim woman in her mid-thirties, a few years younger than her husband. She had shoulder-length honey-colored hair held in place by a black velvet headband. She wore tailored, high-waisted charcoal gray slacks that emphasized the length of her legs, black leather boots, and a green-and-black jacket with a high, Chinese collar. She walked fast and went into the park at the entrance on 76th Street, and he followed her till the dog stopped her at a particularly interesting smell near the Conservatory Waters boat basin.

  “Mrs. Hopkins, I’d like to talk to you for a minute.”

  She looked up, startled from the cigarette she was lighting, and then her face cleared. “Michael, how nice to see you. What are you doing here?”

  That threw him, and she recognized his confusion.

  “Jane Hopkins. We met at Leah’s party before Christmas. You told me a very funny story about working on a ranch in Mexico when you were sixteen. Don’t tell me you don’t remember.”

  A vague memory poking up through the mist of holiday booze. A good-looking woman, flirtatious, one of those women who touches you while she talks, a hand on the arm, a nudge, a finger on the chest, leaning in for a moment at the punch line.

  “You don’t know how devastating it is to a woman’s ego when an attractive man forgets her.”

  “Jane, of course. I didn’t forget you, I just didn’t put it together this far out of that context.”

  “Hmmm, not a bad recovery. I’ve heard better, but not bad. But what are you doing here, and approaching me as Mrs. Hopkins with that very serious tone of voice?”

  She was a woman who was used to being admired by men, used to disarming them with her looks and her charm.

  “I want to talk to you about Casey Allen.”

  That checked her. “Oh,” Then, “Oh, my god, were you the cop downstairs grilling Bob earlier? He was very pissed off, going on about invasion of privacy, and the nerve of this and the nerve of that. Secretaries and junior partners are going to suffer today.” It was delivered with a practiced breeziness, but there was something brittle and strained just below the surface. “Poor Casey Allen. Bob told me he was dead. What happened?” At least she asked.

  “He was shot.”

  “Shot? Who did it? Was it a robbery? That’s awful.” Her eyes were wide in surprise.

  “We don’t know yet. I’d like to ask you some questions about him. Do you mind?”

  “No, not at all. Bob thinks I should have three or four lawyers hovering, but then he didn’t realize you were Leah’s brother and Mark Buckman’s brother-in-law. He’s done quite a bit of business with Mark.” What she meant was that they were all in the same club, as if, therefore, there could be no rudeness, no friction, no unpleasantness. “Do you mind if we walk while we talk?” She gestured to the dog tugging at the end of the leash.

  They walked past the newly planted flowerbeds near the boat pond, the earth turned up dark and rich, the plants vibrant, hopeful green. “Tell me about Casey Allen,” Cassidy said. What would she volunteer, what would she leave out?

  “We brought him in to do some work in the house. We had water damage upstairs, a burst pipe. We’d been talking about knocking down a wall, making our bathroom bigger and giving me a proper dressing room, and since we were going to have workers in anyway, we decided this was the time to do it. Casey was recommended to us by the Millikens. You know them, don’t you? He’s with Sullivan and Cromwell. Anyway, Casey was exactly what we wanted. He was prompt, efficient, he did most of the work himself, so we weren’t tripping over people. If he needed help, he brought in his brother-in-law or someone else.”

  “What was he like? What did you know about him?”

  “Not much. He was one of those cheerful Irishmen. Always a smile on his face. Whistled while he worked, if you can believe it.” She laughed and touched Cassidy on the arm, a fleeting brush of fingers, but still a gesture of intimacy.

  When Lucky was finished, they moved on. Jane took Cassidy’s arm as if it were a perfectly natural thing to do, more intimacy. “Did he tell you anything about his life? Did friends come by, anything like that?”

  “Just the brother-in-law when he needed help with the work, and no, we didn’t talk much about his private life. He was married, but I don’t think he had children. You know how it is when someone is working for you. You make polite conversation, but no one let’s down his hair.”

  “What can you tell me about the brother-in-law? What was his name?”

  “His name. Oh, god. What was it? He was only there a few times, and sometimes I was gone. Let’s see, Casey, and Curt, Carl? No. Cameron? That sounds close, but it’s not quite right. But it was something like that, a hard ‘C’ sound. I didn’t like him much, so I didn’t pay attention. He was one of those men who thought he was God’s gift to women, undressed you with his eyes. Not that women aren’t used to that, my god.” She laughed and squeezed his arm. “Still, one wants to choose, and I found him kind of creepy.”

  “Did you ever see Casey outside the house, outside of work?”

  “What do you mean?” A glance and a touch of frost.

  “I don’t know. Bump into him on the street, see him in a restaurant, that kind of thing.”

  “I don’t think Casey Allen and I eat in the same restaurants.”

  “So, no.”

  “No. Just at the house. Or on the block, coming or going.”

  “Uh-huh. What about at Brooks Brothers or Church’s shoe store over on Madison?”

  She yanked on the leash to pull Lucky away from a piece of trash. “No, Lucky, no.” And it covered any reaction she might have had to Cassidy’s question. When the dog obeyed, she started walking again. “Oh, yes, that. Of course.” Easily said, with almost no tension. “Casey was an ambitious young man. He wanted to better himself. He’d ask what books to read and how people behave in certain situations. He paid attention to how Bob dressed. He seemed genuinely interested in learning things. Bob and I both admired that. I told him about Brooks Brothers and about Church’s, but he seemed a bit intimidated by them, so I said I’d go along and help him choose.” She checked him for his reaction. He smiled encouragement. “He asked me. I thought, why not?”

  “Expensive stores for a man in his line of work.”

  “That’s what I told him, but he quoted one of the homilies Bob loves so much: ‘You have to spend money to make money.’ Bob’s talking about spending millions to make millions, but I suppose the principle is the same. Casey thought that if he presented himself correctly he might get more work in our neighborhood. I think he was right.”

  “And he had the money.”

  “No, no. I paid. We had an agreement that involved dropping his hourly wage on the work he was doing until he paid off the debt.”

  She had an answer to everything. Or she was telling the truth.

  They walked on for a minute without speaking, and then she put a hand on his arm and stopped him. “You think I had an affair with him.”

  “It crossed my mind.”

  “And what, Bob found out and killed him in a jealous rage.” She laughed. “That is priceless. One, I was not having an affair with Casey Allen, the hunky construction guy. That is just too Lady Chatterley’s Lover. And two, Bob doesn’t do jealous rage. Bob does cool and calculated. Bob does cost-benefit analysis. Bob weighs avenging honor against going to Sing Sing. Guess which comes out on top? Uh-uh. Sorry.”

  “A week ago Friday, did you see him?”

  “We left a week ago F
riday. We went to San Francisco.”

  “Did you walk Lucky before you went?”

  “I don’t remember. I assume so.”

  “Where do you usually walk him?”

  “Here, in the park.”

  “Here, or down at Seventy-second Street?”

  “Sometimes here. Sometimes there. Why does it matter?” She tried to make it casual. The dog tugged at the leash, and she jerked him back abruptly and he yelped in surprise.

  “Casey Allen was shot and left on a chair near the Seventy-second Street entrance to the park. We think he was left as a message to someone who was used to going in there in the mornings.”

  “Me? What could the message possibly be to me?”

  Cassidy shrugged.

  She opened her purse and thrashed through it until she found her cigarettes. She lit one and slammed the pack back into her purse.

  “Oh, I get it. This would be Bob’s way of telling me he disapproves. Is that the best you can do? Why couldn’t it be some business rival? Why not someone he had a fight with in a bar?”

  “Was the trip to San Francisco planned, or spur of the moment?”

  “Bob does not do things on the spur of the moment.”

  “What about Lucky? What happens with him?” He scratched the dog’s ears, and it butted him on the leg for more when he stopped.

  “We have a dog walker who takes care of him. It was arranged before we left.”

  That, he knew, was a lie. Naomi, the dog walker, said that they had left unexpectedly and had left her a note about walking the dog.

  Cassidy walked back to the precinct and called the company that sent the town car to pick up Robert Hopkins. The day Casey Allen was found, the driver arrived at the regular time, but instead of taking Mr. Hopkins down to Brown Brothers Harriman, he took Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins to TWA at Idlewild Airport. Cassidy called TWA. Mr. and Mrs. Robert Hopkins took the morning flight to San Francisco. They made their reservations by phone at seven thirty the same morning and paid for the tickets with cash at the airport desk.