Too Soon Dead

by Michael Kurland

  She struggled against me for a moment and then stopped and clung to me. “The slob,” she said, “the poor fat slob. What happened; his heart?”

  “He was murdered,” I told her. “It’s not pretty.”

  “Ohmigod!” she said, backing away from me, her eyes wide. “I told him! I warned him!” She backed into the edge of the bed and her knees buckled and she half fell, half sat down.

  “Warned him about what?”

  “The bookies.” She started crying softly. I decided she wasn’t going to make a mad dash for the darkroom, so I went over to the window and dropped a nickel in the phone and dialed my boss; the private line that doesn’t go through the World switchboard. It was after eight and he might not be there, but he’d be displeased if I didn’t try him before calling the police. Explanations about the bookies would have to wait.

  “Mr. Brass’s office.” The voice that sank a thousand ships.

  “Gloria, it’s me. What are you doing there this late?”

  “Woman’s work is never done. What’s up?”

  “Is the boss in?”

  “He is. And so is Inspector Raab. They’re debating whether Mr. Brass is withholding some information of importance to an ongoing murder investigation. Neither of them has actually struck the other yet.”

  “Put me through to Brass.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Trust me on this one.”

  There was a click, and that strange lack-of-noise that sounds like you’ve been connected to the center of the earth, and then Brass came on. “Hello, DeWitt?”

  “I’ve found the fat man,” I told him. “He’s dead. He was sliced up pretty badly. I think he was tortured.” There was a gasp from behind me, and I realized that Bobbi was listening to my side of the conversation.

  “Ah! And his profession?”

  “Photographer.”

  “Are there any pertinent examples of his art about?”

  I thought that one over for a second. “If you mean are there any dirty pictures, yes, sort of, but only minor-league stuff, the kind of stuff you find in girlie magazines. Professional models in lacy lingerie. I haven’t seen any like the ones he brought to you, but I’ll check. But I have to call the police.”

  “Inspector Raab is in the office,” Brass said. “I will inform him, which will take care of your obligation, and we’ll be right over. You might concern yourself with that question before we arrive. What’s the address?”

  I told him and hung up.

  “Bobbi,” I said, returning to the bed and sitting beside her. “There isn’t much time; the police will be here soon. If there’s anything we should dispose of before they get here, we’d better get busy.”

  She was lying on her back staring at the bleak white ceiling, with her feet dangling on the floor. At my words she pushed herself to a sitting position. “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, any photographs of your brother’s that are significantly racier than the ones on the walls. Anything you wouldn’t want the police to see.”

  “There isn’t anything like that, I told you,” she said. “Why are you so convinced that there is?”

  “Your brother showed me some photographs that were truly pornographic,” I told her. “I don’t think he took them, but he had them. There may be copies of them here. If so, and the police find them, they will certainly get the wrong idea about Hermann’s activities.”

  “You’re lying,” she said flatly. “Herm would never do anything like that.” She pointed a finger at me, but her heart wasn’t in it.

  “You said something about bookies,” I said. “Was your brother a heavy gambler? Could he have been into the bookies for a lot of money?”

  “Nah!” She pushed herself to her feet. “I kept after him about his gambling, but it really wasn’t much. Not like some I know. He was never down more than a nickel.” I looked at her, and she explained. “That’s five hundred bucks. Not a lot as gamblers go, and I know some big-time sports. Herm wasn’t a big-time gambler. Hell, he wasn’t a big-time anything.” She shook her head sadly. “I think I’ll go look at him before the police get here.”

  “I wouldn’t,” I said; “it’ll give you bad dreams.”

  She paused in the doorway and turned to look at me. “Bad?”

  “Very,” I said. “It wasn’t bookies. For a nickel they might send someone around to bust an arm, but they wouldn’t do anything like that. For no amount of money would they do anything like that.”

  “Could it have something to do with those pictures?”

  “I don’t know. It could.”

  She thought for a few seconds. “I don’t think I want to see Hermann all beat up, or whatever,” she decided. “I might remember him that way when I think of him, and I wouldn’t want that. Maybe we should look for those pictures.”

  “Good idea,” I said, restraining an impulse to kiss her.

  Hermann’s files were actually eight-by-ten white envelopes, each holding the negatives from a photo shoot, and sometimes the prints. They were numbered chronologically. This year’s, which had been in the top drawer of the right-hand file cabinet but were now strewn about the bedroom floor, began with 351, for the first shoot in 1935, and ended, as far as we could tell, with 35102, for the hundred and second shoot. There was also a date stamp showing that envelope 351 had been filed, or shot, or processed, or whatever on 01-04-1935, and envelope 35102 only two days ago. Which would seem to indicate that Hermann had been alive then, at least long enough to do his filing. This was no great surprise; it was only three days ago that Hermann had appeared in Brass’s office.

  Most of the photos seemed to be from shoots that Hermann had done; I could tell by the props and location. Bobbi claimed to be able to recognize her brother’s style, and perhaps she could. Some were clearly shot by others, and had been given to Hermann for processing. He usually kept the negatives, Bobbi explained, so he could make more prints on demand. We gathered and sorted the envelopes, and found two missing: numbers 3588 and 3597.

  We continued looking through the negatives just to be sure, but I would have been willing to bet a nickel that we wouldn’t find anything. I would have paid a dime for a look at numbers 3588 and 3597.

  It was about half an hour before Brass and Inspector Raab walked in together, with three detectives close behind. Brass and Raab headed for the darkroom with two of the detectives following. Bobbi and I, for lack of anything better to do, remained sitting on the edge of the bed.

  A couple of minutes later Raab strode out of the back hallway and stood in front of me, his hands on his hips. The remaining detective, a wistful-looking young man whom I had never seen before, came up next to him and whipped out a notebook and flipped it open. It was the sort that flips open from the top. I noticed that the wistful detective’s navy-blue suit and white shirt were both well ironed, his red and blue striped tie had been carefully knotted, and his brown brogans wore an exuberant coat of polish. We novelists train ourselves to notice details like that.

  “Tell me about it,” Raab said.

  “As you’ve noticed, there’s a dead man in the darkroom,” I said. “It was probably designed as the master bedroom, but it’s been converted, with a couple of enlargers and a row of sinks and that sort of thing. The dead man’s name is Hermann—with two n’s—Dworkyn. This lady is his sister.”

  “You found him,” Raab said accusingly.

  “That’s right,” I said. “Miss Starr was just arriving home when I got here.”

  “Who’s Miss Starr?” asked the wistful detective, looking up from his notebook.

  “I am,” Bobbi said. “It’s my nom de burlesque. I’m a headliner with the Ardbaum circuit.”

  Raab switched his attention to Bobbi. “Where were you getting home from?” he asked.

  “Philadelphia,” she said.

  “When did you arrive?”

  “It must have been about seven-thirty. The train came into Penn Station around seven, and I took a cab.�
��

  “How long were you in Philadelphia?”

  “Three days. We did a couple of smokers and spent one day looking at all the historical monuments which the city is noted for. It was very pleasant.”

  “Anyone who can verify that you were in Philadelphia?” Raab asked.

  “The mayor, the chief of police, two aldermen, and a municipal court judge,” she said. “Also, I traveled with two fellow artistes: Wanda the Whip and Kandy Kane—with two K’s.”

  “I see,” Raab said. “Thank you.” He turned to me. “Can you identify him?”

  “The corpse?” I thought for a second. “He is the man who came to our office. I don’t know him as Hermann Dworkyn because he didn’t give us his name. There is a picture of him in his bedroom holding hands with Miss Starr.…”

  Bobbi nodded. “That’s Herm,” she said. “We went to Coney Island last year. Bickey took the picture.”

  “Who’s Bickey?” Raab asked.

  “He’s a comic with whom I was formerly going out,” Bobbi said. “I haven’t seen him in a while. We will not speak further of him.”

  Alan Shine came into the apartment, hat in hand, and glanced around the room. “Hi, all,” he said.

  “Wait outside, Shine,” Raab barked. “We’re not done with the crime scene yet.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Shine said, continuing into the room. “What are you planning to do with it, set it in bronze?”

  Inspector Raab sighed. “Don’t touch anything!” he said.

  “Yeah,” Shine said. “Say, you hear the one about the chorus girl who would do anything for a fur coat—and then when she got it, she couldn’t button it?”

  Raab glared at him. Shine shrugged and went over to inspect the wall full of Hermann’s artwork.

  Brass returned from the darkroom and stood in the doorway. “I don’t like this,” he said.

  “You don’t like it!” Bobbi said, her voice rising into a minor screech. “He’s my brother!”

  Brass came over. “You have my sympathies, Miss, ah—”

  I introduced them. Bobbi offered her hand, and Brass shook it firmly. “Do you have a place to stay tonight, Miss Starr?” he asked.

  “Oh,” she said. “What a thought. I can’t stay here. I mean, I wouldn’t even if I could.” She shuddered.

  Brass took out a card and scribbled something on the back of it. “Take this,” he said, holding it out. “Go downstairs and get a cab and take it to the Park South Hotel. Give the card to the manager, and he will give you a room, a very nice room.”

  “What’s the rates?” she asked, staring at the card and trying to decipher Brass’s handwriting.

  “No charge,” Brass told her. “I have an arrangement with the hotel.”

  “I see,” she said, standing up. “And I suppose you live there, is that part of the arrangement?”

  Brass shook his head. “I live down the block,” he said.

  “Just as I thought,” Bobbi said. “Take your card back; I’ll bed down at Mrs. Adamson’s on Sixty-seventh: four bucks a week and no strings.”

  Brass chuckled. “I see,” he said. “There are no strings here either. I want to talk to you.”

  “Sure; talk!” Bobbi said, making it sound like a dirty word.

  “Talk,” Brass repeated. “Over breakfast. Tomorrow. At Lindner’s on the corner of Sixth Avenue, around ten-thirty.”

  There was a long pause. “Oh,” Bobbi said. Another pause. “Well, how was I to know you were a gentleman? Let me get my suitcases.”

  Brass turned to me. “Why don’t you help Miss Starr downstairs with her luggage and then go home yourself?” he said. “I’d like you to join us for breakfast.”

  And so, after pausing to make sure Inspector Raab was through with us for the evening, I did.

  13

  It was just seven o’clock the next morning when I left my room to stagger down the hall to the bathroom for my morning ablutions. My next-door neighbor Pinky was doing push-ups in the hall, wearing an ancient white terry-cloth bathrobe that exposed a pair of skinny, bony legs. Why he was using the hall was understandable: a retired circus clown, Pinky lived in two small rooms, both so filled with a lifetime of circus and carnival artifacts that there wasn’t enough room to swing a slapstick. Each separate playbill, broadsheet, tent peg, and fright wig had its own story of romance, of pathos, of gaiety, or of ribald humor that Pinky delighted in telling at the drop of a scrapbook. The question was why a man in his early seventies, who had never evidenced the slightest interest in exercising in the year I’d known him, would be doing push-ups at all.

  I didn’t feel awake enough to ask anyone anything until after I’d showered and shaved and had a cup of coffee in my hand, so I carefully stepped around Pinky and enclosed myself in the bathroom. When I came out Pinky was doing sit-ups.

  I retreated to my room and poured two cups of coffee. A minute later I opened the door and found Pinky leaning against the wall, breathing hard. “Come in, Pinky,” I said. “Have a cup of coffee and tell me whom to call when you collapse.”

  He staggered into my room and took the cup from my hands. “Sugar,” he said. “Lots of sugar!”

  I passed him the jar full of cube sugar, which I steal from various restaurants around town. I started to get dressed while Pinky contemplated the sugar.

  “Age creeps up on a fellow,” he said. “You feel the same day after day, but then comes the day you find you get out of breath after doing fifty sit-ups. I used to do a warm-up every day before breakfast—sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups, walking a tight wire—like that. It’s a hell of a thing to suddenly discover you’re old.” Pinky dropped six cubes in his cup and watched them dissolve. “You know, there’s a good bar trick you can do with sugar cubes in a cup of coffee.”

  “How does it work?” I asked.

  “Too late now, I’ve already put the sugar in. Next time I’ll show you.” He stirred the coffee with the spoon that I had thoughtfully placed in the cup for him. Then he took the spoon out and examined it. “Horn and Hardart,” he said. “The Automat must supply half the silverware in New York.”

  “A fine institution,” I agreed. “I’d give them all my business but their sugar doesn’t come in cubes.”

  “I’ll speak to Mr. Horn about it,” Pinky said.

  “Why the sudden renewed interest in exercise?” I asked him. “You clip one of those Charles Atlas coupons from the back of a men’s magazine?”

  “Just trying to get into some sort of shape,” he said. “I got talked into doing some clowning for a bunch of kids, and I want to make sure the muscles are all working. Clowning takes a fair amount of physical exertion, you know.”

  “I’m sure it does.” I picked out a light blue tie with a recurring pattern of yellow sunbursts, a gift from a friend who works on the Sun. It’s the usual Christmas present of his boss, and he had four of them. Peering into the mirror above my bureau I carefully worked on getting the knot right the first time. “Who are you working for, some kiddie birthday party?”

  “No, it’s a Catholic children’s hospital up in the Bronx. A few of the boys are going up on Sunday and do a few routines on the lawn, I guess it is. Then we’ll visit the kids who can’t get out of bed. That reminds me, I’ve got to pick up a gross of balloons; I’ll be making balloon animals all day.”

  “A Catholic hospital? I thought you were Jewish.”

  He looked at me. “Shhh!” he said. “Don’t tell the children!”

  I ripped the knot out; first attempt a failure. “I guess that was a stupid thing to say,” I said, readjusting the tie around my neck.

  “Let me tell you,” he said. “Aside from the fact that children is children, whatever their labels, there’s the fact that clowns is clowns. I’ve worked with Irish clowns, French clowns, Italian clowns, German clowns, Mexican clowns, and, let’s see, a few Baptist clowns—they like to do what they call ‘Bible clowning’—and a Chinese clown or two. I’ve worked with giants and fat ladies and little people�
�they like to be called little people—and people born with monstrous deformities who make their livings being stared at. I’ve worked with a lady clown or two, and a couple of Negro clowns. When we play the south, we put them in blackface and the locals don’t notice. And in all of the forty years I was with it, nobody I worked with ever gave a damn about my race, religion, sex, nationality, or any other damn thing except my act.”

  “The circus seems to be ahead of the rest of the country,” I said.

  “Damn right,” Pinky agreed. “Except for the trapeze artists. If you can’t do at least one somersault in mid-air, you can’t sit at their table. You want me to tie that for you?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Come on,” Pinky said. “I know this great knot.” He stretched his hands apart: “Big!”

  “I’m sure,” I told him. I looped the knot around, and this time it came out right.

  “Mine would’ve looked better,” Pinky said. He got up. “I gotta pack. See you later.”

  I left the house and walked into the park. It was windy and overcast, but it wasn’t raining. I put on my raincoat anyway, because I like the coat and will wear it at any excuse. It’s a war surplus officer’s trench coat, and I like to think it makes me look worldly and sophisticated. Perhaps it does.

  I sat on a bench and stared at the skyline. A flock of pigeons settled in front of me and waited expectantly. I found a piece of tissue paper in the pocket of the trench coat, so I ripped it into small pieces and tossed them amid the pigeons. They pecked at the bits of paper for a while, but then started looking at me out of the corners of their eyes and muttering to each other, so I got up and moved on.

  I arrived at Lindner’s at about ten-fifteen. Brass came in at about ten-thirty-five and sat opposite me. “Good morning, DeWitt,” he said. “Did you settle our princess in last night?”

  “I saw her register, but I didn’t go upstairs with her,” I said. “I assume she made it all right. She didn’t show any signs of wanting to skip.”

  Our conversation paused while Brass ordered poached eggs with two slices of bacon and a glass of what the waitress swore was indeed fresh-squeezed orange juice, and I ordered pancakes and ham.