“Did you know,” Raab said, “that the back of Dworkyn’s building is connected by an alley to the back of the building that Billy Fox’s body was found in?”
“Yes. I figured that out last night.” Brass swiveled to face me. “I started to tell you at breakfast, but we got sidetracked. Oh, yes; that’s when Miss Starr sat down.”
“So you had breakfast with the stripper, eh?” Raab asked. “Both of you?”
“We met her at Lindner’s,” Brass said, sounding annoyed.
“Sure you did,” Raab said. “But that’s none of my business, what you do. Did you know that Fox was killed in Dworkyn’s studio and his body was carried through the alley to where we found it?”
“That was certainly one of the possibilities,” Brass commented.
“Well, it’s no longer a possibility, it’s what happened.”
“You’re sure?”
“There’s a trail of blood, sparse but followable. There are some footprints. There is a slight bit of fabric from his coat caught on a fence nail by the other building. I could probably dream up a scenario where this is all a coincidence, if you like, but I don’t think I could sell it.”
I noticed that Gloria had her steno pad out and was unobtrusively taking notes. Brass ran his hand through his hair and, as always, seemed annoyed that there wasn’t more of it. “Perhaps you should speak to Señor Velo, the oh-so-helpful travel agent,” Brass suggested. “His version of the event seems unlikely.”
“We thought of that,” Raab said. “The travel agency is closed, and Velo is nowhere to be found.”
“Perhaps he’s on his honeymoon,” Brass said. “Have you released von Pilath yet?”
“Not yet,” Raab said. At Brass’s look, he continued defensively, “Well, he might have done it, after all. Besides, we got a report through ICPB that he is wanted by the Berlin police for burglary.”
“And reeling and writhing and fainting in coils,” Brass said. “I was told that the Nazis might try something like this. Does he look like a burglar to you?”
“What does a burglar look like?” Raab asked sensibly. “And who told you?”
“Several of his associates in the Verein für Whosis.”
“Why didn’t they tell me?” Raab demanded.
“It should be obvious,” Brass said, leaning back. “You’ll inquire about them over ICPB and get back that they’re wanted for mopery or barratry or using a bratwurst for immoral purposes. According to them the present German government uses the police as an instrument of policy; a situation in which truth is not highly regarded.”
“Well, I’m not convinced that that’s true,” Raab said. “The Berlin police department has always had high standards, and I don’t think that they’d go along with any hanky-panky.”
“I hope you’re right,” Brass said.
“In any case,” Raab continued, “I don’t have to take notice of the ICPB filing unless someone formally asks for von Pilath’s extradition, which so far they have not done.”
“I don’t see where any of this is going to take us,” Brass said, “but I suppose information is always useful.”
“My point,” Raab said, waving his index finger at Brass. “That’s why I want you to tell me what you’re holding back.” He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, shook one out, and stuck it between his lips. Then he glared at the pack in his hand, as though wondering how it had got there, jammed it back in his pocket, took the cigarette out of his mouth, and crumpled it and threw it in the wastebasket.
He turned back to Brass. “Now look, we’ve been friends, of a sort, for a long time. I know you. The story you told about that fat man was bullshit when you told it and it’s still bullshit.” He turned to Gloria. “Excuse my French.”
“That’s okay,” she told him. “I work on a newspaper; I’m used to bullshit.”
Raab nodded. “The way I figure it,” he told Brass, “is the fat man came up here and showed you some pictures he wanted to sell. Either you bought them or you didn’t; if they were any good you bought them. That’s none of my business. But he wouldn’t tell you who he was, so you asked Fox to follow him. And Fox got killed. So now it is my business. I want to know what was in those pictures that a man—two men—would get killed for them.”
“You don’t want to know,” Brass told him. “Trust me.”
“When did you take charge of the New York City Police Department?” Raab asked, not quite shouting. “It’s not your decision! The First Amendment does not give you the right to withhold evidence, and you damn well know it!”
The two men stared at each other for a minute or so. Then Brass let out a long breath of air. “Let’s suppose—”
“Suppose nothing!” Raab snapped. “I want to know what was in those pictures!”
Brass contemplated the little Chinese god on the corner of his desk, his fingers drumming on the desktop while he considered. Then he contemplated Raab, who just stood there impassively waiting for Brass’s response. Brass sighed. “First I want to assure you that the next ten minutes are, as Mr. Roosevelt is so fond of saying, strictly off the record.”
Raab slammed his hand down on the desk. “Goddamn it,” he yelled. “I’ll decide what’s on or off the record, not you! I’m not going to promise to withhold evidence in a murder case, whatever it is!”
“You misunderstand me,” Brass said. He leaned forward. “The decision is yours.” He turned to me. “DeWitt, will you please hand Inspector Raab the packet of photographs?”
I unbuttoned the flap on my jacket pocket and pulled out the pictures. “Here you are,” I said, handing them to Raab.
“Hmph!” Raab said. He moved his chair over and turned on the floor lamp by the side of the desk. “So you bought them? How much?”
“Actually, he gave them to me,” Brass told him.
“Yeah? Then what the…”
Inspector Raab must have seen something interesting in the picture he was looking at; he stopped talking and peered closely down at the photographs, going slowly from one to the next. Brass and Gloria and I maintained the silence, which stretched out for a while.
“Shit!” Raab said after a while, with feeling. He looked up at Brass. “I recognize the senator and Judge Garbin. Are the rest of them—”
“DeWitt,” Brass said, “read Inspector Raab the list of names.”
I pulled out my little notebook. “Senator Bertram Childers,” I said. “Judge Gerald Garbin. Ephraim L. Wackersan, of the department store of the same name. Pass Helbine, friend of the poor, and of every politician in the city. Suzie Frienard; you may know her husband, Dominic, who builds things. Stepney Partcher, of Partcher, Meedle and Coster—he’s a lawyer. Homer Seinbrenner, he sells booze. Fletcher van Geuip, he writes books.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Shit!” Raab repeated.
Gloria appeared at Raab’s side and handed him a glass. “Cognac,” she said.
Raab stared at it, drank it down, and put the glass on the desk. “Damn,” he said. “Why’d you show those to me?”
“Inspector!” Brass protested.
“Yeah, yeah. It’s my own damn fault. You warned me. You think it’s blackmail? You think one of them killed Dworkyn and Fox?”
“I have no idea,” Brass said, “but I rather think not. It may well be blackmail, but I don’t think Dworkyn was the blackmailer. He claimed to be trying to find out who had taken the pictures.”
Raab got up and looked around the room. I didn’t know what he was looking at, or for. “If I take these,” he said, “there’s no way—I can’t even—Goddamn it!”
“Sorry,” Brass said.
“Yeah,” Raab said. He gathered the photos up and tossed the packet across the desk. “Put those away. This conversation never happened. I swallowed your cock-and-bull story about Dworkyn, and you never showed me the pictures. Right?”
“Right.”
Raab sat back down. “I don’t like looking lik
e an idiot,” he said, “but I want to stay on the force long enough to collect my pension. I’ll go at it another way, although I’m damned if I see what way that is at this moment.”
“If I get anything, I’ll pass it on to you,” Brass assured him.
“Yeah,” Raab said. “And ain’t that a hell of a note? When I figure out which of them did it—if one of them did it—I’ll indict the son of a bitch, political pull or no. But if I try investigating all of them, the seven of them who didn’t do it will have my ass, not to mention my badge. Except for the writer; writers don’t have any political clout. Unless they all did it together. You think they all did it?”
“No,” Brass said.
“Yeah. Me too.” Raab hauled out his pack of cigarettes again, and tapped it against his hand, but no cigarette emerged. He stared balefully at the pack for a moment, then crumpled it and tossed it in the wastebasket. “Does anyone else know about those pictures?”
“The four of us in this room,” Brass told him, “and Cathy, William Fox’s widow, who is now working for me, and an expert I had examine them. He won’t talk; he never talks.”
“What’d he think?”
“They’re real.”
“Yeah.” Raab took a pad from his pocket and a fountain pen from another pocket and wrote down the eight names I had read to him. He didn’t have to ask me to repeat any of them. I don’t know whether that was a credit to his memory or the prominence of the names or the situation. “I can check these people to a certain extent,” he said. “I can have their whereabouts at the time of the murders established. There are ways of doing that without raising anyone’s hackles, or explaining just why we’re asking. Beyond that I cannot go without telling my superiors about the pictures. And they are all very political, which means they’ll be looking for someone to blame. Neither of us would like that.”
“It’s not a situation I’m particularly fond of either,” Brass said. “When we catch whoever did this, we’ll have to give him a stem talking-to.”
“You planning on doing the catching?” Raab asked.
“I will certainly ask for your assistance when there is something for you to assist in,” Brass told him.
“You do that,” Raab said.
15
Inspector Raab was not a happy policeman as he left our office. I would not want to be a miscreant who fell into his clutches for the next few hours. As soon as Raab was gone, Brass pulled the page out of the reception desk typewriter and took it into his office to finish the story of the sleeping detective. I wondered how Raab would feel about that when he read it tomorrow.
I took the packet of pornographic photographs and put it in the special file in the closet behind the booze. He who steals our purse steals trash, but he who steals our dirty picture collection could make a lot of money blackmailing influential citizens. Then I retreated to my office with the day’s mail and began opening the envelopes and sorting the contents into different piles. I am particularly fond of the nut mail; the letters you can’t believe are real, but neither can you believe anyone made them up. A couple of milder examples from this morning’s mail will show you what I mean:
Dear Mr Brass,
I rite you because of how you are always helping the littel people. I am a littel man & my wife to & I need your help. Could you send me about $80 woud be a grate help.
Sinserly George Wrantke
The letter was postmarked Chicago, but there was no return address. How he expected to get his money, I don’t know.
And:
Alexander Brass
The World Building
New York
My Dear Mr. Alexander Brass:
In one of your recent columns you spoke of the plight of the jobless people who still roam the streets of our major cities looking for work, and of the good work the WPA and other “alphabet” organizations started by President Roosevelt has done in helping these “unfortunates.”
I assume you mean well, but you have fallen prey to the propaganda of the Jew industrialists that are trying to turn our Republic into a Communistic state, as is written in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, their own document, for all to see. There is no secret about this except in the blindness of the citizens of our great democracy to see what is before their very eyes before it is too late.
The Depression was created by the Hebrew bankers to throw this great country into chaos so they could further their diabolical schemes. These people on the streets don’t even want to work. Go on and offer one of them a job, and see what happens. President Roosevelt, whose real name is Rosenfeld, it has been conclusively proven, is a conscious agent of this Jew-Freemason conspiracy.
I write you in the best of motivations, to remove the cloud from before your eyes. Don’t be fooled before it is too late.
Most Sincerely, your friend,
Karl Swendele
Ayer, Mass.
Ps. If you send me an envelope with some postage on it, I will send you some books to read that will really open your eyes.
He did include his full address, or at least a post office box number, and I was tempted to send him an envelope with some postage on it, but I didn’t.
I heard Cathy come upstairs from the morgue, where she had been gathering material on our eight photo pals beyond what was in their folders. “You know Mr. Schiff is a really nice man,” she said, “so helpful.”
Brass appeared in his doorway. “Have you found anything that would connect any of them to each other?”
“Not yet,” she said. “I’m making up a list of possibilities, but they’ll have to be checked out. Like, two of them went to Harvard, but one of them went to Princeton, and I don’t know where the others went. Stepney Partcher and Homer Seinbrenner are both members of the Thespian Club, but I don’t know if any of the others are.”
I had a stack of mail in my hand, which I continued to open while this conversation went on. I pulled a card out of its envelope and read it, and held it up in the air. “The princes of Serendip strike again!” I announced.
Brass smiled. “What stroke of serendipity have you stumbled upon?” he asked.
“You have here an invitation,” I told him, “to a dinner party in honor of Charles A. Lindbergh.”
“Well!” Brass said. “This, I think, will be Lindbergh’s first outing since the trial.”
He was referring, of course, to the trial of Bruno Hauptmann for the kidnaping and murder of Lindbergh’s baby son, for those of you who have been on Mars for the past few years. Hauptmann was still sitting on death row at the New Jersey state prison at Trenton.
“What has this to do with our problem?” Brass asked me.
“The party is at the estate of Senator and Mrs. Bertram Childers, at Deal, New Jersey.”
“Is it?” Brass took the card and read it, and then handed it to Gloria. “It is RSVP,” he said. “Call the senator’s social secretary and say there’ll be four of us coming. I don’t think they’ll complain; in order to snag a celebrity guest, one has to put up with his entourage.”
“I thought Lindbergh was the celebrity,” I said.
Brass was not offended. “They can use all the celebrities they can get,” he told me. “It’s one of those two-hundred-dollar-a-plate Republican fund-raisers.” He patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, we celebrities get to eat free. And we don’t have to tell them how we’re planning to vote.”
“It’s for Saturday,” Gloria said.
“So?”
“You’re speaking on Saturday,” she flipped through the pages of the appointment book, “to the annual dinner of the Society of Radio Broadcasters.”
“Call Winchell and ask him to go in my place; free food and an audience—he’ll jump at it.”
“All right.”
Brass looked at his watch. “It’s two o’clock, well past lunchtime,” he said. “Let’s go across the street to Danny’s; I’m buying.”
“What a prince!” I said.
“I’ll just st
ay here and work,” Cathy said. “I want to call the Harvard Club and see if any of our people are members. If they went to Harvard, they probably will be.”
“A good idea,” Brass said, “but you can do it after lunch.”
“Come on, Cathy,” Gloria said, “you’ve got to eat.”
“Actually,” she said, looking embarrassed, “I’ve eaten.”
“Oh? When?”
“Mr. Schiff invited me to share his lunch. He was telling me stories, and it seemed impolite not to—”
“Ah!” Brass said. “The old Schiff magic. Candles and wine? Did he break out his balalaika and strum a few tunes?”
“Well, yes.”
Brass patted her on the shoulder. “He’s harmless, although he’d kill me if he heard me say that, and he’s good for you. He really likes and respects women.”
* * *
Danny’s was not crowded; the last of the late-lunch crowd was just leaving as we arrived. There were a couple of World reporters taking a break at one table, and some men from the pressroom around another. They were not socializing; there is a strong pecking order in newspapers. Pressmen have a much higher status than reporters. They, after all, have a real union. We sat at the corner table near the kitchen that Brass always grabbed when it was otherwise unoccupied.
After a couple of minutes Danny appeared out of the kitchen. “Sorry,” she said, “there was a slight crisis involving fish.” She perched on the empty chair and poised her pencil before her order form. “Steak sandwich with mashed, pastrami on white with fries, and what would you like, my dear?” The last addressed to Gloria.
“Do you have any fish you’re not having a problem with?” Gloria asked.
“Shad,” Danny told her. “The man brought me some wonderful Hudson River shad; I’ll broil you one. Mashed?”
“Rice?”
“Rice it is. And a salad.” She disappeared into the kitchen.
Gloria turned her chair to face Brass. “Well?” she asked.
“Well what?”
“Are we making progress?”
“We’re further along than we were yesterday,” Brass replied, “but it feels more like we’re being tossed ahead by the tide than like we’re propelling ourselves forward.”
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