Too Soon Dead

by Michael Kurland

  “We know more about the pictures,” Gloria said.

  “True. We know they’re not faked, or at least Mitchell thinks they’re not; that they were all taken in the same location, and that someone named Bird is somehow involved. And we are quite sure that someone thinks they’re worth killing for. But what’s the common denominator?”

  “I’ve been thinking,” I said. “Our eight picture pals do have one thing in common, probably.”

  Brass turned to look at me. Gloria smiled encouragingly. I suddenly felt like a sixth-grader who is about to give a report before the whole class.

  “What’s that?” Brass asked.

  “Well, they’re probably all being blackmailed. That is, I can’t think of anything else those pictures could be used for.”

  “They’re certainly not art,” Gloria agreed.

  “Yes.” Brass asked, “And what does that buy us?”

  “Suppose we approach each of them as though we know they’re being blackmailed, and we want to help.”

  “It’s an interesting idea,” Brass said. “The approach would have to be very delicately done; we don’t want to frighten anyone, and we certainly don’t want anyone thinking that we are the blackmailers. That’s a comedy of errors we could live without.”

  “And there’s always the chance that they aren’t being blackmailed yet,” Gloria added. “In which case they’d wonder what we’re talking about and call the police.”

  Brass nodded. In a deep voice he intoned: “‘Columnist Indicted for Extortion. “I was framed,” screams noted syndicated columnist Alexander Brass. While not wishing to prejudge the case, this paper will no longer carry Mr. Brass’s column so as not to offend the sensibilities of the unindicted.’ By God, Winchell would have a field day. Heywood Broun would stick up for me and put me down in the same paragraph. Alexander Woollcott would make a pun. By God, it’s almost worth it. Like Tom Sawyer coming to his own funeral.”

  Danny appeared at the table carrying plates of food. “Tom Sawyer?” she asked. “I thought Huckleberry Finn was a better book; more stuff in it.” She put the plates down.

  Danny stayed at the table and chatted with us while we ate. Which was a good thing: Besides being a welcome addition to any conversation on her own merits, she kept us from the topic that would have monopolized the meal. We discussed poetry and playwriting and fishing, with a few digressions into the meaning of life and the future of civilization. Aristotle was mentioned, and Anatole France; Nietzsche and nihilism. The only crimes we discussed were literary ones, and the only deaths, ones that had occurred years if not centuries before.

  * * *

  It was a little after three when we returned to the World building. We took the elevator to sixteen and were headed to the door of our office when a deep thump shook the corridor walls and floor ever so slightly. The vibrations quickly damped out, and an acrid, sort of burned smell filled the corridor. Brass suddenly shouted, “Damn!” and threw himself toward the office door. Gloria and I followed, perhaps a little more hesitantly. We made it through the door just in time to see three men emerge from the hallway to the inner office. When they saw us they charged, fullbacks breaking through the line to the open space of the hall beyond. Two of them were built like football flayers, and the third was thin and wiry, but he could move fast enough. They all wore blue knitted caps, which they pulled down past their chins as they charged us.

  In an instant, the three were past us and down the hall to the stairway. Brass and I were knocked to the floor, and Gloria was shoved up against the door, from which she slid to the floor on her own. As we lay there, we could hear our assailants rapidly clattering down the stairs.

  I was not in pain but a warm feeling was spreading over my face. I reached up to touch it, and my hand came away covered with blood.

  Brass pushed himself to his feet, sort of doubled over with his hands wrapped tightly around his chest. “Damn!” he said.

  “You said that,” Gloria said. She stood up and took a few steps, and fell into her chair.

  Brass staggered to the edge of the desk and supported himself against it. “Are you all right?” he asked Gloria.

  “I think so,” she said. “I need to catch my breath.”

  Brass turned to me. “Are you—” He stared at me. “Migod! What happened?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. “I think I’m bleeding.”

  “Take my word for it,” he said, staggering over to me. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at my face with it. “He was wearing knucks when he hit you,” Brass said. “You’re lucky; he could have broken your nose.”

  “It’s not broken?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Gloria was on the phone to the infirmary on the seventh floor before Brass finished dabbing at my face. “The nurse will be right up,” she said.

  “Damn!” Brass said again, and we looked at him.

  “Cathy!” he called, and headed toward the inner hallway.

  There are times when anxiety becomes a physical feeling, and a painful knot of anxiety grabbed at my chest with Brass’s call. I pulled myself to my feet and followed Gloria, who was two steps in front of me. The two of them paused in the doorway to Brass’s office, blocking my view.

  Brass and Gloria went on into the office, and I started to follow, but instead I folded up and fell to the floor.

  16

  White. Shining white, brilliant white.

  My closed eyes opened and, as through a glass brightly, I saw white: hazy, sparkling white. Slowly, gradually, my eyes focused and I saw that the white was not uniform, it was differenced, it was dirty and cracked in places. It was a ceiling.

  I was staring at a ceiling. I must be lying on my back. Something throbbed and was in great pain. I searched through the possibilities and the realization grew, slowly, that it was my head. The white was the ceiling, the pain was my head; that was all of the universe that I knew, and all that was needful for me to know. I closed my eyes. It was black.

  Time passed. I opened my eyes. They focused faster this time and I could make out more detail. But it was still a ceiling, essentially uninteresting. I moved my head. Now I could see a wall. It was white.

  “How do you feel?”

  It was a voice. It was a lovely voice. It was a familiar voice. I turned my head. Gloria was sitting by the side of the bed—I was in a bed, that was good to know—looking down at me with concern in her eyes.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “The doctor says you got a mild concussion,” Gloria said. “When that bruiser hit you with the brass knuckles it knocked your head back, and then he slammed into you with his shoulder to get through the door, and you went down, hitting your head on the floor. The brass knucks didn’t do much damage, you lucked out there, but the floor did. That’s how the doc figures it. Now it’s your turn; how do you feel?”

  “Like somebody slammed my head against the floor. What bruiser? What brass knuckles? What are you talking about? How did I get here? And just where is ‘here’?”

  “You’re in a private room on the third floor of New York Hospital,” Gloria told me. She patiently repeated to me the events concerning our recent misadventure, concluding with, “And we found Cathy tied to a chair in the office with a kind of weird beige cloth tape. She was all right when we got her untied, but very angry. She’d been frightened out of her mind, and she didn’t like it. The intruders, whoever they were, went through the desk and the file cabinets like a cyclone, tossing everything on the floor and leaving an incredible mess.”

  As she talked my memory of the events had returned. “And the safe,” I said. “They must have blown the safe; that was the boom we heard.”

  “That’s right,” Gloria agreed. “Brass thinks they were after the pictures, but they didn’t get them; they were in the special file.”

  “How long have I been here?”

  “It’s tomorrow,” Gloria told me. She looked at the watch on her wrist. S
he wore a large man’s watch, with a black band, and I’ve always meant to ask her why. But not now. “It’s a little after one in the morning.”

  “Is everyone else okay?” I asked.

  “I’m fine. Alexander has had his ribs taped up. The doctor thinks they’re bruised but not broken. Anyway, he’s in pain, which we’re going to be reminded of for the next couple of weeks. It’s a good thing you were hurt worse, or he’d be insufferable. He’s outside, probably downstairs in the cafeteria; I’ll get him.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, and she paused in the doorway. “You both waited here?”

  “All three, actually. Cathy is here too.”

  “I feel loved,” I said. “I’ll have to get a minor concussion more often.”

  “Well.” Gloria looked down at the floor. “We didn’t know it was a minor concussion until you woke up.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “If it was a major concussion, then you might not have awakened.”

  “For how long?”

  “Ever, maybe,” she said, and went out the door.

  Two minutes later a short but distinguished-looking man in a spade beard and a dinner jacket walked in. “Hello, there, fellow,” he said. “I’m Dr. Kaplan. What’s your name?”

  “Morgan DeWitt. Why?”

  “I just want to make sure you know it. It’s my job; I’m your doctor.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  He came over and peered into my eyes with a little light. “Do you remember what happened to you?”

  “I didn’t for the first couple of minutes after I came to, but I do now.”

  “Who is the president of the United States?”

  “Eleanor Roosevelt.”

  Dr. Kaplan looked quizzically at me. “You’re joking? Perhaps you shouldn’t joke until we ascertain that your memory is functioning properly.”

  “Sorry.”

  Gloria brought Brass and Cathy in while the doctor was still poking, probing, and asking questions. I was pleased to be able to inform them that, since it was after midnight, today was Friday, March 15, 1935; that the doctor was holding up three fingers; that my mother’s name was Edith; and that my mental processes were probably as good as they had ever been—this last from Dr. Kaplan.

  The doctor stood up and buttoned his jacket. “We’ll keep him until morning just to be sure, but he doesn’t seem to have suffered any lasting damage.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Brass said.

  “No, no, thank you,” Dr. Kaplan said. “You pulled me out of a particularly boring awards dinner and saved me from the only food in New York worse than what’s served in the cafeteria here.”

  “Oh, yes,” Brass said. “Your answering service said you were at an Astor Foundation dinner, wasn’t it? Who was getting the award?”

  “I was.” Dr. Kaplan looked down at me. “Take care of yourself, young man,” he said. “We don’t really understand the workings of the brain that well yet, and I might have had to cut out some part you find useful. Well, good night; or, I should say, good morning.” And he was out the door.

  “I guess we should all get some sleep,” Brass said. “There’ll be a guard outside your door for the night. I called Bradford and had him send a man over.” Michael Bradford, owner of Bradford’s Detective Agency, was an old friend of Brass’s and his agency was one of the best in the city.

  “I appreciate the concern,” I said, “but is it necessary?”

  “I hope not,” Brass said. “But since they didn’t get what they were after, who knows what they’ll do next?”

  I tried sitting up, but my head throbbed a warning, so I lay back down. “Then you’d better look after yourselves as well,” I said.

  “Gloria and Cathy will stay in my spare bedroom for now,” Brass told me, “and Garrett will be alerted to the situation.”

  Theodore Garrett, Brass’s man of all things not associated with the office, was a large, burly veteran of the War to End All Wars with a twisted sense of humor and a propensity for puns; and if his job was to keep you safe, then you were safe. I nodded, which hurt my head, and I said, “Go away now,” and they did. Sometime in the next twenty seconds I fell asleep.

  * * *

  When I awoke, dappled sunlight was streaming through the window, its myriad sparkling feet dancing joyously about the room in celebration of the morn. Sometimes I get the urge to write sentences like that, but I suppress the urge or crumple up the page and toss it. I left this one in to show you every writer’s fear: that his subconscious has slipped a sentence like that by him unnoticed, and no one will tell him. We’ll start again.

  When I woke up it was morning, and a nurse in a starched white uniform was standing by the side of my bed holding a bedpan. “Oh, you’re awake,” she said. “Let me slide this under you.”

  “I can get up,” I told her. “I don’t need that. But thank you for thinking of me.”

  “You’re sure?” she asked. “Don’t let false pride result in a soiled bed.”

  I sat up gingerly and discovered that the throbbing was still present, but very slightly, and it didn’t hurt too much to turn my head from side to side. “I’m sure,” I told her. “Where is the bathroom, and where can I get a toothbrush?”

  She pointed to a door. “That’s the bathroom. I will go down the hall and get you a toothbrush and some toothpaste. Would you like a razor? Straight-edge or safety?”

  “Safety, I think,” I said. “I don’t want to be like that man who accidentally shaved himself while he was trying to cut his throat.”

  She looked at me strangely and left the room.

  I went to the bathroom and, with a certain amount of pride, proved that I could do without a bedpan. My head didn’t hurt except that it throbbed when I moved it about too rapidly. I showered and used the tools the nurse brought me. I got dressed.

  The Bradford op, who told me his name was Luther, came downstairs with me, but then went off on his own, his job done.

  I took a cab to 33 Central Park South, figuring that there was no chance that Brass was out of his apartment yet. The doorman let me in and the elevator man took me up to the twenty-eighth floor without a word. I wanted to say something clever but nothing came to mind, so the silence was mutual.

  Garrett opened the door. “Well, Mr. DeWitt,” he said with a broad smile, “I hear your head isn’t as hard as we both thought it was. You’re just in time for breakfast.” He turned around to precede me into the dining room, and I saw that he had an Army .45 automatic stuck in his belt. I felt protected.

  The clan was assembled at the dining room table when I came in. This business of being threatened with death and mayhem would make early risers of us all. Brass, his mouth full, waved me to a seat and pointed to the food. I filled my plate.

  Gloria and Cathy asked me how I felt, and I said, “Bowed but unbloodied,” and fell to eating my eggs. Then I recollected that I wasn’t the only one who had gone through trying times. “How are you doing?” I asked Cathy. “Was it horrible?”

  “I’ve never been so mad in my life,” she told me. “They burst in and trussed me up like a sack of potatoes, and I had to watch them paw their way through all the desk drawers and the file cabinets.”

  “All but one,” Gloria said. “They didn’t find the special file.”

  “Indeed,” Brass agreed. “The wall safe is a splendid distraction. But there can be no doubt what they were after.”

  “I think it’s a copy of that column you’re writing on how movie stars keep their baby-soft complexions,” I said between sips of juice. “‘“I use Pond’s cold cream in a daily regimen of facial care,” says noted film star Harpo Marx, caught at home lounging in a teal-blue bathrobe of the sheerest silk lamé.’ It’s revelations like that that keep this country the great land that it is.”

  Brass poured himself a fresh cup of coffee. “The ladies and I are going to continue gathering and sorting information today,” he said. “If you are sufficiently recovered, Morgan, I think you
should begin interviewing some of the people on our list. Subtly—if you can manage that—determine their whereabouts at the times that interest us, as well as anything else that seems relevant.”

  “Great,” I said. “Who should I see?”

  Brass took a scrap of paper from his pocket and smoothed it on the table. He makes all his notes on random scraps of paper; if he carried a notebook, someone might mistake him for a reporter. “Why don’t you begin with Mr. Wackersan, whom I understand is an early riser, and continue with Mr. Helbine, whom I understand is not. Try not to alarm them with your questions.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Anything specific that I should ask them?”

  “I rely on your native wit,” Brass said, “but try not to be too witty.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  I stopped off at home to change my clothes and by ten o’clock I was up on the executive floor of Wackersan’s Department Store, which takes up most of the block between Sixth and Seventh avenues from Thirty-first to Thirty-second streets.

  The father of the present Wackersan had founded the department store bearing his name in the 1880s as a monument to modern marketing and sales methods. It remained a monument as the world and the city changed. Wackersan’s still did a good business, even for these depressed times, but both the sales force and the customers got older every year.

  Junior Wackersan kept me waiting for about half an hour, which was long enough to impress upon me that he owned a department store, while I was just a working stiff, but not long enough to turn me into a Bolshevik.

  Wackersan’s office had not been changed since his father had furnished it forty years before, except that the oak-paneled walls were now covered with too many framed pictures of the Wackersans, Senior and Junior, shaking hands or rubbing elbows with the great and near great.

  Wackersan, Jr. was a short, stocky man who fidgeted his way around the office while we talked. He was not so much nervous as blessed—or cursed—with a surplus of energy, which he constantly had to drain off or it would bubble out of him. He kept making a swinging gesture that I didn’t understand until I pictured a tennis racket emerging from his right fist. “Yes, yes,” he bubbled. “Always glad to make time for the working press. Always glad. Good public relations is at the heart of good customer relations, which was a dictum of my father, the late Ephraim L. Wackersan, Sr. But, as much as I like to chat, we’ll have to make this brief. Time is money, and I am a busy man. A busy man. Tempus fugit, as they say. Tempus fugit. What magazine did you say you were from?”