Too Soon Dead

by Michael Kurland

  In the meantime, although the fire had been put out, one of the drunks, or possibly someone on the street, called the fire department, which brought several fire trucks and the police. The firemen ran around chopping holes in the wall to make sure the fire was truly out, and the police asked many questions and stared curiously at me and Shoes. Brass mollified the police, who went away shortly after the firemen departed, leaving two men at the door and promising to send Inspector Raab along as soon as they could locate him.

  Garrett came in and sat with Shoes and me until we regained the use of our bodies. He sang to us and recited poetry, mostly Kipling, Service, and Levy, as well as some of his own, to keep our spirits up. He did explain his timely arrival: He had become concerned and, as he put it, “tippy-toed up the stairs” just in time to hear us being captured. Upon which he trotted over to Lexington Avenue and rounded up the customers at a bar called The Shamrock, jumping up on a bar stool and, with spellbinding oratory, promising them free booze and maybe a good fight if they came with him. A dozen men had followed him from the bar and joined him in his assault on the clinic. Most of them were eight or nine sheets to the wind, and they had stumbled around enough to sound like a whole platoon of gendarmerie.

  By six in the morning the rank and file of Garrett’s drunken army had gone home, except for two who had been laid out in the waiting room, having been rendered hors de booze after finding a cache of schnapps in von Mainard’s office. Cathy had recovered completely except for a headache and an abiding anger at von Mainard and all his works, and Shoes and I were more or less able to stagger about on our own. Garrett went forth into the world and returned with paper cups of coffee and an assortment of doughnuts, and we ate and drank of them and were glad.

  At seven-thirty Inspector Raab showed up with a quartet of plainclothesmen, who began a systematic search of the building from the ground floor up.

  “I won’t ask you how you got in here,” Raab said, after hearing an abbreviated version of our adventures. “We’ll assume that you were rudely snatched from in front of the building, and my old friend Shoes is with you to discuss the Giants outfield. That is your team, isn’t it, Shoes, the Giants?”

  Shoes nodded without rancor. “Opposites attract, Inspector.”

  “Quite right,” Brass agreed. “That’s just how it was.”

  “Just what has been going on here?” Raab asked. “I mean, before you arrived?”

  “I think I can tell you a little bit about that. Follow me,” Brass said. He led the way upstairs to the scene of our rerent excitement. “Through that door did the doctor and his cohorts escape.” He pulled at the door. “It is barred from the inside, but judging by its position, it can’t be more than three or four feet wide. From which I infer that it contains a ladder leading to the roof. Such forethought shows that they had an escape route planned, and are probably well on their way out of your jurisdiction by now. It also shows some sense of guilt, since you don’t plot your escape unless you have reason to think someone might be chasing you.”

  “And just what is it I’d be chasing them for, aside from all the things we suspect but cannot yet prove?”

  “We could begin with the kidnaping of Miss Fox. That should do to hold them for a while. And there is more. I’ve found several things that plant the finger of suspicion firmly on von Mainard’s nose.”

  “Photographs?” Raab asked.

  “No. I fancy von Mainard took those with him. But this,” Brass pushed open the door to the left, behind the row of metal chairs, “this would seem to be the location at which they were taken.”

  The room was about twelve by twelve, with no furniture but a light-colored carpet. Rolled up in one corner was a large, white, fluffy throw-rug, with several oversized pillows perched atop. A large mirror was centered on the wall to the left, and the ceiling was mostly filled with a multipaned skylight of frosted glass, to discourage the prurient interest of anyone who happened to be restating the roof.

  “The camera is mounted on a brace on the other side of the mirror, which is one-way glass,” Brass said. “The wonders of modern science once more serving to improve the condition of mankind.”

  “So the Mainard Clinic was just a front for a whorehouse for the affluent,” Raab said, looking into the empty room with disapproval.

  “No, no, much more than that,” Brass said. “Do you know the story of Hasan ibn al-Sabbah, the ‘Old Man of the Mountain’?”

  “The Arabian Nights?” Raab suggested. “Isn’t that one of the tales?”

  Brass decided that he wanted more relaxed surroundings for his storytelling, so we followed him back downstairs and settled in the overstuffed furniture in the waiting room. “It is not a tale at all in the sense that you mean,” he told Raab. “Hasan ibn al-Sabbah was the leader of a secret sect known as the Hashshashin in eleventh-century Persia. From a fortress called Alamut—‘the Eagle’s Nest’—high on a mountain in central Persia, he terrorized the Muslim, and much of the Christian, world. His followers were few but much feared and completely dedicated to his will. That their name is the root of our word assassin should give you some idea.”

  “Charming,” Raab said, “but I don’t see the relevance.”

  “Patience,” Brass said. “Hasan got this complete obedience from his disciples by telling them that, if they died bravely in his service, they would go to Paradise, where they would feast on rich foods and be serviced nightly by beautiful houri. And they believed him because he had taken them there once to give them a foretaste of what was to come.”

  I had been staring at the ceiling, but now I looked over to Brass. “He what?” I asked.

  “The word hashshashin means ‘hashish eater,’” Brass said. “Hasan would drug his faithful followers with wine doped with hashish and take them into a secret garden hidden in his palace. There they would taste of all the delights that he had promised them. The next morning they would wake up in bed, and Hasan would tell them they had been to Paradise.”

  Raab was skeptical. “And they believed him?” he asked.

  “They did,” Brass assured him. “Why not? Would their leader lie to them? And they would gladly die for him—because they knew where they were going.”

  “I can believe it,” I said. “Look at some of the people who are being blindly followed today, without even drugged wine as an excuse.”

  Alphonse “Shoes” Mallery appeared in the doorway with his overcoat bundled under his arm. “I’ll be going now, if there’s no objection,” he said. “It’s been a fascinating night.”

  Brass waved at him. “I thought you might,” he said. “Go in peace.” Shoes waved back and headed out the door.

  Raab had been thinking over Brass’s narrative. “Are you saying that’s what was happening here?”

  “Sort of,” Brass said.

  “Von Mainard was turning a group of middle-aged politicians and executives into an assassination squad?”

  Brass grinned. “A wonderful image,” he said, “but no. The not-so-good doctor has apparently developed a drug, or combination of drugs, that will release inhibitions in the user and induce a quasi-dream state. It’s what he was going to give me. With my inhibitions removed, I would have told him anything he asked. But what he was using it for with the senator and the judge and the lawyer, all of whom shall henceforth remain nameless, was to induce pleasure. They would all remember in a sort of foggy way that they were alone in a room with a lovely girl, or in one case, boy, who made love to them. Non-judgmental, nonthreatening, with no responsibilities; just pleasure.”

  Raab thought it over. “Well, drugs or no drugs, any court in the state would see it as prostitution and pandering, which is good for a few years in the joint. I guess he took those photos without his, ah, patients’ knowledge, but if he hasn’t actually tried to use them yet, we can’t get him for blackmail.”

  “I think his goals were more ambitious than that,” Brass said. “His drugs cause a state of extreme suggestibility. My guess is th
at he was going to suggest things to them while they were under the influence.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “That is the question. Judges, attorneys, senators—what sort of things indeed. And the secretly taken photographs were for extra persuasion, should such prove necessary.” Raab sat up. “Speaking of senators… I had lunch with Colonel Schwarzkopf yesterday. We discussed Senator Childers.”

  “And?”

  “Schwarzkopf was very circumspect. He didn’t actually say anything. But the impression he managed to leave me with was that the senator does not have a record of sadistic treatment of women.”

  “Does not?”

  “Does not have a record,” Raab reiterated. “But off the record, there is the suggestion that he has paid large sums of money to several women to keep charges from being filed. Apparently the senator loses control occasionally in what would otherwise be just a little playful spanking. I believe in the trade it’s called ‘the English vice,’ but Childers occasionally takes it to an un-English extreme.”

  Brass nodded. “One man’s foreplay is another man’s five years in the penal institution of the state’s choice,” he commented. “Just one more thing that money can buy.”

  Three shots, one after the other, sounded dull and distant from somewhere outside. Raab jumped up and ran for the door, Brass and I right behind him. We paused in a clump at the front door at the thought that the shots might be aimed in our direction.

  The two uniformed officers who had been at the door were standing in the street with their guns drawn, staring up at something over our heads. Inspector Raab drew his revolver. “You two stay here until I find out what’s happening,” he whispered, and cautiously made his way toward the curb, looking up at the building.

  More shots from overhead, louder now that we were outside. And then a continuous firing, every few seconds for what seemed like ten minutes but was probably less than one. I could make out two distinct weapons being used; one had a higher-pitched crack than the other, but what they were I couldn’t have said.

  After a pause of another minute, a head appeared on the rooftop, looking down. For a moment it surveyed the street. And then a voice called, “Inspector Raab?”

  “Yes?” Raab called back.

  “It’s Framingham. You’d better get up here.”

  We were two steps behind Raab as he ran upstairs. One of the detectives was on the phone to Bellevue when we entered the third-floor room, and he gestured toward the far door and continued telling the other end of the phone where to send the ambulances.

  The door that von Mainard had escaped through had been battered open, revealing a closet-sized room with a wooden ladder fastened to the far wall. Brass was right again. Raab went up the ladder and Brass and I followed. The roof of the building was the usual flat, tarred surface with various pipes and oddments sticking up randomly and a knee-high wall around the edge. A plainclothesman was sitting on the tar a short distance from the ladder, clutching his right leg with both hands, a look of fierce concentration on his face. Blood was slowly oozing out from under his hands.

  Framingham was standing by the side wall, his hands on his hips, staring across at the next building. We joined him. “What the hell was all that?” Raab asked.

  Framingham pointed. There was a three-foot gap between the clinic roof and the next rooftop, an easy jump. Three men were lying in various positions at the far corner of the next roof, blood pooling under them. “They started shooting at us as soon as we came up the ladder,” he said. “So we started shooting back. They lost. I don’t even know who the hell they are.”

  “It’s Dr. von Mainard and his two associates,” Brass said.

  “So. What the hell are they still doing up here?” Raab turned to Framingham. “Cover me!” He jumped the gap and cautiously approached the bodies. They remained dormant as he squatted by each one, holding the back of his hand in front of each nose. “This one’s alive,” he said, indicating one of the thugs. “I think the other two are dead, but we’d better get them downstairs just in case.”

  Brass jumped across with studied nonchalance. I followed, trying not to let the fear show on my face. A three-foot jump is a snap, but when the gap is a three-story drop to the street, it becomes more imposing. I went over to look at von Mainard. He looked dead to me, a wide stain of blood across his chest, which had already stopped flowing, and an angry, puzzled look in his eyes, sightlessly staring into eternity or possibly at the water tower on the roof across the street.

  “Here’s the answer,” Brass said, peering over the far edge of the building. I went to look. There was about three feet of iron ladder leading down from the roof, and then nothing but blank wall.

  “A ladder to nowhere,” I said.

  “There was a fire escape here until recently,” Brass pointed out, indicating some rusty iron bolts still protruding from the wall of the building below the ladder. “My guess is that it rusted out and either fell down of its own accord or was taken down because it was too dangerous to use.”

  “And von Mainard didn’t know it was gone,” I said.

  “That’s my guess. And once they were up on the roof, they were trapped. There’s no entrance from inside this building, and they couldn’t go back into the clinic with all the police and firemen there.”

  “They didn’t have to shoot it out,” Inspector Raab said. “We didn’t have that much on von Mainard. I don’t even know if we could have gotten a conviction.”

  Brass went over to von Mainard. “He died an aphorism,” he said. “‘The wicked flee when no man pursueth.’”

  “So that’s an aphorism,” Raab said. “I thought it was a proverb. Well, we would have been pursuing soon enough.”

  “That’s so,” Brass agreed, staring down at the defunct doctor. “I think, as you go through the building, you’ll find more than enough to convict him for a variety of crimes. He certainly had Fox and Dworkyn killed, but I don’t know whether we’ll be able to prove it. If his henchman lives, perhaps we can establish it. But I guess that doesn’t matter now. Which reminds me—” He picked up von Mainard’s overstuffed briefcase and hefted it. “Perhaps it might be wise if I keep this for you and, ah, do a little editing before you have to turn it in as evidence.”

  “That would be irregular,” Raab said. He paused, and added, “I’ll get it from you this evening.”

  A stream of people emerged from the ladder to the other rooftop, carrying stretchers and medical bags and other paraphernalia, which made it a good time for us to leave. Downstairs we ran into a passel of policemen with thick layers of gold braid on their uniforms and hats. Two of them cornered Raab and insisted on a complete report then and there. We elbowed by and onto the sidewalk.

  A short, bald, bemused-looking elderly man carrying an oversized doctor’s bag was being escorted up the steps by two detectives. “The safe’s in a downstairs office,” one of them was telling him. “How long do you think it will take you to get it open?”

  Brass chuckled silently to himself as we headed down the street.

  “What’s so funny?” I demanded.

  “They won’t find anything in the safe,” he told me.

  “Why not?”

  “Shoes left carrying an overcoat, but he didn’t have one when we came in,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said.

  Garrett was waiting in the car, peacefully sleeping behind the wheel. Cathy was curled up in the backseat, covered by a red and white blanket, but she was awake. “What’s been happening?” she asked.

  “You may tell William,” Brass said gently, “that those who sent him to heaven are now on their way to hell.”

  26

  Brass spent the weekend pondering and considering and playing with his toys. He took the Lagonda out for a long solo drive to somewhere in Connecticut and back. I contented myself with deep breathing and lighting joss sticks. On Monday morning Inspector Raab called. Herr Vogel had fled the Europa when it docked at Southampton and asked for
asylum in England even before Scotland Yard had gone after him. A steward on the ship, who also sought asylum, had warned Vogel that a Gestapo welcoming party awaited him at Bremen.

  According to Vogel, he had taken the picture collection to his pal Herm as insurance, because he was beginning to suspect that Dr. von Mainard’s motives were not pure. You can believe as much of that as you like.

  Dworkyn made the mistake of going to Dr. von Mainard, thinking that Vogel had snapped the pictures without von Mainard’s knowledge. Apparently Dworkyn had shown the same sort of reticence at explaining himself that he had demonstrated in Brass’s office, and von Mainard thought that Dworkyn was trying to blackmail him. The good doctor had tortured Dworkyn and gotten Vogel’s name as the picture supplier and Brass’s name as the person holding the other set. Vogel thought he had convinced Dr. von Mainard that Herman had stolen the pictures, but the steward’s story had shown him the error of his beliefs.

  “Very efficient, the doctor,” Brass commented. “Sending Vogel home to be killed eliminates the problem of disposing of the body.”

  Brass sent me to Senator Childers’s apartment with a photograph and a note commanding the senator’s presence in his office. The senator did not want to come to Brass’s office. People came to the senator, he did not go to them. But the photograph was a powerful incentive. Childers didn’t ask me any questions, he just put his jacket on and stomped to the elevator. He stormed out of his building and jumped into a cab, and if I hadn’t been quick it would have left without me. He did not speak to me or even look at me during the brief ride. But he hadn’t become a member of the country’s most exclusive men’s club without learning how to fight in the trenches.

  “Just what does this mean?” Childers demanded, stomping to Brass’s desk and slamming his hand down on the polished walnut. With the other hand he waved the photograph at Brass. “What do you and your pinko newspaper think you’re going to do with this?”

  Brass, who had been staring out at the Hudson when Childers came in, slowly swiveled his chair around to face the senator. “Sit down,” he said sharply.