by Неизвестный
“We’re not planning on going public with it, if that’s what you’re asking, but the coroner’s bound to call a public inquest, because this is most likely a murder—and then it’ll become a matter of record.”
“You can’t imagine how badly other magicians have coveted our act,” said Liu Yang. “None could figure out how we performed the trick. And none knew his secret identity. He fooled them all, and that makes him the greatest magician of all. They’re so competitive they will hate him for it. None of them will want to admit they’ve been fooled. They’ll be angry about it, so you can bet they’ll dance on top of his grave as soon as he’s in the ground.”
“Who did the loading, who did the cleaning after the show?” asked Ben.
“I loaded the charges in the ramrod sleeves before the shows,” said Liu Yang. “Eugene unloaded and cleaned up afterward.”
“Every night?” asked Alan. “Thoroughly?”
“Not always thoroughly,” said Liu Yang. “I could see that when I reloaded them before the next show. He likely had other things distracting him.”
“Burnt powder residue around the sleeves,” said Alan.
“I know,” said Liu Yan. “But about it being a murder, how so? How do you figure?”
“Somebody stacked a second firing cap,” said Alan, “maybe a third, like kids do with toy caps, either on the hammer or the strike. That made the spark strong enough to knock out the plug in the barrel and ignite the real charge. The question is who did it and why?”
“The police always suspect family,” said Liu Yang. “Isn’t that so?”
“It’s as good a place to start as any,” said Ben.
“And you suspect I did it because of jealousy,” said Liu Yang, more of a statement than a question, “because of another woman.”
Alan didn’t see that coming, but he decided to take Ben’s lead and hold firm with his poker face, keeping silent.
“I know about his lover,” said Liu Yang, “but I’m no fool. I’m a business woman first and foremost. Without Eugene, there’s no show, there’s no more income for me, and I’ll soon fade into obscurity. People will remember Eugene as the glorious magician who had a Chinese or White assistant—old what’s her name—a woman who didn’t matter. Sure, I loathe him and his lover, but I’m not foolish enough to kill either one. Who told you about her, anyway?”
“We have our sources,” said Ben. “You know we can’t tell you that, but we’re still unclear as to how long you knew about her? How’d you find out?
Liu Yang stood up, grabbed the sheet, holding it back. She stared at Wang Tao a long moment, hocked phlegm, and spat in his face. Then, as if nothing had happened, she pulled the sheet over Liu Yang’s head and sat down again, her back to the corpse this time.
“Forgive me, but I no longer want to see him anymore than I have to.”
Neither detective responded.
“He’s had dalliances since the show went big in London, before we toured,” she said, “and then he went wild when we hit the road, a sailor with a pretty girl in every port. I’ve always been Liu Yang, his assistant, his interpreter, and his confidant, but never good enough to be his wife. Now instead of meeting the local talent, he’s brought one along with him from Los Angeles. Keeping her in a different hotel, hoping I wouldn’t find out.”
“Do you know where?” asked Ben.
Liu Yang glanced away and stared at the wall, taking a long moment to think. “The Sorrento Hotel, up on Madison.”
“We know where it’s at,” said Alan. “Name and room number?”
“How’s that going to help you?” asked Liu Yang.
“Like you said earlier,” said Ben, “we start with those closest to the victim. Maybe she carries her own grudge.”
“She’s listed by her real name, Merle O’Brien, but you might recognize her as Merle Oberon.”
“Wuthering Heights’ Merle Oberon?” asked Alan. “The Hollywood actress?”
“That’s her,” said Liu Yang. “She’s up here dodging gossip reporters who’re asking questions about her mixed birth.”
“Mixed birth?” asked Alan.
“She’s Eurasian,” said Liu Yang, stone face, a hint of disapproval in her tone.
“I think she’s amazingly gorgeous,” said Alan. “Whatever the combination, she turned out premium.”
“Born in Calcutta to an Indian mother. Her father’s believed to be Irish or English. No one knows for sure, and Merle keeps changing her stories.”
“And now she’s here in Seattle seeing Wang Tao?” asked Alan. “How did you find this out?”
“I had him followed,” said Liu Yang.
“By whom?” asked Alan.
“Someone Nikolai Ivanovich sent over.”
“You trusted Ivanovich with this?” asked Ben.
“I told him I had a blackmail problem,” said Liu Yang. “The man he lined up for me only knew to follow Eugene Roberts, not Wang Tao. He assumed Eugene and the blackmailer were one in the same.”
“I’m not sure this is important,” said Ben, “but who ended up doing the leg work for you and when?”
“A Russian fresh off the boat named Mikhail Medved,” said Liu Yang. “He spoke with a heavy accent. I had a lot of trouble understanding him.”
“Mikhail Medved?” asked Ben, to be sure. “How did you get hold of him? Where’d you meet?”
“In the theater after everyone else had left. I’m the one who puts the show to bed at night. I’m always the last to leave.”
“How long ago?”
“About four days or so, a week or so after we got to town, the janitor at the theater handed me a telegraph message he’d found it on the floor near a waste basket. He didn’t know if it had been dropped inadvertently or by whom. He gave it to me just in case it might be important.”
“And it said what?” asked Ben.
“Something about a ‘charming view of the bay from the top of the town,’ and her looking forward to seeing him after his show.”
“No hint at trouble between them,” said Alan.
Liu Yang exhaled and shook her head.
“Did Eugene visit her every night after the show?” asked Ben. “Do you know if that had been his practice?”
“I believe so, but I’m not positive. My deal with Medved didn’t include continued monitoring. I know Eugene saw her at the Sorrento is all, in a suite on the seventh floor.”
“How do we find Medved, in case we want to talk to him?” asked Ben.
“You could ask Ivanovich,” said Liu Yang, “but I’m not sure he’d give up that kind of connection to you, unless you had a lot of leverage over him.”
Ben nodded at Alan, who grinned devilishly back at him.
“I can always bring persuasion if we think that’s needed,” said Alan.
19
Determining that the lead on Mikhail Medved couldn’t wait until morning, Ben and Alan decided to pay a visit to the Paramount Apartments and see if the other Russians would tell them which room belonged to him, and if he didn’t have a room there, where he might be found. Alan found parking close to the Paramount Apartments. He glanced up at the “Fire Closure” on the marquee as he crossed in front of the Packard and stepped up onto the sidewalk. “That’s sad,” said Alan. “I hate to see it shuttered. I wonder how long it’ll be closed.”
“This is still a tough time to put people out of work,” said Ben, “so I hate to see it too. But it could’ve been worse, both in casualty and damage. My hat’s off to the fire chief and his assistant. I think they saved a lot of lives and property. I think the theater will be up and running in less than two months, but it’ll be hell renegotiating contracts and start dates with all of the scheduled acts. It’ll be a nightmare for the front office people who we never see.”
“Nah,” said Ben, “I say we visit the hired help on the fourth floor, and we save Ivanovich for last.”
Alan pushed the button for four, and the elevator started with a slight lurch. It made up for the sharp acceleration by showing off its brakes, stopping abruptly at the fourth floor. Ben chuckled. “I’m all for automation, but nothing beats having little retired guys running these things. They develop a fine touch with practice and know how to smooth out the rides.”
Alan nodded, waiting for the door to open. “Room 410 isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” said Ben.
As they passed room 403, Ben suddenly stopped and raised his hand, making the quiet sign. Alan glanced back at the room’s door, partially ajar, the room behind the door in the dark. Ben slid his hand inside his coat and pulled out his revolver, while Alan did the same with his Colt semi-automatic, bringing it to the high ready position. Each took a side of the door.
Ben taped on the door itself, striking it strongly enough to make it move further open with each knock. “Police,” he said, keeping his voice low.
When the door had swung open a foot-and-a-half, Ben shoved it with authority, letting it swing in all the way to where it finally stopped abruptly. A strong waft of stale cigarette smoke escaped into the hallway. He pulled a flashlight out of his coat pocket, while Alan did the same.
“Seattle Police,” he repeated, talking into the dark void.
Ben directed his flashlight near the base of the door at a dark spot on the carpet, now showing a deep red as the light glanced across it.
“We’ve got blood on the floor, partner,” said Ben. “I’d say a lot of it.”
Alan nodded.
“It’s congealing,” said Ben, “which mean it’s had a lot of time to set up.”
Ben directed his light inside the door, shining it at the switch plate next to the frame. “Push buttons, no blood, which probably means daylight hours.”
Ben examined a swatch of carpet inside the door and took a step in closer to the blood stain. He pulled the door toward him, leaned around and moved his flashlight beam back and forth at something on the floor. After a long moment he shined the light around the room.
“We’ve got a white male, D.O.A., face down on the carpet, several wounds to his back I’d wager. There’s a long rifle next to the body with a bayonet attached. Otherwise the apartment seems empty of people, but we’ll need to check. I’m going to turn on the overhead light with my pocket knife. But promise me you’ll never do that, Champ. It’s bad procedure.”
“Sure, but why’s that?”
“There’s a theory we can get prints off of light switches, but I’ve never seen it happen—or heard of it, for that matter. Surface area’s much too small if you ask me. I’ll use my knife point, which is minimally intrusive, but if I slip with the blade, I’m in for a shock—quite literally.”
Ben did as he told Alan he would, eventually turning on the light without getting shocked. With the better light from above, he stepped around the door and moved inside the room, stepping over the rifle and body. “Step where I step. Touch only what I touch.”
Alan did as instructed, his eyes taking in as much information as possible. Other than a vodka bottle and an overfull ashtray on the table in the kitchenette, and the dead body on the floor, nothing else about the room seemed remarkable. Finding a safe spot to observe, he stopped to stare at the corpse on the floor, with slicked back hair on the sides, while the hair on top hung forward across the face, the victim’s nose mushed against the carpet.
“Brutal attack,” Alan said. “The wounds to the back look like they came after death.”
“Post mortem,” said Ben. “Gratuitous violence. I’m counting eighteen puncture wounds, just on this side alone. Usually multiple wounds is a sign of rage, but then rage wounds would all be to the front so the victim would see it coming with the perpetrator seeing his face—at least in theory.”
“What if there were a score to settle?” asked Alan. “The number of wounds might’ve been more important than where they were delivered on the body.”
“That’s a possibility. What have you got in mind?”
“I don’t know. I’m sensing revenge as a motive, but I can’t tell you why. Do you think this is our Mikhail Medved.”
“I certainly do,” said Ben. “As soon as we give the apartment a once over, I’ll need to call Chief Ketchum and have the crime scene processed by a team of detectives, and then we can have this fella’s countrymen confirm if it’s him or not. That’ll work better if we do it outside the room, like in the hallway on a gurney, when they’re ready to haul him away.”
“Why the old rifle with the bayonet?” asked Alan. “How many people keep those around? Did our perpetrator bring it with him?”
“This is a foreign cheapo, probably from the Great War, the kind you’d buy in a military surplus store on First Avenue for a couple dollars max. And then if you could find shells for it down at Warshall’s, I doubt you could hit anything with it.”
“Do you think he might have been shot before being bayoneted?”
“We won’t know that until we roll him over, and the Homicide detectives should be the ones who do that. The more we do, the less kindly they’re going to look at our help. Nobody, likes a grandstander, taking all the credit while they do all the work.”
“But we want to solve these before there’re more murders.”
“Point well taken, Champ, if they are indeed connected. But again the more we do the less the other detectives will appreciate our help in the future, which we also have to consider.”
“Vodka bottle on the table,” said Alan.
“I caught that,” said Ben.
“I haven’t tracked Seattle’s homicide history over the years,” said Alan, “but it seems like it’s always been miners, loggers, policemen, and prostitutes. Don’t you find it odd that we’ve suddenly had more murders involving Russians than Fyodor Dostoyevsky had in Crime and Punishment?”
Ben stopped for a moment and creased a smile. “Vera likes how your brain works, always processing information, Champ, especially with what you’ve been reading, but I’m not seeing a connection to a Russian novel here, if that’s what you’re asking?”
“There isn’t one,” said Alan, “other than that these people have also come from St. Petersburg, Russia, and they’re being murdered.”
“How do you know about St. Petersburg?” asked Ben.
“Vera’s contact told us the Medveds were from there, is all.”
“We’ll keep that out of the notes for now,” said Ben, squatting down trying to get a better angle on the dead man’s face.
“Do you see something on the carpet under his face?” asked Ben, “rolled up like a—”
“Like a note,” said Alan. “I do. Under his hair.”
“I’m going to do something else we’re not supposed to,” said Ben.
“I suspect you’ve got a reason then.”
“Protocol for us now is that we first photograph everything in place; second, measure and log it in our reports; and third, we retrieve it.”
Alan nodded. “We’ve been leaving all the reports to you.”
“I’m fine with that, but I’m going to call these exigent circumstances,” said Ben. “We need to know what that hell the note says. Sooner is much better than later.”
“I’m with you there.”
“Good, because this isn’t going to be delicate. I’m going to pull the deceased’s head up high enough for you to yank the note free from his mouth. Do you have any problem with that?”
“Not at all.”
Ben reached from behind, slid his hand over
the dead man’s head and grabbed a handful of hair. As soon as he filled his grip he pulled back on the head, raising it about three inches from the carpet. Alan reached between the dangling locks and tugged the rolled paper from the corpse’s lips, the paper resembling an empty straw. Ben released the man’s head gently, pushing it close to where it had been a moment before. Alan handed Ben the still rolled note.
The big detective stood up, stepped over the body, and set the note down on the counter in the kitchenette. He rolled it open.
“Mikhail Medvedev. Unrepentant baby killer. Got what he gave.”
“What do you make of this?” Ben asked under his breath.
“‘Medvedev’ is the full version of his name,” said Alan. “We can be pretty sure this is our guy.”
“Agreed,” said Ben, “but who got to him and why? We can bet that revenge is a motive, but revenge for what? And whose baby did he kill? When and where did it happen?”
“What doesn’t work for the St. Petersburg connection is that I don’t see any common link with his death to Liu Yang, Wang Tao, or Merle Oberon,” said Alan. “At least not on the early go around.”
“We’re in for a long night,” said Ben. “Oberon is one savvy lady. She has to be to keep the gossip column snoops from digging into her family’s affairs. So I bet she pulls out of town before the ink is dry on the first newspaper of the morning.”
“I’ll use the payphone in the lobby to call Vera,” said Alan. “Let her know we’ll be running late.”
20
Alan nodded at the doorman, busy with another patron inside the Sorrento Hotel’s lobby. He and Ben stopped at the front desk, badges in their palms and ready to bluff their way upstairs.
A night clerk wearing a vest and bow tie worked the desk with a woman assistant. Alan remembered the clerk’s name from other visits. Friendly, smart, and discreet, Dennis stepped up to help. Ben flashed his badge, and Alan followed in kind.