by Peter Quinn
“One can feel sorry for Arnheim, of course, yet his fate is a reminder of the poisonous effect of degenerate bloodlines. There’s no cure, I’m afraid, other than elimination.” Excusing himself, Crinis walked over to the woman who’d held his attention and struck up a conversation. She laughed at the first thing he said.
It was nearly 1:00 A.M. before the reception ended. Max de Crinis and the woman were nowhere to be seen. Canaris rode home with Heydrich. He felt dizzy and a little nauseated; Heydrich, whom he’d presumed to be a teetotaler, had seemingly made an exception in honor of the Duce’s birthday, becoming relaxed and chatty. “You know, Wilhelm,” he said, “the generals may grumble but in the end they’re soldiers, and they’ll obey. The Wehrmacht will make short work of the Czechs and, seeing their ally defeated and annexed, the British and French will have no choice but to acquiesce.”
“The Czechs have 34 well-armed divisions dug into heavily fortified positions,” Canaris said. “If an attack bogged down, the French could easily overrun our western defenses, which are pitifully weak.”
“Come, Wilhelm, you’re beginning to sound like General Beck and the weak-kneed tin hats around him.”
“Facts are facts.”
“Facts are paltry things in the face of destiny. The Führer understands that, even if the generals don’t.” Heydrich leaned forward, pushed the glass back, and instructed his driver to get them home as fast as possible. They rode down the Unter der Linden in silence, west and south toward Wannsee, through the warm, dark, preternaturally quiet streets of Berlin.
FOLEY SQUARE, NEW YORK
The two rows of chairs in the FBI waiting room were lined in military order. The first visitor of the morning, Dunne was the sole occupant. In front of him, on a table with dachshund-sized legs, were neatly arranged issues of Time and Reader’s Digest. Aside from the fact that the magazines were new, rather than six months old, and the two receptionists wore neat gray suits rather than medical whites, it could have been a doctor’s office. The younger receptionist, whose wholesome Sonja Henie-like face indicated she was probably a Norwegian from Bay Ridge, had taken Dunne’s name and told him to have a seat. She’d been curt and cold, more North Pole than South Brooklyn.
A quarter of an hour’s worth of page-flipping sent Dunne back to the receptionist’s desk. There’d been no thaw. “Have a seat, please,” she said without looking up. “You’ll be called at the appropriate time.” The receptionists typed away non-stop on their Underwoods. The tinny tap-tap-tap was reminiscent of toy Tommy guns, perfect accompaniment to the framed photo of J. Edgar Hoover behind them, his bulldog face set in a perpetual scowl. A parade of agents came in and out. They traded helloes with the receptionists, who addressed each by name.
Dunne had hopped in a cab without having a cup of coffee or reading the papers. Hurry up and wait. A time-honored police tactic: Never let a civilian dictate the pace of work. It was about the only policelike feature in the orderly, spic-and-span room. The Best & Co. pair at the front desk turned from typing to filing. The agents coming past seemed to be dressed out of the same catalog as the receptionists, all in gray, brown, or blue suits, starched white shirts, sharp creases in their pants, jackets pressed and clean. They had the earnest air of salesmen going out on their rounds. The receptionist who’d spoken to Dunne stopped her filing. Without looking at him, she said, “Agent Lundgren will be with you in a few minutes.”
Two well-scrubbed agents emerged from inside and bantered for a moment with the receptionists. They fitted their hats to their heads and snapped their brims, Knights of the Gray Fedora, and exited into the hallway with a purposeful stride.
“Mr. Dunne, would you please step this way.” The receptionist opened the door behind her desk. “Agent Lundgren will see you.” Lundgren’s office was directly across the hall. She motioned for Dunne to go in.
Jacket draped around the back of his chair, tie pulled down from the open collar of his shirt, Lundgren scribbled on a yellow legal pad. Beneath each armpit was a crescent of perspiration. He was the closest thing to a real cop Dunne had seen all morning.
“Sit,” he said.
“Should I give you my paw?”
Lundgren glanced up, a tight, disdainful grin on his face. “Don’t bother. I’m out of dog biscuits.” He stopped writing and put down his pencil. He cleared his desk, tossing a folded copy of the Standard and a paper coffee cup in the wastebasket. “Just so we understand one another, I grew up in Flatbush, so don’t think I’m impressed by your wise-ass routine. I knew a slew of Irishers like you. Half of them are in jail.”
“And the other half put them there. I called for an appointment because I’ve got an urgent matter to discuss.”
“Before you say anything, you should know your buddy Jerroff confessed. We don’t operate like the police department and beat it out of people. We talk in a reasonable way. Unfortunately, sometimes it can go on a long time.”
“You turn him into an informer?”
“That’s none of your business.” Lundgren rubbed his eyes. “Listen, Dunne, I’ve been up all night. I’m tired and want to go home. Jerroff swears up and down that you’ve never been part of his schemes. He’s pretty much got me convinced, so why don’t you go and ruin somebody else’s day before I change my mind.”
“I want to report a murder.”
“Then go to the police.”
“This involves transporting people across state lines.”
“Kidnapping?”
“In a sense.”
“By whom?”
“A doctor.”
“For ransom?”
“For experiments. He puts them to death and then dissects them.”
“Them?”
“The inmates of his sanatorium.” Dunne didn’t—wouldn’t—say it. It was his business, nobody else’s: there was no reason to believe that Maura, his sister, had ever been an inmate there, but it was her face that came to mind, blue eyes, sad and fearful.
“Which ones?”
“All of them.”
“All? But nobody’s reported any?”
“One tried. She was killed before she could talk. An innocent man’s been framed by the police. He’s on his way to the chair for a murder he didn’t commit.”
“A regular crime wave.” Lundgren ripped the page off the pad and put it in the pocket of his jacket. His attempt to suppress a yawn came out sounding like a sigh.
“He’s got help. A staff. A goon from the Bund acts as his bodyguard.”
“Spies too? This is quite a case. Undetermined number of people killed, but none reported, and no witnesses except a woman who gets killed to shut her up. And the motive of the police in framing the man accused of murdering her? I missed that.”
“I didn’t say. I’m not sure.”
The intercom buzzed. Lundgren picked up the receiver. “Tell him not to leave. Tell him I’ll be right out.” He pulled his tie tight around his neck and put on his jacket. “I got a detail in the Jerroff matter to attend to. Be right back.”
He returned shortly with Michael McCarthy. “Well, well,” McCarthy said. “Peck’s bad boy returns.” He forced a smile as he leaned against the file cabinet in the corner. “What do you think, Lundgren, should we order a cake and throw a party?”
“Soon as he leaves.” Lundgren retook his seat.
“Agent Lundgren tells me you’ve stumbled on a mass murderer. Coming up in the world, aren’t you? Last time we met you were focused on more prosaic concerns. By the way, how’s Miss Dee?”
“Why don’t you call and ask. I’m sure she’d love to hear from you.”
“Has she gone into the detective business? Or is she in her usual line of work?”
“Which line interests you?”
McCarthy blushed.
“He says he also wants to turn in a Nazi spy,” Lundgren said.
“I never said a spy. I said he was in the Bund.”
“We have a unit dedicated to the Bund. How about I put you in touc
h?”
“What really brings you here, Dunne?” McCarthy seemed taller than Dunne remembered. Legs crossed, hands in the pockets of his pleated pants, he had the athletic trimness of somebody who’d run track in college. It looked to Dunne as though he bought his clothes at the same stores as the Ivy League boys: A Fordham kid and cop’s son doing his best to make it look as though he were from Yale or Harvard. But what to do about the reddish hair and the spritz of freckles across the nose and cheeks? A mick’s mug. Try again, Mike.
“Business brings me here, just like I said. Don’t want to listen? Well, sometimes it’s inconvenient to listen when you’re parked in a government job and can suck the public tit no matter what you do or don’t do.”
“Listen, you five-and-dime grifter,” Lundgren said, “we don’t have to take that guff from you.”
“Let him talk,” McCarthy said. “Let’s hear what he has to say. Go on, fill us in.”
“I’ve been on a case, a murder, and it’s put me on the trail of a high-class doctor. I didn’t like him from the minute I met him, and I liked his chauffeur even less. At one point, he tried to hire me to scare off a blackmailer, but it felt as though he had some other purpose. Anyways, it was the chauffeur I was suspicious of, at first.”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself. “What’s the doctor’s name?” It was hard to tell from McCarthy’s blank expression if he was taking seriously anything he’d heard.
“Dr. Sparks.”
Lundgren’s head jerked up. “Who?”
“Dr. Joseph Sparks.”
“Of the Hermes Sanatorium?”
The instant Dunne said yes, Lundgren broke out laughing. McCarthy settled for a faint, mocking smile.
“You’ve no shame, have you?” Lundgren reached into the wastebasket and rescued the late city edition of the Standard he’d thrown away. “What do you think, we’re so dull we don’t read the papers?” He spread the front page open on the desk and turned the headline toward Dunne: INFERNO IN THE BRONX HERMES SANATORIUM BURNS AND A SCORE OF IDIOTS PERISH IN FIRE
DR. JOSEPH SPARKS LOSES LIFE IN RESCUE ATTEMPT HAILED AS SAINT AND HERO By John Mayhew Taylor
Beneath the headline was a photograph of a structure totally engulfed in flames. A tongue of fire protruded from the widow’s walk atop the roof and jutted into the night sky. Dunne skimmed the story. What it lacked in facts it made up for in high-flown prose. “Merciless flames, cruel and insatiable, consumed the innocent lives of an undetermined number of feeble-minded inmates. . . . The same kindhearted doctor who had taken them into his care stayed with them to the end. . . . He laid down his life in a selfless but unsuccessful attempt to lead his childlike charges to safety.”
“I wonder, Gus, if you wouldn’t mind letting me talk to Dunne alone? Only be a few minutes,” McCarthy said.
“Be my guest.” Lundgren got up and left.
McCarthy took Lundgren’s seat. He picked up the pencil that Lundgren had left, turned it slowly between thumb and forefinger like a spit. “I owe you an apology,” he said. “I’ve done some digging, and it turns out Colonel Donovan isn’t alone in his opinion of you. You have a number of admirers in the NYPD, especially among the ranks of the most reliable, honest men. They all say you were a good cop.”
Dunne studied the newspaper picture, trying to find some hint of a human form. The building and the soaring, all-consuming fire yielded no secrets. He read the caption to himself: The building collapsed less than an hour after the fire was first reported. Three firemen were treated at Westchester Square Hospital for smoke inhalation.
McCarthy put down the pen, reached across the desk, and covered the picture with his hand. “Listen to me.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’m on an important case. My office is involved in an investigation of certain members of the NYPD. We’re working in cooperation with the D.A.’s office. It was Dewey’s office helped get you off the hook in the last matter. Donovan called his office and their investigation had already turned up your name in a favorable light. The man we’re after is Borough Inspector Robert I. Brannigan.”
McCarthy sat back. He picked up the pen again and held it in the same position as before, rotating the spit. “We believe he’s a top player in a prostitution racket that moves girls up and down the East Coast in a condition close to indentured servitude. Brannigan not only provides protection but shares in the proceeds.”
“Brannigan’s been a rotten cop for years. It never hurt him before.”
“Times change. There are honest officials running the department now. Brannigan and his kind aren’t going to be tolerated any longer.”
“Except when they help get convictions.”
“Under Brannigan, the Homicide Squad has a splendid record in terms of nabbing perpetrators. But now it’s been discovered he’s also been a friend to racketeers, gamblers and pimps. Unfortunately, he’s got a lot of people afraid of him, including many of his colleagues in the department. I’m told, however, that you’re not one of them. You have more admirers in the department than you know.”
“They’re good at hiding it.”
“I want him put away, and I want your help.”
“I’m busy with a case. Ever hear of Water Grillo?”
“Grillo? Sure, ‘The West Side Ripper.’”
“He’s innocent.”
“Tom Regan tried the case. He’s a friend of mine and a fine prosecutor.”
“Brannigan handled the investigation.”
“He’s a dishonest cop, not a stupid one. As venal as he appears to be, I know of no evidence that he’s ever tampered with the truth in a murder case.”
“Maybe you forgot to look. He framed Grillo.”
“Tell you what. You help put away Brannigan, I’ll see what I can turn up on Grillo.” McCarthy jammed the pen in its holder, stood, and came from behind the desk.
“You got it backwards. Grillo first. He’s the one with the deadline.”
McCarthy paced back and forth, as though addressing a box full of jurors. “I’m the one who’ll decide that. Grillo’s chances, to be honest, are slim. Meanwhile, Brannigan and his fellow rogues are a running sore on the body politic of this city. Soon as he catches wind of an investigation, he’ll pull out every stop to derail it. There’s no time to waste.” He turned away from the imaginary jury. Fearless gangbuster, scourge of dishonest cops, incorruptible prosecutor, he was on the verge of shedding his boyish good looks and acquiring a more substantial and experienced presence. Add a few pounds, mix in a little gray, and he’d have the kind of face that stared with firm determination from campaign posters plastered on walls and pinned to telephone poles.
“More mileage in convicting a crooked detective than in rescuing a spic janitor from the electric chair. See, what makes you so sure that Brannigan didn’t railroad half of those supposed murderers he brought in and manufactured the evidence needed for conviction? That would make for a very busy situation in the appeals courts, wouldn’t it?”
“Don’t get high and mighty with me, Dunne. It doesn’t suit you.”
“Sorry, I’m not ready to sign on with your campaign. The way I see it, it’s fine with you if Grillo goes to the chair so long as you get Brannigan’s scalp. Then you ride that victory to the bench or congress or the governor’s chair. But the system hasn’t changed. Soon enough it’ll produce a new Brannigan, somebody who makes so many arrests that stick the higher-ups turn a blind eye to his less reputable hobbies.”
“You’re not crooked. You’re just crude. You should learn some manners and try acting like a gentleman. You might enjoy the sheer novelty of it.”
“You should learn to hide your ambitions better, Mike. Right now they’re as plain as the freckles on your nose.”
The flush in McCarthy’s face turned the bright crimson of a bad sunburn. “I’ve had enough of you. Get out. You’ll regret this. I promise you.”
Dunne found the Professor and Corrigan in the back booth at McGloin’s. Joh
n Mayhew Taylor was wedged between them. Dunne sat beside Corrigan.
“Mr. Taylor is moving me toward his point of view,” the Professor said. “If the Germans move on the Czechs, surely the French and British will move on the Germans and be joined by the Soviets. The Japanese will then move against the French and British colonies in the Orient, widening their war against China. It will be an even grander conflagration than in 1914. Should it last long enough, we may well be embroiled.”
“Any president who tries to rush us into war will be impeached,” Corrigan said.
The Professor looked around for McGloin, who was nowhere to be seen. “I don’t believe I solicited your views,” he said to Corrigan. McGloin appeared out of the long-unused and dust-covered kitchen, and the Professor signaled for a round of drinks.
Corrigan finished his drink almost as soon as McGloin served it. “I got quite a thirst today,” he said.
“You were born with a Niagara of a thirst,” the Professor said. “I acquired mine at Princeton. Mr. Taylor, on the other hand, has the imbibitional disposition of a dromedary. A drink a month can keep him going.”
“I’m not in the mood, that’s all.” Taylor slid his glass toward Corrigan.
Corrigan pushed it back. “Go on, Taylor, it’ll cheer you up.”
The Professor lifted his glass. “If last evening caused tragedy for some, it brought triumph to one. The byline of John Mayhew Taylor has appeared for the first time on the front page of the New York Standard!”
“Wait,” Corrigan said, “I need a drink to toast with.”
“I’m no coolie,” McGloin said. “I’ll bring another round, but I ain’t shuttlin’ single drinks.”
“Another round it is, propre, if you please,” the Professor said.
Taylor pushed away his drink once more. This time Corrigan took it, raising it to toast with the Professor. “What about you Dunne?” he asked.
“I’m on the same wagon as Taylor.”