The Hour of the Cat

by Peter Quinn

  “I wouldn’t want to be led by a shameful one.” Forrestal finished his tea. He picked up his hat and stood. “I better be going.”

  “I’ll walk with you on the way out.” Donovan signed for his breakfast and accompanied Forrestal to the street.

  “This Czech business is just a start.” Forrestal snapped the brim of his hat to protect against the glare of the morning sun.

  “It’s also none of our business. It’s for the Europeans to figure out.”

  “For now maybe. But not for long.”

  Donovan’s driver pulled up in front of them. “Can I offer you a ride downtown?”

  “Thanks, but no.” Forrestal slipped his hands into the pockets of his crisply pressed, handsomely tailored suit. “I’m going to stop at my gym.”

  Donovan guessed Forrestal had the suit made by a Savile Row tailor. Like most on Wall Street who weren’t born to the upper class, Forrestal was careful to always dress as if he were.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” Forrestal said, apparently aware Donovan was admiring his suit, “but a few weeks ago, some louse stole one of my suits while I was working out at the gym. He left my wallet and keys but took everything else, including shirt, tie, and shoes. Maybe I should hire that private eye friend of yours to look into it.”

  “Dunne? I’m afraid he’s got bigger things on his mind. But you’re lucky, because it could have been worse.”

  “How?”

  “If the thief was a New Dealer, he’d have taken the wallet, too.”

  Forrestal wasn’t amused. “Whoever he was, if I ever get my hands on him, I’ll break his neck.”

  Delayed by the downtown traffic, Donovan hurried into his office, giving his secretary a quick, perfunctory hello. She followed behind and placed a file on his desk. She held several phone messages in her hand.

  “Damn traffic,” Donovan said. “Pretty soon it’s going to bring the entire city to a standstill.” He took his jacket and tossed it over the arm of a chair.

  She picked it up, smoothed it with her hand, and draped it carefully over her arm. “Which would you like first, the good news or the bad?”

  He sat behind the desk. “Good.”

  “There’s no need to rush. Your ten o’clock appointment is canceled. Mr. Pennoyer from Morgan’s is indisposed. He’ll have to reschedule.”

  “And the bad?”

  She laid five phone messages on his blotter as though they were a poker hand. “Take your pick. They’re all from the same person.”

  He picked one out and read the name aloud, “Ian Anderson.”

  “He called twice after you left last evening and three times this morning. The last was about twenty minutes ago.”

  “Did he say what he wanted?”

  “Only that it was urgent.”

  “Next time insist that you need more information.”

  She shifted his jacket to her other arm. “I’m afraid the bad news gets worse. He’s nearby and intends to stop here in hopes of catching a few spare minutes with you. I told him you have none to spare, but I don’t think I dissuaded him.”

  Donovan looked at his watch. “Well, I suppose now that the ten o’clock appointment is canceled, I can give him a few minutes. But don’t close the door.” By the time he returned from a trip to the bathroom, Anderson had arrived. His visit turned out to be mercifully brief. He explained that he’d read in last night’s paper about the sudden re-opening of the Grillo case and wondered if Donovan might not use his connections with the prosecutor’s office to put him in touch with the chief investigator.

  Pleased at such an easy request to fulfill, Donovan didn’t pry. He told Anderson he could do even better than put him in touch, since he was a personal acquaintance of the private detective being celebrated in the papers. They’d served together in the war, and though Donovan kept mum about his role in getting Dunne out of jail, he promised Anderson that Dunne would gladly provide whatever help he could. He dialed Dunne’s number several times but only got a busy signal. He summoned his secretary and asked her to keep trying.

  It was only when Anderson had taken Dunne’s number to try himself, and was about to leave, that Donovan asked him about his interest in the case. “Last time we talked,” he said, “you seemed interested in bigger matters.”

  Politely evasive, Anderson said the case was of concern to friends of his. Once he gathered more information, he’d have more to say. For now, he was simply grateful to be pointed in Mr. Dunne’s direction. “You wouldn’t mind if I use your name with Mr. Dunne, would you?” he asked.

  “Not at all. He can phone if he has any questions. But I doubt he will.”

  “One hand washes the other, is that it?

  “Something like that.”

  THE HACKETT BUILDING, NEW YORK

  Dunne removed his hand from beneath the cardboard cup. Lukewarm coffee slowly dripped from its bottom. A single drop made a direct hit on the week-old front page of the Standard, splattering Brannigan’s face and the detectives on either side. The brown blot might have obscured his angry disbelief at being in the perpetrator’s position, flash bulbs almost blinding him while shouts came from all sides—Say ‘cheese,’ Chief, say ‘thirty years to life’—except Brannigan’s heavily bandaged nose and jaw were fixed with the blank numbness of a broken-down prizefighter direct from a final trip to the canvas.

  The chief’s vacant face reminded Dunne for the first time in a long while of the Brannigan he’d met when they’d both been rookies. Brannigan had come across as decent enough, even a notch above most. He hadn’t been in the war. Instead, he’d spent a year at Manhattan College studying to be an engineer. When his money ran out, he became a cop. But it hadn’t taken long for casual corruption to turn habitual, and for the poison to spread throughout his system.

  His acolyte, Matt Terry, pulled the cork the minute they dragged him out of the closet in Sally Hoffritz’s place, gushing his story to Taylor with the unplugged contrition of a drunken driver who comes to in the middle of the fatal pileup he’d caused. True to the Professor’s formulation that one man’s tragedy is another’s triumph, the Brannigan exposé brought Taylor his second headline in the Standard.

  TOP COP IMPLICATED IN PROSTITUTION RACKET SCANDAL COULD TOUCH MANY IN THE RANKS: DEWEY PROMISES ‘NEW WAR ON CORRUPTION’ FEDS ALSO LIKELY TO ACT

  By John Mayhew Taylor

  The reader had to turn the page to find a piece by John Lockwood headlined:BRANNIGAN ARREST RAISES NEW QUESTION ON GRILLO CASE: STAY OF EXECUTION LIKELY

  The Professor pointed out that Brannigan’s record of success as the head of homicide had apparently won him a degree of immunity when it came to his other activities. As long as Brannigan didn’t flaunt his involvement in illicit sidelines, the attitude of department higher-ups seemed to be, why endanger the acclaim he won from the press, the public, and prosecutors for catching murderers? Now, however, with the extent of his corruption exposed, the mayor, police commissioner, and D.A. were unanimous in calling for the Chief Inspector’s head.

  The Professor gave prominent mention to the role of private investigator and former policeman Fintan Dunne and reported it was Dunne’s involvement in the case of convicted killer Walter Grillo that caused him to look into Brannigan’s alleged crimes. A spokesman for the D.A.’s office was quoted as saying that all of the recent cases Brannigan handled would be reviewed. Since Grillo was so close to being executed, his would be first. Inspector William Hanlon, the new Chief of Homicide, pledged a full reexamination of the case.

  The Mirror made no mention of the D.A.’s decision to reconsider the Grillo case. Later, rather than sooner, Corrigan would write it up. For now the paper was full of the cop scandal and in no hurry to remind readers of its role in dubbing Grillo the “West Side Ripper.” Dunne ripped off the front page of the Mirror, wrapped it around the leaky bottom of his coffee cup, and tossed it in the wastebasket. The mention of his name in the papers and on the radio was enough to keep his phone ringing mos
t of the morning. The calls were all from people who wanted to hire him to help prove a friend/lover/relative innocent of the murder/heist/forgery for which he/she stood accused/convicted. Oh, please, Mr. Dunne, you’re our last hope. He took their numbers and said he’d call them back. That morning, even the usher in the lobby of the Hackett Building had been fawningly polite, his welcome free of any mention of impending eviction.

  He rang Elba Corado’s shop several times. There was no answer. He was about to leave when the phone rang and kept ringing. Thinking it might be Elba or Roberta, he picked up. A voice with one of those high-hat-and-tails English accents asked, “I wonder if I might speak with Mr. Fintan Dunne?”

  “He’s unavailable.”

  “Perhaps you have a number at which he can be reached.”

  “This is the number.”

  “Might I leave my name and number?”

  “Try later.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind, tell him Colonel William Donovan advised I call.”

  “What’d you say your name was?”

  “I didn’t. It’s Ian Anderson.”

  “Can you give him time to clean up some business?”

  “I’m at his disposal.”

  “Leave a number. Mr. Dunne will get back to you. It’s no emergency, is it?”

  “Tell Mr. Dunne that remains to be seen.”

  WORTH STREET, NEW YORK

  Doc Cropsey was eating a tuna fish sandwich at his desk and reading the Standard when Dunne appeared at his door. He peered over the top of his glasses. “I see the politicians finally woke up to the fact that Brannigan’s a crook. Only took ’em ten years to acknowledge what the rest of the city knew the day he got the job.” He turned the page. “And I see you managed to squeeze some ink for yourself out of poor old Lockwood.”

  “Good for business.”

  “Now you’re famous, I suppose I’ll have to stick a plaque on my place in Southold: ‘Fintan Dunne Slept Here.’ But tell me, before I do, did you sleep alone or did you have those two women you sent here?”

  “I was wondering if they made it to see you.”

  “Stop wondering. When the guard wouldn’t let them in, they caused quite a stir.”

  “Did they give you the vial?”

  “I sent it to the toxicological lab at Bellevue. They already got back to me.”

  “What do I owe you?”

  “It’ll cost you five bucks.” Cropsey finished his sandwich. He took a pad from the drawer of his desk and insisted on giving Dunne a receipt. “Phenobarbital,” he said, “that’s what was in it.”

  “Not Luminal?”

  “Luminal’s a trademark for Phenobarbital.”

  “Can it kill?”

  “Depends on the age, weight, and the physical condition of the person it’s used on. Also, if there was already a sufficient buildup of Luminal in the bloodstream, dose as strong as what was in there would cause pulmonary depression. Lungs fill up with water. Death’s inevitable.”

  “So someone with an adequate supply of Phenobarbital and a way of administering it could kill at will?”

  “That’s why you need a prescription.”

  “But a doctor could pretty much get all he wants, no?”

  “A doctor determined to commit murder has plenty of means at his disposal, if that’s what he wants, and there’s been the occasional lunatic who’s done so. Last century, Dr. Thomas Cream in London killed seven women with strychnine injections. Herman Mudgett in Chicago, a former medical student and pharmacist, confessed to twenty-eight murders by various means, including gas, poison, and strangulation. I’m sure there’ve been other cases. But it goes against a doctor’s whole training to willfully destroy human life. Besides, can you think of a better way for a doctor to put himself out of business than killing all his patients?”

  “What if a doctor had an endless supply of patients and the means both to kill and dispose of them?”

  “He’d still need a motive.”

  “Human sanitation. Free the world of misfits. Preserve the purity of the race.”

  “What’d he do with the remains?”

  “The bodies are used as specimens. They’re dissected or experimented on, then incinerated, the ashes mixed with sand and made the soft bed of a playground.”

  “How about their relatives?”

  “What if they were without families? Orphans? People who’d been abandoned?”

  “He’d still need a good deal of help.”

  “What if there were plenty of people who believed what he believed and considered it a duty to assist?”

  “He’d never be able to hide it. Somebody’d snitch or catch on.”

  “What if somebody did catch on, by accident, and tried to gather evidence but was killed before it could be revealed?”

  “Fin, I’ve been in the bone trade long enough to know that when a normally sensible person detects ghouls and murderers round every corner, it’s time to give the gray matter a breather. Overwork is the enemy of a clear mind. Alcohol’s no friend either. My day, I knew plenty of both, but since I’ve given up the booze and spend every spare minute fishing on Peconic Bay, I’m thinking clear as the purest spring in Paradise. Come out soon. Doctor’s orders.”

  “Soon as I can.”

  “You’re always welcome, long as you come alone.”

  When Dunne arrived at the Hackett Building, the only one in the lobby was a lanky pipe smoker examining the wall directory. The back of his badly wrinkled linen suit jacket had a perspiration stain shaped roughly like the Chrysler Building. His straw hat was white as milk, the way new straw is, and he wore slender, hand-crafted English shoes that cost a bundle but, if properly cared for, last a lifetime. Hearing someone behind him, he turned quickly. “Good day,” he said, a greeting that exposed him as a foreigner, as much for his noticeable accent as his woeful unfamiliarity with the New York rule of never acknowledging anyone waiting for the same conveyance. His tie was thinner than was stylish but had those blue, gold, and red stripes beloved of British officers and the American private-school crowd who couldn’t imagine anything nobler or more desirable than being taken for one.

  “Mr. Anderson?” Dunne thought it was a safe bet that this was the Englishman he’d talked to earlier on the phone.

  “Why, yes.” He grinned and extended his hand. If he was surprised at a total stranger addressing him by name, he didn’t show it.

  Dunne introduced himself and invited him to his office. They rode the elevator in silence. The office, like the day, had become smotheringly hot. Dunne flipped the switch for the ceiling fan, but it stayed motionless. The building’s refurbishment apparently hadn’t included the wiring. He pushed up the window as far as it would go. A pygmy puff of wind blew in and, with it, the stench of two-day-old garbage from the rear of the beanery across the alley.

  “Mind if I smoke?” Anderson was already stuffing the pipe from the tobacco pouch he’d removed from his pocket.

  “Be my guest.”

  “I’m thankful your assistant was able to get hold of you. Did Colonel Donovan reach you as well?”

  “I didn’t know he tried.”

  “He called several times. He’s very proud of you and your new-found fame.”

  “Wasn’t for him, I’d be serving old-fashioned jail time.”

  “And Mr. Grillo would have been executed for a crime he didn’t commit.”

  “You know about Grillo?” Dunne asked.

  “It’s why I’m here. I’ve an interest in one of the peripheral figures in the investigation. His name came up in the newspaper account I read of the D.A.’s intent to re-examine Mr. Grillo’s conviction.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “The late Dr. Sparks. When I contacted Colonel Donovan to inquire if he might put me in touch with someone in the prosecutor’s office who could assist me, he quite enthusiastically suggested that, instead of the prosecutor, I talk to you.”

  “How do you know Colonel Donovan?”

  “Li
ke you, I served with him in the war.” An abundant plume of smoke rose from Anderson’s pipe.

  “I served under him.” Dunne resisted the urge to stick his head out the window. “You a friend of Sparks’s?” he asked.

  “Never met the man.”

  “Insurance?”

  “Pardon?”

  “You investigating a claim?”

  Anderson laughed. “Hardly.”

  Dunne considered picking up the phone to call Colonel Donovan and get the full story on the grinning Englishman he’d sicced on him. But with a debt the size he owed Donovan, he didn’t want to even hint at ingratitude.

  “I know of Sparks only through a book he wrote some years ago and through two acquaintances of mine who used to live in Germany but now reside in New York. I was out of the country at the time, but they alerted me to the news of his demise. They believe Sparks is alive. Do you?”

  “Let’s just say he disappeared at a convenient moment.”

  “I believe very strongly that Sparks is alive, and I also believe that if he’s caught and exposed, it’s a chance to compel people to confront the larger reality he embodies. In that regard, I wonder if I might introduce you to the two I spoke of before? They are most knowledgeable about Sparks and his connections. I think they’ll help resolve any questions you might have about who he was, or rather, is.” Anderson looked around the office as though he didn’t know where the smoke had come from. “At worst, it’ll be a chance to get some fresh air.”

  The air in Yorkville was rank with the slightly sour smell of roasted hops from the Rupert Brewery, every bit as stale as the smoke left behind in Dunne’s office. The address Anderson directed the cab driver to was an as-you’d-expect uptown tenement, indistinguishable from the other dun-colored buildings on the block. But the vestibule was meticulously kept, cracked tile floor mopped and scrubbed, light fixture and mailboxes polished to an out-of-place elegance.