Murder in the Manuscript Room

by Con Lehane

“Did you tell him where?”

  “I didn’t know where.”

  Once again, someone would let her look through someone else’s possessions, as if she had a perfect right to do it. Like Gobi’s housemate in Queens, Leila’s father had no objection to her opening Leila’s boxes and searching through them. It was amazing. Some people didn’t know how to say no. The first box had clothes, blouses and summer dresses. Maybe they weren’t appropriate for New York or she’d grown too old for them by the time she could send for them. They were girlish. The second box was the one she wanted. Notebooks, diaries, bills, and photos, some of her wedding. She didn’t recognize the man in the photo. Yet her heart stood still when she looked at the tall, broad-shouldered, redheaded, cocky man standing beside Leila the bride. She put the photo aside and kept digging, pretty sure she’d find something to pin him down.

  As she dug through the possessions Leila left behind, she was aware that what she searched through was not so different than what she might find in any of the boxes in the manuscripts and archives collections. Leila wasn’t a writer, so no actual manuscripts; aside from that, it wasn’t so different, the things people save and collect in their lifetimes. For others, all they possessed got thrown out, so in a way they disappear from history, especially if they didn’t have children or a family that would keep some memory of them. For some people, shortly after they died, it was as if they never existed.

  Her hands shook when she pulled the official-looking envelope out of the last pile of envelopes at the bottom of the box. It was the marriage license: Susan Brown and Paul Higgins, March 21, 2003.

  The name rang a bell. Paul Higgins was the name of the ex-cop who’d donated his papers to Raymond’s crime fiction collection, the guy who took him on that crazy ride through the city, the man who disappeared right after Leila’s murder. She picked up the wedding photo. She recognized him now. She and Leila had seen him with Raymond and Mike Cosgrove on the stairway in the library shortly before Leila’s troubles with an ex-boyfriend or an ex-husband began.

  Adele stared at the document in her hands. Had she tracked down a killer?

  * * *

  “Are you sitting down?” Adele sat behind the wheel of her rental car in front of Leila’s father’s house.

  “Yes.” Ambler said. “I’m sitting at my desk in my apartment reading email on my laptop.”

  “I found Leila’s, or actually Susan Brown’s, ex-husband.”

  “Found him—” His tone was sharp.

  “Found out who he is … someone you know.”

  “Who? Someone I know?”

  “Paul Higgins, the—”

  Raymond wasn’t sitting anymore. She could picture him pacing the floor of his small living room, his mind whirring.

  “I found the marriage certificate and a wedding photo. Before I leave Texas, I’m going to talk to the woman whose name is on the certificate as a witness. Leila’s father said she went to high school with Susan Brown. They were friends until Susan left Texas. I already called her. I’m meeting her in an hour.”

  “Did she know Paul Higgins? Have you told Mike?”

  “I will right now.”

  She called Cosgrove’s cell phone and told him what she’d found. He had no reaction. It was difficult to surprise him. Without a real pause to absorb the news, he asked if Mr. Brown would let her take the documents she found. “I can make the request through the local police department if we need to, or I can talk to the father if that would help.”

  “I have them. He didn’t mind at all.”

  As she was getting ready to start the car, a black SUV pulled up behind her, ridiculously close, almost on her bumper, for no reason since there weren’t any other cars at the curb anywhere near her car. Bulky men in suits got out of the front seat on either side and approached her car, one on the driver side, one on the passenger side. On instinct, she shoved the marriage license and wedding photo under the front seat.

  “Good afternoon, ma’am,” the man on her side of the car said.

  “What do you want?” Adele locked her eyes on his. She wasn’t at all surprised when the man flashed an identification card and said HOMELAND SECURITY. He flashed the ID quickly, so quickly she didn’t see what was written on the face of the card. It had his picture and a seal of some sort. She was going to ask to see it again but decided not to push it. Instead, she looked him in the eye and waited.

  “Did you come out of that house? Do you know who lives there?” He nodded toward Leila’s father’s house.

  Adele glanced at the sad looking house for a moment. She didn’t know whether to cooperate or demand a lawyer. She didn’t know what they were after, but it probably has something to do with Gobi. “I’d like to know what’s going on. Have I done something wrong?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am. We’d like to know why you’re in Texas and what you were doing in that house. If you haven’t done anything wrong, you don’t have to worry.”

  “Is there some reason you can’t tell me what this is about?”

  The man’s expression hardened, his jaw tightening, his eyes narrowing. “Is there some reason you don’t want to answer my question?”

  Adele felt an adrenaline shot of anger. “Yes there is. It’s none of your business what I’m doing here, unless you tell me why it is your business.”

  The man, who’d been bent at the waist talking to her through the window, straightened up and surveyed the street and neighborhood around them. It was quiet—no one on the sidewalks, no one in the yards, no cars passing on the street. The sun had dipped behind the houses, giving a kind of dullness to the waning daylight.

  He bent to the window again. “Did you take anything from the house?”

  Adele bent forward and started the car. Once the motor was running, she faced the man at her window. “I don’t have to talk to you, do I?”

  He stepped back from the car and put his hand on his hip. For a moment, she thought he might reach for a gun. “No. You don’t, ma’am. You’re not under arrest. You being uncooperative does suggest you have something to hide.” He shook his head, his lips pursed with disapproval. “I don’t understand, ma’am. Most people want to cooperate. They understand our job is to keep the country safe.”

  “Try your sanctimonious bullshit on someone else.” Adele reacted with another surge of anger to memories of being talked down to, pushed around. She’d never taken to it, not on the streets of Brooklyn growing up, not from men bosses when she was younger. “Because I won’t answer questions you’ve given me no reason for asking, you try to goad me into answering by implying I’m a traitor. I hope most people aren’t stupid enough to fall for that.”

  The man’s expression was impassive. “I don’t suppose you’re in contact with Gobi Tabrizi.”

  She paused, flustered for the moment, remembering her trip to Gobi’s apartment. “Yesterday. You probably know that.”

  “You haven’t been in touch today? You don’t know where he is at the moment?”

  “He’s in jail.”

  “Not any longer.”

  Adele caught her breath. “What do you mean?”

  “He was released. He’s already violated the conditions of his release. He’s disappeared.”

  She turned off the car’s motor, feeling suddenly helpless. “I don’t know where he is. I didn’t know he was released.”

  The man waited a couple of beats. “I’m sure you know whose house you were in.”

  “I do. And if you know, why ask me?”

  He was unfazed. “A formality. What were you doing there?”

  “Maybe you know that, too. Were you following me?”

  “We don’t want you to inadvertently become an accessory to a crime. Did you take anything from the house?”

  Adele started the car’s motor again. “I hope you’re not going to harass that poor old man when you get through with me.”

  She glared up at her interrogator, wondering if he was experienced enough with this sort of thing to recog
nize false bravado. He might want to search the car and do it anyway even if she told him no. And if he’d followed her here, he or someone like him might have followed her when she went to Gobi’s apartment. She dropped the shift lever into drive. “I’m sure you know how to reach me.” She slowly pulled away, cringing, expecting any second to hear a command to “Halt!” Shots fired in the air. She got to the end of the block and turned the corner before she breathed.

  * * *

  Susan Brown’s friend, Barbara Jean Allen, the woman who signed her marriage certificate, told Adele she’d meet her at an ice-cream parlor off the town square in Granbury. Driving into the town, Adele felt she’d come upon a movie set for an old time western. The blocks of stores were one or two stories with a raised sidewalk in front of the stores, roofs overhanging the sidewalk, and iron pillars every few feet holding up the roofs.

  The buildings were different colors, browns and gray and dark reds, nothing garish, and made of brick or some sort of stone. Nearly every store had its own overhanging roof, also of different colors, which were actually the floors of second-story porches. The town was as cute as a button. No one in Brooklyn would believe such a place still existed. The ice cream shop, too, was straight out of the fifties. Though still unnerved by her encounter with the men in black, she calmed herself for her talk with Susan’s friend, who at least wouldn’t be threatening.

  Barbara Jean spotted her as soon as she walked through the door, waving and yoo-hooing from a tiny, round, marble-topped table. She had blondish hair, twinkling blue eyes, and had dabbed on some lipstick and makeup for the occasion. Slightly plump, she was pretty, mostly because she sparkled with cheerfulness, rather than glamorous. Adele felt overdressed in a black skirt and gray blouse. She’d dressed for a funeral.

  Their conversation went surprisingly easily. Barbara Jean was a chatterbox and because of her friend Susan’s recent death, filled with memories. At another time, the memories might have interested Adele; she did want to know about Leila’s past. At this moment, she wanted to know about Susan Brown’s ex-husband.

  “He was a cop from New York City who came here, actually to Dallas, to train their police in what he did, which was to pretend to be a bad guy and do everything with the criminals until he got the goods on them and then arrest them all. It was dangerous what he did. He was a brave man.”

  The problem was Barbara Jean lacked any filters. Once she got started on a story, she went on at the length of a Russian novel, unable to distinguish what was interesting or important from what wasn’t either of those things. Adele had to interrupt her stories, pulling her back from where she was heading, to get any worthwhile information. That the man Leila married was a New York City cop who worked undercover sealed the deal that the Paul Higgins who donated his papers to the library’s crime fiction collection was Susan Brown’s, alias Leila Stone, ex-husband.

  A hot fudge sundae and a cup of coffee later, Adele had learned all she was going to from Barbara Jean. She hadn’t seen or heard anything about Paul Higgins since Susan left him. She did hear from Susan every year at Christmas and at other times, few and far between. She hesitated when Adele asked when she’d heard from Susan last. She said it hadn’t been so long ago; then, she said she couldn’t remember when it had been.

  Adele turned down an invitation to have dinner and meet Barbara Jean’s family. Surprisingly, she liked her, as in a surprising way she’d come to like Leila, whom she had a hard time thinking of as Susan. Yet she was tired and couldn’t take much more of Barbara Jean’s chatter, as harmless as it was. And she wanted to get to a hotel room to call Raymond and tell him about her encounter with the men in black.

  * * *

  The funeral the next morning was somber. Along with Leila’s father, Barbara Jean and her family, whom Adele got to meet after all, and a couple of older women Adele assumed were Susan’s aunts, she listened to a boring preacher drone on about God’s will and the unbroken circle in the sky, by and by. She turned down another invitation to visit with Barbara Jean, this time because she had a plane to catch.

  On the way to the airport, Adele regretted her decision not to have dinner with Barbara Jean the night before. As chatty and forthcoming as Leila’s friend seemed, it felt like she might be holding something back, not fully trusting Adele the first time she laid eyes on her. If she’d had more patience, she might have won her over and found out something more about Leila or Paul Higgins.

  Chapter 17

  “Pop is here,” McNulty told Ambler when he delivered his mug of beer on a damp, cold evening portending snow.

  “Good,” said Ambler. McNulty had called him at the library before he left for Woodside to let him know the senior McNulty would be at the Library Tavern that evening.

  “That’s him.” McNulty gestured with his head toward a man sitting alone in a booth across from the bar with a glass of white wine in front of him. “You don’t need an introducer. I told him you’d be along.”

  Ambler took his mug of beer to the booth. The older man stood and looked him over, making no bones about sizing him up. His hair was cut short so it failed to cover a scar on his forehead. His nose was bent in a way that suggested it had been broken more than once. Battle-scarred in the same way Paul Higgins was. His eyes were clear, brown, and lively, giving the sense he enjoyed life and at the same time was ready for a good fight if one came along.

  “Kevin McNulty.” He held out his thick, workingman’s hand. “My son thinks highly of you.” His eyes sparkled. “But he’s friends with half the ne’er-do-wells in the city so I don’t know how much that says for you.” He waited a beat or two before he laughed and cuffed Ambler on the shoulder. “I knew Devon Thomas. Knew Richard Wright.”

  Something changed in his expression, sadness, regret, nostalgia. Whatever it was, the pain it brought with it was visible in his eyes. “I wonder what might have been if we’d known the real story—the one you told my son—that Devon did the time in prison to protect his brother. I knew his brother, too, Trey. Scared kid, useless as tits on a bull. We thought Devon was framed. Never thought his brother was part of it.”

  “It looks like he was.”

  Kevin McNulty took a sip of wine, put the glass down carefully. “What he, Devon, told you, that his brother Trey was a snitch, I’m not surprised. All radical groups, especially black militant ones, were riddled with informers.”

  McNulty junior came by with a wine bottle to refill his father’s glass and a mug of beer for Ambler. “Recruited him yet, Pop?” he asked.

  Pop ignored the question. “I know what you did. The FBI leak and all that. And what they did to you.” He held up his glass in a toast. “Took guts.”

  “More guts than brains, I suspect.”

  “The feds got you blacklisted. Happened to the best of us.” He laughed, genuinely, not bitterly. “I laugh now. Ruined a lot of lives. Looks like you did okay.”

  Ambler chuckled. “I coulda been a contender.”

  The older man gazed into his eyes, seeing more there than most people did, Ambler thought. For the first time, he talked with someone who understood what had happened to him. What it took out of him. What it had cost him. Understood the uncertainty, still, after all this time, that the sacrifice had been worth it. In this wordless moment, he felt a kinship with this aging subversive.

  “Richard Wright and some others in The United Truckers of America were part of a national movement to pull together all of the workers in transportation—airline, train, truck, bus, cab, anything that moved—into one union, a national transportation union. If they’d succeeded, the union would have had the power to shut the country down.”

  Although Kevin McNulty sat comfortably relaxed, he broadcast a tremendous energy. Not a big man, he came off as powerful, perhaps because his shoulders were broad, his neck thick, and his head large, and because of his battle-scarred face. His voice, too, was large so even as he spoke softly, you could sense that if he roared the sound would be fearsome.

&nbs
p; “The feds called Richard Wright the most dangerous man in America. That wasn’t the first attempt on his life, the one that got him. Not long before that, someone shot into a car he should have been riding in and wasn’t. Not just shot at it. I mean a fusillade of bullets from a car that pulled up alongside. The official story was a rival group of black militants.”

  “Are you saying—?”

  Kevin McNulty shook his head. “I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I don’t know who killed Richard Wright. I never thought Devon Thomas did. You tell me you don’t either.”

  After a long silence, Ambler said, “I think Devon knew, or he was about to discover who did kill Richard Wright. That’s why he was murdered.”

  “An interesting hypothesis.”

  Devon Thomas had a younger sister, the elder McNulty told Ambler when he asked about Devon’s family. He took a small, aged, black address book from his inside jacket pocket, thumbed through it until he found something. He took out his cell phone. After exchanging greetings and a couple of hearty laughs with whoever was on the other end of the call, he asked about Angela Thomas and wrote something down.

  “She lives in Harlem. Teaches in Harlem.” He handed Ambler a phone number. “Tell her you got it from me by way of Reverend Zeke Daniels.”

  Chapter 18

  Mike Cosgrove finished the call and disconnected. No one in Texas owned up to the Homeland Security stop Adele told him about. It could be they were watching the house. Not much reason they would be. It could be Campbell’s doing. No reason for that either, unless he knew Higgins and the Stone woman had been married. Cosgrove wanted to talk to his chief anyway; now was as good a time as any. The boss for sure wasn’t going to like an ex-cop as a murder suspect.

  As brass went, Pat Halloran was a decent guy. He didn’t bother with the small stuff if you did your job and didn’t call attention to yourself or put the department in a bad light.

  “There you have it,” Cosgrove said when he finished his tale, including what Ray had told him about Higgins’s uncle in Boston. He sat across an ancient wooden desk from his boss.