“If there was any doubt before,” the Homicide captain said, “there’s isn’t now: it was murder.”
“You got the postmortem results?”
“Fizer had a belly full of sedatives.”
“I guess that’s fitting. A lot of people had a belly full of Fizer. So he was unconscious when he was killed?”
“Like they say, he didn’t know what hit him.”
“Look, Captain, I don’t know what Maggie’s up to, but she said you people need to do a full autopsy.”
“ ‘You people’? I work for you now?”
“That’s the way it goes in a democracy where working stiffs pay taxes and civil servants do our bidding.”
“Yeah, well, swell, only what do you think the postmortem was, if not an autopsy?”
“I think some coroner’s assistant cut open Sam’s stomach, checked its contents and, having worked up an appetite, went to lunch.”
A long pause.
Then he said, “Well, why not? Cause of death was obvious, gunshot to the left temple.”
“I’m just saying, Maggie wants you to request a full autopsy. From toenails to bald spot.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. She’s mysterious sometimes. She’s a beautiful woman, and all beautiful women are enigmatic.”
“I don’t have much trouble figuring my wife out. When she closes one eye and stares at me with the other, I know damn well I’m in for it.”
“Are you doubting Maggie? Do you want me to tell her you told her to go jump in a lake? Captain, I know you’re sweet on her.”
“Jack, I’m a happily married man.”
“I must be mistaken, then, that you turn into a tub of goo when Maggie’s on the scene.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Why? If your wife hears, will she shut one eye? Listen, I’m a detective, you’re a detective, but Maggie? She has intuition.”
“Is that right?”
“By intuition I mean, she’s smarter than me, and we both know I’m smarter than you, so add that up and get back to me.”
Another long pause.
“I’ll call the coroner,” he said. “What have you got for me? You’ve been running around talking to our potential suspects, haven’t you?”
“Yeah.”
And I threw him a couple of bones, stuff he’d find out for himself, anyway, if he hadn’t already—that Fizer threatened to name Rapp as a correspondent in the divorce proceedings against Misty; and that Charlie Mazurki was into Sam Fizer for twenty-five grand. Let him work for the rest.
So we bid each other wary good-byes, and I looked at the other message I’d scribbled down: “Tony Carmine wants to see you ASAP.” There was a third-floor office number at the “Brill Bldg.”
I leaned over to open the bottom drawer on the left-hand side of my desk. I reached in and took out the old .45 Colt the major had brought home from his war; it resided in the brown-leather shoulder holster I’d bought myself right after my war.
Rarely did I wear the rig. But I got up, slipped off the jacket of my light brown Botany 500 worsted, gently rested it over the chair, and arranged the straps until it was as close to comfortable as possible, the big gun under my left shoulder. How did women put up with brassieres, anyway?
Like a kid playing cowboy, I drew the pistol a couple times; first try, it caught on the leather, but second and third and in particular fourth time went fine and fast.
When a guy like Tony Carmine asked you to come around, you had to be a good Boy Scout.
Prepared.
The golden front entry of the Brill Building was rather grand, but the brick exterior of its fifteen stories or so were as drab as the interior was smoke-grimed; even the elevators seemed to cough, when they weren’t wheezing and creaking.
And yet the Brill Building was the nerve center of two entertainment industries: prizefighters and their managers and the assorted helpers and hooligans of the boxing game made this unlikely, unpretentious structure their stronghold; but they shared it with Tin Pan Alley, the music publishers and songwriters and arrangers and piano players who created much of America’s popular music. The unlikely convergence of these two worlds, thanks to the proximity of Madison Square Garden and the theater district, was reflected in the two restaurants at street level— Jack Dempsey’s, where you’ve already been, that palace for pugs; and the Turf, a musician’s hangout, where we won’t be going.
Tony Carmine had an office halfway down an industrial-green hallway of frosted-glass doors and frosted-glass-and-wood walls, behind which pianos pounded out potential hits (and probable flops). Singers, male and female, solo and group, were often going at it behind the frosted glass, providing a kind of shifting musical tapestry as I passed.
Carmine’s door bore only a number, no name (neither Carmine nor Carmichael), and I knocked on the wood frame, rattling it.
I could hear a chair scrape the wooden floor and then footsteps; the door opened and Tony Carmine smiled at me with the sincerity of a guy showing hot jewelry at a pawn shop.
“You must be Jack Starr,” he said in a nasal grating mid-range voice that was odds-on favorite for least musical on this floor.
He was a small man, pale enough to call into question his ever having set foot in daylight; he wore a white shirt with a red bow tie and red black-edged suspenders and black slacks. His black hair was slicked back, his eyes were small and close-set and ratlike, his nose prominent and ratlike, with a Clark Gable mustache over a small, ratlike mouth.
He reminded me of a rat.
“Yeah,” I said. “We haven’t met, but I’ve seen you around. We have mutual friends.”
“I know we do.” He made a gracious gesture with a tiny, perfectly manicured hand. “Step into my humble abode.”
Of course it wasn’t an abode, it was an office, but pointing that out would have been rude; and, anyway, it was fairly humble.
The side and rear walls were covered in green soundproof tiles, meaning this had been set up for musical tenants, and you could see the shadow on the floor where an upright piano had been. A big blond desk faced the door with a table against the wall behind it with stacks of this and that—newspapers, magazines, photos, and correspondence.
He had a window whose blinds were shut, and the one un-soundproofed wall, behind him, was decorated with framed photographs of professional fighters, some famous, some not. A red sofa was off to the left, and a couple of wooden chairs were against the walls here and there; a coat tree in one corner was home to his bloodred sportscoat and a wide-brimmed white Borsalino with a black band.
I took off my fedora and sat it beside me; my suitcoat was unbuttoned, the .45 a reassuring weight under my left arm. “What is it you do out of this office, Tony?”
I knew full well the guy was a glorified bookie; but what were all the photos of fighters about?
“I represent boxers,” he said, settling behind the desk. He was so small I could only think of a grade-school kid sneaking a moment in the teacher’s chair while she’d stepped out.
He was saying, “Not in the ring, I’m no manager—it’s the public appearance stuff, opening supermarkets, signing autographs at car shows and so on. . . . Sit, Jack, sit. It’s generous of you to respond to my phone call, us being more or less strangers.”
Just to be difficult, the seat I took was the sofa, which meant he had to swivel sideways and talk across the office to me. That wasn’t a big deal, as the room was hardly spacious; but I liked needling him a little.
His chair was a leather-upholstered number and he rocked in it as we talked; his socks showed—they were red with black stripes. He reminded me of Eagle-Eye Spiegel, the little zoot-suited character in Tall Paul who could freeze you in your tracks with his hypnotic double whammy.
“You’re wondering why I asked you up here,” he said.
“Yeah, particularly since I wanted to talk to you, anyway.”
He gestured with two hands as he rocked back. “Well, yo
u’re my guest—you go first. Say, there’s coffee and soda down the hall—would you like anything?”
“No, I’m fine.” I shifted and the fake leather under me squeaked. “I’m looking into the Sam Fizer murder.”
Skinny eyebrows rose. “Murder? I thought Sam took himself out.”
“The papers would make you think that. But it was a put-up job—gun in the wrong hand, no powder burns on his hand, gut full of sedatives.”
Carmine grunted a laugh. “Amateurs. Well, you can’t think I had anything to do with it.”
“Why can’t I?”
His smile was white, possibly purchased. “Well, Jack, he owed me money. You don’t kill a guy owes you money. Seventy-five thousand in poker debts, from our weekly game—I was in a weekly game at Sam’s, over at the Waldorf. Or did you know that?”
I nodded. “There’s more?”
His eyes flared; nostrils, too. “Plenty. One hundred grand on the Marciano/LaStarza match.”
“Ouch.” I’d been at the Polo Grounds for that. Pretty brutal—the ref stopped the fight in the eleventh, first six rounds having been a fight, the final five a slaughter.
He rocked back, kept rocking. “Which is why I asked you here, Jack.”
“I bet on Marciano.”
“The smart money did, obviously. But Sam was a lot of things, a famous cartoonist, and a great guy, really . . . but smart about where he bet his money, he wasn’t.”
“Which has what to do with me?”
His smile expanded beyond the confines of the skinny mustache; his hands were tented together, as he rocked and rocked. “How I understand it, when a big-time cartoonist drops unfortunately dead, the syndicate that distributes it more or less . . . inherits it. Keeps it going, and rakes in the dough.”
“Something like that.”
He shrugged elaborately. “Well, I think it’s only fair that the Starr Syndicate, as the heirs of Mug O’Malley, clean up this gambling debt. It’s a hundred and seventy-five thousand . . . but I am graciously willing to settle for one-fifty.”
“Are you?”
A tiny shrug now. “You see, I can’t go to his estate for relief, ’cause after all these are illegal gambling debts. But a technicality like that shouldn’t stand in the way of what’s right and what’s fair.”
I had to laugh. “And what’s right and what’s fair is that we pay off Sam’s gambling debts?”
“I’m knocking off twenty-five grand, ain’t I?”
I leaned back on the sofa, folded my arms. “You know, Tony, I was thinking you weren’t much of a suspect in this thing. Now I’m not so sure.”
The tiny eyes popped. “Suspect?”
“If you’re dumb enough to think that the Starr Syndicate would pay up where Sam Fizer himself wouldn’t, well. . . maybe you’re also dumb enough to stage the clumsiest phony suicide in history.”
His smile, like his eyes, was tiny—and nasty. “You’re a big guy, Jack, physically, I mean.”
I shrugged. “Little over six feet. Two hundred pounds, maybe. Nothing the freak shows on Broadway would be interested in. Why, Tony?”
He rocked. Rocked. “Well, I’m thinking you’re looking at me, and figuring, where does this little pipsqueak get off threatening a big lug like me?”
“Are you threatening me?”
He jerked a thumb at the wall behind him. “You see these photos, Jack?”
“That’s a lot of ugly wallpaper, Tony. Why surround yourself with so much cauliflower?”
He turned a hand as he continued to rock. “Y’see, not all of my fighters get the work on the side they need, you know, to support their own habits and hobbies and such like. Some of ’em don’t have as much luck in the ring as others of them, but they all got two things in common.”
“Which are?”
“Which are, they can always use a little cash on the side; and that there’s not one of them that couldn’t pound you into a puddle of what used to be you. Two at a time, they make two puddles out of you. Or more.”
I just grinned at him.
“What are you smiling about, Jack?”
I got on my feet. “Could I use your phone, Tony?”
He frowned. “What? To call the police? Don’t be a jackass, Jack.”
“Not to call the police. It’s a call you’ll be glad I made.”
He studied me, nose twitching. Did I mention he reminded me of a rat?
“Go ahead,” Tony said. “Just don’t get too cute, Jack.”
“Usually I get just cute enough, Tony.”
Then I stood at his desk, where I swung the phone around and dialed a number I knew by heart. No answer. Then I dialed another number I knew by heart.
“Joey?” I said. “This is Jack Starr. Is he in?”
He was in.
“Frank,” I said. “Sorry to bother you, but I’m over at the Brill Building talking to a comical character who thinks the Starr Syndicate should pay Sam Fizer’s gambling debts.”
Frank Calabria said, “Put that little weasel on.”
One man’s rat was another man’s weasel.
I handed the receiver toward him.
He took it.
“Hello?” Carmine’s complexion had started out pale; now it was arctic. His little eyes bulged like buttons on a fat man’s vest; his tiny mouth was trembling and the nostrils of his big nose opened and closed and opened and closed. “Frank, I’m sorry, I had no way of knowing. . . . Frank, I swear I didn’t know. . . . Complete pass, he gets a complete pass! . . . Thank you, Frank. God bless you, Frank.”
Tony swallowed and hung up the phone carefully, as if it might bite him otherwise. He looked up at me like a newly naturalized Latvian-American contemplating Mount Rushmore.
“Frank says you’re an old pal,” Tony said timidly.
I went back to the sofa and flopped there. “Yeah. He and my father, the major, were in business together. Frank still has a tiny piece of the Starr Syndicate.”
“Oh, hell . . . I didn’t know.” He swallowed again. “You mean, by putting the arm on you I was . . .”
“Putting the arm on Frank Calabria.”
He shuddered.
I waved it off. “But don’t worry about it. It’s not like he’ll send a guy around to shoot you.”
The knock that came to the door could not have been more perfectly timed by Hitchcock. It made Carmine jump, and that would have been funny as hell if I hadn’t jumped a little, too.
Carmine got out of his chair and headed toward the door, where a second series of knocks insisted on attention. He paused and said to me, “I got an appointment. You better go.”
But I was still seated, reaching for my fedora, when Carmine opened the door, said, “Yes?” and all I saw was the snout of the silenced automatic come into view as somebody in the hall pointed it at Tony Carmine’s belly and fired twice, two coughlike reports that crumpled the little man, dropping him to his office floor in a shivering fetal position.
I couldn’t help it; my first thought was: Jesus, Frank, that was fast.
But my second thought was to get out the .45 and try to catch whoever had done this.
CHAPTER TEN
MUST YOU EMBARRASS THE DEAD, JACK?
If you’re wondering why I didn’t call for an ambulance or at least notify the police, what with my diminutive host sprawled on the floor just inside his office door with his white shirt turning as red as his suspenders, well, I was a cop once myself. An MP. I’d seen people gut-shot, and I knew he was a goner.
Tony Carmine had minutes at most left, when I stepped over him to go out into the corridor, .45 in hand, still enough of a cop to put pursuit of the killer ahead of calling in the kill.
And there he was, down at the end of the hall, a big guy, over six feet, in a black fedora and a black woolen topcoat that flapped as he ran, his trousers and shoes black, too, Death trading in its flowing black robe and scythe for street clothes and a silenced automatic. He went through the fire exit door, leaving an empty na
rrow hall for me to barrel down.
With that sound-suppressed weapon, the shots hadn’t been heard by anybody but Tony and me and the shooter, although had the guy just blasted away with that rod unsilenced, who can say anybody would have noticed on a floor where a different concert was in session behind every smoked-glass door, fingers banging away at pianos, machine-gunning ivories and sharps and flats . . .
Luckily I didn’t bump into anybody coming out an office, and when I burst through the fire exit door onto the landing, I quickly shut it behind me to minimize the pop music cacophony of the Brill Building’s third floor.
Right now I was listening not for singing or piano playing but percussion, the snare drumming of feet on wooden steps in the echo chamber of the stairwell. And I heard those racing footsteps all right, but I had to squint and really perk up my ears to tell whether the hollow cadence was coming from above or below.
Logic said the shooter would head down, with the street only a few floors below; but my ears said he’d gone up, maybe hoping to confuse the issue and reach an upper floor and either duck into an office or an elevator before anyone was the wiser. These thoughts were accompanying me as my own feet rattled up the screaky stairs, and I at first didn’t catch it when the footfalls I was following ceased.
I got to the fifth-floor landing, damn glad I was no longer a smoker, and paused for a split second to listen when a flash of black like the wings of a dark giant bird came from above, as the son of a bitch dove from the half landing where he’d waited to surprise me.
The wings were that flapping topcoat, unbuttoned to make getting at his gun easier I suppose, and I was lucky he’d tucked the thing away because maybe then he’d have done more than just jump on me, taking me down hard on the wooden landing, my right hand popping open to send my .45 rattling down the stairs on its own way, God knew where.
The momentum took the two of us down, too, and we instinctively clutched each other as we rode down the stairs, him on top of me, like a kid on a sled navigating a particularly bumpy hill.
The steps played my spine like a xylophone but made no music at all, unless you counted the curses and grunts I was spitting out; the guy making a Radio Flyer out of me kept silent. In the blur of topcoat and fedora, snugged so low it stayed on his skull despite the leap and the fall, a black-and-red scarf tied over his lower face like the pulp magazine’s Shadow, I got no real look at him, had no idea if I knew this guy or not.
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