Night Watch

by David C. Taylor

  The advertising firm of Batten Barton Durstein & Osborn took up much of 383 Madison Avenue. A receptionist directed Cassidy to an office on the eighth floor. The walls in the corridor outside the elevator were decorated with ad posters for agency clients. Bright-eyed, leggy women smoked Lucky Strikes. An auburn-haired beauty with glossy, parted lips offered Revlon’s Fabulous Futurama permanent lipstick, while near her a dark-haired beauty suggested that you could Look lovely all day long with Revlon’s Love-pat. There were colored photographs of Chrysler’s line of new cars for the year, and a small TV embedded in the wall next to them showed a big finned, two-tone sedan running down a country road while a cheerful voice sang a riff on a Cole Porter classic: ‘It’s delightful, it’s delovely, it’s De Soto.’

  A secretary in a severe charcoal gray skirt waited to escort him down the hall. ‘This way, please, Mr Cassidy.’

  The tightness of her girdle and calf-length skirt hobbled her, and she took short steps on high heels that clicked on the hardwood floor. Halfway down the hall she knocked on an office door and then opened it without waiting for a reply. ‘Mr Allen,’ she said into the office, ‘Mr Cassidy.’ She opened the door wider and smiled at Cassidy again as he passed, and then closed the door behind him.

  It was a big office with windows overlooking Madison Avenue. Framed ad posters decorated the walls. Leather chairs and a leather sofa were grouped around a glass-topped coffee table at one side of the room, and there were two comfortable visitors’ chairs pulled up in front of the desk. A tall, thin, young man with the eager manner of a salesman came out from behind the desk with his hand extended and a smile of welcome. ‘Detective Cassidy, I’m Jerry Allen. Pleased to meet you.’ They shook hands.

  ‘We don’t usually get members of the Police Department up here.’ He put a hip up on his desk. ‘Can I get you a drink?’ He waved at a wet bar in a corner of the office.

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘A little early, huh? Well, I might have a nibble.’ He went to the bar and poured a couple of fingers of scotch into a glass and added ice.

  ‘I want to talk to you about Chris Collins.’

  ‘Right. That’s what my secretary said. Chris didn’t come in all last week, and not a word. No answer at his apartment. We were starting to get worried about him. Is anything wrong?’

  Nobody expects a bad answer to that question, and Cassidy had never figured out how to deliver the news softly. It always arrived like a thrown rock. ‘He’s dead.’ Crap, can’t you do better than that?

  ‘Dead? What happened?’ Allen’s face paled. The glass was forgotten in his hand halfway to his mouth.

  ‘We don’t know yet, but we’re treating it as a homicide.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ He remembered the drink and took a sip.

  ‘Did Collins use drugs?’

  ‘Drugs? Like what, like penicillin or something?’

  ‘No, like heroin or marijuana.’

  ‘No. Are you kidding? Booze, sure, but that stuff, never, as far as I know.’

  ‘Never talked about experimenting with something?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There was evidence that he was with a woman that evening.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? No surprise there. Chris was a real hound.’

  ‘Do you have any idea who it might have been?’

  Allen laughed. ‘Oh, God, Chris? No. Hit and run. Hit and run. If he went out with a broad three times in a row, he got nervous.’

  ‘Would he keep a calendar?’

  ‘He might. I’ll call his secretary, but half the time he liked to go out and see what he could find. He called it the urban hunt. Head out to the watering holes and see what tender little beasts came for a drink.’ He laughed and shook his head in admiration. He picked up the phone and dialed. ‘Marie, this is Jerry Allen. Will you take a look at Mr Collins’s calendar and see if he had a date Friday evening? I’ll hold.’ He muffled the phone against his shoulder. ‘I never knew a guy who got as much as he did.’ He lifted the receiver to his ear. ‘Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thanks.’ He hung up and explained, ‘I’ve got to find a way to tell people on the team what happened. I don’t want any rumors to start before I get to it. Anyway, nothing on his calendar.’

  ‘What watering holes?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s a long list. I’ll write down what I can remember.’

  Chris Collins seemed to favor hotel bars. Maybe he found that traveling women were easier prospects. Here today. Gone tomorrow. No expectations. No muss, no fuss. The bartender at the Rough Rider Room in the Roosevelt recognized him from the photograph but had not seen him for a couple of weeks. He had not been in the Biltmore since two weeks before and had left alone. The bartender at Peacock Alley in the Waldorf Astoria knew him but said Collins had not been in lately. Cassidy stopped at a couple of the Irish bars from the list on Lexington and Third Avenue, but he had no luck until he went into P.J. Clarke’s. It was early in the evening, and the after-work crowd had not yet arrived. The bartender gave him a nod of recognition. ‘You’re Cassidy, right? Sometimes a Jack Daniels, sometimes a martini up. I used to work at Chumley’s.’

  ‘Rocco, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He reached across the bar and they shook hands.

  ‘Good to see you.’

  ‘What can I get you, Jack or mart?’

  ‘Martini. Thanks.’

  ‘Up, with a twist.’ He went off to mix the drink, and Cassidy lit a cigarette and looked out the window past the end of the bar at the traffic on the avenue. Evening was coming, and the cabs and buses had their lights on. Some of the people who passed the window hurried on their way home from work, while others moved with less haste, not yet ready to face domestic obligations or empty apartments.

  Rocco slid a martini onto the bar in front of Cassidy and watched while Cassidy tasted the drink and nodded his approval. Cassidy showed him the Polaroid of Chris Collins. Rocco held it up to the light near the back bar mirror.

  ‘Yeah. Okay. Chris Something. Scotch on the rocks. Dewar’s. A good guy. He looks pretty weird here. What is he, dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  ‘When was he in here last?’

  ‘Ten days, two weeks ago, something like that. Right where you are.’

  ‘Did he have a girl with him?’

  Rocco thought for a moment. ‘No. I mean not with him, but … Anyway there was this broad next to him. A hooker, but uptown, you know? Stylish. I’ve seen her around. Anyway, she wasn’t hustling anyone as far as I could see. I thought maybe she just came in for a drink, so I was giving her the benefit of the doubt. If she made a move I was going to run her. The bosses don’t want that in here. I went down to mix a whiskey sour, when I came back they were going out the door.’

  ‘Do you know her name?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Hold on a second.’

  He walked down the bar to where another bartender was talking to a man in a black coat and plaid hat and pulled him away. They talked for a little while, and then Rocco came back. ‘Willie says her name is Roxie, or something like that. Not quite that, but something like it. Trixie, maybe.’

  ‘What did she look like?’

  ‘Mid-twenties, long dark brown hair, one of those little noses that kind of turns up at the end. What do you call it when their teeth kind of stick out a little bit at the top, not buck teeth, something else?’

  ‘Overbite.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it. I like that. There’s something real sexy about that. What happened? Did she do the guy?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. Thanks, Rocco.’ He left a couple of bucks on the bar and went out onto Third Avenue to look for a phone.

  Madison Square Garden’s Eighth Avenue marquee announced in its usual abbreviated manner: Rgrs – Brns tnight – 7:30. The first period was already underway when Cassidy arrived. The roar of the crowd was muffled here, but it rose and fell as the play shifted up and down the ice. A whistle blew, and the noise of
the crowd fell to a murmur. Cassidy went through a portal and stopped at the top of the stairs. He looked down at the rink through the haze of cigarette smoke that permanently clouded the upper reaches of the Garden. The ice gleamed bright white under the lights. As he watched, a Bruin won the face off and flicked the puck back to Vic Stasiuk. The Bruins were in penalty, one man down, but this was a chance for a short-handed goal. Stasiuk snapped a pass to Dave Conte as he broke over the blue line. Gump Worsley skated out of the goal to cut the angle, and Conte faked a shot. Worsley went low, and Conte flipped the puck over his stick-side shoulder into the net. The Ranger crowd went quiet.

  Cassidy found May Stiles in her usual seat in the front row of the center loge. Her blond hair was perfectly set. She wore a light gray tweed suit with dark red accents, a pearl necklace with matching earrings, and high heels. A mink coat was draped on the back of her seat. She looked like Madison Avenue matron, or the prosperous owner of a specialty store, which, in some ways, she was. She was a madam who ran a string of high-end hookers catering to the Upper East Side trade. She saw him when he reached the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘Hey, Cassidy. How are you? Sit down. Sit down.’ Cassidy took the empty seat next to her.

  ‘How are you, May?’

  ‘I’m fine. I didn’t know you were a hockey fan.’

  ‘Not really. Wanda said you’d be here.’

  ‘It’s a home game. Where else would I be? This is our year. The Stanley Cup, I swear to God.’ She raised silver opera glasses to her eyes to follow the action. Andy Bathgate intercepted a Bruin pass, broke in over the blue line and fired a slap shot that hit Terry Sawchuk’s glove, bounced off, and trickled into the goal. The Ranger fans erupted.

  ‘May, I need to ask you about someone.’

  ‘Uh-uh. I’m here for the game, Cassidy. You want to talk business, you’ll have to wait for the end of the period.’

  The skaters flew around the ice. The puck banged off the glass. Hip checks thudded men into the boards. The crowd noise rose and fell with the action. The horn blew, the period was over, and the skaters left the ice.

  ‘I’ll buy you a drink at the Garden Club,’ Cassidy said.

  ‘Let’s go.’ She slung her mink over her shoulders, and Cassidy followed her up the stairs.

  The heavyweight on the door at the Garden Club said, ‘Good evening, Mr Cassidy,’ and waved them in. The bar was full of people having a drink before the next period. Most of them were men crowded at the bar, but there were a few women at tables with their husbands or dates.

  ‘A martini?’

  ‘Sure. Fine. Thanks.’ Cassidy caught the bartender’s eye and held up two fingers and then pointed to a table in the corner. The man nodded and waved.

  May settled into a chair against the wall and took a gold cigarette case from her purse. She selected a cigarette and waited for Cassidy to light it. A waiter brought their drinks, and they clinked glasses and took the first sip. ‘Chin, chin. What’s up?’

  ‘Do you know an uptown girl with a name like Roxie, Trixie, something close to that?’

  ‘Hmmm. Why? You’re out of Vice.’ She took another sip of her drink.

  ‘I need to ask her about a guy she was seen with. It’s not about her. It’s about the guy.’ Not the whole truth, but May had been around long enough to know that.

  ‘Roxie or Trixie. Have you got any more than that? What does she look like?’

  He described her the way the bartender at Clarke’s had described her.

  May thought about it and shook her head. ‘It doesn’t ring a bell. Let me ask around. Anything else you can tell me about her?’

  ‘She’s missing the tip of one of her fingers.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘The guy bit it off.’

  May winced. ‘Christ.’ She took a slug of her drink. ‘I’m getting out of the business. Did I tell you that?’

  ‘Not lately.’ May was always getting out of the business.

  ‘I’ve had it. I don’t know which is worse, the men or the girls, but I’m done. I’ve made money, and I’ve got an investment guy who’s been smart with it. I’m through.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. But it’s a great big world full of interesting things, and running high-class hookers is way down the list.’

  The buzzer sounded to announce the next period. May finished her drink and stood up, eager to see the face off.

  Cassidy left money on the table and walked her back to the top of the loge stairs. ‘Call me if you hear of anything.’ People pushed past them and hurried down to their seats.

  ‘I will. Thanks for the drink.’ She went down the stairs in the rush of people as the teams came out onto the ice to warm up to loud organ music.

  TWENTY-ONE

  ‘Someone’s going to be unhappy if we open this up again.’ Lieutenant Tanner lit a cigarette off the butt of the one he had been smoking when Cassidy and Orso had come into his office.

  ‘Williger and Collins both had the same chemical in their systems. The cases are connected,’ Cassidy said.

  ‘I get it,’ Tanner said, ‘I’m just telling you people aren’t going to like it. They liked Williger as a suicide. There’s something political going on. Someone cashed some chips. I don’t know what it’s about, but it’s about something.’

  ‘So?’ Cassidy asked.

  Tanner scrubbed a hand over his bald head. ‘I don’t know. What the fuck? Do what you do. I’ll back you as far as I can.’ They started toward the door. ‘Hey, and when you come back, let’s keep it in mind that Connor Finn is still out there. Councilman Franzi calls me every couple of days to find out why we can’t find the only heroin dealer in the city bigger than King Kong. And where are you on the Dudek killing?’

  ‘Nowhere. We need a break. I don’t know where the hell it’s going to come from.’

  Cassidy and Orso picked up an unmarked car at the police garage and left the city on the West Side Highway. It was a cold day, under a clear blue sky. A red-and-black Moran Company tug shoved a barge upriver toward the George Washington Bridge past a gray Navy destroyer like a knife in the water headed fast downstream toward the open ocean. Cassidy drove, and Orso slouched in the passenger seat smoking cigarettes and watching the passing scene out the window.

  The late Paul Williger had lived in a modest half-timbered brick house on a tree-lined street a mile from the town center of Scarsdale. The shading elms and maples were a riot of autumn colors, and the front lawns were mottled with fallen leaves. Cassidy parked at the curb behind a Buick sedan with New York plates whose metal still pinged as its engine cooled. He and Orso walked up the brick path to the front door. Cassidy flicked away his cigarette and rang the doorbell. Somewhere deep inside the house the bell rang. Heels clicked on a wood floor, and moments later a handsome woman in her fifties opened the door. Her dark hair was streaked with gray. She looked at them with calm dark eyes. She wore a calf-length brown tweed skirt and a yellow cardigan over a round-collared pale blue blouse.

  ‘Mrs Williger?’ Cassidy asked.

  ‘No. I’m Janet French. You want my daughter, Penny. They’re in the living room.’

  They? Who were they?

  Janet French stepped back and opened the door wide and examined Cassidy and Orso as they entered. She led them down the hall, stopped at the arched doorway to the living room, and waved them in.

  Penny Williger looked like a younger, more timid version of her mother. Her dark hair was pulled back and tied with a black ribbon, and she wore a black skirt and a black sweater over a white blouse. Mourning for her late husband.

  Dr Sebastian Ambrose, unkempt in stained khakis and a flannel shirt, hair afly, sat next to her on the sofa. Spencer Shaw lounged in a chair with one leg hooked over the arm. He greeted their entrance with a sardonic grin and a two-finger salute. Seeing him again, there was something familiar about him, but Cassidy could not pin it down. Had he met him in the past before the night in Williger�
��s room at the Astor, or did he just look like someone he knew?

  ‘Mrs Williger, I’m Detective Michael Cassidy. I spoke to you on the phone yesterday. This is my partner, Tony Orso.’ Penny Williger nodded and extended a hand, and Cassidy leaned forward to shake it.

  ‘Mrs Williger called me,’ Ambrose said. ‘She thought it might be a good idea if I was here for this discussion because of my relationship with Paul. Mr Shaw, offered to drive me out.’

  ‘I want to speak to Mrs Williger alone.’

  Ambrose shook his head. ‘That’s not going to happen. Mrs Williger asked us to be here. I’m going to honor her wishes. Penny?’

  ‘I want Dr Ambrose to stay,’ she said without conviction.

  Cassidy sensed that pressing the issue would get him nowhere. He pulled a chair around to face her across the narrow coffee table. Orso took a seat where he could watch everyone.

  ‘Mrs Williger,’ Cassidy said, ‘I’m sorry about your husband. It must be a terrible blow.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and twisted her hands in her lap.

  ‘When was the last time you spoke to your husband?’

  ‘That evening. You know, the night he …’ It was too hard to finish.

  ‘Do you remember what time? Was it after dinner, or before?’

  ‘Before. I don’t know exactly what time. I was cooking dinner for the children, and they usually eat around six.’ She took in a deep breath and sighed.

  ‘How did he sound?’

  ‘I don’t know. He sounded like Paul. He sounded tired.’ She glanced at Ambrose, and he nodded encouragement.

  ‘Did anything sound wrong? Did he sound anxious, nervous, angry?’

  ‘No. Not really. I asked him if everything was all right, and he said yes, he was just tired.’

  ‘Why did you ask him if everything was all right? Did he not sound all right?’

  She glanced at Ambrose again. ‘No, I just asked if everything was all right the way you do. You know, how are you? Is everything all right?’

  ‘And he said everything was all right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then a few hours later he jumped out the window.’