‘Yes, sir,’ the photographer said.
‘Is the doctor still here?’ he asked a young policeman who was gingerly sorting through the detritus of an overturned trash can. A big one from behind the bar, judging from the empties lined up on the counter.
‘He’s in the bathroom washing up,’ the policeman said.
‘Get him for me, will you?’ Royal asked Dickenson, who nodded and headed toward the back of the bar.
A police corporal almost as old as Royal but whose knees apparently still worked came over to him and tipped his cap.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘we’re pretty much done here. Are you ready for a report?’
‘Let me talk to the doctor first,’ Royal said. He cast his eyes around the room.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve dusted for fingerprints.’
‘Sir!’ the corporal said. ‘It’s a bar! And not a clean one at that! There must be dozens of fingerprints on these surfaces!’
‘So your answer is no,’ Royal said.
‘No,’ the corporal said. ‘I mean yes. I mean we didn’t dust.’
‘OK,’ Royal said. Royal did everything by the book, but he had to agree that in this case fingerprints wouldn’t narrow down suspects and would be useless to him.
The police doctor set his bag down on the table and eased into a chair next to Royal. His arthritis was almost as bad as Royal’s, but he wasn’t allowed to retire, either.
‘So,’ Royal said. ‘Tell me.’
‘You know nothing I say is engraved in stone until the autopsy,’ the doctor said.
‘Of course.’
‘The victim died of multiple stab wounds. About six, I estimate, but I might find more once he’s undressed and on the table. And I don’t know what organs were damaged yet either, but it hardly matters since he lost enough blood to kill him, and quickly.’
‘OK,’ Royal said. ‘Anything else? Time of death?’
‘Yesterday, late afternoon. I’d guess he was in his forties and worked with his hands. His arm muscles were well developed and his hands were calloused. I saw no indication of other injuries or disease. Can I ship him to the morgue now?’
‘Let me get a look at him first,’ Royal said.
The sergeant pushed himself to his feet and with the help of his cane made his way behind the bar. The dead man lay in the same position as last night, stretched out with his hands placed neatly over his chest, like a body laid out for viewing.
‘He didn’t die here,’ Royal said.
‘No, sir,’ the corporal said. ‘He died in the storage room in back of the store. I’ll show you.’
‘In a minute,’ Royal said.
The body was dressed in work boots, heavy canvas overalls and an antique flannel shirt. He wore suspenders but one had been sliced in two, probably by the murder weapon. A worn flat cap was pulled down over his forehead. A few strands of nondescript brown hair poked out around it.
‘Have you found his overcoat?’ Royal asked.
‘No, sir,’ the corporal said.
‘He must have had an overcoat. No one would come out in this weather without one.’
‘We’re missing something else too.’
‘What?’
‘The murderer, or murderers, must have carried the victim from the storage room to here, but there’s no blood on the barroom floor. He would have been bleeding like a stuck pig, so they would have had to wrap him in something. Whatever it was, we can’t find it.’
‘Maybe they wrapped him in his missing overcoat. Although I doubt that would be enough. You’ve looked out back in the garbage can?’
‘Of course, sir,’ the corporal said, miffed. ‘And in every garbage can in the alley on this block. No overcoat, and nothing else he could have been wrapped in.’
‘That would make a large bundle to dispose of,’ Dickenson said.
‘Yes, it would,’ Royal said. He gestured to the doctor. ‘You can take the body.
And you,’ he said to the corporal, ‘show me the murder scene.’
The small storage room at the back of the bar was obviously where Stinson had been killed. A dark pool of blood had soaked deep into its wood floors. Otherwise the room looked undisturbed. Shelves held tablecloths, neatly folded, glassware and cleaning supplies. A mop and bucket stood in the corner. Boxes of liquor and beer lined one wall.
‘There’s no sign of a struggle,’ Dickenson said to Royal. ‘Maybe the victim was unconscious.’
‘Or the murderer straightened up afterwards,’ the corporal said. He pointed to the stack of tablecloths. ‘The body could have been wrapped up in one of those as well as the man’s overcoat and then dragged behind the bar.’
‘But why?’ Dickenson said. ‘Why move it? I’d think it was better hidden in here than outside under the bar.’
‘Unless the barkeep was the murderer,’ the corporal said. ‘See, he didn’t have time to dispose of the body before he had to open the bar. And he figured no one but him would be back there. Then after the bar closed he could get rid of it.’
Royal shook his head. ‘I just don’t see that kid – what’s his name?’
‘Calvin Doyle,’ Dickenson answered.
‘I just don’t see him doing this. He’s too scrawny to overwhelm Stinson, and if he took him by surprise I don’t think he’s strong enough to stab him that deep, either. Speaking of which, I’m sure you would have told me if you’d found the murder weapon,’ Royal said to the corporal.
‘The kid said he kept a nine-inch hunting knife in the storeroom to slit open boxes and such. It’s not there now. We’ve torn the place apart, searched the alley and emptied out all the trash cans on the block. We didn’t find any knife, much less one that’s large enough to inflict those wounds. There are some smaller knives behind the bar, the kind you slice lemons and limes with, but that’s all.’
I resisted the impulse to help Milt. He was right, he needed to learn how to do things, and besides he looked like he had the coffee tray under control. Fortunately, if you could call it that, it was his left arm that he’d lost. Milt slid the tray on to the cocktail table. ‘If you need anything else, you’re going to have to get it yourself,’ he said, glancing at Henry. He spoke lightly, but I knew Milt meant it.
‘Is that teacake?’ Henry said, placing his newspaper on the floor and reaching for the coffee pot. ‘I thought we were running low on sugar.’
‘Yeah,’ Milt said, ‘Dellaphine bought it at a bakery. It’s a day old.’
Milt had brought a knife into the lounge to cut the cake with. It was Dellaphine’s biggest kitchen knife, practically a cleaver, and when I picked it up I had a sudden vision of the dead man behind the bar at the Baron Steuben Inn. Including all the blood congealed on his clothing and the floor. I could swear I even smelled the metallic odor of the blood, but that couldn’t be possible, could it? My hand tightened its grip on the knife handle. What would it be like to use a weapon like this against another person? I owned a Schrade switchblade, which had been issued to me during my training, and I’d used it once, but this knife was huge in comparison. It struck me that wielding it would require rage rather than skill. A rage I’d never experienced myself.
‘Louise, what on earth?’ Henry asked. His voice surprised me and I glanced up. He and Milt were staring at me.
‘What are you thinking?’ Milt asked. ‘You’ve got quite a grip on that knife. It’s just cake.’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry. I was distracted for a minute.’ I took the tip of the knife and cut the cake into neat slices, then laid the knife down on the tray. I felt a sense of relief much greater than finishing such a small task warranted. As if I’d peered into the mind of a crazed murderer and then looked away again.
I wished that Sergeant Royal would interview me and get it over with. Maybe then I could forget what I’d seen.
Despite the cold a small crowd had gathered outside the Baron Steuben Inn to watch Stinson’s body being loaded into the police mortuary van. When the van door sl
ammed the crowd murmured as if they were one person, and began to disperse. Except for the reporters and photographers waiting to get inside.
‘Vultures,’ Dickenson said.
‘They’re just people,’ Royal said. ‘No better, no worse than most. They’ve got jobs to do.’ He dropped his spent Camel on to the frozen sidewalk and crushed it with his shoe. ‘Let’s go talk to Cal Doyle now.’ He glanced at the exterior staircase next to the bar that led upward to the second story. It was damned steep.
‘Don’t you want me to get him and bring him down to the bar?’ Dickenson asked.
‘No,’ Royal said. ‘I want to see him in his own place. I’ll understand him better then. But I’ll need a strong arm to help me get up there.’
‘Done,’ Dickenson said. With one arm over his assistant’s shoulder and the other leaning on his cane, Royal made his way up the stairs. When he reached the landing he paused to lean on the banister and catch his breath.
They knocked on the only door at the head of the stairs and heard Calvin Doyle’s voice say, ‘Come in.’
The kid’s room was small and sparse. A narrow bed piled with covers, a table with two mismatched chairs and a dresser with an electric ring and a pot encrusted with dried food about summed it up. The walls, though, were another story. They were plastered with pictures of pin-up girls torn from barbershop magazines. Cal appeared to prefer viewing the scenery from the rear. And airplanes, lots of airplane pictures, even a few fixed to the ceiling to look as if they were flying overhead.
Cal himself was tucked up in his bed wrapped in blankets holding a mug of cocoa.
In his pajamas he looked very young.
‘How old are you?’ Royal asked him.
‘Twenty-three,’ Cal answered.
‘Sure,’ Dickenson said.
‘It’s right there on my bartender’s license, framed in the bar. I had to show them my birth certificate when I got it. I can’t help that I look young.’
‘You feeling any better today?’ Royal asked him.
Cal shrugged, pulling his blanket around him. ‘Yeah. The flu hit me hard. I got scarring in my lungs from pneumonia. That’s why I ain’t in the army. I tried to get into a training program to be an airplane mechanic but I flunked the entrance test.’
Dickenson grabbed the two chairs and plunked them down at Cal’s bedside. He and Royal sat down and Royal pulled out his notebook.
‘You won’t need that,’ Cal said to him. ‘I ain’t got nothing new to say.’
‘Shut up and listen to the sergeant,’ Dickenson said to him. ‘Show some respect.’ Royal laid his hand on his corporal’s arm to silence him.
‘It’s for the record this time,’ Royal said. ‘Once it gets typed up you’ll have to sign it, so it better be the truth.’
‘I got nothing to hide,’ the kid said.
‘So tell it again, from the beginning,’ Royal said.
‘Like I said, I’d been sick, and I called my boss and told him I didn’t want to work last night. He said he’d already lost too much money because the bar had been closed for two days and I had to open. I told him about my bad lung, and how most places was going to be closed because of the cold, and he told me if I didn’t work he’d fire me. He’s just looking for a reason to fire me, I think, because I get sick a lot. When I can’t come in he has to tend the bar himself. I need this job, so I pulled myself together and called a taxi so I wouldn’t have to walk over here and—’
‘Wait a minute,’ Royal said, looking up from his notebook. ‘Where were you coming from? Weren’t you here?’
‘No,’ Cal said. ‘I was at my aunt’s. Didn’t I tell you that? She took care of me when I was sick on account of my bad lung.’
‘So you weren’t here in your room?’
‘No,’ Cal said. ‘I told you. I was at my aunt’s.’
‘We need her address,’ Dickenson said. Cal gave it to him.
‘OK, go on,’ Royal said.
‘So I got here about six thirty so I could open on time at seven. When I went behind the bar I saw the dead guy. I recognized him, too, as the man who played chess with Mr Becker. I about had a heart attack, I’m telling you.’
‘Did you touch him?’ Dickenson asked.
‘No, are you kidding? He was covered in blood.’ Cal shuddered.
‘So the way we saw him was the way you found him?’ Royal asked.
‘Yes, sir! I swear!’
‘Then what happened?’
‘I was scared. I didn’t know what to do.’
‘How about calling the police?’ Dickenson asked.
‘I wanted to talk to my boss first,’ Cal said. ‘I was already in trouble with him for being sick and missing work. You don’t know him; he’d blame me for any bad publicity for the bar. But I couldn’t. Right then some guys started knocking at the door. I’d turned on the neon martini glass already, you see. So I let them in. It was Walt and Chippy. They show up every Saturday as soon as we open. They drink beer until they run out of money.’
‘So they’re regulars,’ Royal said.
‘Yeah, so I couldn’t call my boss then because the only telephone is the pay phone behind the bar. So I decided to wait until after we closed. Except then Walt came looking for whiskey and saw the corpse and you know what happened next. I ain’t going through it again. It makes my breathing get all funny.’
‘OK,’ Royal said. ‘Now tell me who came in next.’
‘Huh?’ Cal said.
‘Who came into the bar after Walt and Chippy? Make sure you give me the names in the correct order.’
‘OK. Well, Mr Becker with his chessboard. He took the seat by the fire. Then Miss Forrester, the woman with the book. She wanted coffee spiked with whiskey, but like I said we didn’t have any, so she took brandy instead. Then those rich people. And then your friends.’
Royal listed their names in his notebook. Walt and Chippy, Al Becker, Mavis Forrester, Leo Maxwell and Gloria Scott, and Louise Pearlie and her friend, the foreign guy – Joe Prager, his name was. Royal disliked foreigners. He didn’t like his country fighting their battles while these refugees, some of them rich royalty and the like, holed up here safe and sound. But if Prager was Louise’s friend he was probably OK.
‘What did your boss say when you told him what happened?’ Dickenson asked.
‘He said I done all right. And he seemed to think that having the bar in the news would bring customers, not scare them away.’
Royal and Dickenson smoked cigarettes in the car while they waited for the engine to warm up.
‘Do you believe that kid’s story?’ Dickenson asked.
‘You know, I do,’ Royal said. ‘Of course we need to confirm with his aunt. Besides, why would Cal kill the man? He was just a customer. What would he have to gain from it?’
‘That kid’s not running on all six,’ Dickenson said. ‘Imagine not having enough brains to call the police right away. It makes him look guilty as hell.’
‘Just because he’s stupid doesn’t mean he’s not telling the truth,’ Royal said. Royal rarely felt sorry for anyone, including himself. Most people were the products of their own mistakes, he believed. But Royal pitied Cal. The kid probably never had more than a few bucks in his pocket and never would. He lived in one room, papered with pictures of women he’d never date and airplanes he’d never fix, from day to day hoping his lungs would keep working so he could hold down some kind of job. When the able-bodied men came back from the war he’d probably lose it. At least Royal had his pension coming.
The afternoon was interminable. I found my nerves stretched thin. I wondered why I had to get to work so quickly tomorrow and why I needed to bring a suitcase. Were we just short-staffed because of the flu, or had something happened in the war the public didn’t know about yet? I worked in the European section of MO, so a crisis probably hadn’t happened in the Pacific. In Europe anything could have happened – hell, Churchill might have died! There was a persistent rumor that he’d contracted pneumon
ia after getting back to England after the Tehran conference. I forced that thought from my mind. His death was unthinkable, I was being silly.
The whole country had a bad case of ‘war nerves’. Tempers were short. It wasn’t just whiskey that was scarce. So were Christmas gifts, especially children’s toys, cosmetics, books and even gift-wrapping. I’d bought a fountain pen for Joe weeks ago, but everyone else on my list would have to be happy with gift certificates or war bonds.
There were shortages of everything from safety pins to flashlight batteries. Gas rationing had become a joke, for anyone who could afford to buy coupons or gas on the black market had all the gas they could want. Homes were freezing cold because Americans had followed the government’s instructions and had converted from fuel oil to coal for heating, only to be confronted with coal shortages brought on by union strikes.
Adding to the general insecurity, President Roosevelt had been out of the country for over a month. We were a country without a leader; at least it felt like it. No president had ever been gone so long, much less in wartime, and in such exotic places.
Roosevelt had sailed to Dakar, then flown in a Douglas C-54 to Cairo and Tehran, then back to Cairo, then on to Carthage, Malta, Sicily, then back to Dakar. He’d first met up with Churchill and his entourage in Cairo to talk to the Turkish Prime Minister, whom Stalin refused to invite to Tehran. Along with most other Americans I had to look up Iran in the encyclopedia, where I learned that it was once Persia and was ruled by a shah.
In Cairo Roosevelt had Thanksgiving dinner at the Mena Hotel. According to Time magazine, while the Americans, British and Turks discussed invasion strategy they’d consumed 22,000 pounds of meat, 1,000 pounds of coffee, 17,000 pounds of bread, 78,000 eggs, 740 pounds of tea, 5,000 cans of milk, 800 pounds of turkey, 4,600 pounds of sugar, 19,000 pounds of potatoes, 5,000 cans of fruit, 3,000 cigars and a million cigarettes. Thus fortified, they’d flown on to Tehran, the capital of Iran, to discuss the Second Front with Joseph Stalin at the Russian embassy there.
Louise's Lies Page 4