The Longest Second

by Bill S. Ballinger

  I was trapped badly. I thought it over, considering every angle. Rosemary obviously knew where the box was located and to whom it belonged. But where was Rosemary? Several days had passed and Bianca had not heard from her. Even if I should locate Rosemary again, there was no way I could make her tell me unless she wanted to do so. Quite calmly the scene flashed into my mind that I was beating it out of her with my fists. It didn’t surprise me; I suppose everyone envisions such signs of violence occasionally. In reality, if I killed her, I would still not know the secret of the box. I decided that I must continue to attempt to locate the owner of the box through my own efforts. Later, if Rosemary should give me any information, that would be all right too. Pulling away the muffler, which I wore as an ascot from around my throat, I pointed to the scar. It was still very red and ugly. After he had taken a good look, the banker looked down at his desk. I put the pad to work again.

  Giving him my name, I told him that I had no family and had been in a bad automobile accident; witness the scar, and that I could not speak. As a result of the accident, I had lost my memory. This deposit key was my own, but I did not remember where it was located. “It was probably in the same bank where you did your personal or business banking,” he told me. “Do you remember that at all?”

  I shook my head. On his desk was a small sign which read C. K. Swan. I wrote, “Mr. Swan, do you have any suggestions?”

  Swan thought about it for a few moments. “Well,” he said, first you might try to find out through the banks if one of them has you for a depositor. If you locate an account of your own, you’ll probably find you have a safe deposit box in the same bank. If that doesn’t work, there’s a small publication in New York called the New Amsterdam Safe Box News which circulates through most of the deposit departments of the various banks and box companies. I'll give you the paper’s address, and you might get them to run an ad for you requesting information.”

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  Picking up his phone, Swan called the bank’s vault department. “Mr. Kraft,” he said, “this is Swan. Can you give me the address of the New Amsterdam Safe Box News? Yes, if you please. I’ll hold the phone.” Cradling the receiver to his ear, Swan reached for his personalized memo pad. The pad was printed with:

  … from the desk of

  C. K. SWAN, vice-president

  Merchants & Chemists Exchange Bank

  As the voice of Kraft spoke in his ear, Swan began to scribble on the pad, but his pen was dry. Hastily, he tore off the sheet and reaching for another, wrote the address of the paper with a pencil. Handing the slip tome, he said, “Why is it, whenever you want to use a pen it’s dry?”

  I didn’t know. However, I nodded politely and wrote on my own pad, “Thanks very much.” Swan arose from his desk. “Good luck,” he said. “If I can help you, let me know.” We shook hands, and I walked out of the bank.

  That evening, very laboriously, I described to Bianca the fact that I had a thousand dollars in my shoe when I had reached the hospital. I went on to explain that evidently I had possessed some money before I had been attacked, and that it was possible I had maintained either a savings account or a checking account at a bank. Unfortunately, of course, if this was true, I couldn’t remember it.

  “Don’t you think that Santini has checked this?” Bianca asked.

  I explained that I thought he had undoubtedly gone through the motions of it, but that it was dubious if all the banks had been covered and, as the situation was not a very important one to the police, no particular pressure existed for them to explore it further. Bianca agreed with this reasoning. She suggested that she call the banks, herself, to discover if I had an account any place, as it was obvious that I could not call them myself.

  In Manhattan there are between four and five hundred banks, including their branches, listed in the classified telephone directory. Bianca began at the top of the list, but very quickly it became obvious that she would have little success. All of the banks refused to give her any information over the phone. After a number of failures, one bank indicated that such information was given to established businesses for credit references.

  I had been sitting at the table while she called. Placing the phone back on its cradle, she approached me and her hands on my shoulders. “Vic,” her voice was sympathetic, “you mustn’t get discouraged. Perhaps we’ll think of something else.” Her fingers picked at my shirt. I looked into her face; quickly she turned her face away.

  It was at that time I remembered Merkle. When he left the hospital, Merkle had given me his address, so I decided that I’d call on him. That night I took the slip of paper with his address and set off. Merkle lived in a small, reconverted two-room apartment located in a basement of an old brownstone house.

  "The door to his apartment was beneath a stoop of stone stairs to the first floor, and was protected by a heavy wrought iron grille. Rust had gnawed the edges of the iron, and it was pocked with leprous orange spots. After I had rung the belt Merkle opened the door and peered out into the night. Recognizing me, he asked me in. The living room was furnished with cast-off furniture including an overstuffed couch, cane chairs, and a rough mat rug, although it contained an obviously new television set with a very large screen. Plates with remains of crusts, toast, daubs of jelly, half-eaten sandwiches, and drying desserts littered the end tables, seats of the chairs, and tops of the furniture.

  “Well, well, well,” exclaimed Merkle, his face contorted into a too friendly smile, “my old roommate! How’re you All right?”

  “’Ess,” I told him,

  “Huh?”

  “Ess,” I repeated, nodding my head.

  “Oh, you mean yes! So you’ve gotten your voice back.”

  It seemed too much trouble to go through the effort of putting up with such a clown. But, on the other hand, I might be able to use him. Sitting down, I began writing. My original paper pad and pencil had been exchanged for a small permanent pad which was covered with a heavy sheet of transparent plastic. I wrote on the plastic with a wooden stylus, and when I was finished, by lifting the plastic sheet away from its dark background, the writing disappeared, am the pad was ready for use again. It eliminated all the discarded scraps of paper, and the problem of carrying pencil and pens. I attempted to explain to Merkle that I wanted to, trace a possible account through the banks. At once, Merkle brought up the subject of the police. “Won’t they do it for you?" he asked.

  I gave him the explanation I had given Bianca, although there was another reason which I had not explained to either. If I had an account, I didn’t know where the money had come from, and I was not sure that I would care to have the police probing it. Certainly not until I knew more about it myself. However, I said nothing of this to Merkle. He accepted my explanation, as had Bianca, and he sat for a while deep in thought.

  Like so many lonely persons, Merkle was anxious to be friendly and to be of help. I was ready to accept his help, but I did not care to have his friendship. Finally he said, “I think I told you that I work for Sampson, Smith and Tobler. It’s a big wholesale hardware supply house. They get a lot of orders from a bunch of little stores all over the state and they’ve got a sort of system worked out. They have these double cards ... post cards ... printed up, stamped, and everything. All you have to do is address them. There’s a place to check on the second card which is torn off and returned in the mail. So why don’t I swipe a supply of them from the mail room? You can address them to the banks, fill in your name as the guy to be reported on, and then see what happens.”

  It sounded all right except that the cards would be returned to Sampson, Smith and Tobler. I pointed this out to Merkle. He waved away my objection. “So what?” he asked, and grinned. “I’m head clerk in the mail room and I get the mail first. Any cards coming with your name on ’em, I’ll just tear up and throw away—unless it says ‘Yes’ or has something about you. What could be neater?”

  I agreed that nothing could be neater and told Merkle
that I’d return the following evening to pick up the cards.

  It was not late when I reached Bianca’s house. She was waiting for me, and when I entered the kitchen I found her seated at the round table, deep in thought, a glass of brandy in her band She arose, somewhat unsteadily, and I realized that she had drunk too much. This surprised me as she usually drank very little. Hesitating for a moment, she approached and then threw her arms around me. Immediately she buried her face in my shoulder, and I could feel the shaking of her body. I stood there motionless, wondering about the cause of her distress.

  She released her arms and stepped back. “There was a phone call for you while you were out,” she told me.

  “Yes-s?”

  “But no one except Rosemary or Santini knows you're here.”

  That was true so far as I knew.

  “It was a man’s voice. He spoke with a foreign accent When I said you were out, he wanted me to give you a message.”

  “What?”

  “He said just to tell you one word—that you’d understand. I can’t pronounce it the way he did, so I wrote it down." She walked to the table and removed a sheet of paper. On it was written in English the single word “Attl.” I stared at it Abruptly Bianca turned away, wrapping her arms around her breasts as if to keep warm. “Vic,” she said softly, “Vic, I’m frightened.”

  Attl, in Arabic, means “kill.”

  I was frightened too.

  14

  BURROWS was on the lobster shift, twelve midnight to eight a.m. in the morning. Because of his new assignment, he decided to wait until later in the morning ... all day if necessary ... until information began to come in. He had heard nothing more from Jensen and deduced from his silence that the bureau of identification had failed to come up with anything. It was still too early, at eight o’clock, for information to arrive from Washington.

  But it was not too early for Burrows to report to Lieutenant Scott, in charge of the detectives at the Eighth precinct. Scott arrived promptly at eight o’clock. He had been at the Eighth only a little over a month, and had been transferred there from the Seventeenth where he had served five years. Under the revitalized departmental rotation system, Scott had been moved to a new precinct.

  Burrows handed Scott a copy of his report, and quickly filled in, verbally, the developments between two and eight a.m. Scott, who shouldered many responsibilities, thought to himself, “What the hell. This case, at least, isn’t going to be a hot one, and it’s still brand new.” However, he said to Burrows, “Has everyone here had a chance to look at the stiff?”

  “No,” Burrows replied, “just Jensen and me and a couple

  of the uniformed men. Gorman has the body down at the lab.”

  “When Gorman’s through, well try to get them moving on it Better get some pictures and put ’em up on the board.”

  Burrows agreed. It was difficult to get the detectives in the precinct to go to the morgue to view the body. Reporting in three shifts, at different hours of the day, and having their own assignments to cover, few of them found time to make such an effort, unless it was a spectacular case. They far preferred to make their examination and identification from photographs whenever possible. “The prints from the photographic department should be here anytime,” Burrows said.

  Scott nodded his approval. “You know,” he continued to Burrows, “that bit about the shoes and the grand bill might mean a lot of things. Back in the thirties, it used to be the custom to find a squealer in the street with a penny in his mouth. For a while, a crooked gambler would have an ace of spades in his pocket. Sometimes hoods like to get fancy ... dramatic.”

  “This doesn’t look exactly like a mob killing,” Burrows said. “It might be, of course, but usually they prefer to use a gun.”

  Scott was inclined to agree with this reasoning, at least to a degree. “Not a mob, not a syndicate exactly,” he said slowly. “But the job looks pretty well organized. It doesn’t look like some guy did it all by himself. The knock-off and the details were handled pretty well.”

  15

  “VIC,” Bianca repeated, “I’m frightened. Who was that man who called you?”

  I shrugged. I didn’t know. However, my calmness was returning.

  “Why don’t you sleep upstairs tonight in Rosemary’s room?” she asked. “She’s gone and I’d feel more safe.” With my pad I attempted to allay her fears although I agreed to change my quarters from the basement to the top floor. I had been waiting for an opportunity to inspect Rosemary’s room since the night she had left; however, I had not wanted to be surprised by Bianca, so I had done nothing.

  “I think I’ll go upstairs now and go to bed,” Bianca said. “When everything’s clear, I’ll call you.”

  I nodded, and sitting down at the table began to read the paper. Some fifteen minutes later Bianca called down to me. This was the first time I had been above the street level of the house. A narrow stair ran to the second floor and opened on one side into a very small hall. A second side had a bath; the two remaining walls of the hall, opposite each other, contained doors leading to bedrooms. Bianca’s door was closed.

  Switching on the light in Rosemary’s room, I looked around me. The room was small with two narrow windows overlooking the back of the house. It was attractively furnished with a four-poster bed, a marble-topped antique chiffonier, and several Victorian chairs. A long strip of mirror, with an elaborate gilded frame, stretched from the floor to the ceiling on one side of the room. Everywhere there was evidence of a woman’s former occupancy .. . cosmetic bottles and boxes on the chiffonier, a delicate odor of scent permeating the room, an ivory and silver hairbrush, comb, and hand mirror, a pair of slippers peeping neatly from behind the corner of a chair.

  Undressing quickly, I turned out the light and stretched out on the bed. At the sound of the giving of the springs, Bianca called, “Are you in bed, Vic?” I knocked loudly against the side of the bed with my fist. “Good night,” she said. Deliberately I made myself go to sleep for a while.

  I awakened from my regular nightmare with the dark room and the spot of light. The fine perspiration of fear bathed my body, but this was no different than usual. According to the small bedside clock, it was three in the morning. Cautiously I raised myself from the bed, moving my body very slowly, so the sound of my arising might not be announced by the springs. In my bare feet I crossed the hall, and through the door I could hear Bianca’s deep and regular breathing.

  Returning to Rosemary’s room, I closed the door completely, and turned on the light. Systematically I began to search her room. When I opened the top drawer of her chiffonier, a scent of sandalwood filled my nostrils. For a moment I had a feeling of nostalgia ... a lonesome memory of having smelled it before in some forgotten moment of delight. The fleeting impression disappeared as suddenly as it had come, and I was left alone. According to Nietzsche, blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.

  One after another, I searched the drawers, finding nothing but stacks of scented lingerie, stockings, and clothing. In the first closet I searched the pockets of her dresses and suits, her coats and jackets; the toes of her shoes ... all standing in a neat, feminine line.

  This took some time as it was necessary to move quietly and carefully to avoid awakening Bianca across the hall. Unsuccessful, sitting on the side of the bed, I permitted my eyes to explore the room. Directly above the bed was an oil painting, an original with a large white frame. Arising, I removed the picture, turning it over to examine its back; there was nothing concealed there, and the picture was returned to its original position. Carefully I inspected the chairs with their cushions and backs; next I went over the bed, inch by inch, testing the posts for concealed holes. The only object remaining in the room which I had not scrutinized was the large mirror. It was extremely heavy, and I could not imagine Rosemary having the strength to take it down and rehang it by herself. I walked over to it, and stood looking at it.

  Finally
I ran my finger along the edges on the underside of the glass. There was a folded piece of paper attached to the back with Scotch tape. Returning to the chair, I unfolded the note. It read:

  Dear Vic:

  Knowing you, I have no doubt that you will find this after I leave. I’m writing only in case I don’t have a chance to see you alone tomorrow.

  You must have good reason for your pretense of amnesia and have planned accordingly. I don’t know what your plans are, but I’ve gone along with them. And I’ve taken enough chances for you that I still expect my cut, as you promised.

  I’m sure I saw Amar yesterday and I’m getting scared. You can contact me under the old name at the same place.

  R.

  I reread the note, but it still meant nothing to me. I knew no Amar who had frightened her. At some time I had promised her a cut ... an interest... in something which I could not remember. She had another name which I was expected to know, and she would be staying at a place with which I was supposed to be familiar. The note confused me, and it filled me with a sense of helplessness. I was stifled with the silence surrounding me, caught up in wrappings of the unknown, trapped by my own ignorance of past danger.

  With the morning I remembered that Bianca had once mentioned Rosemary Martin’s former apartment. Bianca gave me the address, located just off Fifth Avenue, and late that afternoon I went up to see if Rosemary was there. The apartment was situated in the east Sixties, and the building although small was pretentious. There was no doorman and the lobby opened directly off the street. The lobby was paneled and had an inlaid marble floor, and it contained six brightly polished mailboxes. I examined the names on the boxes, carefully, although there was no Rosemary Martin. The other names were meaningless ... Roache, Townshend, Curtis, Levy, Wainwright, and O’Brien. However, I jotted them down on a slip of paper. As I was preparing to leave, the inside door of the lobby, which was locked, opened and a dignified-appearing man, in his late fifties, came out. He looked at me, nodded pleasantly, and opening the street door went outside.