The Longest Second
Page 13
“Yeah, but why’d the card be gone?”
Burrows shook his head. “J. Edgar Hoover couldn’t put on enough pressure to lift that card,” he said.
“I know that. Anyway,” said Jensen, “Turner checked on the duplicate file and it’s the same guy all right.”
“Victor Pacific?”
“Yeah. Victor Pacific.”
“I got an idea,” said Burrows. “Stick around a few minutes. Let me check up on something else. I got an idea. I want to see.”
27
WHEN Margarite knocked on my door, I opened it. She walked into the room carrying the same large handbag she had carried the last time. “You wanted to see me?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She lounged indolently across the room and seated herself on one of the hard wooden chairs. I looked her over carefully. Margarite’s skin was olive in color; her features were good and were in no way grotesque. In a sullen, knowing way she might be called attractive. But there was no question regarding her appearance; she looked like a chippy ... clothes too tight, too gaudy, heavy make-up, a brazen, half-defiant air. I felt discouraged; she looked nothing like Rosemary Martin had looked, and I was filled with doubts regarding my ability to carry through my plan. Yet I had no alternative, and could only hope that Rosemary Martin might not be remembered at the bank where hundreds of customers appear daily.
At first Margarite was wary when I explained to her. . . laboriously ... that I wanted her to learn to forge a signature, and she must learn to sign it quickly and easily in public.
“No, thanks,” she told me bluntly, “I got enough troubles without looking for more.”
I described to her the safe deposit box and told her that it had belonged to my wife who had since deserted me, that it contained some important papers which I needed badly, and there was no other way to get them.
“Where’s your old lady now?” Margarite asked me.
I told her that I didn’t know where she was.
“In New York?”
“No, not in New York.”
“How much is it worth to you?”
I told Margarite that it was worth a hundred dollars.
She considered this new piece of information thoughtfully. “All I got to do is go down to the bank with you and sign a card with the name Nell O’Hanstrom? That right?”
“That was correct.” I also instructed her that if anyone asked her, she was to say that her middle initial was “C.”
“And there’s no chance jamming up against the cops?”
“No chance.”
Although at last she agreed reluctantly, once she had given her word, she entered into the scheme heartily. I handed her the piece of paper on which I had carefully copied the compiled signature of Nell O’Hanstrom, and she promised to practice it and return to see me the next day.
After she had gone, I went through the items which I had collected from Rosemary’s past. The significance of the newspaper clipping, concerning the early collegiate rowing races, eluded me. The date 1895 was important evidently, and the numerals could be a reminder of many things—a street address, a telephone number without the exchange, or it could be the number to the deposit box. As I considered the different sides to the problem, I reached the conclusion that it was a round-about, too elaborate a concealment for anything as simple as an address or telephone number, but for a safe deposit box, it might be an excellent reminder. It would be necessary for Margarite to give the bank attendant the number of the safe box; she could use 1-8-9-5, and if it was wrong, she could then pretend that she had forgotten. The bluff might work.
The next day when Margarite returned I handed her a sheet of paper and instructed her to write. She wrote rapidly the signature of Nell O’Hanstrom. Picking it up, I compared it with the one I had pieced together. It wasn’t too good, but it wasn’t poor either.
“How’d I do?” Margarite asked.
I shook my head, and wrote, “You must do better.”
“All right,” she agreed sharply, petulant because I hadn’t praised her. “I’ll try. When do you want to go to the bank? Today?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Okay, I’ll practice some more.” Before she left, I carefully explained to her how I wanted her to dress. “Sure,” she told me, “I got a coat. It’s sort of old, but it’s plain and made out of cashmere.” That was the one I wanted her to wear.
When we appeared at the bank, Margarite came as close to looking like a lady as she might ever do. Before leaving the hotel, I had insisted that she remove most of her make-up, leaving only her lipstick. She wore a plain casual coat and medium pumps; her hair was groomed, glistening beneath a small hat. We had rehearsed, step by step, the procedure to be followed at the bank. Margarite assured me that she understood her part perfectly, and I believed that she possessed the self-confidence to carry it through.
As we walked down the winding narrow stairs of the bank to the lower level, I slipped her the key to the safe deposit box. Outside the grilled door, I pressed the electric bell and we were buzzed inside. For this trip, I had purchased a pair of glasses, with plain lenses, and a new hat which I wore solidly on my head. I hoped that no one would recognize me from my previous visit with Bianca. No one did. The attendant who had met Bianca Hill was occupied with other clients of the bank, and to the one who checked with us Margarite said firmly, “I want to get into box 1-8-9-5.”
The attendant gave her a card and a ball point pen. “Please sign here,” he said.
Casually Margarite scrawled the signature of Nell O’Hanstrom, and handed the card, together with the key, to the attendant. Holding the card, he stepped to a file case and checked the signature. For a second he hesitated, and I could feel myself tense. Then he asked Margarite, “What is your middle initial?”
“C,” she replied, “as in Charlotte.”
“Thank you.” He motioned us to follow him within the heavy round door, and stooping slightly inserted first his master key, then the key handed him by Margarite. He opened an oblong-shaped metal door and removed a steel box. “Come this way,” he told us.
We followed him into a corridor which had a number of private rooms opening off it. Each room contained a desk, chair, light, and writing equipment. The attendant placed the box on the desk and, leaving the room, closed the door behind him. I could hear it lock.
“Here we are,” said Margarite.
“Yes.” I handed her a hundred dollars, and motioned for her to stand in the far corner of the room, facing the wall. When she had done this, I opened the box while shielding it with my body.
Inside was a stack of ten-thousand-dollar U. S. government bills ... ten of them, a hundred thousand dollars. In a large Manila envelope were a series of bankers’ acceptances varying in amounts from fifty thousand to a hundred thousand dollars. They were made out to Howard Wainwright and were good for credit in any bank in the United States, or around the world. These acceptances were issued by several banks, for a total of nine hundred thousand dollars. As issued, they would not show up in the books of any bank as an account. Traditionally they are used by importers and exporters.'
We left the room and Margarite returned the box and key to the attendant. He relocked the box, and gave back the key. Without another word, we left the bank. “Well, honey,” she asked me, “did you get what you wanted?”
I didn’t know. I now had a million dollars which had belonged to Wainwright, and which might not do me any good. A ten-thousand-dollar bill is not considered currency, and it is not easy to cash. To cash such a bill, the person must be known and identified at a bank. Bills of such size are used primarily for the transfer of funds by large corporations, exchange of credit in the stock market, and other commercial purposes.
“It must have been awful important,” Margarite continued. “You seemed to be taking a lot of papers.” I didn’t attempt to reply, but kept on walking a little faster, and she hurried to keep step with me. Panting from the exertion, she said, “If
it was really so important, a hundred dollars isn’t much money. Maybe you could give me a little more.” Her voice carried a professional whine.
We were passing a subway entrance, and I stopped suddenly. Drawing her to one side, so we were partly concealed by the covered doorway, I reached in my pocket and withdrew a twenty-dollar bill. Holding the bill in my hand so she could see it, I slipped the knife into my other hand, the blade protected by the sleeve of my coat.
Margarite looked at the bill, then slowly she turned her eyes to see the hilt nestled in my palm. I stood that way until she raised her gaze and looked me in the face. Trembling she drew the coat closely around her. There was no need to say anything; the message was quite clear; she understood. Taking the twenty dollars, she ran down the steps of the subway and disappeared.
Back at the Arena Hotel, I regarded my face in the mirror. Since my last visit to see Minor at the hospital, I had decided to regrow my mustache. Only three days had elapsed; not enough time to do more than shadow my lip. Carefully I shaved around the line of growing hair, then darkened it with a wax pencil. The mustache seemed to leap, nearly full grown, into being. I observed it carefully, attempting to determine the amount of change it produced in my appearance. A mustache will not disguise a person if his features are well known; it will, however, change the impression of his face.
The phone rang, which surprised me, as no one except Margarite knew where I was staying. I picked up the receiver and said, “Yes?”
“Hello, Pacific?” It was Santini’s voice. “I’m down in the lobby, and I’m here to see you. I’ll be up, don’t try to run!”
I had no intention of running and hung up the phone. Within a few minutes, I heard the elevator door slam, and his footsteps approached my door. I opened it. “Well,” said Santini, “it’s real nice seeing you again, Pacific.” His voice, however, was not friendly, and the meaning behind his words was twisted. He came into the room and sat on the bed without removing his hat or coat. It seemed that he was perched there, like a bird of prey, and he moved his head slowly from side to side as he looked around. “Nice place you got here,” he said. “Mind if I look around?”
“Yes.”
He appeared surprised. “You mean you mind if I look around?”
“Yes.” On my pad I wrote rapidly, “Do you have a warrant?”
Santini read it, and he drew his lips into a circle of surprise. “I need a warrant to look around a little? A warrant between two old friends?” He watched me very closely.
I wrote, “That’s exactly what I mean!”
Santini rose deliberately to his feet; I stood facing him. We were less than two feet apart, staring at each other. Santini’s hands were by his side. I had no fear of the man; before he could reach his gun, my knife would be in him. After a pause, he shrugged and reseated himself on the bed. “All right,” he said, steadily, his voice without emotion, “I can always come back if I got to. I didn’t come here to take you in—which I could. I just came for a nice quiet talk.”
I nodded, but I remained standing within arm’s reach of him.
“You get around, Pacific,” Santini continued conversationally. “I keep getting ideas that you’re not a nice guy. For instance, things happen to people who you know. Not good things either. You know what I mean?”
“No.”
‘Take a little, inoffensive, worked-out guy who shares a hospital room with you. Somebody knocks off the side of his head. You didn’t do it, did you, Pacific?”
I didn’t do it, shaking my head firmly.
“Of course I wouldn’t suspect that you did. Although I kind of feel you would’ve done it, if you’d wanted to. Cops get crazy ideas about people.” He took a drag after lighting his cigarette, and watched me. “Why don’t you sit down?” he asked.
I remained standing, waiting for him to continue. There was more to come. Santini was working his way through the preliminaries until he reached his subject of importance.
“Cops are lucky guys, let’s say. They all work together which helps them plenty. A dirty rat of a ... a mug, a wise guy, doesn’t have anybody else to work with except other rats. Sometimes it takes the cops awhile to put everything together, but usually they get it done.” He awaited a reply from me. There was none. Santini drew a deep sigh. Although his eyes pretended pain, they watched me coldly. “Now, let’s take that beautiful dame who lived down at the Hill woman’s when you were working there. Did you know she was strangled, and after she was dead, somebody hung her up in a shower stall by her neck?”
“Papers,” I told him.
He nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed, “there was a little something about it in the papers.” Pushing his hat to the back of his head, he scratched his scalp. “I guess somebody didn’t like that Martin dame much. Did you like her, Pacific?”
“Yes.”
“There were no fingerprints in her room, so we don’t know who went up there to twist her neck. But a funny thing happened. You know what? We discovered this Martin woman had a boyfriend, a real john, a rich guy named Wainwright. She lived with him for a long time. Look, let’s even be fair about it—maybe they were married. We don’t know, and maybe nobody knows. But this Wainwright is missing, has been gone for months. We go up to take a look around Wainwright’s apartment, and do you know what we find?”
I shook my head.
“This time we find plenty of fingerprints. We find fingerprints of the Martin woman, the laundryman, the grocery boy, a cleaning woman ... practically everybody in the neighborhood, and besides that we find fingerprints of a guy named Victor Pacific.” Santini leaned forward and searched my face. “Maybe you were a friend of Wainwright’s too, huh?”
On my pad I wrote, “I don’t know that I ever met Wainwright.”
Santini nodded. “Good for you. Keep it up. Doc Minor is fooled by your act, I’m not.” He arose from the bed and walked to the door. “Don’t bother to try to take a powder on me, Pacific. I can always find you again.” He stepped out into the hall and was gone.
I waited a long time in my room. Then finally I called the desk. “Bellboy,” I requested. When the bellboy arrived, I wrote on my pad that I wanted him to go to the drugstore and buy me a plastic bag and a roll of waterproof tape. When he returned, I took the materials and locked my door.
In the bag I placed all the bills, except one, which I had taken from the safe deposit box, as well as the key, gun, and papers from Rosemary Martin and Amar. The plastic bag was waterproof, and I sealed it carefully with tape. Outside my window were a pair of rusty hooks set about two feet in the building wall on each side of the window ledge. These hooks, during some forgotten day at the Arena Hotel, had been used for the safety belts of window cleaners. I hung the bag, tying it securely, on one of the hooks, then closed the window. No one would see it hanging high and colorless against the wall, in the back of the building where my room was located. Santini could return to search my room while I was away, but would not find the bag outside it.
Santini in his conversation with me had etched away one layer from the flashed-glass coloration of my past life. I did not believe that, as yet, he realized the importance of what he had discovered. But I realized it.
28
WHEN Burrows returned to his desk, Jensen looked up expectantly. Burrows sat down, his face thoughtful. “Well?” asked Jensen.
“We’ve got Pacific on the master file, but there’s no personal file, and nothing in the records.”
“I’ll be damned!”
“Let’s go in and report it to Scott.” They walked across the detectives’ room to Scott’s private office, which was partitioned from the main area by a metal section with glass windows. Scott was busy on the phone and waved the two men to chairs. After hanging up, he turned to them. “Lieutenant,” said Burrows, “on this homicide I reported to you earlier, we have an identification of the body. It’s for a Victor Pacific, resident of New York City, address unknown.”
“He wasn’t a bum, not with a thous
and dollars on him,” said Scott, “but why the address unknown? Did he have a record?”
“The address unknown is a result of a phony Pacific gave to the Army when he was drafted. Evidently he’s been living either in a different city or here under an assumed name, but what Jensen and I wanted to report was about the record.” Burrows turned to Jensen. “You tell Lieutenant Scott what you found out.”
Jensen cleared his throat “Well, Turner in the fingerprint office was late coming through because he wasn’t on duty at the time. But when he heard the name Pacific, he thought it sounded familiar, and he found the name listed on the master, but the card was gone. That’s why the ID had to come from Washington. Of course, there was another card in the duplicates when Turner checked, but no one would have caught it the first time.”
Scott looked thoughtful. “It was taken out, but why?”
“Sir,” Burrows said, “after Jensen told me, I got a hunch and looked in our own master file for the Eighth. We also have the name Pacific. But there’s no personal file and no records on him. That’s why we missed here, too.”
Scott fretfully lit a cigarette. The details of hundreds of faces, thousands of names, scores of thousands of crimes had passed through his mind in twenty-five years. Pacific, he thought, Victor Pacific. I should know it, does it sound familiar? Or am I kidding myself and just think so? Where did I know it? Not as a killer ... he wasn’t a murderer. A thief ... no, not a thief. But there’s a tag I can’t forget, or have I forgotten it? If his name was on the Eighth’s master file, that means he was picked up in connection with this precinct. I’ve only been here a little over a month, it must have been before my time. What’s the matter! Let’s drop it and chew Burrows out about it. Let Burrows and Jensen, the bright boy from Homicide, worry about it.
Scott said to Burrows, “All right, stay with it. Find out what happened. If any stuff has been brought out of our files, I'll personally throw the cop into the middle of Siberia myself!”