“Mendez, Tectivision.”
“Look,” I said, but before I could say any more he said two millions words in Spanish, all in the space of ten seconds. When he was done I was a little groggy, but I kept trying. “I don’t speak Spanish,” I said. “Do you have anybody there that speaks English?”
“I speak English,” he said, enunciating with beautiful clarity.
“God bless you,” I said. “I want to report a kidnapping.”
“When did this occur?”
“Yesterday. Her name is Gertrude Divine, she was kidnapped from her apartment yesterday afternoon.”
“Your name, sir?”
“This is one of those anonymous calls,” I said. “We must have your name, sir.”
“No, no. That’s the whole point of an anonymous call, I don’t give you my name. Now, Miss Divine’s address is 727 West 112th Street, apart—”
“Not this precinct?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Why are you calling this precinct, sir? This event occured way uptown. Just a moment, I’ll connect you with the correct precinct.”
“No, you won’t,” I said. “I’ve reported the kidnapping, and now I’m hanging up.”
“Sir—”
I hung up.
After this experience I needed to rest my nerves awhile before making my other call, so I left the phone booth and walked a block to another outdoor booth, where I called Dr. Lucius Osbertson, he being Uncle Matt’s doctor, the one who’d been interviewed by the Daily News. I didn’t want to give Dr. Osbertson advance warning that I was coming to see him, just to be on the safe side, so when his receptionist or nurse or whoever she was answered the phone I asked if the doctor had office hours at all today.
“Twelve till two,” she said. “Name, please?”
I panicked, not having a name quick to hand. Staring out the phone-booth glass in desperation, seeing the stores and diners all around me, I opened my mouth and said, “Fred Nedick.”
Fred Nedick? What kind of a name was that? I stood there in the phone booth and waited for her to say something like oh-come-off-it, or ha-ha-very-funny, or oh-another-drunk-eh?
Instead, she said, “Has the doctor seen you before, Mr. Nedick?”
This part I had prepared in advance. “No,” I said. “I was recommended by Dr. Wheelwright.” I actually did know a Dr. Wheelwright, who gave me a penicillin shot every February when I got the current year’s virus. My feeling was that no doctor would just blindly turn away a patient who claimed a recommendation from another doctor, even if Doctor A didn’t recognize the name of Doctor B. (Is any of this making sense?)
The nurse, at any rate, said, “Excuse me one minute, please, Mr. Nedick,” and left me standing there under the foolish weight of the name I’d given myself. I scratched myself and felt inadequate and uncomfortable until she returned and said, “The doctor can see you at the end of office hours today. If you could be here at one forty-five?”
“One forty-five. Yes, thank you.”
“That’s quarter till two.”
“Yes,” I said, “I know it is.”
“Some people get confused,” she said. And hung up.
19
MINETTA LANE is an L-shaped street, one block long, in the heart of Greenwich Village. It is a beautiful street, in a Little Old New York sort of way, and is almost the only area that still looks like Greenwich Village, the rest of it looking mostly like Coney Island. Except West 8th Street, which looks like Far Rockaway.
In any case, I was going to Minetta Lane because that was where Gus Ricovic lived.
Remember Gus Ricovic? According to the Daily News, he had taken Gertie out for a date the night my Uncle Matt was murdered. Who he was beyond that the Daily News had not said, nor was it clear whether or not he had accompanied Gertie into the apartment and become a co-discoverer of the body, nor had there been any mention of him in any of the follow-up stories. But I wanted to know more about him, so when I’d gotten up this morning I’d looked him up in the phone book—everybody is in the phone book—and there he was, living on Minetta Lane.
The address was an old dark-brick apartment building, and the name G. Ricovic was next to the bell-button for apartment 5-C. I rang, and waited, and had about decided nobody was home when all at once the door buzzer sounded. I leaped to the door and got it open just in time.
When I got to the fifth floor the door of apartment 5-C was standing open, showing a large square living room full of bad furniture from the Salvation Army. There was no one in sight. I stood tentatively in the doorway a second or two, and then tapped on the door.
A voice called, “Come on in!”
I entered, and the voice called, “Shut it, will ya?”
I shut it, and the voice called, “Take a seat.”
I took a seat, and the voice was quiet.
To the right of where I was sitting, an arched doorway led to a long hall, this in semi-darkness. From somewhere down there came the sound of running water, and the brisk scrub-scrub of someone brushing his teeth. This was followed by an interminable period of repulsive gargling sounds, and then a great deal of splashing—as though dolphins were at play nearby and then what sounded like a towel repeatedly being snapped.
At last there was silence. I listened, and nothing seemed to be happening at all.
My mouth had become very dry. What was I doing here? What did I know about questioning people, about investigating murder cases, about unraveling complex schemes? Nothing. Less than nothing, in fact, because what little I did remember from my reading, I didn’t know how to use.
I had come here to ask a man named Gus Ricovic some questions. What questions? And what did I hope to gain from his answers? If I asked him straight out if he was part of the gang that had killed Uncle Matt and kidnapped Gertie and shot at me, he would naturally say no, he wasn’t. And what would that prove?
While trying to decide what it would prove, I looked up and saw someone coming down the dark hall toward me. At first I thought it was a young boy, and wondered why he was smoking a cigar, but then I realized he was an adult and merely unusually short.
He was wearing a white terrycloth robe, and he was barefoot, and yet the only word that possibly describes him is “dapper.” A dapper little man with neat narrow feet, a neat narrow head, neat slicked-down black hair, neat tiny mustache, and a neat economy of movement. His right hand was in a pocket of his robe, in the manner of English nobility at the races, and with his left hand he removed the long and slender cigar from his mouth in order to say, “Don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, man.”
“Fred Fitch,” I said, getting to my feet. “Are you Gus Ricovic?”
“That’s why I live here,” he said, moving the cigar around like George Burns. “This is Gus Ricovic’s pad, so this is where Gus Ricovic lives. What’s a Fred Fitch?”
“I’m a friend of Gertie’s,” I said. “Also Matt Grierson’s nephew.”
“Ah, the money boy,” he said, and smiled in Levantine pleasure. “Any friend of money is a friend of Gus Ricovic,” he said. “Have you breakfasted?”
“Yes.”
“Come watch,” he said, and turned away.
I followed him into the dark hall and off to the right into an even darker kitchen. He hit a light-switch, nothing happened, and he said conversationally, “Have a seat, man. We talk while I ingest.”
I couldn’t see a thing. Did he think the light had gone on? I stood in the doorway, trying to decide what to say and/or do, and all at once a furious flickering began all around me, with a white-on-white kitchen appearing and disappearing, like a midnight thunderstorm with lightning outside the windows.
But it was only a fluorescent ceiling fixture, somewhat more sluggish than most. It was pinging and buzzing up there, in time with its flickers, and with a final zizzop! it came completely on and stayed that way.
Gus Ricovic—for I supposed this was indeed he—was already at a cabinet across the way, reaching for a box of something called I
nstant Breakfast. “Fantastic invention,” he commented, and took a paper packet out of the box.
Wondering if he meant fluorescent lighting, I pulled out one of the chrome-tube chairs by the formica table and sat down. “Yes, it is,” I said, since comment seemed to be expected of me.
“The only breakfast that makes sense, man,” he said, plunking the packet onto the counter beside the sink, so he hadn’t meant the light after all. He went over to the refrigerator and got out a quart of milk. En passant, he said, “What’s your will with me, pal?”
I said, “You were with Gertie the night my uncle was murdered.”
“Ungood, man,” he said, getting a glass from a cupboard. “Blood. Fuzz. Iron everywhere.” He shuddered, and put the glass with the milk and the packet on the counter.
“You were in the apartment?”
“Wall-to-wall bluecoats,” he said. “Looked like a civil rights meeting.” He went over to another cupboard, opened it, and got down a bottle of Hennessy brandy.
“Did you meet Gertie through Uncle Matt?” I asked, because it suddenly seemed important to know whose circle this odd little man had originally belonged to. I had no idea why it was important, but it seemed important, and so I asked.
Carrying the brandy to the counter, he said, “Nah, man. The other way around.”
“You knew Gertie first.”
He ripped open the packet. “Knew her for years,” he said. “Buddy system.” He shrugged.
“Would you mind telling me where you met her?”
He poured yellow powder from the packet into the glass. “Club in Brooklyn. We both worked there one time.”
“You worked there?”
“Bongos, my friend,” he said, and put down the packet, and drummed the counter a hot lick to demonstrate. “Strippers need bongos,” he said, “like folk singers need guitars.”
“Then you don’t have any connection with my uncle.”
He shrugged, and poured milk into the glass. “Got to know him some. Played him gin while the lady put her face on.” He made dealing motions. “Dishonest old geezer, your uncle,” he said.
“He cheated?”
“Not so’s you couldn’t notice it. Old and slow, man.” He held his hands up close to his face and studied them as though they were recent acquisitions. “Some day these hands,” he said, “will not know bongos. Hard to imagine.”
“What did he say when you caught him?”
Ricovic shrugged, put his hands down, and used them to pour brandy in on top of the milk and the yellow powder. “A few dollars to make an old man happy,” he said. “Besides, Gertie made good on it.”
“You mean you let him get away with it.”
He took a spoon from a drawer and began stirring the contents of the glass. “It’s what Gertie wanted.” He put the spoon down and faced me: “The question is, what do you want.”
“Information,” I said.
“Information.” He smiled slightly, picked up his glass, and said, “Follow.”
We went back to the living room, where he motioned me back to the chair I’d been sitting in before, and then settled himself on the sofa. “Information,” he repeated, seeming to enjoy the feel of the word in his mouth. “Like, vengeance is yours, is that how it goes?”
“I want to know who killed my uncle,” I said. “For reasons of my own.”
“Reasons of your own. You’re a rich boy now.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“When rich boys want information,” he said, smiling at me, “all they have to do is wave money.” He raised his glass in salute. “Your health,” he said, and downed the whole glassful chugalug.
Carefully I said, “You mean you might know something?”
“I know the value of a dollar,” he said. He put the empty glass on the coffee table, and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his robe.
Was this for real, or was he trying to pull something, trying to peddle some cock-and-bull story made up out of his head? I said, “Naturally I’d pay a reward for information leading—”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Leading to the arrest and conviction of the guy that killed your uncle. I’ve read those cards, too.”
“Well?”
“I tell you, man,” he said, “my personal feeling is, there’s many a slip twixt the arrest and the conviction. COD is not my style.”
“You’d want your money beforehand.”
“I’d feel safer that way.”
I said, “Do you really have something to sell?” He smiled “Gus Ricovic,” he said, “doesn’t dicker for practice.”
“The name of the killer?”
“That’s the special of the week, my friend,” he said “And proof,” I said.
He shrugged. “Indications,” he said. “I have the finger to point with, you have the eyes to see.”
“I wouldn’t want to give you money,” I said, “for information I couldn’t use.”
“Fiscally sound, man. Maybe you shouldn’t buy at all.”
Damn him, he was in a seller’s market and he knew it. He didn’t care if I bought or not, or at least he could afford to act that way. I was the one approaching him, so the decision was up to me.
I said, “How much?”
“A thousand now,” he said.
“Now?”
“Installment plan. Another thousand when the law puts the collar on the boy I name. And another thousand when he goes to trial, win or lose.”
“Why so complicated?”
“Gus Ricovic has scruples,” he told me. “If my information does nothing, it costs you one grand. If it helps, but not enough, it costs two grand. If it does the whole job, it costs three grand.” He spread his hands. “Absolutely honest,” he said.
I sat back to think about it, but I already knew I was going to do it. I said, “All right, I’ll write you a check.”
“Not hardly, my friend. You’ll write me cash.”
I could understand that, but I said, “I don’t have a thousand dollars in cash.”
“Who does? You take it out of your bank, you come back at six o’clock.”
“Why six o’clock?”
“I’ll need time to talk to the other party.”
“What other party?”
“The party that did for your uncle. Naturally.” I didn’t see anything naturally about it. I said, “You’re going to talk to him?”
“You want some sort of unfair advantage? Naturally I have to give him the opportunity to meet your price.”
“Meet my—! But you—You can’t—You’re the one—”
“Excuse me pointing this out, man,” he said, “but you’re sputtering.”
“You’re damn right I’m sputtering! What kind of—I’ll come back here at six o’clock, you’ll say oh, no, the price went up, the other party offered such and such, you’ll have to pay at least so and so.”
“Possibly,” he said, judiciously granting me the point. “I tell you what we’ll do, we’ll limit it to two rounds of bidding. You play pinochle?”
“Pinochle?” I said.
“Two rounds of bidding? It’s a phrase from pinochle.”
I felt like a man with a wasp’s nest in the attic of his skull. “What do I care?” I demanded. “Pinochle? What do you mean, pinochle? First you say you know something you’ll sell, then you’ve got to talk to the other party, for God’s sake, then it’s two rounds of bidding, now it’s pinochle. Maybe you don’t know anything, what do you think of that? Maybe you’re some kind of four-flusher, how does that grab you? That’s a term from blackjack, it means you don’t really have anything, you’re bluffing.” I got to my feet, driven upward in an excess of frustration. “I don’t believe a word you’ve said,” I told him, “and I wouldn’t give you a thousand cents.”
“Poker,” he said.
“What?”
“Four-flush is a term from poker. It means you give the appearance of having five cards all in the same suit, but you only have fo
ur.” He got to his feet. “I have five,” he said. “And I’ll see you at six o’clock.”
“I knew that,” I said. I pointed a finger at Gus Ricovic. “I knew it was poker. That’s how upset you got me.”
“My apologies, man,” he said. “When you come back at six, I’ll try not to increase the agitation.”
20
BLACKJACK is a game where you’re dealt two cards face down, and if you want more cards they’re dealt face up, and the object of the game is to get as close as possible to twenty-one points—picture cards count ten—without getting more than twenty-one points. If at the end of the hand your cards come closer to twenty-one points than do the dealer’s cards, you win.
Poker is a game where you’re dealt five cards, and if you get one pair that’s good but if you get two pair that’s better, and three of a kind is better than that, and there are also straights and flushes and straight flushes and full houses and four of a kind.
I just want to point out that I did know all that. I don’t know why I said four-flush was a term from blackjack. The only term from blackjack is blackjack.
Anyway, when I staggered out of Gus Ricovic’s apartment I immediately took a cab back uptown to the bank, on my way to make the second withdrawal of the day.
Sitting in the back of the cab as slowly we progressed through New York’s perpetual traffic snarl, I wondered if I was in the process of being played for a sucker yet a millionth time. Did Gus Ricovic really know who had killed Uncle Matt? If he did know, would he really tell me? If he did know and he really told me, would it ultimately do me any good?
In private-eye books, of which I’ve read my share, people are always buying information, and the information is always one hundred per cent accurate. Nobody ever sells a private eye a lie, Lord knows why. But I wasn’t a private eye, and Gus Ricovic might at this very moment be constructing for my special use a green and blue, six-sided, open-topped, reversible, large economy-size thousand-dollar whopper.
But I’d buy it, I knew that as well as he did. I had no idea how else to learn anything, and I might as well throw my money away at least attempting something.
But before you can throw money away you have to get your hands on it. Not always an easy thing to do, that, not if you’ve entrusted your money to a bank.
God Save the Mark Page 11