“About these,” he said.
She stared, and her punished face softened. She almost smiled.
“Beautiful,” she said. “No?”
“Very beautiful,” Delaney nodded. “May we come in and talk about them?”
Grudgingly, she stepped aside, swinging the door open wider. The three men filed in. The Chief took a quick look around. A one-room apartment. A box. About thirteen by thirteen, he guessed. A narrow closet with a cloth curtain pulled aside. A kitchenette hardly larger than the closet: sink, cabinet, two-burner gas stove, a small, yellowed refrigerator. There was one window in the room, a closed door opposite. Delaney glanced at the door, looked at Jason, motioned with his head. The cop took three steps, stood to one side, opened the door slowly, peered inside cautiously. Then he closed the door.
“Small bathroom,” he said. “Sink, tub, toilet, cabinet. And another door on the other side.”
“Another door?” Delaney said thoughtfully. He turned to Mama Perez. “You share the bathroom with Maria and Dolores Ruiz?”
She nodded.
“Sure,” he said. “Originally this was all one apartment, but the landlord broke it up into two for more money—right?”
Again she nodded.
“Mama, can we sit down?” he asked her. “We want to talk—just friendly talk—but it may take a few minutes.”
She told the story without hesitation, speaking fluently. They listened gravely and never interrupted her.
On that Friday morning, she had taken Dolores Ruiz out to Orchard Street to buy the girl a pair of summer sandals. This crazy man had rushed up to them on the street and grabbed Mama’s arm. He said he was an artist and wanted to paint pictures of Dolores. He would pay if Dolores posed for him. In the nude. Mama could be there while he worked, to protect Dolores’ honor. But he wanted to see Dolores’ body, to see if it was as good as he thought it was.
So they all piled into a cab, and he took them to the Mott Street studio. Dolores undressed, and the crazy man did three drawings and said he wanted Dolores to pose for him. He said he’d pay five dollars an hour, so they agreed to come back on Monday morning. Then they went away. They came back Monday morning at eleven, and found out the man was dead. Later she learned he had been murdered. She read it in the newspapers and saw it on TV. And that’s all that happened.
There was a short silence after she finished. They believed every word she had said. Then …
“Did you have a drink?” Sergeant Boone asked. “In the studio?”
“Yes. Wan.”
“Did Maitland have a drink?” Delaney asked.
“He drank,” she nodded. “From the boatal. Crazy man.”
“When Dolores undressed,” the Chief said, “did she have a safety pin somewhere on her clothes? Did she drop it?”
Rosa Perez shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Maitland was alive when you left the studio?” Boone asked.
She turned her head slowly, looked at him shrewdly.
“You tink I keel heem?”
“Was he alive?” Boone repeated.
“He was alive,” Mama Perez nodded. “Why should I keel heem?”
“Is Dolores here?” Chief Delaney said. “Now? In her apartment?”
The woman straightened slowly. The stone eyes focused on him.
“What you want weeth Dolores?”
“Just to see her, ask her a few questions.”
Mama Perez shook her head.
“Dolores she don’ onnerstan’.”
“Get her,” Delaney said.
She sighed, rose to her feet. She was wearing a cheap cotton wrapper, a thin, flowered shift. She smoothed the cloth down over her bulging hips in a gesture that was coquettish, almost girlish.
“You hurt Dolores,” she said casually, “I keel you.”
“No one’s going to hurt Dolores,” the Chief told her. “Jason, go with her.”
Rosa Perez went to the bathroom door, Jason right on her heels. She went through the bathroom, knocked on the far door. Delaney and Boone heard a chatter of Spanish.
They sat waiting. The summer sun streamed through the big window. The little apartment, right under the roof, was suddenly a hotbox, steaming. Chief Delaney rose, stalked to the window, pulled it open. He had to struggle with it; the heavily painted frame was swollen. But he finally got it open wide. He leaned far out, hands propped on the low sill. He looked down. Then he came back into the room, closed the window halfway.
“Six stories straight down to the cement courtyard,” he reported to Boone. “You’d think she’d have a window guard—one of those iron grilles you screw on. If this kid—”
“Dolores,” Mama Perez said, “Beautiful, no?”
They looked at the vacant-faced girl standing near the doorway to the bathroom. Her arms hung straight down at her sides. They saw what Victor Maitland had seen. The youth. Ripe youth. Ready. And long, glistening black hair. Empty perfection in that mask-face. Eyes of glass. Erupting flesh.
“Hello, Dolores,” Delaney said, smiling. “How are you?”
She didn’t answer, didn’t even look at him.
Delaney took the photostats of the Maitland sketches to her and held them up.
“You, Dolores,” he said, still smiling.
She looked at the drawings but saw nothing. Her face showed nothing. She scratched one arm placidly.
“Ask her to sit down,” the Chief said to Mama Perez.
The woman muttered something in Spanish. The girl walked slowly to the unmade bed, sat down gently. She moved like bird flight, as pure and sure. She was complete. She composed space.
“You sit down, too, Mama,” Delaney said. “A few more questions.”
“More?”
“Just a few.”
He and Rosa Perez took their seats again. Boone and Jason T. Jason stood at opposite walls.
“We’ve been looking for you,” Chief Delaney said. “You and Dolores. Drawings of you were in the newspapers and on TV. You saw them?”
For the first time she hesitated. Delaney saw she was calculating how the truth might hurt her.
“I saw,” she said finally.
“But you didn’t come forward. You didn’t come to us to ask why we wanted to find you.”
“Why should I?” she asked.
“Right,” he said equably. “Why should you? Well, Mama, we wanted to find you to ask you about someone you and Dolores may have seen that Friday morning.”
“Someone we seen?” she said. “We seen lots of peoples that morning.”
“In the building where Maitland’s studio is,” Delaney said patiently. “On the stairs maybe. Or coming up the outside steps. Somewhere close.”
Rosa Perez shook her head.
“I don’ remember,” she said. “So long ago. I don’ remember.”
“Let me help you,” Delaney said. He took all the photographs and newspaper clippings from his manila envelope. He arranged them neatly on the Formica-topped table, all facing Mama Perez.
“Take a look,” he urged her. “A good long look. Take your time. Did you see any of these men or women near Maitland’s studio that Friday morning?”
She glanced quickly at the photos, then shook her head again.
“I don’ remember,” she said.
“Sure you do,” Chief Delaney said quietly. “You’re a smart woman. You notice things. You remember things. Take another look at them.”
“I don’ remember.”
Delaney sighed. He stood up, but he left the photographs lying there.
“All right, Mama,” he said. “But we weren’t the only ones looking for you.”
She stared at him blankly.
“The killer is looking for you, too,” Delaney said. “He must have seen the newspaper stories and the TV, just like you did. He’s afraid you saw him and will recognize him. So he’s looking for you. He doesn’t know we have Officer Jason there, who actually saw you and Dolores on Monday morning. So we found you firs
t. But he’ll keep looking. The killer.”
“So?” she said, shrugging. “How he’s going to find me?”
Delaney looked at her with admiration. She hadn’t yet lost her nerve.
“I’m going to tell him,” he said.
He watched her face pull tight under the thick makeup. Eyes widened. Lips stretched back to show sharp, cutting teeth. The gold incisor gleamed.
“You?” she gasped.
“Oh, not directly,” Delaney said. “But the newspapers have been after us. And the TV stations. They’re interested. They want to know: Have you found the woman and girl? We ran the drawings for you; have you found them? So now I’ll have to tell them, yes, we found the woman and the girl, thanks to you. And this is their address.”
She understood. He didn’t have to spell it out for her.
“You do that?” she asked tentatively.
“Oh yes,” he said. “I would.”
“You are not a nice man,” she said.
“No,” he agreed. “I’m not.”
She flared suddenly into a screamed stream of Spanish that he could only guess was curses, a flood of invective spat at him.
“I don’ care!” she yelled in English. “I don’ care! Let heem come! Let heem keel me!”
He waited until she was screamed out, until she calmed, sank back in her chair, glaring at him, still muttering. He could afford to wait; he had the key to her.
“Not you,” he said. “Not only you. Dolores, too. He’ll hurt Dolores.”
She stared fiercely at him a moment longer before she crumpled. She never did weep. But the hand that went out was trembling, the finger wavering that pointed to the newspaper photograph of Saul Geltman.
“Thees wan,” she said in a low voice. “On the stairs. Me and Dolores, we were coming down. He was going up. We saw heem. He saw us. Thees ess the man.”
They were back in Boone’s car, watching Orchard Street fill up with street vendors and the Saturday afternoon shopping crowd, streaming down from all over New York for bargains. Delaney sat in the back seat again, an unlighted cigar in his fingers.
“Can I ask you a question, Chief?” Jason T. Jason said, without turning around.
“Ask away,” Delaney said expansively. “Any time.”
“If she hadn’t identified anyone in the photos, would you have given her address to the papers? Like you told her you would?”
“Sure. After putting a twenty-four-hour guard on her. Use her as bait. Smoke him out.”
“Wow,” Jason Two said. “I learn something new every day. Well, anyway, we got him.”
Abner Boone made a sound.
“Something, sarge?” Jason asked innocently.
“We haven’t got him.”
“Haven’t got him?” the black cop said indignantly. “She fingered him as being on the scene of the crime at the right time. I can testify to that.”
“Oh sure,” Boone said. “That and half a buck gets you on the subway.”
“It’s no good, Jason,” Delaney amplified. “Suppose we take that to the DA’s office and ask them to seek an indictment of Saul Geltman for Murder One. Okay, they say, what have you got on him? We say, we got an old Puerto Rican whore who saw him near the scene of the crime about the time it was committed. Okay, they say, what else have you got? That’s all, we say. Then they fall on the floor holding their ribs and laughing before they kick our ass out of their office. Jason, we have no case. You can’t convict a man of homicide because he was in the neighborhood about the time the killing took place. Where’s the weapon? What’s the motive? Where’s the legal proof? The sergeant’s right; we’ve got nothing.”
Jason looked back and forth, Delaney to Boone, frowning.
“You mean this dude is going to walk?”
“Oh no,” Delaney said. “I didn’t say that. He’s not going to walk. He probably thinks he is, but he’s wrong.”
“Still,” Abner Boone said, turning sideways in the driver’s seat to look at Delaney, “he must be having some wet moments. Here’s how I see it:
“Geltman goes down to Mott Street on Friday morning to burn Maitland. On the stairs, going up to the studio, he meets Mama and Dolores. He sees them, they see him. Maybe Mama even hustles him right there; she’s got the balls for it. But the important thing is that he’s got no way of knowing they just came down from Victor Maitland’s studio. Right, Chief?”
“Right.”
“Okay. So Saul baby goes up, ices Maitland, and skins out. He goes through his little scam as the anxious agent and then, on Sunday, he returns to the studio, allegedly discovers the body, and calls the cops. Now it gets cute. When the blues come, they find the three drawings Maitland did of Dolores. Geltman is there and recognizes the girl he met on the stairs on Friday. He wants the drawings, but we won’t give them to him. I know; I was there. So he goes home sweating, hoping nothing will come of those damned drawings because he’s afraid the girl may identify him, not knowing she’s a wet-brain.”
“Then you and I come around asking questions about the girl,” the Chief said.
“Right!” Boone said. “Now he’s really shitting. Those fucking sketches could cook him if we found the girl. So he thinks fast—hand it to him—and invites us to his show. You particularly, Chief.”
“Sure,” Delaney nodded. “To get me out of the house so he can lift the drawings.”
“Which he does,” Boone continued. “Hell, he could be missing from that mob scene for an hour, and no one would realize he was gone.”
“Or he could have hired a smash-and-grab lad,” Delaney suggested.
“Easily,” Boone nodded. “Maybe one of his golden boys. Anyway, now he’s got the sketches and he figures he’s home free and can relax. But then, a couple of days later, he picks up the paper and lo! there’s the police drawings of Mama and Dolores. He must have had a cardiac arrest right them. Imagine how he felt! Thought it was a piece of cake, and now he finds out the cops know about Mama and Dolores. And that’s the mood he’s in right now. Is that about the way you see it, Chief?”
“Just right,” Edward X. Delaney approved. “I figure that’s about the way it happened. But I don’t think he’s all that spooked. Listen, this is one cool monkey. When I went up to his apartment unexpectedly, he didn’t turn a hair. My God, those Maitland drawings were probably right there, in one of his beautiful cabinets.”
“Wouldn’t he keep them in the office safe?” Boone asked.
“Oh no,” Delaney said. “Too many people in and out of the place. Too dangerous. That marvelous apartment is his secret place, his dream. He’ll have them there. And won’t destroy them, as he should, any more than Mama Perez would spit on her velvet hanging of Jesus on the Cross. They’re beautiful things, holy things.”
“Search warrant?” Boone asked.
“Mmm … maybe,” the Chief said slowly. “But not yet.”
Jason T. Jason had listened closely to this exchange, had followed most of it.
“How we going to nail him?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Delaney confessed. “He’s got an alibi we’ve got to break. And I’d like to see a motive. You can convict without establishing motive—but it helps. Especially when you’ve got damned little else.”
“Funny,” Abner Boone said, shaking his head. “Saul Geltman. You know, I like the little guy.”
“I do, too,” Chief Delaney said. “So?”
Boone had no answer to that.
“Sergeant,” Delaney said, “think you can stay awake for a few more hours?”
“Sure, Chief. No sweat.”
“I’m going to call Deputy Commissioner Thorsen and ask for more men. Round-the-clock surveillance of Mama Perez.”
“Could we pull her in as a material witness?” Boone asked him.
“Maybe,” Delaney said. “But it won’t tip our hand, and she’s no good to us in the slammer. A loose tail should be enough. Just to make sure she doesn’t skip.”
“What about Ge
ltman, sir? Want him covered, too?”
“No. He’s not going to run. Unless he spots a tail, and that might panic him. Surveillance of Mama will be enough for starters. You brief the new men when they show up. I’ll try to have the first one down here in an hour or so.”
“What do you want me to do, sir?” Jason T. Jason asked anxiously, fearing his brief career as a detective was drawing to a close.
“Go home and get some sleep,” Delaney told him. And then when he saw the man’s expression, he said, “Report to Sergeant Boone on Monday morning. In plainclothes. That means a business suit, not that Superfly outfit.”
Jason T. Jason smiled happily.
19
HE HAD PREPARED A “Things to do” list, and even a time-sequence chart, but on Monday morning all his carefully plotted plans went awry.
He got through to Bernie Wolfe on the first call, but the lieutenant was unable to help him.
“I’m due in court in an hour, Chief,” he explained. “Testimony on a Chagall-forgery case. One of my men is out sick, and my other guy is in Brooklyn, digging into the cutting of some Winslow Homer etchings from a library’s file copies of the old Harper’s Weekly. It’s happening more and more.”
“Look, lieutenant,” Delaney said desperately, “what I need is poop on how the loss of income from Maitland’s work will affect the Geltman Galleries. Can Saul continue in business with the other artists he handles, or will he go broke? I figure the best answer to that would come from his competitors on Madison Avenue.”
“Or Fifty-seventh Street,” Wolfe added.
“Right. Could we do this: if I send Sergeant Boone and another guy to meet you in court, could you give them the names of, oh say a dozen art dealers they could check today and try to get a rundown on Geltman’s financial problems?”
“Of course,” Wolfe assured him. “That’s easy.”
“Good. I’ll have Boone call you and set up a meet.”
“By the way, Chief, I’ve been mooching around a little. I got nothing hard, but there’s some vague talk that you could buy a Maitland painting without going through Geltman Galleries.”
“Uh-huh,” Delaney said. “Now that’s interesting. Many thanks, lieutenant. I’ll have Boone call you. And don’t forget to call when you can make dinner.”
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