by Zelda Popkin
"Yessir. You were a tenant on the same floor?"
"Correct."
"The Inspector wants to know what you knew about the people who lived in 2C."
Young Mister Weinstein thrust his lower lip forward dubiously. "Not much, I'm afraid. I've not been living in the house very long, you see. Just two months. I can't say I've ever seen the people from that apartment. None of them, except the man who went out early Saturday afternoon. Why, Detective Reese, what's this?"
Johnny Reese had bent forward, had gripped the man's hand, was pumping it up and down. "I'm just saying 'welcome home.' I never met a guy I was so glad to see."
"Now, now." Young Mr. Weinstein was pleased with himself. "Maybe I'm not going to turn out to be as much of a help as you think. You see, if I'd known anything was wrong, I'd have probably observed things more carefully. It wasn't till I saw the officer ringing the doorbell, that I realized something might be wrong. This is the way it was: My wife and I were dressing and packing to go away to Atlantic City for the weekend - I had till Monday night off - when we heard a shot. At least my wife thought it was a shot, but I said: 'Oh no, it can't be a shot. It's a backfire.' Trucks are always backfiring in these streets."
"What time was it?"
"About - let me think - somewhere around a quarter after one. Maybe a few minutes after that. I'd just got in from the office and I was in a rush to change my clothes and get started. My wife had the bags all packed, you see. Well, we paid no attention to the shot after we heard it, and I went on dressing, and just as we were going out of our door, we saw a man closing the door of 2C."
"Describe him," Johnny Reese commanded.
"I'll do the best I can. I'm afraid it won't be very adequate. He was a smallish man, thin, in dark clothes, and a dark hat pulled low over his face - a rather wide black hat, sort of foreign looking. I'm afraid I couldn't see his face well. All I saw was the frame of horn-rimmed glasses and a pointed chin that seemed sort of yellowish."
Mary Carner's eyes met the detective's. There was bewilderment in his face; fear in her's.
He said: "Vigo don't wear glasses."
Mary said: "It wasn't Vigo. He was with Marjorie. Go on, Mister Weinstein, please."
Mister Weinstein went on. "He had a large suitcase and his hands were gloved. Just as he was about to turn around to go down the steps, my wife, who was inside, remembered that I hadn't shut off the ice-box, and she called me to come back into the apartment. And so he went down the steps ahead of us and we didn't see his face, nor which direction he went."
"Women again," Johnny Reese wailed. "Always women. When we might've had a perfect description."
"I'm sorry." Mister Weinstein picked up his briefcase. "It's all I can do for you. I'll be glad to repeat it to the Inspector - or anyone else you designate."
Mary Carner came forward. "You've done a good deal for us," she said. "Much more than you realize."
Johnny Reese stared at her. "I don't know what you're talking about," he complained.
When the door had closed behind Weinstein, Johnny said, brusquely: "What's this all about? What were you so scared of?"
"I can't tell you. Believe me, I can't tell you. It's so incredible that I can't talk about it. Not till I'm sure. Not till it's more than an idea."
"Come off that stuff," he protested. "Be yourself. Gimme your hunch and we can dope it out together."
"No dice. If I tell you and I'm wrong, I'll be a fool to the end of my days. If I'm right and I talk - if this person suspects we're interested in him - if he has the faintest notion - it will be too perilous. Our only chance of getting him lies in letting him believe he's perfectly safe. All I can tell you is we're dealing with someone who's resourceful, clever."
"And you're gonna out-smart him?"
"I can try."
"Fat chance. Sister, don't be a goddamned fool. Tell Johnny."
"Eventually."
"Why not now?"
She turned back on the door-sill. She waved her hand in farewell. She said gayly: "Keep the home fires burning."
Miss Carner had a full afternoon. She called on a newspaper and she made a tour of garages.
At the newspaper office she visited her friend, Jane Tennant, and she said: "Jane dear, I want a favor. You have a morgue here, haven't you?"
"Of course. Every newspaper has. Ours is one of the best."
"May I look up two names?"
"You certainly may. Write them on this slip and I'll have the stuff brought in."
Miss Tennant whistled when she read the names Mary had written. She said: "Can I know what this is all about?"
"Not till I know myself."
"Will it be something for us?"
"Rather."
"Do I get an exclusive?"
Mary smiled wearily. "It may not be anything at all. But just in case it is, I never forget a favor."
An office boy brought in two huge manila envelopes. "Here y'are." He spread them on Miss Tennant's desk.
"Make yourself at home, Mary," the newspaper woman said. "If I can help, call me in."
Two hours later, Mary Carner stuffed the piles of yellowed clippings back into their envelopes and wiped the dust from her fingers. Her back was very tired, her eyes heavy lidded.
"Find what you wanted?" Jane Tennant asked.
"Yes, thanks."
"Anything else I can do?"
"Yes. Direct me to the nearest telegraph office."
Mary took a long while composing her message. She wrote it over and over, and dispatched it finally. And then she hailed a taxi-cab, and rode to the East side of Central Park.
Up and down the side streets of the East Sixties, Miss Carner wandered that afternoon while the April sun swung lower in the sky. She was hunting a garage.
At each place she stopped she told the same story: "I've just moved into the neighborhood. I'm looking for garage space. What facilities do you have?" That brought an invitation to look around.
A grease-stained mechanic in a large garage on East Sixty-fourth Street withdrew his head and shoulders for an instant from under the hood of a shining Rolls Royce, answered her absent-mindedly. "Look around, lady. What make car you got?"
"Sport roadster."
"That'll be all right then. We're full up. If it was a big car, we mightn't be able to accommodate you."
"Like this one."
"Yeh. Or like that Cadillac."
"Which Cadillac?" She tried to keep her voice casual.
"That one. Know whose car that is?"
She had seen that shimmering body before. She had seen those white tires, the yellow and black license plate with its impressive double digits. But she moved toward it now with an expression of naive delight.
"That's a honey of a car."
"You bet it is. Belongs to a honey of a guy. Saxon Rorke. Ever hear of him?"
"No," she lied. "Who's he?"
"Big Wall Street man. Rich as all hell. Big shot. See his plate."
She bent down low over the rear wheel, ostensibly to read the license number.
The mechanic asked: "You nearsighted, lady?"
She went around to the car door. She opened it. She slid behind the wheel. "He won't mind if I just sit in it a minute. I've never been in a buggy like this."
"Better don't," the mechanic said. "He wouldn't like it. Hey, what you doing there?"
Miss Carner had ducked down behind the wheel. Miss Carner was swiftly sweeping the floor of Saxon Rorke's automobile, examining the cushions of the front seat. Miss Carner pressed the button which opened a compartment in the instrument panel, abstracted three cigars, blue and white banded. Her head bobbed up. "I dropped my bag," she said sweetly to the garage mechanic. "What did you think I was doing there?"
"Nothing. Only we're not supposed to let people into other people's cars. Against the rules."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't let on you was in his car, understand? I got to clean it."
"You haven't cleaned it yet? It's almost e
vening."
"That ain't my fault. It's the other guy's day off. And I been sweating my head off. These big babies take a lot of time. The night man was supposed to clean it, but he says Rorke didn't get in with it till almost six o'clock in the morning and he didn't have the time. Say, don't let that discourage you, miss. We'll give you good enough service. You'll be satisfied."
"I am satisfied," she said sweetly.
***
Mary's apartment was fragrant with pot roast and pie. Sophie Duda smiled a broad faced welcome.
"I was looking for you," she said. "I was wondering how soon you would be home. Somebody was just telephoning for you. Some man. He says he wants to talk to you. He says he wants to take you out to dinner. He says he's coming right up to take you out. And I have such a nice dinner all ready."
"Did he leave his name?"
"Oh yes. He give his name. His name is Rorke. Mister Saxon Rorke."
"Rorke? Coming right up? He wants to take me out to dinner, does he? Oh no! Get your hat. Get your coat, Sophie."
"The dinner," Sophie wailed. "The nice dinner I fix for you!"
"Forget it. We're dining out tonight. And by ourselves. Take everything. We won't be home tonight."
Chapter XIV
The hotel room was too small and too hot. Steam pipes rattled in its walls and water flushed. The open transom brought in the noises of elevators going up and down, doors opening and closing, voices in prolonged farewells, drunken laughter.
Mary Carner tossed. She rumpled her sheets; she threw off her blankets; she pulled them up again. Sophie, in the adjacent twin bed, snored rhythmically. "I'm not used to anyone in my room," Mary told herself. "That's what keeps me awake. That and the noise. And the heat…. I'm not nervous…I'm really not…. I'm not scared." Yet even as she denied fear, she grew certain of it.
She slid out of bed, went over to the window. Twenty stories below, the city slumbered like a sprawling harridan asleep in her spangles, the lighted avenues glittering necklaces on a broad, black velvet bosom; vertical, illuminated skyscraper elevator shafts, like gilded bar-pins.
She watched the gray of morning dilute the black sky. And her fear grew as she watched and she said to herself: "The day's beginning. It won't be too hard for him to find me. He's clever. I'm a fool to be doing this alone…. It's vanity. It's plain stupidity. I should have told Johnny Reese…. Or Chris…. At least Johnny. If anything happens to me, Johnny should know. Otherwise they'll never get him…. If that telegram's delivered to my house, who'll take it? Oh silly, I will. I, myself. In a few hours, I'll be certain, one way or the other…. But I have this girl on my hands…. A millstone around my neck…. No, I'm the load around hers…. I'm risking her life as well as my own…. I've got to show some sense."
She snapped on the light above the writing table. She wrote two letters, admonishing herself as she wrote: "I mustn't sound as though I'm afraid…. I must put down the facts…. Just the facts as I know them now…. And the others can go on."
After she had sealed the letters and addressed them, one to Chris Whittaker at Blankfort's store, one to Johnny Reese, she felt relaxed, as though she had transferred a load. She went back to bed.
When she opened her eyes again, thin, sharp rays of sunshine were stabbing the edges of the drawn window shades. Sophie, fully dressed, her hat and coat on, sat in the slipper chair.
The hands of Mary's wrist watch pointed to ten o'clock. She leaped out of bed. "Why didn't you wake me?"
"You sleep so good it is a shame to wake you up. Me, I sleep good too. It is the first time in my life I am in a hotel. Sleep in so-nice bed. We stay in this nice place?"
"I should say not." Mary dashed into the shower, out again, and into her clothes. At breakfast in a neighborhood cafeteria, she gave Sophie the letters. "I'm going to be busy this morning," she said. "And you're to do two errands for me. First, you're to deliver this letter to Detective Reese at Headquarters. Don't be afraid to go there. He's very kind and pleasant. And then you're to go uptown to Blankfort's and take this other letter to Mister Whittaker and tell him I said he's to keep an eye on you till he hears from me. I'll probably be in touch with him by one o'clock. He'll take care of you till I come back."
"You're so good to me, Miss Carner. Like Miss Knight was."
"Like Miss Knight…. Why doesn't the girl stop comparing me to Phyllis?" Mary thought. "The comparison's getting on my nerves. Enough's enough."
But to the girl she merely said: "Here's the key to my apartment, in case Mister Whittaker decides you're to go there. And here's carfare and money for anything you need today."
"I'm making my arrangements," she thought. "The condemned woman wrote her farewell letters, disposed of her possessions, ate a hearty breakfast. I suppose I ought to begin to pray." She jerked her shoulders straight, spoke to herself sternly: "Carner, you're getting hysterical. There's nothing to be afraid of. You're going to the safest place in the world this morning. You're going to jail."
At eleven o'clock she stepped from a bus at the angle of Sixth Avenue and Tenth Street. Her nose was powdered, her lips rouged, her hair meticulous under its careful hat. No one, looking at the poised, attractive young woman, could have guessed that she was so anxious, so tense, that she ached from head to foot.
She crossed the street to a red-brick citadel, hurried up a short flight of steps, through the grim portals of Jefferson Market Court. She climbed a winding stone staircase and entered the dark-wood paneled, church-windowed room which is the notorious Women's Court of Manhattan - a court for women, which, oddly enough, concerns itself with only two forms of female misconduct: shoplifting and sex delinquency.
The room was crowded. On rows of benches men and women hunched forward, avidly attentive to one of the most tragic of all the spectacles the metropolis affords. "Like the Roman circuses," Mary thought cynically. "Watching the martyrs fed to the lions."
A woman sat in the judge's seat, a black-robed woman with a student's face and wise, calm eyes, looking down into the frightened faces of three scrawny girls.
A pleasant faced attendant, in a brass-buttoned blue poplin frock, metal badge for corsage on her shoulder, opened a gate in a long rail for Mary. "Glad to see you, Miss Carner. I didn't know you'd any cases here this morning." The attendant flipped through a stack of folded documents in her hand. "Your Mister Whittaker was here yesterday with two."
Mary said: "I'm not here on store business today. I've come to get a look at the docket. You don't by any chance remember the raid on Flo Gordon's place last fall, do you?"
The court attendant smiled broadly. "I don't, eh? I'll never forget it. That was the biggest day we had all year. Place so full of reporters and photographers there wasn't room for the defendants. And Flo in silver fox."
Mary said: "She was wearing mink when they found her on the beach yesterday."
The clerk nodded. "I read about it in the papers. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. Probably some of the gang bumped her off." She bent down to whisper. "She was one of Nardello's women, you know. Oh, the Judge wants to speak to you. Say hello to her."
Miss Carner stepped up on the dais and said "Hello."
"I haven't seen you in some time, Miss Carner," the Judge said.
"You're busy enough without Blankfort's shoplifters."
The Judge sighed. "Same old merry-go-round," she said. "This is the court of the revolving doors. They're brought in; we go through the motions of giving them a trial, sending them to prison, and in a few months they're back again." Her pleasant voice had a sharp note. "Reform? How can we expect them to - as long as low wages and drudgery are the only alternatives we offer them? And the poorest and stupidest are the ones we see here."
"Except Flo Gordon."
"Except Flo," the Judge agreed. "We don't get enough of the Flo Gordons. And when they are arrested, they've the funds to hire a good lawyer and the political connections to beat the rap. If we could only break down the structure of hypocrisy and corruption which pro
tects vice and crime." She shrugged. "I'm asking too much. The most we can do here now is protect the innocent, see that the diseased are cured, and try to sift out and help those who really want to be rehabilitated. What brings you here today?"
"You'll not believe it…Flo Gordon."
"Really! She wasn't involved with any of the stores, was she?"
"Not as far as I know. I'm interested in the records of her trial last October."
"It's not my business to ask why you want it, but I assume it isn't idle curiosity." The Judge signaled an attendant. "Get Miss Carner the records she needs. Let her read them in my chambers. Lunch with me? I'll be off the bench at one."
"I'm sorry," Mary said. "I'm afraid I'm going to be too busy today."