City of the Dead

by Herbert Lieberman

  “That’s okay.” Flynn smiles. “I’m almost finished anyway. Just one more question. You got any way of tellin’ me which one of those four distributors handled this particular piece of paper?”

  Bloom chews pensively for a moment. “You got the invoice slips for that run, Tessie?”

  “I’m pretty sure.” She glances nervously at Flynn. “Hold on. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  She waddles quickly from the office with that curious, light-toed grace not uncharacteristic of very fat people. For a few moments the two men chat inanely about the weather while Bloom goes about the business of polishing off the remainder of his lunch. He now has before him a macaroon and a large paper container of tea with lemon.

  Shortly the fat girl is back in the office with a thick folder of invoice sheets. Licking her thumb periodically, she flicks swiftly through them. “Okay—here it is,” she says, evidently pleased. “Clintonian—Spiegel took the first two thousand, Charles took the next two thousand. The Wagoners took the next eight hundred, so that’d start with number 4001 and run through 4800. And Kristofos took all the rest—4801 through 7500. What number were you interested in again, Sergeant?”

  “3118.”

  “That’d have to be Charles,” Tessie says, snapping her invoice folder shut.

  “Charles—my good friend Charles.” Mr. Bloom belches softly.

  “Where is this Charles located?” asks Flynn.

  The fat girl glances down at her invoice sheet. “452 West 49th.”

  “Over by Tenth Avenue,” Bloom says. “You going over there?”

  “Right now,” says Flynn.

  “If you talk to Stanley, see if you can’t get my money.” Blooms chuckles. “Tell him you’re the police and I sent you over.”

  Bloom laughs out loud; then, so does the fat girl.

  “Say, what’s all this about, anyway?” Bloom bites deeply into his macaroon and waves the crumpled page of news-sheet at Flynn. “What’s all the big fuss about this piece of paper anyway?”

  “Nothin’ much.” Flynn laughs along with him. “We just found a severed head wrapped up in it. We’re trying to find out who did the choppin’, that’s all.”

  For a moment there’s complete silence as the laughter wanes on Mr. Bloom’s lips and his jaws cease to chew. Then the page of crumpled newssheet slips from his fingers, wafting languidly downward to his desktop like a snowflake. For a man who only moments before had been hooting with glee, who was even then still savoring the mingled flavors of his lunch, he appears suddenly green and queasy.

  “Finish up your macaroon,” says Flynn, grinning broadly, “it looks very good. And thanks for everything.” He reaches across the desk and snatches up the torn, crumpled page from where it has lighted on the waxed paper and various leavings of Mr. Bloom’s lunch.

  As he passes the fat girl on his way out, he tips his hat rafiishly and winks.

  »53«

  12:10 P.M. GRAND CENTRAL STATION, UPPER LEVEL.

  The noon lunch hour. Crowds streaming out of the arrival gates, bustling through the arcades. Queues formed all about the place. OTB queues, New York State Lottery queues, Merrill Lynch “Big Board” queues, the Friday payday queues at the First National City minibank, at the Ticketron booth, at the Information Booth at the center of the station. Outside the gates of Track 17 there is the weekend queue waiting to board the 12:30 to New Haven and Boston.

  Lunch hour crowds are rushing for the Oyster Bar, Charlie Brown’s, the Trattoria, Zum Zum, the Liggett’s lunch counter, the pizza stands, the frankfurter stands, the Carvel stands. They browse in the Doubleday Book Shops and wait for a chair at the Esquire bootblack stands.

  Down an escalator from the mezzanine floor of the Pan Am Building, Paul Konig descends into the strangely muted electric glow of the Grand Central underworld. At the foot of the escalator Konig steps off the moving stair with a small, tentative hop that suggests frailty and old age. In his right hand he carries the Gladstone bag. He knows exactly where he is going, having been carefully instructed by the NYPD as to the exact location of that long bank of gray steel lockers in which baggage locker number 2384 is contained.

  At the bottom of the escalator, Konig takes a sharp right, goes past a baggage counter. Then at the Esquire shoeshine stand he takes a sharp left. A few steps from there on his left again is a long wall of baggage lockers, battleship gray and much scarified with graffiti and the like. Directly opposite is a Savarin lunch bar.

  At the moment of Konig’s appearance, the 12:15 from Stamford arrives, disgorging passengers through Gate 34, who swarm outward from there in all directions. Caught up in the dizzy tidal rush, Konig wends his way through a swarm of humanity. In a matter of moments he reaches the wall of lockers, his eyes streaming up, down, and across, searching for his number, his heart thudding in his chest. Number 2384 is at chest level near the center of the bank of lockers and it’s locked. The “key, carried in his trembling fingers from the moment he stepped from the cab and into the station, now jabs hectically at the hole. Two, three of those tremulous jabs go wildly awry, one at last connecting—and the key slides in effortlessly. A sharp twist now to the right, the lock disengages, and the door swings open to a stale, rather fetid emptiness.

  Without hesitation, Konig hoists the Gladstone into the locker, slams the door shut, twists sharp left, thus locking it, then drops the key back into his pocket Now he turns sharply on his heel, and looking neither right nor left, he walks quickly out of the station.

  At the Savarin lunch counter across the way, his back to the bar and having a beer, Francis Haggard watches Konig lumber heavily past the glass windows and disappear beyond, leaving in his wake an unimpeded view of wall lockers.

  The detective sips his beer slowly. He knows it will be some time before Meacham makes his move, if indeed he makes one at all. Haggard’s own guess is that he won’t Not now. This is merely a trial run. A test to see how Konig performs. And just as Haggard has staked out the pick-up location, so he is certain that Meacham’s people have done the same. Within those hordes of people swarming past the windows like schools of fish, among the innumerable figures loitering in that area for one reason or another, among them, he is certain, are Meacham’s people. They’re doing precisely what he is doing—keeping locker 2384 under very close surveillance.

  Tilting his beer back, his eyes, above the rim of his glass, swarm over the area. At the Esquire stand he spies a portly fellow having a shoeshine while his eyes appear to devour a racing form. That is, he recognizes, Detective Sergeant Donnello of the 41st Precinct. A short distance away, at the Nedick’s juice stand, wolfing a frankfurter and an orange drink, is Freddie Zabriskie from the 23rd. He wears a trench coat and a peaked checkered cap. With his attaché case and his slightly agitated manner, he gives the impression of a harried commuter grabbing a bite before boarding a train.

  Working behind the baggage pick-up counter, in red cap, looking flushed and jovial, is Wershba’s very own Morrissey from the 17th; while a little way down the concourse, the thoroughly unsavory-looking creature, complete with foul clothes and a long, licey beard, is young Sam DeSoto, a man with whom Haggard has never worked. It always makes him uneasy, working with someone he doesn’t know. And this DeSoto is young, little more than a novice. But his record is outstanding. Already he has made a quick name for himself at the 41st. Right now he appears to be loitering there for vaguely immoral purposes.

  Haggard orders a second beer, nibbles a hard-boiled egg from the free-lunch counter, and prepares for a long siege.

  It is a game of watching now. If they come at all, the detective reasons, it will be after the lunch hour, when the crowds thin out. Then people still lingering there will be conspicuous by their presence. For this reason Haggard and his small force have worked out a plan of rotation. If no one shows at locker 2384 within an hour, Haggard will leave the Savarin bar and stroll outside to a waiting unmarked police car where, by means of radio and highly sophisticated transponding
equipment, he will maintain contact with the other four men still inside.

  Donnello, his shoes now shined, has already left. But he’s gone only a short way off—up to the mezzanine by the Ticketron booth that juts out above the main station. He cannot see the bank of lockers from that point. Nor can anyone in that area see him. But he can see Morrissey working behind the baggage counter and Morrissey can see him easily enough to make the most innocuous of hand gestures abundantly clear.

  Freddie Zabriskie has now strolled to a magazine stand and proceeds to thumb through Playboy and Penthouse beneath the hostile glare of the newsstand attendant. Soon he too will go. And then, finally, DeSoto. That will leave only Morrissey, who, because of his official position behind the baggage counter, can remain indefinitely without raising suspicion. Then, if no one has shown by 1:15 to pick up the bag, a whole new platoon of four will take over. Four new faces, completely unrecognizable to anyone who happens to be somewhere in the vicinity watching.

  By 1 p.m. Haggard is still leaning up against the bar at the Savarin. Other than Morrissey, he is the last of his group still there. Though he will wait until 1:15 as planned, he does not seriously think anyone will show. Not this first time anyway. This is merely a test to see how Konig will perform, and that, he is sure, they are closely monitoring. For, if it were to become apparent to Meacham’s people that the area around the baggage lockers was staked out, or if, indeed, they did send a pick-up man and it became evident that the man was being followed, Lauren Konig’s life wouldn’t be worth a plugged nickel. Haggard knows there are two things they must not do. If a pick-up man does show, they must not move in too quickly, before the man can lead them back to Meacham; and if they do follow a pick-up man, under no circumstances may they lose him.

  Glancing across at locker 2384, still locked, its contents still untouched, Haggard wipes his mouth with a napkin and picks his change off the bar, leaving a half dollar for the bartender. The big clock above the station says 1:15, and just as the detective moves out through the glass doors of the Savarin bar, a short, stocky fellow with a glabrous dome and enormous mustaches sweeps in. Sergeant Leo Wershba of the 17th Precinct, first man of the second rotation, is now in place.

  Out once more in the busy concourse, Haggard pauses to light a cigarette. Another man by the name of DeGarmo, up from the 22nd, is just then climbing up to the chair at the Esquire shoe stand.

  Haggard will now stroll at a leisurely pace out of the station and take up his vigil in the unmarked patrol car standing just outside the station at the Vanderbilt Avenue exit. On his way out he passes Morrissey, wrestling a bulky carton up onto the baggage counter beneath the stem glare of a petulant old lady who is loudly rebuking him.

  Just then the 1:25 from Hartford pulls in. The track gates open and Haggard is caught up in a swarm of detraining passengers. For some reason he turns, and just as he rounds the corner he sees, or thinks he sees, someone standing before the wall lockers in the immediate vicinity of 2384. Is the person about to insert a key? He can’t be sure. The angle of his vision is such that he can’t be sure precisely where the person is standing with relation to locker 2384. And besides, there are now two other totally unrelated people in the area about to pick up luggage from the same wall of lockers.

  In the momentary flash in which Haggard had seen this figure, he had an impression of a person of average stature, a somewhat seedy, innocuous-looking creature in a raincoat. But he can’t be certain. He’s tempted to circle and come around again for a second look. Or even just to glance back. But either action would be perilously stupid. Anyone observing that area from a secreted spot, seeing a man of Haggard’s large, imposing stature suddenly turn, wheel about, even casually double back on his tracks, would pick that out in a minute. No—he must go directly on now. Straight out of the station to the waiting car.

  Just as he is leaving, he glances up, sees Donnello, on the mezzanine, suddenly turn, then leave very quickly. Then, a bit off to his right, his gaze falls on Morrissey, nodding almost imperceptibly at him.

  »54«

  “How the hell would I know?”

  “You got the serial numbers on the invoice right there in front of you, don’t you?”

  “So what the hell does that mean?”

  “That copy number 3118 of the Clintonian passed through here.”

  “So it passed through here. So big deal. So did nineteen hundred and ninety-nine other copies of the goddamned paper pass through here. You think I know where I sent each one of them?”

  “It’s just possible?”

  1:45 P.M. STANLEY CHARLES AND CO.,

  452 WEST 49TH STREET.

  Stanley Charles stops short in his tracks and laughs out loud. It’s a short, fierce laugh. Flynn comes to a dead halt behind him, almost piling directly into him.

  “Just possible?” Charles laughs again. “You gotta be kidding.”

  They’re standing in the middle of a large warehouse crammed full from floor to ceiling with magazines and newspapers. The storage area is divided into rows and aisles made up of towers of publications waiting to be sent somewhere. A half-dozen or so workmen move through these aisles wrestling huge cartons on and off a fork-lift truck.

  Mr. Stanley Charles is a short, brusque man of unbridled energy. A lean, ulcerous-looking fellow who seems always to be smoldering inwardly. Standing now in the middle of one of those narrow aisles, made stuffy and airless from the effect of tons of paper pressing inward, Mr. Charles glares at Flynn.

  “I must take care of at least forty stands in that area. You think I know where the hell I sent one lousy goddamned newspaper. For Chrissake. Look—I’m busy here—”

  Clipboard in hand, Mr. Charles goes barging up the dusty aisle with Flynn in hot pursuit.

  “You mean you could’ve sent that paper to any one of forty outlets?”

  “More like a hundred, pal. I didn’t mention the cigar stores, the luncheonettes, the drugstores, the markets—”

  Another short, fierce laugh. Flynn is momentarily buffaloed.

  “Okay—can you at least tell me this-—”

  “Tell you what?”

  “When those papers come in here from Triangle, how do they arrive?”

  “On a truck. How the hell else would they arrive? On a goddamned camel?”

  Flynn reddens. “I know on a truck. What I mean is—in a carton? In separate packages? How?”

  “Separate packages of fifty.”

  “Packages of fifty.” Flynn’s face brightens. His slight expression of pleasure is a source of great irritation to Mr. Charles.

  “So what the hell does that tell you? Just that you got forty packages of newspapers to distribute. Don’t tell you where the hell you sent them.”

  “How do they come off the truck?” Flynn goes on doggedly.

  Mr. Charles screeches to another halt. “If you think they come off in numerical order with serial numbers attached, and then I send them out again in numerical order with serial numbers attached to a hundred separate invoices—”

  “Well, don’t you?”

  Mr. Charles’s goitrous eyeballs bulge even more ominously than usual. Unable to speak, he is reduced to a few choked splutters. Flynn recalls Mr. Murray Bloom’s parting words to him when he was leaving the Triangle Printing Corporation—the business about telling Charles that he was a cop and there to collect past-due bills. Standing now with bulging eyes and wattles quivering, Mr. Stanley Charles does have the look of a badly harried man with a surfeit of past-due bills on his desk.

  “You must be crazier than I thought you were,” he snarls. “Look, I got no more time for this. I’m up to my ass in problems here.” He jerks his clipboard up and once again starts pedaling madly up the aisle.

  “Okay, okay.” Flynn scoots after him. “You say you got about a hundred customers in that area?”

  “Mister, I got thousands of customers. All over this goddamned city. Thousands of ’em. See?”

  “But you said around a hundred i
n that area.”

  “If I said that, that’s what it is.”

  Charles halts before a newly delivered crate of girlie magazines with fairly lurid covers and titles—Black Leather, Satanic Nights, Dears and Rears, and other such items. Charles glances at the cover of one and shakes his head. “Look at this garbage,” he mutters and in the next moment plunges ahead.

  “Well, what I wanna know is”—Flynn puffs along behind him—“did every one of these hundred customers of yours take a delivery of this Clintonian?”

  “Some did. Some didn’t.”

  “Which ones did?”

  “Oh—is that all you want to know?” Charles smirks at him. “That’s easy, fella. All I gotta do is go into my books and dig out every one of those invoices for March thirtieth and see which ones took the Clintonian. Crazy. All crazy,” he mutters and moves on.

  “Is that hard?”

  Charles laughs again. But this one is not short and fierce. Instead it’s rather languid, world-weary. Tinged with exhaustion and futility. “You’re a lulu, pal. A real lulu.”

  “Well, what’s the big deal?” Flynn scurries after the wiry little man. “I’ll dig ’em out. Just show me where your books are.”

  “Books. Books.” Mr. Charles smiles mournfully. “I got books here up to my ears. Books coming out of my ass. I need a whole new warehouse just for books. Books? You couldn’t begin to—Look”—he whirls around, suddenly compassionate, a note of pleading in his voice—“you think them hundred names are all in a neat little , pile somewhere with a ribbon tied around them? They’re in a huge central card index around a block and a half long. All in alphabetical order. Someone would have to go through those files, look at every address and zip code and see which ones are in Clinton. There are thousands of cards in there. You know how long that’d take?”

  “Don’t you have a billing department that keeps that information right at hand?”