City of the Dead

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City of the Dead Page 38

by Herbert Lieberman


  Mr. Siegel looks up, that most kindly of smiles beaming upon Flynn.

  “Very pretty.” The detective nods appreciatively. “Very pretty indeed. What does it mean?”

  “It’s a passage on the Cities of Refuge. The places where a criminal may or may not seek sanctuary. Would you like me to translate it for you?”

  “Yes—I’d like that.”

  The old man adjusts the glasses on his nose and peers back into his book:

  And if he smite him with an instrument of iron, so that he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death.

  And if he smite him with a stone in the hand, and he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death.

  Or if he smite him with a hand weapon of wood, and he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death.

  The revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer: when he meeteth him, he shall slay him.

  Mr. Siegel closes his book. Outside there is a flash of heat lightning and a distant rumble of thunder. “Rain,” he murmurs quietly.

  “Looks like it,” Flynn agrees. “Tell me something. Of all your customers here in the neighborhood, you don’t by chance happen to have a Salvation Army officer?”

  “Salvation Army officer?” Mr. Siegel’s eyes narrow and he ponders a bit. “Those fellows in the black uniform with the red collar, the peaked hat?”

  “That’s right.”

  Mr, Siegel smiles brightly. “I got one of them.”

  Flynn’s heart leaps in his chest. “You do?”

  “Sure—that’d be the colonel.”

  “The colonel?” There’s a moment of silence. “Colonel who?”

  The old man stares up at the ceiling trying to recall. “Let me see—takes a Post weekdays, Daily News Sunday mornings. Has it delivered.”

  “You don’t know his name?”

  “Hold on a minute.” Mr. Siegel goes to the back of the store, disappearing into a back room, only to reappear the next moment bearing a small, gray ledger book. It is one of those cheap paperbound ledgers, full of pink-ruled lines and smudgy inked entries. The old man thumbs through hectically, licking a finger every now and then to make the pages fly more swiftly.

  “Ah, here,” he says, halting finally at a page and adjusting his glasses, which keep slipping down his nose. “Colonel Divine,” he announces triumphantly. “Colonel Joseph Divine. That’s the fellow—610 West 49th. Just a few doors down the block here.”

  Flynn feels something like butterflies flutter in his stomach, a slow but inexorably mounting sense of excitement. “Can I see that a minute?”

  “Sure.” Mr. Siegel hands the detective the ledger book. Flynn scribbles the name and address from it onto his pad. “Just down the block you say?”

  “Sure. Old brownstone near the corner. He do something wrong?”

  “Who knows?” Flynn shrugs, his face a little flushed. “Can I use your phone?”

  “Sure. It’s in the back. Help yourself.”

  At the rear of the store Flynn dials the precinct house, arranging to have a squad car meet him at the brownstone on 49th Street. Then he is out front again with Mr. Siegel.

  “How much I owe you?”

  “For what?”

  “The lemon-lime.”

  Mr. Siegel, looking more patriarchal than ever, shakes his hoary, white-maned head and dismisses the offer of money with a broad, regal motion of his arm.

  After the glass door has closed behind him, with the, sound of little entry bells tinkling out after him into the street, Flynn glances back to wave farewell to Mr. Siegel. But the old man is already hunched over the counter again, elbows on the bar, cheeks resting in either palm,, back deep in his Bible.

  Outside in the street it is now thick dusk. The street lamps have just gone on. Children are playing tag around some trash cans on the pavement and young Puerto Rican couples stroll eastward, arm in arm, toward the great Saturday-evening glow of white lights shimmering above the Times Square area. The old sit in the windows and merely watch.

  Another long gash of heat lightning turns the sky momentarily white above the river, and in the close, balmy air there is an imminence of rain.

  Six ten West 49th Street is a three-story brownstone near the end of the block, quite close to Eleventh Avenue. It is one of those houses built around the turn of the century, in the gaslight era of the city. Once an elegant town house for a banker or a wealthy merchant, now it has been partitioned into a number of small dwelling units (efficiency apartments, they’re called) and has fallen upon hard times.

  In the small tiled vestibule downstairs is a narrow wall into which are set eight badly defaced mailboxes. The dim light flickering above them provides scarcely enough illumination for reading the names: Moody—Grayson—Donnelly—Terhune—Horwitz—two more scarcely legible—then, on a neat, elegantly printed little card, the name Divine, apartment 3B.

  There is no buzzer so Flynn cannot ring to announce himself. The glass door between vestibule and hallway stands open, its lock having been removed in toto and never replaced. So the detective merely walks in.

  Standing in the hallway, he can hear voices behind doors, footsteps, a hi-fi blaring the Eroica, kitchen sounds, people going about supper and life.

  Before starting up the narrow, rickety stairs, Flynn’s hand grazes lightly the area where the pistol in its holster rests snugly just beneath his armpit. Outside he can hear the rain starting to drill heavily on the pavements.

  Mounting those stairs now, the steps creaking beneath his shoes, he has a strange sense of exhilaration, like a man who’s been climbing a long time, who can see the summit now just a few feet ahead. And there is that heady buoyancy of the second wind. It all has a kind of inevitability about it. Particularly since the name Divine, which appeared on Stanley Charles’s paper-route list, also appeared on General Pierce’s ten-year-old duty roster, the one from the old South Street Salvation Army shelter.

  Number 3B is in the far corner of the hall, looking out, Flynn surmises, over the back of the building. The name plate on the door says “J. Divine.” Before ringing, the detective stands quietly outside the door listening for sounds from within. But there are no sounds. Nor does any light appear from beneath the door. He smiles oddly there in the shadows, shaking his head. Then he presses the small white buzzer to the side of the door.

  He can hear the sound of the buzzer ringing within, and then a cat meows. Then silence. After a moment he rings again. This time he hears—or thinks he hears—the squeal of springs. Possibly a person rising from a couch or sitting up in bed. Then he hears something like the sound of a throat being cleared of phlegm, followed by the words “Just a minute” pouring muffled through the plaster walls. In the next minute he hears footsteps, then a crack of light glares beneath the door.

  He is staring up now at a tall, strikingly handsome man with a shock of iron-gray hair. The rimless glasses from out of which gaze two greatly magnified eyes give him a parsonical look—faintly disapproving.

  “Colonel Divine?” Flynn hears his voice coming back at him over great distances.

  “Yes.”

  “Sergeant Flynn—New York Police, Sixth Homicide Division. I wonder if I might have a few words with you.”

  »63«

  6:15 P.M. THE HAGGARD APARTMENT, PARKCHESTER, THE BRONX.

  Shirt-sleeved, a small, pink dotted-swiss apron tied around his middle, Francis Haggard hovers over a sink full of supper dishes. While the water runs and suds rise about his elbows, he broods on the events of the day. Facts gathered at the Bureau that afternoon shuttle and flash through his head, and he toys with the idea of a quick run up to Boston.

  Greatly troubled and perplexed, his chief worry now is that Konig, given any chance, will act alone, without the police. And given the disaster of the day before, he could scarcely blame him if he did.

  The shrill whistle of a boiling teakettle jars him from his ruminations. Shortly he’s steeping tea leaves in
a small china pot, then pouring that into a rich mixture of cream and honey.

  Looking ludicrous in the pink apron, he carries a tray, its contents rattling slightly, out through the living room, down a short hall, and into a bedroom.

  Mary Haggard sits in bed there, in a blue silk lounging robe, watching television. She is a small, pretty woman with vivacious eyes and blond hair going prematurely gray. On the bed table beside her is a stack of books, novels and histories, plus a tray of medications. On the big plaid comforter covering the bed are a nearly completed jigsaw puzzle depicting the Botticelli Primavera and a chessboard with a game half completed and waiting there for Frank Haggard to resume.

  In the corner near the bed is Mary Haggard’s wheelchair. The victim of a slowly worsening neuromuscular disease, she has used that chair for nearly the full twenty years of her marriage.

  Displacing the books from their spot on the table, Haggard carefully sets the tray down beside the large double bed. Next he spreads a napkin across his wife’s lap, then pours her tea.

  “Isn’t it beautiful, Frank?” she says, taking the tea from him, her eyes still focused on the TV. There on the large color screen is a spectacular view of the Grand Tetons.

  “Wyoming?” he asks.

  “Yes. It’s a travelogue. Sit down and watch a while.”

  She makes room for him beside her on the bed, but he will not discomfort her. “I’ll stand. I’ve been sitting all day.”

  And so, arms folded, leaning against the wall in his apron, the detective hovers above his wife, watching the screen and still thinking about Boston. Gone is the surly, growling manner he reserves for the office and the precinct houses. With Mary Haggard he becomes uxorious, attentive, almost courtly.

  “Can’t get over how lovely it is,” she says. On the screen a great six-point stag saunters majestically down to the shore of one of those tiny gemlike lakes sequestered, still and timeless, high in the mountain forests of the Yellowstone. Suddenly she looks up at him, smiling. “Wish we could go.”

  “Someday, maybe.” He smiles quietly down at her, knowing she would never be able to make the trip.

  Suddenly the phone rings out in the kitchen. Haggard’s legs are moving instantly. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Who?”

  A hoarse, gruff voice, thick with sibilants and a heavy accent, jabbers frantically at him.

  “Who?”

  “Guzman—Guzman. Antonio Guzman.”

  “Oh, yes—Mr. Guzman.”

  “Das right. You remember? Da superintendent. You come up here. We spoke a couple days ago.”

  “That’s right. I remember.”

  Mr. Guzman proceeds to jabber more frantically. He speaks in a whisper, as if he feared being overheard. His sibilants crackle and hiss so sharply through the phone that Haggard has to hold the receiver away from his ear. Intelligible words come to him only in snatches. “Dem guys—”

  “Who?”

  “Dem guys. Dem guys. Wit’ the bombs—”

  “They’re there?”

  “Yeah—das what I’m say in’. They come back again. Just like you say. They here now.” His voice cracks and he coughs violently into the phone. “Movin’ out stuff. Loadin’ up a car. You told me to call, remember?”

  “I remember,” Haggard nearly shouts, tearing off his apron. “Can you stall them there awhile?”

  “No, man. I ain’t gonna mess wit’ dem. No way. Dey’re bad. Bad.”

  “How many?”

  “Four. You betta hurry. They ain’t gonna stay aroun’ all night.”

  “All right. I’m coming right over.”

  Haggard flings the phone back into the cradle, starts out, comes back, makes two fast phone calls. Then he strides back to the bedroom, composing himself so as not to alarm his wife.

  “Gotta go out,” he says, rolling down his sleeves. Mary Haggard watches him strap on his shoulder holster.

  “Trouble?” she asks, unruffled by the haste in which he must leave. She has lived with Frank Haggard long enough to understand and accept the irregular pattern and rhythm of his life.

  He shrugs. “Maybe. Anyway, I called Mrs. Grogin. She’s coming right over to sit with you. Don’t touch that chess game. Figure I got you checkmated the next three moves.” He slips into his jacket, then, holding her chin in his great raw, red paddle of a hand, he stoops to kiss her.

  “Be careful, dear.”

  “No sweat,” he growls happily. “Don’t wait up. Dream of the Tetons. I got a couple of weeks coming to me. Who knows? Maybe we’ll go this spring.”

  It’s no distance from Parkchester in the east Bronx to Fox Street in the south Bronx. In fifteen minutes’ time Haggard has pulled his Pontiac Le Mans convertible out of the garage, pointed it west on Tremont Avenue, blazing through West Farms to Southern Boulevard, then south on into the no man’s land the police call Fort Apache. It is a grim landscape strewn with sprawling tenements and abandoned buildings crawling with rats and junkies. There is the look of a bombed-out city about it, a place of undeclared war where the grim battle of survival, even at the basest level, is perpetually waged. Finally Haggard turns west, into Fox Street.

  Full darkness has descended over the scene and only the dim orange glow of a solitary street lamp, the rest having been stoned out by marauding gangs of teenagers, illuminates the night.

  Fox Street is narrow. The crowded tenement buildings huddling there appear to arch inward above the street, blacking out any view of the sky. Cars are parked on either side of the street, but there are no people in the street People don’t walk on Fox Street after dark.

  The moment Haggard turns the corner into Fox Street he sees what he’s looking for. There, double-parked in the street up ahead, beneath the single street lamp, is a black late-model station wagon. Its doors are open, its tailgate down. Several people are scurrying around it in the dim light.

  The detective cruises slowly to within twenty feet of it and watches for a while unnoticed. Finally he withdraws the .38-caliber police special from its holster and steps out into the night. Crossing casually to the station wagon he is aware of his own accelerated heartbeat and the sound of his footsteps ringing on the empty pavements.

  He reaches the station wagon just as a burly, panting figure lumbers from the building, hauling a large table-model TV to the car. There’s a great deal of noise and activity from within the station wagon, where several people, unaware of the detective standing there, are busy packing clothing, luggage, odds and ends of furniture. Just as the burly figure, grunting with his burden, is about to shove the TV in over the tailgate, he glances up and notices the tall, white-haired figure waiting patiently there beside the car.

  Haggard stands silently peering into the startled face. It’s a face the detective knows well, having seen it dozens of times in the last few days on mug shots, wanted posters, police files, FBI dossiers. In the hazy glow of the street lamp, the big, thick acromegalic features, the abnormally large head, are even more apelike, more grotesque than in the photographs.

  Still holding the TV, Janos Klejewski stares blankly at the tall man with the white fleecy hair, then down at the .38-caliber police special pointed squarely at his belly. In the next moment his head snaps sharply, first right, then left, his eyes sweeping the street just in time to see the two 16th Precinct patrol cars Haggard had called for from home turn the corners and wheel slowly toward them from each end of the street.

  “Hello, Kunj.” The detective smiles warmly and points to the TV. “Can I give you a hand with that?”

  »64«

  SUNDAY, APRIL 21. 2:55 A.M. CANAL STREET.

  Paul Konig sits alone in his car on the edge of Chinatown. He is parked on the south side of Canal Street close to its extreme east end. The nose of the car is facing the huge illuminated towers of the Brooklyn Bridge. On the seat beside him is the Gladstone bag.

  He has been sitting there now for well over a half-hour, having set out at approximately 1:30 from Riverdale. It is driz
zly outside after a heavy April drenching and from time to time Konig wipes his windshield with a wad of Kleenex to keep it clear. The wide-arc street lamps poised like rows of sentinels along the street are all circled with white gauzy halations.

  Once again Konig checks his wristwatch, following closely the progress of the minute hand creeping across the face of the dial.

  If it was privacy Meacham wanted in order to negotiate their transaction, he certainly had it. At that hour of the morning there is no traffic, and except for the occasional Bowery wino huddling in a doorway or a Chinese waiter scurrying homeward, there is virtually no one in the street. Most of the restaurants have already dimmed their lights and closed. Only where Konig sits does a solitary red neon dragon, with lights that run up and down its silhouette, blink hypnotically in the mist-hung night.

  At exactly 2:58 Konig turns the key in his ignition. The engine turns over and he slips the car into drive. Before edging out onto the causeway leading to the bridge, he glances back over his shoulder to make certain that he himself is not being followed by the police. Once he has satisfied himself on that score, he proceeds to roll out.

  The cobbled road over the bridge is slick from the rain and he moves slowly, not so much as a matter of precaution, but as a matter of timing. He wants to arrive precisely at 3 a.m. With the exception of the big subway cars rattling along beside him on the bridge, there is nothing in sight.

  Somewhere just past the midpoint of the bridge it occurs to Konig that his mouth is very dry, his palms moist. But aside from a few vague, unarticulated misgivings, he is sanguine about the outcome of events.

  Approaching the Brooklyn end of the bridge, he wipes the misted windshield again with the balled Kleenex and squints through the glass. Up ahead he can see nothing, and at the prospect of that, his heart begins to sink.

  Glancing quickly at the illuminated dial of his watch, he sees that it is now exactly 3 a.m. Konig rolls to a stop at the far end of the bridge, shuts down the ignition, turns off the lights, and waits. The cold drizzle drums forlornly on the roof and hood. There is nothing in sight and he is profoundly alone. It’s unthinkable that they would drag him out here at three in the morning and then, as a kind of test, or possibly just out of revenge, not show. Unthinkable. Or is it?

 

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