The Hidden Hand of Death

by Lawrence J Epstein

“I want one in particular. She goes by a few names. One of them is Norah London.”

  Fingers stared at me. It was not a pleasant look.

  “You know?”

  “I know Ice Pick is supposed to kill her.”

  “Maybe it would be a good idea if you sipped your malted milk and kept your nose out of our business, Ryder.”

  “I don’t doubt it. But it’s personal.”

  “You got five thousand on you?”

  “You remember Mickey?”

  “Oh, don’t bring that up again. Yeah, you did us a big favor. Mickey was crazy. No one would go near him. And you made him disappear good. Lepke was real happy with you. But we paid you.”

  “A discount. Now we’ll be even. In fact, I’ll owe Lepke one.”

  “You’ll kill anybody we ask?”

  “You know I don’t do that, Fingers. You got a guy that lost control. He kills innocents. I’m the one to get rid of him.”

  “Ice Pick is from out of town.”

  “So it won’t disrupt your business. No one has to know. He just maybe goes back to Detroit.”

  “I’m not big enough to make that kind of deal, Ryder.”

  I shrugged. “Then don’t make it. Give me his address and then we both forget we ever met.”

  “This don’t come back on me?”

  “No.”

  “I need a thousand for it.”

  “You need five hundred. And that’s a gift.”

  “You got it on you?”

  I reached into my pocket. I had already put a rubber band around the bills.

  “Write out the address.”

  “I don’t know if he found the girl yet.”

  “Just give me the address.”

  “It’s a hotel.”

  Fingers wrote out the hotel’s name and Ice Pick’s room number.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t come back here for a while.”

  “You can count on my absence.”

  Taking the slip of paper with the address, I left the store, found a subway, and made my way to the hotel.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Three Crowns Hotel was, fittingly enough, in Crown Heights. Despite its lofty name, the Three Crowns was shabby. The carpets were thin. The wallpaper was falling off in places. The roof had a leak. The beds were small and hard. The paint was peeling. Even the house cat was too thin.

  I had a good instinct about who took bribes. There was a hunger on their faces, a desperate look of searching for that magical pair of dice, the poker hand that would never require another game, the way to figure out for certain how the Dodgers would do.

  The man I selected to take my bribe was very thin, as though he were arm-wrestling life and losing.

  I handed over a twenty-dollar bill to him.

  “What kind of action you lookin’ for?” the man asked. “I got a dame make your limbs shiver.”

  “I want to find out about a guest. He goes by the name of Chester Harrison.”

  “I take it that ain’t his name.”

  “I know his room number.”

  “And you need…?”

  “I need to know what he looks like and if he’s in the room.”

  “You a cop?”

  “A cop give you money every day?”

  The man chuckled. “Not any day.” He paused. “Just a minute.”

  The man wandered over to the front desk. He was back in three minutes.

  “Guy you’re looking for is real big. Eats in the dining room every day at exactly noon. An hour before that he takes a walk. Yesterday he went to Bed-Stuy I been told. After the walk he goes back and changes for lunch. My guess is he sweats a lot because of his size.”

  “What else about his appearance?”

  The man shrugged. “Curly black hair. Bags under his eyes. But it’s his size you can’t miss. The girl there says he’s maybe three hundred pounds. She’s not so bright, but he’s heavy.”

  I checked my watch.

  “It’s ten minutes after eleven. So he’s out walking now?”

  “Yeah. I guess so.”

  “Call his room for me, will ya?”

  “Another twenty and no one will know you was here.”

  I gave him another twenty, stared hard into his face, and said, “This comes with some advice, mister. Don’t ask for any more money. And don’t look too much at me.”

  The man nodded and called the room.

  There was no answer.

  I skipped the elevator and ran up to the room. I used my skeleton key and got inside.

  I liked hotel rooms. They were small and relatively easy to search. I began by looking under the bed. Then the closet. I opened each drawer and checked to make sure no papers were stuffed behind them.

  Then I went to the bedside table and pulled the drawer open. I saw the Bible and closed the drawer.

  Then I stopped.

  I opened the drawer again and pulled out the Bible. I started riffling through the pages.

  A single piece of paper fluttered in the air and fell on the bed.

  I put the Bible back and looked at the paper.

  It just had an address. It was an apartment in Queens near the airport.

  I folded the paper and put it in my jacket pocket.

  Then I sat in a chair and waited.

  I heard the key in the door twenty minutes later.

  Ice Pick came inside. He was breathing heavily. Then he looked up and saw me. Or maybe he saw the .45 I was pointing at him with my right hand. The weapon had a silencer. Ice Pick knew immediately that whoever the man was holding the .45, he knew how to use it.

  “You coulda shot me as soon as I walked inside. So what do ya want?”

  “Hello Ice Pick.”

  “And you are?”

  “I’m a friend of the boys of the candy shop here in Brooklyn.”

  “I got an agreement all set.”

  “I know.”

  “Listen. I’m joking with them about asking for more money.”

  “You know the girl is in Queens.”

  “Sure. I got her address. I just thought everyone found her hard to find. So I figured I deserved a bonus. You know what I mean?”

  “You shouldn’t play around with any of these guys. This isn’t Detroit.”

  “What do ya want mister? We can share the dough.”

  “What about the family you’re supposed to kill?”

  “Yeah. First I got to get rid of the sister. Then this family.”

  “Who gave the orders for that?”

  “Hey, mister, you know the rules.”

  “Everett Remington hired the boys in the candy shop and they hired you because he wanted someone from out of town.”

  “You know so much why are you asking me?”

  I ignored his question.

  “You want some advice?”

  “I ain’t too good about listenin’ to people.”

  “Get good Ice Pick. Go back to Detroit. Start a cleaning store or a fruit stand.”

  “They can’t let me go if I don’t do it. You know that. I don’t kill the girl, they’ll just send someone else. And they’ll send someone after me. Everett has to get even don’t he? I mean it’s all for his brother.”

  “You gonna go back to Detroit?”

  “Sure. It’s my home. Right after I kill the sister. Then I’ll go home and plan getting the family.”

  I shot him in the forehead. The noise was loud despite the silencer. I opened the room door. There was no one in the hall.

  Then I picked up the phone.

  “Yeah, Tommy please. Tell him it’s Jack Ryder.”

  After thirty seconds, a voice came on the line. “Hey, Ryder. You got how many bodies for me?”

  “It’s a slow day, Tommy. Just one.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Send two men you can trust. They pick up a heavy guy in Room 319 of the Three Kings.”

  “He gonna put up a fight?”

  “Somebody just shot him. His fighting da
ys are over.”

  “I like bodies like that. So we get him. I take it you want us to bring him back here to the funeral home.”

  “No. Take him to the potato field on the East End of Long Island. You know which one?”

  “Of course.

  “Bury him good, Tommy. I don’t want cops or dogs or anyone ever to find him.”

  “You pay the rate you get a body that won’t be found.” A pause. “You gonna stay there until my men come, Ryder?”

  “I got to make sure there’s no trouble. I’ll be here.”

  I paused. “Listen, Tommy, this is a good day for you. I’m also going to need a body. Real recent.”

  “Okay. Describe what you want.”

  I gave the details.

  “That’s easy.”

  “Tommy, you do this fast you get double the rate. And I want good people preparing the body.”

  “Hey, I’m insulted Ryder.”

  “Sorry. I’m just on edge.”

  “Okay. My men are on the way. You sit tight.”

  I paced and then sat and then kept checking the hallway. I was disappointed in one way. I had planned to put the .45 in a brown bag with bricks and throw it off the Brooklyn Bridge. Now, there would be no body. No weapon to check.

  I thought about reading the Bible to pass the time. They used to make us read Bible stories in the orphanage. I liked the one about Noah’s Ark. But by the time he decided not to do any reading, the two men I was waiting for gently knocked at the door. They were wearing white uniforms

  No words were spoken. The men were very muscular. They covered the body and put it on the stretcher. Then they walked out, struggling with the heavy body, and went down the back stairs to the basement where they had parked.

  I went downstairs.

  “Listen,” I said to the man I had bribed, “The gentleman I asked about has left. He had an appointment but didn’t have time to check out. He asked me to set things right for him with the hotel. Here’s some dough to pay his final bill.”

  The man looked at the money, was surprised at the amount, and then looked up.

  I nodded. “Yeah, it’s too much. The rest is for you for doing this. Just forget he was here. Of course forget I was here.”

  “That’s a lot of forgetting mister.”

  I handed him an additional fifty dollars.

  “This should help you forget.”

  “My memory is getting worse by the minute.”

  I walked outside into the sunlight. I liked Brooklyn. I liked how the shadows made angles, how the people moved with a toughness. How the breezes played their own tunes along the sidewalks. And, of course, I liked the Dodgers.

  I walked to the subway. I was headed to Queens to see Norah London.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I found the street where Norah London lived and then the building. She was in a garden apartment complex that started on 78th Street in Flushing. The apartments looked relatively new.

  There was a large weeping willow tree in the front yard of her apartment. There were three attached apartments on the left and three more on the right. There wasn’t much of a garden, I decided. It was too near the airport. It was for people with young children doing their best to survive the war and see if one day they could wind up in the middle class.

  I went to the building on my left and then inside the first apartment building on the right. There was a door leading to a basement on the left.

  There was a stairway just after the door to the basement. The stairway led to the apartment above. Norah lived downstairs on the first floor. Her door was on the right.

  I knocked.

  “Who’s there?”

  The voice was soft and tentative, a young woman very scared and very justified to be scared.

  “Norah, there are men looking for you because of your sister. I have a plan to save you.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Maybe it would be better to speak someplace privately. If you’re afraid to let me in, let’s meet someplace for coffee.”

  The door opened.

  It took a few seconds for me to recognize her. I had seen pictures, but this young woman had changed her appearance. Her hair was now blonde and very curly. She had lost some weight. Too much weight, I thought. Her cheeks were hollow. Her face looked as though a master thief had stolen the life from her eyes.

  “Come in. Only if you’re going to shoot me, do it right away. I don’t like to suffer.”

  I went inside. The kitchen was on the right and directly after it there was a nook for eating. I walked over to the table in the nook and sat down.

  Norah London sat down opposite me.

  “You didn’t tell me your name.”

  “Jack Ryder.”

  “Am I supposed to know you?”

  “No. A bad man hired me to track down your sister. I knew what he was going to do to her, so I made sure she got away. Unfortunately, someone else found her.”

  “Do you know where she’s buried?”

  “No. It’s under a building.”

  The woman shivered.

  “Why do they want me?”

  “They think your sister told you some secrets.”

  “But she didn’t.”

  “Listen, Miss London, you…”

  “Call me Norah. We’re on the verge of being friends.”

  “Okay, Norah. It doesn’t matter if your sister told you information or gave you papers. They have to act as though she did. This is not a group of people that takes chances.”

  “So what am I supposed to do? Hide for the rest of my life?”

  “No offense, Norah. One guy already tracked you down to this address. He’s no longer able to harm you, but if he found you others will be able to do so as well.”

  “You didn’t tell me what I should do, then?”

  “You’ve got to die.”

  Her face snapped back.

  “So you did come here to kill me.”

  “Of course not. I came here to save you.”

  “Then what’s this killing stuff all about?”

  “It’s got to appear to the people looking for you that you did die.”

  “That sounds hard.”

  “That’s my plan. I can do it. Only you’ve got to trust me.”

  “I’m not seeing too many other choices here.”

  “We’ve got to go into the city as soon as I arrange a meeting. It will be for tonight. You spend the day with me.”

  “No offense, mister, but you’re saying you’re going to save my life. I got that right?”

  “I plan to. Yes.”

  “But we don’t know each other.”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “Okay, so two questions. Why are you doing this and what’s it going to cost me? I don’t have a lot of money. And you’ve been looking me in the eye not roaming over my body. What’s your story?”

  “I help people in trouble. It’s as simple as that.”

  “I never heard of a job like that.”

  “I’m a fixer.”

  “And you just go around helping people? You think you’re gonna fix the world or something?”

  “It’s not as simple as that but that’s one way to understand it. I can’t fix the world, but I can fix your problem. I can’t even fix myself, but maybe I can help you.”

  “And exactly how am I paying you back? I mean you’re real cute, but my mama raised me to be a decent woman.”

  “It’s a free service. If you had a lot of money I’d ask for some. I wish you did. I could use it. But you don’t. So it’s free.”

  “You’re a strange man.”

  We sat for a minute. A loud plane flew overhead.

  “Those planes drive me nuts,” she said.

  I stared at her.

  “You want to go with me and we’ll try to fix your problem or do you want to try to make it on your own?”

  Norah London stood up, walked around to the other side of the table, bent down and kissed me on my right
cheek. She smelled nice. It was from soap not perfume. I liked that. It reminded me of Maggie.

  “Don’t say you didn’t get a payment.”

  I smiled. “I won’t. Listen. You’re not coming back here. You get to take one suitcase and any personal papers. Keep it all as light as possible.”

  “Where are we headed?”

  “To an all-night diner.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I called Simon Hill and arranged to meet the homicide detective at the diner at ten o’clock that evening, the earliest Hill could get there.

  Norah London and I walked through the crowded streets of the Lower East Side. The people fascinated her.

  “It used to be so packed that nurses had to walk on the roofs to get to the sick,” I told her.

  “Was there a lot of crime?”

  “Oh, sure. There were pickpockets who worked in the synagogues. A lot of places where you used drugs, especially opium, and lay down on a mattress to sleep.”

  “You must do a lot of fascinating work.”

  “It may sound like it, but you meet a lot of bad people who don’t care about other people.”

  “I once went out with a Pinkerton operative and he showed me his hand where he had been stabbed and his head where a brick had hit him.”

  “It’s a lot easier to watch a movie about criminals than to deal with them. Most of them are very dull. They’re not bright. They have hungers and they want those hungers satisfied. They’re very scary. Very. The movies get it all wrong. They’re not fascinating. They’re not amusing or fun or interesting to be with.”

  She turned to me. “Are you going to fight in the war?”

  “I can’t go. I tried. I’ve got a problem with my heart. I’d go if I could. I’d like to shoot as many Nazis as possible.”

  “They’re doing pretty well in Europe. Do you think they will ever come here?”

  I held her arm. “They’ll be sorry if they do. They’ll never get past Brooklyn. There are some very tough guys there.”

  She wasn’t sure at first that I was making a joke and then decided I was and so she laughed.

  “I’m scared of the war,” she said.

  I nodded. “You should be. A lot of good Americans are going to die. A lot of women are going to be made widows, sometimes with children to take care of.”

  “I’m scared of getting bombed. I read about London.”

  “We have no choice. We have to fight and we have to fight hard. We have nowhere to go.”