The Hidden Hand of Death

by Lawrence J Epstein

  “And so here I am, Gertie.”

  “Are you going to keep doing this, Ryder?”

  I shrugged. “I’m trapped again. The world’s on fire. Today, every decent person is Jewish on an honorary basis. Every decent person has to think about how to stop the Nazis.”

  I looked at Gertie.

  “I wish I could join the Army as soon as I wrap up. What remains is I have to find a missing woman and help her.”

  I looked down and then stared at Gertie. “I already tried to enlist and they turned me down. I have a thing with my heart. I’m a real tough guy, aren’t I?”

  “In the best way, Ryder.”

  “What about you, Gertie? This job is killing you.”

  “It has come close. I’ve got some escape money now, Ryder. But I don’t have the nerve to leave.”

  “Where would you go if you could leave?”

  “I’ve got a sister in Albany. She lives right by a hospital. She says they have nice diners in Albany if I need to earn extra money, but she says I can just stay with her. She said there’s no rent and she’ll feed me. All I’ve got to do is play bridge with her.”

  I laughed.

  “It sounds…”

  The front door of the diner opened.

  “What are you doing here?” Gertie screamed.

  “I’m your husband. Did you forget that? I can go wherever you are.”

  He walked over to her and grabbed her hair in the back of her head.

  “You didn’t leave me no dinner.”

  “Make your own dinner.”

  He slapped her.

  He reached out to hit her again, when a hand stopped him.

  I was standing next to him.

  “You stink of gin. Leave her alone.”

  “She ain’t your wife. She’s mine. She’s got to listen to me.”

  “She’s got to do whatever she wants.”

  “Take your hand off me. I’m going to smack her some more.”

  I punched him in the jaw, and he sank to the floor.

  “I wish I could do that,” Gertie said.

  “What do you want me to do with him?” I asked.

  “I’m calling the boss and saying I’m closing for the night. I can stay with a friend. Just drag him outside and leave him there.”

  I picked the man up by the scruff of his neck and deposited him just outside the door of the restaurant.

  “Take care of yourself, Ryder,” Gertie said. “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

  “You should go to Albany.”

  “I should have gone a thousand miles back. I can’t now.”

  She kissed me gently on the cheek.

  Then I took a long walk and disappeared into the night.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Detective Hill called. The German bookstore was closed. They had found the man who had given spies the naval plans. Karolin was arrested and then released. She had disappeared, but they weren’t looking for her.

  I had no idea where she had gone.

  Hill thanked me again for solving what turned out to be the murder of Hill’s sister. He told me to call him. I promised that he would.

  Hill hesitated.

  I said, “What’s the matter, Detective?”

  “I owe you, Ryder. About as much as one man can owe another. But if I tell you I am betraying friends and the force. And you’ll hate me. My number one rule in life is not to get a killer angry at me.”

  “I’m not going to shoot you Detective.”

  “I’ll be at the diner tomorrow.” He told me when. “I have to think about this.”

  “Think away I said,” and hung up.

  I was still tired and so lay down on the couch. There was a soft knock at the door.

  “Who’s there?” I called out as I walked over and stood on the side of the door. Twice, people had asked me to open it and then shot through the door.

  “It’s Norah London back from the dead.”

  I opened the door.

  There had been no shots.

  “You look different,” I said.

  “I’m supposed to. I’m in permanent disguise and hiding.”

  I invited her inside and made us both a cup of tea.

  “Listen, Ryder, I’m really sorry I ran away. I just got plain old scared.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  “I can’t tell you where I’ve been, where I am, or where I’m going to be.”

  “That’s going to make it difficult to find you. If I were going to spend my time looking for you. But I’m not. You’re free as can be.”

  We sat, drank tea, and talked. I came very close to feeling normal.

  “Listen,” she said. “I’ve got to go. I just wanted to tell you I’m still breathing. Thanks to you. I owe you so much that I can’t even calculate it.”

  “Take care of yourself Norah.”

  She stood, nodded, went over to kiss me on the cheek and quietly walked out the door.

  I sat for an hour thinking about the alternate routes my life might have taken. It was all a big mystery to me. I knew I didn’t always understand my own choices.

  But, I realized, it was time to stop thinking about myself.

  There was a tough world outside my door. I stood up and walked outside to face that world.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  I went to a movie the next day. After I walked out I couldn’t remember what I had seen.

  I arrived at the diner an hour early.

  “You look like you died, Ryder.”

  “No, Gertie. I’d look better if I actually had died. I’m meeting Detective Hill.”

  “Ho owes you.”

  “So he says. We’ll see what his payment is.”

  I had a cup of coffee and a muffin. My mind was strangely blank. I couldn’t even imagine what it was that he had to tell me.

  He walked into the diner slowly, as though he was dragging a cannon ball behind him.

  He sat down, ordered some tea and a piece of chocolate cake, and stared at me.

  “It’s your party,” I said.

  “This is very difficult for me.”

  “I have to drag this out of you, don’t I?”

  He was a Great Stone Face.

  “All right Detective. What’s going to be the subject of this discussion?”

  “Your wife.”

  Of all the words he could have uttered, the mention of Maggie was the last one I expected. I couldn’t even take a sip of coffee.

  “What about her?” My voice was low. It cracked.

  “You’re not going to like this, Ryder. Please keep both your hands on the table.”

  “I told you. I’m not going to shoot you.”

  “You’ll be tempted.”

  “Stop delaying. Say what it is you’ve got to say.”

  “All right. So we found your wife with a shotgun.”

  “And cleaning supplies.”

  “We found your wife with a shotgun.”

  I stopped for a minute.

  “How did the supplies get there?”

  “One of the detectives put it there. That was to confuse you. All right, it was to drive you crazy. We put it down as a suicide. The detective put the supplies there to give you a quarter of an inch of hope. He thought that would drive you nuts. The never-knowing I mean.”

  “That’s it? One of your guys added the supplies? I’m a big boy, Detective.”

  Hill sighed. Then he seemed to stop breathing. Then he sighed again.

  “No. That’s not it.”

  A long pause.

  “Her fingerprints weren’t on the shotgun. There was no gunshot residue on her hand. The angle of the shot was too high for her to have done it by herself.”

  I stared at him. Then I pounded my fist on the tabletop.

  Then I stood up and screamed.

  “Are you telling me someone killed my wife?”

  “Yes, Ryder. I am. We…I almost can’t say this. If I didn’t owe you so much you’d never ha
ve heard any of it.”

  He lowered his head.

  “We thought of blaming you.”

  “You mean framing me.”

  “Yes. It would have been easy. Get your prints on that weapon for starters.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “I swear, Ryder, I swear in the name of my dead sister. I was the one who stopped them.”

  “But you put it down as a suicide. You’re homicide detectives. You didn’t care who killed Maggie. She was Jack Ryder’s wife so what did it matter?”

  “You think I haven’t carried this around in my conscience?”

  “So you didn’t look at all for the killer?”

  “I made a search. I really did, Ryder. But there was no place to look. No offense, but you have a thousand enemies.”

  “You mean besides cops?”

  “Okay. That’s fair. You know what I meant. Maybe your friends at Murder Incorporated have an idea.”

  “No suspects?”

  “No.”

  “No place for me to start?”

  “No.”

  “I will call on you Detective Hill. You’re going to help me.”

  “You need me and it’s legal I’ll do whatever I can to help you, Ryder. You must know that.”

  “She was in our apartment when you found her?”

  “Of course.”

  “I can’t trust any information now about her death. Maybe she was in an alley and you dragged her back to where we lived.”

  “You moved, didn’t you?”

  “Of course I moved. I was choking on my memories. Every inch of that apartment carried a reminder of what she wore, or how she smelled, or how she laughed, or how she cried. I couldn’t stay there.”

  “I brought three hundred dollars. That’s all I have. It’s a down payment for my sister.”

  “Keep the money.”

  We both sat in what seemed to be a very noisy silence.

  “Why don’t you go now, Detective?”

  He didn’t speak a word but stood up and walked out.

  I knew it took some courage for him to tell me. If the other detectives on the case heard about it, Hill would become an outcast. They’d play nasty tricks on him. They’d turn their backs when he walked by. They wouldn’t eat with him.

  But he did speak up. He deserved credit for that.

  I wasn’t done with my efforts to fix what needed to be fixed.

  But how to begin? I was as unsure as Hill had been.

  I went out. I don’t remember where I walked. I think I bumped into two people, but if I did I wasn’t aware of it.

  I took a taxi to the 42nd Street library and sat down on the steps not far from one of the lions. Maybe all the knowledge in that majestic building would rub off on me.

  It wasn’t so much that I couldn’t get an idea. It was that I was so numbed by the realization that Maggie had been killed that no thought at all got through to my brain.

  I forced myself to drain the anger and the pity and the sorrow.

  I needed to know where to start.

  I needed an idea.

  And then I got one.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Larsen.

  I couldn’t recall his first name. I always called him Mr. Larsen. He was the manager of the building in which we had an apartment. He was a drunk who could finish a bottle and not show it. He always smelled of peppermint. It was an attempt to disguise the smell of whiskey. He was a sharp guy, though. He knew what was going on.

  I always thought he stole from some of the apartments. Little items, the kind owners might think they had misplaced.

  That was his liquor money. He reminded me of a guy who pumped gas for me. I always made sure to give him the exact cost of the gas. If I gave him a bill and needed change, he always somehow miscounted and I’d get two dollars instead of three. He put all the money he made from the scheme. That was his gambling money.

  I got to the apartment building and rang the manager’s bell. A man I didn’t recognize came to the door.

  He opened it and said, “Can I help you, buddy?”

  “I’m looking for Mr. Larsen. He used to work here.”

  The man made a scowl. “He was a drunken thief. He got fired.”

  “You know where he is now?”

  “No idea. But if I were you, I’d try Weinstein’s Bar around the corner. He always used to go there. If he still lives in the area, I bet he’d still go there where they know him.”

  “Thanks.”

  He closed the door and went back to his apartment.

  I went to Weinstein’s Bar. It was still mid-afternoon, a little early for the crowd that needed a drink to get through the rest of the day and the evening.

  I looked around and couldn’t see Larsen, so I sat at the bar.

  The bartender came over to me.

  I put down a twenty.

  “You planning to drink all that?” he asked.

  “I’m planning to give it to you if you tell me where I can find Mr. Larsen.”

  He checked his watch.

  “You’re a half-hour early.” Then he pointed to the other end of the bar. “That’s where he sits. You know what he looks like?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Then you can find him when he comes in. Have I earned the money?”

  “You have,” I said. “For the information and for letting me sit at a table without being bothered until he comes here.”

  “You want a drink?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a strange place to stay then.”

  “I have to think, and I need a clear mind to do the thinking.”

  “If more people did that, I’d be out of business. But you paid the rent for the table all right.”

  I went and sat down. I still couldn’t think very well. I wasn’t even sure what I was going to ask Larsen. I wasn’t sure he’d be able to help in any way.

  The half-hour passed slowly until a lightning bolt smacked into my mind. I had blocked it out before. Maybe it was shock. But sitting there my brain was suddenly flooded with guilt. I had the sudden realization that most probably Maggie was killed to punish me. I was responsible for her death. I had a deep wish that the earth would swallow me whole at that moment, that I’d disappear into the oblivion I deserved. I wondered how I could go on. I would find Maggie’s killer. But what was beyond that? Was there any point in living?

  It was forty minutes later that Mr. Larsen, his face redder than I remembered, came into the bar.

  I waved to him. He looked surprised and not entirely happy to see me. But he came over.

  “Mr. Ryder. I’m so sorry. I apologize. I never got to tell you how sorry I am. You and Mrs. Ryder were wonderful people. I wish there were people like you in every apartment.”

  He lowered his head.

  “Sometimes a cop would say it was too bad that Ryder was living there. And I’d always tell him Mr. Ryder, every time, that you were a gentleman who treated me good and everyone else the same way.”

  “Thank you Mr. Larsen. I appreciate that.”

  “So why are you here? I thought you was angry with me.”

  “No. Not at all. I’m here for your help.”

  “Me? How can I help you? I’m living with my brother. I don’t have a job. I’m a worthless drunk, Mr. Ryder.”

  “No one’s worthless if they are decent to others.”

  We both sat silently for a few seconds.

  “Mr. Larsen, I want to use your memory.”

  “It’s soaked in whiskey, Mr. Ryder.”

  “Nevertheless, perhaps part of it still has a useful recollection.”

  “Okay. I’ll try. What do you want me to remember?”

  “Go back to the day the cops and the ambulance came to the apartment building about Maggie.”

  “I’ll never forget that day. I left a month after it. I shouldn’t say this but people came. They wanted to look at the apartment to…to see where your wife had been shot. I told them that was disgust
ing.”

  “Did you see any strangers in the building that day?”

  “The police asked me that. No. The problem was I was in my own apartment most of the day. I didn’t see any strangers. But they didn’t push much. I mean, no offense, but I understood that they pretty quickly thought Mrs. Ryder had taken her own life. So there wasn’t much of a search for a stranger.”

  I sat looking for a crack through which the truth could shine through.

  “Mr. Larsen, I’m looking for a stranger. I don’t think anyone in the other three apartments would have hurt her.” I paused. “Or that you would have.”

  His mouth opened.

  “It pains me that you had to think about those of us in the building, Mr. Ryder. You know we were all good folks.”

  “I do know. Mr. Larsen, I want you to think about the whole week before Maggie’s death. Take your time. Picture it. You’re walking outside. You go into the lobby. Were there any strangers at all in the building?”

  “I’m trying to remember, Mr. Ryder. I really am. It was two years ago almost. For me that’s a while. There were delivery people of course. I didn’t recognize one guy who came from that new Chinese restaurant on the corner. He brought food to Mr. Lazarus. And there was one plumber…wait a minute. What an idiot I am, Mr. Ryder.”

  “You’re no idiot. What is it?”