Corpus Corpus

by H. Paul Jeffers

  'Just a salad for me," Dane said. "Considering the occasion, make it a Caesar."

  "Also considering the occasion, and in memory of a murdered bull by that name," said Bogdanovic, "I'll have a sirloin steak and a baked potato."

  With an uncertain look, the waiter asked, "How do you prefer your steak, sir?"

  "Rare as possible," Bogdanovic said, eyes crinkling and lips twitching with an incipient smile, "but without actually mooing."

  As the puzzled waiter strode toward the kitchen, Dane said, "He must think we're crazy. First he heard us talking murder and then we ignored the fact that this is a seafood restaurant."

  Looking round the crowded room, Bogdanovic said, "I wonder if Janus was ever a customer here."

  "Theo was like you. A meat-and-potatoes man. It's sad that his last meal had to be turkey."

  "If a dose of cyanide or arsenic had been sprinkled on it, solving his murder would be a lot easier. Instead, I have on one hand the possibility that he was murdered and Paulie Mancuso driven to suicide as part of a scheme by some mastermind of the underworld, and on the other the prospect of rummaging around in Janus's history for someone whose dislike of him could date back decades. Either way, the likelihood of an arrest is bleak. A bit of poison in his turkey would have limited the suspects to those at the dinner."

  "Assume for the moment that Theo was not murdered by someone with an old grievance nor by a real-life Professor Moriarty, but by a member of the Wolfe Pack," Dane said excitedly, "which of them would be a suspect?"

  "I could start with Marian Pickering Henry. She had a lot of fun explaining how easily she could have poisoned me."

  "Marian would be thrilled," said Dane gleefully. "Not since Agatha Christie gave up the ghost has a woman sent so many souls to meet their maker as a result of a little extra spice added to a meal. Or a drink. Oscar Pendelton calls his best-selling author the poison pen."

  "Since we're talking about Wolfe Packers as suspects, did everyone at our table dislike Janus?"

  "Not everyone," Dane said as the waiter brought their food.

  "With the exception of you, of course," Bogdanovic said with a smile at what appeared to be perfectly cooked steak. "You think Janus was the cat's pajamas. But, alas, he wasn't poisoned at the dinner. He was killed with a gun in a manner that tomorrow morning's newspapers will undoubtedly describe in gory detail in the headlines as a gangland-style execution befitting the mouthpiece for the mob."

  "That was uncalled for, John," she snapped, spearing a leaf of lettuce as though her fork were a dagger. "He wasn't a demon. Theo earned and deserves a better obituary. But as Mark Antony said at the funeral for Julius Caesar, 'The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.' "

  "Let's make a deal, Maggie. No more talking about the case. We'll pretend we're not a couple of sleuths. We are an ordinary couple having Sunday lunch out. How's your salad?"

  "It's fine. How's your steak?"

  "Perfect!"

  "I'm glad. Now what shall we talk about?"

  He thought a moment, then said, brightly, "I could discuss the nuances of differences between single-malt scotches."

  She sighed in dismay. "That's pretty boring."

  "How about the weather?" He gazed through the window at the glowering gray sky above the icy river. "It looks as if we might be in for a little snow. That ought to please the skiers."

  "On the other hand, it would be bad for anyone who has to drive into the city in it."

  "I suppose that's one of the things you like about living in California. There's no snow to scrape off your car. No need to worry about antifreeze. No steaming up of the car windows while you're dashing merrily along the freeways. Of course, you do have to be worried about all those drive-by shootings we easterners hear about from time to time on the news."

  "In New York it's much more personal. You get shot while you are parked in your car."

  He winced. "Touché, Maggie. But Janus wasn't a victim chosen at random. He was killed because he was targeted. If it had been anyone else in that car we might be at a loss to know where to start looking for the killer. As it is, we're fortunate in that we appear to have several ways to go in the investigadon. Unfortunately, I don't expect the killer to suffer a sudden pang of conscience that will compel him to walk in and confess. Nor is he likely to blab about it to anyone. Barring any such break, we're left with old-fashioned legwork and the hope that it may provide the clue that will clinch a case we said we weren't going to talk about anymore while we're eating. How the devil did we manage to get back on the subject?"

  "The weather. You were talking about snow. I suppose that as you talked about Californians' not having to be concerned about their car windows steaming up, we both thought subconsciously of the shot through the open window of Theo's car." She fell silent a moment, thinking, then said, "I guess we could lay the blame for what happened on that blasted cigar. If Theo hadn't lit it up, he wouldn't have rolled down the damn window."

  "He would have been shot," he said, turning attention to his steak, "even if the window had been up."

  "Perhaps he would have been," she said, ignoring her salad and gazing at the river.

  Jerking up his head, he demanded, "What do you mean?"

  Her eyes came back to him. "It would have been difficult to take aim at a target behind a tinted window, and quite impossible through bulletproof glass."

  Bogdanovic slapped his knife on the table. "What was that?"

  "Theo's car was equipped with tinted bulletproof glass. I thought your crime lab people would have reported it to you. But I suppose they haven't had time yet to examine the car."

  "How do you know Janus's windows were bulletproof?"

  "He told me he'd had the original windows replaced when he returned from California."

  "Did he explain why?"

  "No. I assumed it was because of the death threats that came in during, and especially after, the trial."

  "What car did he use in California?"

  "He usually hired a limousine service to take him to and from court."

  "Do you know if the limos had bulletproof windows?"

  "I'm sorry, I don't."

  "Did he use hired limos the entire time he was in L.A.?"

  "I assume so. No, wait! When he took me to dinner after the trial ended he picked me up in a convertible."

  "That's odd. If he was worried enough about threats to have all the windows of his Rolls bulletproofed in New York, why was he tooling around L.A. in a convertible? I'll tell you why. The danger was not in California. It was at home. Whatever danger he was guarding against did not arise from the trial. The danger was here. That he knew about it raises a couple of questions. Who was he protecting himself against, and how did he come to know he was in danger?"

  Dane thought a moment, then said, "He was warned."

  Bogdanovic pushed aside his plate. "Maggie, if you intended to kill somebody, would you alert your intended victim? I don't think so. You would go ahead and do it."

  'John, that's it! Theo knew that someone wanted to kill him because that person had tried. It's obvious he didn't know who it was. He would have gone to the police. Yet he didn't do so."

  "We don't know that, Maggie."

  "If somebody was charged with attempting to murder Theodore Janus, it certainly would have made headlines coast to coast. Did you see any?"

  He shook his head slowly. "Not that I can recall."

  "Of course you can't. There were no such headlines because Theo hadn't a clue as to who had tried to kill him. Hence, the bulletproof windows for the Rolls."

  ON MONDAY MORNING Bogdanovic double-parked his car at the corner of Broadway and Eighty-sixth Street, bounded out, and picked up the first edition of the Monday morning New York Graphic. Feeling vindicated in his prediction of how the press would treat Janus's murder, he read the headline:

  MIDNIGHT HORROR AT GRAMERCY PARK: SATURDAY SLAYING OF MOB MOUTHPIECE THEODORE JANUS WAS GANGLAND-STYLE EXE
CUTION; FOUND SHOT ONCE IN HEAD

  To the right of the headline a photo showed Janus slumped on the front seat of his car with a half-smoked cigar in his mouth.

  The caption read, "Legal legend shot to death in Rolls-Royce as he puffed on cigar after receiving top award at literary society's banquet."

  Below this was "Photo: A Graphic Exclusive. Other pictures of Janus's last news conference on page 3."

  A FEW MINUTES past seven, as Bogdanovic searched for a gap in traffic that would allow him onto the East River Drive, the chief of detectives sat in the rear seat with the newspaper on his lap. "If the press was kept away from the crime scene until after the body was removed by the medical examiner," he demanded, "how did the Graphic manage to get its slimy hands on this picture?"

  "That's an excellent question," Bogdanovic replied, finding an opening in the traffic. "Because there was no way it could have been taken by one of the paper's photographers, it has to have come from someone at the crime scene with a camera."

  "Meaning one of our own people! That's just great! First we have three assistant district attorneys watching television while in the other room Paulie Mancuso is leaping out a window. Now we apparently have someone from the crime scene unit or the medical examiner's office peddling a crime scene picture to a newspaper. And not just any newspaper. The New York Graphic. No wonder the public has nothing but contempt for government."

  "There is another explanation."

  "Really! If the Graphic's man didn't take it, and it didn't come from one of our people, who snapped the damned thing?" "The murderer."

  Goldstein bolted forward. "Did you say the murderer?"

  "At the time of the killing," Bogdanovic answered as he negotiated from the center lane into the faster far left, "a man who lives across Gramercy Park saw a bright light that came from the direction of Janus's car."

  Goldstein sank back in the seat. "He saw muzzle flash."

  "It couldn't have been. The man heard a bang. The noise is what got his attention. Then he saw the light. He said it looked as if someone took a picture using a flash camera."

  "That's a first! Somebody brings a gun and a camera, shoots someone, snaps a picture of the body, develops and prints it, and then sends it to a newspaper. Why would he do that?"

  "I can't say for sure until we arrest him," Bogdanovic said, turning slightly toward Goldstein. "But I have a theory."

  "I'm sure you do. But while you expound it, do me the favor of keeping your eyes on the road. And while you're at it, ease up on that lead foot of yours so that you and I will live to see if your theory proves right."

  Facing forward, Bogdanovic said, "I think the killer snapped the picture to guarantee that the shooting of Janus would be recognized for what it was. He used the picture to send us the very clear message that this was not a chance murder."

  Goldstein let out an exasperated sigh. "Then why didn't he just send the picture direcdy to us?"

  "Evidently, we were not the only ones he felt he had to send his message to. Either he wanted the general public to know it, or he expected the picture to be seen by someone who, like him, wanted to see Janus dead."

  "Your theory is highly imaginative, Johnny, but I think it's also highly improbable."

  "Improbable, maybe. But not impossible."

  "Anything is possible, such as your slowing down this car and our making it to One Police Plaza alive, well, and ready to fight crime."

  "When you have eliminated the impossible, according to your favorite sleuth, Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street," Bogdanovic said with a smirk, "whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

  "Presuming Janus's killer was the same individual who took the picture of him," Goldstein said, "you should be looking for a psychopath with a fetish for necromancy, not to mention a flair for publicity. If cameras had been available to Jack the Ripper when he was hacking up prostitutes, London newspapers would have been flooded with snapshots, instead of a chunk of human liver."

  "It was a piece of kidney, actually," Bogdanovic said as he edged the car into the exit lane for the government center. "As to Janus's killer being a psychopath, I don't think so. I believe Janus was being stalked, and I have evidence that indicates that Janus knew it."

  As the car turned from the highway with police headquarters looming direcdy ahead, Goldstein again leaned forward urgently. "What evidence?"

  "The windows of Janus's car were tinted black."

  "He was a famous person. Celebrities sometimes want to enjoy a bit of privacy."

  "The windows were also bulletproofed. Recently."

  Two HOURS AFTER Bogdanovic drove his car into the garage of police headquarters and accompanied Goldstein in an elevator to the sixteenth floor, a houseboy rapped twice on the white door of Wiggins's bedroom, entered, and found the proprietor of the Usual Suspects bookstore wrapped in a yellow silk oriental robe with dragons embroidered in red. Propped like a pasha on purple satin pillows, he lounged on a massive Victorian four-poster bed.

  "Ah, good," he exclaimed with delight. "My breakfast!"

  Carrying a silver tray bearing an eight-ounce glass of hand-squeezed orange juice, a white porcelain mug of freshly ground coffee with cream and three lumps of sugar, a stack of raisin scones slathered with clotted butter, and the New York Graphic, the youth said, "There's a headline that should be of interest to you on the front page of the paper."

  Reading it, Wiggins slapped his chest with a meaty hand and gasped, "Oh, my soul, no."

  Leaving the bedroom, the young man looked back and said in a singsong voice, "I told you you would be interested."

  With stunned disbelief as he looked at the gruesome photo of Janus, Wiggins bellowed, "Timothy, you'll have to tend the store this morning." He flung the paper to the floor. "Maybe all day."

  The boy spun round in a sullen manner that was half of his charm. "Oh yeah? How come?"

  "I have business at police headquarters," Wiggins roared as he rolled from the bed. "I must speak to the chief of detectives and Sgt. John Bogdanovic. Go out front and hail me a cab!"

  Half an hour later, with the mangled bullet given to him by Janus tucked into a vest pocket and the newspaper jammed into a pocket of his Inverness cape, which was flapping like the wings of a huge brown bird, he crossed police plaza with the agility and grace of a ballet dancer one-third his weight. Pausing at a metal detector in the lobby, he placed into the tray a cluster of keys, coins, the mashed bullet, and a pinky ring with an enormous diamond.

  "That's an interesting trinket," said the officer in charge of the detector, reaching into the tray.

  With pounding heart and expecting the officer to pick up the slug, Wiggins blurted, "That's nothing. A friend gave it to me."

  "That's quite a gift," the officer said, picking up the ring. "I recommend you not wear this openly out on the streets. People have been murdered for a lot less."

  With a long, relieved breath Wiggins retorted, "You needn't advise me on the subject of murder, Officer. I am expert on the subject. Indeed, I have come here about a murder."

  The cop blurted, "You have a murder to report?"

  "Nothing to trouble you, Officer," Wiggins said blithely as he went through the metal detector. "I am taking up the matter with the chief of detectives himself." Scooping up the ring, the coins, the keys, and the mercifully overlooked slug, he added, "I know the way to his office. I have been there many times. We are old friends, you see. You might even say the chief and I are comrades in fighting crime."

  As the elevator lifted him toward Goldstein's office, each floor was noted by the ding of a bell and a lighted numeral. At the sixth, two uniformed police officers got on wordlessly, but scanned him suspiciously until the bell and the light signaled the thirteenth floor. Exiting, one quipped, "Inspector Lestrade's office is on sixteen, Sherlock."

  When the door opened, a sign on the opposite wall declared: Chief of Detectives. An arrow pointed to a corridor on the left.

  Seated behind a
desk at the end of the hallway, a woman in police uniform whom he knew only as Officer Sweeney greeted him with a surprised smile. "Mr. Wiggins. How nice to see you. Was Chief Goldstein expecting you?"

  "No, but I must see him without delay."

  "I'm sorry. The chief is in a conference at the moment."

  "Then I'll see Sergeant Bogdanovic."

  The officer smiled. "That's who the chief is meeting with."

  Jerking the Graphic from the pocket of the Inverness and unfurling it, he demanded, "Inform them I have come with vital information concerning this."

  A stubby thumb and pudgy forefmger dipped into the pocket of the vest and brought out the slug.

  "And this may be the clue that will solve the murder."

  BOGDANOVIC SLOUCHED IN a bulky, encompassing red leather armchair with his long legs straight out and crossed at the ankles.

  "I doubt that this bullet came from the gun that was used to kill Janus," he said, studying the slug as he rolled it between thumb and forefinger. "This looks like a thirty-eight caliber. A bullet this size fired at the close range at which Janus was shot would have blown his head off."

  Resembling a giant jack-o'-lantern with slits for its eyes, Wiggins turned his massive head toward Bogdanovic. "Sergeant B., I do not claim that this bullet came from the same gun. What I do say is that it came from a weapon that was fired at Janus from a passing car and that Janus gave it to me as evidence to take to the police in the event of his death to prove that somebody was determined to kill him."