Over at the Automat, Ellen’s face lit up as TJ entered and made straight for the cashier’s booth, blind to everything but her. Ignoring the glass between them, he bent forward to kiss her and bumped his forehead. Not to embarrass him further, she suppressed a laugh.
Rubbing his brow and feeling very foolish, he spoke to her through the circular window. “I have to run to class, but I have a plan that may help us get to the bottom of this case. It’ll have to wait until tonight. I’ll tell you all about it when I pick you up at the subway.”
“What did you find out from Chris and Dan?” She was impatient for some news, however meager.
“They’re not going to the cops just yet, they’re waiting for me to try something. That’s all I can tell you now.” He scooted around to the back of the booth and leaned over the gate. With no glass in the way, she gave him a proper goodbye kiss, much to the delight of the morning coffee club at a nearby table.
* * *
By the time Ellen rushed through the Union Square turnstile and into TJ’s arms that evening, she’d been on tenterhooks all day.
“What happened at the League this morning? What’s the plan? Do you really think you can solve the case? Tell me!” She was nearly hopping with anticipation.
“Easy does it, honey, one thing at a time. First, there’s a whole new angle.” He told her about the meeting with Klonis, and his revelation about why Gruen was fired.
“If Gruen were still alive, Benton’s showing up again after all these years might have rekindled the old hatred and pushed him over the edge. But what if it had that effect on his son? Maybe he thinks Benton is responsible for his old man’s suicide. Suddenly, out of the blue, Benton appears, and Wally sees his chance to take revenge.”
Ellen nodded in agreement. “Remember the reaction he had when Benton touched him? I thought he just didn’t like being pawed like that, but maybe there was more to it.”
“I’m going to follow him home tonight,” TJ told her. “He’s modeling for Breinin’s evening class that lets out at ten.”
“What’s the point of that?” Like Chris, Ellen didn’t see what good it would do to find out where he lived. “Why don’t you just tell the police you suspect him, and they’ll question him, maybe search his apartment if they think they have something on him.”
“We decided we don’t want to finger him unless there’s a reasonable suspicion. Right now all we have is speculation, and it would be terrible if he was hauled in for no reason, like it would have been with Bill. No, we need more to go on, and I think I know how to get it—or at least find out if he’s implicated.”
“I still don’t see the point.”
“Let’s just say I know what I’m doing. I’ll tell you if it pans out.”
Ellen punched him on the arm. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. You are exasperating!”
Forty-One
As Chris prepared Studio Nine for Breinin’s evening class, he wondered how many students would turn up. This was the first time the Russian had been back since Benton was killed, and many of them believed he was the killer. Would that put them off, or maybe encourage them to come out of morbid curiosity? Not a very charitable thought.
Mulling over these matters, he jumped when he heard a voice behind him.
“Hi, Chris. I guess it’s time for a new pose. Show me what you did last month with Larl.”
“Jeez, Wally, you startled me. You’re quiet as a cat.”
“Got nine lives, too, though I used up a few of ’em on Iwo Jima. Ancient history. You’re a vet, right?”
“Yeah, but I had a soft hitch, never left New York. The worst action I saw was the hookers and pushers hustling me on Fort Hamilton Parkway.”
“Lucky bastard. Take it from me, combat sucks cock.” Wally turned away as students started arriving. It looked like most of them were showing up. “Better get changed.” He ducked behind the curtain to disrobe.
Not knowing what to expect, the class was slow to settle down. Chris opened his locker and retrieved his newsprint pad. When Wally emerged, he showed him the drawing. It was a seated pose, right leg tucked under the left thigh, the torso twisted to the left, right arm resting on the chair back, left hand on the seat behind the left buttock. Not an easy position to hold without cramping, but Beecham, a modern dancer with the Katherine Dunham Company, was a pro.
So was Wally, who took direction from Chris. They decided on a standing pose, one leg up on a chair. Wally leaned forward to rest his arm on his thigh and tucked his other arm behind his back, relieving the students of the challenge of rendering both hands to Breinin’s satisfaction.
Breinin showed up at seven thirty, just as everyone had gotten down to work. He always arrived with a flourish, and not surprisingly he was extra animated tonight.
“So,” he bellowed, as he flung his hat and scarf on a chair and focused on the new model, “where is Beecham? Is he afraid I will stick kinzhal in him?” He made a hooking motion with his right arm, which brought gasps from a few of the already intimidated students.
“He was switched to the Laning anatomy class,” Chris told him. Beecham—who, like many of the students, was understandably reluctant to return to the scene of the crime—had asked for the reassignment. All week the classes in Studio Nine had been sparsely attended. Tonight was the exception, and Chris decided that his cynicism was well founded after all.
“Don’t worry, little ones,” said Breinin in his most patronizing tone, “murder weapon is still with police. If you anger me, I have to kill with bare hands.” Grinning menacingly, he held them up and clenched his fingers, as if throttling someone’s neck, causing more gasps from the class.
Breinin’s laughter filled the studio. “You will pardon my little joke. I let off steam like boiling samovar, or else I explode. Ridiculous police take me to their ugly station yesterday afternoon and tell me someone sees me on the stairs when Benton dies. I tell them is bullshit, I am not there. Then they ask me same questions I already answer. When are you home? When do you leave? Who can vouch? I tell stupid detective same things again. Let them try to prove different. They will fail.”
That wasn’t exactly a denial of guilt, but of course Breinin had already insisted he didn’t kill Benton, much as he might have wanted to.
* * *
As ten o’clock approached, the studio door opened a crack. There was a rule against entering when the model was posing, nor did TJ want to be visible to Wally, so he stood outside and tried to get Chris’s attention. Fortunately his easel was toward the rear, near the door. TJ beckoned to him, and he stepped into the hall.
“Just want to let you know I’m ready to go. I’m going to wait outside on the street until he comes down. I don’t want him to see me here on a night I’m not supposed to be here.”
“He doesn’t know you’re only here one night a week,” said Chris. “Besides, he probably wouldn’t recognize you. There are a lot of students coming and going.”
“Yeah, but not many with bright red hair like mine. That’s why I’m wearing a knit cap pulled down around my ears. At least I won’t send a signal like a traffic light.”
“That’s a smart precaution,” Chris had to admit. “I hope he doesn’t lead you to some bar or his girlfriend’s place instead of his apartment.” He checked his watch. “Better get downstairs, we’re about to break up.” He shook hands with TJ and wished him good hunting.
It was a mild, clear night, with plenty of people about on Fifty-Seventh Street, so TJ easily remained inconspicuous as he hung around near the League entrance. At about ten-fifteen he saw Wally emerge from the building and head west. TJ had no trouble keeping his tall, athletic figure in sight as he turned down Seventh Avenue and entered the subway station at Fifty-Third Street on the downtown side. TJ did the same, but went in the other direction on the platform.
After the E train pulled in
and TJ saw his quarry get on, he did so as well, and quickly moved from car to car until he saw through the windowed door that Wally was seated in the next one, reading the evening paper and paying no attention to anyone around him. As they neared the Fourteenth Street station, Wally rose, folded his paper, and stood by the doors. The doors opened, and TJ hung back for a moment as Wally got off and walked toward the exit. Then, as the doors were about to close, he hopped off and continued his pursuit. So far, so good, he congratulated himself. I’m sure he hasn’t noticed me.
From a safe distance, he followed Wally as he crossed to the stairs that took him to the east side of Eighth Avenue. From there it was a short walk to 240 West Fourteenth Street, a five-story converted brownstone with an Italian restaurant, The Piedmonte, on the garden floor. For a moment TJ was afraid Wally was headed there for a late supper, but as he got closer he could see that the restaurant was closed for the night.
Wally climbed the tall stoop and entered the residential door, which had a ROOMS FOR RENT sign taped to the glass. After he was safely inside, TJ went up the steps and checked the doorbells. There were eight of them, one for the fortune-teller on the parlor floor front, one for the apartment at the rear, and six above. The name Green was in the slot next to number four.
Satisfied that he had the information he needed, TJ decided to walk across to Stuyvesant Town. On the way home, he considered his next move.
Forty-Two
Thursday, November 9
When he was a kid, TJ used to play with his mother’s set of locksmith tools. Handsomely packaged in a leather case, it included torsion wrenches, various picks, short and medium hooks, a saw rake and a snake rake, as well as a set of skeleton keys—everything a detective needed to get doors, cabinets, and drawers to open without their owners’ consent.
Nita was an expert lockpicker, and she used to enjoy watching TJ struggle to find the right tool to use on the apartment’s security fixtures. But he had a deft touch and excellent hearing, and it wasn’t long before he got the hang of it. He could even open the tiny, delicate lock on her jewelry case without leaving so much as a scratch on the keyhole.
“All you need is a black outfit, a ski mask, and rubber-soled shoes, and you’d make a great cat burglar,” she had teased him. “You definitely have the knack.”
“I’d sure know better than to break into anyplace in East Harlem,” he’d countered, acknowledging Nita’s stellar reputation. “If you were on the case, you’d have me nailed before I left the scene with the loot.”
Neither he nor Nita had used the pick set in years, but he knew she kept it in the bottom drawer of her dresser. After breakfast, he waited until his parents had left and checked the drawer. He found the leather case under some summer blouses, clothes Nita wouldn’t be wearing for several months. She certainly wasn’t going to want the set today, or she would have taken it with her, and he only needed it tonight. He was sure he could slip it back in place tomorrow morning without her knowing it had been gone.
When he scouted Wally’s building he had identified the outside and inside door locks as standard tumbler models, similar to his own front door. So he practiced on the lock at home and quickly regained his old finesse. Satisfied that he hadn’t lost his touch, he left the set in the hallstand drawer and headed off to John Jay. He planned to retrieve it on his way out that evening, while his folks were still finishing dinner.
He would meet Ellen at the subway, walk her to the Up ’n’ Down and wait while she changed, then together they’d take the subway to the League. Only he wasn’t going to Laning’s class tonight.
It all went according to plan. He grabbed a quick bite, explained that he had to rush to meet up with Ellen, and called goodbye from the hall as he retrieved the pick set and shoved it into his jacket pocket. With Ellen’s advent, Nita and Fitz had gotten used to seeing very little of their smitten son, so they smiled at each other across the dinner table as they heard him hurrying out.
“He’s got it bad,” observed Fitz. “Reminds me of a guy I used to know, an Irish cop who fell head over heels for a Cuban cop.”
“Remember what you called us back then?” said Nita. “The mick and the spic. Equally offensive to both, I’ll give you that.”
Fitz chuckled. “Since when were you ever sensitive, baby? You heard much worse on the beat, and look what Hector had to put up with. From your own people, too.”
“The Irish have no shortage of insults for their own kind,” she retorted. “I’ve heard your family call each other names I wouldn’t use in public. Some of them I can’t even pronounce. Paddy’s probably the least objectionable.”
“You don’t know what disrespect is until you’ve been cursed at by an Irishman. Get over here, you bean álainn.”
“If that’s a curse, it’s a very pretty one,” said Nita as she slid onto Fitz’s lap, kissed his ear, and whispered, “say it again.”
“Bean álainn,” he sighed. “My beauty. May I have you for dessert?”
“With whipped cream on top,” she purred.
* * *
As he and Ellen rode uptown, TJ laid out his plan.
“I’m going to Wally’s apartment and see if I can find anything that ties him to the killing,” he told her, and again she questioned what good it would do him to prowl around West Fourteenth Street.
“I’m going inside,” he confided.
Ellen was incredulous. “What? How can you do that? Apart from its being illegal, you need a key.”
He pulled the pick set from his pocket and showed it to her, carefully shielding the contents from the view of other subway riders. “I have everything I need right here.”
“You’re going to break in? I don’t believe it.”
“Really, it’s easy when you know how. I’m gonna make sure Wally’s posing tonight and then go down to his place, check it out, and be in class within an hour. I’ll just be late for once, come in at the eight o’clock break. No one except you will know what held me up.”
“I think you’re crazy. Suppose someone sees you?”
“It’s a rooming house, with a fortune-teller on the second floor. People go in and out all the time. I may not even have to pick the outside locks, just hang around until somebody rings the fortune-teller’s bell and gets buzzed in. Anyway, I know what kind of locks they are, so it won’t take me much longer than a guy fumbling for his keys.”
* * *
When they got to the League, TJ walked Ellen to Studio Fifteen, kissed her, and slipped into the side corridor, where a break in the partition allowed him to see into the studio. It was nearly seven, and most of the students had taken their places. Wally emerged from behind the screen and settled into his pose. Satisfied, TJ walked back down the hall, out onto the street, and west to the Eighth Avenue subway.
Getting into Wally’s building was every bit as easy as he’d imagined—easier, in fact. For the convenience of the fortune-teller’s clients, the outer door had been left off the latch. Opening the inside lock was a quick job, and once in he climbed the stairs to the third floor, where he found two numbered doors, with number four at the rear. Like the outside locks, the one that secured Wally’s apartment was an old tumbler model, no challenge to TJ. Within a few moments he was inside.
It was a single, fairly large studio with a kitchenette to the right of the door. An odd arrangement, but this had originally been one of two bedrooms of a residential brownstone, now converted to separate studio apartments that shared a bathroom at the end of the hall.
The room was as orderly as one would expect from a former military man’s living quarters. It was sparsely furnished with a double bed, neatly made up as if ready for inspection, a chest of drawers and, under a window looking out over a garden that had been glassed in for The Piedmonte’s extra seating, an oak desk with a brass reading lamp on top. A Formica breakfast table with two chairs occupied the nook next to t
he kitchenette. TJ glanced in and found it clean and tidy.
The only apparent extravagance was a handsome Philco radio-phonograph console, next to a record rack. Apparently Wally was a music lover. TJ resisted the urge to look through the albums and turned his attention to the desk. It was old but serviceable, with three drawers along the right side and a shallow lockable drawer under the top. The desk, and the wooden chair on rollers that went with it, probably belonged to the furnished room.
Careful not to disorganize the contents, TJ checked the side drawers. The top one was empty except for a small rectangular box, in which he found Wally’s impressive collection of Marine Corps decorations: a Bronze Star, a Good Conduct Medal, an Asiatic Pacific Campaign Medal, and two Purple Hearts. He stood looking at them for a few moments, taking in their significance, then he closed the box and replaced it in the same position. He found nothing of interest in the other two drawers.
The shallow drawer was locked, but it was a simple device and he had it open in no time. What he found inside convinced him he was on the right track.
Partially hidden by assorted papers, he could see what he recognized as a blackjack—a short sap that could easily be carried in a pocket and hidden in the palm of a large hand. The flexible grip had a leather strap to keep it from slipping when deployed, and the slightly bulbous business end was probably filled with buckshot or sand. The weapon—highly effective for rendering people unconscious—was popular with criminals and law enforcement officers alike, and there was a collection of various models, some dating back to the nineteenth century, on display at the Police Academy.
Aware that someone as fastidious as Wally would know if anything was out of place, TJ gingerly examined the papers without moving them from their positions. There was a takeout menu from a Chinese restaurant on Eighth Avenue, a checkbook and statement from Chase Manhattan Bank, a rent receipt, a West Side YMCA membership card, and a New York Jets season ticket.
Peeking out from under the bank statement was a sales slip from S. Klein, the department store on Union Square. TJ cautiously peeled back the statement, and his eyes widened as he saw that the receipt, dated October 28, was for one jacket, one hat, and one scarf, total $41.85 plus 84¢ sales tax. “Bingo!” he said under his breath.
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