Easy does it, he told himself as he checked that the contents looked undisturbed, closed the drawer, and relocked it. Beside the bed was a closet, where TJ hoped he would find the red velvet jacket, paisley scarf, and fedora that he now believed Wally had used to disguise himself as Breinin. Though TJ didn’t know it, the Russian’s family bought all their clothes at S. Klein. Breinin often bragged that, even on the pittance he was paid by the League, they could afford the best quality because his wife worked there and got the employee discount.
TJ opened the closet door to reveal Wally’s modest wardrobe—a topcoat, two sports jackets, slacks and a few shirts, plus a zippered clothing bag that contained his military uniform. There were a couple of pairs of shoes and a pair of boots on the floor. No red jacket or paisley scarf. He sighed with disappointment.
He saw a box on the shelf that looked like it might contain a hat and was about to reach for it when he heard a voice in the hall and a key being fitted into the lock.
Oh, my God, he’s coming home! How can that be? TJ had been sure he’d have plenty of time to search the apartment. He couldn’t have been there for more than fifteen minutes. What the hell had gone wrong?
All he could think to do was duck into the closet and pull the door shut just as the outer door opened and someone entered.
Oh, man, if he finds me my goose is cooked.
He held his breath as footsteps advanced into the room.
Christ, he’s going to hang his coat in the closet.
Quietly, careful not to trip over the footwear, he shrank back as far as he could, putting the topcoat and the zippered bag between himself and the closet door. Thankfully there was no light inside, so he just might go unnoticed.
But how would he get out? The thought of hiding there until Wally left in the morning made him wish devoutly that he’d never decided to play detective.
The footsteps stopped outside the closet, but the door remained closed. He heard some rustling and a couple of thumps—it sounded like Wally was getting into the bed. Maybe if he goes to sleep right away I can slip out. I hope he snores, so I’ll know when the coast is clear.
But doesn’t he need to get undressed, put on his pajamas, and hang up his clothes? Shit, I’m done for.
He suddenly felt light-headed, and realized he was still holding his breath. He opened his mouth, exhaled slowly, breathed in deeply but silently, steadied himself against the closet wall, and prepared for the worst.
Then he heard footsteps again, walking away from his hiding place. A door opened and closed. The kitchenette? No, that door had been open when he came in.
Wally must have gone out, probably to the bathroom in the hall.
Assuming he had only a few minutes to make his escape, he emerged from the closet ready to bolt for the exit.
But as he shut the closet door he glanced at the bed and did a double take. It had been stripped, and a pile of clean sheets, pillowcases, and towels had been left on the mattress. The footsteps had been those of the landlady bringing in the week’s supply of fresh linens. Thoughtfully, so as not to disturb her tenants, she always did it when she knew they’d be out.
TJ collapsed onto the bed with a heartfelt sigh of relief. Immediately his inner voice admonished him, Pull yourself together, idiot, and get the hell out of here.
Wisely, he did as he was told.
Forty-Three
TJ entered the League’s lobby just as Laning’s class took its eight o’clock break. As he approached Studio Fifteen he was startled to see Wally walking toward him, on his way to the men’s room. In spite of himself—the model couldn’t possibly know where he’d been—TJ felt his color rising, so he coughed as an excuse to cover his face with his hand.
“You’re late tonight, son,” said Wally as he passed. “Maybe you should have stayed home. Sounds like you’re coming down with something.”
“Thanks, I’m okay,” he replied, his hand still masking his embarrassment. “It’s just a tickle.” He hurried on, afraid he might somehow give himself away. But that was ridiculous. It’s not like he was wearing a sign saying, “I just broke into your apartment and searched it.”
As soon as she saw him enter the studio, Ellen jumped up from her bench and ran to meet him. He signaled to Chris, and the three of them adjourned to the side corridor.
“Well?” said Ellen anxiously, “what did you find out?”
Chris was in the dark, so TJ summarized what he’d been up to, leaving out a recap of his close call.
“Ellen’s the only one I let in on my plan,” he said, “so she wouldn’t wonder why I wasn’t going with her to class at seven. I see she didn’t give the game away.” He put his arm around her and gave her a serious hug, which helped dispel his pent-up nervous energy.
“Man, you took a chance and a half,” said Chris, impressed, “but it looks like you got the goods—” He checked himself as he spotted Wally reentering the studio.
“Let’s meet after class and decide what to do,” suggested TJ, and it was agreed. So in they went, followed by Laning, ready to do the rounds.
“Feeling better about your work, Fitzgerald?” he asked, to which TJ replied, “Yes sir, I sure am,” not in reference to his drawing.
* * *
Over coffee at the Carnegie Deli, which stayed open until eleven, Chris, Ellen, and TJ put their heads together. Chris wanted to examine the pick set, but TJ discreetly declined to display it in the restaurant.
“Let’s get serious. What I found is suggestive, but not conclusive. It’s not illegal to own a blackjack. He might carry it for protection, in case somebody tries to mug him.”
“Then why was it in the drawer? Why didn’t he have it on him?” wondered Ellen.
“I don’t know, but anyway it doesn’t prove anything. Just because he has one doesn’t mean he used it on Benton.”
“What about the receipt from S. Klein?” asked Chris. “That’s where Breinin buys all his clothes. Kind of coincidental, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, but nothing in Wally’s wardrobe matched Breinin’s outfit—at least not the jacket. There was a greenish tweed one and a brown plaid one, nothing even close to red and certainly not velvet. I didn’t check the box on the shelf, which I suppose might have the hat and scarf in it. I should have, when I knew it wasn’t him who came in, but I just wanted to get out while the going was good.”
“The point is,” offered Chris, “if he did disguise himself as Breinin he would have dumped the clothes, not kept them in his closet. The receipt is the important thing. Okay, it isn’t proof, but it’s pretty damn interesting, don’t you think?”
TJ didn’t answer. He sipped his coffee in silence for a few moments before he spoke. The thrill of his adventure had given way to remorse as the full realization of the consequences hit home.
“Why am I so reluctant to take the next step? Contact Inspector Kaminsky and tip him off to investigate Wally. I don’t have to tell him what I did or what I found. I can just say I know what happened to Gruen, who was actually Wally’s father, that it was Benton’s fault, and maybe that gives Wally a motive. The cops would follow up on it.”
“Well, that was your plan, once your suspicion was confirmed, wasn’t it?” Ellen reminded him. Chris nodded in agreement.
TJ looked at them both, his conflict evident on his face.
“You should have seen his medals. He’s a genuine war hero. He put his life on the line for his country, our country. I know it was before I was born, but I feel like we owe him, goddammit. And if you ask me, Benton got what he deserved.” He brought his coffee cup down hard on the saucer, causing heads at nearby tables to turn.
“Take it easy, man,” said Chris sympathetically, as Ellen covered TJ’s free hand with hers. “I hear what you’re saying. You didn’t find what you were looking for, but more than you bargained for. Maybe you should step back, and le
t me take it from here. After all, I’m the one who told you about Gruen, so it makes sense for me to go to the police.”
He stood up and put a dollar bill on the table. “Coffee’s on me,” he said. “Come on, let’s go home and get some sleep, decide what to do in the morning. Arlene will be wondering what kept me so late, probably thinks the cops hauled me in again. Maybe I’d better call her.” He headed to the pay phone next to the restrooms, while Ellen and TJ put on their coats.
“You know he’s right,” she said, and he nodded reflectively. “Tell him he should contact the police first thing tomorrow morning.” So when Chris came back and they walked out onto Seventh Avenue, that’s what TJ did.
Forty-Four
Friday, November 10
At nine a.m., Chris presented himself at Midtown North, asked to speak to Inspector Kaminsky, and was directed to his office. When he had interviewed Chris on the night of the murder, Kaminsky had pegged him as level-headed and cooperative, but far from comfortable being questioned. Now he was curious to know why the young man was returning voluntarily to the place he’d been so eager to leave.
With that curiosity masked by a neutral tone perfected by decades of practice, Kaminsky greeted Chris and offered him a chair.
“What’s on your mind, son?”
Before Chris could speak, the intercom on Kaminsky’s desk buzzed and the clerk told him that Mrs. Benton was calling.
Kaminsky couldn’t suppress a sigh. “Tell her I’m in a meeting, and I’ll call her back in a few minutes,” he instructed, anxious to delay yet another fruitless conversation, filled with invective on her part and evasion on his. He had nothing new to report.
“Sorry for the interruption,” he said. “Mrs. Benton is understandably frustrated by our lack of progress on the case.”
“That’s why I’m here, sir. I think I may have another lead for you.”
“Really?” Kaminsky wondered if this was an effort to deflect the investigation from Breinin, whom he knew was one of Chris’s mentors.
Chris shifted in the hard chair, his discomfort evident. He had worked out an approach that avoided any mention of the evidence TJ had found, yet was suggestive enough to warrant police action, and was not fully confident that he could keep the story straight. He settled down and plunged ahead.
“Your men have been all over the League for the past week, so I’m sure you know that there’s plenty of guesswork about who’s responsible. Lots of people are betting on Breinin because of his history with Benton, but I found out that somebody else also has a grudge that goes back decades.”
He told Kaminsky that Benton had gotten a fellow instructor named Johann Gruen fired from the League, and that Gruen never got over it. He said that Gruen’s son, Walter Green, was now working there as a model and blamed Benton for ruining his father’s career, which had led to Gruen’s suicide.
Kaminsky wanted to know where Chris got this information.
“I overheard something in the cafeteria that got me wondering,” he said, truthfully. “One of the instructors was talking about Wally and mentioned that his father taught there back in the ’30s, when Benton was there. That made me think that maybe Gruen heard Benton was in town and decided to settle an old score, but I found out later that Gruen killed himself years ago, so then I thought his son might want revenge.”
The inspector was not content with such generalities.
“Why did Benton want to get rid of this Gruen guy? And how do you know his son has a grudge against Benton? Maybe somebody, or something, else was responsible for his old man’s suicide.”
Trying not to sound defensive or evasive, Chris told Kaminsky what he’d learned in the meeting with Stewart Klonis. “Benton hated queers with a passion, so when Gruen came on to him, he didn’t just reject him, he got rid of him. According to Mr. Klonis, that was the beginning of the end for Gruen.”
“I’ve spoken at length to Mr. Klonis,” said Kaminsky, “and he never mentioned Walter Green as someone who might have wanted Benton dead.”
“He doesn’t know that Wally is Gruen’s son,” Chris explained. “When his parents got divorced, his mother changed their last name to Green so people wouldn’t think they were German. He never told Mr. Klonis about the connection.”
“I see,” said Kaminsky, who was beginning to wonder if there might be something to Chris’s theory. “I suppose you know about the sighting on the staircase, another reason why we’re concentrating on Breinin. How does that square with what you’re telling me?”
Chris had a ready answer. “Everybody knows how Breinin loves his red jacket, but it’s not custom made. They sell them at S. Klein.”
Kaminsky grinned. “So you’ve been doing a little detective work on your own.”
Not me, thought Chris, and not at the department store, but it’s fine if that’s what he believes.
“Well,” he said, “I didn’t want to come to you with nothing more than hearsay. I wanted to satisfy myself that Breinin isn’t the only man in a red jacket who might have been on that staircase.”
“Sure you’re not just trying to steer us away from Breinin?”
“Of course not,” Chris insisted, “and I’m not trying to implicate Wally,” which was in fact what he was trying to do. “I just thought you should know what I found out about his background. He’s a really nice guy, sweet and even-tempered. It’s hard to believe he’d be capable of murder.” That sounded pretty foolish to him, especially considering that Wally was a former marine who’d no doubt done his share of killing in the war. But Kaminsky would find that out soon enough. No need to embellish his incriminating story.
Kaminsky rose from his chair, signaling an end to the interview.
“Thank you for coming in, Mr. Gray. I appreciate your sharing this information with me, and I assure you we’ll look into it.”
* * *
A call to the League’s registrar confirmed that Walter Green was scheduled to model for Robert Brackman’s morning class in Studio Fifteen, which ended at twelve thirty. Kaminsky scheduled Detective Valentino to pay him a visit, and reluctantly asked the clerk to telephone Rita Benton, who was staying with Joe and Maria Kron in Mattituck. At least—assuming he could get a word in—he could tell her they had a new lead in the case.
Sheik arrived at the League a few minutes early and located Studio Fifteen at the end of the ground-floor hallway. As the door opened and students began to file out, he saw the model step behind the privacy screen to change. He noted the man’s powerful physique, still trim and muscular in early middle age, not that of a former athlete gone to seed.
This guy keeps himself in shape, he said to himself, not that you’d need to be all that strong to knock out an old man like Benton. Even a woman could do it. Hit him in the right spot with a pipe or a piece of wood and he’d go out like a light.
They’d found nothing like that at the scene, but there were plenty of potential weapons all over the building. The place was a junk heap, especially the basement, where the sculptors’ supplies of wood and scrap metal included many an object that could have been used, then slipped back where it came from with no one the wiser. But Dr. Helpern had identified the cause of the head wound as an implement that spread the impact rather than concentrating it as a wooden club or a piece of metal would do. Nor was the skin on the scalp broken, another indication of a less rigid weapon. In his expert opinion, the blunt trauma that rendered Benton unconscious was the result of a blow from a sap.
When Wally emerged fully dressed from behind the screen, Sheik approached him and identified himself. He asked Wally for a few minutes of his time.
“Just a few questions, and I’d like to make sure we’re not disturbed,” he said as he closed and locked the door of the now-empty studio. He sat on one of the bench easels and invited Wally to do the same. Taking out his notebook, he began by asking Wally’s full name and add
ress.
“Have the police spoken to you before about the Benton case?”
“Yes,” he answered. “Officer Gomez, I think his name was, talked to me last Thursday, the day after it happened. He and another officer were interviewing everybody who was in the building that day.”
“So you were here on Wednesday?”
“Yeah, I work all day Wednesdays, for the Brackman morning and afternoon classes.”
“Where are they held?”
“Down here, in this studio. I finish at half past four.”
“Did you hang around after class?”
“Yeah, I had a cup of coffee in the cafeteria, then I went home.”
“What time did you leave?”
“I don’t know, around five, I guess.”
“Anyone who can confirm that?”
“I was sitting with a couple guys from the Brackman class, maybe they could tell you when I left. I wasn’t watching the clock.”
Sheik rephrased the question. “I didn’t mean when did you leave the cafeteria. I meant when did you leave the building. Did anyone see you leave? Did you meet anyone later who could place you somewhere else when Benton was killed?”
Wally stood up, looming over Sheik, a frown on his face. “What the fuck are you getting at?” he said, his tone sharp with indignation. “Why should I have to account for my whereabouts? I thought you figured out that Breinin did it. That Russian asshole had plenty of reason to.”
“You don’t get along with Breinin?”
“He’s a jerk. Full of himself, browbeats the students, treats the models like furniture.”
“Sit down, Mr. Green,” said Sheik. Impassive now, back in control of himself, Wally resumed his place on the bench as the detective continued.
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