A Cat in the Wings: (InterMix) (12 page)

Chapter 20

Tony and I were at the window counter of the twenty-four-hour coffee shop on Seventh Avenue. From where we sat we had an unobstructed view of the downtown face of 1407 Broadway. After nine
P.M.
the streets began to empty. As the evening wears on, the stretch between the shopping area at Thirty-fourth Street and the wild Forty-second Street entertainment strip becomes just a windy valley quickly traversed by hurrying souls. The colder the night the more quickly they move. And it was a very cold night.

“Are you confident, Swede?” Tony asked, pulling his woolen cap down on his forehead and pouring the usual vast quantities of ugly white sugar into his coffee.

“As long as the mailman didn’t let me down,” I said, “I’m confident. If they all got those postcards, she’s got to show up.”

Tony looked around. “Wonder how long they’ll let us sit here before they start thinking we’re drug dealers.”

“I think as long as we keep buying coffee, they won’t care who we are.”

“But how many more containers can we drink?’”

Rather than answer, I simply pointed to the large plastic-lined garbage pail set only a few feet away from us, near the door. Tony nodded his understanding; buy a container, take a few sips, dump the rest.

The chill wind blew in right through the window, but we had dressed for the long, cold haul. In fact it was oddly relaxing to be sitting there, drinking bad coffee, staring at that monolith of a building that occupied the entire city block.

As always, Tony was full of reminiscences: about us . . . then . . . “the old days,” as he called them. When we were aspiring . . . arrogant . . . knew what it was all about . . . truth and beauty and Tennessee Williams. I didn’t talk much, mostly listened and nodded. Nostalgia is harmless as long as it doesn’t determine future actions. As Simone Signoret has said, nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

It was ten sixteen
P.M.
—according to the ghastly old fly-specked clock with the Budweiser logo—when we saw a sleek black Lincoln Towncar turn off Broadway onto the downtown side of the street in front of the building. Tony and I were not only awash in coffee but had gone through at least two packets of something called “Yankee Doodles.”

We exchanged quick glances, half-frightened, half-anticipatory, ready to move. But the car just kept moving, and soon was out of sight.

But five minutes later it was back.

This time it parked across the street from Basil’s writing wall. And it just sat there, idling like a huge, humming bug, its parking lights lit. The windows were of tinted smoke. The payoff car was just as Basil had described it. The white lady, as he’d called her, ought to be sitting in back, waiting.

Basillio and I jumped off our stools. “Just one minute!” He jerked me back. “Exactly what do we do now?”

“Now we flush her out of that car . . . make her commit herself,” I said, shaking him off and at the same time withdrawing a new can of spray paint from the pocket of my parka.

“What the hell is that? What are you going to do?”

“Listen carefully, Tony. I’m going to cross to the other side of the street and start writing. You stay back. Play it by ear.”

He was confounded. “Play it by . . . Swede, I wonder if you’ve thought this thing out.”

“Thought it out? I’m brilliant, remember? Besides, do you have a better idea?”

He puffed out his cheeks and blew out air slowly, all the while watching the long black car.

Yes, I was frightened. But I was also exhilarated—high as the proverbial kite.

We were out on the pavement by then. I squeezed his arm as I moved off. “Stay close,” I cautioned.

I crossed the street rapidly and walked along the building line. The side street was deserted. The wind picked up newspapers, empty cans, all the waste of the day, and blew it around my ankles. I stopped abruptly a few feet from the car, and very deliberately turned to face the wall. Then, with an absurdly grandiloquent gesture I began to write, in letters as large and high as my reach could command.

I had started the second
N
in
ANNA
when someone knocked the can from my hand with such force that I fell against the building. Someone was screaming in my ear: “You stupid bitch! What are you doing?” I whirled around and saw a young woman dressed in a ski parka hovering over me.

She had raised her arm as if to strike me. But then I saw another arm—Tony’s—enveloping her from behind. The two struggled, and when my heartbeat had slowed a bit I tried to assist Tony in restraining her.

“Stop fighting!” I heard Tony yell at her. “Stay still and you won’t get hurt!”

At last, she ceased struggling. But the fight had taken a weird sort of toll on her. There was something grotesque hanging from the left side of her skull. A wig.

I found myself staring into the face of Vol Teak.

I was trembling so hard I could barely muster the breath to tell Tony who “the white lady” was—not a lady at all, but Louis Beasley’s companion.

I heard Basillio tell him: “We’re all going to walk calmly over to your car together, like The Three Musketeers, and get into the backseat. Then we’ll all go for a short drive.”

Vol surprised us both with a very colorful expletive.

“Wow,” Tony said. “And I’d heard you weren’t too bright.”

“I’ll go nowhere with you people,” Teak reiterated.

I recovered, “Perhaps you’d like me to call Louis Beasley for you.”

Fear came into his eyes at the mention of Beasley.

“Perhaps,” I continued, “he would be curious about where you got all that money to pay Dobrynin off. He might even be curious as to
why
you were paying him off.”

The three of us climbed into the back of the car. I directed the driver uptown.

***

Frank Brodsky answered the door fully dressed, tasteful as ever. I’d outlined the trap to him earlier in the day, so he’d been waiting up eagerly to hear from us. As he led us into the office, I thought I caught a faint whiff of Scotch on his breath.

In fact there was a cut-glass decanter of what very well might have been Scotch on the table near the club chair where we settled Vol. There was also a pot of coffee, a few other bottles, and a variety of glasses and cups. Tony sat down on the sofa, coat still on, and began to smoke furiously. When it was offered, he hungrily accepted a brandy, I asked for a tonic. Brodsky stood erect near the fireplace. Vol sat with his head in his hands.

We made quite a tableau. A rehearsal for a tried-and-true melodrama? If so, the rehearsal wasn’t going very well. For the longest time, no one dared to try out a line.

It was Mr. Brodsky who ultimately broke the silence, using his kindliest voice.

“Mr. . . . Teak, is it? Mr. Teak, you seem to hold the key to a great many questions my colleagues and I have been pondering. I wonder if you’d care to elaborate on tonight’s events? We’d all be so grateful.”

Vol laughed in a short, staccato burst. Then he stared glumly at the ceiling. The silence returned.

With a great sigh, Brodsky walked over to the high-gloss desk and picked up the receiver of the extension phone that sat there. “Ah, yes,” we heard him say. “Will you please give me . . .” He looked over at Vol then. “Whom shall it be first, Mr. Teak? Your friend Mr. Beasley, or one of the police detectives handling the Dobrynin murder?”

Vol moved with deliberation from his chair to the desk. He ripped the receiver from Brodsky’s hand and slammed it down loudly in its cradle. I caught only the tail end of the name he called the old attorney, who merely raised an eyebrow.

Then Vol stepped back and shouted to all three of us: “I know who you people are! And I know what you’re trying to do! You’re trying to implicate me in Peter’s murder! You’ll do anything to keep Lucia from going to trial! Do you think I’m a fool?”

Frank Brodsky didn’t answer right away. He ambled over to a chair and sat down. “Won’t you have a seat, Mr. Teak? Please?”

Vol threw a sullen look at the lawyer, but came back to his chair.

“Now,” Brodsky continued, “as you have so perceptively pointed out, we are vitally concerned with preventing Miss Maury’s indictment. And while I have no wish to falsely accuse
you
of Mr. Dobrynin’s murder, please understand that I mean to know all about this . . . arrangement . . . this partnership you carried on with him.”

Vol shivered once, as if he had been touched by some slimy presence, and then his handsome mouth began to spit out words.

“He was blackmailing me.”

When Vol halted there, Frank Brodsky shook his head slowly and said, not very patiently, “Yes, yes, Mr. Teak. So we gathered. But I’m afraid that isn’t enough. You’re going to have to trust the three of us with your secrets. Please be specific.”

“Dobrynin was bleeding me,” Teak finally went on. “He found out I was getting finder’s fees from ballet directors I introduced to Louis. They all need Louis. He’s the one they turn to when they need financing. He’s gotten seed money for dozens of companies.

“I never got a lot of money from any of them. A few thousand from each one he helped. Louis never knew. No one did, I thought. But somehow that sonuvabitch Dobrynin found out. And he verified it by beating that Canadian director half to death.”

“Alex Luccan,” Basillio supplied.

“Yes,” Teak said bitterly. “He was one of my ‘clients.’”

He buried his head in his hands for a moment, then slammed his fist down on the table and exploded: “Dobrynin was a bloodsucker—a monster! He always wanted more . . . always more. He’d always say this one was going to be the last payment, but then he’d come back for more. And the stupid games he played! Like that nonsense of painting Anna Pavlova’s name on the building. He had me patrolling that vile neighborhood like a common hooker.

“I started borrowing . . . stealing . . . from Louis. That was the worst part. And when I asked Peter why, why he needed the money—after all, he was living the life of a hobo—he only laughed and said he had to take care of all the lost souls . . . so many forgotten, sick things, he said . . . all the ‘lost and hungry ones.’

“And when I threatened to confess everything to Louis, Peter said he’d tell him . . . about us. Something that happened long ago. But he said he’d see that Louis turned me out, prosecuted me for embezzlement. He would have, too. Dobrynin was evil. The crudest man I’ve ever known.

“I’m glad he’s dead, and I have no apologies to make for feeling that way,” Vol said coolly, drawing himself up. “I’m glad! But that doesn’t mean I killed him! Because I didn’t!”

His outburst had been so pained, so vivid, that it left us all feeling drained.

Then Frank Brodsky broke the silence. “Mr. Teak, why did you need the money you took from those company directors? Those ‘fees,’ as you euphemistically called them. Isn’t your companion a wealthy man?”

Vol now seemed close to breaking down completely. His eyes filled with tears. “Louis has always, given me what I’ve needed. He’s hardly the most generous man in the world, but he’s taken care of me. I didn’t want to use him, though. And I never meant to betray him. I just wanted something of my own. I had to feel . . . independent. I was a dancer, you know. I had two seasons with the Royal.”

He looked at the lawyer, as if this characterization of himself as a fine dancer explained everything in the world.

“I suppose, Mr. Teak, that you can account for your whereabouts on the night Peter Dobrynin died?” Brodsky asked mildly.

“I was with a friend,” he said quickly.

“Just visiting?”

“I can produce his name if the police demand it!” Vol said defiantly. “But not before.”

“I see,” Mr. Brodsky said gently, smiling a little. “Well, Mr. Teak, it’s been a long night for you. Why don’t you go home and get some rest now? I’m sure Mr. Basillio would be happy to see you to your car.”

Vol was taken aback by the suddenness with which the interrogation had come to an end. “What are you going to do now?” he asked, obviously frightened.

“Right now, nothing—nothing in reference to you, that is.” And he stood and gestured to Tony, who headed over to the door and stood waiting for Teak to join him. We heard their footsteps on the stairs.

When Tony had rejoined us, the attorney asked, “What do you make of it, Miss Nestleton?”

“Vol Teak was tired of paying blackmail to Dobrynin,” I said. “He hired Dobrynin’s bagman, Basil, to kill him. That’s what I make of it.”

“And you, Mr. Basillio?”

“She echoes my sentiments exactly.”

Brodsky leaned back in his chair, hands clasped together behind his neck. He looked tired. “I agree,” he pronounced. “The problem is how to prove it. As you’ve already told me, Mr. Basil is slippery. He won’t confess to any of this willingly.”

Brodsky stood suddenly and walked to a small table on the far side of the room. He opened a drawer, extracted a small object, and came back over to us.

I looked at the little white packet that he’d placed on the table in front of me. It was just a small piece of folded paper, its edges tucked in.

“Do you recognize this, Miss Nestleton?”

“No.”

He smiled. “This is the kind of wrapper that diamond merchants carry their wares in. This has always intrigued me. One would think they would transport their gems in tiny locked cases, or use all kinds of security devices. But no, they carry them in ordinary white paper envelopes such as this, in their pocket.”

He leaned over and unfolded the edges of the packet. Nestled within it were three small cut diamonds.

“Pretty, aren’t they?”

Tony and I looked up from the diamonds and at each other, perplexed.

He reclosed the packet, quite happy.

“And now, Miss Nestleton. About that police officer acquaintance of yours—the one who proved helpful in locating the fellow Basil.”

“Yes, what about him?”

“Do you think you could call on him to do one more favor?”

“A minor one, I suppose.”

“Oh, this would be decidedly minor. And Mr. Basillio, might I ask you for your help?”

“What with?” Tony asked.

“I will need a photograph of Vol Teak. And I will need a small, unobtrusive recording device.”