Death of an Old Sinner (19 page)

Finally Jimmie said: “Remember that tall, skinny man who was in here yesterday, with a sweet little woman?”

The girl nodded, but you could almost see the lacquer spreading to her face.

“I’m their lawyer,” Jimmie said. And that saved him from further conversation. He sat in the chair nearest the door, his face averted, and the moment Fowler had taken two steps into the room, Jimmie spoke his name. “I’m accustomed to the courtesy of having my calls returned,” he said when the agent swung around.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Jarvis. I’ve been so damnably busy. Spring season, you know.”

“For what, fishing?”

The agent flushed. “Come inside, eh?” He gave instructions to the girl about his calls and his secretary when she came in.

“Now,” said Jimmie, as soon as the man reached his desk. “What kind of a game were you up to with my father?”

“It wasn’t a game, I assure you.”

“I think it was, something very confidential—like this item in Python’s column.”

“Your father, and I hate to say it of the dead, was a conniving, double-crossing old gentleman. There was nothing he would not do for money.”

“There were some things,” Jimmie said, wishing to heaven he could think of least one. “What did you buy from him for a thousand dollars?”

Fowler folded his arms, as though to protect the truth in his breast. “Foolish of me to have tried to cover that up, wasn’t it?”

“What did you buy?”

“I suppose you won’t believe this. I merely loaned him the money against the publisher’s advance when it came.”

“You thought the diary was valuable?”

Fowler met Jimmie’s eyes. “I thought he needed money that desperately. Early Friday afternoon he called me and offered me fifty percent of the diary for one thousand dollars. I got him the thousand—but declined more than the customary ten percent.”

“How altruistic of you,” Jimmie said with sarcasm.

“Funny—I thought you’d say something like that. Now listen to me, Jarvis—it wasn’t necessary for me to tell you this at all. But here it is—sometime between ten a.m. when he was in my office and shortly after noon, he needed money quick and urgently. From our conversation that morning, I’d say it had to do with the Brooklyn gangster’s death—Rocco. He went out of here in a fog when I told him about it.”

A circle was always round, Jimmie thought. For all the haste and urgency, his father had stopped to buy his mistress flowers. “Ten one hundred dollar bills?” he asked.

Fowler nodded. “You asked me if I thought the diary that valuable. I did and do—if it’s authentic. At the time I did not consider the thousand such a risk.”

Jimmie thought about the word authentic. “Do you doubt its authenticity?”

“While your father was alive,” Fowler said, “I felt no need for such doubts.”

“In other words,” said Jimmie, “when he was alive to make good—or pay the penalty—a thousand dollars was no risk.”

“Precisely.”

“Let me have the diary,” Jimmie said slowly.

“Do you have one thousand dollars with you?”

“No, but I have the District Attorney’s office within call.”

Fowler shrugged. “And of course, you are an honest man, unlike your father. You see, I planned to exploit the book by feeding bits of it to the columnists. I confided this to your father. Little did I know that he would go from this office to that of Lem Python and do a bit of selling himself.”

“Are you sure of that, Fowler?”

The agent waved his hands over his head. “Where else did it come from? Python showed me my release—unopened. That’s what the diary’s about, man, the interesting part of it—the amours of your ancestral President and a certain Lady Sylvia Mucklethrop while he was Ambassador to England.”

Jimmie closed his eyes for a moment, and plainly before them he saw his father at the desk…. “Who is Sylvia?” ….his face cherubic with mock innocence. “The monstrous villain,” he whispered piously to himself.

Fowler stood at his window, his back to Jimmie.

“I suppose,” Jimmie said then, “you put a dateline on your release and then accused Python of breaking it?”

“Exactly. How could I suspect an officer of the United States of such dishonor? Now Python threatens to sue me. Me, mind you, and I already out a thousand dollars.”

“Sue you for what?”

“Publicly impugning his honor.”

“Such sensitivity. Look, Fowler, it was ten a.m. last Friday that you talked over plans for the diary with father, eh?” The agent nodded. “At eleven he was back at his club, at twelve he was at the Mulvany where he stayed until a few minutes before he brought the diary to you, all approximate hours, but close. I doubt if there’s time in there for him to have gone to Python, don’t you?”

“Where then did Python get his handout?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I’ll say this, Fowler, a little promiscuity in a family goes further than all its virtues.”

“A little!” Fowler cried. “You had better read the diary.”

“I intend to—if I may have it now.”

Fowler took a key from a ring in his pocket and opened the bottom drawer to a filing cabinet. He gave the red leather-bound book into Jimmie’s hands. “If ever….”

“If ever,” Jimmie interrupted him. He lifted the book to his nose. “Smells like iodine, doesn’t it—old ink?”

“That’s what it is!” Fowler cried. “The old reprobate wrote it himself!”

“I didn’t say that’s what it is,” Jimmie said irritably. “I said old ink smells like iodine.”

Fowler opened his mouth to say he didn’t say Jimmie said…and then decided to let it go. He went to the door with Jimmie. “Will you shake hands, at least, Mr. Jarvis?”

“I don’t know why I should. I have a very considerable pride in my father.”

“You ought to,” Fowler said. “He was the most charming rogue I’ve ever met.”

“When the estate is settled,” Jimmie said, “I shall see that you get the thousand back.”

J
IMMIE DROVE DIRECTLY TO
party headquarters. Mike Zabriski intercepted him. “Hey, young fella, what are you going to do about the item in the Python’s column?”

“You’ll have my answer by tonight, Mike. In fact, the whole damn town will have it.”

“That’s more like my boy,” Mike said, and clapped him on the back. A cloud of cigar smoke pursued Jimmie to the inner office door. When Mike was happy he blew his smoke in clouds. In temper, he blew smoke rings, enough of them to strangle a man.

But not around Jimmie Jarvis, no sir. Jimmie thought, and roused Madeline Barker from her punctuation of the convention keynote address. “Read this for me, Jimmie. See if you get enough breath in the right places.”

“Right now I’m saving my breath for the right places,” Jimmie said. “And I want you to come with me.”

Madeline looked up.

“How would you like to introduce me to Lemuel Python?”

“I’d be delighted,” she said. “Preferably by cablegram. When?”

Jimmie looked at his watch. “When he gets up this morning.”

Miss Barker took her purse from the drawer. “Before he goes to bed. He sleeps from eleven till seven, a.m. into p.m. that is.”

They intercepted the columnist leaving his office, and Madeline introduced Jimmie.

“He’s a Boy Scout,” the columnist said, looking Jimmie over while he scratched his ribs with his thumbnail. Jimmie waited, letting his tongue play over the edge of his teeth. The columnist grinned. “Who was it said ‘the righteous are bold?’ ”

“Nedda Bopper,” Jimmie said. “You’ve got something that belongs to me. I want it.”

“Come into the Pit,” Python said, and led the way back into his office. The walls were covered with celebrities’ pictures, all signed with love, admiration, and abiding faith. A solid mile of hollow teeth, Jimmie thought.

“I’ve come for my briefcase,” he said. “My father borrowed it…and laid it down.”

“Where?”

Jimmie took a long chance, met Python’s eyes squarely, and answered what he surmised might have been the truth: “Where by the Grace of God, he wasn’t found dead.”

“Okay, Boy Scout,” Python said. “I’ve been waiting for you to pick it up.”

“When did she give it to you?” Jimmie tried another guess.

This one was a failure. “
She
didn’t give it to me, so stop fishing. I don’t even know
she
, except as somebody you just introduced into the conversation.” Python opened the middle drawer of his desk and took out the initialed dispatch case. He threw it down on the desk in front of Jimmie. “Let’s just say I found it.”

“Do you always publish ads in your column like that one?” Jimmie said.

Python pushed his hat back on his head. “Did you expect me to clear that one with Madeline?”

“You know, there just might have been some wisdom in that,” Jimmie said. He opened the briefcase and checked the notes within it—the General’s samples of the diary. He merely glanced at one sheet. “Shall we go?”

Python again snapped the lock on his office door. The hall was crowded with people. At the other side of the elevators was the city editor’s office, almost as crowded as Herald Square.

“Yes, sir,” Jimmie said as the elevator braked for their floor. “That would have been a wise precaution to take in this case. You see these are my father’s notes for a bit of fiction he was writing based on something that might have happened about a hundred years ago.”

Python put his hands on his hips, and looked from Madeline to Jimmie, to Madeline, to Jimmie. “Who the hell do you think you’re kidding, Boy Scout?”

“It’s the truth, Lem,” Madeline said.

“Oh, so now it’s the truth,” the columnist sneered. “He sat out the war in England,” Python jerked his thumb at Jimmie, “rendezvousing with this Lady wha’sher-name, and now you try to tell me those intimate tidbits happened a hundred years ago? Oh, sister!”

Miss Barker flung around to Jimmie. “Jimmie, I did not confirm or deny it. I left that for you to answer.”

“Thank you,” Jimmie said. “And here’s my answer.”

As the elevator door opened, he brought his fist up with the drive of a hammer, and catching Python under the chin, he lifted him into the emerging passengers, all of them staggering back into the elevator. “Like we Boy Scouts always say, Python, ‘Be Prepared!’ ” He pushed through the crowd then and walked downstairs. Madeline Barker needed to skip to catch up with him.

“I think that should be adequate for Python, the Party, and possibly you, my dear,” Jimmie said.

“It was a masterful blow,” she said adoringly.

And sure enough, even Python’s journal gave the incident the afternoon headline: JARVIS DEFENDS HONOR, THRASHES PYTHON.

Miss Barker concocted a lovely story for the reporters, and Jimmie could not be reached for comment.

M
RS. NORRIS ARRIVED BACK
at Mrs. Joyce’s from Brooklyn mid-afternoon in a state of some bewilderment. There had been times when Mag seemed her old sour self whose company was pleasure only when you knew she best enjoyed herself in that disposition. Then again, Mag had perked up and talked about the trip she and Mr. Robinson were going to take soon—perhaps to Scotland. “But there,” she ended up, “he’s only talking to cheer me up. He hasn’t even the time to come up and see you in Nyack.”

Nor the inclination, Mrs. Norris had thought. The best she had come back from Brooklyn with was Mag’s promise to persuade Mr. Robinson that she should spend a week with Annie in Nyack whether he wanted to come or not.

Mrs. Norris stood outside Helene’s door for a moment listening to the sound of the chisel on stone. She hated to interrupt anyone at work but especially Mrs. Joyce whose power to make a stone look mortal was awesome indeed. But at that moment Jimmie came whistling up the street. He had his own key, the propriety of which Mrs. Norris refused to think on for the moment.

Then he held it under her nose. “This is a day key, Mrs. Norris, not a night key.”

She drew herself up to her best height. “Such a thought never crossed the threshold of my mind, Master Jamie.”

“Then it was wiping its feet at the door,” he said.

Between them they had the tea brewed when Helene came out of her workroom. “You two are in high spirits,” she said.

“Did you see the afternoon paper?” said Jimmie. “I just happen to have one in my pocket.”

Jasper Tully arrived soon thereafter with a second copy. He also carried the General’s valise, surrendered to him by the property clerk. The final report was in from the Medical Examiner—General Jarvis had died of coronary thrombosis. Tully was glad to hear Jimmie had had a good day, his own having been a misery. Furthermore, the D.A. was wondering why, as long as he seemed to be running on Jimmie’s ticket for Lieutenant Governor, he didn’t resign from the District Attorney’s staff.

“Not a bad idea, Tully for Lieutenant Governor,” Jimmie said. He wiped butter from his fingers. “Well, shall we have a look at father’s masterpiece? By the way, just for the hell of it, I stopped by an expert’s. It was his opinion this was genuine, so let it not be said that the old boy did a sloppy job of forgery.”

“Forgery?” Mrs. Norris put her fist to her breast.

“Oh, without a doubt,” Jimmie said. “I have no doubt he was working on it all afternoon of the day he died.”

Mr. Tully lifted the book to his nose. “Is it written in iodine?”

“No, it’s ink all right. He had the formula for the ink made in those days, and a sample of the shade he wanted all in my dispatch case. I suppose in time we’ll turn up the chemist who prepared it for him, or the printer. Chemist, I suppose.”

Mrs. Norris lifted her chin at the word printer. Something began to happen inside her, and she had to find a magazine to fan herself.

“When he was experimenting for himself,” Tully said, “he must’ve been using iodine. I found three bottles up there.”

Mrs. Norris cleared her throat. “And the gardener brought a fistful of nibs in from the flower bed under his window.”

Helene laughed aloud. “What a marvelous scandal this might have made!” She had taken the diary from Tully’s hands and read a passage.

“You have a charming sense of humor,” Jimmie said.

“Oh,” she said, “here it is—the passage that landed poor Python in the hospital.”