In the Shadow of Gotham (20 page)

Help came in the form of the two ragtime song pluggers. The singer, a large African man, lifted my attacker from me with an ease that I envied. His partner, a wizened older man, occupied himself with helping Isabella before he joined the singer in pinning the assailant to the wall.

I got up and went over to Isabella. Apart from the dirt stains on her coat, I saw no obvious injuries. She seemed shaken, but otherwise all right. “You’re not hurt?” I asked.

With a brave smile, she answered, “I’m fine. Thank you—both of you.” The latter was directed toward our rescuers.

I took stock of my own injuries. The whole incident had lasted no more than a minute or two, but my assailant had landed several key punches. I had scratches on my face, and bruised ribs I was sure, but nothing was broken. I pulled out a handkerchief to dab the bleeding from the worst scratch near my left eye.

“Do you know this man?” the singer asked. His speaking voice was also a deep baritone.

A large crowd of onlookers now surrounded us. I stared at my assailant, now wedged between the brick wall and my rescuer. The culprit was a large man nearly six feet tall with a hefty paunch. His face was puffy and rough stubble covered his balding
head as well as his chin. Though I searched my memory, especially for past cases, I had never seen him before.

I shook my head. “I take it you don’t know him, either?” I asked Isabella.

“No, I don’t,” she said.

“What’s your name?” I asked as I approached the attacker.

“None of your business,” he said—but the response earned him a sharp jab in the ribs from the singer.

“Think you’d better answer when a gentleman asks you something. Try again.” The singer glared down at the man he had pinned to the wall. If my attacker was about five feet ten or eleven inches, then my rescuer easily towered over him by another half foot. Plus, he was in excellent shape, I could tell.

“Hal Jones.”

It didn’t ring a bell.

“And what business you got attacking this gentleman?” My rescuer seemed as determined as I was to get to the bottom of this.

“None.” He stammered, growing more nervous as he seemed to realize the situation he was in.

“So you’re telling me you’re the kind of fellow who attacks gentlemen and ladies for no good reason? I don’t believe that for a second,” the tall singer said.

“Are you aware you have attacked a police officer?” I added, looking at my attacker sternly.

Now he was wide-eyed with fear. “He didn’t say anything about that. I just did it for the money.”

“What money? Someone paid you?” I asked, observing him closely.

“I got paid ten dollars,” he said. “A man approached me not
half an hour ago as I came out of Moretti’s. I’d lost a bundle and I really needed the dough.” He glanced first at me, then at the singer. “Maybe you could put me down. This isn’t comfortable.”

“Nah,” the singer replied. “You’ll do as you are. Now pay attention to the officer’s questions.”

“He gave you ten dollars up-front?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yeah. And he said if I got your bag, he’d find me and give me something extra.”

I looked around at the crowd surrounding us. Had Fromley been watching?

“What did he look like? And how did he describe me?”

He smirked. “He didn’t describe you, except for saying you’d be the man coming out of
that
building”—he pointed to Clara’s apartment building on the block behind us—“with a real peach.” He pointed to Isabella. “He looked—you know, ordinary. Brown hat, brown coat. Medium build. I didn’t see his face. He never looked at me directly.”

“Is this the man?” I showed him the picture of Fromley that we carried around.

“Maybe. I can’t tell. Look, mister, I needed the money. It wasn’t anything personal.”

At that moment two policemen from the Tenderloin precinct barged through the crowd and immediately made for the singer and his accompanist, brandishing their bully sticks.

“Let go of that man, now! And hands in front, where we can see them.”

Their prejudice was obvious—and I felt bad for my rescuers, who wore a look on their faces suggesting they were accustomed to this treatment.

I stepped in front of the officers and pulled out my own identification. “You’ve got it wrong. Those men are to be commended
for helping me. You need to arrest this other man.” I gestured to the pudgy man still pinned against the brick building. “For attacking a police officer.”

“You sure?” The more senior officer looked around at the crowd, searching for anyone who would contradict me.

“We’re certain,” Isabella said, gazing at him with level eyes. “Everyone here who saw it will tell you the same.”

“All right.” The senior officer still looked suspicious, but he directed the singer to bring over my assailant, whom he promptly cuffed. “You’ll be pressing charges then?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

After once again thanking the men who helped us, Isabella and I followed the two policemen to the Nineteenth Precinct station house, where we made the statements necessary for the assault charges. From there, we walked to the subway station on Thirty-third Street and hopped on a northbound train headed back to the research center, where I hoped we would finally meet up with Alistair. I desperately wanted to talk with him tonight.

I was preoccupied by all we had seen today, from the disturbing photographs hidden in Fromley’s closet, to the violent injuries he had inflicted on Clara Murphy, to the attack he—for it had to be Fromley—had orchestrated against me. It hadn’t been a random attack. As my mind raced through possible scenarios, I decided he must have followed us after we visited his rooms at Mrs. Addison’s. Then, while we were in Clara Murphy’s building, he had plotted the attack and bribed Hal Jones to help. It had involved a degree of planning and foresight I had not expected, given what Alistair had said about him.

I wanted to hear Alistair’s thoughts on the matter—because what struck me as important was that the attack had been
designed to do more than just scare me. The man had tried to steal my bag. Assuming Fromley were responsible, he had gone to great lengths to recover and destroy the evidence I’d obtained—evidence that included the photographs, the glass I had taken for prints, even my case notes. It was a stroke of luck that the glass had not broken during the fracas. Was it possible he knew what I had taken? I supposed it was, if he had surveyed his room after we left.

A troubling thought lingered at the edges of my mind, just beyond my reach.

Could it have been anyone other than Fromley who orchestrated the attack this afternoon? I had enemies from old cases in the city, to be sure. But the timing alone made Fromley a suspect. We had visited his home and interviewed his last girlfriend immediately before the attack. And who else would have wanted my bag?

Probably what troubled me most was the fact that the man we wanted to locate had instead found us. It was an uncomfortable sensation.

With these thoughts weighing on my mind, I felt a renewed sense that Alistair was right: Michael Fromley must indeed be the killer we sought. I had been foolish ever to doubt it. And I would be even more foolish if I did not do my damnedest to find him straightaway.

I would have preferred to take Isabella straight home, for she was clearly disturbed by the day’s events—but she insisted on returning to the research center. I suspected she also wanted to talk with Alistair. And she had left her dog uptown and would not hear of going home without him.

“You must at least eat something,” I said as we arrived at Alistair’s offices.

“Will you ask Mrs. Leab to prepare something? I don’t care what.” Her voice was weary.

I had learned yesterday that Alistair maintained a kitchen in the building for his meals, managed by Mrs. Leab, a capable woman he had brought over from England for light secretarial
and house keeping duties at the research center. When Columbia first moved uptown, it had been a necessity, given the few amenities available in the neighborhood. Now that the area around Columbia had begun to attract restaurants and coffeehouses, it was simply convenient.

Alistair’s office was empty, but I found Fred Ebbings down the hall, working with Tom Baxter.

“What happened to you?” Tom asked, noticing the scratches on my face. I filled them in on the day’s events, which they agreed were not in keeping with behavior they might have anticipated from Fromley.

“I’d have expected him to go to ground,” Tom said. “He was the type to run and hide, not hover on the fringes of this investigation. I wonder if he thinks you really have evidence incriminating him?”

“But if so,” Fred added with a sniff, “why does he care? Michael never thought of the future. He lived moment to moment. That’s why this attack against you, for instance, seems out of character to me. It involves a fair amount of foresight and planning—skills I always thought he lacked.”

I disagreed. “He used roughly half an hour to plan and execute the attack. That’s not a lot of time. And how much planning does it take to find someone in the Tenderloin who will take a swing at a stranger for extra cash?”

No one answered. Switching topics, I asked, “Have you seen Alistair?”

“He was here earlier,” Fred said, shrugging. “We were reviewing our interviews with Fromley from August of this year. I just reread the transcript of one session in which he discussed a recent dream. It was remarkable—in the dream, he first
killed himself and then worked to dispose of his own body.” He lifted his head with pride. “I had thought it an excellent sign at the time, proof that he was transcending his old self.”

I stared at him in disbelief; it sounded like half-baked nonsense to me. Did he honestly believe this sort of case review would help me track down Michael Fromley?

“Yes, you read him as destroying and burying his violent impulses—quite literally,” Tom said smoothly as he changed the subject. “Look here, Ziele, you’ve had a wearing day. Give me the list Clara Murphy gave you of the restaurants Fromley frequented and let me check it out for you tonight.” He put his arm around my shoulder and walked out of Fred’s office with me. “And ask Mrs. Leab for some dinner, if you haven’t already. She made a terrific vegetable soup today.”

And indeed, by the time I rejoined Isabella, Mrs. Leab had brought a tray of bread and soup into the meeting room for us.

“Thank you,” I said, gratefully accepting it. “Has Alistair left for the day?”

I broke off a piece of the bread—a delicious sourdough. Mrs. Leab had warmed it with the soup.

She chuckled. “You just missed him. He’s out for a fancy dinner and a night at the opera. Gone to his regular box, he has. He said Caruso’s singing tonight was not to be missed.”

“Any message?”

She shrugged. “Not that he left with me. Sorry.”

What had Alistair been doing all day? I had not spoken with him today, not once—even though he was supposed to be providing me with extensive help in this case.

“It’s Alistair’s working style,” Isabella said, looking at me as though she understood. “He is a loner at heart, especially when
he is mulling over a difficult problem. When he figures it out, he resurfaces. I’ve seen him do it time and again. Besides”—she smiled—“he did lend you me for the day.”

“True enough,” I said. Isabella had been very helpful—although she had joined me only by accident, if we were to be accurate about it.

“Simon, you’re hurt!” Isabella’s expression had changed, and she was staring aghast at my right arm.

I looked down and saw nothing unusual. Then I realized she had never before had reason to notice my injury, for I had always worn a jacket or overcoat. They had hidden the injury—or at least made it less readily apparent. But in my shirtsleeves, it was obvious that my right arm hung at a slightly odd angle and had limited movement.

“It’s an old injury,” I hastened to reassure her, “though I admit it’s feeling worse than usual after my skirmish this evening.”

“How did it happen?” she asked as she blew on her spoon to cool the soup.

“Malpractice,” I said dryly. “The bone was crushed in one place, fractured in another, and the doctor who attended me set it incorrectly. He didn’t notice until it was too late. Not wholly his fault, of course. He was overwhelmed by so many patients—” My voice grew rough and broke off. “It’s done now anyway. I have an arthritis-like pain that sets in worst when it’s cold and damp, and I’ve lost what strength I once had in it. But I manage all right most days.”

“Surely it can be fixed—or at least improved?”

“Of course, with surgery. But surgery costs time and money, with no guaranteed outcome. I get along all right as I am. Luckily,
I’m left-handed.” I smiled and tried to make light of it—but she seemed to intuit that there was a darker history involved than I was ready to tell her.

Her brown eyes probed my own as she asked, “You were injured on the job?”

Someone knocked at the door.

“Something like that. It’s a story that must wait for another time, I think.” I got up, crossed the room, and opened the door to admit Horace Wood.

“Just dropping off some notes for Professor Sinclair. I thought he was in here with you,” Horace explained. “They’re my write-up of what I found out about Sarah’s political activity from the college paper as well as some of her classmates.” He looked uncertain. “Maybe you’d rather see them instead?”