McNally's Puzzle (18 page)

“Nope.”

“Could you tell me the number of his apartment?”

“In the lobby.”

“Have you seen him about recently?”

Those washed-out eyes stared at me. I sighed, took out my wallet, extracted a fiver, and offered it. An eager claw snatched it away.

“Not for two, three days,” he said, toothpick bobbing.

“I’ll see if he’s in,” I said. He didn’t much care and returned to inspecting the firmament.

The handwritten register showed Emma Gompertz and Tony Sutcliffe as residents of apartment 2-B. I pressed the intercom bell. Several times. No response. I tried the inner door. Locked. I was ready to return to the taciturn super when the door was jerked open from within.

The lady about to exit was a bit long in the tooth and dressed flamboyantly. She was startled by my presence.

“Hi,” she said tentatively.

“Hi,” I replied, thinking her lashes were so heavily loaded with mascara she really should have been accompanied by a Seeing Eye dog.

“You live here?” she inquired.

“No, ma’am, I do not. Just visiting.”

“Pity,” she said. “Have a nice day.”

“You, too,” I said. “Have a good one.”

“I do,” she said, “but I don’t get much chance to use it.” She winked at me and went merrily on her way.

Then I was inside, recalling the route from my previous visit. Up a grungy stairway to 2-B. I leaned on the bell button. No answer or sounds from within. I rapped the door sharply. Several times. Nothing. I tried the doorknob. It turned easily and I stepped warily inside.

“Hello,” I called. “Anyone home?”

No reply.

I closed the door quietly behind me and looked about. Deserted. I went through living room, bedroom, bathroom. All vacant. I even peered into closets and glanced behind the shower curtain at the bathtub. I returned to the kitchen.

The wooden table had been set for two. Dinner had obviously been suddenly interrupted. Plates held half-eaten portions of congealed lasagna. Glasses were stained with dried dregs of red wine, only small puddles of liquid remaining. Cockroaches and one humongous palmetto bug were busy. Not a pleasant sight. And the scent was not something you’d care to dab behind your earlobes.

The only indication of what might have occurred was a single chair tipped over and lying on the floor on its back. I could see no other signs of possible violence. The entire scene said so little but implied so much. Very disturbing. Especially the empty silence.

I left the apartment, closed the door softly behind me, returned to my parked wagon. The super was nowhere to be seen. I used my cellular phone to call Sgt. Al Rogoff at headquarters. He wasn’t available, they said, and refused to tell me his whereabouts. I tried him at his home.

“Yeah?” he said.

“Archy McNally.”

“Call me on Monday. I’m not working till then.”

“Sure you are,” I said. “You never stop working. What are you doing right now?”

“If you must know,” he said, “I just picked up my laundry and I’m folding my shorts. Satisfied?”

“I’m in West Palm,” I said. “Not too far from your place. You could be here in ten minutes.”

“Why should I be there in ten minutes?”

“It concerns the Gottschalk homicide,” I told him. “It may be something or it may be nothing, but you should see it.”

“Why?”

“It would take too long to explain on the phone. Al, please do me a personal favor and get over here.”

“The last time I did you a personal favor I almost got iced.”

“You’re stymied on the Gottschalk case, aren’t you?”

“We’re making progress,” he said.

“Don’t gull me,” I said. “You’re stuck and so am I. This could be a break.”

“It better be,” he said, “or you get promoted to the top of my S-list. What’s the address?”

It was almost twenty minutes before Al’s pickup came wheeling in to park alongside my wagon. Meanwhile the overalled super had reappeared and taken up his station next to the outside door. He stared at me with a definitely jaundiced glint. Maybe he suspected I was a cat burglar. Maybe he was hoping for another five. Who knew—or cared?

Rogoff came trundling over to me. He was wearing faded denim jeans and jacket and juicing up a fresh cigar. He was not in an amiable mood. “All right,” he said, “let’s have it.”

I gave him the background, speaking rapidly. Tony Sutcliffe and Emma Gompertz. Former clerks at Parrots Unlimited, owned by the defunct Hiram Gottschalk. Tony’s apparent altercation with Ricardo Chrisling, the new honcho. Tony’s firing and the resignation of Emma. Their recent disappearance with no mention of their plans to friends.

“So I tried to make contact,” I finished. “I think you should see their place.”

“Anyone file a missing persons report?” he asked brusquely.

“Not to my knowledge.”

“They have any close relatives?”

“I don’t know.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know, isn’t there, sonny boy? Let’s go take a look. What’s the apartment number?”

“Two-B.”

We marched up to the super. Rogoff displayed his ID.

“Sergeant Al Rogoff,” he said. “PBPD. I want to take a look at apartment two-B.”

The schlub stared coldly at him. “You got a search warrant?” he demanded.

“No,” Al said, “I haven’t
got
a search warrant. You
got
an operating sprinkler system? You
got
working smoke alarms? You
got
emergency exits clearly marked and lighted? You
got
garbage cans tightly lidded? You
got
rodents and vermin on the premises? I don’t have a search warrant. How much you
got
?”

The super turned wordlessly and unlocked the inner door for us. We tramped up to the second floor.

“You’re a rough man,” I told Al.

“When I have to be,” he said. “What did you touch in this joint?”

“Nothing. Except for the doorknobs.”

Then we were inside 2-B. I stood stock-still while the sergeant went prowling. I knew he wouldn’t miss the half-eaten meal on the kitchen table, the overturned chair. He came back to me a few minutes later. I could not decipher his expression.

“Wait for me downstairs,” he commanded. “I’m going to toss the place.”

“Hey,” I said angrily, “why do I have to go? I gave you this. Can’t I help you search?”

“No,” he said stonily. “What I’m going to do is illegal. I don’t need an eyewitness.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Dummy!” he said scathingly. “Not only am I covering my own ass but I’m covering yours. What if that goof in overalls files a complaint? Then I’m up for internal investigation. You get called to give testimony as a material witness. Probably under oath. Is that what you want?”

“I’ll wait for you downstairs,” I said hastily.

I sat in the wagon to escape the drizzle and chain-smoked two cigarettes, something I rarely do. Eventually Rogoff came out carrying a small brown paper bag. His chewed cigar was still cold but when he climbed in next to me he lighted up. I lowered the window.

“Anything?” I asked him.

“Some personal letters,” he said curtly. “Names and addresses of people who seem to be relatives.”

“Anything else?” I persisted.

“You ever hear of the Fish and Wildlife Service?”

“Of course. It’s part of the Department of the Interior.”

“Gee, Professor, you know everything,” the sergeant said. “Well, they have a Division of Law Enforcement. This Tony Sutcliffe had some correspondence with them.”

“About what?”

“I don’t know exactly,” Al said blandly. “I’ll go over it when I have the time and see if it means anything.”

He was stiffing me of course but that was okay; there were things I hadn’t told him. It’s the way we work together: a curious mixture of cooperation and rivalry. I know it sounds stupid but it’s effective. Usually.

“What about Emma and Tony?” I asked him.

“If no one files a missing persons report, there’s not much I can do officially.”

“And unofficially?”

“Ask around. Contact the relatives. Talk to neighbors.”

We were silent, neither of us wanting to allude to our primal fear. Finally I had to ask.

“Do you think they left voluntarily?”

“No.”

“Someone barged in and grabbed them in the middle of their lasagna dinner?”

“Could be.”

“Are they still alive?”

He glared at me. “What kind of a sappy question is that? How the hell should I know?”

“What’s your guess?”

He stared out at the melancholy sky. “I think they’re gone,” he said in a low voice, leaving me to wonder if he meant Tony and Emma had simply been abducted for whatever reason, or were now dead. I didn’t dare to keep pressing because I didn’t want to know, didn’t want my own dread to be confirmed.

We parted without further palaver. Al climbed into his pickup and headed out. I finally got the wagon rolling after some asthmatic engine coughs which caused me to suffer a mild panic attack. On the trip homeward I could not help but recall Hamlet’s lament: “The time is out of joint; O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!”

I do intend to drivel occasionally, do I not?

You will have noted, I trust, it was latish in the afternoon and I had not yet lunched. This was deliberate on my part for the waistbands of my trousers had become so constrictive of late I feared friends might soon be addressing me as “Porky.”

My dreams of an abstemious diet went glimmering when I returned home. The weather was so inclement an ocean swim was not to be attempted and so I had no choice but to eat. The kitchen being temporarily deserted, I hurriedly constructed a sandwich of heroic proportions: two thick slices of pumpernickel clamping a deck of baked ham, a slice of sharp cheddar, another of red onion, another of beefsteak tomato, the whole painted lovingly with horseradish sauce.

I carried this magnum opus with a cold bottle of Heineken up to my den and settled down to feed my face and reflect on the developments of that frustrating day.

As I gorged I became convinced the disappearance of the two former clerks of Parrots Unlimited did indeed have a bearing on the murder of Hiram Gottschalk. The connection was unknowable at the moment but I felt a relation did exist and required some heavy sniffing about.

To do that, I realized, I would to some extent have to depend on the investigative talents of Binky Watrous—which was somewhat similar to a man with a broken leg leaning on a rubber cane. But Binky was capable of making observations and reporting odd or unusual occurrences, and I reckoned his raw data was necessary if I was to arrive at any intelligent analysis of what had happened and was happening in this baffling puzzle.

In addition to giving Binky fresh instructions—couched in the form of a pep talk since the lad needed constant reassurance he was a reincarnation of Hercule Poirot—I intended to dig into the role of the Fish and Wildlife Service. Sgt. Rogoff had mentioned that the missing Tony Sutcliffe had corresponded with that agency. Al’s remark had been so casual I was certain the matter was more important than his offhand manner implied. The sergeant plays his cards very, very close to his vest. And so do I—if I wore a vest. Will a shocking-pink Izod golf shirt do?

The sandwich and the brew worked their way and I was suddenly overcome by the need of a nap. Not a long one, you understand, but a brief, intense slumber to give my wearied gray matter (it’s really a Black Watch tartan) a chance to regain its customary zip.

But before I drifted off I had a strange epiphany. Because parrots seemed to play an important part in this affair, I had come to visualize the Gottschalk ménage as an aviary, a cageful of exotic and brilliantly colored birds. Suddenly my fancy was revised and I imaged it as a zoo crowded with ugly and rapacious beasts.

A curious vision certainly but mental pabulum all the same.

B
Y SUNDAY MORNING THE SKIES
had cleared—and I wished I could say that for my thoughts. I was in such a distracted mood I accompanied my parents to church: something, I regretfully admit, I rarely do. The sermon was based on the scriptural dictum “The meek shall inherit the earth.” How true, how true, and keep it in mind the next time you’re mugged.

We returned home and went our separate ways. Father retired to his study to continue devouring
The New York Times
. Mother hurried to the greenhouse to commune with her begonias. And I went searching for Hobo. I finally found him—or rather he found me. He came trotting out of our small patch of woods and paused for a yawn and a long stretch. I had obviously interrupted a noonday nap but he showed no resentment and greeted my presence with an ankle rub.

I had learned from experience the activity he enjoyed most was what I can only term roughhousing. I crouched before him and we engaged in mock combat. He attacked with snarls and growls, jaws open. I defended myself by cuffing him, pushing him violently away, sometimes even flopping him onto his back.

He never bit me of course but delighted in giving my bare hand or wrist a good gumming. We continued this boisterous play until we both had to pause, panting. Then we went for a short walk about the grounds, Hobo padding contentedly at my heels. Finally I peered into his dwelling to make certain his water dish was filled and bade him a fond farewell, urging him to continue his nap.

I retreated to my own doghouse and shucked off my churchy duds, donning a new cotton robe I had recently bought. Well, it was really a nightshirt and the reason for its purchase was that the back was printed with a photograph of Laurel and Hardy trying to push a piano up a hill. I could relate to that.

I then settled down at my desk, blissfully mindless, and began to browse through the Sunday edition of one of our local newspapers. I found no mention whatsoever of the murder of Hiram Gottschalk, from which I could only conclude the police had made no progress. At least they had the decency not to issue the usual claptrap statement: “The homicide is being actively investigated and important developments are expected shortly.”

I flipped the pages to Lolly Spindrift’s gossip column. His breezy comments on the deeds and misdeeds of Palm Beach County’s
haute monde
are always good for a laugh, or at least an amused smile, but there was one item I found more intriguing than risible. It stated: