Might as Well Be Dead (17 page)

You should hear Saul identifying himself. What he meant was that after three minutes with the doorman they were on such good terms that he was allowed to take the elevator without a phone call to announce him. It’s no good trying to imitate him; I’ve tried it.

“I went up to Apartment Twelve-B, and Mrs. Irwin came to the door. I told her I had another errand in the neighborhood and dropped in to see Ella Reyes. She said she wasn’t there and still didn’t know when she would be. I pressed a little, but of course I couldn’t overdo it. I said the mix-up had to do with addresses, and maybe she could straighten it out, and asked if her Ella Reyes had another address, perhaps her family’s address, at Two-nineteen East One-hundred-and-twelfth Street. She said not that she knew of, that her Ella Reyes’ family lived on East One-hundred-and-thirty-seventh Street. I asked if she could give me the number, and she went to another room and came back and said it was Three-oh-six East One-hundred-and-thirty-seventh Street.”

Saul looked at me. “Do you want to note that, Archie?” I did so and he resumed. “I went down and asked the doorman if he had noticed Mrs. Irwin’s maid going out this morning, and he said no, and he hadn’t noticed her coming in either. He said Thursday was her night out and she always came in at eight o’clock Friday morning and he hadn’t seen her. He asked the elevator man, and he hadn’t seen her either. So I went to Three-oh-six East One-hundred-and-thirty-seventh Street. It’s a dump, a coldwater walk-up. I saw Ella Reyes’ mother. I was as careful as possible, but it’s hard to be careful enough with those people. Anyway, I got it that Ella always came home Thursday nights and she hadn’t showed up. Mrs. Reyes had been wanting to go to a phone and call Mrs. Irwin, but she was afraid Ella might be doing something she wouldn’t want her employer to know about. She didn’t say that, but that’s what it was.

“I spent the rest of the day floundering around. Back at the Irwins’ address the doorman told me that Ella Reyes had left as usual at six o’clock yesterday, alone. Mrs. Reyes had given me the names of a couple of Ella’s friends, and I saw them, and they gave me more names. Nobody had seen her or heard from her. I phoned Mrs. Irwin twice during the afternoon, and I phoned headquarters once an hour to ask about accidents, of course not mentioning Ella Reyes. My last call to headquarters, at five o’clock, I was told that the body of a woman had been found behind a pile of lumber on the Harlem River bank near One-hundred-and-fortieth Street, with nothing on it to identify it. The body was on its way to the morgue. I went there, but the body hadn’t arrived yet. When it came I looked at it, and it fits Mrs. Molloy’s description of Ella Reyes—around thirty, small and neat, coffee with cream. Only the head wasn’t neat. The back of the skull was smashed. I just came from there.”

I stood up, realized that that didn’t help matters any, and sat down. Wolfe took a long deep breath through his nose, and let it out through his mouth.

“I needn’t ask,” he said, “if you communicated your surmise.”

“No, sir. Of course not. A surmise isn’t enough.”

“No. What time does the morgue close?”

That’s one way I know he’s a genius. Only a genius would dare to ask such a question after functioning as a private detective for more than twenty years right there in Manhattan, and specializing in murder. The hell of it was, he really didn’t know.

“It doesn’t close,” Saul said.

“Then we can proceed. Archie. Call Mrs. Molloy and ask her to meet you there.”

“Nothing doing,” I said firmly. “There are very few women I would ask to meet me at the morgue, and Mrs. Molloy is not one of them. Anyway, her phone may be tapped. This sonofabitch probably taps lines in between murders to pass the time. I’ll go and get her.”

“Then go.”

I went.

Chapter 15

I
SAT ON A CHAIR facing her. I had accepted the offer of a chair because on the way uptown in the taxi I had made a decision which would prolong my stay a little. She was wearing a light weight woolen dress, lemon-colored, which could have been Dacron or something, but I prefer wool.

“When I first saw you,” I told her, “fifty hours ago, I might have bet you one to twenty that Peter Hays would get clear. Now it’s the other way around. I’ll bet you twenty to one.”

She squinted at me, giving the corners of her eyes the little upturn, and her mouth worked. “You’re just bucking me up,” she said.

“No, I’m not, but I admit it’s a lead. We need your help. You remember I phoned you this morning to get the name of Mrs. Irwin’s maid and a description of her. A body of a woman with a battered skull was found today behind a lumber pile on One-hundred-and-fortieth Street, and it is now in the morgue. We think it’s Ella Reyes but we’re not sure, and we need to know. I’m going to take you down there to look. It’s your turn.”

She sat and regarded me without blinking. I sat and waited. Finally she blinked.

“All right,” she said, “I’ll go. Now?”

No shivers or shudders, no squeals or screams, no string of questions. I admit the circumstances were very favorable, since one thing was so heavy on her mind that there was no room for anything else.

“Now it is,” I told her. “But you’ll pack a bag for a night or two and we’ll take it along. You’ll stay at Wolfe’s house until this thing is over.”

She shook her head. “I won’t do that. I told you yesterday. I have to be alone. I can’t be with people and eat with people.”

“You don’t have to. You can have your meals in your room, and it’s a nice room. I’m not asking you, lady, I’m telling you. Fifty hours ago I had to swallow hard to keep from having personal feelings about you, and I don’t want to do it again, as I would have to if you were found with your skull battered. I’m perfectly willing to help get your guy out to you alive, but not to your corpse. This specimen has killed Molloy, and Johnny Keems, and now Ella Reyes. I don’t know his reason for killing her, but he might have as good a one for killing you, or think he had, and he’s not going to. Go pack a bag, and step on it. We’re in a hurry.”

I’ll be damned if she didn’t start to reach out a hand to me and then jerk it back. The instinct of a woman never to pass up an advantage probably goes back to when we had tails. But she jerked it back.

She stood up. “I think this is foolish,” she said, “but I don’t want to die now.” She left me.

Another improvement. It hadn’t been long since she had said she might as well be dead. She reappeared shortly with a hat and jacket on and carrying a brown leather suitcase. I took the case, and we were off.

To save time I intended to explain the program en route in the taxi, but I didn’t get to. After I had told the hackie, “City Mortuary, Four hundred East Twenty-ninth,” and he had given us a second look, and we had started to roll, she said she wanted to ask me a question and I told her to shoot.

She moved closer to me to get her mouth six inches from my ear, and asked, “Why did Peter try to get away with the gun in his pocket?”

“You really don’t know,” I said.

“No, I—How could I know?”

“You might have figured it out. He thought your fingerprints were on the gun and he wanted to ditch it.”

She stared. Her face was so close I couldn’t see it. “But how could—No! He couldn’t think that! He couldn’t!”

“If you want to keep this private, tone it down. Why couldn’t he? You could. Sauce for the goose and sauce for the gander. You are now inclined to change your mind, but you have been worked on. He hasn’t been in touch as you have, so I suppose he still thinks it. Why shouldn’t he?”

“Peter thinks I killed Mike?”

“Of course. Since he knows he didn’t. Goose is right.”

She gripped my arm with both hands. “Mr. Goodwin, I want to see him. I’ve
got
to see him
now
!”

“You will, but not where we’re going and not now. And for God’s sake don’t crumple on me at this point. Steady the nerves and stiffen the spine. You’ve got a job to do. I should have stalled and saved it for later, but you asked me.”

So when the cab stopped at the curb in front of the morgue I hadn’t briefed her, and, not caring to share it with the hackie, I told him to wait, with the suitcase as collateral, helped her out, and walked her down to the corner and back. Uncertain of the condition of her wits after the jolt I had given her, I made darned sure she had the idea before going inside.

Since I was known there, I had considered sending her in alone, but decided not to risk it. In the outer room I told the sergeant at the desk, whose name was Donovan, that my companion wanted to view the body of the woman which had been found behind a lumber pile. He put an eye on Mrs. Molloy.

“What’s her name?”

“Skip it. She’s a citizen and pays her taxes.”

He shook his head. “It’s a rule, Goodwin, and you know it. Give me a name.”

“Mrs. Alice Bolt, Churchill Hotel.”

“Okay. Who does she think it is?”

But that, as I knew, was not a rule, so I didn’t oblige. After a brief wait an attendant who was new to me took us through the gate and along the corridor to the same room where Wolfe had once placed two old dinars on the eyes of Marko Vukcic’s corpse. Another corpse was now stretched out on the long table under the strong light, with its lower two-thirds covered with a sheet. At the head an assistant medical examiner whom I had met before was busy with tools. As we approached he told me hello, suspended operations, and backed up a step. Selma had her fingers around my arm, not for support, but as part of the program. The head of the object was on its side, and Selma stooped for a good view at a distance of twenty inches. In four seconds she straightened up and squeezed my arm, two little squeezes.

“No,” she said.

It wasn’t in the script that she was to hang onto my arm during our exit, but she did, out to the corridor and all the way to the gate and on through. In the outer corridor I broke contact to cross to the desk and tell Donovan that Mrs. Bolt had made no identification, and he said that was too bad.

On the sidewalk I stopped her before we got in earshot of the hackie and asked, “How sure are you?”

“I’m positive,” she said. “It’s her.”

Crossing town on 34th Street can be a crawl, but not at that time of day. Selma leaned back with her eyes closed all the way. She had had three severe bumps within the hour: learning that her P.H. thought she had killed her husband, taking it that he hadn’t, and viewing a corpse. She could use a recess.

So when we arrived at the old brownstone I took her up the stoop and in, told her to follow me, and, with the suitcase, mounted one flight to the South Room. It was too late for sunshine, but it’s a nice room even without it. I turned on the lights, put the suitcase on the rack, and went to the bathroom to check towels and soap and glasses. She sank into a chair. I told her about the two phones, house and outside, said Fritz would be up with a tray, and left her.

Wolfe was in the dining room, staving off starvation, with Saul Panzer doing likewise, and Fritz was standing there.

“We have a house guest,” I told them. “Mrs. Molloy. With luggage. I showed her how to bolt the door. She doesn’t feel like eating with people, so I suppose she’ll have to get a tray.”

They discussed it. The dinner dish was braised pork filets with spiced wine, and they hoped she would like it. If she didn’t, what? It was eight o’clock, and I was hungry, so I left it to them and went to the kitchen and dished up a plate for myself. By the time I returned the tray problem had been solved, and I took my place, picked up my knife and fork, and cut into a filet.

I spoke. “I was just thinking, as I dished this pork, about the best diet for a ballplayer. I suppose it depends on the player. Take a guy like Campanella, who probably has to regulate his intake—”

“Confound you, Archie.”

“What?” I raised my brows. “No business talk at the table is your rule, not mine. But to change the subject, just for conversation, the study of the human face under stress is absolutely fascinating. Take, for instance, a woman’s face I was studying just half an hour ago. She was looking at a corpse and recognizing it as having belonged to a person she knew, but she didn’t want two bystanders to know that she recognized it. She wanted to keep her face deadpan, but under the circumstances it was difficult.

“That must have been interesting,” Saul said. “You say she recognized it?”

“Oh, sure, no question about it. But you gentlemen continue the conversation. I’m hungry.” I forked a bite of filet to my mouth.

It was a tough day for rules. Still another one got a dent when, the dessert having been disposed of, we went to the office for coffee, but that happened fairly often.

I reported, in detail as usual, but not in full. Certain passages of my talk with Mrs. Molloy were not material, and neither was the fact that she had started to put out a hand to me and jerked it back. We discussed the situation and the outlook. The obvious point of attack was Mr. and Mrs. Thomas L. Irwin, but the question was how to attack. If they denied any knowledge of the reason for their maid’s absence, and if, told that she had been murdered, they denied knowledge of that too, what then? Saul and I did most of the talking. Wolfe sat and listened, or maybe he didn’t listen.

But the only point in keeping the identity of the corpse to ourselves was to have first call on the Irwins and Arkoffs, and if we weren’t going to call we might as well let the cops take over. Of course they were already giving the lumber pile and surroundings the full routine, and putting them on to the Irwins and Arkoffs wouldn’t help that any, but someone who knew what the medical examiner gave as the time of death should at least ask them where they were between this hour and that hour Thursday night. That was only common politeness.

When Fritz came to bring beer and reported that Mrs. Molloy had said she liked the pork very much but had eaten only one small piece of it, Wolfe told me to go and see if she was comfortable. When I went up I found that she hadn’t bolted the door. I knocked and got a call to enter, and did so. She was on her feet, apparently doing nothing. I told her if she didn’t care for the books on the shelf there were a lot more downstairs, and asked if she wanted some magazines or anything else. While I was speaking the doorbell rang downstairs, but with Saul there I skipped it. She said she didn’t want anything; she was going to bed and try to sleep.