Murder at the 42nd Street Library: A Mystery (Thomas Dunne Book) (3 page)

“Donnelly, the victim, had an interest in the Yates collection. It might not mean anything. Could be he has a current wife who wanted him killed. He might have stepped on someone’s toe on the way into the library. That’s a killing they had up in the Bronx last week, only at a bodega not a library.”

When they started walking again, Cosgrove was quiet, but Ambler knew what was coming. “Are you going to get involved in this one, Ray?”

Now it was his turn to be quiet. Even before Cosgrove told him the killer shot at Harry, he was troubled. Surely, a killer could find a better place than the library to do his work—unless the killer was already there, hidden among the staff like the purloined letter.

“Are you telling me not to?”

“Would it do any good?” Ambler followed Cosgrove’s gaze as he looked out over the newly sodded, bright green lawn at the center of the park. A small fence of thin rope, no more than a foot off the ground, girded the lawn; small signs asked folks to stay off the new grass until it established its roots. “One more thing … a witness said the victim was carrying a briefcase when he got to the library. We didn’t find it on or near the body. Larkin says he didn’t see a bag.”

Ambler raised his eyebrows.

They’d circled the park twice and walked to the corner of Fifth Avenue near the library’s main entrance. Cosgrove stopped and watched a man getting a shoeshine on the stand near the corner. “Maybe the friar will open up to you.”

“You’ve lifted the ban on my butting into your investigations?”

“No. We’re better at this than you are. You got lucky a couple of times and helped. You as easily could’ve gotten yourself or someone else dead, not to mention contaminating evidence, tipping off suspects, or finding other ways to fuck up an investigation.”

“I never thought otherwise.”

Their eyes held, until Cosgrove broke off with a slight smile. “Okay, my friend, what’s next on the recommended reading list?”

“Try Yates.”

After watching Cosgrove walk away down Fifth Avenue, Ambler stood for a moment in front of the library, taking in the grandeur of the building—the lions, Patience and Fortitude, standing guard, the marble steps, the massive bronze doors, the flow of tourists up and down the stairs. Mike didn’t usually tell him any more about an investigation than he’d tell the press—things that were public. This was understood between them. He’d listen to what Ambler had to say. He might even ask Ambler what he thought of something. Ambler knew not to ask him anything beyond that about a police matter.

What he knew after talking to Mike was that the victim was a writer, had an interest in the Yates collection, and had been carrying a book bag or briefcase that disappeared. He’d also learned that the killer fired shots at Harry. Harry hadn’t told him any of this. But then he hadn’t asked him about the murder yet.

*   *   *

Near the end of the day, Ambler stopped by Harry’s office, hesitating for a moment in the doorway to watch Harry, who was working at his computer and didn’t hear him come in. He cleared his throat and knocked on the doorjamb. “Jesus, Harry! After what happened I’d think you’d be more aware of someone at your door.”

Harry looked up. “I was sending an e-mail.”

“The police think someone tried to kill you.”

“No one tried to kill me.”

“Someone shot at you.”

Harry swiveled his chair to face Ambler. “You don’t have to tell me. I assume it was a warning not to follow.”

Ambler searched Harry’s face. Something was wrong; some pain in his usually mild expression made him look older and careworn. “Do you mind telling me what happened with the shooting?”

“I’ve told the police everything I remember.”

“You might have missed something … something that might prevent another murder.”

Harry cringed. “I don’t believe that. Why would there be another murder? That’s your imagination again. This isn’t a detective novel.”

“Why did James Donnelly come to your office?”

“I don’t know.” Irritation edged Harry’s voice.

“Was it about the Yates papers?”

“Why do you ask that?” Here it was again, something hanging in the air unsaid. It was like he was visiting a friend with an illness neither of them wanted to talk about.

“Mike Cosgrove said Donnelly had an interest in the collection.”

Harry took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “The killer shot Donnelly, not me.”

“That’s why I asked. What did the shooting have to do with the Yates collection?”

Harry didn’t hide his impatience. “The person who did the shooting didn’t make a speech. Asking me a lot of question won’t change that. And I have work to do—and so do you.”

Ambler was out of sorts when he went back to his desk. He browsed through an auction catalog, but his attention wandered. What the hell was going on with Harry? He was too guileless to get away with a cover-up—and what in God’s name would he be covering up—but that’s exactly what he was doing. Asked an innocuous question, he squirmed like he was getting the third degree.

Chapter 3

Ambler got to the Library Tavern that evening as cocktail hour was winding down, a more subdued and more relaxed gathering than during the week. McNulty the bartender glanced in his direction, the glance noting his arrival and suggesting he take his seat and wait until McNulty got to him, which wouldn’t be long.

Brian McNulty was an old-school bartender who ruled over his establishment as if it were a fiefdom bestowed on him, rather than a job. The bar owners had given up trying to rein him in, since as curmudgeonly as he was, fully three quarters of the bar’s patrons came specifically to see the bartender. Not much of a glad-hander, he earned the loyalty of the after-work crowd by his craftsmanship and by his sincere interest in those things the folks who frequented his bar wanted to tell him.

Ambler sat down. As he expected, before he was fully settled in, McNulty delivered his beer. A few minutes later, Adele came through the door. She squinted at Ambler. “What’s the matter with you? Pretty soon, you’ll be as grumpy as McNulty.”

The bartender, not far away, shot her a mildly reproachful glance and went back to making the drinks a waitress had ordered. Finished, he sauntered over. “Did you take a number when you came in?”

“I don’t want a beer. I want to try a new drink. Cognac and Coke.” Adele was searching through her bag.

McNulty shook his head. “I’m not going to make that. It’s a waste of Cognac.”

She poked her head out of her purse. “I’m paying for it.”

McNulty, both hands on the bar, bent toward her. “Drink the Cognac straight, in a snifter. With Coke have rum, if you must.”

She turned to Ambler. “Is he like this to you?”

“Some days he’s touchier than others.”

“I’ll go back to having a beer.”

McNulty drew the beer and delivered it, taking a moment to lean on the bar in front of them. His hair was long enough to be considered shaggy, his expression somewhere between bored and impatient, his manner bordered on surly. What gave him away was the twinkling in those Irish blue eyes. “Doesn’t she brighten up the evening?” he asked Ambler while looking at Adele, who smiled.

“What have you heard about the shooting in the library?” Ambler asked the bartender. He’d known McNulty a long time. A journeyman bartender and Equity-card carrying actor, the son of a card-carrying Communist, McNulty had had run-ins with, and at times ran with, any number of denizens of the mean streets. He’d also read half the books in Ambler’s crime collection.

“I got something. Hang on a minute.” He turned and walked to the service bar where two waitresses stood patiently. Neither had called him. They’d waited only a few seconds.

“He saw those servers out the back of his head,” Adele said.

They sipped their beers watching McNulty.

“I had a strange conversation with Harry this afternoon,” Ambler said. “I asked him about the shooting and he didn’t want to talk about it. You’d think he’d be more concerned that someone shot at him.”

Adele jolted up straight. “Someone shot at him?”

Ambler nodded. “Mike Cosgrove said the victim was interested in the Yates collection. Harry didn’t want to talk about that either.” He waited for her reaction. She’d been privy to some of the hush-hush negotiations over the Yates papers.

“That’s strange.” She paused. “That the man who was killed was interested in Nelson Yates is strange, not that Harry wouldn’t talk about it. He’s not supposed to.”

“Someone didn’t want the library to get the donation, right?”

“Nelson Yates didn’t donate his papers. We paid for the collection.” She paused, as they watched McNulty shaking a cocktail. “His wife, Mary, didn’t want the papers to go to us. Someone else—I don’t know who—made a fuss. Harry thought the deal might fall through. Then, we met with the donor—”

“The donor—”

Adele rolled her eyes. “Don’t grill me, Sherlock.” She put her hand on top of his to quiet him. “The funding came from a donor who doesn’t want her name revealed.”

“Do you know who the donor is? A her?”

“Anonymous, Raymond. An anonymous donor.” She made a sour face. After another moment, she grabbed his forearm with both hands. “Guess what?”

He looked at her blankly.

“I’m moving to Manhattan.”

“Oh?”

“I know. The rents are shocking. But I really want to live here. How about if I move in with you?”

Ambler felt a rush of panic.

She giggled. “You turned as white as a ghost.” She peered into his eyes. “I’m not that bad, am I?”

“No. No.… No. You’re not bad at all. It’s … It’s just—”

“Stop. I was kidding. I wouldn’t want to live with you. You’re too grouchy.”

When their eyes met, something plaintive in her expression tugged at him. He’d lived alone for years. He was grumpy, and old, too; yet for a moment, the idea that Adele might come home with him and stay formed a picture in his mind, causing an unfamiliar longing for something he couldn’t name.

“God, Raymond. What’s wrong? You’re about to have apoplexy. I said I was kidding.”

He took a long swallow from his beer mug, watching her out of the corner of his eye.

“I might as well shack up with someone. I broke up with Peter, this time for good. I’m sure he’s relieved. The big, handsome hunk, women fall all over him. He’ll do fine.” She watched Ambler, smiling, for a long moment. “I think I found an apartment in the West Fifties.”

“Already?” Ambler tried to take a drink from his glass, but it was empty. He signaled to McNulty for another. “You have something to tell me?” he said when the bartender arrived with the beer.

McNulty leaned closer. “About the shooting.”

“You know something about the shooting in the library?” Adele practically leaped at him.

McNulty shook his head. “This guy was in last night. He’s doing something at the library, so he’s been stopping in—a writer, your kind of guy. He writes detective novels. His name’s Yates.”

“Nelson Yates!” Adele’s eyes shot open.

“He donated his papers to the library,” Ambler said.

“A couple of guys at the bar were talking about the shooting. I happened to be standing near him. He wasn’t part of the conversation, drinking by himself. He said something I didn’t get, so I asked him what he said. ‘Chickens coming home to roost’ was what he said.”

“Was he drunk?” Ambler asked.

“He’d had a few. I asked him, ‘The guy in the library?’ He said, ‘Chickens coming home to roost.’”

“What’s that mean?”

McNulty looked aggrieved. “It’s a saying. It means—

“I know what it means. I meant what did he mean. What chickens? Whose chickens?”

The bartender frowned. “The chickens, I believe, would be those of the deceased. Where they were coming from or why they arrived when they did, I couldn’t tell you.”

Adele laughed.

Ambler shot her an irritated glance and then turned it on McNulty. “Why’s he telling you this?” His tone was more challenging than he meant it to be.

“People confide in their bartenders.” McNulty challenged right back.

A little while later, after saying goodnight, clumsily, to Adele and putting her into a car service cab in front of the bar, Ambler walked across town the few blocks to his apartment. He’d lived on 36th Street between Second and Third avenues for more than twenty years, since the end of his marriage.

Thanks to rent stabilization, his rent was manageable. Other apartments in the building had been gutted and renovated to justify higher rents. His, on the third floor of the four-story brownstone, was much the same as when he’d moved in. But now, with Adele on his mind, he looked at it in a different way. A floor-through, the living room overlooking 36th Street, the bedroom in the back overlooking the asphalt and cement backyard of an apartment building that faced 37th Street. A hallway ran between the living room and the back of the apartment, a bathroom off the hallway, the kitchen at the end of the hallway next to the bedroom. By Manhattan standards, it was large and, yes, might easily be comfortable for two people.

Over the years since the end of his marriage to Liz, a few women had spent varying numbers of nights in the apartment with him, but no one moved in. His relationships, not that there were many, seemed to run their course in somewhere between a couple of weeks and six months, with long periods of solitariness between them. He didn’t so much choose to be alone as recognize solitude as a kind of destiny.

*   *   *

The next afternoon, Sunday, Ambler glanced up from his computer screen to see Benny Barone open the door of the crime fiction reading room and look back over his shoulder before closing the door behind him.

“What’s up?” Ambler asked.

Small and wiry, olive-complexioned, with jittery, somewhat squirrel-like, movements, Benny looked shifty, even when he wasn’t tiptoeing into the room looking over his shoulder like he was on the lam. “Something weird’s going on, man.”

“Oh?”

“The dude I’m working with—” A knock on the entryway to the reading room froze Benny in mid-sentence.

The knock was followed by a tall, crew-cut, gray-haired man wearing a tweed jacket. He went immediately to Ambler. “I want him replaced.” The man, whose head was shaped like a Rottweiler’s and whose hair was the color and consistency of metal shavings, nodded toward Benny. His dark eyes were blazing.