Murder at the 42nd Street Library: A Mystery (Thomas Dunne Book) (7 page)

“You’re no fucking prize yourself,” Yates said. “You sound like a shrew.”

Engrossed in their battle, they ignored Adele and Ambler, who watched and listened for a moment before turning back to the waiting cab. Man and wife continued to argue in the doorway as the cab pulled away.

*   *   *

The following morning, Ambler stopped by the reference desk in the catalog room, where Benny Barone was working that day. He told Benny about Emily Yates, asked him to do any searches he could think of, and gave him a phone number for Nelson Yates.

“What I know about her is she ran away from home when she was teenager.”

“Doesn’t everybody?” Benny had gotten in with a neighborhood gang of hoodlum apprentices during his rebellious youth and at one point ran away from home. His father, a Brooklyn longshoreman, stood down the gang and brought him home.

“Runaways don’t always fare so well,” Ambler said.

“Don’t I know it? Too often, no one wants to find them. Was it sex?”

Ambler was puzzled.

“The reason she ran away.”

“Why sex?”

“Kids who run away usually do it for a good reason—lots of times it’s sex or violence.” Benny, as payback for his own experience, did volunteer work at a runaway center near the Port Authority for as long as Ambler could remember.

Ambler told him the little he knew about Emily Yates’s disappearance.

“The desk is too busy for me to do it now. I’ll do it later when I’m supposed to be doing research for the ogre.”

*   *   *

The message came as a memo in an envelope, an ominous sign in itself in the age of instant, impersonal, e-mail notification. And the news was as bad as he thought it would be—worse. He held the memo in his hand, rereading it for the fourth or fifth time, when Adele knocked on the reading room door. Without meaning to, he snarled at her.

“Good God, Raymond! What’s wrong?” She shrank back. “Did I do something?”

“Not you.…” He took a deep breath. “They’re shutting me down.”

“Shutting you down?” She surveyed the tiny room, taking in the book-lined walls, the small balcony, two cluttered library tables, unoccupied at the moment, the truth dawning on her. “No! They’re not—”

“They certainly are.” He handed her the memo.

She read it through and then read it again. “They can’t do this. They simply can’t.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “I knew it. I knew when they closed the Slavic reading room it was the beginning. Everything’s changing so fast. What’s a library without books?”

“Harry didn’t even tell me. Just this.” He waved the memo.

“Well, you’re not going to sit there and let them do it, are you?” Adele threw back her shoulders—a stance Joan of Arc would be proud of.

“They’re going to send the books to a warehouse in Princeton. Princeton, a hundred miles away.”

“We’ll see about that,” said Adele.

She stormed out, leaving Ambler sitting among his books and papers.

The collection had its origins in the early nineties when a New York City collector, a former mystery editor and bookstore owner, donated his first editions and extensive Rex Stout collection, as well as a small endowment to support future collecting. Ambler talked Harry into letting him take charge of the collection.

Over time, he acquired a few things here and there—a college professor’s library of American hard-boiled and noir first editions, a collection of early twentieth-century American Golden Age whodunits from a retired nurse from Long Island, a couple of other collections of first editions. Later, with Harry’s help, he expanded the archival part of the collection, acquiring papers and manuscripts from well-known and not-so-well-known working mystery writers, the estates of once well-known writers who’d died in obscurity, letters, manuscripts, and notebooks at auctions. Now, his literary sinecure was coming undone.

He’d fight back, like Adele said, though the effort had a Spotted Elk at Wounded Knee feel to it. Whatever the social or economic dynamics that brought about this age of expediency in which no one cared about the things he cared about, they were running at full throttle, hell-bent on destroying the library as he’d known it—not actually tearing it down to the ground brick by brick, but literally and figuratively ripping its guts out.

He should have learned by now that as you progress through life things you thought would be there forever won’t be—not even you. Not just the library, Manhattan had been transformed over the half century he’d known it from a place of neighborhoods with the characteristics of a small town—bakery, butcher, drugstore, bar—into a megalopolis-like shopping mall of chain restaurants, chain coffee shops, national brand boutiques. Pockets of the old New York remained—his Murray Hill walk-up apartment building for one—but not much was left. And now the library would change as so much else had changed.

*   *   *

That afternoon, Harry Larkin stopped him on the second floor landing above the lobby. “There’s been an altercation. Benny Barone—”

“Someone attacked Benny?”

“Quite the opposite—he assaulted Maximilian Wagner. Professor Wagner says Benny punched him. From what I understand, he grabbed him by the throat. I’m hoping she meant shirt collar rather than putting his hands around his neck.”

“Who’s she?”

“Mrs. Wagner.”

“Laura Lee?”

Harry raised his eyebrows.

Ambler shrugged.

“She played down the incident. What she said was, ‘Maximilian got his feathers ruffled.’ But he wasn’t laughing.”

“What’s Benny say?”

“He’s not saying anything. He wants Adele in the room if I question him.”

“Adele?”

“She’s his union steward.”

“The police?”

“Not yet. We’ll see.”

When Ambler got to his desk, two readers were waiting for materials and the page had brought the wrong boxes to another reader. He was too busy to think about anything else until Adele showed up.

“Benny wants to talk to you,” she said.

Ambler found Benny in the hallway.

“Harry sent me home.”

“Suspended you?”

Benny shrugged. “I guess. Can we walk?”

They walked down Fifth Avenue. Ambler watched Benny’s shiny Italian leather shoes strike rhythmically against the sidewalk.

“I grabbed him by the collar, shoved him against the desk, and slapped him.” Wagner had come upon Benny and Kay Donnelly heads bent together in the microform reading room on the first floor. “He embarrassed her. His wife was with him. I told him to leave it alone. He kept at Kay, so I grabbed him and told him to shut up. He laughed, so I slapped him. I wasn’t going to. But he had this mocking expression on his puss, so I slapped it off.”

Ambler nodded. He’d wanted to knock Wagner’s smug expression off his face any number of times.

“You’ve been in trouble with the library, Ray, and you got out of it.”

“I didn’t slug a reader.”

“Not slug. I slapped him. Do you think the shithead can get me fired?

“Did he grab you, punch at you?”

Benny shook his head. “Nope. Just that smug superior expression.”

“Well, you’ve got the union.”

“Anything you can do? You know the guy.”

Ambler was quiet. He thought about Max’s wife, Laura Lee. “I’ll see.”

Chapter 6

Kay Donnelly walked back to her room at The Webster Apartments on 34th Street after getting off the crosstown bus at Ninth Avenue. The women’s residence wasn’t a place she liked very much—the room reminded her of being in college. Max found it for her, the only decent place she could afford on what she was getting paid for the Yates project.

He would have paid her more if he weren’t scared of Laura Lee. He’d have liked her to have her own apartment for their now infrequent assignations. Laura Lee kept the books and controlled the money. The apartment in the nunnery was her way of showing she wasn’t fooled. If Max had half a brain, he’d know his wife had known for some time about his occasional walk on the wild side and couldn’t care less about it.

On the other hand, Laura Lee was brilliant at letting Kay know she was onto Max’s indiscretions. It was as if she could speak in another language in front of him, getting her thoughts across to Kay while he was oblivious to what she said. Laura Lee was a miserable bitch, more ruthless and selfish than Max—but too good an actress, too charming and coquettish, for most people, especially men, to catch on to her.

But what could she do? Her career was tied up with Max’s projects. If she was to get tenure at Whitehall, it would have to be through him, and it would have to be pretty soon. The clock was running.

In retrospect, she probably shouldn’t have taken up with Benny. He was too close to home, and Max too jealous and insecure. Now, Benny was in big trouble for fighting with him. Still, he was cute, a rough-around-the-edges guy, innocent at the same time; taking him to bed, she felt like she was corrupting him. The hotel room probably cost him half a week’s pay.

His chivalry was endearing and he was handsome—in a primitive, manly way you didn’t come across often in the academic world. Strangely, it was the same rough-around-the-edges appeal Max had when she first met him. Max changed and the appeal, if not the brashness, wore off over the years. She didn’t know how she felt about him anymore, only that she was bound to him in so many ways that no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t pull away. It was her fault Benny was in this mess. The poor guy didn’t know Max would have any reason to be jealous. She’d have to hope that when Max calmed down, she might get him to drop the whole thing.

The thing with Benny was fun. The archaic, relic residence hall she stayed in didn’t allow women to have men in their rooms. Benny lived in Brooklyn with his parents. So, at her age, they were slinking around like teenagers, trying to find a place to have sex. He took her one afternoon to an out-of-the-way office in the bowels of the library, where they necked and petted and she sucked him off. She was afraid to take off her clothes because someone discovering them would be too damn silly and mortifying—Max would have a fit, and Laura Lee would never let her forget it.

The police detective who questioned her asked so many questions about Max she thought he might be a suspect in James’s murder. He had motive enough to kill him, for reasons the police didn’t know about and were unlikely to find out about. The detective asked about Benny, too. This worried her. What did he have to do with James? If Benny were going to kill anyone, it would be Max. She was half-convinced he would, too, if she asked him to, or even if she didn’t, if he thought Max would harm her. It was fun to have a man smitten with her.

Max ridiculed Benny; probably he reminded Max of where he himself had come from. How Max could be so smart about literature, yet so dumb about himself—and Laura Lee, too, for that matter—was beyond her.

She wasn’t surprised the detective asked her if she knew where Max was at the time of the murder. Then, he asked where she was. Why would he ask that? She got so flustered, she couldn’t think of what to say. How could he possibly suspect her?

*   *   *

Not long after leaving Benny, Ambler saw Laura Lee McGlynn walking up the main stairway, so he followed and caught up with her at the top of the stairs on the third floor. She was as glamorous and fashionable as the first time he saw her, her smile as bright. He led her to one of the stone benches in the rotunda outside the catalog room.

“It was nothing … a little roughing up,” she said lightly. “You know what Max is like. He deserved it.”

“Why do you think I know what he’s like?”

Laura Lee smiled, more of an easy, carefree laugh. “You made an impression on him when you were in graduate school.”

“He told you about that? We didn’t like one another.”

“With Max, that’s making an impression.”

Ambler laughed.

“He’s been telling me about you. He said you were treated unfairly. He knew you didn’t do what they said. You weren’t a plagiarist.” Her expression when her eyes narrowed with concern was as appealing and even more intense than when she smiled. “I’d like to know what happened if you’d like to tell me. You paid a price for your radical activities—”

Ambler laughed again. “It was a long time ago.”

“Someday, when you know me better, you’ll want to tell me.” Her tone was soothing, reassuring. “I’m a good listener.” She shifted her position on the bench, moving closer to him, her eyes searching his. “Well, I can’t flatter myself that you stopped me because you couldn’t pass up an opportunity to chat.” She didn’t actually bat her eyelashes, but it seemed so. “I suppose you’d like me to ask Max not to press charges against your friend?”

“I would.”

Her expression went sour in front of a fake laugh. “Kay Donnelly is as subtle as a streetwalker. It’s her fault.”

“I’m sure with her ex-husband’s death—”

Laura Lee grimaced. “They’d been divorced for some time. She treated him badly before the divorce, during it, and long after. She’s not beside herself with grief.”

Her cynicism, something in her tone, suggested she might be more forthcoming than he thought. He took a chance. “How well did you know James Donnelly?”

“Max and I hadn’t been in contact with him for years. Kay, as far as I know, hadn’t had anything to do with him for years either. Why do you ask?”

He could say, “Because Wagner and James Donnelly had an argument the day before he was murdered.” And he might have if she hadn’t just lied. “No reason. Just wondering. I suppose the police asked you about him.”

She stiffened. Her manner became chilly. “Yes. They did. James Donnelly was a difficult man. I’m not surprised he made enemies.”

“Oh? Were he and Max enemies?”

She hesitated, blinking rapidly, before looking directly at him. “He wasn’t important enough for Max to care one way or another about him”

Ambler held her gaze.

A charming smile replaced the frown. “When Max cools off, I’ll speak to him about your friend.”

*   *   *

Max Wagner wasn’t happy. The Nelson Yates biography was treading water, the narrative boring—Yates did this; Yates did that. The spectacular was missing, the shocking twist that would expose Yates as the exact opposite of the man his hero-worshipping fans thought he was. The thing was he knew the shocking revelation, yet he couldn’t use it. He didn’t have proof.