Murder Your Darlings (33 page)

Church turned slightly. “Good old-fashioned police work.”

O’Rannigan barked a laugh. “Ha, that’s exactly right.” He didn’t take his eyes off the road. “When we went to question Battersby the very first time, he showed us Mayflower’s big, fancy office. But we insisted on talking to Battersby in his own little dinky office. Then, when he stepped outside for something or other, some papers—you know—fell out of his desk, like.”

“They fell out all by themselves?” she asked.

Church shot O’Rannigan a stern look, but the detective didn’t see it.

“They were Mayflower’s papers. Seems he was writing a kind of autobiographical exposé, and a big chunk of it was about what a great big dummy his boss, Battersby, is. You know, rich kid who doesn’t know nothing but thinks he can run the show? That was Mayflower’s take.”

“So that’s why Mayflower went to Ramshackle. For libel insurance.”

“Who?”

“Wallace Ramshackle. Mayflower’s lawyer.”

“Lawyer?” O’Rannigan turned and gave her a nasty look. “Why didn’t you tell us Mayflower had a lawyer?”

“Why didn’t you tell us you were using us as bait to trap Battersby?”

“Detective!” Church shouted.
“Look out!”

O’Rannigan turned to see a traffic cop directly in front of the sedan. The cop held up a white-gloved hand; he blew furiously on his whistle; his face was red and panicked. O’Rannigan twisted the wheel to the left, directly into the path of an oncoming truck. Swerving around the traffic cop, O’Rannigan jerked the wheel back to the right. The truck raced by within inches of the sedan.

“Good heavens!” Benchley’s hand went to his forehead.

“That was a close one, wasn’t it?” Dorothy said.

“Not that,” Benchley said peevishly.

“What?”

“I mean, good heavens, Detective Orangutan figured it out right from the first! Remember what he said during our nightlong Spanish Inquisition?”

“What’d he say?”

“Something to the effect that Mayflower had annoyed Battersby. And then Battersby called in a favor from the Sandman or somehow paid him to kill Mayflower. That was it. O’Tannenbaum deduced it.”

“The de-deuce you say!”

“I told you,” Church said. “Detective O’Rannigan is very good at his job. You would be unwise to underestimate him.”

“He is, is he?” she said. “Say,
Detective
, something’s been on my mind since we left the ’Gonk. Did you ever call the cops at the Fourteenth Precinct to intercept Battersby at the printing plant? Or were you too busy arguing over directions?”

The smug smile disappeared from O’Rannigan’s face.

“Detective?” Church said.

“Well, I—” O’Rannigan began.

Church’s voice was hard and cold. “Pull over now! A call box is right there, in front of the post office.”

On the corner at Thirty-third was the colossal post office building, as solid and massive as a Greek temple. O’Rannigan slammed on the brakes and spun the wheel directly toward it. On the sidewalk, an organ grinder and his monkey barely jumped out of the way. O’Rannigan flung open the door and nearly leaped toward the police call box.

“And make it quick!” Church shouted after him. He turned to Dorothy. “Why did you wait until now to remind the detective to make that call?”

“I only thought of it now.”

“At this rate, Finnegan will slaughter Battersby and Dachshund, then make his escape before we even arrive.”

“Then, let’s go!” she cried, and jumped forward to crawl over the seat and get behind the wheel. But O’Rannigan, bursting into the car, pushed her back with one wide hand.

“Get outta here,” he cried. “Do you even know how to drive?”

She landed back in her seat. “No, do you?”

All of a sudden, a long white limousine, followed by a white sedan, came hurtling around the corner, sped past the police sedan, and flew down Ninth. Dorothy thought she had seen Woollcott’s terrified face staring out the window of the limo.

“Son of a gun!” O’Rannigan shouted, throwing the car into reverse. “It’s Mickey Finn and his gang.”

Chapter 39

The police car shot forward. In a moment, they had passed the paddy wagon, which struggled to catch up. But they couldn’t catch up to Mickey Finn’s limo and the car following it.

Dorothy closed her eyes and clutched her stomach.

“I never thought I’d get seasick in the middle of the island of Manhattan.”

She couldn’t decide which was more terrifying—keeping her eyes open or keeping them closed. She decided to keep them closed for a while to find out. Then the car screeched and lurched forward. She opened her eyes to see gunfire blazing out of the window of the white sedan.

Next to the white car—and directly in front of the police sedan—was a rickety coal truck. Small bursts of flame erupted in the open cargo bed as the bullets struck.

“They’re shooting into the coal truck,” O’Rannigan shouted. “It’s catching fire!”

Pockets of flame now dotted the truck’s load of black coal.

One of Finn’s henchmen stuck his head and arm out of the window of the car. He reached forward, the top half of his body now struggling toward the tailgate of the coal truck.

In an instant, Church released the siren and clutched a snub-nosed pistol. Quickly, he rolled down his window—but not quickly enough.

The man grabbed the tailgate’s latch and opened it. The tailgate disappeared under an avalanche of flaming coal that poured into the street, directly in front of the police sedan.

O’Rannigan wrestled with the wheel, but there was nowhere to go. To the left was a series of upright girders that supported the elevated train platform overhead. To the right was a milk wagon pulled by a horse.

At the sight of the oncoming pile of flaming coal, the horse reared in fright. The driver of the milk wagon held on for dear life.

O’Rannigan slammed the brakes. The car skidded on the first few chunks of coal. The oncoming pile was only thirty feet in front of them.

“The milk!” Dorothy shouted.

“What?” O’Rannigan yelled.

But Church understood immediately. He flung open his door and swung his wooden peg leg out into open space. He pivoted and, with dead accuracy, shot his leg out sideways like a bolt. It broke the pole that connected the horse’s harness to the wagon. The driver released the reins. The horse ran free. But the wagon tilted on two wheels. It turned sharply—as Dorothy and Church saw it would—directly into the sedan’s path.

The police car rammed straight into the broad side of the wagon, smashing the wooden cart to pieces. Pint-sized and quart-sized milk bottles exploded everywhere like fluid fireworks, spattering the sedan’s windshield with a cataract of creamy liquid, white foam and chunks of glass.

Then the car smashed into the pile of coal like a fist pounding into a mound of sand, and lurched to a stop. Lumps of coal thunked and smudged the cracked, white-painted windshield, which shattered under the hailstorm of coal. Through the open window, they could see that the sedan’s hood was buried nose deep in the heaping pile of wet coal. The milk had extinguished most of the flames.

They looked at one another, as if surprised to be alive.

“Hey, you lunatics!”

They turned to see the wagon driver shaking an angry fist. “You wrecked my wagon, spooked my horse and nearly killed me!”

“Ah, piffle,” she said. “It’s no use crying over spilled—oh, never mind. Let’s clear out of here.”

The paddy wagon screeched to a stop right behind the sedan. They clambered out of the car, stumbling and tripping over the lumps of wet coal.

“No room up front. Get in the back,” O’Rannigan commanded Dorothy and Benchley, pointing to the prisoner compartment of the paddy wagon. The detective raced around and opened the back doors, clutching his small derby to his big head.

“Won’t be the last time I ride in one of these, I’m sure,” she said, and climbed in. Benchley, Church and O’Rannigan followed.

Chapter 40

In the back of the speeding paddy wagon, Dorothy—with her eyes squeezed shut—caught the scent of baking bread. She had read that this smell was the last thing you sense before dying. Was she now about to die? She could smell it. The rich, yeasty, sweet aroma of . . . cookies?

Her eyes popped open. Benchley wore his usual merry smile.

“Smell that?” He breathed in deeply. “Must be fattening to live in this neighborhood.”

She glanced out the small window at the hulking red-brick North American Biscuit factory.

“Fig Newtons, I think,” he said.

She shrugged. “Who gives a fig?”

“Officer!” Church yelled through the small window to the driver’s cabin. “Do you have them in sight?”

“Yes, sir! About a block ahead. We’re closing the distance.”

“Faster, Officer. Faster!”

“Sir!”

Benchley leaned forward, a perplexed look on his face. He had to shout over the siren and the roar of the engine. “So, Captain, can you please explain something? If you had intended to use our lunch meeting today as bait for your trap, why did you come around to the party last night and tell us to call it off?”

“We have our methods,” Church said.

O’Rannigan wore a self-satisfied smile. “Ain’t you never heard of reverse psychology? We know how you smart alecks think. We tell you
not
to do something, and you go ahead and do it. We tell you to do something, you
don’t
do it. So we wanted to make sure you went ahead with your cuckoo plan.”

“You’re a regular Dr. Freud,” Benchley said drily.

“I’d say he’s Jung at heart,” she muttered.

Church ignored them. “Officer! Have you caught up yet?”

“Closing in, sir!”

Against her better judgment, Dorothy leaned forward again over Church’s shoulder to peer through the little mesh window. She could see the white sedan just a short distance ahead and, beyond it, the long white limousine.

An intersection approached. The limo sped heedlessly through the tangle of traffic; the sedan followed.

She saw the elevated train tracks above the intersection. This must have been Greenwich Street again, where the Ninth Avenue El continued into Greenwich Village. The street fell into shadow under the train tracks as the paddy wagon sped into the intersection.

The police driver jumped in his seat. “Holy sh—”

Suddenly, a large white flash appeared directly in front of the paddy wagon. Dorothy saw the terrified eye and heard the frantic whinny. She and Church were jolted forward against the small window as the paddy wagon slammed hard, as if it had hit a wall.

Chapter 41

The paddy wagon stopped. The whinny turned intoa keening wail, more shrill and earsplitting than the siren’s wail. People screamed. Cars screeched to a halt.

“God, no!” Dorothy cried. “Was that a horse?”

The police driver looked back, horror-struck. “Came out of nowhere! I c-couldn’t stop in time.”

Church spoke calmly, almost coldly. “Never mind. Go around it. Continue after Finnegan.”

The paddy wagon was still rocking up and down.

“Th-the horse is in the way. We’re stuck. God, it’s flailing!”

The other officer in the passenger seat looked back. “It’s flopping around like a fish, Captain. It’s nearly crushed.”

O’Rannigan got up, withdrawing his large police pistol. “I’ll take care of it.”

Dorothy grabbed his sleeve. “Don’t you dare—”

He didn’t look at her. He shook his arm free and kicked open the back doors of the paddy wagon. He jumped out.

They couldn’t see where he went, but they could imagine it. A stomach-churning moment passed, until the echoing gunshot ended the horse’s wailing. The paddy wagon stopped rocking.

She buried her face in her hands.

The detective pulled himself back in. He closed the doors and sat down. “Let’s go, Officer.”

The paddy wagon lurched into reverse, disentangled itself from the body of the horse, then rolled forward haltingly.

“Can’t you move this thing any faster?” O’Rannigan barked as the paddy wagon limped along.

“The whole front end is smashed in,” the driver said. “We’re lucky we’re moving at all.”

“Detective O’Rannigan?” Benchley said.

The detective didn’t respond.

Benchley leaned forward, speaking louder. “Detective O’Rannigan?”

The detective didn’t seem to hear him. “You’re never gonna believe this,” O’Rannigan said, his gaze and his voice distant. “It was the horse from the milk wagon. Must have kept running down Ninth, then took the dogleg at Greenwich. Damned thing was nearly in two pieces when I shot it.”

Dorothy cringed.

“Detective O’Rannigan?” Benchley said tentatively.

The detective turned sharply. “Did you just call me O’Rannigan? Not O’Tannenbaum? Or Orangutan? Or Orient Express?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Okay, Mr. Benchley. What?”

“I do believe you were right from the start,” he said. “We should have taken Seventh Avenue.”

Captain Church grimaced. “Officer,” he snapped at the driver, “faster, now, faster!”

The paddy wagon hobbled forward without gaining much speed.

“What’s the use?” Dorothy slumped in her seat. “There’s no chance we can catch up now. Either by Battersby or by Finn, Billy’s goose is cooked.”

“Not so fast, Dottie.” Benchley took her hand, which made her stomach—already upset—tremble. “Billy’s resourceful. He’s smart. And despite what you may wish to think, he’s not a helpless little puppy. Furthermore, he wouldn’t give up on you. So let’s not yet give up on him, shall we?”

She sat up. His optimism, as always, took the edge off her despair. It didn’t dispel it but made it somehow surmountable.

“Perhaps,” she said.

“Certainly. Billy probably gave Battersby the slip, and at this very moment he’s likely waiting at a bus stop somewhere to get back to the Algonquin. We’ll all have a good laugh and a drink together when this is cleared up. You’ll see.”