The Hour of the Cat (18 page)

“Come on, will you,” the super said. “You're payin' to see Miss Lynch's apartment, not live in mine.”

“Wouldn't worry about that I was you.” Dunne followed the super up three flights of stairs. They stopped in front of a door at the far end of a badly lit hallway. The super opened the door and stood back. “Don't stay all day,” he said.

“In like Flynn,” Dunne said. “Out just as quick.”

The layout of the place was different from the super's: bedroom straight ahead, bathroom right beside it; to the right, a tiny kitchen; to the left, two windows facing the street. It was no surprise the furniture was gone. Dunne's footsteps echoed on the bare floors as he crossed the living room to the bedroom. Except for a few dust balls, the closets were empty. Same with the kitchen and bathroom cabinets. Mother Hubbard's cupboard all over again.

From outside came the muffled commotion of traffic, clash of roller skates on concrete, kids shouting, laughing, sounds that might have been among the last Miss Lynch heard. According to the trial record, it had been sometime after 8:30 P.M. that a neighbor noticed her door ajar. The neighbor knocked and called her name. Fearful and suspicious when she got no answer, she went to find the super. No answer there either, she left the building and corralled Patrolman Michael Rath. He entered the apartment and found Miss Lynch sprawled amid the caked, clotted gore on her bedclothes and summoned the homicide squad.

Though it was possible Officer Rath had guarded the apartment until the other cops arrived, touching nothing and making sure no one else did until the place got an official going-over, Dunne knew from experience that it was more likely Rath had made a quick search through dressers, trunks, closets, under the mattress, for “spinster's gold,” the fabled horde accumulated by those thrifty souls who stowed away cash and jewelry against the possibility of an old age spent in poverty. Several years before, two sisters had been discovered in a room they hadn't left in a quarter century with nearly a million dollars in cash and negotiable bonds. The Surrogate's Court glommed the goods that time, but with each homicide or suicide or unexplained death, the treasure hunt went on more fervidly than ever, cops, ambulance men, whoever was in first on a mad dash to find the trove before the next wave of detectives, fingerprint boys, and photographers arrived.

He lit a cigarette in the bathroom and tossed the match in the john. Wisps of smoke hung in the dead air. After a while, the place would have been thick with cops, some working, most standing around and kibitzing. Maybe somebody noticed a crucifix on the wall and called a priest. Anybody's guess how much evidence was lost and how much gathered before the morgue crew stuck the corpse in a heavy canvas bag and hauled it away.
Requiescat in pace.
The person who searched Miss Lynch's jewelry box did so carefully, the Professor said, piece-by-piece, as though searching for something in particular. Didn't seem likely he'd been part of this crowd.

The super was in the hall, leaning on a mop. There was no pail. “Satisfied?”

“How about a word in private?”

“This is private.”

A wide, frightened eye stared at Dunne through the peephole in the door behind the super. The fate of Miss Lynch helped confirm the impression of a horde of homicidal lunatics continually on the prowl, which the Professor and his fellow tradesmen earned their daily bread reinforcing. The fact that there were a few hundred murders a year in a population of eight million, most involving people who knew one another, didn't exactly match the tabloids' version of nonstop mayhem. But good luck trying to convince the one-eyed peepers that they have about as much chance of being hit by lightning as getting chopped in pieces by a new, improved version of Jack the Ripper.

“More private,” Dunne said. “Your place.”

“No way.”

Dunne drew close and nudged him with his shoulder, a wordless invitation:
push back or start moving.

“Don't try that tough guy stuff with me.” The super banged the handle end of the mop on the floor for emphasis.

Dunne nudged him again.
“Move.”

The super hesitated, then turned and walked ahead of Dunne. He halted a few feet inside his apartment, the mop at his side like a spear. “Okay, Aladdin, this is your last wish. Make it quick.”

“Tell me, genie, where's the highboy from?”

“Who?”

Dunne nodded toward the piece of furniture at the far end of the room. “The chest of drawers.”

“That? It was in the storage room when I moved in. Nobody knew who it belonged to, so I took it.”

“No chance it belonged to Miss Lynch?” A hunch dressed up as a question: the out-of-placeness of the piece plus a recollection of the Professor's mention of the elegant furniture in her apartment.

“Suppose it did? Finders keepers.”

“Furniture at a murder scene should have been impounded by the Sheriff's Office.” Dunne's memory of the evidentiary rules for homicides was rusty, but it sounded right, and the super seemed disinclined to argue about it. “This amounts to suppression of evidence. A crime. Losers weepers, if the D.A. hears about it.”

“Ain't givin' it back, if that's what you're anglin' for.”

“Can't imagine you would. Goes so nice with everything else.”

The super stood aside. “Have a look. Nothin' in it anyways. Then scat. Your welcome's run out.”

The top drawer glided out smoothly and noiselessly. Dunne repeated the process with the drawers beneath. They were as empty as the super promised. Dunne felt their undersides. No fake bottoms. The trial record indicated that though Grillo's prints had been found on the murder weapon, he'd managed to turn the place upside down and meticulously search the jewelry box without leaving a print anywhere else. Odd.

“Time's up.” The super was at the door, cradling the mop in both hands, more like a rifle than a spear.

“Another second.” Dunne knelt and put his hand beneath the highboy. He ran his index finger along the inner rim, from corner to corner, and touched something that had the feel of an old wad of gum stuck underneath a movie seat. He pried it loose with two fingers. It fell into his hand. As he stood, he brushed his pants with his hands and dropped the wad into his pocket. “Nothing,” he said.

The super smiled for the first time. “I told you.”

“Next time I'll listen.”

“Next time?” The smile vanished. “There ain't gonna be no next time.” He pulled the door open and stood next to it, mop by his side. “Now get out!”

Dunne stepped into the hallway. He pointed at the mop. “Try it with soap and water. It works better.”

“Kiss my ass, Dick Tracy.” The super flung the door shut.

Skates slung over his shoulder, the kid in the felt cap was on the corner when Dunne came out of the alley. “Find him?”

“Bigger charmer than you let on.” Dunne tossed him a quarter.

“Hey, thanks. Figured you for a cop when you wouldn't let go a nickel. Them guys is so tight, they squeak a block away. Crawled all over the neighborhood after old lady Lynch was kilt and didn't spring for a glass of seltzer.” The boy put the quarter in the pocket of his knickers. “Guess I was wrong about you.”

“Cops question you?”

“Questioned everybody.”

“What'd you tell 'em?”

“Gettin' the feelin' it's time for another quarter.”

“Tell me what you told the cops, I'll tell you what it's worth.”

“Ain't worth much, least the fat cop in charge didn't think so, but Miss Lynch had a brother, a wino bum. Came by every once in a while. Got the neighbors upset, a hobo hangin' around, but she'd smooth it over, give him a meal and some money, I guess, and send him away before people got too angry. Anyways, I thought I seen him here the day she was kilt, late afternoon like, little after she come home.”

“You weren't sure?”

“Maybe yes, maybe no. Didn't matter much till Miss Lynch was dead, if it was him or not.”

“That the last time he came around?”

“Was the last time I seen him. Or maybe it wasn't. Me and my friends, sometimes we go to the river to fish, down by the Hoover Flats, and the bums is lyin' on the pier sunnin' themselves. This one time, I thought I seen him there but, hey, like the fat cop said when I told him about thinkin' I spotted Miss Lynch's brother, ‘Seen one wino bum, seen 'em all.'”

“Here, buy you and your friends some sodas.” Dunne handed the kid a dollar.

“Man, now I know for sure you ain't a cop!”

Arriving early at the corner where he'd arranged to meet Elba Corado, Dunne went into the 5 & 10 and ordered a cup of coffee at the luncheon counter. He took the wad from his pocket, laid it on the paper napkin, and pressed it with his finger. There was something hard at its center. He scraped away the gummy covering with his penknife and exposed a key, an embossed circle at one end, two teeth at the other. Its small size seemed fit for a dresser or cabinet drawer. The highboy didn't have any locks. That narrowed the search down to the several million drawers and cabinets throughout the five boroughs. But somebody had gone to the trouble of hiding it. Perhaps it was what the killer had searched for in Miss Lynch's jewelry box. At the post office next door, he bought a stamped envelope and mailed the key to himself in the Hackett Building.

 

 

Elba Corado arrived in a two-door Ford coupe, a sporty maroon model that looked faster than it probably was. He was barely in the passenger seat when she stepped on the gas. Dunne braced himself against the dashboard.

“I can't tell you how excited I am that you've taken Wilfredo's case,” Elba said. “It's the first ray of hope in such a long time.”

She braked at the last moment for a red light. A cab almost slammed into their rear. The driver honked and screamed. She paid no notice. “I have such faith in you, Mr. Dunne. I knew from the minute I saw you, you were the one to help Wilfredo.” She raced ahead, coming to another abrupt stop at the next light.

“Just buy the car?” Dunne asked.

“You can tell?”

“Dress business must be good.”

“Thank God, Mr. Dunne, it's something I can rely on.” The car moved away from the light at a slower, more deliberate speed. “Where are we going?”

“Where we can talk. Go straight for now.” He lit two cigarettes and handed her one. “What's Wilfredo's secret?”

She drove with one hand; held the cigarette to her lips with the other. “Secret?”

“He'd rather go to the chair than reveal it, whatever it is.”

“He told you that?”

“Didn't have to. It was obvious.”

“So you think he killed Miss Lynch?”

“Whatever his secret, it's not
that
obvious.”

She pulled over to the curb, drew deeply on the cigarette. “This is very emotional for me. Would you mind driving?”

“Sure.” He came around and opened the driver's door. She slid across the seat.

“You have a license, don't you?”

“Been a while since I've been behind the wheel, but I'll be fine.” He re-entered the stream of traffic and glanced in the rearview mirror. A beer truck was right on their tail. The driver honked twice.

“He wants you to go faster.”

“Faster it is.” Though he'd never bothered with the formality of a driver's license, it came back to him quickly, the feel of shifting the clutch, up and down, in and out. The engine responded smoothly.

“You drive well,” Elba said.

“Thank Uncle Sam for that. I learned in the army.”

His first time behind the wheel was in France. They'd marched through a blizzard in the same uniforms issued the previous summer. Next morning, the sun came out and turned the roads to pudding-like slime. In the early afternoon, weary from trudging though miles of muck, they sat on the side of the road as a motorcade went past, a roaring, sputtering caravan of British and French touring cars, Rolls-Royces, Emersons, Grand Days, Courbots, and Renaults, each with one or two army brass, dry and warm inside and oblivious to the exhausted, sodden, mud-splattered soldiers on the roadside.

The troops grumbled and complained, then resumed their march. Dunne remembered what Vincent Coll said in the Protectory when they'd managed to get out of slaving in the laundry and were assigned to Brother Flavin's garden detail.
Gettin' what you want, that's the game, Fin, not grousin' about not havin' it
. Soon as they were quartered in a local village, Dunne went to the garage next to the church and drafted the rotund, gray-haired proprietor into teaching him to drive. The Frenchman knew only one abbreviated English phrase: “Eyes on zee road!” But thanks to his impassioned pantomime, Dunne got the hang.

By evening, they were ripping across moonlit roads and lanes, the Frenchman yelling what Dunne chose to interpret as encouragement. For the next month or two, Dunne chauffeured regimental officers to historic churches and handsome bordellos, until the fighting started and every available man went into the trenches.

 

 

Dunne turned onto Riverside Drive. “Where you taking me?” Elba asked. “Canada?”

“Farther. The North Pole.” He glanced at her.

A rush of air shook the frilly collar on her dress, tugged at her hat, and rippled across the soft waves of black hair beneath it.

Tempted to leave his gaze fixed on her, Dunne remembered:
Keep your eyes on the road.
He looked ahead.

Without any prompting, she began talking about her brother and herself. She was nearly twenty years younger than Wilfredo. They had the same father, but Wilfredo's mother died when he was a boy; Elba's died giving birth to her. Their father died in a boating accident soon afterwards. She was raised by her maiden aunt and, in a way, by Wilfredo, who had always seemed more an uncle than a brother. The family was well supported by a sugar business they'd owned for more than a century. Wilfredo trained to be a lawyer, and had even come briefly to New York to attend Columbia University School of Law. Eventually, instead of joining the family business, he became a professor of law at the University of Havana and advisor to the Student Federation.