The King of Ragtime (22 page)

During the last part of Tabor’s speech, Birdie’s eyes went wider and wider. When he finished, she charged full tilt into the living room. Nell and Tabor followed. The girl paused as she saw the colored man on the floor, then let out a wail, ran up to the body, fell to her knees, and threw her arms around the dead man’s shoulders. “You killed him,” she screamed back at Tabor. “What did you have to kill him for?”

Tabor snorted. “He was holding a gun on Mrs. Stanley.” Tabor nudged the pistol, on the floor, a few inches from Dubie’s outstretched hand. “You think I should have just let him shoot
me
? And her. And maybe you, too, while he was at it?”

“He wouldn’t have done that.” Birdie sobbed. “He just talked big.”

Tabor shook his head. “What the deuce is going on? Who is…
was
this guy? How did you get here?”

Nell reached a hand to Birdie, helped the girl to her feet, and over to the sofa. She rubbed at her wrists, then took a handkerchief from Nell and wiped at her eyes and face. “I don’t know. He got hold of me yesterday on my way in to work, pulled me behind the elevator and held a chloroform rag over my face. Next thing I knew, I was here. I was scared, ’cause I didn’t know what he was going to do, but then he got really nice.” The girl looked at Dubie’s body, started to cry again, noiselessly this time. “He called out for food for us, and we sat around, playing cards and talking. He said he was working for a big-time music publisher who was going to put out some of his tunes.”

“Did he say who?” Tabor’s tone was a jackhammer staccato.

She shook her head. “No.”

“That doesn’t help a lot.”

Enough, Nell thought. “Mr. Tabor, she can’t tell you what she doesn’t know. We need to call the police, but first, the girl is going to call her mother. The poor woman is worried sick.” Nell took Birdie’s hand, led her to the phone. “Tell your mother you’re all right, and that I’ll bring you home as soon as the police let us go.”

Birdie acknowledged the directive with a wan smile, then picked up the receiver and gave the number to the operator. She watched silently as Nell palmed a little slip of paper from the telephone table, and walked away. “Mr. Tabor…” Nell said.

“What?”

“I’m just wondering. How is it you have a key to this apartment?”

Tabor looked away, rolled his tongue against his cheek. “Well, all right, Mrs. Stanley, you’re a married woman. And working at W, B, and S, you’re bound to hear about it sooner or later. I keep this apartment because it’s convenient after I’ve gone to dinner and the theater. He cleared his throat. But I do have friends, and I get requests from them often enough that I keep an extra key. The day before yesterday, one of them asked whether he could borrow the room for a few days. I thought he was going to…well, you know.”

“I can imagine easily enough.”

“I think we have a problem, Mrs. Stanley.”

Birdie hung up the telephone.

“I think we do,” Nell said. And I think we’d better inform the police. Now.”

Tabor hesitated. “I’d hoped we might come up with a better idea. This will be terrible publicity for the firm.”

“I understand that. And if it weren’t for that dead man on the floor, I might go along with you. But I don’t think any of us should take the risk that one day we might need to explain why we tried to cover over a murder, even one so clearly justified. Now, will you call, or shall I?”

Tabor laughed, and walked toward the phone. “Mrs. Stanley, you make a strong argument.”

***

Detective Ciccone spent several minutes looking over Dubie Harris’ body, then straightened, stretched, groaned. “Floor gets lower every year, Charlie.”

Patrolman Flaherty produced a properly appreciative laugh.

Great, Nell thought. We call the police and they send Weber and Fields.

Ciccone looked long and hard at Birdie and Nell, then turned up the intensity as he focused on Tabor. “You seem to be making a habit of coming across dead people. Two homicides inside of a few days, within a few blocks of each other, and the same man calls them both in. Quite a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”

Over Flaherty’s snicker, Tabor said, “Listen, Detective Ciccone—”

“That’s Sic-cone-E. Like the island, not something you put ice cream in. And I
am
listening, but I’m also thinking. You call in both murders. And Miss Kuminsky there gets a visit from me at home about the first one, and now she’s front and center at the second. You better watch it, Miss. You don’t want to be the feature attraction at the next event.”

Birdie sniffled, began to shiver. Nell wrapped an arm around her. “That’s not necessary, Detective. Not with what this girl’s been through the past couple of days.”

Ciccone treated Nell to a look that should have withered her, but she returned his glare with interest, and in the end it was the detective who looked away. “I’ll decide what’s necessary,” he said, but most of the starch was gone from his voice. “There are two men dead—”

“And one poor girl, kidnaped and frightened out of her wits,” Nell barked. “We all want to help you, but one more remark like that, and I’ll take Miss Kuminsky out the door and home. You will have to stop me by force.”

Ciccone chewed on his lip. “All right, Mrs. Stanley. Miss Kuminsky, I’m sorry I upset you. Please tell me what went on here. Start at the beginning.”

When Birdie finished, her account, Nell took over, and finally Tabor. Ciccone took it all in silently, here nodding, there raising his eyebrows at Flaherty. Then he addressed Nell. “Not that I doubt your word, Mrs. Stanley—but are you in the habit of looking two stories up as you walk along the sidewalk?”

“Of course not. But I thought I heard calls for help, and when I looked up to where they seemed to be coming from, I saw Miss Kuminsky, leaning out the window. She looked upset.”

“You have good eyesight.”

“As a matter of fact, I do. But I’m sure you or anyone else would have come to the same conclusion.”

“Hmm.” Ciccone smiled. “Miss Kuminsky, if you were tied to the bed, how did you manage to get your head out the window?”

“The foot of the bed is right under the sill. I pushed myself up as far as I could, and then I leaned on the ledge, and called, “Help,” but not too loud.” She pointed at Dubie’s body. “I didn’t want him to hear me.”

“What did you think would happen when Mrs. Stanley came up? Did you imagine that man with the gun was going to say he was sorry and let you go with her?”

Birdie’s lip trembled. “I didn’t…I thought maybe a policeman would see me, or maybe someone would call a policeman.”

“All right. Mr. Tabor, how is it you happen to have both a gun and a key to this apartment?”

“I keep the gun in my desk. If you want, I can show you my license.”

“We’ll get to that.” Ciccone paused long enough to send a message that the man’s attitude annoyed him. “But since you know about gun licenses, I’ve got to think you also know it’s illegal to discharge any firearm in the Borough of Manhattan.”

Tabor got the message, didn’t like it. “What the hell’s the point of licensing a gun if you’re not allowed to use it to defend yourself?”

Ciccone shrugged. “I don’t write the laws. I just enforce them.” He held out his hand. “The gun, please, Mr. Tabor.”

Tabor pulled the weapon from his pocket, handed it to Ciccone, who passed it to Flaherty. “Thank you. Now, let’s talk about the key.”

Tabor coughed and cleared his throat. “The apartment is mine,” he said. “I use it to entertain friends, evenings.”

Ciccone looked at the body on the floor. “He wouldn’t be one of your friends, would he?”

“Certainly not. I’d never set eyes on him until I came into the room today.”

“And how was it that you
did
happen to come into the room today,” Ciccone asked. “At five o’clock in the afternoon, with a gun in your hand.”

Tabor looked at Nell and Birdie, then sighed luxuriantly and turned a wry face onto the detective. “That man called the office and insisted on talking to someone who wasn’t there. I’m the office manager, so the receptionist asked me to take the call. Before I could say hello, the man told me there was a problem, he was holding a gun on a woman, and I should come right over. So I figured I’d better be prepared. When I opened the door, he pointed the gun at me. Fortunately, I fired first.”

“Who was it the man asked for?” Ciccone’s voice went very soft. “On the phone. At your office?”

By now, Tabor was giving a good impression of a man who’d accidentally sat on a nest of fire ants. “Uh…Mr. Berlin, one of the partners.”

“Oh. This colored man is in
your
apartment, with a girl he’s kidnaped and tied to the bed, while he’s holding a gun on a woman. And he calls and asks Mr. Berlin—what? Why would he be asking Mr. Berlin what to do?”

Tabor looked at Nell and Birdie, but there was no help forthcoming. Neither was a good reply written on the wall behind Ciccone and Flaherty. Finally, Tabor looked back to Ciccone. “I loaned Mr. Berlin a key the other day.” Nell could hardly hear the words. “Every now and then, he asks about using the apartment. I don’t ask him why. He’s my boss.”

Nell felt Birdie sway against her side; she walked the girl to a chair, sat her down, then marched back to face the detective. “Mr. Ciccone, this girl is at the end of her rope. May I please take her home? If you need to talk more with her, perhaps you could see her there.”

Ciccone glanced at Birdie. “Yeah, okay. We’ve got her address. Just give yours to the patrolman here.” As Nell reached for the pencil and pad in Flaherty’s hand, Ciccone added, “Just one more question, an easy one. Miss Kuminsky, did you see Mr. Berlin here at any time? Or anyone else, besides the man on the floor?”

Birdie shook her head. “No. No one.”

“Okay. Go ahead, then, Mrs. Stanley. Take her home.”

Nell glanced at her wrist watch. After six o’clock. Her father would be at Joe Lamb’s by now, and at the least he’d be concerned. She took a step toward the telephone, but stopped. That detective was not a fool. All he’d have to do was hear her give the operator a Brooklyn number, right after she’d written down her Manhattan address, and he’d be all over her. Better to just go down to the street and find a phone booth.

***

Martin was up and over to Nell before she got fully inside the room. “Where’s Birdie? Is she all right?”

Stark had lowered his newspaper; now he folded it and set it on the coffee table. Lamb came out from the kitchen, a wooden spoon in his hand. Joplin, surprisingly, got up and walked away from the piano, then sat next to Stark on the sofa.

Nell brushed past Martin, pulled off her hat, tossed it onto an end-table next to a lamp, and collapsed into an armchair. Martin followed at her heels. She gave the young man a warm smile. “Yes, she’s fine. I suspect she’ll sleep very well tonight.”

“They didn’t hurt her, did they?”

“From what she says, she is no longer kosher, but that’s the extent of it.”

“Why didn’t you bring her here?”

Stark pushed himself up and off the sofa, took Martin by the elbow, pulled him away from Nell. “There are many reasons why she didn’t bring the girl. In case you don’t recall, you and Joplin are still fugitives from the law, and the fewer people, your girlfriend included, who come traipsing over here, the better. Besides, she’ll be able to get some rest now, back in her own home.”

Martin wrenched his arm away. “She got kidnaped once, she could get kidnaped again.”

Stark saw him glance toward the door. “Martin!”

“Damn it!” The young man stamped a foot. “Mr. Stark, you’re old. You don’t know what it’s like.”

It seemed to Nell that everyone in the room, herself included, held their breath. But Stark’s face was calm, his voice level. “Old I may be, but my memory is in no way faulty. I remember well when I was twenty-four, and my new wife, sixteen. That was in 1865. I was in the Union Army, stationed in New Orleans, and shortly after the wedding ceremony, my company shipped out to Mobile Bay. Not long after, word came to me that neighbors were threatening my wife’s safety, and so I left my unit and made my way back to New Orleans, where I sent my wife, in the company of a young Negro man who posed as her servant, up the Mississippi to my brother’s farm. Can you imagine how much I would have given to go with her?”

Nell thought Martin looked like a sailboat suddenly becalmed. “Your leave was only long enough to let you go back to New Orleans?” he asked.

Stark looked at Nell, then pulled himself even straighter. “I was not given leave. I deserted. How I wished I could have gone up the river with my wife, but I knew she was safer on that boat with my friend than she would have been with me. Had I gone with her, and been apprehended as a deserter, she would have been entirely without help. Much against my will, I returned to my unit and served out my time, which passed slowly indeed. So yes, young man, I know very well what it is like. And you have my full sympathy.”

Lamb waved the wooden spoon. “I don’t know if any of you are hungry—”

“I am, for one,” said Nell. “I can fill you in at the table on what’s happened.”

***

“Extraordinary,” Stark said when Nell finished her account. “Someone with Berlin’s success, going to such lengths to steal Joplin’s music and then put him and Martin out of the way.”

“Some people can never be satisfied,” said Lamb.

“I thought it was odd, though,” Nell said. “Everyone in the music business knows Berlin doesn’t chase women. I’ve heard some nasty jokes. But Tabor said Berlin often asked to borrow the apartment.”

“He wouldn’t be the first man to be hypocritical about his private behavior,” said Lamb.

“But why would he need Tabor’s apartment?” Martin spoke so softly, Nell had to listen with care to catch all his words. “He has his own place, and no one to stop him entertaining there.”

“He’d have to face his staff the next morning,” said Stark. “Which would no doubt embarrass him severely. Not to mention what might happen if one of his lady friends were to show up at his home another time, uninvited. It does make sense. Perhaps at this point, we should just sit tight for a day or two. From what you tell me, Nell, I’d say the police are going to make Mr. Berlin shed a great deal of perspiration.”