The Longest Second (10 page)

I returned to the Acton-Plaza. Before contacting the elevator operator, I wrote on my pad, “Does this guest of the hotel live on the 3, 9, or 15 floor?” When the elevator descended, I waited until it had emptied of passengers, and then approaching the operator, I handed him a five-dollar bill. He stuffed it in his pocket, and then I gave him the photograph of the woman and the question I had prepared. Glancing first at the picture, then reading my question, he nodded and said, “Yes, the ninth.”

Quickly I wrote, “Do you know her room number?” He told me no, he didn’t know it. An elderly couple entered the elevator, followed by several other persons. They all appeared impatient to be taken to their floors. There was time for only one more question. I wrote and handed him the pad, “Do you know her name?”

“Nope,” he replied, returning the pad to me, and shutting the elevator door in my face. Taking the photograph, I walked back to the main lobby where the registration desk was located. I showed the picture to the clerk, and inquired if a woman answering to this description was registered on the ninth floor. After reading my inquiry, the clerk replied that he didn’t know and asked me for her name. As I didn’t know what name she was using, I couldn’t tell him that; we were at an impasse.

However, I returned to the elevators and took one to the ninth floor. After I had stepped off it, I stood for a moment attempting to impress the plan of the floor in my mind. Unfortunately, there was no floor desk, or clerk, where I could ask for information. Seemingly the plan of the ninth floor was similar to a gigantic grid. A main corridor ran along each of the four sides of the floor; two smaller corridors ran horizontally, and two others vertically, within this main rectangle. Banks of elevators opened on three of the four main corridors, and it was impossible to select a central position from which to watch all the elevators or all the halls. Rosemary Martin could reach the ninth floor from any one of three places in the lobby, and could get off on one of three different corridors on arriving. Obviously I could not spend any length of time in the halls without arousing suspicion, nor could I question the different chambermaids without one of them reporting my questions to the management. I decided that I should not linger on the floor, so I went down to the lobby and left the hotel.

That evening I visited Merkle and he told me that he had called the
New Amsterdam Safe Box News
and they had a reply for me. My advertisement had struck some information. He seemed to be extremely pleased, and he drew his lips back over his stained brown teeth in a wide smile. “I’ll go over there tomorrow and get it for you. The office isn’t far from my job, and I’ll pick up the reply on my lunch hour.” It was decent enough of him to offer to do it because it was still difficult for me to go to strange places and talk to new people even for the most simple reasons. My ability to speak only a few simple words and the laborious writing of questions combined to make me an object of curiosity. For my efforts brought looks of surprise, then sympathy which I did not want, and I avoided these embarrassments whenever possible. When circumstances were unavoidable ... such as in the case of the elevator operator ... I would do it, but whenever I could, I preferred that Bianca or Merkle do the talking. I thanked Merkle for his offer, and arranged to see him the next evening and get the letter from him.

After dinner, on the following night, when I arrived at his apartment, the heavy grilled door beneath the steps was ajar. Ringing his bell, I pushed open the door and walked into his rooms. Merkle was seated in his shabby chair with a gaping wound in his head above the temple. A battered clock, on a cluttered table, pointed to a little past nine o’clock. Merkle usually arrived home around six-thirty, as I knew from the times I had met him for dinner, which indicated that he had been dead for a maximum of two and a half hours. The blood on the back of the chair, his shoulders, and on the rug was dry.

His shirt collar was disarranged roughly, and his stringy tie had been pulled very tight—although not enough to have strangled him. It looked to me as if he had been grasped by the throat, with a very powerful hand, pushed down into the chair and then given a tremendous blow on the side of the head. For an instant, I seemed to recall such a hand, and my fingers trembled as I reached inside my coat to touch my knife. It was there. The impersonal coolness of the steel reassured me, and I returned to my examination.

The wound had been caused by a heavy object, most probably metal. Fingerprints cannot be left on a body or its clothing, and I had no hesitation searching Merkle’s pocket to find the letter from the
New Amsterdam Safe Box News.
But it was not there. When I explored the littered apartment though, I was more careful, and worked with the thickness of my handkerchief wrapped over the fingers of my right hand.

The appalling filth and disorder of Merkle’s rooms were both an asset and hindrance in my search. There were very few places where Merkle might file or hide anything, yet he had only to lay an envelope down and it would disappear into the general confusion. However, my search did not turn it up. Before leaving the apartment, I switched off the lights and, with my handkerchief, wiped the doorknob and iron grille, and closed them behind me.

To face my feelings honestly, I could feel little sorrow for Merkle. The life he had led, and the future which he could expect, were not worth the living. Merely to cling to life in order to be able to breathe, to eat for the purpose only that one’s organs may continue to function, is not enough. Perhaps Merkle was happier; at least, he would not be as unhappy.

Nor did I feel that I should assume the responsibility for his death. Merkle had thrust his friendship upon me which I had not particularly desired, although I had accepted it, and he had run for me this last deadly errand which I had not requested. The truth was that I had accepted it as a matter of convenience, and I did not believe that Merkle had been betrayed by either life or death. He had been human, weak, a bore, and a fool and—as every other man must do— had died. He had died, however, from a blow to the head instead of perhaps pneumonia or an infected kidney.

As I walked away, I slipped my knife from out of its sheath, and carried it, with the hilt cupped in my hand, the blade up the sleeve of my coat. It was possible, I thought, that Merkle’s body might not be discovered for some time, possibly even days. But I also wondered if the letter of reply had been found by his murderer. Merkle might have been killed accidentally before the letter was found, or fatally struck in an attempt to force him to produce it Whether the killer had it now, I could not be sure. The knife in my sleeve seemed to come to life; it burned against my wrist. Before me stretched the streets of Manhattan, clothed in the blue-brown night, and I said to myself, “Amar, sometime soon we must meet.”

JENSEN
said, “I thought maybe it was better if I came down and we could bat this stuff around.” He was sitting by Burrows’ desk, and he looked rather tired. Jensen lit a cigarette, then placed it in an ashtray without smoking.

Burrows had several pages of notes which Jensen had phoned to him earlier. They concerned the Army record of Victor Pacific. Burrows looked at the notes in his hand, and then at the preliminary report he had filled out. “Well,” he said to Jensen, “fingerprints don’t lie.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” Jensen said, “but don’t forget that was a long time ago. Maybe other things don’t stay the same for fifteen years or so, but fingerprints don’t change.”

“Gorman said the stiff was six feet or better; that means maybe six one or two. According to this Army information, he was five eleven.”

“That was only Gorman’s first guess. It’s hard to measure a body lying down flat. Maybe Gorman was wrong.”

“By maybe three inches?” asked Burrows. “I don’t think so!”

“That’s a lot,” agreed Jensen, “but suppose Gorman was out by one or two inches. Say the stiff is six feet. The Army report says five eleven. In those days everybody made mistakes including the Army doctors.”

“At induction centers there was a shortage of doctors, and the ones they had were damned busy,” Burrows agreed reluctantly.

“Sure. Most of them had to use enlisted personnel to help out ... medical assistants. I remember when I went in some sergeant stood me up against a wall with a scale on it. He took a look at where my hair reached—and that’s how tall I was.” This was not exactly the truth, but Jensen at the moment believed that it was.

“Well,” said Burrows, “I wish Gorman would get his report finished and up here.”

“Don’t take Gorman’s remarks that he made too seriously, He told us, himself, that he was just taking a guess at the time. Remember? He said he could always change his mind.”

“I’d feel better if Gorman said the stiff was really only six feet tall. I’d feel a lot better. I can see the difference between some overworked med assistant slapping a guy through a line and saying he was five eleven, and a doc later on says he was six feet. A report just can’t be that wrong—five eleven and maybe six two.”

“Unless he was a growing boy,” said Jensen. He tried to make a joke of it. He continued seriously, “I’ve read of guys who’ve taken stretching exercises at gyms, using some kind of harness, which added an inch or two to their height.” “You don’t mean it though,” said Burrows.

“Course I don’t mean it,” agreed Jensen. “I just said it, because it came to my mind, but it’s downright foolish.”

I DEBATED
, with myself, concerning the next step forced on me by the murder of Merkle. He had picked up a reply to my ad in the
New Amsterdam Safe Box News.
Undoubtedly the reply had arrived in a sealed envelope through the mail, and there was a possibility, although a remote one, that the envelope had carried a return address which the magazine might have kept as a record. With the discovery of Merkle’s death, the police would attempt to trace his actions during the last day of his life and possibly discover his trip to the publication. On the one hand, I did not want to be connected with Merkle’s death in any way, but on the other, if there was a remote chance of finding the source of the reply, I did not wish to miss it. Another month would pass before the ad could be run again, and it might not be answered a second time.

With some hesitation, I decided that I would call at the
New Amsterdam Safe Box News,
and accept the consequences as a calculated risk. The office was on the sixth floor of a shabby building filled with mercantile jobbers. In an outlying office, which served as a reception room, a middle-aged typist pounded a heavy machine and answered the single phone. In the second office was the editor and sole member of the editorial staff. He was a man named Holcombe, with balding head fringed in sandy hair. His desk was crammed into a narrow space surrounded by green metal filing cabinets, and the top of it was littered with clippings, paste pot, scissors, and blank dummy pages of the magazine.

After I had explained to him that I had come to pick up any replies to my ad, Holcombe called to the typist, “Any replies to ad P-61?”

Deliberately she sorted through a thin stack of envelopes and shook her head. “No,” she replied, “nothing.” She returned to her typewriter, then paused and raised her head. “Say,” she observed, half to herself half to Holcombe, “I think there was one.” In another moment, she bobbed her head positively. “Yes, there was one. It was picked up yesterday.”

Holcombe turned to me. “Did you get it?”

“No,” I told him. Then on my pad I explained that probably it had been picked up for me by a friend.

“He’ll give it to you then,” Holcombe assured me.

I nodded, then added, “I may not see him for a few days. Would you have a record of it?”

“You mean a return address?”

That was what I meant. “Sorry,” said Holcombe. “After all we’re a highly specialized publication. We carry very few ads, and there’s never any problem concerning the replies.”

Deciding that it was better not to arouse curiosity or comment, I dropped the subject and left the office.

The next day I read in the papers that Merkle’s body had been discovered. The story was brief and appeared on the inside fourth page; it said that Merkle had been absent from work, and when his office called him had not answered his phone. As he was known to be a bachelor, it was feared he might be ill, and a fellow employee had stopped by to see him. The police theorized that Merkle had been killed as a result of a burglary attempt. His apartment indicated that it had been searched but whether anything of value had been stolen was not known.

The police, I knew, would carry through their investigation as far as they could, and then drop it. Merkle was unimportant; he was nobody. The authorities could not waste too much time on this unspectacular little man.

It became increasingly important, however, for me to talk to Rosemary Martin. With Merkle’s death, I desired to remain even more inconspicuous than in the past, and I did not want to be held or questioned by the hotel for loitering on its premises. I believed that Rosemary Martin was staying very close to her own room, and I would need help to locate her. Therefore, I selected the name of a detective agency at random; it was located on Fifth Avenue just above Forty-second Street; this was a good address and it gave me confidence that the agency was efficient. I went up to see it.

On the office door was the name “Bell, Investigators,” and the offices looked prosperous. A young woman at a switchboard doubled as a receptionist, and she introduced me to a Mr. Delton. I do not know whatever happened to Mr. Bell. I never met him, but Delton seemed to be in charge. He was a short compact man with heavy features and a full, thick upper lip. We went into his private office and I showed him the picture of Rosemary Martin. Then, slowly, I pieced together my story for him; it was not all of the story, but it was enough for him to know. When I had finished I put my pad to one side, and he summed it up briskly.

“You say this young lady is a friend of yours and is staying at the Acton-Plaza, is that right?” I nodded. “You believe she is living in a room on the ninth floor, and is registered under a name other than her own?”