The Longest Second (15 page)

“Okay,” agreed Burrows. He drew a pad of paper forward on his desk to make notes.

“Well,” Gorman began, “I wasn’t too far off on most of my original guesses. The body weighs a hundred and eighty-seven pounds, is six feet and one-half inch. Originally light brown hair, now somewhat grayed, and was in good physical condition for whatever his age was.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Burrows.

“I can’t really nail his age down by an examination, you know that. I can put it within certain probable limits. When he was alive he probably looked and acted younger than he was.”

“Meaning what?”

“From his appearance he could have been around forty, a few years either way. But the body organs ... arteries and so on ... might indicate he was older.”

“Maybe he just drank it up too much,” said Burrows.

“Possibly. Anyway, he was nearly decapitated from the blow of a large, heavy blade.”

“How large and how heavy?”

“Practically a sword. As a matter of fact, you could call it a sword. An examination of the shoes and socks showed no foreign matter; no dust, sand, cement, or anything like that which would not ordinarily be found in New York.”

“That means he was living here?”

“Not necessarily. But at least he hadn’t worn those shoes out of New York recently. The shoes are well worn, although in good condition, so he’d been wearing them for some time.”

“What was the time of death?”

“Between twelve midnight and one o’clock. Finely drawn, that is. I can’t be too positive on it. Fifteen minutes to half an hour each way might still be too close.”

“What about the scar?”

“Undoubtedly an old wound. Characteristic ... star shape and so forth. I’ve seen a lot of them from the war.”

After Gorman had hung up, Burrows relayed the information to Jensen. “The doc did pretty well the first time around,” Jensen remarked.

“Sure,” said Burrows, “but
…”

FOR
a moment I stood motionless. Behind me the voice continued, “I am a patient man, and patience is repaid ...
khlas.”

Khlas
... the end. The revolver remained firmly planted in my back, and I extended my arms to the side, holding them away from my body. I could feel a hand pat my coat and trousers for concealed weapons, and then cautiously dip into my pockets and throw their contents on the floor. “The key, if you please," the voice told me after it was obvious I had no key in my possession.

The revolver moved slightly from my body, and it was then that my reflex took over. Instinctively I stepped back, jamming quickly and hard against the barrel of the revolver, turning it to one side. Without effort my knife jumped into my hand from the sleeve of my jacket, and I thrust over my shoulder without turning. The blade bit into the arm behind me even as the revolver was falling to the floor.

I pivoted and held the point of the knife against the man’s stomach. He grasped his wounded shoulder with a hand, and I motioned him to turn around. Reluctantly he complied with my command. When his back was to me, I scooped the gun from the floor and held it in my hand. In the dim light of the room it was difficult to see my adversary and I circled him completely; he was short, very slender, a man of middle age with intense black eyes and heavy dark hair. Although he was dressed in American-tailored clothes, he did not wear them well, and I believed that he might be Amar. For a moment, I was undecided about slipping my knife into him quietly and holding his mouth, but I discarded the idea and, instead, hit him over the ear with the revolver. He dropped to the floor and lay without moving. From his pockets I removed all the papers and objects he was carrying, as well as his billfold. Leaving him unconscious on the floor, I gathered up my own possessions and left the apartment.

I was in a hurry to get back to the Castillo to pack up my belongings and leave. Since I’d taken his money Amar would be unable to follow me without a delay. That delay would permit me to lose myself again somewhere in the city. At the hotel the room clerk was reading a paper behind his desk and didn’t look up when I carried my suitcase through the lobby. Hailing another cab, I rode uptown and stopped the taxi when we passed a desolate-looking hotel on lower Broadway. It was called the Arena and would do as well as any other.

In my new room, which was only a slight improvement over the Castillo, I spread out the contents of the man’s pockets which I had taken from Wainwright’s apartment. There was a short letter addressed to Amar Al-Kariff reporting the sailing of a vessel some two weeks before to a port in Africa and it was typewritten and in English. The letterhead was the “Tajir Transportation Company” with offices in Damascus, Mecca, and Cairo. Inasmuch as the letter was not in an envelope there was no way to determine from where it had been mailed. Also I recognized the word
Tajir
which, in Arabic, means “wholesale-import-export merchants.”

A fountain pen, mechanical pencil, and cigarette holder I took apart to examine, but there was nothing in them. In the billfold was Amar’s driver’s license which listed his address as a YMCA, an amusing piece of fiction. There were also half a dozen neatly printed personal business cards with his name and the Tajir Transportation Company—listing a business address in the extreme lower West side in the steamship and dock area. In addition to the cards and license, I found a ring holding five keys, and ninety-one dollars.

I put the money in my pocket, tore up the letter and cards, and threw the billfold and key ring into an air shaft.

The morning brought me a new problem to consider: should I return to my job at the stained glass window company? I wanted to get the key from the window where it had been soldered, but it might be advisable to wait until I needed it. If Amar Al-Kariff had followed me from the Castillo to my work at Warner’s, he certainly would be waiting at my job to pick me up again. On the other hand, he might have been watching for me only at Wainwright’s, or looking for someone else there, although this seemed open to doubt, as he had called me at Bianca’s on the phone, hoping to force me into action. I believed he had come upon my trail originally through trailing Rosemary Martin, and undoubtedly had lost me again when I moved to the Castillo. Under these circumstances, I decided, I should return to Warner’s and regain possession of the key immediately.

Reporting to work as usual, and removing the key at the first opportunity, I wrote a note to Haines explaining that I felt sick. He told me to go home, which I did, although I did not return to my new hotel until after riding uptown on the IRT, then circuitously by foot going through Macy’s and leaving by an emergency fire exit. On the street, I found a cab and rode to the Arena; it was not probable that I had been followed.

After returning to the hotel, I took out the memo slip which I had received from Swan at his bank, with the heading:

… from the desk of

C. K. SWAN, vice-president

Merchants & Chemists Exchange Bank

On it Swan had jotted, in pencil, the address of the New
Amsterdam Safe Box News.
I erased carefully his writing and with a pen wrote: “This will introduce Mr. Victor Pacific, one of our depositors who recently has been ill. Any information you can give him will be appreciated.”

I signed it C. K. Swan with a flourish.

At the Amco Building, as I entered the First International Export Bank, Bianca was waiting for me inside the door. We returned to the lobby where I laboriously explained to her what I wanted her to do as it had been impossible for me to even attempt it over the phone when I had called her to arrange our meeting. When I told her my plan, she agreed to help although her eyes held a number of questions. Re-entering the bank, we went to the desk of Mr. Jackson, one of the vice-presidents. I handed him the memo from Swan which he read; then he told us courteously he would do what he could.

Bianca smiled and said, “I’m Mr. Pacific’s nurse. It’s very difficult for him to speak, so with your permission I’ll speak for him.”

“Certainly, certainly,” Jackson agreed.

“Mr. Pacific, before his illness, was in the importing business. However, because of his accident, he has suffered a partial loss of memory and cannot remember all the details of it.”

Jackson asked, “Can’t his company help him?”

“No,” explained Bianca, “he had a small, personal business and because he was away for so long, his secretary had to find another position, and she can’t be located.”

“Certainly he must have kept records?”

Bianca, with the dexterity of any woman acting, gently shook her head, smiled slightly, and pretending to hide the gesture from me, tapped her forehead slightly. “It’s possible Mr. Pacific put his files away suddenly just before his sickness.”

“Oh.” Jackson shifted his eyes to me, then quickly looked back at Bianca. “Well,” he said, “I’ll help you if I can. What do you want to know?”

“Only if Mr. Pacific had an account with this bank.”

“I can find that out easily,” Jackson replied. As he reacted for the phone on his desk, Bianca Hill added smoothly, “Of course, while he was ill, he insisted on using a number of names. One of his favorites was O’Hanstrom.”

Jackson requested the information from the bookkeeping department. He held the phone for a few moments before turning back to Bianca Hill. “There’s an account here in the name of Nell C. O’Hanstrom,” he told her. “Nothing for Pacific.”

I printed on my pad, “How about Tajir Transportation Company, and a man named Horstman?” and handed it to Bianca. She repeated the question to Jackson. He shrugged, and again spoke into his phone. After a short wait, he nodded and hung up the receiver. “Yes and no,” he said. “There is an account for the Tajir Transportation Company, but there is no record of a Horstman.” Leaning back in his chair, he terminated further questions, as he told Bianca firmly, “In both instances these accounts seem to have no connection with Mr. Pacific. One is a
Miss
O’Hanstrom and the other, the Tajir Company, is an international corporation.”

Bianca thanked him politely and rose to her feet. But I wasn’t satisfied. I scribbled another request. Reading it, she turned to Jackson and asked, “Is there any objection to our asking some questions in your safe deposit department?”

“Not at all,” Jackson assured her.

Downstairs, in the basement of the bank, we were passed through a door with shining metal bars, and into a reception room which contained a tremendous, round, time-operating door. There I huddled myself deep into my muffler, keeping my face averted as much as possible. Bianca made a quick explanation and referred to Jackson as her authority to ask questions. The officer in charge of the vault accepted her story and, quickly searching through an alphabetical listing of names, reported that Nell C. O’Hanstrom had a safe deposit box, but there was none for Horstman, Pacific, or the Tajir Transportation Company.

Bianca Hill asked the man a question, a good one, which , had escaped me. “Did Miss O’Hanstrom authorize anyone else to have access to her deposit box?” Turning to me, she explained, “I used to be deputized for my mother when she had one.”

After a moment’s examination of the files, we were told that a Mr. Wainwright, Howard K., had been deputized to gain admittance at any time, and he had been issued a key. This information tied back to what I had decided previously. Rosemary Martin was directly connected with Wainwright in her personal life and in business.

Another question remained, however. What was in the safe deposit box? It was possible that Wainwright or Rosemary Martin had been through it before her death. But, inasmuch as I had Rosemary Martin’s key in my pocket, I decided that she could not have been near it. She had been too frightened to keep the key and had given it to me. Undoubtedly Wainwright had the second key so that left just the two of us.

On the street, Bianca asked, “Where are you living now, Vic?”

I shook my head. Taking me by the arm, she said, “You’re right. It’s better that I don’t know. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Since we had left the bank, I had been considering the possibility of getting into the safe deposit box. Stopping in a doorway, I again depended on my pad to explain to Bianca that it was too dangerous for her to see me again, but that she could help me a final time if she had any samples of Rosemary Martin’s handwriting.

After reflecting a moment, she replied that she might have a few notes or cards that Rosemary Martin had left behind. I asked her to send them to me in care of general delivery, the third zone. She promised to do so immediately.

Although I now knew that Rosemary Martin and Wainwright had held a joint safe deposit box, I was equally sure that somewhere in New York I had held one of my own. There was the reply from the
New Amsterdam Safe Box News
to support this conviction as the request for information had been in the name of Pacific. And suddenly I knew, equally as well, that Amar had not been able to find that reply in Merkle’s apartment. Merkle had been clubbed too hard, accidentally before he had an opportunity to tell him, and a search at the apartment had not revealed it. Perhaps Merkle had left the letter behind him at the hardware company after work. If this premise was true, then Amar, the night we met in Wainwright’s apartment, had been asking for Rosemary Martin’s key, the duplicate of Wainwright’s, and not for die key belonging to me, Victor Pacific.

There was time, I decided, to trace my own safe deposit box later. Perhaps by finding the answer to Rosemary Martin and Wainwright, I would find my own answer, too. Certainly there had to be a direct connection between the three of us.

Much depended on me getting into the O’Hanstrom box in the bank, but I was not sure that I could do it.

There was quite a wait at the hospital before I could see Doctor Minor. Finally he walked down the hall and shook hands with me. “How are you doing?” he asked. I told him, “Fine” in my talk-around voice. Minor seemed as pleased as if I had been a trained parrot. “Keep it up,” he said. “Someday we’ll have you singing in the Met.”