The Longest Second (17 page)

“Yes.”

He appeared surprised. “You mean you mind if I look around?”

“Yes.” On my pad I wrote rapidly, “Do you have a warrant?”

Santini read it, and he drew his lips into a circle of surprise. “I need a warrant to look around a little? A warrant between two old friends?” He watched me very closely.

I wrote, “That’s exactly what I mean!”

Santini rose deliberately to his feet; I stood facing him. We were less than two feet apart, staring at each other. Santini’s hands were by his side. I had no fear of the man; before he could reach his gun, my knife would be in him. After a pause, he shrugged and reseated himself on the bed. “All right,” he said, steadily, his voice without emotion, “I can always come back if I got to. I didn’t come here to take you in—which I could. I just came for a nice quiet talk.”

I nodded, but I remained standing within arm’s reach of him.

“You get around, Pacific,” Santini continued conversationally. “I keep getting ideas that you’re not a nice guy. For instance, things happen to people who you know. Not good things either. You know what I mean?”

“No.”

‘Take a little, inoffensive, worked-out guy who shares a hospital room with you. Somebody knocks off the side of his head. You didn’t do it, did you, Pacific?”

I didn’t do it, shaking my head firmly.

“Of course I wouldn’t suspect that you did. Although I kind of feel you would’ve done it, if you’d wanted to. Cops get crazy ideas about people.” He took a drag after lighting his cigarette, and watched me. “Why don’t you sit down?” he asked.

I remained standing, waiting for him to continue. There was more to come. Santini was working his way through the preliminaries until he reached his subject of importance.

“Cops are lucky guys, let’s say. They all work together which helps them plenty. A dirty rat of a ... a mug, a wise guy, doesn’t have anybody else to work with except other rats. Sometimes it takes the cops awhile to put everything together, but usually they get it done.” He awaited a reply from me. There was none. Santini drew a deep sigh. Although his eyes pretended pain, they watched me coldly. “Now, let’s take that beautiful dame who lived down at the Hill woman’s when you were working there. Did you know she was strangled, and after she was dead, somebody hung her up in a shower stall by her neck?”

“Papers,” I told him.

He nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed, “there was a little something about it in the papers.” Pushing his hat to the back of his head, he scratched his scalp. “I guess somebody didn’t like that Martin dame much. Did you like her, Pacific?”

“Yes.”

“There were no fingerprints in her room, so we don’t know who went up there to twist her neck. But a funny thing happened. You know what? We discovered this Martin woman had a boyfriend, a real john, a rich guy named Wainwright. She lived with him for a long time. Look, let’s even be fair about it—maybe they were married. We don’t know, and maybe nobody knows. But this Wainwright is missing, has been gone for months. We go up to take a look around Wainwright’s apartment, and do you know what we find?”

I shook my head.

“This time we find plenty of fingerprints. We find fingerprints of the Martin woman, the laundryman, the grocery boy, a cleaning woman ... practically everybody in the neighborhood, and besides that we find fingerprints of a guy named Victor Pacific.” Santini leaned forward and searched my face. “Maybe you were a friend of Wainwright’s too, huh?”

On my pad I wrote, “I don’t know that I ever met Wainwright.”

Santini nodded. “Good for you. Keep it up. Doc Minor is fooled by your act, I’m not.” He arose from the bed and walked to the door. “Don’t bother to try to take a powder on me, Pacific. I can always find you again.” He stepped out into the hall and was gone.

I waited a long time in my room. Then finally I called the desk. “Bellboy,” I requested. When the bellboy arrived, I wrote on my pad that I wanted him to go to the drugstore and buy me a plastic bag and a roll of waterproof tape. When he returned, I took the materials and locked my door.

In the bag I placed all the bills, except one, which I had taken from the safe deposit box, as well as the key, gun, and papers from Rosemary Martin and Amar. The plastic bag was waterproof, and I sealed it carefully with tape. Outside my window were a pair of rusty hooks set about two feet in the building wall on each side of the window ledge. These hooks, during some forgotten day at the Arena Hotel, had been used for the safety belts of window cleaners. I hung the bag, tying it securely, on one of the hooks, then closed the window. No one would see it hanging high and colorless against the wall, in the back of the building where my room was located. Santini could return to search my room while I was away, but would not find the bag outside it.

Santini in his conversation with me had etched away one layer from the flashed-glass coloration of my past life. I did not believe that, as yet, he realized the importance of what he had discovered. But I realized it.

WHEN Burrows returned to his desk, Jensen looked up expectantly. Burrows sat down, his face thoughtful. “Well?” asked Jensen.

“We’ve got Pacific on the master file, but there’s no personal file, and nothing in the records.”

“I’ll be damned!”

“Let’s go in and report it to Scott.” They walked across the detectives’ room to Scott’s private office, which was partitioned from the main area by a metal section with glass windows. Scott was busy on the phone and waved the two men to chairs. After hanging up, he turned to them. “Lieutenant,” said Burrows, “on this homicide I reported to you earlier, we have an identification of the body. It’s for a Victor Pacific, resident of New York City, address unknown.”

“He wasn’t a bum, not with a thousand dollars on him,” said Scott, “but why the address unknown? Did he have a record?”

“The address unknown is a result of a phony Pacific gave to the Army when he was drafted. Evidently he’s been living either in a different city or here under an assumed name, but what Jensen and I wanted to report was about the record.” Burrows turned to Jensen. “You tell Lieutenant Scott what you found out.”

Jensen cleared his throat “Well, Turner in the fingerprint office was late coming through because he wasn’t on duty at the time. But when he heard the name Pacific, he thought it sounded familiar, and he found the name listed on the master, but the card was gone. That’s why the ID had to come from Washington. Of course, there was another card in the duplicates when Turner checked, but no one would have caught it the first time.”

Scott looked thoughtful. “It was taken out, but why?”

“Sir,” Burrows said, “after Jensen told me, I got a hunch and looked in our own master file for the Eighth. We also have the name Pacific. But there’s no personal file and no records on him. That’s why we missed here, too.”

Scott fretfully lit a cigarette. The details of hundreds of faces, thousands of names, scores of thousands of crimes had passed through his mind in twenty-five years. Pacific, he thought, Victor Pacific. I should know it, does it sound familiar? Or am I kidding myself and just think so? Where did I know it? Not as a killer ... he wasn’t a murderer. A thief ... no, not a thief. But there’s a tag I can’t forget, or have I forgotten it? If his name was on the Eighth’s master file, that means he was picked up in connection with this precinct. I’ve only been here a little over a month, it must have been before my time. What’s the matter! Let’s drop it and chew Burrows out about it. Let Burrows and Jensen, the bright boy from Homicide, worry about it.

Scott said to Burrows, “All right, stay with it. Find out what happened. If any stuff has been brought out of our files, I'll personally throw the cop into the middle of Siberia myself!”

THE
building on Wall Street was tall and very narrow. The lobby, with a cigar counter just inside the door, stretched along one side of the building—a marbled alley —to the elevators, two of them. On the directory board I located Wainwright’s office; it was on the eleventh floor. When an elevator arrived, I stepped into it and waited for what I expected to take place. The operator, an elderly washed-out little man, greeted me, “Mr. Wainwright! I see you’re back.”

“Yess.” My throat was unusually stiff and I pronounced my few words with more difficulty than usual. In the enclosure of the elevator, my voice sounded extraordinarily guttural and harsh. “Yess,” I repeated.

The old man seemed to take no notice of the quality of my speech. “You’ve been away quite a while. Have a good trip?”

“No. Sick,” I told him.

On the eleventh floor, I found the office at the rear of the building. I had no key, but I did have my Lock-Aid and I did not hesitate to use it. After stepping inside, I had no recollection of ever having seen the office, but as Howard Wainwright I must have spent a lot of time here in the past. Looking around curiously, I saw there were only two rooms —a secretary-reception room and a large private office. The furniture was good with a feeling both of money and restraint ... a good combination for an investment counselor.

It did not take long for me to discover that all the important books and ledgers had been removed, as well as the business correspondence files, and I sat down behind my desk, attempting to recapture some feeling from the past, some memory. I wondered if Horstman had ever come to this office. Perhaps he had visited me many times and that was why I remembered his name. The idea became a conviction, although not a memory, and I wondered how I could get in touch with him.

On one side of the room stood a tall mahogany bookcase, and my eyes glanced over the titles ... commercial law, money and banking, business reference books, until I reached a matched four-volume set entitled
Rommel’s War in the Desert
by General G. K. Henry. Leaving my chair, I walked to the bookshelf and removed the four books. Leafing through them, I found a completely detailed history of Rommel’s entire series of campaigns, together with topographical maps compiled with great detail. General Henry, I read, was head of the U.S. Army War College and this was an official Army report of the campaigns.

There was nothing secret about the books as they were on public sale, but the presence of them in my office could only be accounted for by my interest in them. It was true that I had served in some of the campaigns myself; this might explain why I had the books.

After a few more minutes spent in looking around the office, I left it, closing but not locking the door behind me. When the elevator reached the street level, the same operator detained me as I prepared to step out. “Just a minute, Mr. Wainwright,” he said. “I happened to think of something. There’s been an awful lot of people around looking for you. Your secretary asked me to give you this whenever you came back.” He reached a thin hand up to the mirror in the elevator and removed a plain white envelope which he handed to me.

“Thanks.” I handed him a bill.

On the street, I tore open the envelope and withdrew a sheet of paper. On it had been written the message, “If you get this, please call me at once. J.” After the initial was a telephone number.

I didn’t know J., I had no recollection of her. The elevator operator had said she had been my secretary; I wanted to see her. Returning from the lower end of Manhattan back to Fourteenth Street, I made another trip to Bozell’s office. He was in. Patiently I wrote out the information I wanted him to relay over the phone. Then he dialed the number.

“Hello,” Bozell asked, “is this Mr. Wainwright’s secretary?” There was a pause, and then he said, “No, no, I’m quite sure this is the correct number. Mr. Wainwright received your message from the elevator operator in the office building.” My former secretary seemed worried about the call.

Motioning Bozell to hold the receiver so I could share it, I listened to her conversation. It was a soft pleasant voice, slightly accented, and I heard her say, “If Mr. Wainwright is there, let me speak to him.”

“I’m Mr. Wainwright’s attorney,” Bozell replied, “and he can’t speak to you. He’s been in a bad accident, and it’s nearly impossible for him to talk.”

“How do I know this isn’t a trick?” she asked.

“Trick?” Bozell seemed puzzled. ‘I’m an attorney,” he repeated. “My name is Bozell, Frank M. Bozell, and I’m listed in the telephone book. Look me up, and call me back at the number listed. That way you’ll know.” J. evidently agreed to this, because Bozell replaced the receiver on its cradle.

Quickly I wrote on my pad concise directions and handed them to the attorney to read. The phone rang, and it was J. calling back. Bozell relayed my instructions to her. “Mr. Wainwright will meet you at any time and place you suggest. He’ll wait for you on the street, and you can drive past in a taxi and see him for yourself. Then, if you are convinced, you can stop and talk to him.”

The girl approved this suggestion, and agreed to my waiting on the corner of Fifty-seventh and Fifth Avenue at five o’clock that afternoon. I was to be standing by the curb in front of Tiffany’s.

At that time of day, there is heavy traffic flowing along both Fifty-seventh Street and Fifth Avenue, and taxis travel in long lines. It would be difficult to stop or follow anyone in another cab, and J. realized it. I was thinking about this, as I waited according to our agreement, and about ten minutes past five, I felt a light hand touch my arm. Turning, I looked down into the face of a slender, swarthy-skinned girl, with great brown eyes and hair bleached to silver gilt. “Mr. Wainwright,” she said softly, her words sibilant, “it is you after all.” I nodded.

She glanced around anxiously and said, “You must be in trouble. You have been followed, no?”

I didn’t know; Santini might have a man on me, but I didn’t think that Amar had picked me up again. However, there was nothing to be gained by standing on the corner, so we walked down Fifty-seventh Street until we came to a large antique gallery. Entering it, we pretended to examine a cabinet filled with
objets d’art.

With my pad, I explained to her that I had been in an accident and had suffered a complete loss of memory, that I didn’t remember anything at all, not even her name. “Oh!” she exclaimed. She regarded me for a moment, then said, “My name is Juahara.”