The Longest Second (7 page)

“Why?”

“Well, actually she hadn’t applied for the job. The day the fashion show was ready to leave for Chicago, one of the models became sick. At the last moment the fashion director called Rosemary to take her place. Rosemary had to rush like mad to get the plane.”

“Oh.” One event fell sharply into place. I had been meant as a warning to Rosemary. Unexpectedly she had not been present when my body had been delivered.

THE
desolate, bleak dawn edged slowly behind the buildings of the city, picking out a fire escape here, a chimney there. It seeped slowly into skylights and windows, edging doorways, silhouetting poles. Burrows sipped his coffee. He decided that it tasted foul because of the cardboard container. For a moment he considered the possibility of throwing it away; then he changed his mind and decided to drink it because it was hot. The phone on his desk rang loudly, and he reached out his hand to pick it up. “Burrows, Eight, precinct,” he said.

It was Jensen. “I just got a call from Gorman,” Jensen said, “and he found something. When they got the stiff to the lab, Gorman removed the socks and shoes for further examination. In one shoe he found a thousand-dollar bill.”

Burrows digested both his mouthful of coffee and information. “Was the bill concealed in the sole of the shoe he asked.

“Not sewed into the sole, or anything like that,” Jensen replied. “It was just laying inside the shoe with the foot and sock resting on it.”

“Is the bill a phony?”

“It looks plenty good,” Jensen replied. “I asked Gorman the same thing. It isn’t listed in the Counterfeit Detector.”

“Ask him to send it over,” Burrows said.

“I already have,” Jensen replied.

“A grand bill is a hard thing to get cashed. You just can’t walk into a store or a hotel and get change for it. Mostly you got to get it cashed at a bank.”

“Sure,” agreed Jensen, “and even then you have to identify yourself. If a guy’s got a thousand bucks in one bill, it means he knows someplace he can get it changed. That also means that somebody knows him.”

“I’ll get the information out to the banks first thing this morning. Maybe they’ve got a record of it.” Burrows took another swallow of coffee. “Gorman have anything else on the shoes?”

“Not yet. They’ll give ’em the usual dirt and lint test, Probably won’t find anything though, if the guy was walking' around the streets here.”

"Gorman push up his time on the report yet?”

“No. He still says around noon.”

“Okay,” Burrows agreed heavily. He and Jensen hung up, and he began to work back through the reports from the Correspondence Bureau. In these reports would be listed all recent fugitives, criminals, and missing persons. The reports are bound in heavy black covers, and all detectives are expected to memorize their contents. But the amount of information is too great. Burrows was looking for someone who might resemble his corpse.

I HANDED
a slip of paper to the locksmith, together with the key Rosemary had given me. He read my question, “What kind of a key is this?”

The locksmith took a casual glance at the key. It was two and a quarter inches long, but less than a sixteenth of an inch thick. There were no grooves on its sides, although the lower edge of the key had the usual notches cut from the metal. On one side, stamped into it, were the initials KCLSK. The locksmith said, “This is a key to a safe deposit box.” He pointed to the initials, “It was made by the Kingston Company, Lock Safe Key.” Looking up at me, he asked, “Where’d you get it?”

I wrote to him that I had found it. Then I asked if there was any way to identify the box, so I could return it to the owner. “Not that I know of,” he replied, “unless you want to advertise in the paper, and even then I doubt that a person can identify one key like this from another unless he tries it in his own lock. You might ask at a bank about it, though. Maybe they’d have some ideas.”

One bank was probably as good as another, and after I left the locksmith’s shop, I walked uptown on Sixth Avenue. On the comer of Sixth and Fourteenth Street, I entered the first bank I found—The Merchants and Chemists Exchange— and located a vice-president seated behind a desk, at the rear of the main lobby. It took some time to explain to him that I had found the key, and to ask if there was any way to locate the owner to return it. He looked at the key, examining it, and said, “There’re a number of lock and safe companies who furnish keys and boxes to banks for their deposit departments. Also there’re a number of companies which are not banks, who rent safe deposit boxes out to customers. As a rule, it costs about twenty dollars if a deposit loses his keys and the lock has to be removed and a new key made. Ordinarily, however, a box holder is given two keys when he rents a box, and as soon as he loses a key he has another made from the remaining one for only two dollars It would hardly seem worthwhile for you to spend much effort in trying to return the key.”

I was trapped badly. I thought it over, considering every angle. Rosemary obviously knew where the box was located and to whom it belonged. But where was Rosemary? Several days had passed and Bianca had not heard from her. Even if I should locate Rosemary again, there was no way I could make her tell me unless she wanted to do so. Quite calmly the scene flashed into my mind that I was beating it out of her with my fists. It didn’t surprise me; I suppose everyone envisions such signs of violence occasionally. In reality, if I killed her, I would still not know the secret of the box. I decided that I must continue to attempt to locate the owner of the box through my own efforts. Later, if Rosemary should give me any information, that would be all right too. Pulling away the muffler, which I wore as an ascot from around my throat, I pointed to the scar. It was still very red and ugly. After he had taken a good look, the banker looked down at his desk. I put the pad to work again.

Giving him my name, I told him that I had no family and had been in a bad automobile accident; witness the scar, and that I could not speak. As a result of the accident, I had lost my memory. This deposit key was my own, but I did not remember where it was located. “It was probably in the same bank where you did your personal or business banking,” he told me. “Do you remember that at all?”

I shook my head. On his desk was a small sign which read C. K. Swan. I wrote, “Mr. Swan, do you have any suggestions?”

Swan thought about it for a few moments. “Well,” he said, first you might try to find out through the banks if one of them has you for a depositor. If you locate an account of your own, you’ll probably find you have a safe deposit box in the same bank. If that doesn’t work, there’s a small publication in New York called the
New Amsterdam Safe Box News
which circulates through most of the deposit departments of the various banks and box companies. I'll give you the paper’s address, and you might get them to run an ad for you requesting information.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

Picking up his phone, Swan called the bank’s vault department. “Mr. Kraft,” he said, “this is Swan. Can you give me the address of the
New Amsterdam Safe Box News?
Yes, if you please. I’ll hold the phone.” Cradling the receiver to his ear, Swan reached for his personalized memo pad. The pad was printed with:

… from the desk of

C. K. SWAN, vice-president

Merchants & Chemists Exchange Bank

As the voice of Kraft spoke in his ear, Swan began to scribble on the pad, but his pen was dry. Hastily, he tore off the sheet and reaching for another, wrote the address of the paper with a pencil. Handing the slip tome, he said, “Why is it, whenever you want to use a pen it’s dry?”

I didn’t know. However, I nodded politely and wrote on my own pad, “Thanks very much.” Swan arose from his desk. “Good luck,” he said. “If I can help you, let me know.” We shook hands, and I walked out of the bank.

That evening, very laboriously, I described to Bianca the fact that I had a thousand dollars in my shoe when I had reached the hospital. I went on to explain that evidently I had possessed some money before I had been attacked, and that it was possible I had maintained either a savings account or a checking account at a bank. Unfortunately, of course, if this was true, I couldn’t remember it.

“Don’t you think that Santini has checked this?” Bianca asked.

I explained that I thought he had undoubtedly gone through the motions of it, but that it was dubious if all the banks had been covered and, as the situation was not a very important one to the police, no particular pressure existed for them to explore it further. Bianca agreed with this reasoning. She suggested that she call the banks, herself, to discover if I had an account any place, as it was obvious that I could not call them myself.

In Manhattan there are between four and five hundred banks, including their branches, listed in the classified telephone directory. Bianca began at the top of the list, but very quickly it became obvious that she would have little success. All of the banks refused to give her any information over the phone. After a number of failures, one bank indicated that such information was given to established businesses for credit references.

I had been sitting at the table while she called. Placing the phone back on its cradle, she approached me and her hands on my shoulders. “Vic,” her voice was sympathetic, “you mustn’t get discouraged. Perhaps we’ll think of something else.” Her fingers picked at my shirt. I looked into her face; quickly she turned her face away.

It was at that time I remembered Merkle. When he left the hospital, Merkle had given me his address, so I decided that I’d call on him. That night I took the slip of paper with his address and set off. Merkle lived in a small, reconverted two-room apartment located in a basement of an old brownstone house.

"The door to his apartment was beneath a stoop of stone stairs to the first floor, and was protected by a heavy wrought iron grille. Rust had gnawed the edges of the iron, and it was pocked with leprous orange spots. After I had rung the belt Merkle opened the door and peered out into the night. Recognizing me, he asked me in. The living room was furnished with cast-off furniture including an overstuffed couch, cane chairs, and a rough mat rug, although it contained an obviously new television set with a very large screen. Plates with remains of crusts, toast, daubs of jelly, half-eaten sandwiches, and drying desserts littered the end tables, seats of the chairs, and tops of the furniture.

“Well, well, well,” exclaimed Merkle, his face contorted into a too friendly smile, “my old roommate! How’re you All right?”

“’Ess,” I told him,

“Huh?”

“Ess,” I repeated, nodding my head.

“Oh, you mean yes! So you’ve gotten your voice back.”

It seemed too much trouble to go through the effort of putting up with such a clown. But, on the other hand, I might be able to use him. Sitting down, I began writing. My original paper pad and pencil had been exchanged for a small permanent pad which was covered with a heavy sheet of transparent plastic. I wrote on the plastic with a wooden stylus, and when I was finished, by lifting the plastic sheet away from its dark background, the writing disappeared, am the pad was ready for use again. It eliminated all the discarded scraps of paper, and the problem of carrying pencil and pens. I attempted to explain to Merkle that I wanted to, trace a possible account through the banks. At once, Merkle brought up the subject of the police. “Won’t they do it for you?" he asked.

I gave him the explanation I had given Bianca, although there was another reason which I had not explained to either. If I had an account, I didn’t know where the money had come from, and I was not sure that I would care to have the police probing it. Certainly not until I knew more about it myself. However, I said nothing of this to Merkle. He accepted my explanation, as had Bianca, and he sat for a while deep in thought.

Like so many lonely persons, Merkle was anxious to be friendly and to be of help. I was ready to accept his help, but I did not care to have his friendship. Finally he said, “I think I told you that I work for Sampson, Smith and Tobler. It’s a big wholesale hardware supply house. They get a lot of orders from a bunch of little stores all over the state and they’ve got a sort of system worked out. They have these double cards ... post cards ... printed up, stamped, and everything. All you have to do is address them. There’s a place to check on the second card which is torn off and returned in the mail. So why don’t I swipe a supply of them from the mail room? You can address them to the banks, fill in your name as the guy to be reported on, and then see what happens.”

It sounded all right except that the cards would be returned to Sampson, Smith and Tobler. I pointed this out to Merkle. He waved away my objection. “So what?” he asked, and grinned. “I’m head clerk in the mail room and I get the mail first. Any cards coming with your name on ’em, I’ll just tear up and throw away—unless it says ‘Yes’ or has something about you. What could be neater?”

I agreed that nothing could be neater and told Merkle that I’d return the following evening to pick up the cards.

It was not late when I reached Bianca’s house. She was waiting for me, and when I entered the kitchen I found her seated at the round table, deep in thought, a glass of brandy in her band She arose, somewhat unsteadily, and I realized that she had drunk too much. This surprised me as she usually drank very little. Hesitating for a moment, she approached and then threw her arms around me. Immediately she buried her face in my shoulder, and I could feel the shaking of her body. I stood there motionless, wondering about the cause of her distress.

She released her arms and stepped back. “There was a phone call for you while you were out,” she told me.

“Yes-s?”

“But no one except Rosemary or Santini knows you're here.”

That was true so far as I knew.

“It was a man’s voice. He spoke with a foreign accent When I said you were out, he wanted me to give you a message.”

“What?”

“He said just to tell you one word—that you’d understand. I can’t pronounce it the way he did, so I wrote it down." She walked to the table and removed a sheet of paper. On it was written in English the single word
“Attl.”
I stared at it Abruptly Bianca turned away, wrapping her arms around her breasts as if to keep warm. “Vic,” she said softly, “Vic, I’m frightened.”