You Might As Well Die (25 page)

“It’s certainly not performed with little lunches,” Benchley said, looking at O’Rannigan’s big, greasy sandwich.

O’Rannigan’s half smile of welcome disappeared. “Captain Church knew you were mixed up in this.”

“We’re not mixed up in any—”

“Save your breath,” O’Rannigan snapped. “Captain Church saw Mr. Benchley here at MacGuffin’s art auction the other night. Says he knew right away you two were involved somehow—and deeper than just getting MacGuffin’s suicide note.” The detective leaned back in his chair, folding his hands on his big belly. “Did you come here to turn yourselves in?”

“Turn ourselves in?” Dorothy asked.

“Turn ourselves into what?” Benchley asked.

Before O’Rannigan answered, Dorothy asked, “So,
do
you suspect foul play?”

O’Rannigan’s face went as blank and hard as a slab of slate. “I didn’t say nothing like that.”

“You just asked us to turn ourselves in. Clearly you’re thinking along those lines?” Dorothy said. “So was MacGuffin’s death foul play?”

“I was making a joke. You two fruits make them all the time. You telling me I can’t make a joke as a policeman?”

“You already make yourself a joke
of
a policeman. Why beat a dead horse?” she said.

O’Rannigan stood up. “You ain’t so smart. You don’t think I know your game? You’re trying to rattle me. Get me to tell you whatever it is you want to know.”

Dorothy lowered her eyes, batting her lashes. “Fine. You figured me out. I take it all back. You are a good detective. You know I’m just trying to get you to tell us how MacGuffin was killed. But you can see right through me.”

“Save the sweet talk.” O’Rannigan sat down again, smiling and nodding. “I ain’t playing that game either. You can’t tear me down and you can’t butter me up. So just talk straight. What the hell do you want?”

Dorothy spoke plainly. “We know MacGuffin’s body was found this morning. But it was found in the street, not in the river.”

“The whole city knows that. Don’t worry about it. We’re looking into it.” He chomped off a big bite of his sandwich, speaking with his mouth full. “That it? Anything else bugging you?”

“Yes, there is,” she said. “I talked to Ernie MacGuffin the night before last. Now he’s dead. That’s bugging me.”

O’Rannigan stood up, grabbed a paper napkin off his desk, wiped his mouth, crumpled the napkin in his hands and threw it down into a wastebasket. He picked up his small bowler hat and jammed it on his big bald head. “Come on. Let’s go talk to the captain.”

 

“Why did you fail to come forward with this information earlier?” Captain Church asked her.

Dorothy had had no intention of coming forward with any information at all. But Church didn’t have to know that.

“It was too late and I was too tired to call last night,” she fibbed. “I had planned to call from work this morning. But before I could, the news came over the wire that MacGuffin was dead. So as soon as we could get ourselves out of the office, we came here.”

Dorothy figured Church didn’t have to know about their visit that morning to Cathcart’s with Mickey Finn.

Church stood behind his neat, empty desk. He shifted his weight from his good leg to his peg leg. Dorothy could see that he was thinking deeply—probably skeptically—although his face was blank.

She and Benchley stood before his desk. Detective O’Rannigan stood to one side, against the wall. Dorothy wondered if this would be over quickly or if they would be invited to sit down—or if they’d stand here looking at one another for the next hour or so.

So she sat down in a hard wooden chair facing Church’s desk. Benchley sat down, too. He took out his pipe, tobacco and matches and started fixing himself a smoke.

Slowly, Captain Church sat down in his chair. O’Rannigan folded his arms and kept standing. There were no more chairs.

“So,” Dorothy began, “if MacGuffin was alive last night, what was he doing dead in the street this morning?”

Church steepled his fingers in thought. Then he reached for his telephone. “This would be an appropriate opportunity to communicate with Chief Medical Examiner Norris.”

He dialed a number and asked for the medical examiner. Then he tilted the earpiece away from his ear. They could all hear the man’s strident, baritone voice answer, “Norris here.”

“Captain Church calling,” he said by way of introduction. “I am inquiring about the body of Ernest MacGuffin.”

“I’m looking down at the sorry bastard right now,” Norris said. They could hear him puffing on his cigar.

“I have Mrs. Dorothy Parker and Mr. Robert Benchley sitting here in my office. Do you remember meeting them?”

Norris’ voice brightened. “I certainly remember that spunky, delectable little Dorothy Parker. I could eat her for dinner.”

“She can hear you, Dr. Norris,” Church said evenly.

“Then, hello, Mrs. Parker!” He didn’t sound ashamed at all. “What I should have said was, could I
meet
you for dinner ?”

Church ignored this. “Mrs. Parker stated she saw Ernest MacGuffin alive last night.”

“I guess that explains why he wasn’t bloated like a sponge and bobbing in the East River,” Norris said dryly. “Yeah, I would have told you the same damn thing, Captain, if you’d only waited to receive my report.”

Church was unruffled. “Tell us about the body.”

Norris exhaled and spoke perfunctorily, as though reciting a case report. “He was found approximately five o’clock this morning by a milkman on his rounds. The body was lying supine in the gutter of the street—”

“Supine?” Dorothy asked.

“Faceup,” Norris answered her over the phone. Evidently he could hear her as well as she could hear him. “The body lay perpendicular to the curb of the sidewalk, arms spread wide, the heels of his feet up on the curb, like he was napping in a field of daisies. He was fully dressed, with shoes and jacket, though his hat was found blown against a parked car a dozen yards away.”

“What exactly was he wearing?” Dorothy asked.

“Hold on.” Norris put down the phone for a moment, and then he picked it back up. They heard the rustle of a paper bag. “Cheap black suit—the label says Penney’s,” he sneered. “Dingy gray shirt, cuffs stained with streaks of paint. No tie. Nondescript black felt hat. Black shoes, dirty and wet—which isn’t so strange considering the rain we just had.”

Ernie had told Dorothy he wore dark clothes to move unseen through the alleys. “That’s the getup he was wearing the other night,” she said.

“Matter of fact,” Norris continued, “all his clothes were soaking wet. He must have been lying in the gutter a while before someone reported him.”

Church asked, “Are there any injuries? Did you determine the cause of death?”

“Other than the primary insult, no. His hands, forearms and face show no sign of physical violence,” Norris said. “No, scratch that—there’s a periorbital hematoma of the right eye.”

“Perry Orton of Ronkonkoma, Long Island?” Benchley said. “He was my bunkmate at summer camp. Small world.”

But Dorothy understood exactly what Norris meant by “periorbital hematoma of the right eye.” A black eye. The one she gave MacGuffin. She had socked him in the eye in his own basement. And now she knew for sure that the dead body lying in front of the medical examiner really was Ernie MacGuffin. He really was dead. She began to feel the creeping hand of guilt.

“What is the primary insult?” Church asked.

Dr. Norris dropped the medical jargon and spoke in his usual straightforward style. “His head’s caved in. Like someone smashed him in the back of the noggin with a slab of concrete.”

Dorothy felt a wave of nausea.

O’Rannigan spoke up. “Any slabs of concrete lying nearby?”

Dorothy looked at him. He was serious.

“Nothing of the kind to be found, according to the report I got,” Norris said. “But the scene of the crime wasn’t far from a construction site, one of the reporting officers said. Rain must have washed most of the blood away, too.”

“But he was found in the street,” O’Rannigan said. “Car accident maybe?”

“Maybe,” Norris said sourly, “if MacGuffin crossed the street bent over—with the back of his head facing into traffic. Good thinking, Detective.”

“Every possibility should be explored, Doctor,” Church said sharply. “Consider if MacGuffin dropped something into the street. Then he bent over and picked it up. As he was doing so, a car came upon him unexpectedly in the rain and collided directly into his head. You said he was found at five o’clock in the morning. Certainly, if his death occurred at the location in which he was found, it had to have happened shortly before. It would be dark at that time.”

“Hmph,”
Norris grunted. “Possible. But I highly doubt it.”

O’Rannigan spoke up. “Up until today, we believed MacGuffin had jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge. Are you sure he didn’t drown? Perhaps a passing ship caused the blow to his head. Then for whatever reason, someone dragged him out of the water, pulled him into a car and dumped the body in the street.”

Norris grunted again. “Three problems with that theory. Firstly, there was no water in the lungs, so he didn’t drown. Secondly, his clothes don’t smell like river water. Thirdly, we now have Mrs. Parker’s word that she saw him last night . . .
Detective
!”

O’Rannigan’s face turned red. “I know that. I was just exploring every possibility.”

“Explore on your own time. I have work to do,” Norris said.

Dorothy ignored this. “So you don’t think it was suicide or an accident? You think maybe it happened deliberately ?”

“Can’t say. That’s for New York’s finest to figure out. Could be an accident. Could be cold-blooded murder.”

“Murder?” Dorothy said.

MacGuffin had been asking for her help two nights ago. Today he was found murdered? That creeping hand of guilt now tightened around her heart.

“No one said murder,” Church grumbled.

“I just did,” Norris said.

The word
murder
seemed to hang in the air for a moment before Norris continued. “But if it was murder, the guy would have to be strong as an ox to clobber MacGuffin in the head like that. My guess is it was done with one blow.”

Something made Dorothy wonder aloud, “What if it wasn’t a guy? What if it was a woman?”

“Doubt it,” Norris said. “Not an average woman, anyhow.”

“There is no such thing,” she said, “as an average woman.”

O’Rannigan snorted.

“Every possibility should be explored, gentlemen,” Church said again, just as sharply. O’Rannigan’s smirk evaporated.

Dorothy asked, “What about an average man—or, for argument’s sake, an average woman—with a big shovel or tool of some sort? Couldn’t that do the trick?”

“Could be,” Norris sighed. “There’s just no way to know for sure. But it’d have to be a very strong-willed man—or woman—to smash in MacGuffin’s head with a shovel. It would take a score of blows. But as I said, it looks to me like it was done with just one blow with something really large and heavy.”

“But you can’t be sure about that?” O’Rannigan said hopefully.

“No, I can’t,
Detective
,” Norris said peevishly. “But I wouldn’t bet the farm against it either.”

“I understand,” Church said contemplatively. After a moment’s thought, he spoke to Dorothy and Benchley, the phone still in his hand. “We need you to help us. Keep your ears open. You move in these circles, so let us know if you hear anything suspicious.”

O’Rannigan snorted again, in disgust.

Dorothy said, “You want us to spy on our friends?”

O’Rannigan said, “If anyone you know had anything to do with the death of MacGuffin, he’s no friend of yours.”

Church leaned forward. “Say nothing about MacGuffin. We shall inform the press that his death was accidental. If it was murder, this will allow the murderer to lower his defenses and show himself.”

“Or
herself
,” Dorothy said. “Dr. Norris said it could have been a strong-willed woman.”

“Speaking of strong-willed women”—Norris’ voice turned sweeter—“how about that dinner tonight, Mrs. Parker?”

“How about you go jump off a bridge, Dr. Norris?” she said.

“Y
ou should go,” Benchley said to Dorothy.

“Go?” she said, pulling off her gloves. “Go where?”

“Out to dinner with that oddball Dr. Norris.”

Benchley opened the door for her and they stepped into the familiar lobby of the Algonquin. She was glad Benchley couldn’t see her face at the moment, because she couldn’t believe he was suggesting this.

She stayed a step in front of him until she could gather her thoughts. She knew he wouldn’t show his feelings for her (if indeed he had any). But to push her into the arms of that ghoulish Dr. Norris was not at all what she expected of her best friend.

She said, “Why in heaven’s name should I go out to dinner with Norris the Necromaniac?”

“Oh, I’m sure he’s not all that bad,” Benchley said jovially as he helped her slide off her coat. “At least you’ll get a few drinks and a good meal out of it.”

She turned and looked at him. Was that what he thought of her? That she was nothing more than one of those women who would go out with a man for a few drinks and a nice meal at a restaurant? That she had no better offers?

“Sure,” she said, her words dripping sarcasm. “Any gal would be happy to go to dinner with a doctor who cuts up the dead all day. I’ll ask him to dissect my steak for me. Sounds like an enchanting time.”

But then the reality of her statement hit her. Who was she to turn down Dr. Norris? Despite the medical examiner’s morbid occupation, he had seemed a quick-witted and pleasant enough gentleman.

Benchley smiled at her encouragingly. “There you are. You’ll have a fine time.”

A fine time. Well, tonight was Saturday night and she had no other offers, did she? Certainly not an evening at the theater with Benchley—or any other suitors for that matter.