The Gutter and the Grave, page 2
“Yes. But what I’m trying to say is that he isn’t a rich man, and maybe he’s in some kind of financial trouble or something, I don’t know. It’s the only way I can figure it.”
“Figure what?”
“The thefts,” Johnny said.
“Someone’s been stealing something?”
“Yes,” Johnny said. “From the cash register.”
“How much? Large amounts?”
“No. No, that’s just it. The thefts have been small. Ten dollars at a time. Sometimes fifteen dollars. Until this last one.”
“How much was the last one?”
“Fifty dollars.”
“That still isn’t very large,” I said.
“Well, it’s large enough to be serious,” Johnny said.
“How much has been stolen altogether?”
“Two hundred and thirty-five dollars.”
“Over how long a period of time?”
“About six months, I think. In any case, that was when I noticed the first shortage.”
“Did you tell Dom about it?”
“Yes. He said I probably added wrong. Then, when I found the second theft, a couple of weeks later, I told him again.”
“And what did he say that time?”
“The same thing. He’s either a very trusting person, Dom, or else…” Johnny shrugged. “I don’t know what to think.”
“Who else works in the shop?”
“A kid named Dave Ryan. He’s our presser.”
“Does he handle the cash register at all?”
“No.”
“But he could get into it when you or Dom aren’t around, couldn’t he?”
“No. If both of us are out of the shop, we lock the register.”
“Then he does sometimes work alone in the shop? When both of you are gone?”
“Yes. He presses at night sometimes. I told you, there’s a lot of work to be done.”
“But the register is locked?”
“Yes.”
“So you figure it’s Dom who’s been dipping into the till?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, what do you want from me?” I said.
“Matt, I don’t know what to do. How can I blow the whistle on my partner and friend? How can I go to the police? If he’s taking the money, he must have a damn good reason.”
“Why don’t you talk to him? Tell him…”
“And suppose I’m wrong? Suppose it isn’t him? Suppose…I don’t know…suppose somebody’s sneaking in at night or something? Jesus, I don’t know what to do, Matt. That’s why I came down to see you. I’ve been all over the Bowery looking for you. Finally, some guy told me I might find you in that park outside the school. Won’t you help me, Matt?”
“By doing what?”
“Come up to the shop. Look over the register, look over the windows. Maybe somebody’s getting in at night and forcing the drawer. I can’t tell, but I’m sure you could.”
“Do you ever leave any money in the register at night?”
“Yes. Usually about fifty bucks or so. Just enough to start the next day. It saves the trouble of taking it out and then bringing it back in the morning.”
“Mmmm. Then there is the possibility…”
“Will you help me, Matt?”
I thought about it for a while. Did I want to go back to the old neighborhood, see people I’d known when I was a kid? Did I want more memories to add to the memory I already carried, the memory of first meeting Toni, that goddamn corny meeting as she was coming off the Triborough Bridge, laughing, her blonde hair caught by the November wind, walking with the Randall’s Island football crowd, carrying a pennant in her hand? Did I want that memory to come welling back, and with it all the other ghosts, all the shadows I’d been drinking away for five years?
“No,” I said to Johnny. “I’m busy. I can’t help you.”
“Busy doing what?” Johnny asked. He paused, seemed to weigh his next question, and then said, “Getting drunk?”
“Yes,” I said, “getting drunk. Do you have any objections?”
“It seems to me…”
“It seems to me a smart man stops when he’s ahead,” I told him. “I’d hate like hell to have to knock down an old neighbor.”
“You talk a good game, Matt,” he said, and he stood up. He reached into his pocket for some change to leave on the table. “What are you afraid of?” he said. “The police? This wouldn’t be an official investigation. It would just be an old friend doing a favor.”
“When did we become such good old buddies?” I said.
“For Christ’s sake, we grew up together.”
“Does that make us brothers? Go to the police. Or else get yourself a bona fide private detective. Don’t come running to a Bowery bum.”
“Is that what you are, Matt?”
“What the hell did you think I was? A society swordsman? A pedigreed dog trainer? I’m a bum. Me. Matthew Cordell, bum. I sleep in flophouses or on park benches when I can’t afford a pad. I’m drunk twenty-five hours out of twenty-four, and I get my whiskey money by panhandling. I’m a bum. Do you want me to yell hallelujah?”
He shook his head and looked at me. “I didn’t think it was possible,” he said. “I didn’t think a dame…”
“Shut up, Johnny.”
“…could take a guy who was a man and turn him into…”
“Shut up!”
“Sure. Thanks for listening, Matt. I’ll work it out some way. Thanks a lot.”
“Get the pity out of your eyes,” I said. “I don’t need it.”
“You need something, pal,” he said.
“Oh, go the hell back to 118th Street. Who asked you to come down here, anyway? Who needs you?”
“I need you,” he said.
“Sure.”
“I do. Matt…please. Won’t you help me?” He put his arm on my sleeve, and I’ve never been able to kick a man in the teeth when he suddenly begins begging. “Please, Matt, I’m…I’m ready to lose my mind with this damn thing. Please. Help me.”
“No.”
“I’ll pay you. I can’t afford much but…”
“I don’t want your money.”
“Then will you help me? Will you please…”
“Jesus Christ, can’t you leave me alone?” I said.
The table was suddenly silent. Johnny kept looking at me. I kept looking at my hands.
In a small voice, I said, “Can’t you just leave me alone?” He didn’t answer. He kept staring at me. Finally, I raised my head and met his eyes. “I’ll…I’ll just take a look at the…the windows and doors,” I said. “And the cash register. Just to let you know if…if someone’s been getting in at night. But that’s all. I don’t want…”
“Thank you, Matt,” he said.
* * *
The sky had turned black outside. Clouds had moved in over the river and were banked overhead now, ready to burst. There was a smell in the air, the sweet air-rushing smell a city gets just before an electric storm. The lights in some of the shops had already come on as the city grew darker. It was going to rain like hell.
We caught a cab and headed uptown. The tailor shop was on First Avenue between 118th and 119th. It was just a small shop, with the usual dry-cleaning posters in the window, the posters that somehow never look professional but seem to have been run off by an art student in a basement. There was also a small sign in the window which read: WE DO EXPERT HAND TAILORING. A heavy padlock hung on the front door.
“Nobody here?” I said.
Johnny looked at his watch. “We close at six,” he said. “Dom is probably home already.”
“Were you in the shop today?”
“Yes.” Johnny took out a key ring and began searching for the right key.
“When?” I said.
He found the key and unlocked the padlock. “I came in around noon, and left at two. I went down to the Bowery. To look for you.” He swung open the door and snapped on the lights. The rain had still not started, but it wouldn’t be long now. “This is it,” he said.
The shop was the kind of shop you don’t find around much anymore. Two sewing machines were near the window, and opposite them was the counter over which business was done, the cash register at the extreme right. Behind that was a row of cabinets in which the finished clothes hung, waiting to be claimed. A curtained doorway bisected the clothing racks. I assumed the doorway led to the back of the shop. I also assumed the pressing was done in the back.
“There’s the cash register,” Johnny said.
I went over to it and studied it for a few minutes. “It doesn’t look to me as if it’s ever been forced,” I said. “Where’s your key?”
He took out his key ring again and handed me the key. I unlocked the register and opened it. As Johnny had said, there was about fifty dollars in small bills and change left in the register to start the new day. There were no marks on the drawer. I slammed it shut, locked it again, and handed the key ring back to Johnny.
“Is that the only entrance door?” I said, gesturing at the front door.
“No, there’s another at the back of the shop. And a lot of windows that open on the airshaft.”
“Let’s take a look,” I said.
We were moving toward the curtained doorway when the rain started. It started with a crackling streak of lightning and an answering bellow of thunder, and then the rain poured down suddenly in giant spattering drops, sweeping across the streets and pavement. Outside, people began running for shelter. Another lightning streak shattered the sky.
“It’s going to be a bad storm,” Johnny said.
“Yeah.”
“Come on, I’ll take you in back.”
He swept aside the curtains. I followed him into the back of the shop. It was dark back there, and I almost stumbled on a basket of unpressed clothes. Then Johnny snapped on the light.
The first thing I saw was the giant pressing machine with its levers and cloth-covered pads, gaping open like the jaws of a monster. The next thing I saw was the man sprawled against the wall opposite the machine. The man was in his early forties, wearing a white dress shirt with the collar unbuttoned and the sleeves rolled up. The front of his shirt was red with blood that flowed from two holes in his chest. A piece of tailor’s chalk was in the man’s right hand.
Scrawled in chalk on the wall behind him was an arrow and the arrow pointed to the initials J.B. which had also been chalked onto the wall in a shaky hand.
I guess Johnny Bridges saw the initials at the same time I did because he let out a short sharp scream and then whirled to me, his eyes wide with terror.
Chapter Two
“Goodbye, Johnny,” I said, and I turned and started for the curtained doorway. He clutched my arm with the strength that sometimes comes with total panic, swinging me around and then grabbing both my arms and staring at me and not speaking for a few seconds, just staring at my face with his eyes wide and a small tic at the corner of his mouth.
And then he said, “Matt…I…I…I…,” the words coming out like short bursts from a sighing machine gun.
“Johnny,” I said, “I don’t know what this is all about. I’m willing to believe you didn’t know that guy was lying dead by the wall when you came to fetch me. I’m willing to believe the only thing on your mind was the cash being swiped from…”
“That’s the truth! I didn’t know…”
“But the guy is dead, and I’m here, and man, when the cops start seeping out of the woodwork, I don’t want to be here. I want to be as far away from here as I can get. So long, pal, it was nice.” I started to go again, and his fingers tightened on my arms. “Let go of me, Johnny.”
“Matt, you can’t leave now. That’s Dom! That man is Dom, my partner.”
“I don’t care if he’s the Pope. He’s dead. Look, Johnny, I’ve had cops—up to here, I’ve had them. I don’t want them anymore.”
A look of desperation came into Johnny’s eyes, and then the look fled before an idea, and the idea claimed the eyes so that they became narrow and crafty.
“You can’t leave,” he said. “I’ll tell the police you were with me when I found the body. They’ll come after you.”
I didn’t say anything. I just watched him, and then I nodded, but I still didn’t say anything. Outside, the rain swept the streets relentlessly. At the front of the shop, over the steady wash of the storm, I could hear the ticking of a big clock.
Finally I said, “Is that why you came to find me?”
“What do you mean?”
“So you’d have someone with you when you accidentally ‘discovered’ the body?”
“You don’t believe that, Matt.”
I didn’t, actually. If he’d wanted someone he could put on an act for, he wouldn’t go digging up a Bowery bum. Besides, those initials on the wall were J.B., and I didn’t think any murderer was nuts enough to deliberately point the finger at himself and then try to register shock and surprise before a witness. I’d known of killers who’d made a point of directing suspicion toward themselves, but only after they’d set up an airtight alibi that would immediately dispel any suspicion when investigated. But those chalked initials on the wall were almost a dying man’s declaration, and the declaration of a man about to die—where it concerns his attacker—is admissible as court evidence and very often leads to a conviction. Johnny Bridges, whether he knew it or not, had read the writing on the wall. I’d read it, too, and I didn’t want any damn part of it. But if he planned to tell the police I’d been with him when he discovered the body, it would look worse for me if I ran.
Did you ever have the feeling that you wanted to go, and yet…?
“Did you kill him?” I said.
“No.”
“Your initials are on the wall. A big arrow points to them. The police will assume Archese put them there before he died.”
“I know.”
“Do you know anyone else with those initials?”
“No…not offhand. Matt, what am I going to.…?”
“Did you get along with Archese?”
“Yes. Matt, for Christ’s sake.”
“You said you were in the shop between twelve and two. Is that right, Johnny?”
“Yes.”
“Was Archese here?”
“Yes.”
“Was anyone else here?”
“No.”
“What did you do then?”
“I stopped in to say hello to Christine. That’s Dom’s wife. As a matter of fact, he asked me to stop by. He’d left a check for her, and he wasn’t sure she knew where it was. So I went by to tell her.”
“Why didn’t he phone her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does he have a phone at home?”
“Yes. I guess he could have called her. But he was busy pressing, so maybe he thought it’d be easier if I stopped by. I had to pass that way, anyway.”
“How long did you stay with her?”
“About a half-hour.”
“Then what?”
“Then I started for the Bowery. To look for you.”
“And Archese was alive at two o’clock when you left him, right?”
“Yes.”
“Do you often come into the shop for just two hours?”
“Tuesday is my day off. I only came in to see how things were going.”
“Did you and Archese argue?”
“No, we just chatted for a while.”
“Did you ever argue?”
“No. We got along fine.”
“What did you chat about this afternoon?”
“The cash register thefts.”
“Did you accuse him?”
“No. We just talked about it, and that was when I decided to come down to see you.”
“Do you own a gun?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“In the drawer out front.”
“You’d better let me see it.”
We went out to the front of the shop. It was still raining, but the thunder and lightning had stopped. The rain pressed against the big plate-glass window, melting it. Johnny went to a drawer near the cash register, and pulled it open and moved some papers and a scissors aside. He reached clear to the back of the drawer and then turned to me.
“It’s gone,” he said.
“What kind of a gun was it?”
“A Smith and Wesson .38.”
“Do you have a permit for it?”
“Yes.”
“Carry or premises?”
“Premises. The gun never left that drawer. The store was held up once, right after my father passed away. So I got a permit and bought a gun.”
“Don’t be surprised if the slugs they dig out of Archese were fired from a .38 Smith and Wesson,” I said.
“What are we going to do, Matt?” he said.
The panic had left his eyes. He was watching me with calm intelligence now. For all practical purposes, there was no longer a dead man in the back room. We were simply two level-headed gentlemen discussing a course of action on something of slightly more than everyday importance. I watched him and then told him what I thought.
“I don’t want to get involved with the police again. I had enough of the police that time with my wife. I’m sure they remember me, and maybe yanking my license wasn’t enough for them. I’m willing to make a deal with you, Johnny.”
“What’s the deal?”
“Leave me out of this. You came back to the store alone and found the body alone. I wasn’t with you.”
“What good will lying do me?”
“A lot of good. When the police see those initials, they’re going to think they’ve got an open-and-shut. They’re going to lock you up faster than they can say ‘Suspicion of homicide.’ That puts you on the inside and the real murderer on the outside. The cops will then begin their investigation. The D.A.’s office will do its best to uncover facts that will clinch the prosecution. They’ve already got what amounts to a dying man’s declaration. They may also have two bullets that came from your gun. With a murderer already in the pokey, they’re not going to try too hard to find another one.”
“I still don’t understand,” Johnny said.
“Then I’ll spell it for you. You’ll tell your lawyer you’re innocent, but he certainly isn’t going to start a private investigation. He’s going to build his defense on lack of motive or opportunity. If those bullets were fired from your gun, the prosecution can easily show ‘means.’ Lack of motive is a weak defense. As for opportunity, you could have come into this shop anytime during the day and put the blocks to your partner.”
