The Devil’s Daughter, page 1
Subscribe to our newsletter for title recommendations, giveaways, and discounts reserved only for subscribers.
Join here.
PRAISE FOR THE DEVIL’S DAUGHTER
“A first-rate late ’50s NYC noir that hits all the right notes, weaving fiction, familiar real-life figures, and an affecting love story into a gripping tale of moral corruption that packs a physical and emotional punch.”
—MARK FROST, COCREATOR OF TWIN PEAKS
“A gritty noir thriller reminiscent of the best of Ross Macdonald. The Devil’s Daughter spins a compelling tale of lust and greed in late 1950s New York. Combining singular fictional characters with some of the most famous real people of that era, it takes us on an unforgettable journey.”
—DAVID MILCH, CREATOR OF DEADWOOD AND COCREATOR OF NYPD BLUE
“SLICK PACING AND WELL-DRAWN DETAILS . . . [COFFEY] IS A HUGELY WINNING PROTAGONIST, AND GREISMAN KEEPS HIS FOOT ON THE GAS THROUGHOUT.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“A well-crafted throwback thriller.”
—KIRKUS REVIEWS
THE DEVIL’S DAUGHTER
GORDON GREISMAN
Copyright © 2024 by Gordon Greisman
E-book published in 2024 by Blackstone Publishing
Cover design by Bookfly
All rights reserved. This book or any portion
thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner
whatsoever without the express written permission
of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations
in a book review.
Any historical figures and events referenced in this book are depicted in a fictitious manner. All other characters and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Trade e-book ISBN 979-8-212-34255-1
Library e-book ISBN 979-8-212-34254-4
Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Private Investigators
Blackstone Publishing
31 Mistletoe Rd.
Ashland, OR 97520
www.BlackstonePublishing.com
For Elinor
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Acknowledgments
About the Author
CHAPTER 1
2022
I can’t hear a thing.
I have a hearing aid. It’s in the utility drawer in the kitchen, I think, but there’s an infernal buzzing whenever I wear it, like a mosquito circling over my bed in the dark on a summer night, so I never use it.
I can’t really see either.
I have three pairs of glasses—three because I usually don’t have the slightest idea where I put any one of them down. They have lenses as thick as double-glazed windows that make my eyes bulge like a cartoon character, but if I don’t wear them, the world has all the clarity of a Haley’s M-O commercial. Are there still commercials for Haley’s M-O? Is there still Haley’s M-O, for that matter? One of the many strange and disturbing things about living into your nineties is that the past has a way of collapsing in on itself. Something as trivial as an ad on TV that you’re sure you saw just a couple of days ago hasn’t actually aired in years. That collapse goes for people too, people who were once close friends, kids from the old neighborhood, guys I knew in the service, drinking buddies, mooks I took down or ones I put down, and—infinitely more distressing than all of them—women I once loved.
There weren’t that many. I was never one for the errant lay, not one of those guys who took imbecilic pride in the notches on their belt. Does anyone still say that? Notches on your belt? Probably not. Anyway, like I said, there weren’t that many. I lost my virginity to Mary O’Callahan, a kindly local pro, when I was thirteen, which proved to be far more terrifying than exciting. There were a few assignations and brief affairs after that, but as it turns out, I have to feel something a little more nourishing than passing lust.
Some of those people do turn up at the oddest times though. I can be combing what’s left of my hair when Edie Marx, an artsy girl I once had a fling with, suddenly appears in the bathroom mirror behind me, wearing nothing but one of my old white Oxford shirts and smoking an unfiltered Lucky. She blows a perfectly round smoke ring with a click of her jaw and asks if I want to go to the Vanguard later, Oscar’s quartet is playing, and she thinks Bud might be there.
Or I can be walking over to Queensboro Wine and Spirits in Stockbridge—hobbling over, is more like it—when Carmine Rizzo falls into step with me. He says The Chin wants a sit-down. I ask when, and he says, “How ’bout right now? No time like the present, Jack.”
I don’t say anything. I know Carmine isn’t really there. I know Edie isn’t either. I may be blind as a bat and deaf as a post, but I’m still playing with a full deck even if the cards have gotten a little frayed. I still recognize John Coltrane’s “Straight Street” from its first four notes, know that Gleyber Torres went three for four last night, and read Krugman’s column when the Times posts it online. And almost every day now, I FaceTime with Sarah, though it took her the better part of a freezing January afternoon to teach me how.
Tracy doesn’t appear as often as she used to, and that makes me sad. We were married for thirty-two years, and for months after she was gone, I would wake up in the morning not only expecting her to be curled up next to me but sure that she was. I felt her hand in mine and her cheek warm against my shoulder, and it wasn’t until the fog of sleep and the haze of the two Klonopin I took the night before cleared from my head that I realized she wasn’t actually there.
I loved Tracy, but she wasn’t the love of my life, which I guess she knew. We were happy together but more comfortable than passionate. That not only annoyed the hell out of her, it hurt, and I’m still sorry about it. It’s not that we never made love, and it was always good when we did, but I was in my forties when we married, not exactly in my sexual prime. Tracy was younger, not obscenely so, but young enough to expect more than a kiss and a friendly squeeze on her behind when she crawled into bed with the man she loved. She told me that more than once, often in tears. I felt bad, promised to do better, and would for a month or two before falling back into the old routine of dozing off watching Johnny Carson or an old black-and-white movie on The Late Show. But we were content. That sounds like pretty weak sauce, but it was more than that. We were close, talked and laughed, shared secrets, took showers together, and read the Sunday paper on a bench in Washington Square Park when the weather was decent. And she loved it whenever Monk stopped by on his way uptown, or we went out to dinner with Bud and his latest. Tracy was generous and kind, put up with my moods, which could turn sour for no apparent reason, and never complained when I went out on a job and didn’t come home for a day or two. When I once asked her why she didn’t think I was cheating on her, Tracy smiled and said having an affair took effort and deceit and that I was too lazy to sneak around.
I was gutted when cancer took her. That was nearly twenty years ago, and I still miss her. I closed up the house in West Stockbridge then, holed up in our apartment on Perry Street, and wept. Sarah and the girls came by every couple of days with their arms full of groceries from Balducci’s and buzzed around the place chattering at me, hoping that would draw me out of my funk. And eventually it did. Like I said, I loved Tracy, but the truth is, she wasn’t V.
CHAPTER 2
1957
Richie Costello can’t stop staring at V, which is not only embarrassing but pretty inappropriate, considering he’s a priest. Actually, Richie is more than that. He’s a monsignor and executive secretary to Cardinal Spellman, the archbishop of New York. He looks the part too: his fingernails are manicured, his hair razor-cut, and the cassock he’s wearing is so expertly fitted that it could have been tailored on Savile Row. In fact, it probably was.
“Jack,” Richie says, “His Eminence would consider it a personal favor if you would look into the matter for him.” V’s sitting across the kitchen table from him, and he finally manages to wrest his eyes from her to me, adding, “Louis Garrett has given generously to the church, despite not being a member of the flock. And from what I understand, his daughter is basically a good kid, a little confused maybe, but what teenager isn’t?”
I know Richie from the old neighborhood. His family lived in a tenement on
“How long has she been gone?” I ask.
“Just a few nights. There’s probably a perfectly innocent explanation, but her father is very worried.”
“Then why doesn’t he call the police?”
“Mr. Garrett would rather keep it a private matter and only inform the authorities if it’s absolutely necessary.”
This kind of bullshit probably works for Richie most of the time, but if Garrett’s kid just snuck out to spend a couple of nights with her boyfriend, her father wouldn’t have sent an emissary from His Eminence the cardinal to have a guy like me find out what happened to her.
“Can I get you something a little stronger than that cup of coffee, Father?” V asks, getting up from my kitchen table. “You look like you could use it.”
She doesn’t wait for an answer. V goes to the sideboard, pours Richie three fingers of Irish over rocks, pours another three neat for herself, and flashes the monsignor a little cleavage when she sits back down. She’s being a wiseass on purpose, not just because Richie hasn’t been able to stop staring at her breasts, but because she’s made him for a phony and an officious little jerk. Where V comes from, that’s a mortal sin.
Thelonious Monk introduced us. There was an after-hours cutting contest at Minton’s, and when Kenny Kersey took over from him, Monk escorted the most beautiful woman I had ever seen over to my table. When I finally managed to recover from the shock, he told me her name was Vicky, but I already knew that. I hadn’t actually met Victoria Hemming before, but I’d seen her in ads in magazines and peeking seductively over a bare shoulder on billboards around town. Monk grinned and told me that I was going to spend the rest of my life with her, but I knew that wasn’t true. So did V, but she sat down anyway and offered to buy me a drink.
When I asked, she said she was from Texas, that her father was an oil wildcatter and her mother was a Houston society doyenne. When she was sixteen, she took off with her boyfriend, crossed the state line into Louisiana, and married him. The marriage lasted a week. By the time she was eighteen, she was living in Paris and modeling for Christian Dior. He introduced her to a French count who V said was so handsome his looks nearly made her cry. He was twice her age, destitute, and lived off her, which she didn’t really mind. What she did mind was that Monsieur Le Compte was serially unfaithful, sleeping with every young model he could get his hands on before she finally threw him out. Her marriages may have failed, but her career was spectacularly successful. Now she’s chased around town by movie stars, jet-setting playboys, scions of vast family fortunes and their fathers. What she sees in me is a mystery.
“I can’t imagine this will take up too much of your time, Jack, and Mr. Garrett will pay handsomely for your services.” Richie knocks back half his drink in a gulp to settle his nerves. V is still toying with him, and I shoot her a look telling her to cut it out, but she ignores me. “It would be a real blessing if you can help the poor man out,” Richie says, rattling the ice in his glass. “It really would.”
My dad was raised a Catholic, but then he became a radical Wobbly and never stepped foot inside a church again. My mother was Jewish, a piece of information that was best kept under wraps in our neighborhood. She came from a lot of money, but her family cut her off when she married a goy, so we never saw a penny of it. I was raised to be suspicious of anyone sanctimonious enough to wear a collar, but being that I’m nearly broke right at the moment, I tell Richie I’ll do what I can.
“I can’t make any promises, but I’ll talk to this guy Garrett, if that’s what you want.”
“It’s not what I want, Jack, it’s what His Eminence wants.”
“Well, in that case, how can I possibly refuse?”
CHAPTER 3
I’ve been taking the subway by myself since I was five. I’d take it now, but V is done up for a job, so instead of grabbing the Seventh Avenue Express at Fourteenth Street, we walk to Sixth and hail a cab.
This requires virtually no effort. Looking like she does, all V has to do is stand on the sidewalk and lift a finger, and every cabbie in the vicinity makes a beeline for us. A Checker beats the others to the punch. We slide into the back seat, and when Moe Moskowitz—Moe’s name and mug shot are on the taxi license pinned to his dashboard—finally stops gawking at V, we take off and head uptown.
Moe pulls to a stop in front of Avedon’s studio on East Forty-Ninth Street. V gives me a smooch before she gets out; then I tell Moe to take me crosstown to the Beresford on Central Park West.
The Beresford’s doorman, a human slab of cement in a Ruritanian uniform complete with gold brocade epaulets, accosts me the second I cross the building’s threshold.
“Can I help you with something?” he says, looking like he’d rather help crush my skull than do me any favors.
“I’m here to see Louis Garrett.”
“Is Mr. Garrett expecting you?”
“No, buddy, I’m the Fuller Brush man. Just call up to Garrett’s apartment and tell him Jack Coffey’s here.”
In other circumstances, the slab would have busted my nose for a crack like that, but he’s on duty and I might be somebody important, so he does what he’s told.
Now, I’m not entirely unfamiliar with how the other half lives. For starters, V’s apartment on Beekman Place is a very cushy prewar six. I don’t know why she prefers spending her nights in my quasi dump on Perry Street, but she does. And I’ve worked for a few Park Avenue swells who had nasty secrets and habits that I kept out of the papers and off the police blotter. Their places were pretty impressive, but none of them hold a candle to Louis Garrett’s sixteen-room luxury duplex. For one thing, the elevator goes right up into the apartment, which must be why the building’s management employs a guy like the slab to patrol the lobby.
I’m greeted by Garrett’s butler when the elevator doors open. He’s friendly, not the doddering Englishman in livery that I’d expected. He introduces himself as Burton—I don’t know whether that’s his first name or last—and he takes my hat and coat.
“Mr. Garrett is on the phone,” he says. “If you could just wait for him in the library.” I follow Burton into a room with floor-to-ceiling mahogany bookcases and a panoramic view of the park. He asks if he can get me anything: a glass of water or a cup of coffee. I beg off and he says, “Mr. Garrett shouldn’t be very long,” before he leaves me alone.
There’s an antique writing desk in the center of the room. On it are three photographs in sterling silver frames, all of them featuring a pretty teenage girl, who I assume is Garrett’s daughter. One is formal, subtly lit, and obviously shot by a professional. Another is taken at a cotillion of some sort. The girl is wearing an evening gown, and she’s on the arm of a West Point cadet in full dress uniform. The last one is a vacation snap. In it she’s smiling for the camera and looks genuinely happy. I’m holding the picture when Garrett walks into the room.
