Dear Sister Dead, page 9
“Why then?”
“He messed up our billing and invoicing.” Levy paused, then added with bitterness. “He might’ve even been stealing on the side. I can’t say for certain, but I suspect it was headed in that direction.”
“So, this had nothing to do with Vera?”
“My firing him? No, nothing. She had nothing to do with it.”
“When did you let him go?”
“About two weeks ago.”
“And since then?”
“Since then what?”
“Any communication from him?”
“Of course not. I told him if he ever showed his face again, I’d have him arrested.”
"He never reached out to you?"
"Oh, he tried. He called me here a few times. I refused to speak to him."
That jived with what his secretary said. “The thing is, there’s a possibility that this man was blackmailing Vera. She might’ve tried to end it and he—“
“Lanie, I’m telling you, no. My Vera wouldn’t have—“
“She was selling her things, Levy. Emptying her jewelry box. She pawned an earring and necklace set. I talked to the pawn dealer myself and got it back from him. I—”
“That can’t be. That just can’t be.”
"I'm sorry, Levy, but it's true. I have the jewelry right here."
"And you’re sure it's Vera's?"
I described the pieces to him.
"I can't believe it," he whispered. "There must be some other explanation."
"What other one could there be?"
"I-I don't know."
I used the pencil to make notes.
“These letters,” Levy said. “You’re not going to mention them in your article, are you? Publish them?”
I took a moment to answer. “It’s not up to me.. I won’t be the one to make that final decision.”
“Who will then?”
“My editor.”
“Well, let me speak to him.”
“I can’t. He’s ...” I looked up at Sam’s office. He was hard at work on something, stacks of pages towering on either side of him. “He’s not here at the moment.”
I turned away and spoke into the phone. “Levy, don’t worry. I-I loved Vera, too.”
“Well, you don’t act like it.”
“I promise—“ I bit my lip. “I promise to do everything I can to protect her memory.”
He didn’t say anything, but I could sense him thinking, pondering.
“I want to see the letters,” he said.
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“Why not? If they were from that man—that Slocum—from him to her, then they were her letters. That means, that as her husband, they’re now mine.”
“I told you, Levy. I’ll protect her.”
“I’m warning you,” he said. “If I see those letters in your paper. If I see even the merest hint of scandal in your reporting on my wife, I’ll find a way ... to take away your voice. If you use your voice to hurt my Vera, I’ll use mine to take away yours. Every Sunday, in the pulpit, I will raise my voice against those who would seek to make money off of her death.”
“Levy, that’s not me.”
“She loved you, Lanie, like a sister. I didn’t think you’d be among those who would dance on her grave—“
“Levy, I—”
The next sound was the clink of the phone. He’d hung up.
CHAPTER 13
It was only mid-morning and I already felt exhausted. The conversation with Levy had drained me. How in the world did it go off the rails so fast?
I told myself I should’ve known better. I should’ve known how he would react and handled it better.
I gave my head a little shake, massaged my temples, and went back to work, writing out my notes while they were still fresh in my mind. It took another twenty minutes, but then I had fully laid out everything so far and carefully put both the notes and the letters in a folder. I slipped it into one of the desk drawers and locked it. I was about to put the key in my purse when the phone on my desk rang.
“Lanie’s World,” I answered, using the name of my newspaper column.
“It’s Blackie.”
“Oh, good morning,” I said, somewhat surprised that he would be calling me. Usually, it was me calling him.
“Just a courtesy call,” he said. “Wanted you to know that I’ve confirmed the brother’s alibi.”
“The husband, too? Or just the brother?”
“The husband, too.”
“Well, that’s news. Thank you.” I picked up a pencil and began tapping it on the desktop. “Any news on Slocum?”
“Still no sign of him.” Blackie cleared his throat.
There was something he wasn’t telling me. “What’s going on, Blackie? You holding out on me?”
He paused. “Let’s just say we’re working another angle.”
“You want to tell me about it?”
“Not at this time, no.”
I hung up, thoughtful, and sat there holding the receiver. The wrinkles on my forehead were getting deeper by the second. Now, what was that all about?
I sat back in my chair, ran through everything I knew about the case, trying to figure out what ‘new angle’ Blackie might’ve stumbled upon. Only one name came to mind. Slocum. It had to be him. He was the only person I could think of, the only one, who might possibly have gotten Blackie to exclude both Levy and Martin from his list of suspects: Slocum. He was the man of mystery. So, he must be it. He had to be.
I happened to glance up and see Sam in his office. He had gotten up from his desk, from behind those stacks of papers, and was now standing in front of his wall map, staring at it, arms folded across his chest, his face scrunched up in an expression of deep thought.
I sauntered down to his office, stepped just inside the door, and rapped on the doorframe. “A penny for your thoughts?”
He tapped his lips with a forefinger, raised an eyebrow then pointed to the map. It was a map of Manhattan. But it extended as far north as the Bronx. “They never did figure out where Vera went into the water, did they?”
“No,” I said, entering and joining him at the map.
“You know, I used to be a sports reporter. Used to cover the races up the Harlem River.”
“No, I didn’t realize.” I glanced at the map. “So, I guess you’d know something about currents.”
“A little something, yeah.” He pointed to the northern stretch of Manhattan. “I’m thinking,” he said slowly,” that given the time of her death, the approximate time of it, and where she ended up, that she went into the water ...” He leaned forward and traced a circle on the map with an index finger. “Right there.”
I examined the place he was pointing to, then turned to him and said, ”So what are we waiting for?”
It turns out we indeed have to wait a while. Sam had meetings and stacks of copy to edit on deadline. Meanwhile, I worked on a draft of my column and an article on the Kincaid story.
We finally set out in late afternoon. It was a cool day, with crisp air and a gray sky overhead. Sam and I made good time heading north. It only took us thirty minutes or so to reach our destination, the area that Sam had traced on the map. During the ride up, I filled Sam in on what Blackie told me in that last phone call.“Well, it certainly sounds as though he thinks he’s made a breakthrough,” Sam said.
“He wouldn’t tell me anything about it.”
Sam chuckled. “Just think of it as a compliment, Lanie. He knew that if he gave you the slightest inkling of what he’s up to, of what he’s found, that you’d run with it. And not just run with it but probably get there before him. Shucks, baby, you got that cop running scared!”
We both laughed at the very thought.
“We’re almost there,” Sam said.
The Bronx Kill. What an appropriate name, I thought, if this is where it happened.
The Kill was a tidal strait that linked the Harlem River and the upper East River. It wasn’t all that wide, but it could go deep and it was given to strong, turbulent currents.
“There’s a stream—Mill Brook—that feeds into the Kill,” Sam said, “and there’s a railroad bridge that spans it. If she was killed and thrown into Mill Brook, then the tide would’ve carried her to where she was found.”
Soon, we were trundling through a small park. It was getting dark by then. The place was quiet and isolated. The sounds of the city seemed far away.
“It’s the perfect setup for lovers who want to meet in secret,” Sam said.
“Or for a blackmailer to meet his victim and collect his payment.” I gave in to a little shiver.
We turned onto a small road.
“Look!” I leaned forward, pointing.
A black car stood on the grassy area off under a small copse of trees. The car listed to one side as if it had a flat tire and the front passenger door stood wide open.
Sam and I glanced at each other. He slowed down and we silently drove past it. The window on the driver’s side had been shattered, with sharp irregular bits of glass still jutting up from the steel frame. What appeared to be a male figure sat slumped behind the steering wheel.
“Pull over, Sam. Pull over.”
Sam steered his car to the side of the road, half on, half off the grass, just ahead of the parked vehicle. “Do you recognize it?”
“I just know it’s not Vera’s.”
We approached the driver’s side. Sam had served in the war and I’d covered a good number of homicide scenes, so we were both experienced in viewing the results of violence, but we’d never grown numb to it.
There was indeed a man in the driver’s seat. He was half-erect, half-keeled over. He was obviously dead, had been for a while from the looks of it. A bullet hole had carved a hole in the left side of his head.
“That shot,” Sam said, “was up close and personal.”
From the size of the hole, it had been of fairly large caliber. I didn’t need to see the other side of his head to know there probably wasn’t much left of it. A bullet that made an entry hole that big would explode out the other side.
I swallowed, hardening my stomach. It wasn't easy to make out his facial features, not in the shadow of his car and not with all that blood. Even so, something about his face seemed vaguely familiar. Maybe it was just the profile. But no, I shook my head, that wasn’t it. There was something familiar about him. I couldn’t put my finger on it.
"Looks like he's alone," I said, "but there's something on the passenger seat." I walked around to the passenger side, bent down, and peered in. “Sam.”
“You’ve found something?”
I beckoned for him to come around. When he joined me, I pointed to inside the car. A woman’s scarf lay on the passenger seat. It had a pattern of lavender flowers and green leaves on a background of ivory. From the looks of it, it was made of silk.
“Vera’s?” Sam asked.
“It looks like one I gave her. Levy said she was wearing it.”
Sam straightened up and glanced around, taking in the whole scene. “The killer must have walked up to the driver’s side first. Walked straight up to it. Cause this wasn’t a drive-by. This car wasn’t sprayed. The killer just walked up to the window, cool as you please, aimed, and fired. A precision hit.”
“And Vera, she must’ve been in the car with him, sitting here in the passenger seat. She managed to get the door open and tried to make a run for it—“
“But she didn’t get far.”
Sam and I walked the short remaining distance to the bridge. Together, we looked over the edge to the rushing water below.
“The killer followed her,” he said, “shot her in the back, and then ...”
“Tipped her over.”
He turned to me. “You think she was the target? Or just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time?”
“Not sure,” I said. “But I do think one thing’s clear.”
“What’s that?”
“We just found Blackie’s missing man, Nate Slocum.”
I stayed with the car while Sam went to find a phone and call Blackie. Sam was back pretty quickly, but it took Blackie another hour to get there. In the meantime, uniformed police from the local station arrived on the scene—and immediately began treating Sam and me as though we were the ones who’d pulled the trigger.
They had actually pulled out the handcuffs and were about to slap them on us when Blackie finally arrived. I must say he took his sweet time, examining the car, listening to the local lieutenant’s report, including all of its innuendos and false assumptions, before sauntering over to speak to us, where we stood under police observation by one of the patrol cars.
“You are going to tell them we didn’t do it?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said with an open-palmed shrug. “Should I? Did you?”
“Of course, not,” I said, tapping my foot with annoyance.
“You told the lieutenant over there that you recognized the woman’s scarf as belonging to Vera Kincaid? Does that mean you recognized the man, too?”
“I’m guessing it’s Nate Slocum. But you already know that, right? I mean, I saw your guys going through his pockets and pulling out a wallet.”
Blackie’s dark brows drew together. “Yeah, it's him. How'd you know he'd be here?"
"We didn't."
"Then what are you doing here?"
I nodded toward Sam. “He figured it out.”
“Figured what out?”
Sam explained it as he’d explained it to me.
“So,” Blackie said, “a lucky guess, then.”
“No,” Sam said, “an educated one.”
Blackie looked sour. He looked at me to see if I had anything to add and I nodded toward Sam. “It’s what he said.”
Blackie gave Sam a gimlet eye, then turned back to me. "Look, I know you don't want to hear this, but—"
“Lieutenant!” There was a cry. “Lieutenant, over here!”
We three looked around, then realized that the voice was coming from under the bridge. We hurried to the railing and looked down. A couple of officers stood on an embankment at the river’s edge, waving up at us. They had found something.
It turned out to be an abandoned tent and fishing tackle. There was an old tin pot, the cold dead ashes of a fire, and a tin plate with food still on it.
“Looks like someone was living here till recently,” Blackie said.
“Yeah, but he cleared out fast,” Sam said.
“Wonder why,” I said.
Sam pointed to the tin pot. A bullet had pierced it through and through. “I imagine that’s why,” he said, then looked upward toward the bridge. We had a clear view of it from where we were standing.
“Whoever was here,” Sam said, “would’ve been able to see what happened—see the face of the man who did it.”
“And the killer,” I said, “he would’ve been able to see whoever was standing here, too.”
Blackie and Sam turned to me, realization in their eyes. We had a witness—and a killer who was out to get him.
CHAPTER 14
It was dark by the time we got back to the office. The staff had gone home and the empty newsroom, cavernous with its high ceilings, seemed ghostly. But it was still warm. I appreciated that. It had been cold in Sam’s car on the drive back. I’d sat there shivering for most of the drive.
As soon as we got back, I headed downstairs to the newspaper morgue, where we kept copies of old newspapers. It didn't take anywhere near as long as I thought it would to find what I was looking for.
Thirty minutes later I was back at my desk, reviewing my notes. They were on Slocum. He'd looked familiar and now I knew why. Five years earlier, he’d gone by the name of Chiles, Mason Lou Chiles, and he was working for a loan shark, a pretty bad one, the kind who nursed grudges.
After several minutes, I reached for the phone, had a couple of calls put through, not to anyone official but to people who were still in the know, and got the info I needed. Then I sat there for a while, cogitating. Was this the new angle Blackie had alluded to?
I was about to place another call, this time to the homicide cop, when Sam walked up.
“I think I’ve found the witness,” he said. “At least, I know where to look. Let’s go.”
I glanced out the soot-covered windows of the newsroom. It was pitch-black outside. And cold, too. Just looking at it made me shiver. A sense of exhaustion hit me. The only decent reason for going back out there was to go home. All I wanted to do was curl up in my nice warm bed, not traipse around in the dark, looking for a man who didn’t want to be found.
“Now? Tonight?” I said.
“The sooner, the better.”
On our way out there, I told Sam about Slocum and his links to a loan shark.
“Sam Sharkey’s lowdown enough to have ordered the hit,” Sam said. “The question is why. We know why he’d have gone after Slocum. But why kill a preacher’s wife?” He took his eyes off the road a moment to glance at me. “You think she borrowed money from him and couldn’t pay it back?”
“Highly unlikely.”
“Well, so was her ending up where she did.”
I didn’t have an answer for that, so I said nothing and we rode the rest of the way in silence.
There were places in New York where Edison or Ma Bell or Consolidated didn’t dare to tread. Places where you wouldn’t find electrical wiring or telephone or gas lines. Places out of time. It was to one of those places Sam took me.
“I thought I knew this city,” I said.
“But you didn’t know about this.”
We were standing on the harsh rocky banks of a dirty waterway at the northern tip of Manhattan. Before us lay a rough and impoverished replica of Venice. Instead of Italian palatial buildings, you had shacks on stilts; instead of gondolas, dories tethered to rickety plank piers, and instead of blue-green canals, you had alleyways of gray and brown water that lapped in-between and ran underneath.
It was cold. As a matter of fact, it felt downright icy with an arctic wind blowing across the river. I turned up my coat collar, tucked my nose in the warmth of its fur, and hugged myself. “Where exactly are we?”
