Sammy Two Shoes, page 6
‘I was gonna come see you,’ I began, ‘after I heard Blossom.’
‘But you’re staying at the Benjamin,’ Shayna said, looking down.
I started to protest, then I started to ask her how she knew, but in the end, I just said, ‘Yes.’
My mother said, ‘As my old friend Damon Runyon used to say, “A story goes with it.”’
I don’t know if she actually knew Runyon or not, but she certainly wanted to hear the story, so I told her. Starting with sitting in the barber chair and reading about Blossom in the New Yorker and ending with figuring out that Sammy killed an actor.
They both sat in silence for a moment, and then my aunt Shayna smacked me on the back of my head. Not hard, but serious.
‘How in the hell could you think Samuel would do a thing like that?’ she demanded. ‘He’s not a maniac. He’s a nice boy with a few bad habits. Period.’
‘And not one of those habits includes anything like killing anybody,’ my mother added. ‘Even an actor.’
‘I think you’d agree that your mother and I know a thing or two about killers,’ Shayna went on. ‘Samuel’s not the type. Not even.’
‘Look,’ I said to them both, ‘he did it. He shoved a pencil in a girl’s neck. He told me so. And he said it in a way that made me believe him.’
‘And what way was that?’ my aunt asked, sitting back in her chair and folding her arms.
‘He said the cops were going to find his prints on the pencil. He said he did it for his girl, this Phoebe. Speaking of which, I have to go get her out of jail.’
I stood.
Shayna looked at my mother. ‘Prints.’
My mother nodded. ‘There’s more to the story.’
‘There probably is,’ I agreed. ‘But if the cops do find Sammy’s prints on the pencil, he’ll be gone from us a very long time, right?’
‘Sammy who?’ my mother said.
‘I haven’t seen the boy in years,’ Shayna added softly.
TEN
Cornelia Street, where the murder took place, was in the Sixth Precinct. The precinct house for that area was on West 10th Street. Seemed like the best place to start. It had been maybe eighteen hours since she’d been arrested, so she might have been taken to Central Booking at the nearest courthouse for arraignment, and maybe that had already happened too. But it had been a long time since I’d been through all that, and my memory was a little fuzzy about the details, because, who wants to remember?
So, another cab to the Precinct House, a bit of wandering around, and then an encounter with Sergeant Weiss. His desk was tidy; he was not. He’d had chicken soup for lunch. I could tell because there was a lot of it on his shirt, including noodles, and he smelled like a bay leaf.
I sat down and he looked up.
‘What?’ he wanted to know.
I showed him my Child Protective Services investigator’s license. It was a risk, but it had my full name on it, and nobody but family knew what that was. He might have recognized ‘Foggy’ but never Fyvush.
‘Florida Child Protective.’ He gave me the once-over and shook his head.
‘I’m investigating a possible child abduction, and someone named Phoebe Peabody has information that can help me,’ I told him, using my official law enforcement voice, ‘but I discover that you guys arrested her.’
‘Never heard of her.’
‘Then point to someone who knows dick about what happens in this precinct,’ I said, ‘because you guys arrested her for murder, like, yesterday.’
He squinted. ‘The theatre thing.’
‘So I’m told.’
He looked back down at the work on his desk. ‘Took her to Centre Street.’
‘Was that so hard?’ I stood up.
‘Might have already been arraigned,’ he said, not looking up.
‘But she wouldn’t get bail on a murder charge no matter what her plea was,’ I suggested, ‘and she couldn’t have been moved yet, right?’
He tilted his head. ‘Probably not. She’s gonna tell you about some kid that got grabbed in Florida?’
‘I hope so.’
He’d already lost interest.
I’d never been to the Centre Street Courthouse. And when I got there, I was confronted by the statue of a giant marble woman sitting on a stack of books, or something. And there were very tall columns. All very disorienting to me after a couple of years in Florida getting used to flat buildings, seagulls, and a lot of the color pink.
I managed to keep it together long enough to find a desk sergeant who knew what from what.
‘You’re talking about the theatre kid,’ he said. ‘Heard some of the guys laughing about it.’
His voice was husky, and his hair was thin. He was teetering on the brink of retirement and diabetes. His tone said he didn’t care, but his eyes disagreed.
‘Phoebe Peabody is her name,’ I told him.
‘You got paper?’
I shook my head. ‘You have to understand the rubes in my little town. The kid that I’m looking for, the one who got snatched, she’s a Seminole, and the locals don’t care.’
‘But you take it more serious.’ He stared into my eyes like he was looking for the Hope Diamond. Or, anyway, some kind of hope.
‘I’m more serious about my job than you can possibly imagine,’ I said, and I meant it.
He could tell. ‘You’re not from Florida, though.’
‘I’m from Brooklyn. I live in Florida now. The weather’s nice.’
‘So they tell me,’ he said. ‘But see, you’re not her lawyer, and you’ve got no paper, and I’m off in, like, five minutes.’
‘Is she still here in the building?’ I asked him. ‘Can you at least tell me that?’
‘Far as I know.’
That was all he was going to give me. I stood there for a second to be sure, and then I launched myself away from his desk, trying to figure what to do.
What I should have done was leave it alone. Let the cops find Sammy’s prints. Let justice take its course and Phoebe would be out in no time all on her own. What I should have done is go back to the Benjamin, take a shower, and get myself over to Reno Sweeney’s for Blossom’s second night. And then what I should have done was take myself back to Florida where I should have stayed in the first place.
But I hadn’t gone more than five steps away from the sergeant when I heard him say, ‘Hey, Florida!’
I turned around.
He pointed. ‘I think that’s the PD who’s handling the theatre kid’s case.’
I looked to where he was pointing, and she looked like a public defender. She was six feet tall. Her hair was the color of night and cut short. She was wearing those round-framed metal glasses like John Lennon wore. Her suit was as crisp and clean as it was plain and inexpensive.
I only hesitated for a heartbeat, and then headed her way.
‘Sorry,’ I said as soon as I got close enough, ‘are you Phoebe Peabody’s lawyer?’
She was startled. ‘Who?’
‘Theatre kid,’ I went on. ‘Death by pencil.’
‘Oh. Jesus. Yeah.’
I showed my badge. Sometimes it impressed people.
‘I’m Moscowitz with Child Protective Services in Florida. Do you have three seconds?’
She adjusted her glasses with the hand that wasn’t holding an overstuffed briefcase.
‘I can give you two if you walk with me,’ she said.
We walked.
‘I’ll be brief. Make sure the cops find all the fingerprints on the pencil because some of them belong to Samuel Cohen.’
‘Who?’
‘Samuel Cohen. He’s the person who put the pencil in the dead actor’s neck. Not Phoebe Peabody. So maybe you could nudge the cops, like, in that direction. You know, find out who’s actually guilty, let the innocent go free. That sort of thing.’
The lawyer stopped walking. ‘How would you know a thing like this? What’s it got to do with Florida Child Protective? What are you doing in New York? Who are you?’
Yeah. I was going to have to answer all those questions. But first I had to find out what kind of a person this lawyer was.
‘I think I just told you who I am,’ I said. ‘Showed you a badge and everything. It’s your turn.’
She adjusted her glasses, shook her head, and then her shoulders drifted about two inches south.
‘Helen Baker, Public Defender’s Office, home of the most overworked lawyers in the fifty states. What makes you think this Cohen guy is guilty?’
‘He told me so. And he said they’d find his prints on the murder weapon.’
‘Uh huh.’ She appeared to doubt my story. ‘You Phoebe’s boyfriend?’
‘Not even a little bit,’ I assured Ms Baker. ‘I just happened to be at the show when the victim was killed. The all-female Hamlet. Set in a women’s prison.’
‘Sounds terrible.’
‘It was. Nevertheless.’
‘So the story I heard you tell Sergeant Weiss about some lost little lamb from Florida was bullshit.’ She stared. ‘As much bullshit as your current “I just happened to be there” routine.’
‘I work for Child Protective Services in Fry’s Bay, Florida,’ I began, ‘but I grew up in Brooklyn, and sometimes I miss the city. So I came up … Jesus, it was only yesterday. Long drive. Just wanted to get away from all the sand in my shoes, like, for a few days. Take in a show, have a real slice, look at a pigeon.’
Why not give her the full information? Wasn’t the truth a complete defense under the law?
‘And the show you decided to see was lesbian Hamlet?’ She laughed, but it wasn’t the jolly sort.
‘It wasn’t … the show that I came up to see was Blossom Dearie at Reno Sweeney’s.’
Her face changed. ‘With Bob Dorough? I read about that.’
‘He sat in,’ I confirmed. ‘“Two Sleepy People” never sounded so good.’
‘Damn it.’ She set her briefcase down. ‘I love Blossom. Last time I saw her was at the Algonquin.’
I nodded. ‘Saw Bucky Pizzarelli there. Kind of a while back.’
‘OK, Mister … what was your name?
‘Moscowitz.’
‘Mr Moscowitz. How the hell did you get from Blossom to Hamlet?’
I told her the story in five sentences. All of it, but with a low percentage of detail. And I left out the part about my mother and my aunt helping Sammy get gone, of course.
‘Uh huh,’ she said, ‘and how is it that your friend Sammy knew you were in town at all, let alone at Reno Sweeney’s?’
OK, I may have left that part out. She was, after all, an officer of the court, and I really didn’t want her to get me nabbed for an old transgression. Such as escaping a police vehicle and absconding to Florida.
So I said, ‘Weird coincidence, believe me or don’t. A bus boy who works at Reno Sweeney’s was a mutual pal back in the younger days and gave Sammy a call to instigate some sort of reunion. I haven’t been back to the city for a number of years and my return was, apparently, what passed for news among the easily amused.’
She sipped a breath but didn’t say anything for a minute. ‘All right, I completely don’t believe most of this, but if it might get the kid off, I’ll suggest a thorough fingerprint check with this Samuel Cohen.’
‘His prints will be on file,’ I assured her.
‘As long as I’m at it,’ she went on, ‘I’ll maybe get the full battery of tests, just so there aren’t a lot of questions about all this specifically. I get the impression that you’d rather not answer a lot of specific questions.’
‘I don’t see how they could have any bearing on your particular case with Phoebe Peabody.’
‘So.’ She picked up her briefcase. ‘What else did Blossom sing?’
‘Well,’ I told her, ‘of course there was “I’m Hip” and “Lush Life”.’
She laughed. ‘I hate that I missed it.’
‘You work too much,’ I said.
‘You got a card or something?’
‘A card?’ My turn to laugh. ‘I work in a tiny little burg on a bay, I can’t afford stationery, and everybody knows me. I’m that Jew from Brooklyn.’
‘So how am I supposed to get in touch if I need to?’
‘Why would you need to?’ I asked.
‘Like when the police want to ask about Samuel Cohen, for example,’ she insisted.
I wondered should I tell her or not.
Then: ‘I’m staying at the Benjamin on East 50th.’
She nodded, then reached into her pocket and got a card, handed it over. ‘Or you call me.’
Then she hoisted up her briefcase and was gone.
ELEVEN
Now, everybody knows that the very first place to have the name Ray’s Pizza on a sign was opened in 1959 on Prince Street in Manhattan. After that, it’s a matter of opinion. But listen, wars have been fought on lesser grounds than which one is the real Ray’s. So all I decided when I left the courthouse was that I would go to the nearest Ray’s.
I walked about twenty minutes north up Hudson Street then 9th Avenue until I got to Famous Original Ray’s on 9th. I got one slice, but it wasn’t enough, so I got two more, which was too much. I had planned to walk back to the Benjamin, but the seventy pounds of pizza in my stomach told me it was a bad idea. So I grabbed a cab and almost fell asleep before we got to the hotel.
I’m not saying that I had a dark night of the soul when I was trying to take a nap once I got to my room. But it was a pretty overcast afternoon at the Benjamin. What was I doing in New York? Was it really about good pizza and bad streets? And I owned every record Bob Dorough ever made. Even the imports. So was it really worth driving over a thousand miles to hear him sing two songs?
As I lay there tossing and turning in my second-best suit, I was riddled with regrets and second thoughts. Mostly about pizza, but a little about the whole trip in general. Like maybe the Angel of Karma had whispered into my ear, enticed me back to the city of my sins. I was there to pay a debt or right a wrong or some other such metaphysical malarkey.
The room grew dark as the afternoon turned into evening. I wasn’t going to sleep, but I didn’t feel like getting up.
So I nearly jumped out the window when the phone rang.
I grabbed it before it could ring again.
‘Yes?’ I snapped.
‘Moscowitz?’ said a female voice.
‘Who is this?’ I asked.
‘It’s Helen Baker.’
‘Who?’ I sat up.
‘The lawyer. For Phoebe Peabody.’
‘Right.’ I rubbed my forehead. ‘Right. What can I do for you?’
‘You can meet me in the bar downstairs at your hotel.’
‘I can?’ I looked at my watch. It had somehow gotten to be nearly seven o’clock.
‘I’m buying,’ she insisted.
‘Oh.’ I stood up. ‘In that case, when?’
‘I’m down here now.’
‘Ah. Well, then, I’ll be right there.’
A quick comb through the hair and a straightening of the tie, and I was out the door and down the elevator.
The place was crowded, pleasantly noisy, still the after-work crowd. Helen Baker was, indeed, at the bar, taking up three seats with her coat, her stuff, and herself. I joined her.
The bartender appeared instantly.
‘Gin and tonic, please,’ I mumbled, ‘and could you make it a half and half, I’ve got a stomach.’
He seemed to understand. And then he vanished.
‘And?’ I prompted Ms Baker.
‘I have a pal who’s a coroner.’ That’s all. She seemed to be upset about something.
‘And?’ I repeated.
‘And she told me that … Would you be surprised to learn that the pencil in the dead actor’s neck was not, in fact, the proximate cause of her death?’
‘Hold on.’ I focused. ‘What was?’
‘Hydrogen cyanide.’
‘No.’ I laughed. ‘This isn’t an Agatha Christie novel.’
‘Hydrogen cyanide,’ she repeated. ‘It was in her stomach. Not a whole lot, but apparently enough to kill her. She swallowed it down, and she was probably dead in a couple of minutes.’
‘But the pencil,’ I began.
‘Your boy Samuel Cohen’s prints were on the pencil,’ she interrupted, ‘along with the victim’s. But since the victim actually died from the cyanide, Sammy Two Shoes is off the hook for the murder, sort of. They don’t really know what to charge him with. They do wonder why he bothered to stab her when she was probably already dead from the aforementioned poison. All of which, thanks very much, does not, in fact, get Phoebe Peabody off the hook. The cops figure she could have put the cyanide in the water bottle before the show even started. Her lighting booth alibi doesn’t matter. So she’s staying in jail and my job just got a lot harder.’
The bartender chose that moment to deliver my G and T.
I stared down at it. ‘So you did not invite me here to thank me for helping you. You invited me here to berate me. Or worse.’
She nodded. ‘Worse. You’re going to help me get Phoebe off. I did a little checking up on you. You’re some kind of a genius detective down there in Florida.’
‘Not even remotely,’ I insisted, picking up my drink.
‘Well, your work here in New York doesn’t exactly support that theory,’ she agreed, ‘but the people I talked to in Florida all sang your praises. To the tune of “Amazing Grace.”’
‘I don’t have any singing friends. You talked to the wrong class of person.’
‘Your bosses at Child Protective,’ she said, ‘some guys at the FBI, and someone with the unlikely name of Betty Mae Tiger Jumper.’
‘Only woman to ever be chief of the Florida Seminoles.’ I smiled. ‘She’s a remarkable person. Supernatural, in fact. But I don’t really know her.’
‘You’re not getting out of this,’ Baker snapped. ‘You’re highly esteemed and that’s that!’
‘A scurrilous lie,’ I told her, ‘but I’m not trying to get out of anything. I’ll help Phoebe because I promised I would. And by the way, how did you know he was called “Sammy Two Shoes”?’
‘His rap sheet,’ she answered. ‘Which is the proverbial mile long. Also known as Spider Cohen.’
