Departure Delayed, page 12
There was a wash basin in one comer of the storeroom. We cleaned up there, dried our faces with paper towels.
Through the windows you could see the first gray streaks of dawn outside.
"Spike, we’ve got to clear out of here.”
He was brushing dust from his hat. He said, "I’ll handle the watchman, Roy. I’ll tell him I’m taking you in for questioning and it’s off the record. Matter of security.”
"Suppose he checks back with G-2P Suppose they find out-”
"They know I’m on this investigation. I’ve got to use my own judgment. Particularly about whether or not I’m ready to pull a guy in.”
We got ourselves bacon and eggs and coffee in an all-night cafeteria on Eighth Avenue near 42nd Street.
We didn’t talk any about the sound track or what it might mean. But over the coffee, Spike did tell me about the Eaton family. He’d spent hours the previous day delving into their background.
"Nothing unusual about Frank Eaton,” he told me. "He’s tied up with some bankers’ international finance group. Spends all his time poring over dull figures and bond issues, trying to figure how he can make himself an extra million. Poor guy trying to struggle along. The one that puzzles me in that family is Aunt Edna.”
He shot me a sideways glance. "She’s got a pack of dough herself,” he went on. "Most of it’s tied up in oil. She owns oil wells. A lot of them out in the Far East.”
‘"There’s nothing suspicious about that,” I said. "When you’ve got a pile of dough you have to put it somewhere.”
“Oh, sure. But she’s a funny dame. Social type. Butterfly, getting along in years. When she was younger she used to travel a great deal. All through Europe. And Asia. Spent one whole winter in Shanghai.”
“That doesn’t prove anything. Just because a dame with dough lives abroad—”
“You don’t get the point. She spent a winter in Shanghai fifteen years ago. Shanghai was where Captain Curtis was stationed a lot of the time. She moved with the British and American social set. She couldn’t have helped knowing him.”
Outside on the street we stood on the comer, trying to hail a cab.
Spike said, “I’m holding on to the recording, Roy. For the time being I’m not telling McCormick or anybody else about it. There’s still plenty we’ve got to find out. I’ll drop you in the cab, a couple of blocks from your room. You just walk back in as if nothing had happened.”
“Those detectives are going to be full of questions, Spike.” “You’re not talking. You don’t know anything about any recording. You weren’t trying to take a powder. You were just so upset you couldn’t sleep, so you decided to take a walk. Went out the back way and they missed you.”
“What about McCormick? Suppose he—”
“They won’t pull you in, Roy. I know that for sure. McCormick isn’t ready yet. He said so last night. He still figures to leave you out there for bait.”
“So I’m to sit tight, sweat the thing out—”
“Sit tight and say nothing. After the cops get tired asking questions, grab yourself some sleep. Ill be up there around noon.”
“If we could find the old guy, Spike.”
“We’ve got to find him. We’re heading up to the Bronx this afternoon. Up to Finley Road. We’ve got to track down a butcher boy.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
We located the butcher shop finally. It was in a place called Mitchen Square, two blocks from Finley Road, half a mile from the Grand Concourse. It was the only meat market in the neighborhood.
The store was crowded with women shoppers, pushing to get orders taken. Men behind the counters were trying to wait on two or three at a time.
The manager’s name was Mr. Morris, a big, heavy-set man with a brown mustache. He kept wiping his hands on the white apron.
He didn’t want to talk at first. He kept looking at Spike. Spike finally pulled out some identification papers. The man studied the papers a couple of minutes and handed them back.
“What do you fellows want?”
Spike told him we were trying to locate an old man who lived somewhere in the neighborhood. Wasn’t anything serious. We had a few questions we wanted to ask.
I tried to describe the old man. The whiteness of the face. The lusterless eyes. I got half through my description when the manager stopped me.
“Don’t know anybody like that,” he said. “Only been in this job a couple of weeks myself. We got a kid named Willie may be able to help you. He makes deliveries.”
Willie was just getting ready to start out on his bicycle delivery route. He was a red-haired, gawky youth about sixteen. The manager called him over and explained what we wanted.
He seemed flattered at his own-importance. A self-conscious grin came to his lips.
“Geeze,” he said, “it’s hard to say. You see a lot of people in my business. Every day—plenty of calls. Some of ’em you get to know pretty well. It ain’t easy. Course, there’s—”
He looked from Spike to me and back to Spike. “Wait a minute. Wait a minute, now. What did you say he looked like? A little old man with a whitish face? I’ll bet—”
He paused. Spike said, “You’ll bet what?”
“You mean Lazarus. Lazarus Come Forth. That’s what they call him.”
Spike gave no show of excitement. “Could be. What’s the guy like? Live near here?”
“It’s Finley Road, all right,” Willie raced on. “Two forty-eight Finley Road. Down at the end there, by the tracks.”
“What’s his name?” Spike asked.
“Michaels. Lazarus Michaels. The kids call him Lazarus Come Forth because that’s what he don’t do. Only once or twice a month he comes out to get supplies. I’ve delivered stuff there sometimes. Mostly he stays in the house. Lives alone.”
“You can show us the house?” I asked.
“Sure. Nothing to it. You friends?”
I said we’d never met him. Willie shook his head. “Wouldn’t count on any big reception. They say he don’t take to visitors. Especially people he don’t know.”
Nobody really knew much about Michaels, Willie explained. There were stories he was once a Broadway actor until he had a broken romance and took to heavy drinking. There was another yam that he was a disinherited brother of some English lord.
“But he’s lived in that rat hole a long time,” Willie said. “No one knows where he gets his dough from, even the little he spends for food. But nobody bothers him and he don’t bother nobody.
“Funny thing, though. Seems like a few months back he got himself a car. Keeps it in a garage in the back. There’s been a couple of stories that he goes riding in it sometimes at night. But then you know how people talk.”
It sounded screwy enough to fit the old man. And the address matched the marks we’d found on the wrapping paper. I noticed packages people were carrying appeared to be wrapped in the same kind of paper.
“Sometimes,” Willie was telling us, “you can hear him playing on that piano he’s got. That’s only daytimes. Nights he goes to bed early. There’s never any lights on in the place.”
“City type hermit, sounds like,” I said.
Willie laughed. “You got right. I’ll take you down there. Place isn’t far. But I’m warning you—he don’t like visitors.”
Spike said, “That’ll be too damn bad.”
It was an old house. A two-story, weather-beaten frame dwelling. It sat on a comer lot that faced a coal yard. Beyond the coal yard were railroad sidings and freight cars.
Shades were drawn at most of the windows. The day was hazy and the window panes glittered in the half light.
The front yard was cluttered with refuse, tin cans and old papers. But the place had an air of respectability, in spite of the dilapidated condition. The front porch was clean. Three high-backed wicker chairs were lined up in a row like guards at attention.
We hunted for a bell or knocker by the front door but found none. We could see the door wasn’t closed tight. Spike knocked several times without getting any answer. Then he pounded with his fist. There was no sound from inside. Finally Spike said, “The hell with it.”
He pushed the door open.
Inside was a pungent, dusty smell. In the entrance hall was an old-fashioned clothes rack with a mirror and umbrella stand. Across from that were double sliding doors facing on the living room.
The living room was crowded with a hodgepodge collection of furniture. It looked like a junk shop. There was a horse-hair sofa in one comer. The wall paper was a floral design, faded and in places tom. On the wall were three or four darkened paintings in gilt frames.
There was a man in a rocking chair near the window, his back to the double doors. I cleared my throat. The man jumped at the sound. He whirled and faced us.
It was the old fellow. The one who had brought me that package.
You could see surprise and anger in his face. “What—what is the meaning of this invasion?” he demanded. “What are you doing breaking into my home? This is a private home.”
“Yes, of course.” Spike smiled. “We’re sorry to intrude!”
Spike glanced over at me. I nodded confirmation. He turned back to the old man. “You’re Mr. Lazarus Michaels?”
He looked at us with bewilderment, trying desperately to understand what was happening.
“I—I must explain. I never see anyone. Never see anyone. I cannot understand why you should break in here in this manner. I’m alone here.”
“We pounded on the door,” I said. “You didn’t answer.”
“I had no wish to see anyone.” He was staring straight at me. “I have never seen you before. I do not know who or what you are. I must ask you to leave. Please get out of my house.”
Spike said, “We’re not leaving. Not for the present. Unless you’d like to call the police and have us thrown out.”
I said, “Mr. Michaels, you dropped in on me last night. We’re returning the call. We’d like a little more explicit information.”
“I called on you?” lie was shaking his head. “I never saw you before. I haven’t been out of this house in a week. I haven’t called on anybody.”
“You’re lying,” I said. “You damn well know you were down there.”
It wasn’t any good. Michaels kept staring at me blankly, muttering that he didn’t know who I was, hadn’t ever seen me before.
We threw questions at him. We asked him about the package, the film he’d brought down. Where had he gotten it? Who had given it to him?
I could see drops of perspiration on his face. My pity for him was mixed up with my realization that he was tied in with the people I was trying to hunt down.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I want to be left by myself. Why don’t you go, please?”
He looked up at us with a pleading, childish expression. I glanced over to Spike. I half expected to see doubt—doubt of me and the story I'd told him that morning.
But if he had reservations about my story, he gave no hint of it. "Mr. Michaels," he said, "the performance isn't going over. There isn't much point in trying to carry on—"
Michaels raised his hands in a helpless gesture. "You force your way into my home,” he whined. "There's nothing I can do. But I can't—I cannot tell you—what I do not know.”
It had to be acting. It couldn't be real. Yet he seemed utterly sincere in that lost, puzzled, helpless manner.
"I never saw you before, either of you,” he told us. "I know nothing about any package. I never go out, except to a few stores nearby for my provisions. I go nowhere else. They’ll all tell you that. Ask the people who live around here. They all know.”
He had the perfect alibi. The whole neighborhood to stand behind his story that he never left the house.
Spike kept at him. Kept asking questions but it wasn't any use. He didn't even seem to hear. He walked across the room and began straightening a vase of artificial flowers.
I looked around at the room. There was a mantelpiece crowded with little curios, ash trays and goblets, an alarm clock and a set of copper candlesticks. There were ashes in the fireplace and a few embers of coal still glowing red.
Michaels seemed oblivious to our presence. He continued to adjust those artificial flowers. He was humming to himself.
I said, “You shouldn't be treating us this way. After all, I am a friend of Evie's.”
It was a blind thrust. We'd asked him about Evie once or twice, but he'd only shaken his head numbly. But now the meaning seemed to strike home.
I knew Evie. I was Evie's friend.
His eyes seemed to bum into mine. “You say—you say you know me?”
"Sure, I know you,” I told him easily. "Don't you remember now?”
He hesitated. “Perhaps I could be mistaken. Perhaps—”
“You remember last night?”
He shook his head. “Oh, no. It wasn’t last night. It wasn’t last night at all. It was a while ago, when—”
“A while ago—when what?”
“When I saw you. When she told me about you. When she told me—but I do remember now. I do remember it quite distinctly.”
“You remember what?”
“She told me about it. She told me.”
“Evie told you? What—”
“Yes, I do remember it all. I do. I—”
His voice faded. Horror came into his face. It was sudden and sharp and unmistakable. He took a step backwards. He seemed almost to be cringing before me.
“I remember. I know who you are now. I know who you are.”
The watery eyes were wide, demented. Stark terror rode in the glittery stare. For him I was polluted and untouchable.
“Get out of here,” he cried. “Get out of this house, I tell you. You’re to be Queen of the May. Yes, that’s what you are. You’re to be Queen of the May.”
You’re to he Queen of the May. A ripple of fear went through me at the irrational, meaningless words. I’d heard them before. I knew I’d heard them somewhere—somehow. They hung on the edges of my memory.
“What does that mean?” I persisted. “What do you mean by that gag—Queen of the May?”
He laughed. “Ask your lady. Ask your Carol. I remember that, you see. I recall quite well. You ask her.”
He sat down in the rocker and hid his face in his hands. You could hear the short, gasping sobs of hysteria.
Spike said, “It’s no use now. He’s demented. There’s only one thing we can do—have to do. We’ve got to—”
He left it unfinished. But I knew what he was thinking. Michaels was out of his mind. We had to get word to the proper authorities. Maybe, under treatment, they could make him talk sense.
There wasn’t any phone in the house. But there would be one up at that market.
Spike started for the door and I followed. The old man didn’t even bother to look up.
We were outside, crossing the front yard to the sidewalk, when we heard the tinkling sound from inside the house.
It was a piano. A piano very much off key. The notes had a sickly vibration. It wasn’t a tune, nothing you could recognize. It was a jangle of noises.
We stopped to listen. Spike said, "He recovered quick enough from that hysteria.”
"Unless it’s somebody else in the house,” I said.
"Let’s go back,” Spike cut in. "You may be right. I’ve got a hunch there is somebody else in there. That noise isn’t coming from the living room. There wasn’t any piano in the living room.”
We went back up the steps to the porch, shoved open the door and walked in. The sound of the piano was louder. I looked into the living room. The old man wasn’t there.
The sounds appeared to come from a room at the end of a short hall leading to the rear of the house. The hall was shadowy and we had to grope our way.
The door was closed. We stood a moment listening. The tuneless tinkle of that piano kept on. But now we could hear someone talking. It sounded like Michaels.
"They’ve gone now,” he was saying. "They’ve gone away. You can sing all you want. They can’t hear you. They’ve gone.”
. Spike put his hand on the doorknob, turned it, opened the door.
The old man was seated at an upright piano in what looked like a small music room. Beside the piano was a large, overstuffed chair.
Evie was sitting in the chair. She was wearing that purple, flower-design dress. Her legs were crossed and her skirt rode up above her knees.
The old man didn’t hear us come in. He was bent over those yellowed piano keys. “Go on and sing, Evie,” he was saying. “Go on and sing.”
She had her head tilted a little to one side. The blond hair fell to her shoulders.
I said, “Evie, what the hell—”
She didn’t move. She seemed to look at us with an empty gaze. It took a moment to seep in. The girl in the chair was dead.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
We spent the rest of that afternoon at Headquarters.
They made me tell and retell the story of how we found Evie. Everything I knew about her. All about how we found that house. The one break I had this time was that I had Spike to back me up.
Then, when we’d spread out most of the facts, Spike went behind closed doors with McCormick. They kept me under guard in a room on a lower floor.
I was there an hour. The detectives guarding me wouldn’t talk. They wouldn’t even answer my questions. They sat stoney-faced, smoking cigarettes and staring at the floor.
Spike came down finally. McCormick was with him. They and the detectives guarding me had a conference outside the door while I sat alone in the room.
In about five minutes Spike came into the room. The thin lips bent in a tight smile. “It’s all right for now. They’re not going to hold you. You’re in my custody. I’m responsible if anything goes wrong.”
McCormick and the two detectives had gone. Apparently McCormick didn’t want to talk to me direct. He hadn’t been present when I’d been interrogated.
