Triple Slay Page 13

  “Be my guest.”

  “He wouldn’t be there, Steve.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because he promised me he was finished with Gretchen MacGruder,” she said quietly. We had made the turn toward Margaret Lane and her steps faltered as we approached the corner. “He promised me, Steve.”

  “He’s an expert promiser,” I said. “Let’s check Gretchen’s studio anyhow.”

  She could have been right about him. Gretchen MacGruder’s nest was completely empty of Masterson’s personal trappings. His pipe no longer sat in the ashtray on the table. His manuscript was gone. She watched me roam the flat, checking and rechecking for signs of him. The fireplace held me for a while. Last night there had been wood ashes in the debris of sweepings. Tonight there was an added touch in the ashes; large, blackened slices of recently burned paper or cardboard. I salvaged an unburned corner, a fragment of a box of some sort. There was part of a printed word, unburned and quite clear, the letters: THES.

  I showed it to Helen.

  “What is it, Steve?”

  “Part of a large box. See this printing? The letters are obviously part of a store name, part of the word ‘clothes.’ Our friend Masterson came up here to change into his new clothes.”

  “But what’s wrong with changing his clothes?”

  “Wrong?” She wasn’t getting the message. Whatever his faults, Masterson certainly had the ability to mesmerize his lady-loves. “He’s running out, Helen. He’s taking off, can’t you see it?”

  “And if I can’t?”

  “Then I’m giving up on you,” I said angrily. “Maybe brother Luigi was right—you’re just stubborn.”

  “I suppose I am,” she said sadly. “Will you let me go home now, Steve?”

  “I’ll do better than that. I’ll take you home personally.”

  “Thanks. There’s no need for that.”

  “Wrong again. I see a crying need for it, Helen.” I tugged her gently toward the door and held her there.

  All conversation ceased on the way uptown in the cab. I was too much concerned with the search for the Nowist king, too much involved with my activities during the past few hours. More than ever, my instincts told me that there was much to be learned from Helen Calabrese. She sat beside me in a kind of trance, her eyes misted and lost, staring ahead into some personal landscape in which she might find Masterson. She was a girl of great sensitivity, emotionally delicate. How had he charmed her? What was the secret of his appeal?

  The cab dumped us at the corner of Helen’s street because there was a police car set up to hold traffic on First Avenue.

  “Accident up ahead,” the cop said. “You got business on this block?”

  “Taking this lady home,” I said.

  In the middle of the street two more squad cars were parked on the right side. A small knot of people buzzed on the pavement, held off at a respectable distance by the attendant police. As we moved forward, a siren wailed behind us and an ambulance slid to a smooth stop at the edge of the crowd. Helen walked faster, her grip on my arm tightening as we advanced.

  “Stay here,” I told her, when we neared the core of activity.

  “I’m frightened, Steve.”

  “Be frightened back here.”

  She did as she was told and I edged forward and found myself talking to a detective named Herb Appleby, one of the Midtown Precinct boys. The man’s body was at the edge of the narrow alley that led to the rear of Helen’s apartment. He lay on his side, his face half turned to the thin light from the street lamp. He had been hit, probably from the back, because the blood seemed limited to the area behind his shoulder. The police photographers were very busy.

  I edged forward for a better look at the body. He was a big man, dressed in gray slacks and a tweed jacket and tan shoes, a spin and span type, as well-dressed as a store dummy.

  “Who’s the stiff?” I asked Appleby.

  “We don’t know yet,” Appleby said. “He’s been rolled and cleaned.”

  One of the ambulance boys was studying the body. He shook his head sadly at Appleby.

  “Knifed,” said the intern.

  He began to unfold a sheet and spread it over the man. I bent down and asked permission to have a look at the right hand. There was a tattoo on the right wrist, a kind of bird, crudely drawn, exaggerated in the head and wings, foolishly distorted in the talons.

  “I’ll be damned,” I said.

  I went back and told Helen Calabrese about the unfortunate accident that befell an unidentified man. I escorted her up to her apartment and left soon afterwards.

  I was in a hurry to visit Dave Cushing now.

  Because the dead man in the street was obviously Jeff Masterson.

  CHAPTER 13

  The man in the street sees the Police Department as a fantasy, the result of too much fictional imagining, too many bad television shows, too many ridiculous movies. The Police Department thus becomes the background for a variety of cliché faces; the wide-open Irish cop, the hard-bitten commissioner, the iron-jawed detective. Yet, the inner reaches of Police Department investigation are areas where one may find only endless rows of files and records, photos and charts, references and histories. The statistical foundry behind the human façade of the Police Department is an efficient monster, a giant repository of information, as impersonal as an IBM machine. Facts are dropped into the maze of files. Ideas and theories are tossed into the maw of data. Checks and balances are made with precision and speed. Sometimes the search is quickly over. Sometimes a simple lead can open the door to a prison record and expose a suspect’s background. But often the hunt yields nothing and the project dead-ends in limbo.

  The wheels of the machine were always started by Dave Cushing. He pulled the switch to spark the procedural hunt and sat back to await results before advancing to the next move in whatever game of hide-and-seek he might be playing.

  “We’ve got his prints in the works,” Dave Cushing said. “I’ll have the results in a little while.”

  “What about the mug hunt?” Harry Gahan asked.

  “Tell Harry what you told me, Steve.”

  “I suggested that maybe you wouldn’t stand a chance with his face, Harry. What I mean is I’m pretty positive he’s Jeff Masterson. Unless he dirtied himself up in a police matter during that period, how much good will the photo identification do you? The way I found it, Masterson is about two years out of college, a place called Blanchard University. He raised the beard after he graduated.”

  “Interesting,” said Harry. “But how can you be sure he’s Masterson?”

  “The foolish tattoo. Corny as hell, but it tabs him. A kind of bird on his right wrist.”

  “Lots of kids go for the bird-on-wrist foolishness, Steve.”

  “Not this bird, Harry.’

  “A special bird?”

  “Different,” I said. “It’s a kind of crude, primitive design, something out of Indian or Inca culture, the sort of thing a longhair college kid would select. The routine tattoos are anchors and chains and stars and nude women. But Masterson’s smelled of a special job.”

  “You’re pretty sure about him, aren’t you?” Dave Cushing asked. “It isn’t like you to be so positive.”

  “Not at all like you,” Harry said. “What’s the gimmick, Steve?”

  “Nothing now.”

  “But you had one? A hot one?”

  “It blew up,” I said. “I exploded, Harry.”

  “You had him pegged for the man who knifed Max?”

  “I most certainly did. Didn’t you?”

  “We were just browsing,” Harry said. One of the men came in with three containers of coffee. Harry got a few glasses from the cabinet and poured the coffee. He pushed a glass my way and offered me a doughnut. He put three lumps of sugar in his coffee and just sat there sti
rring it and staring at his doughnut. “You liked Masterson as the knifer then, because he was shacked up in the MacGruder studio, is that it? You figured him in the Margaret Lane dump when Max walked upstairs?”

  “It sounded logical at the time.”

  “And that was all?” Dave Cushing asked quietly. He was eyeing me knowingly, not wanting to push me but just sitting back and throwing me lines and waiting for me to come his way. “Certainly not for that reason alone, Steve?”

  “I was pretty mad at the time,” I admitted. “I was willing to make a grab at anybody who looked possible. Max’s death leveled me. When I found out that Masterson had holed up in the MacGruder dump, it seemed more than enough. And after that, when I couldn’t reach Masterson, I suppose I forgot about logic and simple good sense. The fact that he couldn’t be found made him my man. You know something? I felt pretty lousy, damned frustrated when I saw him dead and without his beard. I would have liked it, better if Masterson had stayed alive for me. From where I stood, he looked like my pigeon—all the way down the line.”

  “Which line?” Harry Gahan asked.

  “I’m including the Flato murder. Masterson could have knifed Flato and set up an alibi with the MacGruder woman. She’d eat nails for him.”

  “Why would he want to kill old Max?”

  “He didn’t plan to,” I said. “I figured it might have been an impulsive stabbing. Maybe he didn’t want anybody to visit Gretchen’s studio. Maybe he had a reason. I was on my way to him to find that reason.”

  “And now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No ideas?”

  “My head is an empty box, Dave.”

  “That will be the day,” smiled Harry Gahan.

  The phone rang and Dave Cushing answered it and told his man to bring in the latest on Masterson’s prints. After a pause one of the research boys came in with a small file of papers and buzzed over Cushing with the data. He left soon and Dave finished reading the report and then recited some of it for Harry and me.

  “This boy Masterson was a dedicated creep, even in his college days,” Dave said. “You were right, Steve. He graduated a little over two years ago with a B.A. degree from Blanchard. But before that there’s a print record on him from the town of Emonville in upstate New York, an assault charge, but it points a finger in the direction Masterson took after he got out. He was involved with a girl in Emonville, Diana Thompson, a minor. Masterson was hell bent for running away with her, but her brother interfered. There was a fight and Masterson leveled the brother, almost killed him. Masterson was booked for simple assault. They released him right away when he claimed self-defense and the girl testified for him. After that, Masterson paid three auto fines for speeding, once while under the influence. His college record shows a petty larceny deal involving funds for a school dramatic group called The Blanchard Players. The Emonville record shows this one whitewashed by a couple of college kids who made good for him, two girls—Linda Karig and Mari Barstow.”

  “Bingo,” I said, because Dave had put down the sheet and was smiling at me. “He certainly knew his way around with the girls.”

  “It was only the beginning, Steve. Masterson graduated from college and we next hear about him in the town of Brookville, out on Long Island. He was employed as a personal secretary to Mrs. Loretta Stanton-Nuptil. You know the name?”

  “Art,” I said. “A patroness of the arts, the young widow of Horace Nuptil? I remember her debutante publicity. Spit-fire type. Loves poets and mad painters.”

  “And evidently idiot literary lice like Masterson. He worked for her for six months and left suddenly with one of her French maids. This led Mrs. Stanton-Nuptil to have him arrested for stealing a Utrillo painting from her living room. The record shows, however, that she soon withdrew charges and he returned to her employ, remaining with her for a couple more months or so until she reopened her chateau at Antibes. I have a picture of him taken from the County Police files out there. As you can see, he had no beard then.”

  Harry Gahan joined me in examining the photo. It was a routine police shot, head and shoulders, as mirthless as a passport picture. It bore the date: June 7, 1957.

  “The corpse, all right,” Harry said. “Handsome devil, wasn’t he? No wonder the girls fell for him.”

  “They did more than fall,” said Dave. “They invariably remained faithful, despite his larcenous nature. He was next bailed out by Mrs. DeVoe, who admitted supporting him as her literary protégé. That would be the big DeVoe, Prentice DeVoe’s widow, Park Avenue and Southampton. Now this dame was an older type, almost old enough to be his mother. He caused her no trouble at all for eight or nine months. Then again, the pattern repeated. Mrs. DeVoe had him booked for petty theft and some missing jewelry in her Park Avenue nest. But she didn’t press charges and he was released. That brings us almost up to date, Steve. There’s nothing else on his record until now.”

  “Nothing but death,” I said.

  “Funny that both rich broads didn’t really have him sent away, isn’t it?” Harry said. “Stinks a little, doesn’t it?”

  “He probably had an angle,” Dave said. “He was a natural con man. He must have found some dirty wash while he worked for them, enough to blackmail them, maybe.”

  One of his outside men came in and said: “We’ve got the MacGruder woman, Dave. You want to talk to her now?”

  “Show the lady in, Sam.”

  The lady was shown in. Gretchen looked strangely older and more wrinkled now. She was obviously in a state of semi-shock, her eyes red-rimmed from crying, her face pale and unhealthy looking without the veneer of heavy make-up. She stared at me, confused. There was no longer any menace in her eyes, only the sick, fogged gaze of a sorrowing woman.

  “You,” she said stupidly. “Didn’t I see you?”

  “Have a seat, Mrs. MacGruder,” Harry Gahan said, pushing a chair close to her. “Do you want a cigarette?”

  “I didn’t come here to smoke cigarettes, did I?” She adjusted her massive frame in the chair, squirming into position fretfully. She stopped wriggling and clasped her hands in her ample lap and sat there studying me coldly. “You didn’t tell me you were a cop,” she said irritably.

  “I’m not a cop, Gretchen,” I said. “I’m just kibitzing.”

  “Get him out of here,” she commanded Dave Cushing.

  “Now, now, Mrs. MacGruder,” Dave said. “I give the orders in this office. You just relax and answer the questions we ask you and everything will be all right. You’re involved in a murder case. We need your help. But that doesn’t mean we have to take your orders.”

  “You don’t need my help, mister,” she said, tight-lipped. “I don’t know anything. Not a thing.”

  “You knew Jeff Masterson. Let’s take it from there.”

  She winced at the mention of Masterson’s name. She sniffed and fumbled in her bag and dabbed at her nose with a lace handkerchief. Dave Cushing watched her respectfully, allowing her the release of tears. He had been through this ritual with hundreds of women. He knew that he would get nowhere unless he permitted her to wax emotional in this, the hour of her bereavement. Over his head, the big clock showed me it would soon be midnight. I wondered whether his day had been as long as mine. Or as fruitful.

  “Now, Mrs. MacGruder, let’s start at the beginning,” Dave said. “You were a good friend of Masterson’s, isn’t that right?”

  “I knew him. Is that what you mean, man?”

  “Not quite. You knew him well.”

  “Well? Well?” she asked herself. “All right.”

  “Very well. You let him use your Margaret Lane studio, didn’t you?”

  “Yes I did,” she said with a touch of arrogance. “Is there anything wrong with that? He needed a place. He was a poor boy, quite poor.”

  “Did you ever give him money?”

  “S
ometimes. Why not?”

  Dave smiled patiently. “And did you give him a substantial sum of money recently?”

  “Substantial? What does that mean?”

  “Enough to buy himself a new outfit?”

  “I did not,” she said stiffly. “That friendly I couldn’t afford to be.”

  “But you knew he was planning to leave town?”

  “I knew it.”

  “Did he tell you why?”

  “Only that he was going.”

  “No explanation for shaving off his beard?”

  “What? Not Jeff!” She was obviously surprised to hear this piece of news. For the first time she seemed completely lost, befuddled, baffled. Her heavy hands ceased lacerating the handkerchief and knotted into fists. Some color tinted her cheeks, the blush of confusion. “Now why would he do a thing like that? The man never told me he was shaving off that beautiful beard.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “Late in the afternoon. He came over with his new clothes. Said he was changing. Said he was moving up into class. But you never knew with Crazy Brains. He was a big kidder lots of times. I almost flipped when he told me the news. Jeff Masterson getting dressed? I looked at him. He seemed may be a little drunk. Not much, but a little. He used my place to change. Told me to get rid of his old things. That was it. All of it. Then he walked out and it was the last time I saw him.” She had been talking at a fast clip, her eyes wide with remembering, staring ahead at a spot somewhere over Dave’s shoulder. There was a hint of deep tragedy in her bearing. She was suffering a great loss and fighting to retain her calm. At her age, the crack-up would come suddenly, later on. “But—the beard?” she asked herself. “Why cut off that beautiful beard?”

  “What did you do after he left your place?” Dave asked.

  “I was there. I stayed there.”

  “Did anybody see you?”

  “He did,” she said, pointing to me.

  “After he left?”

  “I took a nap.”

  “Nobody saw you?”

  “What for? An audience, maybe? For taking a nap?”