At one point, humbled, I even read the daybook. It was some half-dozen items long and the most exciting one was a Mets pitcher visiting a children’s hospital. I grabbed the phone again. I grabbed my cigarettes. I couldn’t think of anyone to dial. I glanced at my watch. It was quarter to twelve. I dialed Siegel’s deli and ordered a club sandwich. I figured it would be noon by the time it arrived. Late enough to take an hour off for lunch. I smoked, waiting for the sandwich.
McKay, meanwhile, was doing a feature on the swimming facilities at St. Bartholomew’s. He came back around two P.M. His hair was damp. He was whistling. Around three, Lansing beat me to the door on a scaffold collapse. It didn’t turn out to be much. Only four people were injured. I felt bad for trying to trip her as she ran past.
Deadline approached for the bulldog. I smoked and tried to think of people to call. Rafferty, who is the city editor, emerged from the budget meeting. He walked over to my cubicle. He told me they were going national with the front page. He is a bullet-headed old cuss with a shell of imperturbable calm. He never raises his voice above a tight-lipped murmur. But I sensed an accusation in his tone.
I smoked. The city offices were closed now. Only the cops were left, and you could only reach them at P.I.O. They had just heard about the scaffold collapse. We had more on it than they did. They did have a drug killing in the Heights, but it had cleared the wires half an hour before. They had nothing new to add. I asked Rafferty if he wanted me to rewrite the wire copy. “Don’t, John. Don’t debase yourself,” he said. I went back to my cubicle.
The deadline came. The deadline went. No story by John Wells. I smoked. The next edition’s deadline came and it went too and still no story. By the deadline for the final edition I had given up. I sat at my desk staring at the pile of papers with my typewriter under it. I smoked the last of my second pack of cigarettes. I cursed the gods of summertime.
I looked around me. The day was gone. Lansing and McKay had left. The lanes between the cubicles were as quiet as when I had come in. Only Rafferty remained and he practically lived here. Even he was now handing the reins over to Wendy Miller, the night city editor.
I finished my cigarette. I was all out. I stood up, cursing. I grabbed my coat off the back of my chair. I tossed it over my arm. I walked through the maze to the city desk.
Rafferty was thumbing through some hard copy. Miller was looking over his shoulder. It was very quiet. Only the police scanners blurped and fizzled.
Rafferty did not look up at me. “Another wasted day, I see,” he murmured.
“No news is good news, Rafferty. Just think of me as the bearer of good news.”
“Now, now.” He barely moved his lips. “You’re just not trying. Remember: relatability.”
“Relatability.”
“Keep saying it.”
“Good night, Rafferty.”
“’Night, deadweight.”
I tossed my coat over my shoulder. “Relatability,” I repeated to myself. I wandered to the glass doors. I pushed one open. The muggy heat stormed over me.
“Hey, Wells,” Rafferty mumbled.
I leaned my back against the open door, looked at him. He had reached for the scanner. He was fiddling with the squelch dial.
“Mayforth Kendrick III,” said the city editor. “He’s one of your buddies, right?”
“Yeah, he’s my twin brother, why?”
Rafferty cocked his head, listening. Nothing came from the little box but static.
“I just heard a call about him.”
“Sound like they’re gonna bust him?” I asked.
“Sounds like they’re gonna bury him,” said Rafferty. “Sounds like he’s dead.”
3
The short, scummy life of Mayforth Kendrick III had been extinguished by a .22 caliber slug. It had drilled a neat little rust-colored hole in the center of that Cro-Magnon forehead of his. Then it had continued right on through his skull into the softer stuff of his brain. It had turned off the lights in there just as easy as flicking a switch.
That’s what he looked like, lying there. Like someone had turned him off right in the middle of things. He lay on his back at the center of the orange rug. Just in front of the director’s chair I’d been sitting in the night before. He had his arms thrown out on either side of him. His eyes were still open. His mouth was still shaping the scream it had meant to make before the lights went out.
I turned away from him. I left him to the crowd of forensic types crouched by his body. I walked back to Fred Gottlieb. He shook his head at me as I came.
“Are you hot?” he said. “I’m hot today.”
He was leaning against the kitchenette counter. He looked hot. His white jacket seemed to hang heavy on him. There were beads of sweat caught in the black swatches of hair that poured out of his open peach shirt. The shirt’s middle, stretched tight by his big belly, was dark and damp. The sweat shone on his high forehead. It dribbled from what was left of his curly black hair. It creased his round, rough, swarthy face. He kept his lips parted slightly, as if he was panting.
I leaned against the counter next to him. “Everybody’s hot,” I said. I looked down at the backs of the men crouching over poor Mayforth. All around them, other men and women scurried. Men mostly, mostly in their forties. Most of them were wearing gray suits. Most of them had bare pates that shone with sweat. Some had briefcases, some had cameras. Some were leaning over, painting furniture with fingerprint dust. Some were crawling along the carpet on their hands and knees, plucking out prizes and dropping them in plastic bags. Some were opening drawers and cabinets, going through the contents.
“No, really,” said Gottlieb. “I feel especially hot. Maybe I have a fever, I don’t know, I could be walking around with a hundred and four, I’ll catch pneumonia.” He wiped his face with the palm of his hand.
“I wouldn’t worry, Fred.”
“Of course not, why should you worry? Do you have a fever? No.”
“Fred, it’s ninety-five degrees at ten o’clock at night. It’s hot. You’re hot because it’s hot. We’re all hot.”
“Eesh. I don’t know. Maybe that’s it.” He felt with his fingers for the pulse at the base of his neck. “You think that could be it?”
A flash snapped. It seemed to add to the thick night heat. Two men brought a stretcher to the door. One of the forensic guys, McFadden I think his name was, stood up from Mayforth’s body. He wiped his brow with his sleeve. He saluted to Gottlieb and backed away. Gottlieb made a gesture to the attendants at the door. Someone moved a chair out of the way. The attendants carried in the stretcher and laid it next to the corpse.
Gottlieb shook his head again. “Such a thing,” he said. “It’s a terrible, terrible thing.”
“Yeah. Poor little weasel,” I said.
“A terrible thing,” he repeated. “It could happen to anyone—just like that, you wouldn’t even know why.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “With a guy like Kendrick, there’s usually a pretty good reason.”
“It’s a blessing his father isn’t alive to see this, he would be ashamed, and who could blame him, his own son.” Gottlieb rubbed at the sweat on his chest hairs. He examined his wet palm. “Eesh,” he said. He glanced at me sideways. “And? So? Why’re you out so late burying weasels?”
I snorted. “It’s slow. Anyway, there’s the Broadway connection. Anyway, I knew him.”
“I forgot. That’s right.”
“What about you? I thought lieutenants only did presidents and popes and, like, locked-room mysteries.”
The small brown pools of Gottlieb’s eyes glittered. “I should be so lucky. I work. He’s shot. I’m here.”
The two attendants had unrolled a body bag now. They fitted Kendrick in it gently. Feet first, then pulling it up. Lifting him to get it on, as if he were a baby being changed. Then they pulled it over his head and zipped it up. Kendrick’s face disappeared behind the plastic. The shape of his nose and forehead could be traced
in the bag. I caught myself wondering how he’d be able to breathe like that.
I watched as the attendants lifted the body bag onto the stretcher.
“So what’s the word, Fred? What have you got?”
The burly detective groaned. “You could get cholera in this heat. I’ve heard of that. Places like Africa. They get cholera from the heat.”
“I thought that was from the water.”
“The water, the heat,” he said. “It’s the heat on the water that makes it like that. Look at this.” He turned a bit away from me. “Is there a rash here on the back of my neck?”
“No, no, you’re fine. Anyway, it’s from shit.”
“The rash.”
“No, cholera.” The bag holding the corpse of Mayforth Kendrick III was carried out the door. “I remember now. They get it from drinking water with shit in it.”
“Eesh, that’s disgusting,” Gottlieb said, screwing up his face. “Why do they do that?”
“I don’t know. I guess it’s a ritual or something.”
Above the voices of the investigators around the room, I could hear the banging of the stretcher men on the stairs. I heard them mutter instructions at each other. I heard their voices fading. Then they were gone. A few moments later, the siren of the ambulance began. Then that faded away too.
“Well,” said Gottlieb. “It can’t be good for you, this heat.”
“You’ll live.”
He put his hand on his stomach. “Eesh,” he said again.
McFadden, or whoever he was, wandered over. He was a short, thin man. His suit was light gray. So was his hair, what there was of it. He pressed his fists into his kidneys and stretched backward, grunting.
“So?” Gottlieb asked him.
McFadden shrugged with his eyebrows. “Shot dead with a twenty-two.”
“When?”
“When’d you get the call about the gunshot?”
“I don’t know. Half hour, forty-five minutes.”
“I’d guess it happened half hour, forty-five minutes ago,” said McFadden.
“For this your mother sent you to medical school?”
McFadden broke his stretch with a laugh. “I’ll call you after the autopsy. We’ll do lunch.”
“Thanks. After an autopsy, I do seltzer. I do Pepto.”
McFadden waved and walked to the door.
“After the autopsy …” Gottlieb muttered. He pushed off the counter. He was ready to go to work. Around the room, the eyes of half a dozen investigators shifted toward him.
“Listen,” I said, “I’ve got something.”
He paused. He rubbed the back of his neck again. He looked annoyed with it. “So?”
“So let’s play.”
He gave a big shrug. “Fine. We’ll play, we’ll talk, we’ll know things together.”
“Terrific. You first.”
“Me first. I just got here. What could I know?” Now his head went from side to side. “Kendrick—you knew him—Kendrick was a shmendrik. He hung around with other shmendriks. One of these alleged shmendriks had a gun. A bad situation: a shmendrik with a gun. And Mayforth is a fond memory for all of us.” Another big shrug. “What else? We’re searching the area. We’re browbeating the landlord …”
“How come?”
“He didn’t live here. Kendrick. You know that. He lived with Delilah Rose formerly Shasta Jones formerly a not-very-high-priced lady of the evening. The landlord, a not-very-reputable fellow named Ray Leonard, he tells me this apartment was rented by a woman who called herself April Something … Thomas … formerly somebody else probably … He says she paid in cash monthly with no lease—Mr. Leonard never heard of the housing code—and he doesn’t know anything else about her. So what I want to know is: who’s April Thomas and why is Mayforth Kendrick in her apartment?”
“She’s probably one of his new girls. He told me he was pimping again. That’s why Delilah eighty-sixed him.”
“This explains many things. One puts him out, one takes him in. Somebody else takes him out.” Gottlieb heaved a big sigh. “What a life. Was he pimping this neighborhood?”
“That I don’t know.”
“It would explain many another conundrum.”
“This someone’s neighborhood already?”
“I would say, yes. Alphonse Marino, he would also say yes.”
“Oh Christ. Mean man, Alphonse. I thought he strong-armed for Dellacroce.”
“He does this on the side. He’s an entrepreneur,” Gottlieb said.
“Poor Kendrick.”
“Poor Kendrick.”
“So what. You gonna look for the girl?”
“The girl, a gun, a clue, a tip. We’ll take an anonymous tip. Anything. Now,” he said. He focused those oddly gentle little eyes on me. “I played. So you play.”
“Can I smoke in here?”
“Oh, God, don’t, it’s so bad for you. Eesh. Cancer. It’s a disaster. You don’t want to know about it. Anyway, this is a crime scene. It’s not allowed.”
“Thanks.” I lit a cigarette. It tasted sharp in the heat. I took a long drag all the same.
“Use the ashtray on the counter,” Gottlieb said. “It’s been dusted already.” He kept watching me. He wiped his neck. He shook his jacket to air out his underarms. He mopped his face with a handkerchief. But his eyes stayed on me.
I took another long drag. I stalled.
“Hello?” said Gottlieb.
“Yeah, yeah.” There was nothing for it. Even if I could get away with withholding evidence as a reporter, I couldn’t do it to Gottlieb. He was a friend, not to mention my best contact on the force. “Okay,” I said. I sighed smoke at him. “Have you found any pictures?”
“Pictures?”
“Yeah, an envelope with pictures in it. It was in that table.” I pointed at the table with the spindly legs.
Gottlieb looked over his shoulder at it. “We did that table. No envelope, no pictures. Which pictures are these?”
I took another drag. I let it out with another sigh. “Oh, you’d know these pictures,” I said. “They feature one Congressman Paul Abingdon in frolicsome mood with one very naked blonde.”
Gottlieb stared at me. His tongue was in his cheek. He chewed on it for a long time. “You saw these.”
“Kendrick tried to sell them to me. Apparently he tried to blackmail Abingdon first, but when Paul wouldn’t go, he tried me.”
“When was this exactly?”
“Last night.”
“You saw the dear departed last night? Did he look afraid or anything? Did he say to you: make sure you shut the door when you come in, Wells, someone named such-and-such is coming over to kill me.”
“Sorry.”
Gottlieb sighed. “Just a thought. He was healthy, happy? Life was a song?”
“Yeah. He was just a little put out when I didn’t take the pictures, that’s all.”
“You turned them down.”
Now I sighed. I shook my head. “Guilty.”
“You don’t like selling newspapers?”
“I like selling newspapers with news.”
“So?” Gottlieb looked around the busy room with a bemused expression. “Now it’s news,” he said.
“Yeah, I know it. Boy, do I know it.” I followed his gaze around the room. I saw myself sitting there again. I heard myself telling Kendrick, The thing is, it’s just not a story. I remembered the confidence in my voice when I said it. Now I said: “So does this make me a schlemiel or a shlimazl?”
Gottlieb chuckled. He reached out and patted my cheek with one hairy hand. It forced smoke out of my mouth. “It makes you a mensch,” he said. “You should be in a decent profession without bodies in it. You should be a married person. Where’s Lansing these days? I haven’t seen her.”
“Vacation. With the other kindergarten kids. Listen. Any possibility you can keep this picture thing under wraps? For a day or so?”
“Eesh,” said Gottlieb.
“I know, I know. B
ut eventually my boss is gonna find out I turned these pictures down. It’s not gonna be pretty. And then if I get scooped on it, I won’t have to worry about the decency of my profession.”
Gottlieb waggled his head a little. Then he said, “Ooh!” and rubbed the back of his neck again.
“A rash on the back of the neck,” he said. “What’s that a symptom of?”
“The heat.”
“No, really. Don’t hide it from me, because you have to get these things right away, catch them early.”
“It’s heat rash, buddy, everybody gets it.”
“This heat. I’m telling you: It’s not a good thing.”
“What do you think? About the pictures, I mean.”
Now, the activity around the room seemed to be slowing down. Uniformed officers and plainclothesmen alike seemed to have come to rest at their stations around the room. They were waiting for Gottlieb. He glanced over his shoulder at them, held up his hand.
“I’ll do what I can, my friend. But I can’t exactly keep it from my own people. And this is New York. The press has more sources on the force than I have.” He spread his arms helplessly. “I’ll try.”
“Thanks, pal.” I crushed out my cigarette in the dusted ashtray. I headed for the door. “Remember: I can’t support Lansing without a job.”
“She won’t wait forever, Wells,” he called after me.
I laughed. “She’s a kid.”
He waved me off. “What do you know?” he said.
His people rallied round him as he moved to the center of the room. He stood before them mopping the back of his neck with the handkerchief. He was examining the sweat on the handkerchief with a look of deep concern when I went out the door.
4
My radio alarm went off at seven A.M.:
“The top story this hour: anonymous police sources are saying this morning that photos of Congressman Paul Abingdon may have played a role in last night’s murder of a suspected drug dealer. The source described the photos of the senate candidate as being (quote) ‘of a sexual nature.’ According to the source, the murder victim, Mayforth Kendrick III, may have tried to blackmail the married Abingdon with the photos, and then tried to sell them to a reporter for the New York Star. Abingdon has been unavailable for comment so far.…”