“Certainly not. Unless you think you need a chaperone. Anyhow, I have to get to Seventh Avenue.”
At the door, Jack asked, “Tell me if I’m making a pest of myself. If I’m not, how about dinner tomorrow night?”
“You know darn well you’re not making a pest of yourself. Dinner’s fine if you don’t mind waiting until I phone you. I don’t know what time that would be. I usually make my last stop at Uncle Sal’s, so I’ll call you from there.”
“I don’t mind. Neeve, just one thing. Be careful. You’re an important witness in Ethel Lambston’s death, and seeing those people, Seamus Lambston and his wife, made me pretty uneasy. Neeve, they’re desperate. Guilty or innocent, they want this investigation stopped. Their desire to spill to your father may be spontaneous or it may be pretty calculated. The point is, murderers don’t hesitate to kill again if someone gets in the way.”
11|
Since Monday was Denny’s day off from the delicatessen, his absence there would not be suspect, but he also wanted to establish the alibi that he’d spent the day in bed. “I guess I got flu,” he mumbled to the disinterested clerk in the lobby of his rooming house. Big Charley had called him on the phone in this lobby yesterday. “Get rid of her now or we’ll find someone who can.”
Denny knew what that meant. He wouldn’t be left around in case he ever tried to use his knowledge of the hit as a plea bargain. Besides, he wanted the rest of the money.
Carefully he laid his plans. He went to the corner drug-store and, coughing his way through the questions; asked the pharmacist to suggest over-the-counter medication. Back in the rooming house, he made it a point to talk to the stupid old broad who lived two doors down from him and was always trying to get friendly. Five minutes later, he left her room with a cup of evil-smelling tea in a battered mug.
“It’ll cure anything,” she told him. “I’ll look in on you later.”
“Maybe you’d make more tea for me around noon,” Denny whined.
He went to the bathroom that serviced the tenants on the second and third floors and complained of cramps to the old wino who was waiting patiently for the door to open. The wino refused to give up his place on line.
In his own room, Denny carefully packed all the shabby clothes he had used when following Neeve. You never knew who among doormen might have sharp eyes and be able to describe someone who’d been hanging around Schwab House. Even that old busybody with the dog. She’d gotten a good look at him. Denny did not doubt that when the ex–Police Commissioner’s daughter was wasted, the cops would be swarming for leads.
He would drop the clothes into a nearby dumpster. That was easy. The tough part was following Neeve Kearny from her shop to Seventh Avenue. But he had figured out a way. He had a new gray sweatsuit. No one around here had ever seen him wear it. He had a punk-rock wig and wide space-cadet glasses. In that outfit, he’d look like the messengers running all over town on their bikes knocking people down. He’d get a big manila envelope, watch for Neeve Kearny to come out. She’d probably cab to the fashion district. He’d follow her in another cab. He’d give the cabbie a cock-and-bull story about his bike being stolen and that lady needing the papers he was delivering.
With his own ears, he’d heard Neeve Kearny discuss a one-thirty appointment with one of those rich broads who could afford to spend big bucks for clothes.
Always leave margin for error. He’d be across the street from her place before one-thirty.
It wouldn’t matter if the cabbie put two and two together after Kearny was wasted. They’d be looking for a guy with a punk-rock cut.
His plans made, Denny shoved the bundle of old clothes under the sagging bed. What a dump, he thought as he stared around the tiny room. Alive with cockroaches. Smelly. A bureau that wasn’t much more than an orange crate. But when he finished the job and got the other ten thousand, he’d only have to hang around till his parole was up and then he’d take off. Boy, would he take off.
For the rest of the morning, Denny made frequent trips to the toilet, complaining about his pains to anyone who would listen. At noon, the hag down the hall knocked on his door and handed him another cup of tea and a stale roll. He made more trips to the toilet, standing inside the locked door, trying not to inhale the noxious odors and keeping others waiting until there were grumbled protests.
At quarter of one, he shuffled out and said to the old wino, “I think I feel better. I’m gonna get some sleep.” His room was on the second floor and faced an alley. There was an overhang from the steep roof that jutted over the lower floors. Minutes after he had changed into the gray sweats, pulled on the punk wig and adjusted the glasses, he’d tossed the bag of beggar clothes into the alley and vaulted down.
He dropped the bundle deep into a rat-infested dumpster behind an apartment building on One Hundred and Eighth Street, caught the subway to Lexington and Eighty-sixth, picked up a large manila envelope and crayons in the five-and-ten, marked the envelope “Rush” and took up a vigil opposite Neeve’s Place.
• • •
At ten o’clock on Monday morning, a Korean cargo plane, Flight 771, was cleared for landing at Kennedy Airport. Trucks from Gordon Steuber Textiles were waiting to pick up the crates of dresses and sportswear to be transported to Long Island City warehouses; warehouses that did not appear anywhere in the company records.
Others were waiting for that shipment: law-enforcement officers aware that they were about to make one of the biggest drug busts of the past ten years.
“A hell of an idea,” one observed to the other as he waited in a mechanic’s uniform on the tarmac. “I’ve seen the stuff stashed in furniture, in Kewpie dolls, in dog collars, in babies’ diapers, but never in designer clothes.”
The plane circled, landed, braked to a stop in front of the hangar. In an instant the field was swarming with Federal officers.
Ten minutes later, the first crate had been pried open. The seams of an exquisitely tailored linen jacket were slashed. Pure, uncut heroin poured into a plastic bag held open by the chief of the task force. “Christ,” he said in awe, “there must be two million bucks’ worth in this box alone. Tell them to pick up Steuber.”
At 9:40 A.M., Federal officers burst into Gordon Steuber’s office. His secretary tried to bar the way, but was firmly put aside. Steuber listened impassively as the Miranda warning was read to him. Without a trace of visible emotion, he watched as handcuffs were clasped around his wrists. Inwardly he was raging, a deadly, furious rage, and the target was Neeve.
As he was being led out he paused to speak to his weeping secretary. “May,” he told her, “you’d better cancel all my appointments. Don’t forget.”
The expression in her eyes told him that she understood. She would not mention that twelve days ago, on Wednesday evening, Ethel Lambston had barged into his office and told him she was wise to his activities.
• • •
Douglas Brown did not sleep easily on Sunday night. As he tossed restlessly on Ethel’s fine percale sheets, he dreamt of her, fitful dreams in which Ethel was brandishing a glass of Dom Pérignon at San Domenico: “Here’s to Seamus the wimp.” Dreams that portrayed Ethel saying coldly to him, “How much did you help yourself to this time?” Dreams in which the police came to take him away.
At ten o’clock on Monday morning, the Medical Examiner’s Office of Rockland County phoned. As next of kin, Doug was queried about his plans for the disposal of the mortal remains of Ethel Lambston. Doug tried to sound solicitous. “It was my aunt’s wish that she be cremated. Can you suggest what I should do?”
Actually Ethel had said something about being buried with her parents in Ohio, but it would be a lot cheaper to mail an urn than a casket.
He was given the name of a mortuary. The woman who answered was cordial and solicitous and inquired about financial responsibility. Doug promised to get back to her and phoned Ethel’s accountant. The accountant had been away for a long weekend and had just heard the dreadful news.
<
br /> “I witnessed Miss Lambston’s will,” the accountant said. “I have a copy of the original. She was very fond of you.”
“And I loved her dearly.” Doug hung up. It still took getting used to, knowing that he was a rich man. Rich by his standards, anyhow.
If only it doesn’t all get screwed up, he thought.
He had instinctively been expecting the cops, but, even so, the brisk rap on the door, the invitation to step down to headquarters for questioning, unnerved him.
At the precinct, he was startled when he received the Miranda warning. “You gotta be kidding.”
“We tend to be overcautious,” Detective Gomez said soothingly. “Remember, Doug, you don’t need to answer questions. You can call a lawyer. Or, you can stop answering questions whenever you say the word.”
Doug thought of Ethel’s money; Ethel’s co-op; the chick at work who had big eyes for him; throwing up his job; telling off that scum who was his immediate boss. He assumed a solicitous stance. “I’m perfectly agreeable to answering any questions.”
That first one from Detective O’Brien threw him for a loop. “Last Thursday, you went to the bank and withdrew four hundred dollars which you took in hundred-dollar bills. No point in denying that, Doug. We checked it. That was the money we found in the apartment, wasn’t it, Doug? Now, why would you put it there when you told us your aunt always found the money she accused you of taking?”
• • •
Myles slept from midnight till five-thirty. When he woke, he knew there was no chance of dozing off again. There was nothing he detested more than lying in bed on the off chance that he could slip back into the arms of Morpheus. He got up, reached for a bathrobe and went into the kitchen.
Over a cup of freshly perked decaffeinated coffee, he step-by-step examined the events of the week. His initial sense of release that had stemmed from Nicky Sepetti’s death was fading. Why?
He glanced around the orderly kitchen. Last night he’d silently approved of the way Jack Campbell had assisted Neeve in clearing. Jack knew his way around a kitchen. Myles half smiled, thinking of his own father. A great guy. “Himself,” his mother said when referring to him. But God knows, Pop had never carried a dish to the sink or minded a child or pushed a vacuum around. Today’s young husbands were different. And it was a good difference.
What kind of husband had he been to Renata? Good by most people’s standards. “I loved her,” Myles said now, his voice barely above a whisper, “I was proud of her. We had fun together. But I wonder how well I knew her. How much of my father’s son was I during our marriage? Did I ever take her seriously outside of her role as wife and mother?”
Last night, or was it the night before, he’d told Jack Campbell that Renata had taught him about wine. I was busy clearing off my rough spots in those days, Myles thought, remembering how before he met Renata he had quietly set on a program of self-improvement. Tickets to Carnegie Hall. Tickets to the Met. Dutiful visits to the Museum of Art.
It was Renata who had changed those dutiful visits to exciting expeditions of discovery. Renata, who when she came home from an opera would hum the music in her strong clear soprano. “Milo, caro, are you the only Irishman in the world who is tone deaf?” she would tease.
In the eleven wonderful years we had, we were only beginning to plumb all that we would have become to each other.
Myles got up and poured a second cup of coffee. Why was this awareness so strong? What was eluding him? Something. Something. Oh, Renata, he begged. I don’t know why, but I’m worried about Neeve. I’ve done my best for her these seventeen years. But she’s your kid, too. Is she in trouble?
The second cup of coffee revived his spirits and he began to feel slightly foolish. When Neeve came yawning into the kitchen, he was sufficiently recovered to say, “Your publisher is a good pot-walloper.”
Neeve grinned, bent down to kiss the top of Myles’s head and replied, “So it’s ‘pretty Kitty Conway.’ I approve, Commish. It’s about time you started looking over the ladies. After all, you’re not getting any younger.” She ducked to avoid his swat.
• • •
Neeve chose a pale-pink-and-gray Chanel suit with gold buttons, gray leather pumps and a matching shoulder bag to wear to work. She pulled her hair into a smooth chignon.
Myles nodded his approval. “I like that kind of outfit. Better than Saturday’s checkerboard. I must say, you have your mother’s taste in clothes.”
“Approbation from Sir Hubert is praise indeed.” At the door, Neeve hesitated. “Commish, are you going to indulge me and ask the Medical Examiner if there’s any chance Ethel’s clothes were changed after she died?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Please think about it. And even if you don’t approve, do it for my sake. Something else: Do you think Seamus Lambston and his wife were trying to sucker us?”
“Entirely possible.”
“Fair enough. But, Myles, hear me out without hushing me up, just this once. The last person who admits to seeing Ethel alive was her ex-husband Seamus. We know that was Thursday afternoon. Can someone ask him what she was wearing? My bet is that it was a multicolored light wool caftan that she just about lived in when she was home. That caftan wasn’t in her closet. Ethel never traveled with it. Myles, don’t look at me like that. I know what I’m talking about. The point is, suppose Seamus—or someone else—killed Ethel while she was wearing that caftan and then changed her clothes.”
Neeve opened the door. Myles realized that she was expecting a derisive remark from him. He kept his tone impersonal. “Meaning . . .?”
“Meaning that if Ethel’s clothes were changed after she died, there is no way that ex-husband is responsible for her death. You saw the way he and his wife were dressed. They have no more idea of fashion than I have of the inner workings of the space shuttle. On the other hand, there is a slimy bastard named Gordon Steuber who would instinctively have chosen something that came from his own company and dressed Ethel the way the outfit was sold.”
Just before she closed the door behind her, Neeve added, “You’re always talking about a killer leaving his calling card, Commish.”
• • •
Peter Kennedy, attorney at law, was frequently asked whether he was related to the Kennedys. He did in fact bear a strong resemblance to the late President. He was a man in his early fifties with hair more rust than gray, a square, strong face and a rangy body. Early in his career he had been an assistant attorney general and formed a lasting friendship with Myles Kearny. At Myles’s urgent phone call, Pete had canceled his eleven-o’clock appointment and agreed to meet Seamus and Ruth Lambston in his midtown office.
Now he listened to them incredulously as he observed their strained, weary faces. From time to time he interjected questions. “You are saying, Mr. Lambston, that you punched your former wife so violently that she fell backwards onto the floor, that she sprang up and grabbed the dagger she used as a letter opener, that in the struggle to wrench it from her hand her cheek was nicked.”
Seamus nodded. “Ethel could see I’d been almost ready to kill her.”
“Almost?”
“Almost,” Seamus said, his voice low and ashamed. “I mean, for one second if that punch had killed her, I’d have been glad. She made my life hell for more than twenty years. Then when she got up, I realized what could have happened. But she was scared. She told me to forget the alimony payments.”
“And then . . .”
“I got out. I went to the bar. Then I went home, got drunk and stayed drunk. I knew Ethel. It woulda been just like her to file an assault charge against me. She tried to have me locked up three different times when I was late with the alimony.” He laughed mirthlessly. “One of those times was the day Jeannie was born.”
Pete continued his questioning and skillfully extracted the fact that Seamus had been afraid of Ethel’s signing a complaint; sure that when she had time to think about it she’d demand the alimony; foolish e
nough to tell Ruth that Ethel had said it was all right to quit the payments; terrified when Ruth demanded he put it in writing to Ethel.
“And then you inadvertently left both the check and the letter in the mailbox and went back hoping to retrieve them?”
Seamus twisted his hands in his lap. To his own ears he sounded like a bumbling fool. Which was exactly what he was. And there was more. The threats. But somehow he couldn’t bring himself to tell about them yet.
“You never saw or spoke to your former wife, Ethel Lambston, after Thursday, March thirtieth.”
“No. I did not.”
He hasn’t told me everything, Pete thought, but it’s enough for a start. He watched as Seamus Lambston leaned back on the maroon leather couch. He was beginning to relax. Soon he’d unwind enough to put everything on the table. Too much probing would be a mistake. Pete turned to Ruth Lambston. She was sitting primly next to her husband, her eyes wary. Pete realized that Ruth was becoming frightened at her husband’s revelations.
“Is it possible for someone to charge Seamus with assault or whatever it is for punching Ethel?” she asked.
“Ethel Lambston’s not alive to press a charge,” Pete replied. Technically the police could file. “Mrs. Lambston, I think I’m a pretty good judge of character. You were the one who persuaded your husband to speak to Commissioner”—he corrected himself—“former Commissioner Kearny. I think you were right to know you needed help at this time. But the only way I can help you is if you tell me the truth. There is something that you are weighing and measuring, and I think I need to know what it is.”
As her husband and this impressive-looking lawyer stared at her, Ruth said. “I believe I threw away the murder weapon.”
By the time they left an hour later, Seamus having agreed to offer to take a lie-detector test, Pete Kennedy was no longer sure of his instincts. At the very end of the session, Seamus admitted that he had hired some wet-brained goon who hung around his pub to threaten Ethel. Either he’s only stupid and scared or he’s playing a pretty shrewd hand, Pete decided, and made a mental note to let Myles Kearny know that not all the clients Myles sent him were his cup of tea.