Murder Your Darlings Page 20

  Dorothy stepped toward Woollcott and whispered, “What about our little secret?”

  Woollcott’s eyes zeroed in on hers. “What secret?”

  “You know.”

  “Oh, yes,” he muttered conspiratorially. “You’re squandering your talent on poems about ponies, peonies and petty heartbreak? It’s not such a secret. The word is out.”

  The insufferable windbag!

  She forced herself to be calm. “No, the one about how Mayflower hoodwinked you to land that Saber fountain pen endorsement.”

  He cinched his robe tighter and pointed his pinched little nose in the air. “Go ahead. Tell everyone. It’s water under the bridge to me.”

  Just the day before, Woollcott had nearly thrown a tantrum when she had forced him to explain Mayflower’s gambit. Now he acted as if he didn’t care?

  Finally, she made her weakest appeal of all—to his compassion.

  “Have a heart,” she said. “Where’s your sense of charity? You can’t turn the poor boy out on the street.”

  “I’m not turning him out on the street. If he needs a place to stay, there are many fine hotel rooms in this cosmopolitan metropolis. Now, kindly remove your Dachshund from my doorstep. Good night.”

  This was impossible. She was indeed at Wit’s End, literally and figuratively.

  Faulkner, apparently giving up, began his retreat. Dorothy heard cellophane crinkling in his pocket.

  “Hold on,” she said to Woollcott. “Let me sweeten the deal.”

  She gestured to Faulkner to hand over the wrapped box. Faulkner, not comprehending at first, finally drew the flat box from the deep pocket of his long coat. It was a box of liquor-filled chocolate cordials. She handed it to Woollcott.

  His eyes widened. He panted. “Chocolate . . . and liquor? Where did you get these?”

  Truth was, Mickey Finn had pressed it into her hands on their way out of his bootlegger’s den. She had refused the token gift at first, but Finn was insistent—it was just easier to accept it. Later, she had carelessly handed it to Faulkner to carry. How surprising that she found a use for such a gift so quickly.

  “Oh, do you like them?” she said indifferently. “I have a whole crate of them back at my apartment.”

  This, unfortunately for Woollcott, was not true.

  But Woollcott was suddenly a one-man beehive of activity. He pirouetted away, calling over his shoulder, “Well, as you say, one must be charitable. One can’t turn a poor boy out in the street. I’ll pack my valise—just for one night, of course.”

  Benchley slid the borrowed key into the door of the Sandman’s apartment.

  After he had come back in from the ledge and into the neighbors’ apartment, he had joined them for another Manhattan or two. What nice people they were. He didn’t have the heart to confess that he was not really a window inspector. But perhaps they had figured that out.

  In the course of conversation, they told him that having Sanderson next door had frightened them. When Sanderson had first moved in, he hadn’t bothered to change the locks. The nice couple still had the key that the previous neighbor had given them in case of emergency. But they were too intimidated by Sanderson to offer to return the key. So they kept it.

  When the Sandman was found dead, the couple didn’t know whom to give the key to. It was a hot potato, they said. They were happy to hand it over to Benchley. They gave him one more Manhattan “for the road.”

  Benchley had not yet had dinner. And he had had only beer for lunch, courtesy of Mickey Finn. So the cocktails were working their magic. He had some trouble finding the light switch, but eventually he flicked it on. One bare overhead bulb illuminated the room.

  The Sandman’s large studio apartment would have been elegant, had anyone bothered to decorate the place. There were a few very expensive, very ostentatious items of furniture—a bamboo bar and stools, an oxblood leather sofa, a walnut gun cabinet. The rest was junk—a card table in the kitchen, a wooden orange crate for a makeshift shoe rack (which was filled with fancy shoes and boots) and a cast-iron bed that looked like an army cot. It was as though the Sandman had had the money and desire to buy a few items he considered valuable and either didn’t know or didn’t care to fix up the rest of the place to match.

  Benchley didn’t really know what to look for. What might connect the Sandman to Mayflower? Or, what missing link might connect the Sandman to the real killer—the one who hired the Sandman . . . the one who then killed the Sandman in this very room?

  Benchley wandered around the room. Old newspapers and a few wax paper sandwich wrappers littered the card table. The kitchen cabinets held nothing but cans of beans and sardines. The door of the oven, where the Sandman’s body had been found, gaped open. Benchley hurriedly turned away.

  In a far corner, he saw another orange crate and went over and crouched down to inspect it. The crate was stuffed with playing cards, poker chips, some handcuffs, a blackjack, a rope, a lead pipe and other miscellaneous junk. Nothing.

  Benchley scratched his head. Mickey Finn and his boys had already searched the place and found nothing. What could he hope to find?

  Benchley stood up quickly—too quickly—and the room started to swim. He braced himself against the wall. His eyes came to rest on the only picture in the apartment. It was a large black-and-white photograph, about a foot and a half wide. The photo was of some fifty men in army uniforms, posing in rows for the picture. A few men in the bottom row held a sign: THE FIGHTIN’ THIRD: 3RD NEW YORK INFANTRY, 108TH INFANTRY REGIMENT, 54TH BRIGADE, 27TH DIVISION. BELLICOURT, AISNE, FRANCE. OCTOBER 1918.

  So, Sanderson had fought in France.... Benchley scanned the cheerless gray faces for a young, doughboy version of the Sandman. But doing this made Benchley’s head swim again.

  There was a sound. Someone was at the door. On blind instinct—rare for him—Benchley switched out the light and turned to hide in the darkness.

  As soon as he did this, he silently cursed himself for a fool. It was probably just that nice young couple coming over to check on him.

  He shuffled to where he thought he had switched off the light, but he couldn’t find the switch, couldn’t even find the wall. Now he was stuck, and he cursed himself again for acting so rashly.

  Then he heard a metallic squeak—someone was testing the doorknob. Something told him it wasn’t the nice couple. Had he locked the door behind him? He didn’t think so. Of course he’d left it unlocked so that any murderous stranger could come in and strangle him in the pitch dark.

  He turned around and banged his leg against something hard. It was the cast-iron bed. As quickly and quietly as he could, he dropped to the floor and slid under the bed.

  The door opened. The light clicked on. Someone stood in the doorway. Under the bed, Benchley could see only a nondescript pair of men’s black shoes and men’s dark trousers. The shoes didn’t move for a very long time. The man, whoever he was, seemed to suspect there was someone else in the room, Benchley thought.

  Almost imperceptibly at first, Benchley began to feel a tingling sensation. His face had been against the floor for only a few moments. Could his cheek be falling asleep already? The tingling turned into a prickling sensation, an unsettling feeling of movement along his skin. Then there seemed to be a shadow in his vision. He realized he was staring into the eyes and antennae of a large brown cockroach perched on his cheek.

  It took every last ounce of courage and nerve for Benchley not to scream and flail about like a six-year-old girl.

  Woollcott seemed almost giddy as he climbed into a taxi with Dorothy and Faulkner bound for the Algonquin Hotel. He reevaluated Faulkner with approval, chattering ridiculously.

  “You’ve certainly cleaned yourself up, my lad,” Woollcott said. “You’ve shaved. You’ve lost that bohemian coat. Good for you, young man. Writing is a business, after all, and one must dress for business, don’t you agree? That isn’t to say that one should lack style or go without a measure of artistic flair. . . .”


  Dorothy’s mind wandered. She was feeling guilty about letting Benchley go to the Sandman’s apartment alone. Still, the Sandman was dead. And as long as there was nothing mechanical there for Benchley to get entangled with, he should be fine.

  Woollcott and Faulkner were hitting it off, talking about their favorite books—Woollcott doing most of the talking while gobbling up the liquor-filled chocolates.

  Soon, they arrived at the Algonquin. Woollcott bounded out the door, leaving the empty box of chocolates on the seat. Dorothy looked at Faulkner apologetically.

  “I don’t have a dime to pay the fare.”

  Faulkner pulled out a carefully folded bill. “It’s my bottom dollar.” He handed it to the taxi driver, received a dime in change, and they got out.

  Upstairs, Dorothy unlocked the door to her small suite. The room, as usual, smelled like dog. Woodrow Wilson jumped off the couch and trotted over. She scratched the dog behind the ears, feeling guilty and sorry for the third time in almost as many minutes. Here she was, about to leave the poor pooch all alone with Woollcott. And how did Woody respond to her treachery? With a cheery little four-step dance and a frenetically wagging tail. How she adored and envied the boundless optimism of dogs!

  Woollcott, for his part, was staggering around nearly half-drunk and looking out of the corner of his eyes for more of the as-promised booze-filled chocolates.

  “Perhaps you might have something a man could eat?” he said, not so obliquely.

  She ignored him and hurried to her bedroom, quickly stuffing clothes in an overnight bag. She cursed herself for not thinking of doing this beforehand.

  She slung the bag over her shoulder and went back into the living room. She patted Woody—now looking puzzled—on the head. Then she turned to Woollcott.

  “Now, I have your word that you won’t mention to anyone where we are, right?” she said.

  “As a man of many words,” he said, “you may rest assured that your secret is safe with me.”

  She motioned to Faulkner that it was time to go.

  Woollcott followed them to the door. “One other thing ... You had mentioned that carton of chocolates—”

  “Oh, look around,” she said. “It’s here somewhere. Unless the dog ate them all.”

  She left Woody and Woollcott sizing each other up as she closed the door.

  The pair of shoes crossed the hardwood floor of Knut Sanderson’s nearly empty apartment. Under the cover of the sound of the clacking shoes, Benchley slapped the cockroach off his face.

  The man went to the far wall and stopped.

  The cockroach landed beside Benchley’s ear. He could feel its hairy legs flutter beside his earlobe.The sensation—its presence—was intolerable.

  The man in the shoes was doing something—pulling something, disrupting something—Benchley didn’t know what.

  Benchley knew he should pay attention to what the man was doing, but the cockroach was driving him mad. It quivered and clawed at his hair, his scalp, chilling him and making his skin crawl.

  That was it. He couldn’t take it anymore. He clutched at the cockroach and flung it away. The huge brown insect skittered across the polished wood floor, skidding to a stop in the dead center of the room.

  The man in the shoes spun around. The shoes raced across the floor—the clattering, thumping sound reverberated in Benchley’s ear like thunder. The man stopped just before the cockroach. Benchley could see the bug helpless on its back, its tiny clawlike legs grasping and flailing desperately. The man raised one shoe and stomped the bug without hesitation.

  Benchley held his breath. Did the man know he was under the bed? The man stood still a moment, as though looking around. Then the man came toward the bed. The shoes were inches from Benchley’s face. The man raised the shoe that had stomped the cockroach—Benchley could see its liquefied, flattened body on the sole—and wiped the bottom of the shoe against the edge of the mattress. The shoe came down. The cockroach was gone.

  The shoes moved toward the door. The light went out. The door closed with a bang.

  Dorothy and Faulkner had settled in nicely at Woollcott’s apartment. They were lounging on his sofa, wearing his robes, smoking his cigarettes and sipping his hidden stash of brandy.

  “I wonder how Aleck is holding up right now at the Algonquin,” she said lazily, although she was more concerned about Woody than Woollcott.

  “What’s next?” Faulkner asked. “Are you any closer to finding who killed Mayflower—that is, who killed the Sandman?”

  “In a word, yes. And no.”

  She described how she and Benchley had almost been flattened by the Bible truck. “So we hit a nerve with someone. We just don’t know which nerve we hit.”

  “Or who the someone is.”

  “As for finding the someone, we have until Friday. Otherwise, Finn will put an end to Tony Soma’s.”

  And put an end to Faulkner, too, but she didn’t mention that. She merely described to him how Mickey Finn had shaken them down for some answers and had given them the Friday deadline.

  “What will you do between now and then?”

  She shrugged and sucked her cigarette.

  “What about that Bible truck?” he said.

  “What about it?”

  “Did you look up the company?”

  “The New Canaan Bible Company? It wasn’t in the directory. Heywood Broun has a friend at the Wall Street Journal. Tomorrow I’ll ask him to call his friend to track the company down.”

  “And what if he can’t?”

  “Oh, don’t worry.” She sipped the brandy. “Something will emerge.”

  Benchley poked his head out from underneath the bed and exhaled. Before this, he had waited a moment to be sure that the man was gone. It seemed he had been holding his breath for an eternity. Finally, he crawled out from under the bed before any more cockroaches decided to use his face for a playground.

  He stumbled toward the wall and flicked on the light.

  He looked around the room. Something was different.

  Then he figured it out. The far wall was bare.

  The Sandman’s army photograph was gone.

  Chapter 31

  Wallace Ramshackle, Esquire, had a face like an Easter ham: round, plump and pink. His oily gray hair was parted neatly down the middle. He gazed at Dorothy over half-moon glasses.

  “You’d like what?” he croaked.

  She shifted in her chair. She wore the closest thing she had to a formal suit, a slender wool serge ensemble in gray with a black felt cloche. She felt fairly presentable and, having had an excellent night’s sleep in Woollcott’s plush feather bed, she felt fairly confident for this morning’s meeting with this aging attorney.

  “I’d like to see your contract with Leland Mayflower. I was an acquaintance of his.”

  “Out of the question. That’s an outright violation of the attorney-client privilege.”

  She batted her eyelashes. “I was under the impression that, since the party of the first part has departed, then the attorney-client relationship would no longer apply.”

  “You are under a misapprehension, Miss—”

  “Apprehension?”

  “No, your name. Miss—”

  “Parker,” she said. “Mrs. Parker, actually.”

  “Mrs. Parker,” Ramshackle said, rising from his chair, “I cannot divulge any business of another client, living or deceased. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have other business to attend to.”

  “So,” she said, “you haven’t discussed Mr. Mayflower’s contract with anyone? Even the police?”

  “Not without a court order.”

  “The police haven’t even contacted you?”

  “No, they have not. Now, if you would excuse me, I have many other clients—”

  That was good, she thought. From what Lou Neeley had told her—that Mayflower had visited this lawyer shortly before his murder—she felt certain that Mayflower’s death was tied to his business with Ramshackle
. Even the police hadn’t figured this out yet. Somehow, that seemed like a good sign for Faulkner. She felt closer to proving his innocence and having this whole business done with.

  Ramshackle hobbled around the desk and stood over her. He smelled of hair tonic and cough lozenges. “I said, I have many other clients, Mrs. Parker. Good day.”

  “But that’s why I’m here. I’d like to be a client. A paying client.”

  Despite’s Ramshackle’s self-importance,she had noticed that his vest needed mending, his carpet was well-worn, and his office seemed less frequented than it probably had once been. His gruff manner changed immediately.

  “Well.” He beamed. “Why didn’t you say so? Now what sort of legal representation do you require?”

  She hesitated. How should she put this?

  “Ah, I see,” Ramshackle said, settling again into his desk chair. “You needn’t worry. I am discreet—the absolute apex of discretion. So it is a divorce, then?”

  Her jaw dropped. Did she look like a divorcée? Was that the first thought that came into a person’s mind?

  “These things can be messy, of course,” he continued, smiling, “but lucrative. Oh, yes, you needn’t subsist on a pittance as spinsters did in the old days.”

  “No, no, no,” she blurted. “I’m not getting a divorce. I want what Mayflower had. Just write me up one of those.”

  His Easter ham face reddened. “You want indemnity for libel?”

  Indemnity for libel?

  Ramshackle stammered, “B-but Mr. Mayflower was a writer—a famous columnist—working on his memoirs. He had reason to be cautious about being sued for libel. I-I take it you are just a housewife, are you not?”

  Now it was her turn to be indignant. “Just a housewife? I’m a writer. A goddamn writer for Vanity Fair! And a goddamn poet, too. People quote me. Franklin Pierce Adams quotes me in the goddamn New York World.”

  Ramshackle was flustered. He grabbed a handful of papers to busy himself with. “Forgive me; please forgive me. I read only legal journals and—and occasionally Reader’s Digest. My humblest apologies.” He shuffled the papers. “Now, let me see, let me see. Yes, here we are. To protect you from libel—”