Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death Page 14

  If Quigley had been telling the truth, of course, about Rita’s attitude toward Rembek—if he had known the truth about it—then this mock wake was after all a very grotesque and ugly joke.

  Kerrigan said, “If you don’t mind, Mister Tobin, I believe I’ll go out and circulate a little. Put in an appearance.”

  “In a minute,” I said. “I want to talk to you first.”

  “About what?”

  “About the fact that you’re my number one suspect,” I said.

  That shook him, for just a second. He said, “Oh. Well, uhhh, well. I didn’t know I was doing that good.”

  “Let’s look at the list,” I said. I went over and sat down at the desk and began to write out the names again, commenting on each as I went along. Kerrigan stood beside me and watched the names emerge from the pencil.

  “With Einhorn dead,” I said, “I’ve got six possibles. Of them all, Pietrojetti is in my opinion the least likely. He knew about the money, but he just doesn’t fit as someone Rita Castle would call a ‘real man.’ Besides, if he wanted to steal eighty thousand dollars I’m sure he could do it easiest and fastest with a pen and a ledger. This isn’t his kind of plot.”

  Kerrigan nodded. “Least likely,” he said. “I’ll go along with that.”

  “I’ll put Donner next,” I said, “because I have to believe him when he says he hasn’t looked at another woman in twenty-eight years. Also because he’s nearly as unlikely as Pietrojetti to be called a ‘real man’ by Rita Castle.”

  “Fine,” said Kerrigan. “I’m still with you.”

  “Lydon third from the bottom,” I said. “He’s got youth going for him, and an unhappy home life. But a man in real estate in this city, with as many holdings as Lydon, doesn’t have to get this complicated if he wants quick money. Besides, I think he’s a whiner and I think Rita Castle would have felt immediate contempt for him and nothing would ever have made her change her opinion.”

  “Nobody looks likely so far,” said Kerrigan. “And I’m still agreeing with everything you say.”

  “That’s the bottom half of the list,” I said. “The upper three are all much likelier. Third from the top is Louis Hogan. It’s entirely possible he’s of a type she might have considered a real man, and that incident he told us, about ‘inspecting’ her in his garage when her flirtation irritated him, just might have been the sort of thing to intrigue her. He’s a union executive, which means he wouldn’t necessarily have any other way to get a lot of money fast if he needed it, and so might be forced to resort to something like this. He also seems like the sort of man who might live beyond his income.”

  Kerrigan said, “Why isn’t he at the top of the list?”

  “Because I have trouble believing he could have fooled Rita Castle about his motives. She was a very complicated girl herself, full of false faces and deceptions, and I think it would require a complicated and artful man to pull the wool over her eyes. Hogan strikes me as too blunt a personality.”

  Kerrigan said, “You may be right. But you left somebody off that list. Hogan should be number two, at least. In fact, everybody should come up one notch.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Seay ought to go at the bottom.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? Because he’s a faggot.”

  I shook my head. “No, he isn’t, not exactly. I suppose he does take other men to bed from time to time, but only as surrogates for himself. No, the kind he is he might very well be capable of playing the heterosexual game with a great deal of competence, if the reason was compelling enough.”

  “If you say so,” he said doubtfully.

  I said, “Matthew Seay carries beyond sane limits several tendencies which I think were also present—to a lesser degree—in Rita Castle. It’s entirely possible she would have been attracted to someone who would seem to have such a deep instinctive understanding of her. The picture of the two of them together has a certain nightmarish lightness to it.”

  Kerrigan laughed. “A pair of false faces talking to each other.”

  The image that had come into my own mind was similar to that, but worse. I suddenly saw Rita Castle and Matthew Seay as a pair of puppeteers, hidden in darkness from one another, operating by means of long white strings two marionettes down below. The marionettes posture before one another, dance together, make love, and all the while up rises the faint clacking sounds of the wooden joints.

  Does the male marionette strike the female down, crush its wooden skull, leave it bleeding straw alone on the little stage?

  I shook my head. Such imagery had too narrow an application, it wouldn’t help me to the answer I needed.

  Kerrigan said, “Anyway, that leaves only me, right at the top.”

  “Yes.” I wrote his name above the others. “You’re the likeliest.”

  “Could I ask why?”

  “You’re single, and therefore most readily available to have an affair. You have the youth and self-confidence and style to potentially be Rita Castle’s real man. You are smart enough to have set this thing up, and you’re probably devious enough, too. I doubt your job leaves openings for making a lot of money quickly, the way Pietrojetti’s does, and at the same time I think it possible you would live beyond your means. Particularly if you got involved with someone like Rita Castle.”

  He gave me a thin smile and said, “It’s a persuasive case. What are you going to do now?”

  “I’m not entirely persuaded of it yet,” I said, “so I’m not going to say anything right now to Rembek.” I put the pencil down, leaned back, and studied Kerrigan’s face. “If I were still on the force,” I said, “at this point I’d have you picked up for questioning. I’d make sure we could hold onto you for a minimum of fifteen hours, I’d set up shifts of teams to question you, and I’d see if there was anything interesting inside your head.”

  He nodded, smiling sardonically. “I know the style,” he said. “I’d come through it, Mister Tobin, smelling like a rose. And it wouldn’t prove a thing.”

  “But it’s what I would do,” I said. “It’s what I think of as the next step. But the way things are, I’ll have to find a different next step.”

  “Do you have any ideas?”

  “Some. I want you to help me.”

  He spread his hands, half jokingly. “Whatever you want, Mister Tobin,” he said. “All you have to do is name it.”

  “I’d like you to prove two things to me,” I said. I counted them off on my fingers. “First, I’d like you to prove to me that your emotional life the last few months has been so satisfactory that you wouldn’t have started an affair with Rita Castle or anybody else under any circumstances at all. Second, I’d like you to prove to me that your financial condition is absolutely sound, that you have all the money you need for expenses, that you have adequate savings, and that neither in the present nor in the foreseeable future is there any economic crisis in store for you.”

  He smiled sadly, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Mister Tobin,” he said, “but it can’t be done.”

  “Neither?”

  “Neither,” he agreed. “First of all, my emotional life, as you call it, is a mess. I’m still emotionally involved with my ex-wife, if you want the truth, and I’ve been trying to cure it with fast doses of this girl, that girl, the other girl. If I’d thought Rita really meant it when she tossed me the high-sign, I probably would have taken her up on it, because that’s the way I’m working it these days. I keep thinking one of them will have the antidote.”

  “That’s the emotional side,” I said. “What about the financial?”

  “You made a good guess about me before,” he said. “I’ve been just slightly overextended for about the last nine years. It’s no worse than usual now, but it’s no better either. My ex-wife comes into this part, too; she gets very generous alimony.”

  I said, “Then you can’t do anything to help me get your name farther down the list?”

  “I ca
n only tell you Rita never gave me a signal that I could believe in. Therefore there was no affair, and therefore I didn’t kill her.”

  “We’ll have to work on it some more,” I said.

  He said, “What makes you hesitate, Mister Tobin? Why not just turn me over to Ernie? He’s got teams of questioners, too, they could maybe cover even more ground than your kind in fifteen hours.”

  “I won’t do that unless I’m sure.”

  “Why aren’t you sure?”

  I said, “If you killed Rita Castle, you also booby-trapped my other office, which means you want me dead. So far today I’ve given you four good shots at killing me and you haven’t taken a one of them.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. Then he said, “What if I had taken one of them?”

  “One of us would be dead now, I suppose.”

  Before he could answer, the door burst open and Rembek came striding in, smiling broadly, saying, “Well, that wraps it up! It’s all over, Mister Tobin, it just came over the phone.”

  I said, “What just came over the phone?”

  “Suicide,” he said. “Paul Einhorn killed himself.” He turned to Kerrigan, saying, “See how it works? Paul’s the one killed Rita, that’s why he ran away. But he knew we were on him, that’s why he rigged the bomb, and that’s why he killed himself.” To me he said, “You can hear it for yourself, Mister Tobin, my man’s still on the wire.”

  I looked at Kerrigan. “Now I’m persuaded,” I said.

  twenty-three

  REMBEK FROWNED AT US both. “What is this?”

  Kerrigan said to me, “Let me tell it.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Thank you,” he said, and nodded his head at me. Calm as ever, he turned to Rembek. “Mister Tobin has the idea I’m the one. We were just talking about it, how I’m the number one suspect but he wasn’t quite sure yet, he wasn’t one hundred percent persuaded.”

  Rembek was frowning harder and harder, glaring at both of us. He said to me, “Is this on the level?”

  “Yes.”

  Kerrigan said, “Now that Paul’s dead, he’s sure.” He turned his head and looked at me. “Aren’t you, Mister Tobin?”

  I said, “It depends how Einhorn died.”

  Rembek spread his hands, saying, “What’s that mean? I just told you, he shot himself.”

  I said, “Maybe.”

  Kerrigan wasn’t being cocky about the situation but at the same time he didn’t seem particularly ruffled by it either. He said to Rembek, “The way Mister Tobin sees it, maybe Paul didn’t shoot himself at all. Maybe he was shot by somebody else and the thing set up to look like suicide. And if that’s what happened, he figures the somebody that did it is me.”

  Rembek said, to both of us, “Why?”

  I said, “Let Kerrigan tell it, he’s doing fine.”

  Kerrigan didn’t smile. He said to me, “It’s not that hard to figure, Mister Tobin. I always admitted the thing was plausible.”

  “Tell it to me,” said Rembek.

  Kerrigan told it to him: “I’ve got money troubles. Not bad, but chronic. And I’ve got woman trouble because of my ex-wife. So there’s my two motives. I’ve got as much opportunity as anybody else, and Mister Tobin figures I might fit that ‘real man’ line in Rita’s note.”

  Rembek said, “What’s this got to do with Paul?”

  “The way Mister Tobin sees it,” Kerrigan explained, “when he and I went to see Paul, I took Paul to one side and talked him into making a run for it. Then I arranged for Paul to call me later, I went to see him, killed him, and set it up to look like a suicide.”

  “Why?”

  “To make him take the rap. You came in here yourself, Ernie, saying it was all wrapped up.”

  Rembek had slowly backed up until he blocked the door. Now, standing there, he looked grimly at me and said, “Is that the way you read it? Did he tell it right?”

  “Yes.”

  He turned back to Kerrigan. “What do you say?”

  “I say I didn’t do it.”

  I said, “Let me hear about Einhorn. Can I take it on this phone?”

  “Press the button for 72.”

  I did, and picked up the receiver and said, “You still there?”

  A guarded voice said, “Who is this?”

  I said, “You’re supposed to tell me about the Einhorn homicide.”

  “Suicide.”

  “Details.”

  He said, “Body found in room 516, Warrington Hotel, 290 West 47th Street. He’d taken the room last night, one-ten A.M., using the name Paul Standish. No luggage. About twelve-thirty this afternoon the maid came around to clean the room. She knocked on the door, heard the shot, used her key on—”

  “Wait a second,” I said. “Give me that sequence again. She knocked on the door before the shot?”

  “Right. As soon as she knocked he shot himself. She opened the door right away and—”

  “She didn’t go after the manager?”

  “Definitely no. She went straight in, found him on the floor, and called the desk from the room phone.”

  “Is there a ledge outside the window?”

  “No. And no connecting rooms. It’s suicide, no question. He held the gun to the side of his head and pulled the trigger. His head has the marks of a contact wound, his hand passes the paraffin test, his prints are on the gun.”

  I didn’t like giving it up. I said, “Where was the gun? In his hand?”

  “On the floor beside the body, where it dropped.”

  “Hold on a second,” I said. “Let me think.”

  “Take your time,” he said.

  Rembek and Kerrigan were watching me, Rembek grimly and Kerrigan warily. I closed my eyes against their eyes and thought.

  It did make sense as a suicide, I had to admit it. Einhorn had simply run away for the last time. He must have been sure his father and uncles would drag him back home to Florida, maybe for good, and this time it was just too much. So he got himself a gun—a gun is as easy to buy in New York as a pack of razor blades—and sat in his room thinking about killing himself, and probably thinking sometimes about killing his father and uncles instead or as well, and when the knock had sounded at the door he’d assumed it was the pursuit, catching up with him, and he put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

  All right

  I opened my eyes. I said into the phone, “Who are you?”

  He said, “That isn’t part of the deal.”

  “How do I know this information is trustworthy?”

  “It’s the goods,” he said.

  “Are you on the force?”

  “That isn’t part of the deal,” he said, and hung up.

  I held the phone away from my ear and said to Rembek, “How much can I count on this man?”

  “He’s on the scene,” Rembek told me. “You can take his word one hundred percent.”

  “Then it’s suicide,” I said, and cradled the phone. I noticed the look of relief that washed quickly across Kerrigan’s face, to be replaced just as quickly by his usual expression of unruffled calm.

  Rembek said to me, “Does that take Roger off the hook?”

  “Off the hook,” I said, “but not off the list.”

  Rembek had been keyed up to take vengeance and he was having trouble throttling back. He didn’t quite look at Kerrigan as he said, gruffly, “All right. I’ll be outside if you want me.

  “What about the police records on my suspects?”

  “Oh,” he said. “With all this other stuff, I forgot. Top drawer of your filing cabinet, manila envelope.”

  “Good. Thank you.”

  He left, and Kerrigan said, “Are you done with me now?”

  “Yes. Is Rembek’s lawyer out there?”

  “Which one, Canfield?”

  “Yes. If he’s there, I want—no, wait a second. Rembek’s got more than one lawyer?”

  “Sure. He’s got two. Canfield’s a corporation attorney, he isn’t Ernie
’s personal lawyer.”

  I said, “I wish I’d known that before. All right, who’s the personal attorney?”

  “Sam Goldberg. He was one of the men with alibis from your first list.”

  “Is he here?”

  “I don’t know. He might be.”

  “I want to talk to him,” I said. “I’ll take a look,” he said, and went out.

  While I waited, I looked at the record sheets on my six suspects. They made pretty reading.

  Kerrigan, as he’d told me in our first interview, had no civilian record at all. But he did have an Army court-martial, and stockade time, having been found guilty of assaulting an officer. There were no details given.

  Matthew Seay had a number of arrests, all in the mid-fifties, three times for possession of narcotics, once for contributing to the delinquency of a male minor, once for beating up a sailor in a West Side bar, once for automobile theft, twice for possession and sale of pornographic materials. His most recent arrest was seven years old and he had never served any jail time, though he’d been given a number of suspended sentences.

  Louis Hogan, as he’d told me, had no record at all.

  Joseph Lydon had two arrests and no convictions, the first arrest being on a Sullivan Law charge, carrying of a concealed weapon, and the second an assault charge growing out of a fight with a tenant in one of his buildings.

  Frank Donner had the longest record of them all, but with only two jail terms, one in the early thirties for assault with a deadly weapon and one in the late forties for blackmail and forgery. His other arrests, some with no convictions and some with suspended sentences, ranged from bribery and extortion to arson and assault. His last twelve years had been free of arrests of any kind.

  William Pietrojetti had two arrests, two convictions, and two jail terms, the first in 1947 for tax fraud and the second in 1952 for receiving stolen property.

  The six dossiers made a grim picture, but I knew they told far less than the whole story. This was the visible fraction of the iceberg; beneath the surface lay all the crimes for which these six men had never received any official notice at all.

  In one way of looking at things, I could point at any one of these men, turn him over to Rembek to be dealt with, and rest easy with the knowledge that the punishment he got would be due him for something in his life even if not for the murder of Rita Castle. I found myself tempted to handle the case just that way; construct a box around Kerrigan, say, or Donner, or Seay, take my five-thousand bonus, and go back to my wall. What difference did it make, really, whether or not the murderer of Rita Castle was ever punished for that crime, with all the unpunished crimes already existing in the world, with all the unpunished crimes stated or implied merely by these six dossiers?