Don't Lie to Me Page 6

  I said, “Unless an Allied man was working with them.”

  Goldrich offered his thin smile again. “You see? That’s the natural assumption. Grazko and I of course think it’s wrong.”

  “What happened to the man whose place I took? Did he quit or retire or something?”

  “Sorry. His name’s Edwards, his wife got sick, he wanted to switch to day work. We have him with a furrier now, in midtown.” Goldrich pointed a finger at me and said, “Take a word of advice. Don’t make the same suggestion to Grazko. He’s really upset about this.”

  “I can see that.”

  Goldrich sighed, and got to his feet. “And now we really will be late, and he’ll be upset about that, too. Any more questions?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  6

  THE MUSEUM WASN’T OPEN to the public, but was more crowded this morning than it had probably ever been on any day that the public had been allowed in. Since my own connection with the museum was only three weeks old, was extremely peripheral, and was limited to that part of the day when the place was closed and empty, I recognized almost none of the faces I saw, but I could guess who they all were. The gray-haired men in suits would be museum directors and officials. The boys and girls in sweaters and bell-bottom slacks would be the NYU students who did various free work around here. A few rumpled-looking men in brown suits would probably be from insurance companies, law firms, perhaps a foundation or two which had put money into this operation. Several plainclothes detectives were obvious in the mix, among them both Grinella and Hargerson; I flinched at the sight of Hargerson, wondering if he had looked me up by now, and if so, what he would say. I also saw both Phil Crane and Ernest Ramsey. And finally there were the people from Allied Protection Service: Grazko, Goldrich, Muller, three or four others in our gray uniform, and myself.

  Grazko, Goldrich and I had arrived at just eleven, to find the museum already full. We had traveled uptown by cab, and Grazko hadn’t said a word. He hadn’t, in fact, said anything at all since leaving me with Goldrich to be told of Allied’s misfortune.

  I would guess there were fifty people present, grouped in small clusters of like type, mostly silent, scattered through the front two display rooms. Grazko and Goldrich and I joined the rest of the Allied contingent, and after brief hellos we all stood around, feeling uncomfortable and uncertain what was to happen next.

  I kept thinking about the workroom downstairs. It would be empty now, and since it was windowless, it would look exactly the same both day and night. It would look now as it had on the night I went down to see it, and I kept trying to visualize it as I had seen it then. There was a vague irritation in me to see the place again, to compare it with my mental image. I had no idea why I should feel like that, and kept trying to think about other things—what was happening at this moment in these rooms up here, for instance—but it kept gnawing away in the back of my head, distracting and annoying me. Like the sand in the oyster, I thought; but what pearl could I possibly produce?

  After about five minutes there was some sense of disturbance in the other display room: a general shuffling about, movement in that direction. A voice from in there called over the hubbub, “Would everybody move in here, please?” Our group from Allied joined the rest, and we walked through the wide doorway, helping to jam the next room to overflowing.

  At the far end of the room, a uniformed policeman was standing on one of the upholstered benches, looking a trifle uncertain of his soft footing. This wasn’t a mere patrolman, but a full inspector, his hatbrim and sleeves loaded with braid and insignia. A simple John Doe murder had produced patrolmen and a team of detectives, but the stealing of pieces of paper from a museum endowed by foundations and connected to a university and in other ways also no doubt plugged in to what has appropriately been called the Establishment had brought a full inspector out in complete uniform.

  The inspector was peering down at our end of the room, and now he called, “Are we all in here now?”

  He got a murmur back from the group.

  “All right, fine. My name is Stanton, Inspector William Stanton.” He paused, perhaps to give us time to recognize his name from the newspapers. I did not, but I knew inspectors tended to get frequent newspaper coverage, so perhaps some of the people around me did remember the name. However, there was no audible response, so he went on: “Most of you know what we’re doing here, but just to get the record straight and avoid starting a rumor factory, let me give you a rundown.”

  He gave us a rundown, adding nothing I didn’t already know. In fact, the only interesting part of his talk was its one omission; he never once mentioned the John Doe. He wasn’t here on a murder investigation, and he was making no bones about it; he was here because some papers had been stolen from some important people.

  Since I was toward the rear of his audience, it was relatively easy for me to let my mind wander; unfortunately, it insisted on wandering to that workroom. I looked around, trying to find something else to attract my attention, and my eye lit on a sand-filled cigarette receptacle to one side of the doorway just behind me. A partly crumpled cigarette pack was lying on the sand among the jutting cigarette butts; Marlboro, it was, Grinella’s brand. But no, it wasn’t either; I looked more closely and saw that the lettering was wrong, though the design was right. M-a-something.

  Maverick. That’s what it was. Then I remembered hearing a radio commercial for that brand recently, and being surprised to hear a cigarette commercial until it had turned out to be a station in Canada. Maverick was apparently the Canadian brand name for Marlboro; they used the same pack design and the same music theme in their commercials. I’d heard it over the weekend, up in Plattsburg, near the Canadian border.

  Things happen in threes, they say. Here I’d run across Maverick cigarettes twice in three days; I wondered if there’d really be a third.

  Up front, Inspector Stanton was finishing his rundown. He was a stocky man, gray-haired under his uniform cap, and he was clearly uncomfortable about his footing on that upholstered bench. I think he would have liked a handy shoulder to brace himself against, but his dignity wouldn’t let him ask for one. He got to the end of his explanation of what had been going on, and then said, “With your cooperation, we should be able to clear this up, find the guilty party, and restore the originals in very short order. Everyone directly connected with the museum is in this room. I want to make it clear that I don’t look upon you all as suspects, but as potential witnesses. It may be that no one in this room knows the whole truth about what’s been going on here. But one of you may know one little fact, another knows another little fact, and so on. We want to get all those facts and put them together and get this mess cleaned up, and do it fast. So we’re going to ask you to give us statements now, and sign them, and we’ll also ask you to be available in case we want to check with you further. Let us know where you can be reached, tell us if you plan to travel anywhere.”

  He explained the logistics of the statement-taking; he himself wouldn’t talk individually to every one of us, though he would be seeing many of us along the way. Several teams of detectives would do the actual questioning, in different rooms of the museum. If we would all cooperate, we could be out of here in plenty of time for lunch. That’s what he said, but since it was now quarter past eleven, and statements were going to be taken from possibly forty people, I didn’t see how he planned to make it all work out. Though I guessed that the most important people—the museum directors, for instance—would be taken first, while the least important—graduate students and private guards—would be the ones to cool their heels the longest.

  Inspector Stanton finished at last, and climbed down from the bench with evident relief. He was followed by the detective teams, reading off lists of names and telling people what rooms they should go to. There were three pairs of detectives, each with a stenographer. The entire Allied group was to be questioned by Grinella and Hargerson, as it turned out, and they wanted us in a room on the se
cond floor.

  The room we were to wait in was “Advertising in the Fifties,” the place where I’d found the John Doe. We nine from Allied were joined there by two girl students; they took the only bench, and the rest of us stood in the middle of the room, talking together in low tones. I knew a few of the uniformed men, and was introduced to the rest. Tendler and Twain were Muller’s assistants on the Monday-Friday day shift. Daniels worked the weekend days, when the museum was closed, and O’Keefe worked the three nights that I had off. Finally, Edwards was there, he being my predecessor on the night shift.

  I was interested to meet Edwards, since if anyone from Allied was involved in the thefts, he would have been the one with the strongest opportunity, but one look at him convinced me he was innocent. A frail man in his early sixties, he had washed-out blue eyes, false teeth that clicked, and a mournful line of talk—mostly about his ailing wife and thoughtless children. The thoughtless children appeared to be men and women in their thirties, all of whom were living in California. In self-defense, no doubt.

  The interrogations were delayed by Goldrich, who went off to tell the detectives that he wanted to be present during all the questioning of Allied employees. The problem was referred to Inspector Stanton downstairs, who agreed to it, leaving only one more brief delay while a folding chair was found for Goldrich to sit in. After which Goldrich returned to us, because the girl students were to be talked to first.

  It all went quickly enough, once it got started. The girls took about three minutes each to give their statements, and departed giggling and bouncing down the stairs; I wondered if they’d been aware that they’d waited in the room where the body had been found.

  Grazko was next, followed by Muller and then the other two day men; all fast and efficient. Essentially, Inspector Stanton was mapping the territory this time through, not hoping for any great revelations this early in the game. A little later he would be coming back to individuals who interested him, then with more specific goals in mind for the interrogation.

  Daniels and O’Keefe went next, and now it was down to Edwards and me. We sat together on the bench, and Edwards whined on about his family. I’d turned him off some time before, reducing my responses to an occasional grunt or nod of the head.

  Inspector Stanton had stopped by a couple of times during the statement-taking, just walking through this room, spending a minute or so inside, and then coming back through and out again. While O’Keefe was still in there, Stanton appeared once more and went in.

  I was wondering if they were saving me for last, and if so, why. I supposed Hargerson wanted to say a few things to me unrelated to the problem of stolen cartoons. Under the circumstances, I didn’t know if Goldrich’s presence would be an asset or a liability.

  But they took me ahead of Edwards, after all. The room they were using was “Comic Strips Between the World Wars”; this is where I’d been when I’d first heard Linda knocking at the main door. It was a long narrow room, almost a hallway, and they had set up a folding table and several chairs at the end to the left. Grinella and Hargerson were behind the table, the male stenographer to one side, and Goldrich a bit apart and sideways so as to face the rest of the group. Inspector Stanton was leaning his back against the wall behind the detectives, watching with an abstracted manner, his arms folded over his chest.

  It was a simple run-through. They asked questions and I supplied answers: how long I’d worked here, what my hours were, what I knew of museum routine, who I had seen here and when. Neither John Doe nor the woman visitor was mentioned, nor was my own past until the very end, when Inspector Stanton suddenly said to the stenographer, “No need to copy this.”

  “Yes, sir.” He left pad and pen on the table, and leaned back in his chair.

  Stanton said to me, “You were on the force once yourself, Tobin.”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “I looked into your history.”

  I couldn’t help glancing at Hargerson, knowing he was the one who would have brought my history to Inspector Stanton’s attention. But Hargerson was busy scanning some notes he’d made, and so was Grinella.

  “Based on your history,” Stanton said, “I wouldn’t have much use for you. In fact, I was a bit surprised to see you’d been given a private investigator’s ticket. So I looked into it a little more, and it turns out you still have some friends on the force.”

  Did he consider that good or bad? It could go either way, and I couldn’t tell which it was from his expression. “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “They think well of you,” he said. “Further, they tell me you’ve been helpful once or twice in the last few years.”

  “A little,” I said.

  He gave a small smile. “On murder cases,” he said. “Do you feel helpful on this one?”

  The smile had told me he was on my side. I returned it, and said, “I’m afraid not, sir. Not this time.”

  Hargerson was now frowning at me. The tones of voice had communicated themselves to him, and he wasn’t happy.

  Stanton said, “Well, do keep your eyes open.”

  “I will,” I said.

  He nodded, dismissing me. “Thanks for your cooperation.”

  “Thank you, sir.” I didn’t look at Hargerson again, but got up and left the room. Edwards took my place, and I headed downstairs. I was free now until nine tonight, so I might as well go straight home.

  Heading for the front door, my eye was caught by another butt-can standing against the wall, and I suddenly realized I’d already had my third run-in with Maverick cigarettes. A crumpled pack in a wastebasket. The design of the pack had been familiar, but the lettering a little off, so that I hadn’t really noticed it, but still it had stuck in my mind. In a wastebasket in the workroom downstairs, next to a carton where old rags were kept.

  My hand was on the doorknob, but I didn’t go out. I could hear faint murmurings, interrogations still going on in various parts of the building. I pictured the workroom again, my mind full of that workroom now, with the small detail of the cigarette package in the wastebasket. What were the other details of the room?

  I turned to go back upstairs, and halfway up I met Inspector Stanton coming down. He looked at me with mild surprise, saying, “Forget something?”

  “I remembered something,” I said. “Do you have a minute?”

  He stopped. “Of course.”

  We stood across from one another on the stairs, and I said, “The other night, I was thinking about the body I found, and the trouble somebody went to in carrying it up these stairs. Why not just open the door and throw it in? Then I thought it might have been done by somebody with a key just to one door, and they wanted to leave a question as to which route was used coming in.”

  He looked thoughtful. “That’s possible,” he said.

  “But now I think he was murdered here,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “I’m not even sure.” The leap from cigarette packages would be very hard to explain. “I just think he was. He was killed with picture-hanging wire. I think it was done down in the workroom in the basement. There’s a concrete floor, so it could be cleaned up. There’s a sink in there, and a toilet behind a partition. There’s work clothes hanging on hooks, and I think John Doe’s clothes are with them. And his underwear in a rag carton down there. I don’t know what he did with the shoes.”

  Stanton rubbed a knuckle thoughtfully along his jaw. “You’re saying the murderer killed him in the basement, then stripped him, cleaned him up, washed the clothes, put them with work clothing, carried up the naked body, and put it on the second floor so we’d think it had been brought in from outside.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why clean him up?”

  “He can’t carry him dirty. Not and be sure he isn’t leaving some kind of trail. And there’d be smells. Down in the workroom he could mask the odors by spreading some of those chemicals around after he’d finished washing up.”

  “The question is, would the clothes still
be there.” Then he answered his own question, saying, “Yes, they probably are. The museum hasn’t been back to normal since the killing. First the inventory, and now the theft investigation.”

  “One thing more,” I said. “The other night I saw an empty pack of Canadian cigarettes in the wastebasket down there. That may be why he’s a John Doe, because he’s Canadian.”

  Stanton smiled at me. “There, you see,” he said. “You can be helpful, if you try.”

  7

  THE SHOES WERE INSIDE the trousers. The killer had tied the laces together and hung the shoes inside, one down each trouser leg with the laces across the crotch. Then he’d put the trousers on a hook in the workroom, along with the dead man’s shirt and zippered jacket. The socks were stuffed inside the shoes, and the underwear had been ripped into pieces and jumbled into the rag carton. All the pockets of trousers and shirt and jacket were empty.

  I learned all this twelve hours after my talk with Inspector Stanton. In the intervening time, I took the subway home, worked a bit on my wall, napped, ate two meals, talked with Kate, listened to Bill describe a rock band he and some friends were starting in which he was to be the drummer, and returned to the museum to report to work at the usual hour of nine o’clock.

  Muller was there, as always, plus a few students continuing the inventory. They all had the look of Crane people, but Crane himself wasn’t present; another young man was in charge, and in a strange way he combined elements of both Crane and Ramsey in his makeup. He was dressed in the Crane manner and used similar slang in his speech, but his style was pedantic and fussy and impatient, very much like Ramsey. He came over to the door where Muller and I were chatting, a minute or two after my arrival, and said without preamble to Muller, “We’ll be staying awhile. No point waiting.”

  “Good enough,” Muller said, and walked on down toward the office to get his lunchbox.

  The young man looked at me. “You’re Mr. Tobin, aren’t you?”