Death of an Old Sinner (15 page)

“Not a care in the world, I’d say. Looked all around. Inquired what I fed the parakeet.”

Tully noticed the bird for the first time. It would be a safe conjecture then, that the General’s mistress was mistress also to a parakeet. Nothing at all so far indicated her a woman capable of violence.

“How much was the ticket? Have you got that on the books?”

The big man heaved himself up and went to his ledger. He found the page and ran a pudgy finger along the entries. “Forty-three dollars and fifty cents—including interest.” He closed the ledger. “And I tell you what she paid it out of—a hundred dollar bill.”

That was no great surprise. It merely toted up the General’s pocket money to a thousand dollars. “Anything else you remember about her?”

“She asked me if the bird talked. I said I wouldn’t have a bird around which talked, meaning it double, you see. She caught on. She gave me a kind of wink. Real soft and southern lady, she was. ‘Mine always says the proper thing,’ she said, and going out she said: ‘good evenin’.”

It was downright disgusting to see this hunk of a man go mushy talking about a woman, Tully thought. He thanked him for his cooperation and clapped his hat on.

“Good evenin’,” the big one called after him in a mock southern accent. Tully looked back from the door. The pawnbroker was churning with laughter.

Something, nothing. Something, nothing. The words kept time with his footfalls. He took a cab back to the office, and there, called up for the tracer on the license number Helene Joyce had got at the funeral.

“Sorry, Tully. Somebody goofed on you. There’s no such number issued by the state.”

Tully sat back and thought about that. Mrs. Joyce was a competent woman. But this was the second license number taken in this business that might have had great relevance: a drunk had memorized the license on the black limousine that took The Rock on his last mile, and there was no such number. Somebody was using plates of his own manufacture for these special occasions. And then there was the round-faced gentleman with the fading sunburn: he had put the finger on the General outside Minnie’s that night, saying he was Johnny Rocco. He drove the limousine in which a fair blonde lady attended the General’s funeral. Maybe they wouldn’t add up yet, but you could count ʼem: one, two, three.

Jasper Tully enjoyed his dinner.

I
T WAS A STRANGE
, empty house, the Jarvis home in Nyack, full of clutter and petty chores. They were all her duty, Mrs. Norris said, but she heaved a great sigh of regret when Jimmie and Helene drove off to the city early in the morning. At the gate they turned back, and Mrs. Norris retreated in haste from the window not to be caught at it.

“Mrs. Joyce would be pleased to have you stay over tonight, if you don’t mind a small room,” Jimmie said from the door.

“Thank her very much,” Mrs. Norris said, “If my obligations permit it, I’d be obliged.”

It made the morning of tedious chores tolerable, and the truth was that she would have been glad to squeeze into a mousehole to spend the night in the city. She talked to the painter who wanted far too much money to redo the General’s rooms, and God knew, they needed redoing. The painter knew it, too, which was why he was standing by his price. She began sorting the household bills which she was in the habit of going over before giving to Jimmie to pay. The phone bill puzzled her—not that this was unusual—but there were two calls listed to her sister’s exchange in Brooklyn on the same day, March fourteenth, the day before she had ridden in with the General. She could remember the call to Mag to see if she would be home. Well, the Nyack telephone company was not the most reliable in the world. It was one of the last stands of the old-fashioned system, depending more on the human element…and they were all very human, the Nyack operators.

Again the feeling of having been over an identical conversation! She picked up the phone and asked for the supervisor, watching the while as the gardener trudged into the house and over the kitchen floor with his muddy boots. He would not do that in his own house, she’d wager. “Do you have to come in in your shoes?” she cried, covering the phone.

“Would you have me come in on my head?”

“Oh, very clever. There’s a mop in the pail by the sink and you can just wipe the floor after yourself going out.”

The man clapped his hat on his head. “I found these all over the place by the east beds,” he said, and flung a handful of muddy, rusting pen nibs on the table before her.

“What do I want with them?”

He was forever complaining of the things people threw in his garden beds; cigarettes and matches, nails and buttons always seemed to be turning up there. Ordinarily she had a measure of sympathy with him, but this morning his trail of mud over the floor and the smear of it on her polished table set her near to screaming: “Get them out of here, Mr. Turpel, do you hear me!”

“Yes, madam.” That was the Nyack supervisor. “Can I help you?”

“You can indeed,” Mrs. Norris said, her wrath now compounded. “Whoever was making out the bill to Mr. James Ransom Jarvis was seeing double again, and it’s not the first time. We are billed for two calls to Esplanade exchange, Brooklyn. Now it’s my own sister who lives there and it was myself that made the call…”

“One moment, please….”

Mrs. Norris waited and watched.

The gardener brushed the fistful of mud into his pocket; he grabbed the mop and without wringing it out dragged it over the bricks after him to the door where he left it in a puddle of its own making and slammed the door behind him.

“Are you sure, madam, there was but one call?”

“I am a careful woman with money, miss, and I would not make two calls where one would do.”

“Very well, madam, we shall make the adjustment.”

“Thank you very much.” She then debated calling the Robinsons to inquire after her sister and say she would be over in the morning. She decided against it. This time she would surprise them. If Mag were only a little sick, she would be glad to see her; if she was very ill, she wouldn’t care, and so far as Mr. Robinson was concerned, Mrs. Norris didn’t care.

J
IMMIE READ THE ITEM
in Lem Python’s column twice:

“…One thing sure, if a certain young bachelor about town is elected governor it shouldn’t hurt our relations with Great Britain. Things already seem to have been très intime with a branch of the royal household. Been that is, as in bean, old bean in fact…”

He made himself walk slowly out to the hall to the old-fashioned water-cooler and drink a cupful of water in the hope it would cool his temper. A remarkable thing had happened that morning when he entered the office: the senior partners had come to see him, to shake his hand. Nor was it all sympathy. With his father’s passing, they looked upon him in a new capacity. He was now the head of an old family, the last survivor of the direct line, two hundred years American. No small responsibility, the honor of such a family, and now it was all his. They expected big things of him, Johnson, Wiggam and Jarvis did, and if he were not successful in his candidacy for governor, it would make no difference to them—so long as he conducted a dignified campaign.

Lem Python’s column was just the place to establish dignity. So it was out, wherever it came from. His wartime escapade had been well observed by some camera eye. Madeline Barker’s? He could think of no other. He was tempted to call her and blast her from there to the United Kingdom. He did not get the chance: she was waiting outside his office for him when he returned, and she was carrying a copy of
The Standard
, open to “The Python Pit.”

Without a word they went to a conference room—the partners did not approve women in the private offices—and Madeline spread the newspaper on the table.

She was very formal. “We are going to have to go into this, Mr. Jarvis.”

“I should think we are,” said Jimmie. “You might at least have put it in good English for him.”

“You think
I
gave it to him, Jimmie?”

“That had crossed my mind, Madeline. You’ve fed him before—to your own purpose, haven’t you?”

“Of course.”

Jimmie folded his arms. “Tell me, Madeline—from the shoulder—what do you think of me as a candidate?”

“From the shoulder—I think we could have done better.” She looked him straight in the eyes, saying it.

It might have come from the shoulder, but Jimmie felt it in the pit of his stomach. “To what ends would you go to see me disqualified before the convention?”

“If this item in Python’s column is true, I don’t think I shall have to go very far, Jimmie.”

“A trial balloon—is that it?”

A quiver of anger ran through her penciled brows. “Do you have two phones on one line here?”

Jimmie brought them from the cupboard and plugged them in.

“I shall try to get him on the phone, and I want you to listen.” She gave the switchboard operator an unlisted phone number, and in immediate return, over the sound of dialing got part of a conversation: “So I says to him it looks like a clotheshanger, and he says to me: go to…” The circuit was closed. A moment later Python himself answered.

“Lem, this is Madeline Barker. Where did you get the story?”

“What’s the matter, honey? Your personality boy threatening to sue? Let him.”

“This is important to me, Lem.”

“Don’t you think it’s worth something to ole Lem Python? A scoop is a scoop, baby. I crawl for ʼem, remember?”

“Confidentially, Lem,” she pleaded.

“Baby…come around some time when you’re on one side or the other. You’re getting a little too old to do the splits in public.”

Jimmie heard the phone click and cradled his own. Madeline put the receiver slowly into place. It was a good act, Jimmie thought—if it was an act. “What did all that mean?” he asked.

“It means that Lem Python is a foul-mouthed, double-dealing bastard,” she said, with shocking directness. She moved to the window overlooking Trinity Churchyard.

“Can I go back to the headquarters and say you deny the whole thing, Jimmie?”

“You cannot. You and headquarters can ignore it as I intend to do.”

“You can’t ignore him, Jimmie!”

“Maybe you can’t…I can.”

Suddenly Miss Barker was in tears. Jimmie had to go to her. It was the only thing a gentleman could do, pat her on the shoulder, make soothing noises. Someone had called tears a woman’s last line of defense, he thought. It was his own opinion that it was her best offense.

“Oh, Jimmie,” she wailed, “it’s so peaceful down there.”

All that was down there that was peaceful was the cemetery, with the downtown traffic thundering by it.

“Too noisy,” Jimmie said.

She looked at him, drying some not very wet tears. “You are an enigma,” she said.

“An enigma and an egghead,” he mused aloud. “I don’t really think my name will ever reach the convention.”

“Not unless you deny that story…”

Jimmie shook his head.

“Then let’s work out some way between us of avoiding a direct answer.”

“Why?”

“You can’t ignore it, Jimmie.”

“I can.”

“Stop being so damned superior!”

This was a very interesting development, Jimmie thought, watching her expose the raw edges of her temper. “Superior to whom, Madeline? To Python? I think I am. But then at the moment, I can’t think of anyone inferior to him.”

“I can,” Madeline said, “if murder is worse than scandal. Right now, James Jarvis, I could murder you myself.”

Jimmie was about to make a mistake and he knew it, but he plunged ahead as though fate had ordained it. “You have intimated a couple of times, my dear, some highly personal observations of my private life. I think the time has come for you to tell the truth and shame Lem Python, shall we say?”

She sat down and crossed a lovely pair of legs. “No lady could do that, Jimmie. What I will do though—you have my word that any confidence you give me will be respected.”

“By whom?” Jimmie said. She was too damn eager.

“You are becoming a vast bore with your petty secrets, and your late carnivorous father. Be a man again, Jimmie. Speak up. There is no disgrace in having been one.”

Jimmie strode across the room, glimpsing the half-open door, and marking that no one was visible from the angle at which he reached Madeline. He caught her chin beneath his thumb and forefinger, practically lifting her bodily from the chair by it; he kissed her full and hard upon the mouth, and then dropped her.

“You don’t know a blasted thing about me, Miss Barker,” he said then.

“Nothing except what you have taught me this moment, Mr. Jarvis.”

That, he thought, was the truth. Conscience was no guide whatsoever in his case. “Yes?” he said, for she was looking pensive.

“Would you like to know something Lem taught me in one of his gentler moments? Always act as though you know something. Nine times out of ten you’ll flush a skeleton.”

“That does sound like one of his gentler moments,” Jimmie said.

He took her to the elevator. To a problem which might very well prove legal he had used an approach that the partners would certainly disapprove. But they had a lifetime, nay, generations, and he had less than a month before the state convention.

T
ULLY’S CALL FOR INFORMATION
had gone out to all the cab companies, and to the garages where most of the privately owned taxis were serviced.

By Tuesday noon he had two responses. He had the men come in ten minutes apart. The first driver accounted picking up the General on Third Avenue and Fifty-fifth Street, Thursday night last at ten-thirty.

“Kind of breathy, you know, pantin’, the old man was,” the cabbie summed up his impression. “Said somethin’ about not bein’ able to take excitement anymore. Oh, and he asked me if I was married. ‘Sure,’ I says, ‘six kids.’ ‘Ah-hah,’ he says, ‘that’s how to keep ʼem in their place. Give ʼem plenty of kids to tie ʼem down.’ So I says, ‘It don’t give me much freedom neither, six kids.’ ‘True,’ he says. ‘All too true.’ Then after a while, maybe Forty-second Street and Fourth, he leans up to ask me something like: did I ever want to be a cad. I didn’t understand him, a cad. Who says a cad in this country? So I says: ‘A what?’ ‘A sonofabitch,’ he says. ‘Oh, sure,’ I says, ‘but it don’t do me no good, tryin’ to be. When I don’t try I do fine at it.’ ” The cabbie shrugged. “He just laughed. Good-natured old guy.”