Authors: Michael Mayo
The outer office was bigger and tonier than Maranzano's, with chairs in a waiting area separated from a couple of secretary desks by a waist-high railing. There were three doors behind the desks, one of them open double doors leading to a hallway. I was the only person in the place, but a man's overcoat had been tossed over the divider, and there was a small suitcase on the floor next to it.
The Wilcox Foundation was one of those antivice, good deeds groups that popped up every few years or so to make the city a better place to live. As far as I knew, it was one of the few that most normal people didn't hate. While the Committee of Fourteen and the Citizens Union and those guys were trying to stamp out sin wherever they could find it, the Wilcox Foundation was meant to help the women and girls who got caught up in the Magistrate's Court business, no questions asked. After the Seabury Commission got that settled, you didn't see the foundation mentioned in the papers anymore, but it still had a couple of places downtown where dames who were in a bad way could get three hots and a cot.
That Friday, the office had an unused empty feeling and I wondered if anybody was still working there. Wondered why the door was unlocked, too. I stood there without doing anything for a full minute or so, long enough to decide that I was probably alone in the place. Or if there was anybody else there, he wasn't making any noise. I didn't either.
Moving quietly, I went past the desks and into the hallway. It had been cool in the outer office, and it got colder the farther I went from it. There were unmarked offices on either side. I tried each door and found them locked until I got to the end. The door on the right was open. It was labeled
peter wilcox.
I pushed it the rest of the way open and went inside. It was too dark to see anything until I found the lights. The office was nothing special: an average-size wooden desk and nice big rolling leather chair, telephone, shelves partway filled with notebooks and manila folders, a few framed photographs on the wall of Peter Wilcox and city officials. I recognized him from the papers. He looked a lot like Theodore Roosevelt with a thick neck, lantern jaw, bulky upper body and bottlebrush mustache. He didn't smile much in the pictures in the paper, or on his wall.
He was one of those guys, you saw his name in the papers all the time in stories about reforming city government and eliminating corruption, but never in the headlines. He'd be down a few paragraphs.
I turned to the doors on the other side of the hall. That was the conference room where Daphne and Apollinaire met his partner, who figured to be Peter Wilcox. It was a long carpeted walnut-paneled room with four tall narrow windows on one side and a table in the center with two rows of green shaded banker's lights. There were chairs on both sides and a high-backed chair at the end where I guessed the big cheese would sit when they conferred.
I was trying out the high-backed chair when I heard a door open and voices in the outer office. I guess I should've thought about making myself scarce but, hell, I hadn't done anything. Just to be safe, I took out the Banker's Special and put it on my lap and slipped the knucks on my right hand. All I could see at first was the light I'd left on in Wilcox's office across the hall.
The voices got louder. The only words I could make out were, “This way.”
I heard the sounds of something bumping into furniture and a bleating animal cry. I thought it was a sheep, but what the hell did I know from sheep? There were curses and more banging and bumping until two men and an animal staggered into the light. I still couldn't make out what it was, but it was about knee height to the men and it didn't want to be there. They had a rope around its neck, and it took both of them to drag it to the door. It balked and they struggled until one guy got behind and pushed while the other yanked on the rope and they got it through the doorway and into the office. When they got into the light, I could tell that it was the two idiots, the kid with the pistol and bad hair and the older guy, the vice cop that knew Fat Joe. What was his name? Trodache? His face was still red from the coffee I threw at him.
They were followed by a man in a suit. I only got a look at his profile and saw that he was a young fellow with round glasses, a downy mustache. Not tall, not short, smoking a cigarette. He had the overcoat tucked under his arm, and he was carrying the suitcase. Once the two guys had the animal in the office, he followed them in and shut the door. After that, they had a lot to say to each other but I couldn't understand any of it and the animal quieted down. All I could see was the line of light under the door.
I got up and walked back down the long table to the door. Along the way, I cocked the .38. The office door opened outward. I figured I could get close enough to hear and they might not see me behind it when they left. And if they did see me and object, I could shoot them. Or, if I had time, I could duck back in the conference room.
When I got to the door, I heard two of them arguing. It was Trodache, with the whispery voice, and the young guy who, I guessed, was the boss, the one I saw with the big Olds the night before. I couldn't make out what Trodache was saying, but I could tell he was asking for something. The other man had a crisp, educated accent, easy to understand. “Don't worry,” he said, “They're going to pay. Six thousand means nothing. And if they don't, it doesn't matter. We'll go back to the original arrangement, but this will be better. And remember, we've got to take a look at the other place before you call them tonight.”
Trodache and the kid said things I couldn't get and the boss answered, “No, he won't be back until Sunday at the earliest and this is for me to worry about, it's not your concern. Go on. You know what you've got to do. I'll meet you at six.”
I stepped back into the conference room. Moments later, the two idiots came out, and the door slammed fast behind them, like the other man had pushed them out. As they walked away, the kid said, “This is so fucking screwy I don't believe it.”
The older guy croaked, “Think about the money,” and they left. I heard the frosted glass door close.
For several seconds after that, I couldn't tell what the hell was happening on the other side of Wilcox's office door. It was completely quiet for a long time, then I heard bleats and moans and squeals and groans and grunts and a lot more banging around, much more violent than it had sounded coming in. The pace and intensity got quicker and more excited, and the bleating rose to sound like a terrified scream. It was almost human in its fear, but I knew it was the animal. The frightened sound seemed to go on for hours, but it couldn't have been more than minutes, long painful minutes, with more loud thumps of things being knocked over.
It ended with a long screech and a tearing sound and a satisfied moan that was human. Definitely human. Then the smell hit me. I knew it right away from the slaughterhouses down on Gansevoort Street.
I also knew that whatever happened next was going to be bloody, and I tried to clamp down on my shallow breathing and racing heartbeat.
Be cool
, I told myself.
Don't hurry, don't hesitate
. I made sure my finger was outside the trigger guard. Again, silent seconds stretched out until the door swung open and the third man stood there, his back to me, looking into the office. He wore a brown tweed suit. I could only see the collar of the suit until he took off the overcoat, and folded it carefully, keeping the blood-smeared front away from his hands and clothes. He put the coat in the suitcase, then took off the gloves I hadn't noticed, and put them in the suitcase, too, and snapped it shut.
The smell of blood and shit and offal was rank.
I couldn't see past the man into the office. His breathing still sounded as ragged as mine had been. He took time to straighten his tie, adjust his cuffs, and smooth his hair back with his hands. He picked up the suitcase, reached in to turn off the lights, closed the door, and left.
A few seconds later, I heard the frosted glass door shut again. I eased the hammer down on the pistol and forced myself to open the office door and turn on the lights.
It was a goat, not a sheep, with curled horns. It was hanging upside down on the leather chair. The guy had tied the rope around the animal's back legs and pinned the rope with a knife driven into the top of the chair. He'd killed it by cutting the throat and slashing it open from stomach to sternum. Another blood-streaked knife was buried in the middle of the desk. The guts and other messy stuff were smeared around the second knife.
Scrawled large in blood on the wall were the words
BROTHER BEAST
.
The smell alone was enough to make me dizzy. I wanted to scram out of there fast but settled down and strolled out like a guy who wasn't in a hurry.
Back when we killed Maranzano, it took four guys with knives and guns to finish him off, and even then, it wasn't easy, the old man put up a hell of a fight. I didn't see the body, but I saw the photographs. It was pretty bad. The goat got it worse.
After the business with Miss Wray saying her husband knew me, and Daphne saying that this Apollinaire knew me, the slaughter of the goat meant I was in the middle of something I'd never seen before, and it scared me worse than anything ever had.
Chapter Twelve
So what do I tell Miss Wray and the RKO guys? That's what I was thinking as I settled behind my desk in the office. It was getting close to five o'clock by then, and the Democrats were making an early start of it. The bar was jumping. If it got much busier, as it tended to on Friday, we'd need extra help. I was reaching for the phone to call the kitchen when the thing rang. It was Grossner, the RKO lawyer. He sounded honked off.
“I've just learned that you've been in contact with the extortionists. Why didn't you tell us?”
“I had other things to do. Have they called? You decide to pay 'em?”
“No, and I can't say that I care for your attitude. We're not paying you toâ”
“You haven't paid me anything yet. After you do, you can give me orders and I might listen to you, but don't count on it. For the moment, I'm working for Miss Wray. Take it up with her.”
He backed off right away and said perhaps he'd been too hasty. “We all want Miss Wray to be happy. I understand that, and even though we haven't agreed to their demands, we do have the money ready. Since they sent the book and the demand to the Pierre, we assume they'll call here. You should be here, too.”
I said I'd be there in half an hour and told him to have them send up a corned beef sandwich.
That got him honked off again and he sputtered, “I'm not going to order a sandwich for you.”
“Okay,” I said, “then make it an hour” and hung up.
Vittorio's guys didn't have any corned beef, but there was some steak left over from lunch. They put some horseradish on the bread, too.
When I finished, I went downstairs. They were two deep at the bar, all the booths were filled and most of the tables. I went to the back corner of the bar and motioned Connie over. We had to lean close to hear each other.
I said, “It was an interesting afternoon. Daphne had a lot to say. I'll tell you all about it when we can talk, but the important thing is that it looks like the picture book is advertising for a stag movie based on
King Kong
.”
That surprised her. “I never heard of such a thing. How could they do that?”
“Search me. But I might have a line on the guy who made the picture. Could be that he lives at the Chelsea, one floor above you.”
That really surprised her. “You're kidding.”
“If I'm lyin', I'm dyin'. Now they want me to go back to Miss Wray's hotel. If those guys who were in here last night call, they'll want their money tonight. Sounds like the studio is willing to pay up, so I might be busy. But I'll try to get back early, and maybe we can pay a visit to this guy. Daphne said his name is Oscar Apollinaire. And she said he knows me. That I can't figure at all. The name mean anything to you?”
“No,” she said, “but I can ask Nelson.”
“Nelson?”
“The elevator operator. He knows everybody in the building. Want me to call him?”
“No, ask him when we wake him up.”
There was no sign of the Olds on the taxi ride up to the Pierre.
Miss Wray's suite was still lousy with flowers. It looked like more had arrived since I was there last night. One table had been cleared, and right in the middle of it, she'd put one white rose. The card leaning on the pot read
congratulations! see you soon, cary.
Miss Wray looked terrific. She was dolled up in a long dress made of heavy blue silk with some kind of pattern woven into it, and a necklace with a diamond that would fill a shot glass. She was still pacing the room, and she'd switched from champagne to tea.
Detective Ellis was getting chummy with Grossner and Sleave in a far corner of the room. The lawyers were decked out in white ties and tails. Grossner got up as soon as he saw me. A fourth guy in a regular suit sat at a desk beside them. He was scribbling serial numbers from a stack of bills. He wasn't paying much attention to that, because all the time we were talking, he was turning to listen to us.
Grossner strode over and said, tugging at his coat, “All right, Quinn, what have you learned?”
I took off my topcoat and hat and went to the bar to pour myself a brandy. Then I said, “Miss Wray, do you want everybody to know this, or do you want to talk it over in private, just you and me?”
Grossner and Sleave started to say something until she held up a hand. “Go ahead,” she said and gave me a wink they couldn't see. “I trust your discretion.”
“It looks like the guys behind this are an ex-vice cop named Trodache and a kid. I don't know his name. Ellis, do you know Trodache?”
He shook his head, and his quick scowl told you everything you needed to know about his opinion of vice cops. I asked the lawyers if the name meant anything to them and they said no.