Lullaby of Murder (9 page)

“That’s what it seemed like to me,” Alice said, somewhat flustered as though she had finked on Julie. “I could be wrong.”

“And you could be right,” Julie snapped. Then, to the detective: “I felt there might be some political maneuvering behind the Garden of Roses lease to Butts.”

“I’d have thought that would interest someone like Alexander,” Marks said, leading the witness.

Julie leaped ahead rather than seem to fall into a trap. “I hoped it would, but I should have researched it better. Instead, I went to a quick source that may have angered Tony—my going to him instead of doing my own homework.”

“May we know who you went to?” Marks asked blandly.

Julie hesitated, remembering her promise to Romano that her source was sacred, a promise given, however, outside the context of Tony’s death. Before, answering she turned to Alice: “Did you feel that Tony knew where I’d got my information? Not information. My questions?”

“Yes.”

Tim blew everything open. “For God’s sake, Julie, even I knew it had to be Sweets Romano.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Julie said.

“I mean who else do you know who has a handle on everything including West Side real estate?”

Julie nodded and glanced at Marks. “You know who Romano is?”

“Oh, yes,” Marks said, very dry. “I don’t know what we’d do in our business without him.”

“I have this crazy kind of rapport with him that I don’t really understand myself.”

“No need to explain. We all need our informants.”

Julie knew better than to offer further explanation. Besides, there wasn’t any. “Lieutenant, could we find out if Morton Butts was at the Gracie Mansion party. In the interview he said he expected the mayor to attend the opening of the dance marathon. I thought he was kidding. Now I wonder.”

“We already know that he was there,” Marks said. “What we’d better find out now is on whose invitation. I doubt, from your description of him, that it came directly from the mayor.”

“The trouble is I’m beginning to doubt my description of him.”

Marks phoned the mayor’s office and spoke to someone called Maggie.

They were finishing their hamburgers when Marks got a call he expected to be from Maggie. It was not. From his responses Julie deduced that it was from his boss. Alice gathered the napkins and paper cups. Tim was composing something in longhand.

Marks sat a moment thinking after he hung up the phone. Then he dialed his own headquarters and asked if Herring had come on duty yet. Apparently not. “Who’s in?” he asked, and from the names mentioned chose a detective called Tomasino and asked that he meet him at a Park Avenue address Julie recognized as the Alexanders’.

Marks turned off the tape recorder and pocketed the tape.

“What about your call to the mayor’s office?” Julie asked.

“She knows where to leave a message for me.”

He was going out the door when Julie said, “Thanks for the hamburgers, Lieutenant.”

He looked back and grinned. “My pleasure. Her name is Maggie Taylor. Tell her I said she could give you the message. It might work. If it does, we’ll call it a
quid pro quo,
shall we?”

“Okay,” Julie said, but she wondered: for favors past or in the future?

W
HEN MARKS LEFT THEM
Julie told Alice what had taken place in Hastings’ office. She said she wasn’t sure the column could afford a secretary after the first of the month.

“I don’t want to work for just anybody,” Alice said.

“‘Just anybody’ might turn out to be a good guy,” Tim said.

“Alice,” Julie said, “was Tony a good guy?”

“How do you mean?”

She cast about in her mind for a way to illustrate. “If he was your father, would you have been proud of him?”

“I often did think of him as my father, and I was more afraid of him than anything else.”

“That makes two of us.”

“Three,” Tim said.

Alice folded her hands over the borrowed typewriter. “I suppose a lot of people would say he was not a good person. He was suspicious of everybody. When something humane or philanthropic about a person came in, he would say, ‘Let’s find out why they’re doing it. What’s in it for them?’”

“She’s right,” Tim said. “Tony didn’t trust success, even his own. He just worshipped it—like one of those ancient gods or goddesses you had to keep paying tribute to…or else.” He drew his finger across his throat.

“You knew him better than any of us, Alice. What went wrong with him lately that turned him so mean?”

“He wasn’t mean with me,” she said. A clam.

“Then why were you scared of him?”

“Because I was scared of my own father when he was alive.”

Julie saw no point in going round and round on that one. She turned to Tim and said, with an edge: “The same Turkish bath. The Tripod: what does that mean?”

“Three. Where they’re not a crowd,” Tim said.

“Oh.”

“It’s better than Eighth Avenue, sweetheart.”

“Okay.”

“You asked.”

“Oh, damn it, I know I did.”

Alice said, “Not lately. I mean Tony wasn’t there lately.”

“How can you be sure?” Julie asked.

“I just am.”

Tim said, “I don’t know which of you is more naive.”

“Me,” Julie said.

“It means he was getting what he wanted somewhere else,” Tim said.

And still Alice sat, almost prim, tight-lipped.

“I’m beginning to get the picture,” Julie said. What she was wondering was if Jeff knew about the Tripod, and if he did, what?

“Julie, if you don’t find out what happened to Tony—or if the police don’t solve this murder soon, do you think Hastings will fold the column?”

“I think it will depend on the column. You’ve got to believe that, Tim.”

Did she believe it herself? Yes, deep down. They were on sufferance, and what Hastings was looking for most was an immediate investigative job—in which pursuit Julie had some small credit—and the sensational copy it might spark. Tony’s death shouldn’t be a total loss. Or, more kindly, the
Daily,
like every tabloid, needed all the hype it could get.

THEY BEGAN THEIR FIRST
collaborative column with the lead: “Tony Alexander died at his desk Friday night.” They pasted up three columns from copy Tony had cleared for future use. Julie wrote again as best she remembered it her piece on Butts and the dance marathon, not to use, but to have approximately as Tony had read it. She cringed at the opening. It triggered a replay of Tony reading the whole damn thing aloud. Hard on the ego, not so bad for the memory.

“Julie…” There was a confessional tone to Tim’s voice. She looked around. “I picked up a cute item on one of the kids in
Murder Money.
He used to be a jockey only he started growing again at the age of twenty. It ruined his career on a horse. Okay with you to run it?”

“Why? I’m not saying not to. I’m just saying ask yourself why. Is it good for the column or a personal favor?”

“Shit,” Tim said. Then, “You’re right, but don’t go being right all the time.”

The call came from the mayor’s office: “Maggie Taylor for Lieutenant Marks, please.” A strong feminine voice.

Julie, identifying herself, persuaded her that Marks intended to share the information.

Maggie Taylor thought it over for a second. Then: “The subject attended the party with Councilman Daniel McCord who first cleared it with the mayor’s secretary.”

Julie repeated the name as she wrote it. “McCord’s famous for something, isn’t he?”

“He’s the organizer of ‘Save the family, save the neighborhood, save the city.’”

“Is Morningside Heights and environs one of the neighborhoods he wants to save?”

“That’s his district.”

“I ought to be able to find him in the phone book,” Julie said. “Thank you very much…”

Mrs. Taylor interjected, “It’s Daniel Matthew McCord. They’ve nicknamed him Damn McCord in the chamber. I don’t know the address, but he owns a bicycle shop on Amsterdam Avenue.”

“Thank you,” Julie said again. “I’ll pass the information on to Lieutenant Marks.”

“So will I,” Mrs. Taylor said.

When Julie hung up the phone Alice Arthur said, “I wish I could stay on with the column.”

“One day at a time, but let’s work on it.”

On her way out Julie stopped at the
Daily
library and looked up
Lollopaloozer
, the musical Jeff had heard Tony demanding opening night tickets for. The newsprint had started to crumble before they got it on microfilm, but she made out that it opened nineteen years ago in November and that Michael Dorfman was the producer. If Jay Phillips handled the publicity, Jeff was right: he was the one Tony had talked tough to. And he had got the tickets: a paragraph in the next day’s column began, “In our fifth row seats at the opening of
Lollopaloozer
we could hardly see the stage for the stars in our eyes…”

And he had gagged on “I never promised you a rose garden.”

J
ULIE TOOK THE LEXINGTON
Avenue subway uptown and walked from the Eighty-sixth Street stop to Murray’s Funeral Home. Be it ever so humble it was a busy place, getting everybody underground before the Sunday layoff. She persuaded the person on office duty to let her belatedly sign the Phillips memorial book. It was about to be packaged with other mementos for the Phillips sisters. Julie’s hunch paid off: D. M. McCord and M. Butts had both attended the viewing. They had signed in early—Butts’ signature looking like a series of M’s with a line through. They could have walked from Murray’s to Gracie Mansion. Julie thought about signing a false name, but she didn’t. She paid respect.

Afterwards she took the crosstown bus through Central Park and walked up Amsterdam Avenue. She passed the Garden of Roses, closed up tight as a drum. No registration going on, no renovations. But then it was Saturday as well as the day after Tony Alexander’s murder.

SHE WAITED FOR MCCORD
to finish with a customer who wanted an old-fashioned bicycle, one you could brake by standing up on the pedals. McCord’s son, a sandy-haired boy who bore a strong resemblance to his father, drew the grille across the entryway. It was getting on toward six and a lot of other merchants on the street were doing the same thing. McCord promised to call the customer if the kind of bike he wanted came his way. He walked the man to the door and turned to Julie.

“Yes, ma’am. What can I do for you?” His very blue eyes were friendly, curious. You could tell he liked people.

“I’m not sure,” Julie said, explaining who she was and why she was there. “I’d like to run a piece on Mr. Butts and the dance marathon, but I wanted to check with you first.”

McCord bade his son lock up and sweep the front of the store. He took Julie to the back room where they could sit down. He gave her the desk chair and settled himself astride a two-step ladder. “Now. How did you get to me?”

“I saw both your names in the book at the funeral parlor and I know you went to the mayor’s birthday party together.”

“But why check with me instead of Butts himself?”

“I’m curious to know how he managed to lease the property from the city.”

“And he refuses to tell you?”

She could feel herself slipping into a defensive position, those righteous eyes of his seeking truth. “I haven’t asked him. It didn’t occur to me at the time of the interview and I haven’t been able to reach him since.”

“You don’t trust him, is that it?”

“I’m not saying that exactly. I just didn’t think he was for real, to tell the truth. But when I found out Jay Phillips was doing his publicity, it put a different light on things.”

“I begin to see—or am I wrong? You’re trying to find out if there’s a connection between Jay’s suicide and Butts’ deal with the city for the Garden of Roses.”

“You’re dead wrong, sir. Such an idea never crossed my mind. What I’m most interested in are the deaths of two men who didn’t like one another—Tony Alexander
and
Jay Phillips. Is there a connection in their deaths? I don’t know, but I’d like to find out. And whether Mr. Butts comes into the picture at all, I don’t know. But I’m trying to find that out too. And we will run something in the column about his dance marathon if it comes off, but I would like to know more about the real estate deal first.”

“Fair enough,” McCord said, Julie having met his challenge. “I think I can clarify that for you. Whether you want to blow it up into some sort of scandal is your business. From what I’ve read in
Tony Alexander Says
…I think that’s what he might have done with it. A little distortion of facts never troubled a gossip monger. Sorry if that offends you.”

Julie shrugged.

“You see, I don’t think there’s a dishonest buck in the whole deal. And it started in my back yard. My folks and the Phillips family have been friends since before I was born. We all belong to the same parish. My mother and Miss Eileen and Mary Jean went to parochial school together over fifty years ago. I attended Jay’s wake on behalf of my mother who’s laid up with a broken hip. And while I was there the sisters asked me if I could get Mr. Butts next to Mayor Bracken, that Jay had promised him. I wasn’t going to get a better opportunity than right then, so I took him along with me to the mayor’s birthday party. The fact is I was already pretty well acquainted with Mr. Butts. About six months ago Jay came into the shop here and asked if I could do anything about getting a friend of his a long lease on the Garden of Roses. I looked into the matter. The property belongs to the city and the building was condemned, about to be torn down. But in the meantime, the University was stirring around to get the best deal possible on it.”

The bus garage idea was apparently before his time, thought Julie. Otherwise what he was saying jibed with the information Romano had given her.

“Now you may not know it, ma’am, but it’s my philosophic belief and my geographic cure for some of the ills of the city that we can save it by saving the neighborhoods, and I’m by no means convinced that having chunks of city real estate gobbled up by the university complex is going to save the neighborhood for the people who live there. I’m an advocate of the small, privately owned business that services its own community. And I had a feeling that Mr. Butts might come up with something enterprising, and the very least that could happen, I figured, was he’d hold the property in place, you might say, till we see what happens to that wasteland to the east of it.