Slow Burn (6 page)

I
DECIDED
to mourn the early death of my only lead alone. It was just after five-fifteen when I left Bixby at Lefty’s and started my long, lonely walk back to the station house. The sky was just beginning to brighten, but it was already as humid as noontime. Cabs were hard to come by, and I didn’t have enough money to pay for one anyway. Sure, I could’ve badged a cabbie and made him take me there for free, but that wouldn’t have been fair. Cabbies needed to eat, too. Besides, I only had a little more than a couple of hours until my shift ended at eight.

Normally I’d be dreaming up ways to kill time until my replacements arrived. But that morning, going home was the last thing on my mind. Silas Van Dorn was all I could think about. Resting in peace. Silas Van Dorn, Bixby had told me, had died yesterday morning at the family’s Hamptons vacation home from a bad heart. More than ninety miles away, around the time he’d supposedly gotten a room at The Chauncey Arms. I laughed at myself as I walked along. Boy, it didn’t take long for my theory to fall apart, did it? Nice try, Charlie, but you were hunting a dead man all along.

Now I’d never have the chance to ask Van Dorn why someone might’ve used his name to rent that room. Hell, there wasn’t even any mystery to it any more. The killer must’ve seen Van Dorn’s name in the paper and decided to use it. The killer…

I stopped dead in my tracks. A man bumped into me from behind and called me a goddamned fool for stopping in the middle of the street like that. But I barely heard what he’d said. My mind was elsewhere. Because the killer couldn’t have read about Van Dorn’s death in the paper yesterday afternoon. His death hadn’t been reported in the papers until that night. Bixby had said so himself. I suddenly felt that cold feeling of truth run through me. Of possibility. Maybe I was onto something after all. The killer had used Silas Van Dorn’s name on purpose. That meant he must have known Silas was dead before it had been reported in the papers. That meant there had to be some kind of connection between the Van Dorns and the dead girl. And that’s when my thoughts started to turn from the pursuit of justice to a pursuit of a more personal kind.

After all, a rich family was now linked to a dead girl. Maybe there was something else in this for Charlie Doherty. Something more than just redemption. Maybe something more tangible, something more to fill my pockets than just a badge. The last thing the grieving Van Dorns needed right now was a scandal involving a dead girl in a sleazy hotel. Maybe there could be a little hush money at the end of this for Detective Charlie Doherty. Maybe more than just a little. It wasn’t admirable, but like they say: old habits die hard. I didn’t know what the girl’s connection to the Van Dorns might be, but there had to be one. And I was sure as hell going to find out what it was. Not the daytime boys. Not the real detectives.

Me.

Because there was something more than redemption and pride at the end of this now. Something more permanent. The oldest friend I had left in this world. Money. I ducked into the Horn and Hardart’s off Thirty-eighth and Broadway and hit the payphone in the back. I had the operator connect me with the station house and reached Loomis.

“How’s Frank making out with those pictures?”

“Started developing them an hour or so ago,” Loomis told me. “Said he didn’t want you riding him all day for them, so he figured…”

I didn’t care about details. “Does he have any pictures of the dead girl’s face yet?”

“Don’t know, but I can find out easy enough. What’s the rush? Say, where the hell are you, anyhow?”

“I’ll tell you later,” I said. “Just get that picture from Frank as soon as it’s ready. Then get an address on a guy by the name of Silas Van Dorn.”

I heard him writing it down. “The name in the registry?”

“The same. I found out he’s an old blue-blood after all. And get this: he croaked yesterday morning, out in the Hamptons.” I could hear a smile in Loomis’ voice. “Guess he didn’t rent that room after all.”

“Nice work, detective,” I said. “I need you to see if the family’s got a place here in the city, too. See what you can get on Silas while you’re at it. When you get all that, call me back at this number.” I gave him the number on the payphone and hung up. I kept the rest of what I was planning to myself. I didn’t want him talking me out of it. I killed time waiting for Floyd’s call by parking myself on a stool at the end of the counter, guzzling black coffee and smoking cigarettes. I thought about the possibilities of hush money, and how much I should ask for. I thought over what I was about to do and why. I even tried talking myself out of it once or twice. But I didn’t try too hard.

A dull, throbbing ache settled in the back of my head. I told myself it was from the heat. My hand shook a bit as I reached for my cup. I told myself it was from too much coffee. But I knew better. I knew I was about to take the biggest risk of my life. A risk so big that, even if I was right, it could damn well blow up in my face. Forgetting about hush money, and just handing off the Van Dorn lead to the daytime shift, would’ve been the smartest thing to do. And the safest. But when you don’t have much to lose, safety isn’t high on the list. Besides, no one was looking out for my interests anymore. If my luck was going to change, I’d have to do something to change it. And that’s just what I planned on doing once Loomis got there.

I
T WAS
about a quarter to seven when Floyd called to tell me he’d gotten everything I’d asked him for. Ten minutes later, he swung by to pick me up in front of the Automat. By then, the sun was a gray smear, low in an overcast sky. As Floyd pulled back out into traffic, he told me he’d not only gotten the photo of the girl’s face, but the address of the Van Dorn clan as well. A place up on Sixty-Sixth Street and Fifth Avenue. I checked the girl’s picture to make sure it wasn’t too gory. It wasn’t. It was a close shot of her face, taken above the knife wound and below the halo of blood. Loomis had also gotten the old man’s obituary from the previous night’s Journal.

The top half of the page featured an article about a garment worker riot that had broken out during a rally up in the Bronx the day before. But the whole page below the fold was dedicated to the Van Dorn obituary, complete with a picture of old Silas himself. He was a tall, hard-looking old bastard with a long, white moustache that drooped at the sides. The obit said he was a humanitarian and a renowned patron of the arts. It said he’d managed the family’s holdings in a variety of industries, but didn’t give specifics. I guess when you’re that rich, specifics aren’t necessary. Money was money. It also listed a couple of charities and museums he’d thrown money at over the years. I hoped they’d be adding my favorite charity to the list soon: The Charles Doherty Benevolent Fund.

The obit listed a son, Harriman, a daughter-in-law, Eleanor, and two grandchildren — Jessica and Jackson Van Dorn — as surviving relatives.

We’d just hit Sixth Avenue when Loomis finally asked me, “Where are we going, anyhow?”

“The Van Dorn house on Fifth. I want to show them the dead girl’s face and see what happens.”

Loomis damned near sideswiped a milk truck. “Are you nuts?” he yelled. “You want us to walk in on of one of the wealthiest families in the city while they’re still in mourning and show them a picture of a dead girl they probably don’t even know?”

“Calm down and keep your eyes on the road.”

Loomis didn’t hear me. “The Van Dorns probably have a direct line to Mayor Walker himself. You know what they’ll do to us for barging in there at a time like this?”

“We’re not barging in anywhere.” I decided to keep the hush money angle to myself and soft sell him on the idea of going to the Van Dorn place. “We won’t even get near them, anyway. These swells all have servants, don’t they? Butlers, footmen, maids and the like?”

“I guess,” Loomis said. “So what?”

“These servants always know everything that goes on with these families. Sometimes better than the families themselves. All we have to do is flash the girl’s picture to the help, and see if they know who she is. Maybe they’ll give us something to work with.” I threw in what I was really hoping for as an afterthought. “If we get to talk to one of the Van Dorns, all the better, but I’m not counting on it.”

Loomis had been shaking his head the whole time I was talking. “It’s too risky, Charlie. We’re due to clock out in a little while, anyway. Why don’t we just pass this whole off to the daytime crew, and…”

“No,” I said a bit louder than I’d wanted. “Something tells me this thing’s bigger than we know. Van Dorn’s name is in that register for a reason. It’s too specific to be a coincidence and the old man being dead at the time of the register makes it a pretty big coincidence. I’m not just going to give it up because a clock on the wall says we have to go home.”

“What do you care who works it?” Loomis asked. “We get paid whether they find who killed her or not.”

I knew Loomis was a boy scout and any talk of hush money would scare him off. I took a run at his pride instead. “I don’t know about you, but I’m damned tired of being treated like an oddball by the rest of the department. My gut tells me that working this case for a little while longer might be our best chance to prove them all wrong. You and I deserve better than that, Floyd.” I saved my best punch for last. “That dead girl deserves better than that, too. The daytime boys won’t break their asses looking for someone who killed a girl in a place like The Chauncey Arms. You know I’m right, too.”

I watched Loomis’ knuckles whiten as he grabbed the wheel tighter. Sweat popped on his face and upper lip, and I knew it wasn’t just from the weather. He’d been working nights too long. He actually liked the graveyard shift because he liked the obscurity, the ability to work behind the scenes at his own pace. Without responsibility. He liked to be close to the action, but far from the consequences. I thought I was reminding him of what it felt like to be a real detective again. Then he showed me just how good of a detective he really was.

“You phony little son of a bitch,” Loomis said. “This doesn’t have anything to do with pride, or the job, or even that dead girl back there. You think there’s something in this for you, don’t you?”

I hadn’t seen that coming, but I was surprised how I answered it. “Maybe it’s about having pride in…”

Loomis didn’t buy it. “Pride my ass. You only come out of your hole when you smell something in it for you. You’re working some kind of an angle here, and you’re willing to step on a dead girl to do it.”

I wasn’t surprised he’d come that close to figuring it out. I just hadn’t counted on him figuring it out that fast. I didn’t bother denying it. “What’s wrong with doing right by her and for ourselves at the same time? Someone’s going to get to figure this out, so why not us? And with a family like the Van Dorns in the mix, why not see if there’s something in it for us?”

“Like what?” Loomis asked. “All we’ll get is our heads handed to us for bothering the family while they’re mourning.”

“If the Van Dorns are involved in the girl’s death somehow,” I said, “maybe there’s some hush money in the mix. Or maybe there’s some other way we can help them and help ourselves at the same time.”

Loomis began to argue with me, but I didn’t give him the chance. “If they’re involved, they’ll be willing to pay someone to look the other way. These well-heeled types always do. If they don’t pay us, they’ll pay the daytime detectives that question them about it. As far as I’m concerned, we caught this case. We’ve done the legwork so far. If there’s money to be had, we deserve it before anyone else. And don’t tell me it doesn’t work that way, because you know goddamned well it does.”

Loomis got quiet and kept driving east. He didn’t talk again until we hit Lexington, but I could tell he was mulling it over the whole time. Loomis had always been a big thinker, but he wasn’t naive. “It’s damned risky,” Loomis finally said. “Bothering rich people like the Van Dorns at a time like this. Jesus, the old man’s not even cold yet.”

I could tell he was tilting my way. “We’ll be gentle, don’t worry. If I know how to do anything, it’s how to put the touch on someone.”

Loomis winced. “I’m not like you, Charlie. I like the graveyard shift and—”

I decided to go in for the kill. “Don’t forget I’m the lead investigator here, not you. If there’s any blame flying around about this, the boys downtown’ll be more than happy to drop it on my head, not yours. They’ve been looking for a reason to do it for years, and now I’m willing to give them their chance.” I watched Loomis’ hands slowly loosen on the wheel.

He stopped sweating. Hell, he looked damned near peaceful. “Yeah, I guess you’ve got a point.”

I couldn’t help but smile. Yes, Floyd Loomis was a careful man, indeed.