The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues (9 page)

“Has your heart ever felt like a singing bird?” Dickory asked George after they had both signed their names petitioning the mayor for improved street-sign designs.

“Mine will, some day,” Harold Silverfish butted in. “When I paint my first masterpiece.”

“I doubt that,” Professor D’Arches said, folding his petition. “If you are ever that satisfied with your own work, it would be time to give up art and take up plumbing.”

George, painfully aware of his lack of sophistication, didn’t answer until they were several blocks from school, alone. “My heart once felt like a singing bird, Dickory,” he confessed. “It happened a few years ago, back home. I found this bird with a broken wing, a beautiful spotted bird, a thrush. I took it home with me and. . . .”

“George, I don’t think that ‘my heart is like a singing bird’ has anything to do with birds,” Dickory said impatiently.

“I know; it just happened that way. I found this bird and. . . . Hi!” George greeted the strange man who blocked their way.

Black hair, black moustache, dark glasses, a gold earring in one ear, and a tattoo on his left arm that was extended toward Dickory. “Deliver this letter for me, young lady. Here’s a buck for your pains.” His voice was guttural with a trace of an unrecognizable accent.

Two words were scrawled across the sealed envelope in Dickory’s hand:
Manny Mallomar
. When she looked up again, the bulky sailor in striped jersey and bell-bottom pants was entering a building, stepping over a derelict asleep in the entranceway.

“Who was that?” George asked.

Dickory’s eyes were still on the entranceway. The sign read: HEALTH CLUB AND GYM. And the derelict was the same bum who sprawled on the stoop in Cobble Lane.

“Gee, Dickory, either you’ve got to cheer up or tell me what’s bothering you.”

Dickory did neither. “Where should we eat, George? I don’t feel much like pizza.”

They bought hot dogs and soda from a street vendor and ate on a bench in Washington Square Park. “My park,” George called, delighted at having discovered this patch of green. Dickory gave him a patronizing smile. She had known this park from childhood; on hot days her brother had taken her here to romp in the fountain.

“You know,” George said after devouring his frankfurter, “I don’t even know if Dickory is your first name or your last.”

“You have mustard on your chin,” she replied. George wiped his chin with a paper napkin and waited for her answer.

“Dickory Dock.”

“Hi, Dickory Dock,” he said. No snickering, no laughter, no nursery rhyme. There could be only one explanation for this aloof acceptance of her silly name—his name must be sillier. Perhaps he wasn’t joking when he said this was his park. “George Washington?” Dickory guessed.

George Washington nodded. “First in war, first in peace, first in the heart of his countrymen. Unless you’d rather discuss the cherry tree.”

“I’m the last one to joke about names, George.”

He smiled. “It’s really George Washington the Third, but no relation to the father of our country. My grand-father, on coming here, wanted to sound like a real American, so he gave the immigration people a name that was more American than his unpronounceable one. He settled in Vermont. That’s where I come from, a little town in Vermont; but I’m staying here with an uncle who. . . .”

“I’ve got to get going,” Dickory said abruptly. George looked hurt. “I do want to hear about your family, but I must go. You see, I don’t really live in Cobble Lane; I just work there. I live on Fourteenth Street and First.” For a moment she considered asking George to deliver the letter for her; then she remembered that Mallomar had seen him gawking at the house. And she remembered the painful nose-tweak. “It’s better if you don’t walk me to my job; I can’t explain, but it’s for your own good.”

Without asking questions, George agreed. He remained on the bench as Dickory rose to leave.

“One more thing, George. Did your heart really feel like a singing bird that time you caught the thrush?”

George brightened. “Not when I found the thrush, Dickory. When its wing healed. When I watched it fly away. After I nursed it back to health and it flew away free, that’s when my heart was like a singing bird.”

With the envelope clutched tightly in her hand, Dickory turned the corner into Cobble Lane. From the opposite direction the chief’s car slowly turned into the bend, honking its horn to warn the blind man. The derelict, having just settled down on his stoop, opened a bleary eye and closed it again.

“Hickory Dickory Dock,
The mouse ran up the clock,
The clock struck four,
He opened the door,
Just like Hickory Dickory Dock.”

Dickory didn’t mind the rhyme today, but not because of the Christina Rossetti story or George’s funnier name. “Hello, Chief Quinn,” she said loudly and cheerily, grateful to have this official-looking, cigar-smoking bodyguard at her side as she handed the letter through the crack in Mallomar’s door.

“Welcome.” Garson descended the stairs from the upper floor as Dickory and the chief entered the studio. “Any news on the counterfeiter?” he asked, buttoning the cuffs of his shirt at his wrists.

“Ah, yes, the counterfeiter. Much to the consternation of the feds,” the chief announced with pride, “Winston S. Fiddle was apprehended by the New York City Police Department, Bureau of Detectives.”

The name sounded familiar to both Garson and Dickory.

“It should sound familiar,” Quinn said. “That egomaniac not only put his face on the five-dollar bill, he also signed his name to it. No one bothered to find out who was Secretary of the Treasury when those counterfeit bills were in circulation.”

Garson slumped in his chair. Dickory tried to remember who the Secretary of the Treasury was now. She couldn’t.

“You were right on all the other details, though,” the chief had to admit. “And sooner or later we would have found him, either through the engravers’ union or plastic surgeons. Fiddle did have a nose job; and he did eat red pistachio nuts (three pounds a day, in fact); and he was older than he appeared in his portrait; and he was left-handed.”

“How did you find him?” Garson asked.

“A bit of dumb luck, dumb meaning Fiddle the engraver. He decided to print ten million dollars more. Ten million bucks takes a lot of paper, you know. Tons of paper. The floor collapsed—paper, printing press, and all. The police emergency crew found Fiddle buried under an avalanche of phony five-dollar bills.”

“Dead?” asked Dickory.

“No, just a broken left arm.”

“An ironic and just punishment,” Garson commented.

“A rather unusual case altogether,” Quinn remarked. “Have you noticed that two of the four horsemen of crime were involved here? Vanity
and
Greed. I’m afraid your next case was instigated by greed alone.”

“Next case?”

The chief nodded. “I call it The Case of the Full-Sized Midget.”

? ? ? ?

The Case of the Full-Sized Midget

1

“Fifty-seven witnesses?”

“Actually fifty-six,” the chief replied. “One of them is the midget, but we don’t know which. Here are the facts:

“The Empress Fatima bracelet was stolen from its display case in the showroom of Opalmeyer Jewelers at 3:15 yesterday afternoon. The glass in one side of the display case was broken, setting off the alarm and automatically locking all exits, including the elevator doors. Fifty-seven people were present when the robbery was committed. They were thoroughly searched, and so was the entire floor. The bracelet was gone.”

“Windows?” Garson thought the bracelet could have been thrown out to an accomplice.

“The windows are sealed. Besides, Opalmeyer Jewelers is on the ninety-ninth floor.”

“Are you saying that fifty-six people saw a midget steal the bracelet? And that the midget is no longer a midget? And that the bracelet has disappeared even though all doors and windows were locked?”

Quinn shrugged. “Who knows? Everyone panicked when the alarm went off and the guards drew their guns. Here’s the complete file on the case.” He tossed a thick manila envelope on the table and turned toward the door, listening to the heavy footsteps on the stairs.

The experienced chief of detectives showed neither surprise nor alarm when the mutilated deaf-mute clumped into the studio. Only his cigar moved, from one corner of his mouth to the other. With a hard, professional eye, Quinn watched Isaac Bickerstaffe prop the framed portrait of Mrs. Julius B. Panzpresser against the wall, shuffle over to the mysterious easel, wrap the hidden canvas in its red velvet drape, and carry it from the room.

“Well, I’ve got to get going,” the chief said, rising, but instead of going to the door, he walked to the window. “As if I didn’t have enough on my hands these days, what with the stolen Empress Fatima bracelet and an unsolved murder with a missing corpse, the Eldon F. Zyzyskczuk case has just been dropped in my lap.”

“I thought Zyzyskczuk wasn’t your affair,” Garson said. Dickory was still puzzling over the secret canvas Isaac had taken from the studio.

“It wasn’t,” Quinn replied, brushing ashes from his vest as he looked down on Cobble Lane. “The two Eldon F. Zyzyskczuks was just a matter of mistaken identity and haywire computers. Now it’s become criminal fraud to the tune of half a million bucks.” He turned to leave. “There are now THREE Eldon F. Zyzyskczuks, heaven help me.”

Still baffled, Dickory stared at the empty easel as she capped the tubes of oil paint that cluttered the taboret top.

Garson undressed the dummy drum majorette. “We’ll begin on The Case of the Full-Sized Midget tomorrow-it’s Saturday, isn’t it?—after you return from the Panzpressers.”

“What?”

“Julius Panzpresser won’t be home, so I thought you would like to deliver the portrait. Cookie will give you a private showing of the collection, if you’d like.”

Dickory would like that very much.

“The painting is too heavy for you to manage by yourself,” Garson continued, “so Isaac will go with you. Just don’t let him out of your sight. He’s frightened of the city and could never find his way back home.”

How does a brain-damaged monster act when frightened? Dickory decided not to think about it. At least she didn’t have to worry about getting mugged in the subway, not with Isaac Bickerstaffe at her side.

“Come over here and tell me what you think of Cookie’s portrait,” Garson said, setting the ornately framed painting on his easel for display.

Dickory looked at the poised, well-groomed, well-mannered lady pouring tea. “The frame is beautiful.”

“And Mrs. Panzpresser?” Garson asked.

“Vain.”

“And the painting? What do you think of the painting, Dickory?”

“Slick.”

The artist sighed. “You’re a hard woman, Dickory Dock. Most uncharitable. What you are looking at is not a portrait of a person, but a portrait of a dream—Cookie Panzpresser’s dream.”

“It’s a vain dream,” replied the honest Dickory.

Dickory and Isaac, his face hidden behind the portrait held high, were told to wait in the luxurious entrance of the Panzpresser mansion.

“Hickory Dickory Dock,
The mouse ran up the clock. . . .”

Dickory tugged down the framed painting to reveal Isaac’s horrible one-eyed glare. Cookie Panzpresser, rhyming and skipping down the wide, carpeted stairway, stopped dead in her tracks. The toothy grin, which Garson had transformed into a Mona Lisa smile in the portrait, fell into a slack-jawed gape.

“I’m so glad you could come,” Mrs. Panzpresser said hesitantly, staring at Isaac. Then she saw the painting. “Is that really me?” she exclaimed with delight. “How wonderful, how absolutely glorious! Julius will just love it, seeing his wife so distinguished and everything.”

Watching the exuberant Cookie, Dickory realized Garson had been wrong. Cookie Panzpresser had barely recognized the “lady” in the portrait. It was not
her
dream he had painted, it was the dream of Julius Panzpresser. If so, Dickory did not like Julius. She much preferred Cookie the way she was, a cheerleader, a pink and prancing drum majorette. A drum majorette!

“Oh, but here I am going on and on about my picture when I promised Garson I’d show you the art collection.” Linking her arms into theirs, Cookie Panzpresser propelled Dickory and Isaac through a paneled door into a white marble gallery. “I don’t know much about these things—it’s Julius’ collection, you know—now let me see, I think this one here is the Gauguin.”

It was a Degas. It was beautiful. It was the tender portrait of a blind woman; a portrait of a real being, who had lived and had loved and knew pain.

Dickory gasped at the vibrant yet tranquil lushness of the next painting. Gauguin had painted not another’s, but his own idyllic dream. Lost in colors, Dickory had forgotten about Isaac Bickerstaffe until she heard his hoarse animal grunts from the other side of the room. Isaac was gesticulating wildly before one of the paintings on the wall, uttering rasping cries and unintelligible moans that in no way resembled sounds of human origin.

Running, skidding across the gallery floor, Cookie and Dickory reached the mad creature at the same time. He had done no damage, but he kept up his howls of joy, or was it despair?

“I think he’s trying to say he likes the frame,” Dickory shouted above the mute’s ravings.

“There, there, young man, everything is going to be all right.” Cookie cooed and patted Isaac’s arm, comforting him into silence.

Now Dickory studied the unfamiliar painting that had sent Isaac into his spell. “Fruit Peddler” by Edgar Sonneborg (1935- ) , the plaque said. It was a harsh portrait of a rouged woman in tatters straddling a pushcart full of fruit. Head thrown back, she was laughing shamelessly at the hungry hordes that surrounded her cart, saluting them with a peeled banana. The artist’s bold, almost frenzied brush had sketched the peddler in brittle colors, in naked and tragic truth; yet the sordidness was somehow fused with compassion. Sonneborg, whoever he was, had painted a portrait of a woman’s soul.