Corpus Corpus Page 7

  "But Janus isn't making a point, is he? He's perpetrating a fraud on people who just gave him an award, and in my book that makes him as low as a snake's bellybutton. Well, snakes have been known to get their heads bashed in. Or swallowed by bigger ones."

  "They can also be murder weapons, as in Fer-de-Lance, Nero Wolfe's first recorded case."

  "I haven't read it."

  "A fer-de-lance is a snake."

  "There was also a deadly snake in the Sherlock Holmes case that Dr. Watson called 'The Speckled Band.' "

  Goldstein's voice intruded. "It was a swamp adder, trained to climb a bell rope."

  Turning to Goldstein, Bogdanovic blurted, "A trained snake?"

  "It answered to a whistle," said Dane, grinning.

  "Unfortunately for Dr. Grimesby Roylott of Stoke Moran," said Goldstein, holding a half-smoked Janus cigar, "it ignored common wisdom about never biting the hand that feeds you and sank its fangs into its owner and trainer. Dare I ask you what's prompted this discussion of snakes?"

  Dane answered, "Your assistant thinks Theo Janus is one."

  "You're holding the evidence in your hand," Bogdanovic said. "The band on your cigar says it's Cuban, but it isn't."

  "Is that so?" Goldstein said, studying the black and gold band. "Is an arrest for consumer fraud imminent?"

  Bogdanovic glared at Janus. "No, but I wouldn't slap the cuffs on anybody who gave Janus a poke in the eye, either."

  Goldstein puffed the bogus cigar, took it from his mouth, and declared, "Fake Havana or not, it's a pretty good smoke. All this talk about Havana cigars being the best in the world is, in my opinion, a bunch of baloney. Many fine cigars are being made in the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Jamaica."

  As he spoke, he heard the chirping of Bogdanovic's beeper.

  "Of course," he continued while Bogdanovic read the message in the window of the device, "the best cigar is the one you don't have to pay for. There is no such thing as a bad free cigar, no matter who gave it to you."

  With a worried expression, Bogdanovic interrupted. "Excuse me, Chief. The message was from Red Reiter. He wants a callback as soon as possible."

  "Did he say where he is?"

  "No. And I don't recognize the phone number he listed," said Bogdanovic, reaching into his inside coat pocket for his cellular phone. "I think it's an uptown one."

  Looking around the room, Goldstein said quietly, "Discretion is the thing, Johnny. Members of the press might still be around. Use a phone booth in the lobby."

  Watching Bogdanovic impatiently threading through the happy throng that stood between him and the exit, Dane smiled a little, then turned to Goldstein. "You can always tell a detective!"

  "Yes," he replied through a puff of smoke, "but not much."

  "May I deduce that Red Reiter is another of the breed?"

  "He and his partner are what you might call a first-response team," he said, looking anxiously toward the exit. "It's their job to check out situations that might require my attention."

  "As in situations that might require the personal appearance at the scene of the crime by the chief of detectives and what our dear friends in the news media like to call high-profile cases?"

  "That's it exactly."

  "Well, let's hope this very pleasant evening isn't going to turn out to be one of them."

  As they both looked toward the door, Theodore Janus arrived at Goldstein's side. "Pardon this old bloodhound for butting in, Chief," he whispered, tapping a finger to the side of his nose, "but the hurried departure of your sterling aide-de-camp after being beeped and your rapt attention on the door through which he departed so hastily suggest to my keen olfactory sense that the game may be afoot. Dare I hope it's a juicy case of murder?"

  "What's the matter, Theo?" demanded Dane, playfully poking him in the ribs. "Is that beat-up briefcase of yours empty?"

  "Have you forgotten the first lesson I taught you in law school, my darling? There's always room for one more opportunity to hold the prosecution's feet to the fire known as proof beyond a reasonable doubt."

  "What was the tide of that course?" asked Goldstein. "Was it by any chance 'How to Get Rich by Chasing Ambulances'?"

  With a thin smile as he walked away, Janus answered, "Very droll response, Chief. I am certain that when I repeat it to my accountant he will be most amused. I hope you enjoyed the cigar."

  "I know he's a friend of yours, Maggie," Goldstein said as he removed the half-smoked fake Havana from his mouth, "but that guy is a bigger horse's ass than any you'll find on that ranch of his upstate."

  As the cigar went into an ashtray, Bogdanovic appeared in the doorway to beckon him with upraised hand and a wiggling of fingers. "Evidently Theo's acute sense of smell was right," Dane said. "It seems the game is afoot. Good sleuthing, Mr. Holmes."

  "Oh no you don't. You're coming, too," Goldstein said, gripping her hand. "As Sherlock advised, A trusty comrade is always of use.' Especially if that comrade is one of the best district attorneys in the country."

  When they reached the doorway Bogdanovic blurted, "There's big trouble at the hotel where the DA stashed Paulie Mancuso. He seems to have changed his mind about testifying. Half an hour ago he took a nosedive out a ninth-floor window."

  EXCEPT FOR THE curvy eastern boundary shaped by the East River, the Nineteenth Precinct formed a perfect rectangle with Fifth Avenue and Central Park on the west, East Fifty-ninth Street at the bottom and East Ninety-sixth Street at the top. More expensive land and more privileges of wealth could not be found in the city of New York. Politicians called it the Silk Stocking District. For more than half a century the most ambitious of their breed had done their best, and sometimes their worst, to reside within its most prestigious address. Located in Carl Schurz Park, a stately house built in 1799 by the Scottish shipping magnate Archibald Gracie became the official residence of the mayor in 1942.

  Gazing past its surrounding trees as Bogdanovic turned the car onto East End Avenue, Goldstein said to Dane, "The first of New York's mayors to move into Gracie Mansion did so reluctantly. Fiorello La Guardia didn't think the people of New York should be footing his rental bill. He left his small apartment in Spanish Harlem only because of personal security considerations growing out of the fact that the country was in the midst of the Second World War. Plus the fact that he realized the taxpayers would be paying for the mansion's upkeep whether he lived in it or not."

  One of the best-policed areas in the city, with its elegant town homes, high-rise co-op and condominium apartment houses, and a handful of residential hotels, the Gracie Mansion neighborhood qualified in terms of criminal activity as the quietest in the Nineteenth Precinct. Consequently, a report of a man found dead on the sidewalk across the street would have promoted a far more urgent response by the police than, say, the same scenario on a street in Harlem.

  In this case, the bloodied, pulpy corpse had brought such a flood of blue-and-white patrol cars with flashing lights and men in plain clothes and unmarked cars that a passerby might assume an attempt had been made against the life of the person who lived in the large house in the park.

  "Save for periodic eruptions from groups of protesters and picketers venting views on a variety of causes, from the cost of living to the Vietnam War," Goldstein continued as Bogdanovic stopped the car behind a radio patrol unit, "the only arrest we made in the mansion was in 1987."

  Bogdanovic snorted a laugh. "I remember that one. A burglar was caught red-handed. When he found out the house he was burglarizing was the home of the mayor he asked, 'Can't I just put the stuff back and leave?' "

  Stepping from the car, he turned up the collar of a heavy gray overcoat and peered up at a white curtain flapping through a ninth-floor window of the Hotel Radcliffe.

  "The guy was a rat," he said, shaking his head as Goldstein and Dane came around the front of the car, "but that is a really nasty way for anybody to check out."

  Goldstein looked up at the window. "Fifty years ago at the Half
Moon Hotel out at Coney Island a hit man for the Murder, Incorporated gang, by the name of Kid Twist Reles, also went out on a flyer while in protective custody as a material witness. The newspapers had a field day writing about a canary who could sing but couldn't fly. What Kid Twist did not know was that the cops who were supposed to guard him were on the mob payroll."

  As he spoke, they were joined by a rangy and rugged young man wearing an open brown suede duster coat and snakeskin western boots. "Evening, Chief. Sorry to have interrupted your night out to bring you to this mess." Recognizing the woman beside him, he asked, "Are you working for the New York DA now, Miss Dane?"

  Goldstein asked Reiter, "Where's your partner in crime, the indomitable Detective Leibholz?"

  "Al's upstairs taking statements from the three blind mice." "Three blind mice?"

  "The district attorney assigned a trio of assistant DAs to watch the store while the investigators who had been assigned to guard Mancuso got the weekend off. According to the mice, Mancuso said he was going to bed early to do some reading."

  Goldstein grunted. "Who'd have thought Paulie Mancuso was a bookworm?"

  "After about an hour watching TV," Reiter went on, "the mice heard a commotion from down on the street and when they looked out the window they saw what was left of Paulie splattered all over the pavement."

  "Has District Attorney Vanderhoff been notified?"

  "Yes. He's on his way into the city from his place in the Hamptons. Meantime, two of his deputies-Jeffrey Marx and Tommy Farley—are reportedly on their way. They ought to be showing up at any minute."

  "What about the press? Do the newsies know about this yet?"

  "This is also their weekend. The newsrooms are geared down. They've got their second-stringers working. It's also on the late side. The Sunday newspapers are already out and the TV news shows won't be cranking up until morning. I don't picture any of them creating a problem for us before then."

  "Okay. But tell the uniforms that should any members of the Fourth Estate show up, they are to be kept at a distance. Now, let's go up and see what these three blind mice have to say for themselves before Marx and Farley get here and tell them to clam up. Marx and Farley! Sounds like a vaudeville act."

  Dane turned away. "I'm going to be in your way. I'll wait in the car."

  "Nonsense," exclaimed Bogdanovic, grabbing her coat sleeve. "You're coming with us."

  She looked quizzically at Goldstein. "Only if your boss says it's okay."

  Goldstein smiled. "Fur coat notwithstanding," he said, "only a cad would leave a lady outside on a night like this."

  "Maggie, meet Red Reiter," said Goldstein.

  "I'm merely an interested spectator" she said, lifting her eyes from the body. "A busman's holiday!"

  Entering the large lobby, they stepped into a green and red wonderland of seasonal decorations. Gleaming white marble walls were festooned with evergreen garlands. Giant wreaths were dotted with pinecones and striped candy canes, and a towering Christmas tree in a corner was decorated with angels. Two small trees atop the reception desk achoed the motif. Flanked by a pair of jolly Santa Clauses on the mande of a going fireplace stood a menorah with yellow electric bulbs signifying the next to the last day of Hanukkah. Two police officers flanking a waiting elevator added a dash of navy blue as they snapped salutes as Goldstein strode past them.

  When he stepped out of the elevator on the ninth floor he found Detective Sgt. Al Leibholz in the hallway. Clutched in his left hand was a small notebook.

  According to the New York Police Department's Investigator's Guide, chapter 1, page six, the notebook used had to be small enough to be carried in a pocket. A bound one was pre-ferrable: The notes remained intact and because the pages were not normally removed or easily lost, it was more acceptable in court.

  Leibholz's was a left-sided spiral-ring with a blue cover and eighty blue-lined five-by-three pages. By the time Goldstein arrived he had used a ballpoint pen with black ink to fill almost half of them, as regulations demanded, with only that information relative to the investigator's case, without including extraneous information and personal opinions.

  Yet a dozen years of experience as a homicide investigator had taught him it was the latter Goldstein would want. He did not disappoint. Barely out of the elevator, Goldstein asked, "What the devil happened here, Al?"

  "Everything points to Mancuso committing suicide by the old tried and true method, when all other means are not available, of defenestration. Otherwise, you'd have to believe that three guys on the staff of the district attorney colluded in giving him the heave-ho for some reason known but to them."

  "What are are their names?"

  "Tyson, Dearborn, and Davis. Assistant district attorneys."

  "Not after Cornelius Vanderhoff gets done with them. They'll be lucky if they're not disbarred. Which room are they in?"

  "End of the hall," Leibholz answered, using the notebook to point. "Suite nine-twelve."

  "Well, let's have at them again before the reinforcements from downtown get here to circle the wagons."

  SEATED SIDE BY side on a couch, the three coatless young men appeared to Maggie Dane like first-year law school students holding an all-night cram session before an exam. Worried, tense, on the edge of their seats—literally—and quite possibly at the end of their wits, they looked up nervously as the door opened.

  "This is Chief of Detectives Harvey Goldstein," Leibholz declared as they gaped with startled expressions. "He'll be asking you a few questions."

  Rising abruptly and violently shaking his head, the middle youth was tall and slender with long coal black hair. "We've been advised to say nothing further about this incident until District Attorney Vanderhoff gets here."

  Goldstein advanced briskly across the room. "Is that so? Who gave you that advice? And how did you get it?"

  "By phone from Deputy District Attorney Jeffrey Marx."

  "I see nothing suspicious about it at all," Dearborn said as he smoothed his hair with a neatly manicured hand. "Mancuso leapt out the window. He committed suicide. End of story."

  "When the state's star witness has been sequestered at great expense to the taxpayer in a posh Upper East Side hotel room with three bodyguards," Goldstein said sternly, "and he winds up with his guts all over a sidewalk right across the street from Gracie Mansion, I seriously doubt that the news media will think of this as the end of the story. I'd say that you and your two associates will be reading and hearing about yourselves in the papers and on the airwaves for quite a few days. Maybe weeks. End of the story? Hell, this is just the beginning. Now, have a seat and answer my questions. Unless you'd care to make things a whole lot worse by invoking your right to remain silent."

  A fair-haired youth lurched up from the couch. Short and with an athletic build, he protested, "We're not criminals, sir."

  "Your name, please?"

  'James Tyson."

  Goldstein looked to the third man. "And you are?"

  Standing, he was as tall as Dearborn, though not as slender. A lush brown mustache seemed to be intended to divert attention from severely premature baldness. "I'm Spencer Davis."

  Goldstein said, "I have not accused any of you of being criminals. But you are material witnesses in, to use Mr. Dearborn's term, an incident to which the police department has been called and whose duty it is to investigate. It may very well be that Mancuso killed himself. I'd even go so far as to say that his death evi-dendy seems to be a suicide. But until I know for sure, this will remain a police matter. Now, I need to hear for myself what hap-pened, and I don't give a damn which one of you tells me."

  The three exchanged anxious glances but remained silent.

  "Very well," Goldstein said, sliding into a large armchair opposite them. "Because he's senior man, I pick Mr. Dearborn."

  With a shrug of resignation and a sigh he asked, "Where do you want me to start?"

  "How long has the DA's office had Mancuso stashed here?"

  "About
three weeks."

  "Did he in those three weeks ever attempt to kill himself?"

  "When did you talk to him?"

  "A few moments ago."

  "What's your name?"

  "Anthony Dearborn."

  "Are you the senior man here?"

  "Yes."

  "How long have you been in the DA's office?" "Three years."

  "How long with the criminal division?" "Since my second year."

  "Then you surely ought to have learned by this time that the investigation of a suspicious death such as this is the province of the police."

  "Not that I know of. We were with him only on weekends."

  "On those three weekends were you all assigned to him?"

  “Just two of us. Davis joined the team Friday a week ago."

  "Why was that? Why did two suddenly become three?"

  Davis interjected, "It's a training assignment."

  "How long have you been with the criminal division?"

  "About eight months. Before that I handled civil cases."

  "I know how the system works, Mr. Davis. Now, Mr. Dearborn, on the weekends what was the routine you followed?"

  "What do you mean by routine?"

  "The question seems clear to me, young man. I want to know what went on from Mancuso's getting up in the morning to his going to bed at night."

  "He had breakfast, lunch, and dinner and between them he was either watching television, playing cards with us, or reading."

  "What about questioning him or going over his testimony?"

  "All that was handled during the week."