A Handy Death

Chapter 8

Mike Gunnerson was seated behind Hank’s desk when Ross returned from his visit to the Tombs. The big man was tilted back in the swivel chair, carefully tossing paper clips across the room into the wastebasket beside Sharon’s desk. The girl was out of the office. Mike took considered aim with his final clip, flipped it in a long arc, and nodded in satisfaction as the ring of metal on metal confirmed the accuracy of the shot. Ross grinned at him, put his attaché case down on the desk, hung up his topcoat behind the door, pulled up a chair and sat down.

“I see,” he said. “That’s the reason my office expenses are so high. Interlopers making free with the supplies.”

“I’ll send you a box of paper clips, free,” Mike said magnanimously. “For Christmas.” He swung around in the swivel chair, facing Ross. “What’s new at the Tombs?”

“Enough to keep you and your boys busy for quite a while,” Ross said. “You won’t have time for target practice with my office supplies, I’m afraid. But first of all, what’s new with you?”

“Well,” Gunnerson said lightly, “I don’t know where our missing lady named Grace is at the moment, but I’m pretty sure I know where she went when she ducked out of Neeley’s apartment eight years ago.”

Ross stared at him.

“Well! You mean, you actually believe the lady exists?”

“I believe she existed. I don’t know if she still exists. You made it a precondition, practically, of my employment that I believe that, remember? You not only insisted that I believe in her existence, but that I prove that existence.” His voice became serious. “Well, oddly enough, I now honestly believe she existed.”

“And can prove it?”

“To my satisfaction, although I’m not sure anyone else would take my word for it. We’re far from through, though. I’m just getting started. I’ve got a little to work on, now.”

“Such as?”

“Such as where she went when she walked out of Neeley’s place eight years ago.”

“You said that,” Ross said impatiently. “So where did she go?”

“Next door,” Gunnerson said, and grinned at the expression on Ross’s face.

“Next door?”

“That’s right.” Gunnerson’s grin disappeared. “Let’s take it step by step. The transcript is clear that the taxi companies were checked out thoroughly for the night of July 25, 1964, and none of them made a call at that apartment house. Now, Neeley walks in with a suitcase. He was supposed to have been traveling. Either he was or he wasn’t, right? Let’s assume first that he was. Then he came in at either one of the railroad stations, the bus depot, or one of the airports. He couldn’t have caught a gypsy cab at any of those places, because they don’t allow gypsies there; he certainly wouldn’t have walked that far with a suitcase, and no regular cab brought him. Okay so far?”

“More than okay,” Ross said.

“Good. Then the chances are he hadn’t been traveling, which seems to bear out your swindle theory — that the suitcase was purely a stage prop. Still, he had to come from somewhere with that suitcase, even as the woman had to go somewhere with it. And remember, the woman left about the time the police were coming, which would make her an obvious sight, a woman running down the street dragging a suitcase—”

Ross help up his hand, interrupting.

“Did they ever find out who called the police?”

“An unidentified woman’s voice, according to the precinct.”

“She might have called them herself, if she wanted the boy caught.”

“Exactly,” Gunnerson said. “But she’d have to call from pretty close by, if she didn’t want him to have time to get away. So I had two things: she hadn’t been seen, and if she made the call, it had to be from close by. That pointed to another apartment in the same building.”

“Very good, Sherlock,” Ross said with a grin.

“I’m just starting,” Mike said modestly. “Save the applause for the big finish. I figured that while she was in another apartment in that building, she certainly wouldn’t be hanging around very long after the shooting, and definitely not after she found out that Neeley not only was alive, but promised to stay that way. So I had my men go down to the renting office for the building and check the records. And lo and behold, there was a Grace Melisi who rented an apartment across the hall from Neeley’s pad. She left without notice sometime after the shooting—”

Ross frowned. “Sometime?”

“They don’t check on tenants unless they fail to pay their rent on time, and that’s when they checked on her. And the apartment was empty. This was three weeks after the shooting, but she may have been gone the next day. Her things were out. They are furnished apartments, so all she needed was a couple of suitcases and a pocketbook and she was set to travel.”

Ross was listening intently. Mike picked up a paper clip and began to unbend it, straightening it out as he talked.

“My guess is the thing worked like this: Neeley and Grace Melisi were in this swindle racket, as you surmised. They rented the second apartment as a base of operations. While it’s true the average New Yorker doesn’t pay any attention to his neighbor, they probably felt there was too much danger in sharing Neeley’s aparment while using it for their racket—”

He paused, thinking, his brow furrowed, and then shook his head. Ross waited patiently.

“No,” Mike said. “That doesn’t make sense. The single apartment would have been ideal for the swindle, but it would have been disastrous for the murder scheme. So the chances are that Grace Melisi insisted on separate apartments. Who knows? Maybe she was modest. In any event, they rent the second apartment. And Neeley is waiting there when the woman brings the fly into the spider’s web. Neeley waits until the woman has time to set the stage and then walks in with the empty suitcase. And — unfortunately for him — right into a gun filled with real bullets.”

Ross thought about it a moment and frowned.

“I like it up to a point, but something in my mind sticks at the shooting. Why would she arrange to have Neeley shot?”

“Well,” Gunnerson said with elaborate sarcasm, “I doubt she did it as a sign of excessive friendship.”

“I’m serious. Why not wait until they’d milked the sucker and then arrange for Neeley to — as the morticians say — pass on? She wouldn’t even have to split. Why go to all the trouble of setting up the deal and then throw it all away?”

“My guess,” Mike said, “is that probably the opportunity to have Neeley shot and be home free didn’t present itself every day. I figure she felt she had to forego the money for the pleasure of having Neeley knocked off.”

“I’m still not sure,” Ross said. “Did she live in that apartment alone?”

“As far as the renting agents know, although they wouldn’t have fussed if she lived there with a basketball team. It’s that kind of place.”

“Anyone living in the building now who lived there then?”

“No, because I already thought of that and checked. It’s not the kind of place,” Mike said, “that people choose for retirement.” He suddenly frowned. “What are you getting at, Hank? You think she might have been in the deal with a third party?”

“It makes more sense,” Ross said. “Someone had to get that gun and hand it over to her. And it couldn’t have been Neeley.”

“Why not?”

“Because they couldn’t take the chance that Dupaul would see him and remember him if he picked it up during the contract signing, or during any other time at the hotel. What did Neeley do for a living, do you know?”

“No idea. But bringing in a third party merely complicates things that are already too complicated.”

“Don’t worry,” Ross said, and grinned. “Things are always darkest just before the dawn.”

“You mean, to coin a phrase.”

“Exactly. How far have you gotten in tracing her after she skipped the apartment?”

“Well,” Mike said, “we have a name for her — Grace Melisi, whether it’s a real name or not. It sounds it. And she used it once and may have used it again, and there’s a chance at least her initials are the same. We have her description as given by Billy Dupaul, and while it fits a million women, there are one hundred million it doesn’t fit, which is a tiny step forward for mankind. And we have her signature—”

He saw the look on Ross’s face and smiled.

“She signed the rental papers, remember? And we figure she probably got as far away from New York and Raymond Neeley as possible, because she knew he’d come out of the hospital with a few questions, like, ‘Why did you have me shot, Grace, dear?’”

“Unless, as I said, she had a partner who arranged the loaded gun without her knowledge.” Ross paused. “Although I don’t suppose Neeley would have bought that story, true or not.”

“I rather doubt he would. I know I doubt I would.”

“So where do we go from here?” Ross said. “You have a description that doesn’t mean much, a name that’s probably false, a signature, and the whole wide world in which she could hide. And a lapse of eight years...”

“Well,” Mike said cheerfully, “we have as much as we get for most skip-tracing jobs. Plus one little thing: Neeley must have known something about her, and I intend to backtrack Neeley, too. When is the trial coming up?”

“Gorman is in a rush, I guess. The preliminary proceedings are scheduled for tomorrow, and I’m sure he’ll push’ for trial as soon as possible afterward. He’ll want to rush us before we can come up with anything. It’s his usual tactic, so we can’t waste time.”

“We won’t,” Mike promised. “What did you get from your visit to the Tombs?”

“A few things,” Ross said.

He reached for the attaché case, opened it, and removed the portable casette recorder that neatly fit into one of the pockets of the case. He reversed the tape; the slight buzzing as the tape fed back at high speed was the only sound in the room for several minutes. When the spool had run to the end, Ross reversed it again, and set it to play. The two men listened carefully until it had completed the entire conversation with Billy Dupaul at the Tombs. Ross stopped the tape and looked across the desk at Gunnerson.

“I’ll have Sharon transcribe this for you when she has time. Probably sometime tomorrow. But you can get started before then. What you heard should give you enough to work on.”

“More than enough,” Mike said. He had been scribbling on a pad as he listened; now he looked at his notes. “Jim Marshall, eh? I had his name on the list from the trial transcript as one to be checked out, but I’ll move him up in priority. A fight, eh? And he could have put his hand on the gun any time, earlier than the fight. And a lot of people have been shot by guys who are afraid of guns.”

“Except that he couldn’t have been the one to steer Dupaul to the Mountain Top Bar,” Ross said. “In the mood Billy was in, if he ran into Jim Marshall at that Lexington Avenue bar, he wouldn’t have listened to him tout another bar; he’d have pasted him one. Especially since he had about six or eight drinks in him already at that point.”

“Still,” Mike said, scribbling, “we’ll put him between two rollers and turn the crank just to see what comes out. I have a man up in Glens Falls now who can handle it.”

“Good. See what you can find out about the big secret, too.”

“Naturally,” Mike said. “And there’s the matter of that baseball game up at Attica.”

“Right. The delay in starting time could be extremely important. If the delay was an accident, and the timing of the escape attempt made it imperative that the riot be started at once over any excuse—”

“Then our boy Dupaul looks better, eh?”

“At least he doesn’t look quite so bad.”

“In which case,” Gunnerson said slowly, “we have a long, serious talk with that umpire-guard who called those four balls. Right? And then maybe talk to the warden?”

“You’re getting ahead of yourself, and our main problem is Billy Dupaul, not the morality of the prison guards, though whatever we dig out will go to the authorities, of course.”

“Of course,” Gunnerson said, and resumed making corrections to his notes. “But first we check out the reason for the delay with the prison chaplain, this Father Swiaki. Right?”

“Right.”

“I’ll get right to it,” Mike said. He rose, stuffing his notes into his pocket. He started to move around the desk in the direction of the door but Ross reached out, restraining him.

“Wait a minute,” Hank said. “You didn’t make a note of the most important thing on that tape.”

Mike Gunnerson frowned a him.

“Most, important? I got the baseball game, the delay, the chaplain. And I got Marshall and the big secret of what caused the fight that night. Did I miss something, Hank?”

“Billy Dupaul’s grandfather, the one he calls Old John,” Ross said softly. “An old man with only his social security, no retirement, who manages to buy his grandson everything a growing teenager wants, and a lot of things families in far better positions are unable to get their kids.”

Gunnerson stared at him, mystified. “What about it?”

“Where did the money come from, Mike? That’s what I want to know, because I have a hunch it’s important. Where did the money come from?”