Created, the Destroyer

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The two East Hudson detectives rode quietly up in the Lamonica Towers elevator to the twelfth floor, the penthouse level.

The silence of the elevator's rise seemed to stifle their speech. Detective Sergeant Grover, a round ball of a man, showed the end of a dead cigar and watched the numbers flash by. Detective Reed, «Long Gaunt Reed» as he was known to the homicide squad, ran a pencil along markings in a small black notebook.

«He had to fall from at least the eighth story,» Reed said.

Grover grunted assent.

«He wouldn't talk.»

«You fall eight stories, you going to talk?» Grover asked. He touched the immaculately polished button panel with a pudgy, hairy finger. «No, he ain't gonna talk. He ain't gonna say nothing. He ain't gonna even make it to the hospital.»

«But he was able to talk. I heard him say something to one of the stretcher men,» Reed said.

«You heard. You heard. Get off my back, you heard.» The blood rushed to the folds of Grover's face. «So you heard; I don't like this whole business. You heard.»

«So what d'ya want from me?» Reed yelled. «It's my fault we gotta speak to the owner of Lamonica Towers?»

Grover wiped at a smudge on the polished button panel. They had been a team nearly eight years and both knew the danger of Lamonica Towers.

It was a luxury apartment house fit for the most exclusive sections of New York, yet the builder had chosen East Hudson. He had brought the town $4.5 million worth of taxable real estate, twelve stories high. Lamonica Towers balanced the municipal budget and lowered the taxes of the townspeople. It was a political asset that had kept one party in power for nearly a decade. It rose, white and splendid, among the gray three-story dwellings that huddled at its base.

And the mayor had issued strict instructions to the police force:

-A prowl car was to circle the towers twenty-four hours a day. No policeman was to enter without the permission of the mayor himself. Any emergency call was to receive top priority.

-And if Mr. Norman Felton, the owner, who lived in the 23-room penthouse should call headquarters, the East Hudson Police Department was to be at his service-after the department had first notified the mayor, who might be able to do something personally for Mr. Felton, whose political contributions were generous.

Grover rubbed a coat sleeve across the panel and stepped back to survey his shining. The smudge was off.

«You should've reached the mayor,» Reed said as the elevator doors opened.

«I should've. I should've. He wasn't home. Whaddya want?»

A red flush rose to the surface of Grover's puffy cheeks. He gave the panel a last inspection, then left the elevator and stepped onto the deep pile of a dark green foyer carpet. When the elevator doors closed, he suddenly realized there was no button to call it back.

He nudged Reed. They could only go forward to the single white door ahead of them with a large metallic eye in the center. The door was ridgeless and without handles.

The well-lit foyer was like a windowless gas chamber except they couldn't even spy a hole for a pill to drop through into the acid.

The foyer bothered Reed least of all. «We didn't even reach the chief,» he grumbled.

«Will you shut up?» Grover asked. «Huh? Just shut up?»

«We're gonna be busted sure as you're born.»

Grover grabbed a handful of Reed's wide blue labels and whispered fiercely: «We have to do it. There's a body downstairs. I know these rich people. Don't worry. We'll be okay. There's nothing the chief can do. We got the law behind us. It's okay.»

Reed shook his head as Grover knocked on the white door. The rap was muffled, like flesh coming against solid steel. Grover removed his hat and nudged Reed to do the same. Reed fumbled with his black notebook but managed to hold on to his fedora. Grover chomped on the butt of the cigar.

The door opened quickly but quietly, sliding to the left, revealing a black-frocked butler, tall and imposing.

They were sorry for disturbing Mr. Felton, Grover told the butler, but they must see him. A man was found on the sidewalk in front of Lamonica Towers. There was reason to believe he fell from one of the apartments.

Grover and Reed suffered under the butler's stare for a moment. Then he said: «Please step inside.»

He ushered them into a large room the size of a banquet hall. The detectives didn't even notice the door quietly slide closed behind them. They gaped at the rich white drapes partially shielding a fifty-foot long picture window. A dark, richly upholstered couch ran the length of a side wall. The room was illuminated by indirect white lighting that seemed like a diffused spotlight for an art exhibit. Modern paintings, each in a different striking setting, surrounded the room like sentinel reminders that two high school graduates had entered a different world from East Hudson.

A black Steinway dominated the far corner of the room. The chairs were works of sculpture, flowing in marble simplicity into lines that blended with the room's decor. Through the picture window, the men could see the red reflection of the setting sun glinting off the sides of passenger ships tied up in New York harbor.

Grover let out a low, long whistle and suddenly wished he had waited to reach the chief. The cigar in his mouth felt like an indictment against his rearing. He stuffed it, wet and sticky end first, into the pocket of his overcoat.

Reed just kept mashing his notebook into his hat.

Finally, the butler returned.

«Mr. Felton will see you gentlemen. If you'll follow me, no smoking please.»

When the butler opened the door to the study, Grover knew he had made a mistake. This was not the East Hudson kind of person he was used to dealing with, not the mayor whom he had known as a shyster lawyer or the leading town physician who while drunk had once fumbled away the life of an infant.

It was a different breed of man who sat in the cherrywood chair, his legs crossed under a cashmere robe, a thin volume on his lap. His graying hair, immaculately groomed, seemed to highlight a strong-lined, somber face. His eyes were light blue and unmoving.

An aura of greatness and elegance seemed to permeate his being, as if his presence lent dignity to the book-lined walls. He seemed like what men should be, but never were.

«Mr. Felton,» the butler said, «the two police gentlemen.»

Mr. Felton nodded and the butler ushered them into the study. The servant placed two chairs near Felton's knees. To his right was a high-polished oak desk. Behind him, drawn curtains.

Mr. Felton nodded. The butler left. Grover sat down hesitantly. Reed followed.

«We're sorry to bother you,» Grover said. Mr. Felton raised a hand in a gesture of reassurance. Grover shifted in his seat. His pants suddenly felt hot and wrinkled tight. «I don't know how to begin this, Mr. Felton.»

The gray-haired man leaned forward and smiled benevolently. «Go ahead,» he said softly.

Grover glanced at Reed's pad and nodded.

«A man was found about an hour ago in front of this building. From the way his body was crushed, we think he fell from one of these apartments.»

«Someone saw him fall, you mean,» Felton asked in a tone suggesting more of a statement than a question.

Grover tilted his head like a man suddenly seeing a door open where none had been before. «No, no,» he said. «No one saw him fall. But we've seen a lot of these plungers and I'm almost sure, begging your pardon, that he came from this building.»

«I'm not almost sure,» the dignified owner said.

Reed demolished his notebook in his twisting hands. Grover swallowed again, his throat suddenly as dry as a summer sidewalk. He started to say something, but a motion from Felton's hands cut him off.

«I'm not almost sure, I'm positive,» Felton said.

The two detectives sat motionless. Felton continued: «There have been several families in this building who have entertained rather… how can I say it… rather odd types. We have a careful screening process before leasing an apartment, but as you men know, you cannot always be sure of the caliber of tenant. I believe the man jumped or…» Felton lowered his head as if gaming strength to force the words out. He looked into the blinking eyes of Grover and said: «God forgive me, I believe he may have been pushed.»

Felton stared at the thin volume of poetry on his lap. «I know how horrendous this may sound to you, the taking of a human life. But it is possible, you know. There are cases of it.»

If their jobs had not been at stake, Grover and Reed would have been hysterical with laughter at someone telling two homicide detectives that murder actually existed in the world. But what could you expect from someone so refined, who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and who insulated himself against the world with books of poetry?

Felton went on. «I was on the balcony of my apartment an hour ago, leaning over and looking down at the street below when I saw the man fall. He came off the balcony of the eighth floor. My butler and I went down there, but it is an empty apartment. It has been vacant for some time. No one was there. If the man was pushed, his assailant had escaped. I was going to volunteer this information, but I was so unnerved I had to return here for a few minutes to regain my composure. What a terrible thing.»

«Yeah. We know how rough it must be on you, sir,» Grover said.

«Rough,» Reed agreed.

«Terrible and frightening,» Felton continued. «And to think that whoever pushed this person… if he was pushed… may be living in this very building now.»

Felton looked into the eyes of the two detectives. «I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you a great favor. I've already told Bill and he's agreed.»

«Bill?» Grover asked.

«Yes. Mayor Dalton. Bill Dalton.»

«Oh, yes,» Grover said. «Sure.»

«That man who was in the street. The dead one.»

«He's not dead,» Grover said.

«Oh.»

«He will be in a little while, but he ain't yet. Pretty bad though, you know, sir.»

«Oh, how terrible. But this may help us. I want you to find out who he is, where he is from, as soon as possible. Before midnight if possible. We have extremely good references and background on all the people living here. If there is some connection, we might be able to find it.»

The detectives nodded. «We already started a routine check,» Grover said.

«Make it more than routine and I'll see you will be well rewarded.»

Grover pushed out his fat, thick hands as though shoving away a second helping of strawberry shortcake. «Oh, no. We don't want nothing like that. We're just happy to…»

Grover didn't get a chance to finish his refusal. Felton had smoothly taken two envelopes from the pages of the volume of poetry. «My card is in here, gentlemen,» he said. «Please call as soon as you learn something.»

When the butler returned after ushering out the two policemen, he said: «You could have bluffed your way through. You didn't have to buy them off.»

«I didn't buy them off, stupid,» Felton said, flipping the poetry on the desk. He rose from the chair and rubbed his hands.

The butler shrugged. «What'd I say, boss? What'd I say?»

«Nothing, Jimmy. I'm kind of griped.»

«What's to worry?»

Felton shot a cold glance at Jimmy. Then he turned his back on him and walked toward the curtains shielding the balcony. «Where'd he come from?»

«What?»

«Nothing, Jimmy. Fix me a drink.»

«Right, boss. And one for me.»

«Yeah, sure. One for you.»

Felton parted the curtains and walked out into the twilight air, twelve stories over East Hudson, on the building he had created.

He brushed some spilled earth from a toppled potted palm with his white velvet slipper. It made a scratching noise against the white tiles of the balcony. He walked to the edge, rested his hands on the aluminum railing and inhaled the fresh air blowing off the Hudson.

The air was clean up there. And he had paid for every brick to get him that high into the cool refreshing breezes. It was free of soot, not like the streets across the river on the lower East Side with pushing crowds, vendors, factories and mothers screaming at kids-when mothers were home. Felton's had rarely been.

Of course, there had been the nights. He would feel a tap on his shoulder, look up, and see his mother and smell the stench of alcohol. There was always a man behind, outlined by the light of the hallway. There was no place else for him to stand. It was a small apartment. One room. One bed. He was in it.

She'd nudge and he'd go out in the hallway. «Hey, leave the pillow,» she would yell. And he'd leave it and go outside into the hallway and curl up near the door. During the winter he would bring his coat.

He lived on the top floor then, too. But on Delancey Street on the lower East Side, the top floor was the bottom of the social ladder, even without a whore for a mother. There were no elevators on the lower East Side. The top meant walking.

Sometimes she would lock the door. And then he couldn't sneak into the apartment in the morning to get a jacket or brush his teeth or comb his hair. He would go to school with the hairy dust of the hallway floor still on his back. But none of the students would laugh.

One had tried it once. Norman Felton had settled it in an alley with a broken bottle. The boy had been bigger, by a full half foot, but size never bothered Norman. Everyone had weak points and on the big ones, it was bigger. All the more space for a stick, a rock, a broken bottle.

By the time he was fourteen, Norman Felton had done two stretches in the reformatory. He was headed for his third when one of his mother's sleeping partners left a wallet in his pants. Norman, heading for the sink, picked up the wallet and left the room. It wasn't the first time he had lifted a wallet near his mother's bed, but it was the first time it had been so full. Two hundred dollars.

This was too much to split with mom, so Norman Felton walked down the stairs of the tenement house for the last time. He was on his own.

His success was not immediate. He ran through the two hundred dollars in two weeks. No firms would hire a fourteen-year-old boy, not even when he said he was seventeen. He tried to work his way in with a bookie, but even they wouldn't touch kids as runners.

He had spent his last nickel on a hot dog and was nibbling around it, saving it, caressing it, as he strolled down Fifth Avenue, scared for the first time he could remember, when a large man leaving a mansion bumped into him and knocked Norman's last food to the pavement.

Without thinking, he flailed into the grownup. Before he got off his second punch, two giants were upon him, beating him.

When he recovered consciousness, he was in a large kitchen with servants buzzing around. A middle-aged woman, attractive and heavily-jeweled, was wiping his forehead.

«You certainly know who to take on, kid,» she said.

Norman blinked.

«That was quite a show out in front of my house.» He looked around. There were more pretty women than he had ever seen in his life.

«What do you think, girls?» the middle-aged woman asked. «Does he know who to take on?» The girls laughed.

The woman said «Kid, you're not going to tell anyone about this, right?»

«Got no one to tell,» Norman said.

The woman shook her head, smiling with mistrust. «No one?»

«Got no one,» Felton repeated.

«Where do you live?»

«Around.»

«Around where?»

«Where I can find a place to live.»

«I don't believe you, kid,» the woman said and wiped his forehead again.

And thus, Norman Felton began his career in the most fashionable house in New York. He made a good errand boy for the Missus and the girls like him. He kept his mouth shut and he was smart.

Later, he found out who had bumped his hot dog, out in the street. It was Alphonso Degenerato, head of the Bronx rackets.