Dead of Night

Chapter eighteen: Girl in hiding

I hoped it was true. If it was, Auguste was in the clear on the killing, and since presumably Hacklin had half a dozen of the DAides in the hotel by then, they ought to nab Gowriss. But there was a small doubt in my mind. Maxie.

Max liked to tell the tale, to make it dramatic. If he took a Distinguished Personage in his car late at night and the gentleman had perhaps imbibed one over the eight, as Mickey would say, by morning Maxie would be relating how the rubber-legged guest had fallen flat on his face as he stepped out of the elevator. A pretty who smiled casually at Max would, an hour later, have been inviting him up to help unhook her girdle.

So I warned Tim not to call in the Marines until Gowriss’s presence in the hotel had been verified by someone less inclined to Play It Up Big.

“Okay, okay.” He was hurt that I hadn’t slammed down the receiver and come a-running. “Only other thing, this Schneider says Auguste admits bein’ in hock to some loan shark for two hundred an’ fifty seeds. This Schneider seems t’think that was the motive for robb’ry an’ the murder was committed because th’ guard discovered Auguste makin’ the grab.”

“If they’re going to list everyone who owes dough as a suspect, they’ll have a nice, long job. Look in the personnel file there, Timothy. Find the phone number for that pastry chef we got out of trouble with the steward’s department, for stealing that hundred pounds of caraway seeds. Tadross, wasn’t it?”

“Wait a sec.” I could see him going through the file as if he had mittens on. “Yeah. Khalil Tadross — no phone listed.”

“What’s his address?”

“Sixteen ’n a half Washington Street. I don’ know where that is—”

“I do. Look, Tim. There’ll be a couple of pressers still down in the valet room. Ask ’em if they remember seeing a cream-colored jacket with chocolate checks, last couple of days, huh?”

“Sounds like something Milton Berle’d wear. Say, I checked on Auguste’s scrap with the roast chef. Chef weighs fifty pounds more’n Auguste but he got backed into a hot oven just the same. Auguste is nobody to pick a muss with. When’ll you be back?”

“Little while. See if you can get Max to give you more details on Al Gowriss; if he remembers too much you’ll know it’s the balonus.”

The hullabaloo on the juke was something about a wild goose. I needed no reminder I might be chasing something I couldn’t catch.

Gowriss might have had an accomplice check in the hotel. Later on he could have gone up to the accomplice’s room, from there sneaked up to 21MM. But then how had Tildy Millett escaped assassination? And how had he managed to get in the suite? Had he been in her bedroom all the time they’d been eating in the living-room? Or had he gotten in after dinner, while the skater and Nikky were in the bedroom? Only way to find out was from Tildy. Or the Syrian maid.

Our kitchen staff is a sort of miniature United Nations. French sauce chefs, Austrian bakers, Danish fish cooks, Italian vegetable chefs, Filipino silver boys. And one Syrian, a pastry chef. There weren’t so many Syrians in New York; probably they kept to themselves fairly closely. A Tadross might know where to find a Narian.

A mile or so beyond Dave’s I stopped churning all that around, began to wonder about the taxi in my rear-view.

I’d been driving at thirty; the cab didn’t try to pass me, though its top lights were on, which meant it had no fare. At night cab jockeys seldom drive so slow when they’re out on the Parkway where there’s not much chance of picking up a customer.

Cars passed him, passed me; he stayed about a hundred yards behind me. I speeded up to fifty, passing other cars; he hung right there on my tail.

I swung off a Parkway exit, switched off my lights. He slowed, came right up to the exit, stopped for a second, then rolled on toward the city. If there was anyone riding in the rear seat I couldn’t see him; it was too dark and too far away for me to tell if the flag was down.

Nerves, Gilbert, I chided myself. Be peeking under your bed before you turn in, next thing you know.

Nerves or not, two people had been bedded down in the morgue already. I kept an eye out for a trailing taxi all the way to the East River Drive, but how was I to tell one cab from another? All I’d seen of the hackie was a low-pulled cap and an undershot jaw.

I crossed to Fourth, went down Lafayette, over to Broadway, west a block on Rector. Washington Street looked like something out of a Currier & Ives print of pre-Civil War New York.

Next to an imposing marble bank, a row of narrow stores; windows full of brassware and rugs and jewelry; squiggly black Arabic signs; the only English lettering names such as those on upper windows along Fifth Avenue below Thirty-Fourth. Bardwil, Maluf, Lian.

A brightly lighted coffee shop. More curlicue signs. A row of brick houses with dark hallways and gloomy alleys leading on back to courtyards somewhere. Small, dark, bearded men wearing derby hats and pointed slippers. Thin-boned women with beautiful oval faces and enormous almond-shaped eyes, long hair down over their shoulders. And strange, pleasant, spicy smells.

Sixteen and a half was between a coffee shop and a window full of musical instruments that looked like mandolins and guitars with the mumps.

I had to go to Battery Park to find a place to park. I kept an eye out for taxis as I walked back. There weren’t any.

The first youngsters I asked to direct me to Mr. Tadross just stared out of big black eyes, backed away from me, and ran. Finally I found an old man with a sweet, sorrowful face like that of a saint in those old Italian paintings; he directed me down a moldering hall, up a flight of stairs to a sort of rickety balcony opening onto a tiny court full of washing on clotheslines, trash barrels, and baby carriages.

There weren’t any numbers on the doors. I called, “Tadross,” a couple of times; he came out of one of the doors. A fat man with eyes sunk deep in bulgy sacs, a bulbous chin, he was in his undershirt and a pair of those pointed, heelless slippers.

He was glad to see me, until I told him what I wanted.

“I don’t know any girl of that name, Mister Vine. Has she done something bad?” He gazed at me fearfully.

“Not as far as I know. She can help get one of our room-service captains out of a mess, Tadross. Auguste. You know Auguste.”

His face lighted up.

“Oh, yes. He’s in trouble?”

“They’ve arrested him for something he didn’t do. But this Narian girl may be able to fix it.”

“One moment.” He disappeared into his room, came out directly in an embroidered silk jacket. “We will see.”

We went along the balcony, down the stairs, back through the black tunnel of the hall. On the street he asked me to wait.

“I will inquire among friends,” he said in his liquid half-French accent. “I think they may talk more freely if I am alone.”

“Sure.”

“I can promise nothing. But you have been a good friend. I myself might have been in trouble, save that you have a large heart.”

“I know when a man is really honest, Tadross.”

“Yes. So I will do what I can.”

He went into the coffee shop next door. I smoked and inspected glass jars of strange vegetables in a store window — They looked like vegetables; they may have been cuttlefish for all I know.

After a minute, Tadross came out, sluff-sluffed up Washington Street in his slippers. I lost sight of him.

It was fifteen minutes before he came back. His face was solemn.

“I can tell you,” he said slowly, “though I have made a falsehood by saying I would not do this.”

“You have to do those things sometimes.”

“She is not from here. The name is common but she is from the state of Louisiana. But she is a cousin of Golub Narian. He lives in the Syrian colony on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. You know?”

“Sure.” I’d never known there was a Little Syria in Brooklyn.

He gave me the address. “My friends were much disturbed when I asked about her.” Tadross fingered his chubby chin. “She is hiding from someone. She does not wish people to know where she is. And—” he searched my eyes thoughtfully, “you are the second tonight who has tried to find her. But the other — he learned nothing.”