Murder, My Love

Chapter Six

The Fifth Avenue of the Flatiron Building was one thing — the Fifth Avenue across the river in Brooklyn was something else again. This grim stretch — wide-open drug deals, bodega cashiers in Plexiglas cages and SMACK KILLS graffiti, Salvation Army storefronts operating like frontier forts — cut through the Park Slope neighborhood like a junkie’s ravaged, ragged arm.

Park Slope was in the midst of a nervous breakdown, with gentrification under way even as a crack house popped up near venerable Prospect Park, baseball on offer but coke 8-balls too, a nice area where shootings and muggings were becoming commonplace. The neighborhood was “in transition,” the Realtors would say. This was the kind of area, after all, where educated middle-class couples lived alongside working-class Irish, Italian, and Puerto Rican immigrants in an area once known as the Borough of Churches.

Erin Dunn’s Park Slope address on Seventh Avenue was an apartment in a somewhat renovated brownstone, a once-proud four-story that was a ripe prospect for either gentrification or arson, but right now was just another shabby structure that took in boarders.

It was a quarter to noon. I’d figured to allow the cleaning lady to get in a few hours of sleep before dropping by on her. Getting her phone number and calling her up first would be courteous, but a bad idea in this situation.

The day was cold and crisp and overcast again, so the hat and trenchcoat were required. Whether the .45 was or not, who could say? But I always packed heat on criminal matters. I’d considered taking the subway, but I hadn’t had the heap out of the parking garage for maybe a month and figured to take my nondescript black Ford with its souped-up motor out for a ride. Shake the rust off. The drive in steady but unclogged traffic gave me a chance to think.

While I wasn’t ruling Myron Henry out, the ex-cop didn’t seem like a good bet for the blackmail route. And none of the four women that either Velda or I or both of us had talked to seemed likely accomplices in an extortion scheme, either. Still, you never knew. And how would a working-class woman like Erin Dunn get caught up in a blackmail scheme involving a United States senator?

Plenty of options here, just no good ones.

Parking on the street was no problem. But it took repeated knocking to get me a haggard, rheumy-eyed woman in her late seventies with smudged scarlet lipstick and white hair whose perm was a dim memory. Her blue-and-green floral housedress was faded and torn, her thick stockings saggy, her shoes brown and clunky.

“Not buying,” she rasped through the cracked door.

“Not selling,” I said, and showed her the P.I. badge in the leather fold. That almost always works. It did now.

“You got the wrong house, officer,” she said, chin going up proudly. “We’re respectable here. I don’t take in druggies and Mr. Davis is my only alkie, and he come straight from rehab.”

She started to close the door on me. That’s what a detective’s gum-sole shoe is for.

I shouldered in with a smile.

“Good to hear,” I said. “But I’m not looking for a drug addict or an alcoholic that I know of. Unless one of those categories applies to Erin Dunn.”

The entryway announced corned beef and cabbage from a kitchen visible down the hall, bordered by an open stairway. To my left I saw a mahogany-edged parlor where furnishings with faded upholstery were arranged on worn oriental rugs on oak parquet floors. A struggle had been going on for years here, between respectability and atrophy. Respectability was losing.

“Miss Dunn is no druggie or alkie or nothin’. A good girl, as far as it goes.”

“Is she in?”

The crone nodded. “Works nights in the city.”

“Yes, she’s a cleaning woman at the Flatiron Building. Is she married?”

“No. But she lives with a dago fella. People used to have morals.”

“Why, is Erin an immoral type, do you think?”

She shook her head. “No more or less than anybody these days, I suppose. She works a respectable job, anyway. Her man just tends bar over at Snooky’s up the street.”

I took a little offense. “Bartender’s a respectable job. My old man was a bartender.”

“Be that as it may, Snooky’s ain’t no respectable joint, that’s for ding dang sure. You’re not Brooklyn PD, are ya?”

“No. My beat’s in Manhattan.” Not claiming to represent the police, you’ll note. And I was an officer of the court, remember. “What’s the, uh, dago’s name?”

“Tony Something. They’re all Tony Somethings, ain’t they?”

“Well, I’ve known a Mario or two. Is Tony up there?”

She shrugged. “Ain’t my day to look after him. But the Dunn girl’s up and around. Come down for the mail. Are you going up there?”

“Her room’s upstairs?”

She nodded. “Top right. 2A. Tell her if she wants lunch, I ain’t serving past 1:30.”

So it was a rooming house, not apartments.

“You want some lunch, officer?”

“That’s nice of you, ma’am, but—”

“Cost a buck. Bargain at twice the price. You know what corned beef is a pound these days?”

I admitted I didn’t, and headed up the stairs. She trundled back toward the kitchen. She’d have some non-druggies and ex-alkies to serve soon.

The stairs had remnants of carpeting where you stepped, but that didn’t stop the creaking. A general musty odor danced with the corned beef and cabbage. I would have blackmailed somebody gladly, to get out of that place.

I knocked at 2A.

The face that appeared was a narrow, lightly freckled oval offset by apple cheeks. Her eyes were sky blue but bore a red filigree — either she’d been crying or she was just plain tired. Her hair was red, but not the Nicole Winters variety — this shade didn’t come from a beauty shop but strictly from genes. She wore it short and curly. No perm, either. No make-up at all, not that she needed it.

“Yes?” she said, cracking the door suspiciously, much as her landlady had. A pleasant enough voice but no Irish lilt, that was for sure.

“Need a word, Ms. Dunn,” I said, and flashed the badge.

It worked on her, too.

The door opened and I stepped in and she closed it behind me, looking at me warily.

Then she led me into a very neat room — her cleaning skills on display here, as well — of furnishings that were either secondhand or had haphazardly assembled themselves over the decades in this house, the kind of things you relegated to a guest room when you really didn’t like having guests. Chairs from the 1950s joined tables from the ’30s, and an overstuffed sofa from the ’40s with springs trying to escape had blond end tables with an early ’60s atomic style.

Erin Dunn was something else again.

She wore a green satin robe — her red hair went well with emerald, just as Nicole’s had — sashed at the waist. The sleek fabric clung enough to show off a busty figure with nice gams showing at the knee. Her feet were bare. This was another small, curvy female, like the others in this case, with Nicole and of course Velda the only leggy exceptions.

“Won’t you sit down, officer?” she asked, gesturing to a well-worn easy chair positioned across from the sofa, where she settled herself. She crossed her legs, revealing some creamy inner thigh. She wasn’t showing off, but then she didn’t have to.

Before I sat, I draped my trenchcoat over the back of the chair and tossed my hat on the coffee table between us. Maybe it was that term — “cleaning lady” — that had made me expect something dowdy, or a woman heavy-set, or anything but another foxy addition to the chorus line this case was turning into.

But Erin Dunn was a beauty, all right. Maybe not a raving one, but certainly a little doll who might well have earned the attentions of a certain United States senator. Had my client withheld the identity of one of his conquests? It would hardly be the first time a client lied to me.

She sat forward, hands clasped, her eyes wide now. “Uh, officer, I don’t have any coffee going, but I can get us some downstairs, if you like.”

“No, that’s fine. Thank you, though. Get yourself a cup, if you want. This may take a while.”

She shook her head, the tight red curls hardly moving. She reached for a pack of cigarettes, Kools, on the nearby end table and lighted up from a book of matches. She waved out the flame, got the smoke going, and only then said, “You don’t mind, do you?”

“No,” I said, and smiled a little. “I’m an ex-smoker and relish any secondhand smoke that comes along.”

She smiled a little, too. “So. What’s this about?”

“I have a few questions about your job at the Flatiron Building.”

Her pause was brief, but it nonetheless registered on me.

She said, “Go right ahead. I have nothing to hide.”

It’s been my experience that the only people who say they have nothing to hide usually have something to hide. But not always.

I said, “How long have you worked at the Flatiron?”

Her smile was quick and gone. “Well, I should straighten you out on that.”

“Please do.”

She gestured with the Kool in hand. “I don’t actually work for the Flatiron. Not itself. I work for a cleaning service that contracts with the building. There are five of us girls. One strictly cleans the men’s and ladies’ rooms. I clean the upper floors — seventeen up. It’s a lot of work in a short period of time.”

“An eight-hour ‘day’?”

She nodded, drew in smoke, let it out. “Eight-hour shift, yes.”

“That includes the nineteenth floor.”

“Of course.”

“So Senator Winters’ office is on your list.”

“It is. He’s not there all the time, only certain days, certain times of the year. So that’s one of the easy ones. I can skip it, frequently. Why? Is there a concern about the senator’s office?”

“Yes. Something was taken.”

Her eyes widened. But there was something artificial about her reaction. “Really? That surprises me.”

“Why is that?”

She shrugged. “Well, nothing terribly valuable’s in that particular office. Some others have paintings and sculptures that I would imagine are worth money. I’m not an expert on such things. Oh! The computer and so on — was that what was taken?”

“No.”

“Then maybe you should tell me what was.”

I sat back, sighed big, as if the day had already worn me out. “You know, I think I will have that coffee.”

She got up quickly, her expression pleasant, lips pursed in a smile. “Certainly. Sugar? Cream?”

“Both, please.”

She put her cigarette out in a tray, said, “I won’t be long,” and went out.

I could hear her padding down the creaky stairs.

I got up and poked around, but something told me she’d expected that. As if she wanted to prove to me she hadn’t taken anything from the senator’s office. Whether she was specifically thinking of a cassette tape, I had no idea.

In this outer room, a little writing desk and some odd pieces with drawers all proved unhelpful. Adjacent was a cubbyhole kitchenette. The only other room was the bedroom, where the neat little female had already made the bed, and where nothing in the dresser or nightstand drawers gave up anything of note. I didn’t check the closet, other than to just peek in quickly, before going back out and resuming my chair.

No bathroom in the place. This was a rooming house with shared facilities. Nothing fancy here, and what made it barely livable was the fastidiousness of a woman who made her living cleaning for others, and brought that bent home.

She came in with a little tray and cups of coffee for both of us. My coffee had already been sugared and creamed. She was having hers black. Resuming her seat, she placed the coffee cup on its saucer on the atomic end table and sat close to that arm of the sofa. Crossed her legs again. Very pretty legs, but still she wasn’t showing off. Just getting comfortable, and she seemed at ease, though I had a hunch she was neither of those things.

So I pretended to just be making conversation, between sips of the coffee. If that old gal downstairs had made this stuff, she had at least one talent.

“Your landlady’s quite a character,” I said.

“She is at that,” Erin said, laughing a little. “You should hear her talk about her clientele in ‘better days.’ It was all respectable bachelors and older women who had known finer times. She claims she served them tea on silver trays.”

I smiled. “I’m happy with just the coffee. She’s a talky one. Mentioned to me that you live with someone who’s not just a roommate, I take it.”

Her eyebrows went up and she made herself keep smiling. “Tony? Tony Licata, yes, we’re, uh... engaged.”

I gave her another smile. “Trial run never hurt anybody. Of course, if you ever have kids, you’ll need bigger, better digs than this.”

She nodded. Sighed. “True enough. This is a terrible place, officer. Most of the other boarders are old people, really old people — men and women on government assistance.” She shivered. “Would you like to share a bathroom with the likes of them? Poor souls, but...” She shivered again. “No, not a place to have kids... we’d have to live better than this.”

“Park Slope’s improving, they say.”

The big blue eyes widened. “Not fast enough! Any nights I’m not working, I almost always hear car windows getting shattered, by a baseball bat or whatever. Kids can’t walk home from school without a parent playing escort. Do you know how many times I’ve been held up at gunpoint on my way home from the subway station?”

“Is that why you did it?”

“Did what?”

“Recorded the senator and his secretary going at it in the next room.”

She swallowed. Her face turned whiter than a blister. She said, “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about... Let me see that badge again. Let me see your I.D.!”

I got out the leather fold and reached it out to her across the coffee table. She snatched it from me.

“Michael Hammer,” she read. “I know that name. Private investigations!.. Did I read about you in the paper? Are you who they wrote that story about?”

I shrugged. “I’ve had a lot of stories written about me. Maybe you’re thinking of the nostalgia piece in the Post last year. ‘Remember that trigger-happy private eye? He’s still around!’”

She stood. She was shaking. Really trembling.

“You should leave,” she said. “Right now.”

I patted the air with my palms. “I’ll leave. But hear me out, first.”

“Why should I?”

“Because otherwise you might go to jail. At the very least you’ll lose your job and never be employable again in your trade. And you are a lovely young woman obviously adept at cleaning up for others. You should try cleaning up for yourself... while you still can.”

She narrowed her eyes about halfway through that, really thinking, thinking. She sat, her knees together now. Her hands on her thighs.

“First,” I said, “I need you to be straight with me about something, and remember — I can check it, easy enough. You see, the senator and his wife are my clients. The senator, as you know, is being blackmailed.”

“Not by me!”

“By Tony, then.”

Her chin quivered. “Not... not exactly. I don’t think I should say anything else. I think you should go.”

“Not just yet. We have a few questions to get through, first. Let’s start with, have you ever been involved with the senator? I can get the truth out of him, if you don’t want to give it to me.”

Her eyes were very wide now. “Involved... you mean involved? No! I’ve only spoken to him a few times. He doesn’t know I exist.”

“Oh, he does now. So tell me if I’m mistaken about any of this. The senator and Ms. Long were playing hide the salami in his inner office and either the intercom had been left on, or you knew how to utilize it to record their fun and games. You replaced the cassette with a blank one from one of the secretary’s desk drawers and tucked the little audio love-fest in your pocket. But not, you say, for blackmail reasons?”

She was looking at her lap, where her hands were folded now. She was shaking her head. “You’ll never believe me.”

“Take a swing.”

“I did it as a joke. A... a lark.”

“Explain.”

Her smile was a wrinkled thing. “Tony, he’s a... he’s a real character. He likes a good laugh. He’s... really into sex stuff.” She shook her head and smiled. “Hey, we’re into each other, okay? You got a problem with that?”

“None. Sounds very healthy to me.”

She sighed. Very big. “Well, I thought Tony would get a kick out of the tape. A charge out of it. I thought he’d think it was a real riot, hearing a big shot like Senator Winters getting it on with his secretary. I thought... oh hell. I could see us listening to that and getting all hot and... I can’t talk about this.”

“So it was Tony who had the idea.”

She nodded. “He listened to it and he didn’t react like I figured. Instead, he... he just started to pace around. He said, think how if we could get some real money, we could move into a decent place and finally get married. We’d really have something to build on.”

Blackmail. Something to build on.

“Anyway,” she said, “I... I went along. But it wasn’t about blackmailing the senator.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No! Tony said he knew just who to sell it to. Don’t ask me who that is, because I don’t know. I really don’t. But Tony, he’s a bartender, you know?”

“A noble profession.”

“Yeah, well, he’s good at it, and he’s had some really good jobs — it’s not just joints like Snooky’s and Moody’s. Worked some of the big hotels, when they needed additional help for parties or whatever. Some of those parties have important people at them. Businessmen. What do you call it, captains of industry? And big shot politicians.”

“Like Senator Winters.”

“Yeah, but not Senator Winters, too. Other people in that area, that field. Listen, Mr. Hammer — that’s really all I know.”

I studied her. “Are you saying that Tony sold that tape already? Not to the senator, but to someone else?”

“Yes! And that someone else must be the blackmailer you’re after!”

I sat forward. “Listen, Erin — I’m in a position to protect you on this. I can even protect Tony. He doesn’t deserve it, but I can. All the senator wants is to stop this — to stop the blackmailer, and get that tape deep-sixed...”

Somebody worked a key in the door.

A big good-looking guy in a bomber jacket with a fur collar and jeans and motorcycle boots let himself in. His hair was dark and curly, his eyes were half-lidded, and his mouth had that Stallone looseness. Maybe twenty-five, he looked like he could bench-press a Buick.

Erin flew to her feet.

“Baby!” she said. “This is Mike Hammer! He’s here to help us out of this mess.”

He shrugged, stepped inside, but left the door standing open. His voice was a thick baritone, like Elvis if he had no sense of humor. “What mess?”

“Somebody’s blackmailing Senator Winters with that tape,” she said. “Mr. Hammer says if we’re honest with him, he’ll get us out of this thing.”

He looked at me, dark eyes tight. “We wouldn’t have to pay the money back?”

“If you sold that tape, and didn’t keep any copies,” I said, “you can swim in that money as far as I’m concerned. All we want is the name of who you sold it to.”

He came slowly over to me. “You could keep the law off of us?”

“Very good chance of that.”

His frown was confused, no threat in it at all. “That doesn’t sound like ‘yes’.”

I held one palm up. “I can see a situation where, if the cops got onto this, you might have to testify. But you’d likely get immunity.”

“And you’ll pave the way for that?”

“I will.”

He nodded, then extended his hand for me to shake and, as I extended mine and leaned toward him, he brought that hand quickly back and turned it into a fist and slammed it into the side of my face.

I didn’t go down, didn’t lose my balance, but my head swam — he was as big as me but much younger, and if he had kept at it, he might have got enough good ones in to put me down and out.

Instead, he used those few seconds while I was stunned to bolt for the open door. He was halfway down the stairs before I made my way after him, and a guy my age should not have done what I did.

But I did.

I threw myself at him, threw myself down those stairs and tackled him, taking his ass down. Then I rode the bastard like a sled down those steps, each one banging him in the head and face. We wound up in a pile on the little landing, with only a few stairs left to go, and I got up and stepped over him and dragged him down a few more of those stairs, face-first, hauled him like a bag of laundry and tossed him in the entry way.

The crone of a landlady in her torn, faded housedress was standing nearby now, screaming her head off. It sounded like an old-time siren, the kind you had to crank. Somehow I got the front door open and I dragged him some more, but by his fur collar now — going down those cement steps face-first might have killed him, and I wanted him alive.

I tossed him onto the sidewalk and, catching my breath, I’ll be damned but if he didn’t tackle me and knock me back onto the sidewalk. He got on top of me, flailing at me with hard fists though without much power behind them, after the ride he’d taken.

So I kneed him in the nuts and he crawled off of me and curled up in a fetal ball and yelled bloody murder and started crying. A bawling ball of flesh.

Up on the front stoop, the old lady was screaming and now, next to her, the pretty Irish lass in a green satin robe was screaming, too.

The only one not making noise was me.

I was waiting till things quieted down so I could ask this son of a bitch a question.