The Case of the Petticoat Murder

Chapter Twelve

THE BOARDED-UP little house on Barrow Street looked old enough to have been standing there ever since the yellow fever epidemic of 1791, when Greenwich Village, then an outlying section of the city, had been settled almost overnight by families fleeing the terror at the lower tip of the island. There was no space between the house and the buildings on either side of it, no basement entrance, and nothing to indicate that there had ever been any attempt to pry off the planks nailed across the windows and front door.

“No alley behind these houses,” I said. “We'll have to go through the place next door.”

It was a small stationery store. The proprietor let us in, showed us through the store, and let us out the back door into a small, weed-grown court.

“Thanks,” Stan told him. “We'll take it from here.”

“I hope there's no shooting,” the proprietor said. He was a very old man; old enough to mean what he said.

“Neither do we,” Stan said. “Better stay inside.”

The proprietor closed the door and Stan and I walked across the court and paused before the steps that led down to the basement.

“He must have come in through a space between the houses on the next street,” Stan said. “Damn, it's dark enough for a flashlight.”

“Not so loud,” I said, and went down the steps to the door. It was made of wood, and when I pulled it toward me, it gave an inch and then held.

“Hook and eye on the inside,” I whispered to Stan who had just stepped down beside me.

“You've got more muscles than I have,” he said. “After you.”

I worked my fingers between the door and the jam and pried back as slowly and steadily as I could. There was a soft, tearing sound; then the hook ripped free from the rotting wood and the door swung outward.

We paused, listening. But there was no sound from inside, and a moment later we stepped into a dank, moldering hallway littered with debris and almost completely dark.

But not quite. Midway down the hallway an orange sliver of light measured the width of a door on the crumbling concrete floor just outside it.

I felt Stan's hand on my shoulder. “You see it?” he whispered.

“Yes.”

“How do we do it?”

“You mean, are we polite?”

“Yeah.”

“No. The door gets the treatment. You hug the wall, just in case.” I went forward quietly, taking out my gun.

When I reached the door, I braced my shoulders against the wall opposite it, waited till Stan was in position beside it, and then drew back my foot and booted the wood as hard as I could.

My foot went all the way through it.

I drew it back again, booted the door a little closer to the jamb, and stepped inside as the door ripped open and whipped around to slam against the wall. Stan was just behind me.

The room was swelteringly hot and stank like a garbage heap in the noonday sun. There were two filthy mattresses side by side in one corner, newspapers spread on the concrete floor in lieu of a carpet, a brown-scummed toilet and sink with an overflowing refuse can between them, scraps of food and cigarette butts everywhere, and a good-sized cardboard carton near the door heaped to the top with empty liquor bottles and beer cans. The walls held a few items of clothing suspended from nails and a considerable number of pornographic drawings, the latter apparently photostated blowups of the kind of illustrations found in privately published “cartoon books.”

The light had come from a kerosene lantern sitting on an upended soap box near the mattresses.

There was a man lying on the mattresses, but it had taken only a casual glance to know he would be no problem. He lay with his mouth open, his chest moving slowly, his body half on one mattress and half on the other, and his face moist and yellow in the flickering light of the lantern.

Benny Bucket's wife had said that Johnny Farmer was the tallest man she'd ever seen off a basketball court, and now I realized she hadn't been exaggerating. From the top of his ash-blond head to the soles of the half-boots with their crisscrossed chains, Farmer was easily six foot seven

“He must have grown up instead of out,” Stan said as we stood looking down at him. “I'll bet he doesn't weigh much more than I do.”

“He isn't much better-looking, either,” I said. “Let's get some cuffs on him and wake him up.”

I bent down, handcuffed Farmer's wrists behind him, and shook him roughly by the shoulder. He groaned, muttered something unintelligible, and turned his head the other way.

“Alky stupor,” Stan said. “Probably be out for hours.”

My eyes were slowly adjusting themselves to the dim lantern light, and now I saw something I had missed before. It was a good-sized metal box wedged between the edge of one of the mattresses and the wall. I stepped over Farmer's body, lifted the box, and took it closer to the lantern.

The box was, I felt certain, the same gray-enameled fish-tackle box that Marty Hutchins had described for me as the one which the dead girl had kept in the bottom drawer of her dresser. There were sturdy hasps for a padlock, but the lock itself was missing.

Farmer moaned again and moved one leg a little.

“Better search him while he's still so peaceable, Stan,” I said. “But leave all his personal stuff in his pockets. No use giving him grounds for any squawks later on.”

While Stan went through Farmer's pockets I looked in the metal box.

There was nothing in the box but a long, narrow, very expensive-looking alligator handbag and, sticking to the bottom of the box, a buff-colored piece of paper just a little larger than a post card.

I looked first at the piece of paper. It was a billhead, imprinted at the top with the name and address of the Joyner Translation Bureau and addressed to Miss Nadine Ellison at her address on Bleecker Street. It was dated some five months ago, marked paid, and bore the typed notation:

At the bottom of the billhead was a statement to the effect that the Joyner Translation Bureau specialized in the translation of foreign medical and legal journals, and that copies of all work were retained permanently.

There was Nothing whatever to indicate the nature of the printed matter Nadine had had translated.

I folded the billhead, tucked it in my breast pocket, and examined the alligator handbag.

I was no expert on ladies' purses, but I did know that this particular one had cost a great deal of money. It wasn't so much the fact that all metal parts were of silver as it was that the entire bag, from first operation to last, had been done by hand.

The bag appeared to have seen very little use and was completely empty.

Stan walked over to me, weighing something in his hand.

“I'll trade you,” he said, and held out a pair of sapphire earrings. Even in the poor light from the lantern the stones burned like blue-black fire.

“Those are for pierced ears, Stan,” I said. “I couldn't wear them.”

He dropped the earrings into one of the small cellophane envelopes detectives carry for such purposes and put the envelope in his pocket. “What was in the box?”

I showed him the handbag and the receipted bill.

“This isn't the kind of bag a woman would hide away.”

“Why even keep a box in the first place?” he asked.

“People get some pretty weird ideas about security,” I said. “But the point is, she kept the bag and the receipted bill in what she thought was a safe place.”

“Didn't Marty Hutchins tell you she kept all kinds of stuff in there?”

“Yes, but I don't think he meant to stretch that far enough to include something like a handbag. It just doesn't jibe out somehow.”

“You worry about the bag,” he said. “Me, I'm interested in that bill, Nadine wasn't any lawyer or doctor, was she? What'd she want with a translation like that?”

“The outfit will have a copy of whatever it was.”

“Sure, but that doesn't mean we'll know what she wanted with it.” He shook his head.

“Anyhow,” I said, “it's no problem. What we've got to do now is—”

There was a sort of muffled yell. Johnny Farmer sat up suddenly, lost his balance, realized his hands were cuffed behind him, and rolled over on his side. In another instant he was sitting up again and trying very hard to get to his feet.

“Stay where you are, Johnny,” Stan said.

Farmer's pale eyes were slightly protuberant to begin with, and now they bulged even more. “Goddam,” he said thickly. “I'll be goddam.”

“Awful way to wake up, isn't it, Johnny?” Stan said, and walked over to show Farmer his badge.

“Goddam,” Farmer said.

“Old Johnny One Note,” Stan said. “Tell me something. Why'd you kill that girl, Johnny?”

“Me? Kill a girl?” He shook his head. “You're crazy, man. I never killed any girl in my whole life.”

“You didn't get those pretty blue earrings in the five-and-ten,” Stan said.

Farmer patted his pocket. “There goes my gimmick,” he said, looking up at Stan reproachfully. “Those things would have got me all the quiff I ever wanted.”

“You should have hocked them a little sooner,” Stan said.

“You nuts?” Farmer said. “With things like that you can talk women into anything.”

“You still didn't tell us why you killed Nadine Ellison,” Stan said.

Farmer changed his position a little and the chains across the insteps of his half-boots clinked softly. “Never did it,” he said.

I moved over closer to him. “What'd you do with the rest of the stuff in that box?” I asked.

“I didn't kill her,” he said.

“You robbed her, though,” I said. “Or are you going to tell us you're just keeping the loot for a friend?”

He shook his head. “Goddam,” he said. “Somebody must have seen me coming out.”

I saw no reason to dissuade him “Not just somebody, Johnny,” I said. “Four of them.”

“Oh, oh,” he said. “Four?”

I nodded. “You're not cut out for a thief, Johnny. People remember you too easily.”

“Too tall,” he said. “I was always too tall.”

“What happened to the other things in the box?” I asked.

“I burned them up,” he said.

“Where?”

“Over there in the corner. There wasn't nothing but a lot of letters and a couple little books, anyhow. I couldn't read what was in them, so what good could they've done me?”

I walked over to the corner and looked down at the small pile of ashes. There was nothing salvable. I poked around in the ashes, just to make certain; then I walked back.

“Why'd you bring that box all the way over here?” I asked.

“Because I couldn't get the lock busted off over there.”

“What'd you do with the lock?”

“I threw it away, out on the street somewhere. I got mad at it, and took it out and slung it the hell away.”

“Was that handbag in the box, Johnny?”

“Yeah — and that's all, too. I was going to keep it and maybe trade it to some girl for a little bit.”

“You were throwing some cash around this afternoon,” I said. “Where'd you get it?”

“It was in a drawer.”

“Was the handbag empty when you found it?”

“Empty as hell. I looked first thing, soon as I busted off that damn lock. Took me better'n half an hour, too.”

“Which brings up back to why you killed the girl,” Stan said. “We're real curious about that, Johnny. Why'd you do it?”

“I told you, man! I never did it.” He looked at me. “How'd you know I was here?”

“Couple people saw you lugging that box in here,” I said.

“Oh, oh,” he said. “Goddam 'em!”

“It was pretty dirty of them, all right,” Stan said. “You rape that girl before you killed her, Johnny?”

“No, man!”

“Afterwards?”

“I didn't do nothing to her. I just robbed her, that's all.”

“You choked her to death with a petticoat,” Stan said.

“I didn't do no such thing! All I did was take the earrings off her.”

“How'd you go about that?” I asked.

He seemed surprised. “How I'd do it? Jesus, how many ways could I do it? I just reached out and yanked them out of her ears, that's all. Man, are you stupid! How would you have done it?”

“She put up much of a fight?” I asked.

“Now I know you're stupid. Goddam, what a question! How's she gonna put up a fight when she's already dead? You take a dead girl hanging up there on a goddam pipe, and how is she going to put up a fight?”

“How'd you go about hanging her up there, Johnny?” Stan asked. “You made it look just like suicide. In fact, you almost fooled us completely.”

Farmer's pale eyes grew sly. “Yeah?” he said.

“You sure did,” Stan said. “It was clever as hell.”

“Well, I'll be damned,” Farmer said. “Fooled you, eh?”

“One of the smoothest jobs I've ever seen,” Stan said.

Farmer grinned crookedly. “Snow jobs, you mean. Who you trying to honk, anyhow? You think you're conning me about anything, you're nuts.” He tilted his head back and looked up at Stan contemptuously. “You're too stupid to trick anybody. You know that?”

“You sneer pretty good,” Stan said. “You've got a real talent that way. All I'm worried about is how we'll be able to see you do it through that black bag over your face.”

“You scare me a lot,” Farmer said. “Look how I'm shaking.”

I lit a cigar. “Take a look around, Stan,” I said. “Make sure we don't leave anything.”

“My head hurts,” Farmer said. “I'm sicker than a dog.”

“Where are you from, Johnny?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “One cop's a bastard, and the other cop makes out like he's a nice guy. Wants to hear all about you. I know how you cops do. And you know something? You're both bastards.”

“If you didn't kill her, who did?”

“How should I know? All I know is I hit her place.

There she is, hanging on that pipe. I see she's dead, that's she knocked herself off, and I don't see what good her earrings are going to do her, and so I take them, along with the other stuff.” He shrugged. “That's what I done, and all I done, and you'll play hell ever proving different.”

“Will we?” I said. “Think about it a while, Johnny.”

“I don't have to. You think about it.”

I took a long drag on my cigar, studying him, reflecting on the strange way people like Farmer had of making you feel almost as disoriented as they were. They could be almost unbelievably gullible one moment, and surprisingly knowing and cunning the next. The only certainty about them was their inconsistency.

“How much money was in that drawer, Johnny?” I asked.

“Eighty bucks.”

“Let's have it.”

“Go get it at the bars I spent it at.”

Stan returned from his circuit of the small room. “No luck,” he said. “You'd think he might still have a little loot from his other scores.”

“What other scores?” Farmer said. “You kidding?”

“We'll tip off the burglary squad,” I said. “They can toss the house all they like.”

“That's right,” Farmer said. “Make the other stupes do all the work.”

“How about it, Pete?” Stan said. “You about ready to take this bird in?”

I nodded, replaced the alligator handbag in the fish-tackle box, and stuck the box under my arm. “All right, Farmer,” I said. “The door's already open.”

When we reached the Plymouth, I unlocked one of Farmer's handcuffs long enough to secure it to the steel bar provided in the back seat, and then got in beside him.

“What I don't like about jails,” Farmer said as Stan put the car in gear, “is you can't get hold of a woman.”

“You ought to know,” Stan said.

“It's a fact,” Farmer said conversationally, as if we were just beginning a pleasure ride into the country. “A guy without no woman around is better off dead.”

“You know a lot about jails, do you?” I said.

“Enough,” he said. “In fact, this'll be the shortest time I was ever out of one.”

“That right?”

He nodded. “I'll be breaking my own record. Goddam, I wish I hadn't soaked up all that booze. I'm sicker'n hell.”

“You'll live,” Stan said.

“Don't even know as I want to. Hey, what time did that girl get it, anyhow?”

“You know that better than anybody,” Stan said.

“No kidding, now. What time?”

“You should have remembered to look at your watch,” Stan said.

“Hell,” he said. “I bet you don't even know.”

“We know the time limits,” Stan said. “That's all we'll need, Farmer.”

“Like hell,” Farmer said. “You still need the guy that hit her. Was it before nine o'clock this morning?”

“Why nine?” I asked.

“Because if she got it before nine, I'm in the clear.”

I saw Stan glance up at the rear-view mirror. “What are you trying to pull?” he said.

“By Christ,” Farmer said, sitting up abruptly. “She did get it before then, didn't she?” He looked at me, his lips spreading back in a wide grin. “She sure did! I can tell just by the look on your stupid face.”

Neither Stan nor I said anything.

Farmer laughed. “Like I said, I set a new record today.”

“You trying to tell us you were in jail at nine o'clock this morning?” Stan said.

“I wouldn't try to tell a stupe like you anything,” Farmer said. “All I say is ask them about me at the Tombs. They didn't let me out of there until nine o'clock — right on the button.”

There was a long silence.

“When did you rob her apartment?” I asked.

“About a quarter after ten,” he said. “You know how it is. I didn't even have breakfast money.” He leaned forward to look at Stan's face. “Why, what's the matter?” he said mockingly. “Damned if you don't look a little sick yourself.”