Time to Murder and Create

Chapter 5

I had arranged to meet Beverly Ethridge in the bar at the Hotel Pierre at seven o’clock. From Prager’s office I walked to another bar, one on Madison Avenue. It turned out to be a hangout for advertising people, and the noise level was high and the tension unsettling. I had some bourbon and left.

On my way up Fifth Avenue, I stopped at St. Thomas’s and slipped into a pew. I discovered churches not long after I left the force and moved away from Anita and the boys. I don’t know what it is about them, exactly. They are about the only place in New York where a person has room to think, but I’m not sure that’s their sole attraction for me. It seems logical to assume that there’s some sort of personal quest involved, although I’ve no real idea what it might be. I don’t pray. I don’t think I believe in anything.

But they are perfect places to sit and think things out. I sat in St. Thomas’s and thought about Henry Prager for a while. The thoughts didn’t lead anywhere in particular. If he’d had a more expressive and less guarded face, I might have learned something one way or the other. He had done nothing to give himself away, but if he had been clever enough to nail the Spinner when the Spinner was already on guard, he’d be clever enough to give damned little away to me.

I had trouble seeing him as a murderer. At the same time, I had trouble seeing him as a blackmail victim. He didn’t know it, and it was hardly time for me to tell him, but he should have told Spinner to take his dirt and shove it. So much money gets spread around to brush so many crimes under various rugs that no one really had anything resembling a hold on him. His daughter had committed a crime a couple of years ago. A really tough prosecutor might have gone for vehicular homicide, but more likely the charge would have been involuntary manslaughter and the sentence would have been suspended. Given those facts, there was really nothing much that could happen to her or to him this long after the fact. There might be a touch of scandal involved, but not enough to ruin either his business or his daughter’s life.

So on the surface he had little motive for paying Spinner off, and less for killing him. Unless there was more to it than I knew about.

Three of them, Prager and Ethridge and Huysendahl, and they had all been paying silence money to Spinner until one of them decided to make the silence permanent. All I had to do was find out which was which.

And I really didn’t want to.

For a couple of reasons. One of the best was that there was no way I could have as good a shot at the killer as the police could. All I had to do was dump Spinner’s envelope on the desk of a good Homicide cop and let him play it out. The department’s determination of time of death would be a lot more accurate than the vague estimate Koehler had given me. They could check alibis. They could put the three possibles through intensive interrogation, which all by itself would almost certainly be enough to open it all up.

There was just one thing wrong with that: The killer would wind up in slam, but the other two would come out with dirty faces. I came very close to passing it on to the cops anyway, figuring that none of the three had spotless faces to begin with. A hit-and-run killer, a hooker and con artist, a particularly nasty pervert — Spinner, with his personal code of ethics, had felt that he owed those innocent of his murder the silence they had purchased. But they had bought nothing from me, and I didn’t owe them a thing.

The police would always be an option. If I never got a handle on things, they would remain as a last resort. But in the meantime I was going to make a try, and so I had made an appointment with Beverly Ethridge, I had dropped in on Henry Prager, and I would see Theodore Huysendahl sometime the next day. One way or another, they would all find out I was Spinner’s heir and that the hook he’d had in them was in as deep as ever.

A group of tourists passed in the aisle, pointing out things to each other about the elaborate stone carvings above the high altar. I waited until they went by, sat for another minute or two, then got to my feet. On my way out I examined the offering boxes at the doors. You had your choice of furthering church work, overseas missions, or homeless children. I put three of Spinner’s thirty hundred-dollar bills in the slot for homeless children.

There are certain things I do without knowing why. Tithing is one of them. A tenth of whatever I earn goes to whatever church I happen to visit after I’ve received the money. The Catholics get most of my business, not because I’m partial to them but because their churches are more apt to be open at odd times.

St. Thomas’s is Episcopal. A plaque in front says they keep it open all week long so that passers-by will have a refuge from the turmoil of midtown Manhattan. I suppose the donations from tourists cover their overhead. Well, they now had a quick three hundred toward the light bill, courtesy of a dead blackmailer.

I went outside and headed uptown. It was time to let a lady know who was taking Spinner Jablon’s place. Once they all knew, I would be able to take it easy. I could just sit back and relax, waiting for Spinner’s killer to try killing me.