Very Cold for May

Chapter Ten

He stopped for a Scotch and soda at the Blackstone bar and smoked a cigarette while he drank it. He hadn’t enjoyed the session with Riordan. It was not pleasant to be told bluntly that your loyalty was for sale. But that’s what it amounted to, so there was no point in being annoyed. It was merely the process of supply and demand at work.

When he went outside to get a cab another idea occurred to him. He could regain Prior’s good will by telling what he’d learned of Nickerson; namely, that the man was dead. That would save Prior the time of making an investigation, and it couldn’t possibly hurt Riordan.

Waiting on the curb in the cold gray weather it occurred to him that he didn’t particularly want to ingratiate himself with Prior. He considered Prior a dedicated young ass. Yet it was necessary for him to make a placating overture, because Riordan might need even the tiniest speck of good will from Prior when things got grim.

It was, all things considered, an undistinguished sort of business.

Prior’s unit was installed in a suite of offices on the eighteenth floor of the Postal Building. A busy young man in the reception room told Jake that Prior was in conference and couldn’t be disturbed. Jake said he’d wait a moment and took a seat.

There was a door directly before him that led to a private office, and the transom above the door was open. Through this aperture a high-pitched irascible voice suddenly sounded:

“Excuses, gentlemen, are the base coin with which incompetents hope to buy the respect of conscientious men.”

The young man at the desk glanced at Jake and then up at the open transom before returning to his work with noticeably renewed energy.

The voice continued stridently: “The papers in this city have joined in excoriating your work, and I refuse to believe that this unanimity of opinion is traceable to anything but some egregious mistake in your procedure.”

“Senator Hampstead has arrived, I hear,” Jake said, recognizing the voice.

“That’s right,” the young man said, and smiled politely. “The tempo picks up a little when he’s around.”

“I can imagine.”

Jake had met Elias Hampstead, senior Senator from a midwestern state, several times in Washington and Chicago. He had considered him a windbag, a charlatan, and a bore; but the Senator had a staunch and zealous national following.

Senator Hampstead had a reputation among his followers for selfless honesty, unflinching rectitude, and deathless integrity; and for being, by actual count, at least a one hundred and fifteen per cent dyed-in-the-wool American.

He had been elected in the twenties on a fusion ticket which had as its platform the reestablishment of the pioneer principles of godliness and decency. No one took the campaign seriously except Elias Hampstead, who at the time was in his early forties and had lost his farm in the depression following the first World War. He had been selling religious pamphlets to care for his wife and son, when the political movement swept him up and gave him a reason for taking up space on earth.

He was elected to the Senate and immediately sponsored bills which respectively advocated the abolishment of horse racing, dog racing, prize fighting, professional baseball, and drinking. He became the butt of a thousand gags and cartoons. He was railed at as the personification of prudery, the epitome of provincial insularity. But there was something about his stubbornness, his boorishness, his refusal to stop braying forth his pious platitudes for even a moment, that perversely caused some people to admire him; and among certain cheerless sects he came to be looked upon as a sort of down-to-earth, home-spun Messiah.

Near the close of the war the Hampstead Committee was formed to investigate war profits and the breath of fear blew across the back of anyone it turned its attention to, because this committee was as harsh in its judgments as the laws of the Old Testament. The committee took its character from Senator Hampstead. He was incorruptible. His past was without a flaw or stain. He had lived for thirty years with a gray, retiring woman who had died shortly after their only son was killed in the war. He had no unexplained bank accounts. He was the militant foe of lewdness, of corruption, of wrong doing, of anything, in short, that differed from his concept of decency, modesty and godliness.

Such was the man, Jake thought with a humorless smile, who would weigh the evidence against Dan Riordan. It would be difficult to imagine two men more opposed in their tastes, convictions and motivations.

The door of the private office opened and Senator Hampstead emerged, trailed by Gregory Prior and Gil Coombs.

The Senator was a commonplace-looking man, with straight, graying hair, appraising eyes, and features somewhat too small and bunched together to be handsome, but which were not unrefined. He was of middle height and his body was spare and well cared for. He wore a gray suit and carried a walking stick.

Jake said, “Hello, Senator. We’ve met before. My name is Harrison.”

“Oh, yes,” Senator Hampstead said. His normal voice was high, affected and irritating. “You’re handling the public relations of that poltroon, Riordan, aren’t you?”

“That’s right,” Jake said, easily.

“You’ve made our job difficult with your tactics. There should be a law that would permit us to lock up men like you.”

“Why don’t you introduce one?” Jake asked. He felt pleasantly angry. “It would hardly be noticed with the rest of your crackpot legislation.”

“Good day,” Senator Hampstead said slowly. And Jake knew he had hurt the man, and that he would never be forgiven. “Come along, Prior,” the Senator said.

“All right,” Prior said. He gave Jake a quick glance and shrugged helplessly as he followed the Senator from the office.

Coombs grinned at Jake. “The Senator is in a rare mood today. Come in, won’t you? No need for us to bark at each other, at any rate?”

Inside the private office Jake saw neat stacks of ledgers and account books on two conference tables. “The Riordan records,” Coombs said, running a hand through his thin hair. “Helluva job going through them. And it’s mine, all mine,” he added with a smile.

“No help?”

“Oh, yes. I’m just looking for sympathy. I have three accountants helping me, and Greg — Mr. Prior — takes care of the legal angles and runs the main show. Did you wish to see him?”

“Yes, but I can leave the message with you. He was looking for a man named Nickerson, who worked in a Riordan plant during the war as a Government inspector.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Well, Nickerson is dead. I thought that would save you some time to know that. That information comes from Riordan, so it’s probably accurate.”

Coombs smiled. “Riordan must be a fascinating man.” He glanced at the books on the tables. “Very bold, very venturesome, very adroit. That’s the impression I’m getting. But I’d better make a note of that fellow’s name. What was it?” He made a record of it on his memorandum pad.

They talked desultorily for a few moments then and Coombs mentioned that he was enjoying Chicago.

“It’s an amazing city,” he said. “I’ve been completely fascinated by some obscure bars on the South Side. The music is genuine, honest-to-God jazz, and the people are just fabulous. We’ve also tried your West Side steak houses, and some of the West Madison Street bistros, but for color only, of course.”

“You’ve got around,” Jake said.

“Yes, Greg is a good guide,” Coombs smiled.

Jake gave him the names and addresses of a few little-known places that were favorites of his, and Coombs made a note of them with an enthusiasm that Jake found rather charming.

“We’ve been to one of these, I think,” Coombs said, “but we’ll try the others if we can find the time. With Senator Hampstead on hand that will be difficult.”

“I can imagine,” Jake said.

They talked desultorily for a moment after that and finally Jake said goodbye to Coombs and went out to the elevators. He glanced at his watch and realized that the working day was about over.

It was five o’clock when he reached the office, and the receptionist told him that Mr. Noble had gone for the day, and also that a package had come for him in the afternoon which the office boy had delivered to his desk.

Jake thanked her and went to his office. He felt tired and depressed, and was glad that he’d missed Noble. There was something wrong with him, he knew.

The package was lying on his desk, a flat object about twelve inches by twelve and two inches thick, wrapped in brown paper and tied clumsily but firmly with strong twine. Jake sat down, untied the knots and tore off the wrapping paper.

The package contained a large leather-bound book. Jake stared at it for a moment without recognition; and then he realized where he had seen it before and a cold tremor went down his back.

This was May’s diary.

Jake sat for a moment holding the diary in his hands, and the only thought in his mind was that two people had died because of what it contained.

From the adjoining office he heard Toni Ryerson humming tunelessly, and he saw that her silken ankles were in their customary position atop her desk. He put the diary down and walked to the doorway that connected his office with Toni’s.

“Mind if I close this door?” he said. “The draft through here is reaching the typhoon class.”

“I’ll try to live,” Toni said.

Jake smiled and closed the door. Returning to his desk he picked up the diary and opened it to page one, which was dated the first of January, 1943.

Flipping to the back of the book he saw that it ended on December 31st, 1948. It was a six-year diary, with each page containing space for three days.

He frowned, trying to guess why the diary had been sent to him, of all people. Assuming for a start that Avery Meed had killed May to get the diary, whoever had sent it to him must be the person who had murdered Meed. But why in God’s name should anyone kill Meed to get the diary, and then mail it to someone else?

Jake opened the diary to the last half of 1944, which was the time that Riordan had known May, and he immediately saw that someone had been at work with scissors. There were pages cut from the diary in every month from June through December of 1944. And it didn’t take him long to see that there was no mention at all of Riordan in May’s diary.

Jake looked at the obvious conclusion for a moment; someone had removed all reference to Riordan from the diary. That could have been Avery Meed. Or it could have been done by the person who murdered him.

For a few minutes he turned this idea over in his head, and then he picked up his phone and called Sheila’s office. When she answered, he asked her if she would step down to his office for a moment. She hesitated, almost imperceptibly, before saying yes.

She appeared half a minute later, wearing a coat, and carrying her bag and gloves. “I was just leaving when you called,” she said.

Jake closed the door behind her and picked up May’s diary from his desk. “I wanted you to see this.”

Sheila glanced at the book and then opened it and began reading. For a few seconds her face was expressionless; but suddenly she caught her breath sharply.

“Where did you get this?” she asked.

“It came in the mail.”

“Who sent it?”

“I have no idea.”

She sat down carefully in the chair behind his desk. “What does it mean, Jake?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “However, it opens up some interesting ideas. Riordan, you know, sent Avery Meed to get the diary from May. Then someone murdered Meed later that morning and took off with the diary. Whoever sent this to me is probably the person who murdered Meed.”

“Have you looked through it yet?”

“That’s another thing.” He leaned over her shoulder and opened the diary to the last half of 1944. “You’ll notice that someone is collecting Riordaniana. There’s no mention of him in the diary now.”

She said, “Then whoever murdered Meed probably has the dirt on Riordan now.”

“That’s possible.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

Jake grinned ironically. “What do you think I’m going to do?” he said. “I’m going to take a look at how our betters behaved themselves during the war.”

He opened the diary to page one.

May’s account of her wartime relationships with gangsters, industrialists, artists, movie stars, generals and prostitutes was a fascinating chronicle, Jake realized after reading only a few pages. She recounted verbatim conversations and her memory for names, dates and places had been amazing. There was the saga of a three-star general whose name had become a household symbol for idealism and unflinching honesty during the war, but who, according to May’s record of his comments while drinking, was actually little more than an office boy for one of the nation’s major industries. And her account of the relationship between a politician of national stature and a foreign ambassador could have footnoted a chapter in Kraft-Ebbing. The diary teemed with names, big and little, with intricate transactions designed to pad someone’s pocket at the expense of someone else, and with the details of assignations, infidelities, promiscuities, and sexual acrobatics of all varieties.

Jake shook his head. “No wonder Riordan was worried.”

“He must still be worried,” Sheila said.

Jake looked at her thoughtfully. “Yes, of course. The dossier on him is still in limbo.”

“Maybe not,” Sheila said, thoughtfully.

“That’s right,” Jake lit a cigarette, and the sound of the flaring match seemed unnaturally loud in the still office. Sheila was right. Riordan might not be worried any more, for the good reason that he could have killed Meed and gotten the incriminating information from the diary.

“But that doesn’t explain why he sent the diary to me,” he said finally. “Let’s stop playing detective and give this thing to Martin.”

“You can take care of that errand yourself.”

“I wish you’d stop being so damn impersonal,” Jake said irritably. “I’m depressed and I’d like to talk with you. Why don’t you have dinner with me tonight?”

Sheila shook her head. “Sorry, Jake. Something is bothering you, but you’ll have to figure it out for yourself.”

“I don’t expect you to take me on your lap and calm my fevered crying,” Jake said. “I merely want you to have dinner with me and laugh at my gay commentaries on the weather.”

“Not tonight,” Sheila said. “But thanks.”

“Oh, not at all,” Jake said drily. He opened the door for her and watched her walk away with quick light steps...

Jake took a cab to Central Station and found Martin sitting in his warm, smoke-filled office, with his feet on his desk, staring out at the swirling snow that was falling over the city.

He put the diary at Martin’s elbow and lighted a cigarette while Martin swung himself around in the chair and opened the book. For several moments he skimmed through the pages without comment or expression; and then he glanced up at Jake, and said quietly, “Where’d you get this?”

Jake told him how he had received the diary, and added that he had noticed a number of pages had been cut out, and that there was no mention of Riordan in the diary.

Martin didn’t answer for a moment. He stared at the book and turned a few pages idly, a thoughtful frown on his face. Finally he said, “I want you to do me a favor, Jake. Don’t tell anybody about bringing me this, will you?”

“You’re the boss.”

“I want to surprise some people,” Martin said. “I don’t want anyone to know how it came into my hands. Okay?”

Jake said okay and then spent a half hour talking with Martin, mainly because there was no place in particular that he wanted to go, and nothing in particular he wanted to do. They didn’t talk about the two murders that were on their minds. They talked about local politics, about the days when Jake covered a police beat and Martin was in uniform.

When Jake left he was feeling vaguely nostalgic, but he suspected the feeling was cheap, phony and empty. He decided he might just as well be drunk as sentimental, so he told the cab driver who came along to take him to a bar.