Very Cold for May

Chapter Twelve

Fifteen minutes later Jake was ringing Sheila’s bell. She opened the door and when she saw him she tried to close it; but he put a foot inside and pushed his way into the room.

“Please go away,” she said, and he saw that she had been crying. She turned from him and sat down on the sofa before the fire. “I meant it. I want you to go away,” she said.

“I’ve got a little speech to deliver,” Jake said. “Can I sit down?”

She didn’t answer, and from the set of her shoulders he knew she wouldn’t. He sat on the arm of the sofa and removed his hat.

“It’s just this,” he said. “I know why you divorced me and I know why you’re sick of me now. I’ve changed since we were married. Given a soupçon of encouragement I could be something spectacular in the bastard line. You saw it coming and got out before I reached the stage of dismembering children in a spirit of good clean fun.”

“Can’t you say it without sounding like a night club entertainer?” Sheila said, fumbling for a cigarette.

Jake held his lighter for her, but she pushed his hand away and used matches from the coffee table.

“I’ll try,” Jake said quietly. “When I met you I was no prize, admittedly; but I had certain values and certain ideas that I respected. I took people as they came, regardless of their personal, religious, or ethical idiosyncrasies, and I didn’t want to see anyone get hurt.”

He put a cigarette in his mouth, lit it and inhaled deeply. For a moment he watched Sheila in silence, and then shrugged and continued. “But I changed. I can’t blame the public relations business, or anything else, I suppose. But it hit me this afternoon that I was stirring around in a slimy job, and not particularly minding it.” He shook his head and tossed his cigarette into the fireplace. “I’m not saying this very well. But I’m fed up. I’m through. I’ve told Noble that already.”

He watched Sheila’s still face and the firelight in her hair. He was tired and empty; but it wasn’t a bad feeling.

“That’s the end of the speech,” he said.

“What are you going to do now?” Sheila asked.

“I’m going to tell Martin some things about a couple of murders. After that I’m going to send you a dozen roses and go on relief.”

Sheila raised her head slowly and he saw that she was crying and making no attempt to check the tears.

“Can’t you do something about this middle-class emotion?” he said uncomfortably.

“Give me a hanky.”

He gave her his handkerchief. “I’m sorry,” she said. Then she shook her head. “No, I’m not. I waited for it two years and it doesn’t matter a damn bit that I’m behaving like a fool.”

Jake sat beside her. “Then, in the traditional phrase, it isn’t too late?”

Sheila put her hand against his cheek. “The time wasn’t important. I just wanted you to wake up, I suppose I’d have waited until I was an old hag for that to happen. Maybe I shouldn’t say that, it’s not good politics. But it’s the way I feel, Jake. I love you, you know.”

Jake had no urge to be flippant. He simply felt very lucky. “Why didn’t you just tell me what you wanted?” he said.

“That wouldn’t have been any good. You had to see it yourself and make your own decision, one way or the other. I thought if I left, you might wake up. Anyway, I couldn’t bear to be around and watch you changing into a person I didn’t know and didn’t like.”

Jake put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her close to him, and for a moment they didn’t do any more talking; then Sheila pushed him away. “That can wait. Right now I want to know what you meant when you said you were going to tell Martin about a couple of murders.”

“I dislike easily distracted women,” Jake said, and then his mood changed and he sighed. “This is hardly the time for the light touch. I’ve stumbled onto a number of things in the past couple of days. They add up to a pretty good guess as to who killed whom. But I can’t fit Niccolo into the picture.”

“Niccolo?” Sheila asked.

“You couldn’t know about that, I guess. Well, here it is: This afternoon Niccolo asked me how to handle the angle that May’s diary had been sent to me. Well, he couldn’t have known that I received the diary unless he sent it to me.”

“Did you ask him about it?”

“Yes. And he had a nice glib story. He said that Toni Ryerson was sitting at her desk when I unwrapped the diary. She recognized it from the newspaper descriptions, and told Niccolo.”

“Well, that’s logical enough.”

“No, it isn’t,” Jake said. “Toni’s desk and mine are not in line, Sheila. Sitting at her desk, she couldn’t see what I was doing at my desk.”

“Are you sure?” Sheila asked.

“Pretty sure,” Jake said. “But I’m not going to guess about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Were going down to the office and check. You see what it means if Niccolo is lying, don’t you?”

“I get it all right,” Sheila said.

She came out of her bedroom five minutes later with fresh makeup on, and her hair tucked under the rim of a small woolen hat.

“I hurried,” she said.

“It doesn’t show. You look perfect.”

“You sound normal again. Cheerful, I mean.” She smiled and took his arm. “It’s a nice change.”

Outside snow was falling and darkness had settled thickly and suddenly. They waited on the curb of Lake Shore Drive for a Loop-bound cab while in the opposite lanes four rows of traffic flowed smoothly away from the city, their headlights cutting clear tunnels into the night.

Jake thought about Sheila’s comment with a slightly cynical smile. Yes, he had made a change of a sort, and he did feel better. The depression that had affected him for the past days was gone, and he guessed that it had stemmed from a subconscious realization that his work for Riordan was hitting a new low in his career with Gary Noble.

Things were not only bleak, they were confusing. It was curious, he thought, that moral rehabilitation should generally be accompanied by the renunciation of money, in one way or another. In fact, it was about the only way of proving the purity of your desire to be a better man. Yet the world respected the making of money as it respected nothing else, in spite of the academic maxims that two could live as cheaply as one, that the best things in life were free, and that the rich were really a collection of miserable neurotics.

You came to realize very quickly that the best things in life were not only not free, but were usually the most expensive things in life; and that the rich, far from being miserable neurotics, were pleasant, contented people who led charming, satisfying lives. And so you worked to make some money but in the process became a fouled-up moral cripple. It was all very confusing.

The thing was, Jake decided, that he probably was made to be a poor newspaperman, instead of a rich philosopher. At any rate, he realized, the days ahead would not be rosy sequences from a grade B picture.

But he wasn’t worried too much about it now.

He was worried about murder. He had a conviction that he could explain the bewildering and violent events that had begun with the murder of May Laval. However, a conviction wasn’t enough. He had to marshal his guesses into a concrete, unassailable pattern of evidence; he had to put his conviction into an equation that would solve the identity of a clever murderer. Or possibly two.

That was enough to worry about at the moment.

The reception room of the agency was darkened, and the thick carpet muffled their footsteps as they walked across the floor and into the corridor that led to Jake’s office. From where they stood they saw a narrow beam of light coming from the open door of the art department; but they heard no sound and the floor was apparently deserted.

“I’m scared,” Sheila said. Her voice was matter-of-fact, but Jake felt her hand tighten on his arm.

“Don’t feel superior about it,” he said. “So am I. Let’s go.”

They walked down the dark corridor, keeping close together and unconsciously moving quietly and cautiously.

Inside his office Jake snapped on the overhead lights, and then walked into Toni’s office and did the same.

He went behind Toni’s desk and looked through the open door to his own office. Sheila said, “She could see your desk, all right. Maybe Niccolo wasn’t lying, Jake.”

“Something’s wrong,” Jake said. “Look, sit down in Toni’s chair and put your feet on the desk.”

“What’s your idea?”

“I’m not sure.”

He went into his office and sat behind the desk. Sheila called out from Toni’s office, “Okay, I’m set.”

Jake turned his head and saw Sheila’s slim ankles crossed on the top of Toni’s desk. She was wearing black suede pumps with tiny bows over the instep. He could also see her knees where the skirt had pulled up.

He stood up and walked back to Toni’s office. Sheila said, “What’s wrong, Jake?”

“Somebody is lying, if only on a technicality,” he said. He lit a cigarette with an automatic gesture. “I’ve used that office for two years and I know what I’m likely to see when I look around. One of the familiar sights was Toni’s ankles. But that was all I saw. Now under the same circumstances I get a view of your legs that is quite a bit more revealing.”

Sheila came around to his side. “What does it mean, though?”

Jake didn’t answer her; instead he got down on his knees and inspected the legs of the desk. And he found what he had expected to find. The depressions made in the carpet by the legs of the desk were clearly visible; and they were about a foot behind the present position of the desk’s legs.

“Somebody moved the desk forward enough to make Niccolo’s story check,” he said.

“Who?” Sheila asked.

Jake sighed and shook his head. “Hard to say. Let’s review the facts. Niccolo made a compromising statement to me this afternoon. He indicated that he knew I’d received the diary. Logically, the only person who would know that would be the person who sent it to me. Right?”

“I knew you received the diary,” Sheila said. “Don’t forget that, Jake.”

“I’m passing you by for the moment,” he said. “Getting back to the facts; Niccolo had a plausible explanation for his information. Toni told him about it, he said. However, he said she saw me while she was sitting at her desk. That’s impossible. However, it now appears that such a thing is possible, because Toni’s desk was moved, and its present position makes Niccolo’s story a thing of pristine beauty.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We’re going calling,” Jake said. “I’ve always wanted to see Toni in her native environment. This seems like a good chance. Come on.”

Toni Ryerson lived on the near North Side in the fifteen hundred block of Clark Street. The neighborhood had been deteriorating for decades but the progress had been halted, or rather rerouted, during the war, by an influx of single girls who had come from smaller cities to work in Chicago; and by the colony of homosexuals, artists, writers, and draft evaders, which had sprung up in the area at the same time, apparently attracted by its flavor of fin de siècle decay, and the low rent. Now the district boasted a number of studios with slanted windows blinking toward the north, and pizzeria bars and sidewalk cafés.

Jake paid off their cab and stepped out into the snow before Toni’s address, a three story brownstone apartment building.

“Why should she live in a place like this?” Sheila asked as they went up to the entrance.

“Who knows?” Jake shrugged, looking for Toni’s name in the hallway. “She probably thinks it’s a slice of raw, pulsing life, and she wants to do a little pulsing. Actually she wants a suburban home with an incinerator and mortgage, and a husband who cheats on her at American Legion conventions.”

“Ah, bitter,” Sheila sighed. “Do you really believe you can figure out human motivations so accurately?”

Jake found Toni’s name halfway down the metal rack and punched the adjacent button. Then he smiled at Sheila. “In a word, no. I don’t know what Toni wants, or anybody else, for that matter. I was guessing, and indulging my craving for epigrammatic inanities.” He kissed her hard and quickly on the mouth. “I know what I want, however.”

The buzzer sounded; and Jake pushed open the door and followed Sheila up the uncarpeted steps. A door opened above them and Toni’s voice called, “Who is it?”

Jake said, “Jake and Sheila. Can we see you a minute?”

“Why, sure,” Toni said cheerfully.

She waited for them on the third floor landing. They exchanged hellos and followed Toni into her one-room apartment, where Stravinsky was coming from a record player and one glaring, unshaded bulb hung from the ceiling.

“How about a drink?” Toni said.

Jake said, “No thanks. I want to talk to you a moment.”

“Why, sure,” Toni said again. She looked puzzled. “Let’s sit down, anyway.”

There were several wooden chairs in the room, surrounding an immense table on which a portable typewriter was almost lost in a clutter of books and manuscript.

Toni pulled a chair from the table and sat down, with her legs crossed, tailor fashion.

Jake sat on the edge of her work table. “Here’s the reason for the visit, Toni,” he said. “Yesterday somebody sent me May Laval’s diary. Niccolo has told me that you were at your desk when I got it, and recognized the diary from the descriptions of it in the papers. Is that right?”

Toni looked guilty. “Yes, I saw it, Jake.”

“And you told Niccolo about it?”

“I–I didn’t know I was doing wrong. I’ve just got a big mouth, I guess.”

“There’s no reason you shouldn’t have told Dean about it,” Jake said. “It was just one of those things, and you had a perfect right to mention it to anyone.”

“You’re making me feel a little better,” Toni said. “I thought you were going to tell me I’m a snooping little brat.”

“Perish the thought,” Jake said. “I’m not going to tell you anything like that. However, I’m going to tell you that you’re a stupid little liar, Toni.”

“What do you mean?” she cried.

“When did you move your desk?” Jake said evenly. “I didn’t — I don’t know when I moved it,” Toni said, twisting her hands together.

Jake lit a cigarette, and said mildly, “You love Dean, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

“You’d like to keep him from getting hurt, then?”

Toni’s eyes became enormous. “Yes,” she whispered.

“All right, just relax a little bit and listen to me. You can’t see my desk from your desk. You couldn’t, at least, until yesterday or today. Now, your desk has been moved forward to a spot where it’s in line with mine. Coincidentally enough, that move corroborates the story about the diary that Niccolo told me. Curious, isn’t it?”

Toni wet her lips. “I–I don’t know.”

“Dean’s in trouble. Serious trouble. You aren’t doing him any service by keeping quiet now. Let’s have the story.”

Toni looked to Sheila, then back at Jake. “Dean called me yesterday afternoon,” she said, in a low, hesitant voice. “He asked me to tell you I’d seen you get the diary.”

“What time was that?”

“I don’t know. He was at Mr. Riordan’s apartment, though.”

Jake thought that Niccolo hadn’t wasted any time correcting his slip about the diary.

“Go on,” Jake said.

“Dean sounded upset,” Toni said. “He said if you asked me had I seen you get the diary that I was to say yes. And I was also to tell you that I’d told him about it. Then he asked me if I could see your desk when I was sitting at my own. I said no. For a few seconds he didn’t say anything. Then he told me to move my desk up enough so that it was in line with yours.”

“And you did, of course?”

“Yes.”

“Anything else?”

“No. I asked him why he wanted me to lie for him, but he just said, ‘Why not?’ and hung up.”

Jake said to Toni, “Do you have a phone?”

Surprisingly, she had. It was on a piano stool in the closet. Jake picked up the receiver and gave the operator Niccolo’s number. Toni was beginning to cry. “He’ll hate me,” she said.

“I don’t think so,” Jake said.

The phone on the other end was lifted. Jake’s hand tightened on the receiver.

“Yes?” It was Niccolo’s voice, low and guarded.

“Dean, this is Jake.”

There was silence. Then Niccolo said, “What’s on your mind?”

“I’m at Toni’s. Let’s don’t waste time. She told me the whole story.”

Dean was silent, and Jake said, “Are you still there?”

“I didn’t bolt for the door,” Niccolo said. His voice was tired. “Where are you now?”

“At Toni’s.”

“Well, do me a favor. I shouldn’t have dragged her into this mess, but I was desperate. Tell her for me she’s a good kid, and that I’m sorry. Will you do that?”

“I’ll do that,” Jake said. “Now let’s come to the point. How did you know I received May’s diary?”

“I sent it to you,” Niccolo said. “I wrapped it with brown paper, put your name on it, and dropped it into a mail box. That’s how I knew you got it, Jake.”

Jake felt perspiration starting on his forehead. He said, “Where did you get it, Dean?”

“I got it from Avery Meed, Riordan’s little batman. I killed Meed, Jake. I killed him and took the diary. Does that shock you?”

“You’re crazy. Don’t talk any more. I’ll come over and we’ll go over this thing. Will you wait there for me, Dean?”

“Sorry, Jake. Thanks, but I have other plans. I need a half hour’s start. How about a half hour for auld lang syne? Have a drink, smoke a couple of cigarettes before you call the police, eh, Jake?”

“I won’t give you thirty seconds unless you listen to me. Why in hell did you do it, Dean?”

Niccolo chuckled, and Jake could imagine the light in his eye and the cynical good humor of his strong and handsome face. “I have a sordid story in the balcony, doctor,” Niccolo said. “Jake, I killed Meed because I’m a smart operator.”

“Stop this neurotic babbling,” Jake said sharply. “Give me the story.”

Toni had come closer to the phone. “He’s in trouble, isn’t he?” she said in an anguished whisper. Sheila put an arm around her shoulder and held her close.

“Okay,” Niccolo said, quietly. “I’ll give it to you, Jake. But in exchange for that half hour. Is it a deal?”

“Go ahead.”

“Here it is then, in my own clean and sparkling style. I needed money, Jake. I liked the horses but they didn’t like me, Mr. Bones. I got in deep with some characters who weren’t interested in excuses or good intentions. Remember our first conference with Riordan? He said that May Laval had some dope on him. I was in a straw-grabbing mood, so I decided to see May. I hoped to talk her into joining me in a deal to pry Riordan loose from some of his cash. Blackmail is the traditional word, I guess.” Niccolo laughed drily. “Still interested?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. I went to May’s the morning she was murdered. But I was too late. A little man, whom I later learned was Avery Meed, was going up the steps of her house. He went in and came out not more than a minute later, with a flat book under his arm. I didn’t get the pitch. Anyway, I lost my nerve. I went home, but the next morning I met Meed in your office. By that time I knew that May had been murdered, and that the diary was missing. So I reasoned that Meed had killed May and taken the diary. The rest was pretty simple. I followed him when he left the office — you wanted me that morning but I was gone, remember? Anyway, I talked to Meed in his apartment. He had an appointment with Riordan and he didn’t have much time. Neither did I, Jake. I told him what I knew, and gave him an opportunity to join my little deal. But he turned me down. More than that, he reached for a phone to call the police. He must have been bluffing, but I couldn’t take a chance. I killed him and took the diary. Later that morning, I clipped the information in it that pertained to Riordan, and sent the rest of the diary to you.”

“Do you still have the dope on Riordan?”

“Yes,” Niccolo said, and laughed. “It’s plenty hot, Jake. But it didn’t do me any good. I sent you the diary because I hoped you’d tell Riordan. I thought it might put a little psychological pressure on him to know that the dirt had gotten into someone else’s hands. But I’m a bad guesser. I called Riordan the next night and made him a proposition. He told me to go to hell and hung up. And that’s just half of it. Tonight I called that character Prior, the government man. I offered him the dope on Riordan for a price, and he told me to go to hell, too. Funny, isn’t it?”

“Dean, you can’t help yourself by running now. You’d better face this thing.”

“You promised me a half hour, remember?”

“You’ll get the half hour,” Jake said.

“Okay. We’ll see how far I can get. I have plans but I don’t honestly expect them to work. I’m kind of disappointed in myself, Jake. Take it easy.”

The phone clicked in Jake’s ear. He jiggled the hook automatically; then he shrugged and put the receiver back into place.

“What did he do?” Toni whispered.

Jake looked at her for a moment without speaking. Then he said, “He killed Avery Meed.”

Toni frowned as if the words had no meaning for her, and then she sat down in a straight chair and began to rub her forehead. “That’s not — Dean couldn’t do that,” she said, in a puzzled, reasonable voice, and started to cry. The tears ran down her cheeks, but she stared at the opposite wall, sitting straight in the chair, and made no attempt to brush them away.

Sheila came to Jake’s side and he put his arm around her shoulder. “He wants me to wait half an hour before calling the police,” he said.

“I see. Do you have a cigarette?”

They lit cigarettes and Jake glanced at his watch.

“Damn it,” he said.

Fifteen minutes passed. Toni had stopped crying. She stared at Jake now in a beseeching silence, as if begging him to tell her nothing was wrong.

The half hour passed.

Jake picked up the phone and called the police board. He asked for Homicide. The sergeant on duty switched his call to Lieutenant Martin’s office.

“Yes?” Martin said crisply.

“This is Jake. I’ve got some news for you.”

“Fine. What is it?”

Jake heard Toni crying again, and he let out his breath wearily. “I’ve got the man who killed Avery Meed. All wrapped up in a fancy package.”

“Who’ve you got?” Martin said, his voice quickening with interest.

“Dean Niccolo.”

Martin was silent for several seconds. Then he said, in a thoughtful voice, “That’s funny, Jake. Dean Niccolo was murdered in his apartment about fifteen minutes ago. We’re just going out there.”