Corpses in the Cellar (2 page)

Brannigan was standing in the middle of the club, oblivious to the room-wide, inch-deep puddle that surrounded him. His hat
was on the back of his head and he was staring down at the floor, at the charred remnants of a human being. As Lockwood’s
eyes became accustomed to the light, he saw the rest of them, all the other bodies, grotesquely sprawled in the muck and debris.
A police photographer was putting away his camera.

“You got all you need?” Brannigan asked, voice rasping out of his great Irish bulk.

“Yeah. You can cover ’em up and take ’em away now,” the cameraman replied; then he saw Lockwood. “Company,” he said quietly.

Brannigan turned around casually. The light in the place wasn’t good, and it took him a few seconds to distinguish the figure
at the base of the stairs. “Lockwood!” he boomed finally. “Christ, Hooky-boy, you
do
get all the pretty ones, don’t you?”

“Hello, Jimbo.” Lockwood picked his way through the destruction, searching for dry spots. “They must have used the whole Croton
reservoir on this one.”

Brannigan snorted out a laugh. “You can’t say the boys with the red suspenders aren’t thorough. Transatlantic insured this
one, I suppose.”

“You ought to be a detective.” Lockwood deadpanned. “What’s it look like to you?”

“Who knows?” Brannigan said. “It’ll take days to go through all this stuff. Weeks perhaps.”

“Mmm. Where’d it start?” Lockwood’s eyes never rested, taking it all in as he spoke.

“Storage room, most likely. Oily-rags.”

“Over there?” Brannigan nodded, and Lockwood moved in that direction, followed by the hulking detective.

“Where were the bodies?”

“All down here.”

“The bookkeeper, too?”

“Yep.”

“Everyone in the main room. Interesting,” Lockwood replied, as he stood in the storage closet, looking down at the charred
remnants of a rag.

“Must’ve been awfully fast,” Brannigan volunteered. “Coroner says they were all asphyxiated.”

“Poisonous fumes from the palm fronds, maybe? Quick-killing?”

“I can ask him to check. That bothers you, huh? Everyone in the main room, nowhere near the exits?”

“Makes me wonder a little,” Lockwood acknowledged. “No bruises, no bulletholes?”

“No. That I’m sure of. At least as far as the preliminaries go. Our good friend the coroner has been known to overlook things
once in a while.”

Lockwood shrugged. “Not likely. Do you know where the books are?”

Brannigan stared at him. “You think Grand set the fire himself for the insurance?”

“Everything’s possible in this best of all possible worlds,” Lockwood reminded him. “Mainly I want to check everything while
it’s all still here. Amazing how quickly evidence can disappear.”

Brannigan led him to the small office that had been used by Grand and his bookkeeper. The books had survived, singed and yellowed
and soggy with water, but Lockwood could make out most of the figures.

After a few moments he straightened up. “What about the register?”

“Over there.”

The register tape had survived, too. Lockwood studied it. “Checks with the books,” he murmured as Brannigan looked on with
less than keen interest.

“What about the people who died? Any of them have a record?”

“Not likely. We’ll be having their prints checked, what prints they’ve got left, that is, but I don’t figure on coming up
with anything.”

“Probably not. Who called in the alarm?”

“Eddie Black. The patrolman on the beat.”

“Black. Do I know him?”

“Could be. On the force five years. Husky, good-looking kid. Big dark eyebrows.”

“Yeah, I think I’ve seen him around. Was he the first one here?”

“That’s right.” Brannigan drew out a bedraggled pack of Kools and offered one to Lockwood, who smilingly turned him down,
in favor of one of his own.

“Don’t care what you smoke, do you?” he said, lighting them both up.

“Hell, it’s all smoke, anyway,” Brannigan mumbled. “Found ’em on the bar. Besides, down here, this menthol stuff kind of helps.”

Lockwood, coughing, dropped his cigarette into the muck. “Could be you’re right. Let me give it a try. Did Black spot anything
suspicious?” he asked as he lit the cork-edged cigarette.

“Nope. Just saw the smoke comin’ out of the doors, tried to run in, but the flames pushed him back. Then he turned in the
alarm.”

Lockwood’s eyes went sharp. “Did he have any trouble opening the doors?”

“I don’t—Jeez, I don’t know.” Brannigan scratched his head. “What’re you driving at, Hook?”

“Nothing, Jimbo. Just laying all the groundwork I can.” He moved toward the bodies, took another drag on the Kool, and then,
one after the other, pulled back the blankets that had been placed on the corpses a few moments before.

“Well?” Brannigan asked when he was done.

“The girls used to be pretty,” Lockwood remarked flatly.

“Nobody there familiar to you, either?” Brannigan asked.

“No, not really. Although as the years go on, they all begin to look alike.”

“ ‘They’?” Brannigan inquired.

“Innocent victims,” Lockwood said. He made a slow tour of the rest of the club, and moved toward the exit.

Brannigan, who’d been chewing his lip saying nothing, jerked his head up as he saw his friend start toward the stairs. “I’ll
come on out with you,” he said. “I’m through here.”

The two of them slowly went up the stairway, alert to whatever they might find. The doors were shut as they reached the top,
and Lockwood opened them carefully, stopping them when they had fully caught the light.

In a moment, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a jackknife, and then a handkerchief.

Brannigan stood there impassively as Lockwood carefully put the knife to the door, scraping at it slowly and with precision,
holding the handkerchief near, depositing the scrapings into it from time to time.

Finally, he stood up, put the knife into his pocket, folded the handkerchief, and handed it to Brannigan. From Brannigan’s
expression he knew he didn’t have to explain. The big man’s eyes had gone opaque and dangerous. “I’ll get this to the lab
for you, Bill. And if it’s what you think it is, I’ll check with Eddie Black, and find out whether or not the doors were open.”

Debbie wasn’t there. Just the old man, uncomfortable, apprehensive as he let him in, a little frail as he showed the way into
the enormous living room. Ceilings at least twenty feet high, Lockwood judged. High ceilings should cool a room down, but
the place was still oppressively hot, even with half-a-dozen fans going. It looked as if it were going to be a bad summer.

“Drink?” Grand asked, moving to the cocktail bar.

“Irish and soda if you’ve got it,” Lockwood requested, and waited as Mack Grand ploddingly went through the motions. He was
a small man, maybe five foot six inches, Lockwood judged, stocky, without suggesting either fat or strength, and bald, fluffs
of white circling the large bare spot at the top of his head. However, his eyes were aware, and his lips full and sensual,
as if whatever power that had once been contained in that body had retreated to those few inches between chin and forehead.

“Cheers,” Grand toasted mechanically, after handing one of the glasses to Lockwood. He waited while Lockwood sipped, and then
asked, “Now what can I do for you?”

“I want you to tell me everything you know.”

“My wife informs me she already told you all that.” It was said quietly, without anger or malice.

“There has to be more to it than that.”

“A fire is a fire, Mr. Lockwood.”

“And arson is not just a fire.”

“Arson?” Grand’s brows arched, and his eyes widened. “The police never said—”

“I’ve just left the police. They’d only just determined that it was arson.”

“I don’t understand—” Grand said, giving the appearance of genuine confusion.

“All the bodies were found in the main part of the club, at the cellar level, far from the stairs.”

“Yes?”

“It didn’t make much sense because people don’t usually die that quickly in a fire. And since there were no marks on the bodies…”
Lockwood pulled out the Camels and offered them to Grand, who shook his head no, and waved Lockwood to feel free to light
up.

The cigarette tasted good, blotting away the remaining traces of menthol, and Lockwood waited a moment to continue. Then,
“So I checked the exits, and found nothing. Nothing, that is, till I got to the front doors. There were things stuck to those
doors…”

He rose, and walked to the window. Below he could see all of Central Park, green, throbbing with life. What was there in people
that moved them to destroy? Why all the waste, the useless, unnecessary waste? He sighed, and turned back to the club owner.
He wasn’t being paid to reflect. “I had them checked out at the police lab. They were what I suspected they were. Bits of
clothing and human flesh.”

“I don’t—” Grand’s voice faltered, “I don’t understand.”

“Simple enough. The people in that club had tried to get out. Had pressed their bodies against the hot steel of the doors.
Were crushed against the doors, probably by the people behind them, till bits of them sizzled, and stuck.”

Grand looked sick. He sat for a moment hanging his head, and then looked up at Lockwood. “But why does that make that arson?”

“Two reasons. One, the bodies weren’t found on the stairs. They’d been moved to look as if they’d never gone near the front
doors.”

“But why?”

“That should be obvious to you. The doors were locked from outside.”

“But they couldn’t have been.”

“Shouldn’t have been, perhaps. But they were. Nothing else could have kept them shut, no way they could have just jammed.”

“But if they were locked, how did the firemen—the doors weren’t damaged.”

“Even before the firemen got there, the doors were open. Even before the first person on the scene—a policeman—got there,
the doors were open.”

“I don’t understand.”

Lockwood took a drag on the Camel. “Whoever did it opened the door before the cop got there, dragged the bodies down to the
cellar, and left.”

“Impossible. He’d have been burned to death. I saw what the stairs look like.”

“My guess is the decorations went quickly. The stairs probably burnt out in minutes. When the firemen got there they were
fighting flames along the sides of the cellar; the more substantial stuff.”

“My God.” Grand looked about him, helplessly. “Who could ever do such a thing?”

The detective returned to the couch, and sat. “That’s what I’d like to ask you,” he said, quietly.

Grand stared at him dumbly for a moment, then offered, “How could I possibly know?”

“It’s your club. Somebody torched it. Deliberately.”

Grand finished his drink in one quick gulp. “I don’t see how I can help you.”

“Mr. Grand, I have to warn you—until my investigation can proceed to a satisfactory conclusion, there’s no way my company
is going to pay off on your insurance.” Lockwood stabbed out his butt. “And at the moment, I’m nowhere near that conclusion.”

The old man’s arms dropped to his sides, and he faced Lockwood directly, all defenses seemingly down. “All right. I can’t
think of anything. But if you want to ask questions, go ahead, if you believe it’ll help.”

“Vinnie Griese,” Lockwood said.

Grand’s eyebrows shot up. “What?”

“There’s been word out for some time that Griese’s been trying to muscle into your club. Some people even say he’s done it.”

Grand’s eyes narrowed in anger, and his lower teeth showed, as he spat out the words, “Griese’s got nothing to do with my
club! Nothing!”

“Okay,” Lockwood said, soothingly. “Okay. But what about the rumors that he wanted a piece of the action?”

“Mr. Lockwood, everyone in New York seems to want a piece of my club. Hoodlums like Griese, cops on the take, columnists expecting
freebies everytime they drop in with a party of twelve…”

Lockwood persisted. “How recently was Griese after you?”

“I don’t know. A month ago, two months… at my age, it’s hard to keep track of time.”

“You turned him down?”

.”Of course. He’s nothing but a lamebrain punk. What good could he do me?”

“The standard offer is protection.”

“I can protect myself.” Grand stood up, glass in hand. “Drink?”

Lockwood shook his head no, and Grand walked over to the bar and poured himself another, a stiff one.

“When you told him no, did he make any threats?”

“Sure,” Grand said, still at the bar. “Sure, he made threats. People like him, they’re always making threats.”

“You didn’t take them seriously.”

“Mr. Lockwood, I’m not an idiot. Of course I took them seriously. With a mental case like Griese, you know anything’s possible.
But I also shrugged it off. I’m a club owner. That kind of stuff goes with the territory. In the old days, it used to keep
me up nights. You get older, you shrug it off, and,” he added wryly, returning to his seat, “you let other things keep you
up nights instead. At my age, you don’t sleep too good, no matter what.”

Lockwood continued to dig. “Were any of the threats about a fire?”

“Nah. That kind don’t have no imagination,” Grand said, for a moment slipping into night club vernacular. “Just a lot of ‘you’ll
be sorrys’ and ‘wait and sees’. If Griese set the fire, the reason he was so long getting around to it is that it probably
took him a month to come up with the idea.”

“You may be underestimating him.”

“Punks. They’re all punks,” Grand snarled, shrugging it off.

“All right,” Lockwood said. “Anyone else who could have done it?”

“Sure,” Grand grinned, without much humor. “My ex-wives. Only they’d have made sure I was in the place.”

“Who else?”

“You don’t quit, do you, fella?” Grand asked, amusement mixed with exasperation.

“That’s my job, Mr. Grand. It’s the nature of it. Going one step at a time, touching all the bases, just kind of slogging
through. You’ll find I’m not easy to shrug off.”