The Cutie (22 page)

He glared at me and gnawed on his lower lip. “I could break you,” he said at last. “I could break Ed Ganolese.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” I said.

“You know that I can influence the Police Department to make life difficult for you and your employer. I did it once. Why shouldn’t I do it now?”

“Because you were in love with Mavis St. Paul,” I said, “and you quite naturally want to help us find the man who killed her.”

“I see. And if I don’t cooperate, that means I’m a hypocrite. You’ll have things your own way, won’t you?”

“No, sir. I can only ask. We’ll have things your way.”

“You’re glib,” he said. He sat back, frowning, and studied the empty expanse of his desktop. Tux stood stolidly in the corner, watching a point in mid-air somewhere between his boss and myself. I waited, sitting tense in my chair, wanting a cigarette but knowing I shouldn’t move until Tesselman had thought it out and come to a decision.

When he spoke again, he did so without moving, without turning his gaze away from the desktop. “I was fond of Mavis,” he said. “She wanted to marry me. I never fooled myself that she loved me. I’m an old man, she was a young woman. She wanted to marry me because she liked me, she could tolerate living with me, and she would have fine prospects of being a wealthy widow in just a few years. I understood that. I also understood that her terms were better than I could expect to find from any other woman of her age. Mavis was interested in my money, but she was also interested in me. I’m convinced of that. She would not live with a man simply because he was rich. If he was rich, and she could like him, then she would live with him.”

He looked up at me then, his eyes hard beneath frowning brows. “This is painful for me to talk about,” he said. “When Mavis died, I was shocked. She was, if you prefer, a valued possession. I didn’t love her, but I was fond of her, and I was aware that she was the last woman who could possibly be interested in me. I did everything I could think of to keep that interest alive. Of course she couldn’t sing, but she didn’t know that. I promised to help her make a name for herself in musical comedy. I promised her anything she wanted, to keep that interest alive. When she spoke of marriage, I promised her that, too. Even knowing our marriage would be, on her part, one long deathwatch, I promised to marry her. She was my last chance.”

He got suddenly to his feet, turned away from me, and stumped over to stare out the window at Fifth Avenue. “I’m a proud man,” he said, his back to me. “I don’t like to admit the weakness of my relationship with Mavis. When I heard she was dead, she’d been murdered, I was shocked and I was outraged. A pos-session of mine, something of value to me, had been destroyed. I talked to a friend on the Police Department, told him I wanted a fast arrest and a fast conviction. I was vindictive, justifiably so. But later on, I saw the whole thing in a different light. I was an old man who had made a fool of himself over a young woman. When you came to talk to me, I didn’t want you to know that. I didn’t want anyone to know what a fool and what a weakling I had been. I have always prided myself on my strength.”

The room was silent again as he stared out the window. Then he turned and looked at me. “That’s what you wanted to know,” he said. “Now you can leave. Find the man who killed Mavis, if you want. I don’t care. One gets over the loss of a possession, no matter how valuable it once seemed.”

“Mr. Tesselman—”

“I think I see you pitying me,” he said. “The last thing in the world I want is your cheap pity. I’ve never in my life needed pity, and I don’t need pity now.”

“Mr. Tesselman,” I said again, but he turned his back once more and looked out the window.

Tux took a step toward me. “It’s time to leave, buddy,” he said.

I left.

I knew Ella would still be at the apartment, and I didn’t want to go home and sit around beneath that heavy silence again. It was now nearly four-thirty, and she would be leaving for work at seven o’clock, so I had two and a half hours to kill.

I spent the time in a bar half a block from Ernest Tesselman’s office, and I spent my time thinking about the Mavis St. Paul killing, and refusing to think about Ella.

Sitting in the booth, a Scotch and water on the table in front of me, I opened the notebook and looked at the three names left there. I had now talked to Ernest Tesselman again, and I was convinced that this time he’d told me the truth. Whether he had told me all the truth or not was another question. I was sure his relationship with Mavis St. Paul was just as he had described it. But what if Mavis had backed out at the last minute? What if she had suddenly decided it wasn’t worth it, marrying an old geezer like Ernest Tesselman? As Tesselman had said, Mavis was his last chance. What if she’d taken that chance away from him? There was a lot of rage boiling deep within that old man. I’d seen glimpses of it. If Mavis had turned him down, if she’d told him she was leaving him, he might have grown just furious enough to grab a knife and stab her to death. Then, knowing he was a natural suspect, he hurried out of the apartment, found someone to take his place as suspect number one, and went home prepared to be grief-stricken when he got the news.

And then it hit me. Why it hadn’t before I don’t know, but all at once I realized it couldn’t have happened that way. Mavis St. Paul was killed in an apartment on East 63rd Street. Junky Stein had seen Billy-Billy passed out in an alleyway beside a movie theater, earlier that night, on East 6th Street, fifty-seven blocks away. Aside from the fact that it would have taken the better part of an hour to make the round trip, there was no necessity for the killer to go all the way to 6th Street to find a passed-out bum.

Up until now, I’d been figuring the case from the viewpoint that Billy-Billy had been chosen by accident, but it didn’t make sense that way. The cutie hadn’t gone out looking for any old stumblebum, he’d gone out looking for Billy-Billy Cantell.

Not only that, he’d gone out to get Billy-Billy
first,
before he killed Mavis St. Paul. He found Billy-Billy, stuffed him into the car, drove up to Mavis’s place, brought Billy-Billy upstairs, carried him into the apartment, dumped him on the sofa, knifed Mavis, and left. Of course that was the way it had happened. Not two trips to Mavis’s apartment, only one trip. Our boy planned too carefully to risk returning to the apartment after Mavis was dead.

Which left Ernest Tesselman out. I could see Tesselman, enraged, suddenly murdering Mavis St. Paul, and then trying to figure out some way to get himself off the hook. But I couldn’t see him
planning
to murder Mavis. He had no reason to kill her that would hold up after calm and careful reflection. He might kill her in white-hot anger, but he wouldn’t be killing her while calm.

I could cross his name off the list, leaving only Johnny Ricardo and the husband. I would have crossed Johnny Ricardo’s name off, too, but I didn’t want to limit myself to one suspect until I found out a hell of a lot more about the husband than I knew right now.

I sat around in the bar, thinking about one thing and another until almost seven-thirty, and then I went home. I had twenty-five blocks to go, and it was still hot out, though not as oppressively muggy as it had been the last few days, but I decided to walk. I was in no hurry to be alone in the apartment. Out here on the street, I could think about the heat and the taxicabs and the fairies lined up along Central Park West, looking hopefully with gray-ringed round eyes at all the men hurrying by. I could think about Mavis St. Paul and Ernest Tesselman and the husband. I could think about Ed Ganolese and Billy-Billy Cantell and half a million other things.

In the apartment, I would only be able to think of Ella.

I arrived at my building finally, went up in the elevator, and walked into the apartment just as the phone started ringing. I shut the door and hurried across the room to pick up the receiver.

The voice said, “Clay? This is Tex.”

“Who?”

“You know. From East St. Louis.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh, yeah. Tex.”

“I’ve been trying to call since four-thirty,” he said. “There wasn’t anybody home.”

Which meant Ella had gone out again. To avoid me? “I just walked in the front door this minute,” I said. “Did you get the information I wanted?”

“Sure. She married one of the Air Force officers out at the air base.” And he told me the name of the killer.

I thanked him, and I hung up, and then I just sat and stared at the wall for a while. Because now I knew what the connection was between Billy-Billy Cantell and the guy who had killed Mavis St. Paul.

Because Mavis St. Paul had been married to First Lieutenant Michael Cantell.

I spent a while just sitting there in my living room, as it gradually grew dark outside the windows, and it gradually grew light inside my mind. I let the thoughts come to me, and piece by piece the whole thing came together.

I remembered the fact I’d noticed but hadn’t made anything of at the time, the fact that Billy-Billy Cantell had gone into that subway station alive and had been murdered right there. Which could only mean he’d gone down there with somebody he knew and trusted. Michael Cantell. Good old Mike.

And now I knew where Billy-Billy had gone after he’d run away from my place, way back at the beginning of this mess. He’d gone off to see good old Mike.

I wondered what the relationship was. Brothers? Cousins? Not that it really mattered. The point was that the relationship was there, and Billy-Billy had placed his trust in that relationship, and Michael Cantell, the bastard, had killed him.

Good old Mike had set him up in the first place, come to think of it. And now I saw that scene a lot more clearly, too. Billy-Billy is full of heroin, snoozing away in that alley beside the theater. Good old Mike (cousin? brother?) comes along and says, “Hop in, Billy-Billy, and we’ll go for a little ride.” Billy-Billy hops in, but he doesn’t remember it later on. Maybe he doesn’t even recognize Mike when it happens. I remembered how long it had taken Junky Stein to recognize me.

All right, that was the way it happened. Now the question was: Why did Michael Cantell do it that way? Why does he set his own relative up, of all people, to take the rap for his killing?

And there was an answer for that one, too. Because he wanted to get rid of Billy-Billy.

Then why didn’t he just stick the same knife into Billy-Billy, and forget it?

There was a possible reason for that. Let’s say Michael Cantell came to New York when he deserted Mavis St. Paul. Let’s say he’s made good in the last five years, he’s done well for himself. Now, add Billy-Billy. A relative, most likely a brother. And he’s a bum. He’s got a monkey on his back bigger than King Kong. He’s a disgrace to the family. He’s an annoyance. Not big enough an annoyance to kill, since a relative would be a natural suspect, but big enough to keep Michael Cantell irritated. Big enough an annoyance so that, when our boy Mike Cantell does decide somebody has to get killed, Billy-Billy is his natural choice for the patsy. He kills two birds with one knife. He gets rid of Mavis, the one he’d decided to kill, and at the same time he gets rid of Billy-Billy, that family annoyance. Chop. Chop. All problems solved.

That was half of his motive. The other half concerned Mavis. For all I’d been able to find out, he and Mavis hadn’t seen each other for five years. She didn’t even know he was in New York. Why should he wait five years to kill her? What had happened recently, what had changed recently, that suddenly made it necessary for him to kill her?

And then I remembered something Betty Benson had told me. Mavis had seen a lawyer about getting a divorce. A divorce, that was the change. For some reason, Mavis’s starting divorce proceedings had forced the murder.

How?

Maybe he was married again. Maybe he was rich now, and Mavis was about to put the screws to him. She’d apparently been that type of girl.

Yes, but they still had to meet somehow, they still had to get together after a five-year separation.

And then I remembered something else Betty Benson had told me. Something she had said that had seemed so slight at the time that I hadn’t even bothered to copy it down in my notebook. Something that she alone, out of all the people in New York, was likely to know. The thing that had forced Michael Cantell to kill her.

And then I knew who Michael Cantell was today. I knew the face of the murderer.

I reached out to the phone and called Ed Ganolese. When he came on the line, I said, “I’ve got him, Ed. I’ve got the cutie.”

“Are you sure? Are you one hundred percent positive?”

“I’m one thousand percent positive, Ed. I’ve got the goods on him. Call a meeting of the board, will you? In Clancy’s office at”—I looked at my watch, and it was eight-thirty—“at nine-thirty. That’ll give everybody time to get there.”

“Where is he, Clay? Where is the bastard?”

“Wait a second, now,” I said. “You don’t want to go off half-cocked. And you don’t want me to go off half-cocked, either. I’ll go over the whole thing with you, every step of the way. That’s why I want a meeting of the board. I want you people to double-check my thinking on this thing and tell me whether I’m right or wrong.”

“You’ve got it, though. You’re sure of that.”

“I’ve got it, Ed. I’ve got this guy pinned to the wall like a butterfly.”

“Okay. Nine-thirty, at Clancy’s office.”

“Right. And bring Joe Pistol along. He might be interested.”

“I’ll have to bring him along. This thing has been lousing things up all over the place. Joe isn’t very happy about it, and he’s clinging to me like a leech.”

“He’ll be happy soon,” I said. “And so will you.”

Clancy opened the office door for me when I knocked. He grinned that grin of his and said, “I hear you’re the boy genius of the hour.”

“I’m the boy genius of the week,” I told him.

“You mean this is really finished now?”

“It’s really finished.”

We walked on through to the inner office. Ed and Tony and Joe Pistol hadn’t shown up yet. Starkweather, the accountant, was there, sitting off in a corner and looking uncomfortable and out of place. “How come you’re here?” I asked him.