The Devil You Know (9 page)

I’d not liked him much, but between the two of us, Barrett and I could get him to talk about Fleish Brogan. All it would take was a drink.

Or maybe not.

Peering in his office, I found Clapsaddle sprawled on a battered couch, hat over his eyes. When I breathed in to say hello, the air was thick with the ripe fumes of stale booze from his sagging mouth. He snored away with the kind of wholesale gusto that only the truly unconscious can achieve.

At his desk a pint-sized young woman hammered on his typewriter. Her round little rump was perched on two phonebooks so she could see what she was typing. The desk and chair were set up for the long bones belonging to Sleeping Beauty.

She had short dark hair, a cute figure—at least from this angle—and was focused on her story.

“Excuse us, Miss,” began Barrett, who shouldered in next to me.

“Almost there,” said the girl, not stopping. “I got another minute to deadline. . .”

She suddenly ripped the paper clear, grabbed a few sheets from a pile, and spun the chair around, holding the story out. She adjusted quickly that neither visitor was who she expected.

“Copyboy!” she shouted past us.

Another one butted in between, grabbed her papers, and shot out again.

She gave us a closer, less distracted look, fixing on me with surprise. “Fleming?”

“Hello, Izzy, how’s tricks?”

Isabelle DeLeon squealed and shot off the chair, jumping on me. In self-defense I had to catch her. She was a little thing, not more than five feet, and built light. I was afraid of breaking her and took it easy, but it was nice to be hugged like that. Out of all the people at this paper, I’d missed her.

She pulled away. “Golly, Chicago’s done you a world of good. You look younger.”

“It’s the suit, I had it ironed.”

“Some suit. When did you turn into a clothes horse? What are you doing back here and” —she aimed her bright brown eyes at Barrett— “
who
is your friend?” She patted her hair and stood up straighter, which did not increase her height by any significant fraction.

I made introductions. Barrett had his hat off. I’d not bothered as this was the city room. He said he was enchanted, bowed, and kissed the back of her fingers, and got away with it. Izzy was startled for all of two seconds, then took on a big smile.

“A gentleman,” she said. “Fleming, you’ve moved up in the world. How did that happen?”

“It’s a long story I don’t have time to tell. We came to ask Clapsaddle a thing or three.”

“Good luck.” She gestured toward him, then crossed her arms.

Desmond Clapsaddle’s snoring continued, unbroken by our intrusion.

“He’s not waking up tonight, is he?” I asked.

“If he runs to form, he’s not waking up till Wednesday.”

“What happened to him?”

“Some party at the Algonquin. It went on all weekend. When I walked in tonight he was like that, but left his notes on the desk so I could do his story.”

“What?”

“We have a deal. He starts a story, I finish it, and he passes me cash under the table. I’d kill for a byline, but money talks, and we all keep our jobs.”

That sounded like Clapsaddle. He could write like a demon when he was sober, but had ways to beat deadlines when he was not.

Izzy had been one of those younger, faster, hungrier kids who had come in about the time I was deciding to leave for Chicago. If I’d been less broken-hearted about Maureen, I might have asked Izzy out. Somehow that had never happened.

“What are you doing back here?” she demanded. “You can’t be looking for work if you’ve got a suit like that, and what’s with this coat? Is that vicuna?” She fingered the sleeve.

“Plain old wool,” I said. It was
good
wool, though. “Mr. Barrett and I are here to settle a bet.”

“Uh-huh. You came all the way from Chicago to look up Clapsaddle because of a bet? Pull the other one, Fleming, you never could lie.”

“I could pull ’em both, it won’t make you any taller.”

She was used to my cracks, and likewise I was used to her reaction, which was a backhanded swat to my chest. “Don’t sass me—ow! Sheesh, Fleming, you got on a bulletproof vest?” She rubbed her knuckles.

“Actually,” said Barrett, stepping forward, hat in hand, “we drove in from Long Island. I’ve an estate there.”

I don’t know what they called it in the eighteenth century when it came to giving a girl the eye, but that’s what Barrett was doing. He wasn’t throwing any influence on her, but he was clearly interested.

“An estate? Impressive.” Izzy returned the interest.

At some point I’d have to remind him that dating a reporter could be bad for his personal privacy. I got between them. “Izzy, if you’re covering Clapsaddle’s beat, then maybe you can help.”

“What do I get out of it?”

She was, rumor had it, from some backwoods swamp-filled southern state where fried alligator was the blue plate special, but her accent, manner, and way of thinking were now pure New Yorker.

“I buy you dinner. A nice one.”

 
“That’s it?”

“
We
buy you dinner,” said Barrett, pushing around me. ="0"A very nice one.”

“How can a girl refuse? Okay, what’s your big emergency? Let’s get the business part out of the way.”

“I’m needing current news on Fleish Brogan and if he’s connected to Brogan Trucking,” I said.

“Is that all?”

“And if he was involved with the sudden disappearance of a well-heeled man seven years ago.”

“You mean Judge Crater? He’s under the boardwalk on Coney Island. Everyone knows that.”

“That was eight years ago. This would be August, 1931.”

“It’s before I got here, but there might be something in the files. Lemme see what Clappie’s got.”

She was either highly confident of Clapsaddle’s unconscious state or had earned a place in his inner circle. No one outside it called him that to his face without collecting a shiner.

Izzy opened a file drawer with “1930-34” on the label and scrounged toward the back, pulling out a fat folder. “Here’s his stuff from August.”

She dropped it on the desk and flipped through yellowed clippings of old stories and his weekly column. A column headline popped out as she got to the bottom of the stack, and she read it aloud.

‘Graft’ Endicott—Another Judge Crater?

Naomi Endicott, wife of criminal attorney—you may draw your own sense of irony from that descriptive—Griffin “Graft” Endicott, has filed a missing persons report with the police. Her wayward husband has been gone for three weeks, and the lady is in need of butter and egg money.

According to my sources, Endicott made a forty-thousand dollar withdrawal from their joint bank account in the first week of this month, leaving his better half high and dry with whatever pocket change she could find under the sofa cushions.

The withdrawal and subsequent vanishing of Endicott follows close on the heels of his being subpoenaed by our fair city’s DA. One may conclude that this is not a case for trial but rather a case of cause-and-effect.

The famously flamboyant Mr. Endicott, who cannot stand to read a paper unless his name was mentioned in it at least twice, has not sent so much as a postcard to his nearest and dearest in all this time. It is this reporter’s opinion that if he knows what’s good for him, the jolly fellow will continue to be missing indefinitely.

Of course, I must mention that You-Know-Who, leading the pack of Endicott’s cantankerous clients, must also want an appointment with the bunked barrister; five minutes would be enough for Y-K-W to encourage him to take a long walk off a short pier.

Unless that’s happened already in Brazil?

Watch this space.

The column was fitted around a photo of an aristocratically pretty woman and captioned “Naomi Endicott, Deserted Dame.” It must have been taken in happier times; she was smiling.

“I remember that now,” I said. “It was the nine-day wonder. Who had it in for Endicott?”

Izzy gave a short laugh. “You kidding? Everybody.”

“How about the top ten names in order of the most violent?”

“Fleming, what are you up to?”

“Top ten. Bad tempered, most likely to use a machine gun? Ride with me on this and the byline is yours.” I was trusting Barrett would see to it she forgot this part of the conversation. Yes, I’m a manipulative stinker, but it was the quickest way to get things done. “Did they ever find Endicott?”

“No they did not,” said a man in an irritated drawl. “Izzy, can you not entertain your male callers in some other part of the building and allow me to die in peace?”

She made no reply, but opened a drawer, pulling out a bottle of vodka. She sloshed two fingers into a glass and took it to him. “Hair of the dog, Clappie. Hoist away.”

He struggled to sit up and dutifully hoisted. “What day is it?”

 
“Monday night.”

He groaned. “Impossible. Far too early in the week. Everyone go away.”

“Not just yet. Get a load of who walked in. Remember Jack Fleming?”

Clapsaddle squinted at me. He was in his forties, blond hair turning silver, his once handsome features going soft, sliding fast from distinguished and into dissipated, so he looked ten years older. That’s what regular weekend benders will do to you. “Yes, you owe me five dollars.”

“No, I don’t.”

He squinted at Barrett. “Then it’s you who owes me five dollars.”

Barrett started to protest, but Izzy shook her head. “Never mind, he says that to everyone and sometimes it works. Behave yourself, Clappie.”

“Thus speaks my diminutive conscience. Did we make our deadline today?”

“With thirty seconds to spare. It’s a whizzer of a story, too.”

“Clip it for me to read on Wednesday. Now, what must I do to get rid of you three?”

I grabbed the opportunity to use his encyclopedic brain. “Tell me what you know about Fleish Brogan, does he still run a trucking company, and does he make people disappear?”

“He’s a smart and dangerous bas—son of a gun.” Clapsaddle was not so hung over as to use vulgarities in front of a female. It was one of his private rules. “Yes, he does, and it’s been known to happen.”

“Did he have any connection to Graft Endicott in ’31?’

“Such as Endicott defending Brogan on a murder charge and being so clumsy as to get caught trying to bribe a jury member? They declared a mistrial and didn’t go for another. Evidence mysteriously disappeared from the DA’s office at about the same time as Endicott.”

“Endicott did that?”

“Tip of the iceberg, my lad. You were around here then, where’s your memory?”

“I pickled it that year.”

“Yes, you put in a lot of evenings on the dog watch. Avoid it next time by getting yourself a column and a brilliant guardian angel to write it for you.” He threw a companionable wink at Izzy, who shook her head and went back to the desk to flip through the clippings.

“About Endicott. . .?”

“The DA
had a solid case, but the graftster disappeared. The first thing they suspected was that Brogan had removed him. Endicott would have violated attorney-client privilege and done his best imitation of a canary if it meant avoiding a trip upstate to scenic Ossining on the Hudson. The second thing they suspected, after they found he’d cleaned out his bank account, was that he’d done a bunk to South America.”

“Who was Brogan supposed to have murdered?”

“A business rival who failed to follow through on threats he’d made to kill Brogan. They found the body on a sidewalk outside the Pendlebury Hotel; supposedly he leaped to his death all on his own. That said, what is your interest in the two of them?”

“I’m working on a story.”