Chapter 10 #2
“If you want my opinion, young man,” Miss Genevieve continued in the serene certainty that Rosenblatt was going to listen, willy-nilly, “this homicide has all the hallmarks of an attempt to warn Carmody off, which went wrong. Which of the Tammany bosses did he have his claws into?”
Daisy listened in admiration as the ex-crime reporter winkled the information she wanted out of the reluctant Deputy District Attorney.
All Carmody’s notes on his investigations had been found in his room, and Rosenblatt ended up telling Miss Genevieve exactly who was named in those papers.
However, all the names were unfamiliar to Daisy, and she soon lost interest in the subsequent discussion of who was most likely to have sent a thug to scare Carmody off.
Sergeant Gilligan wasn’t listening either. He had proceeded with his original intent to take Lambert through his story again. Unfortunately, Lambert had been thinking.
“And I think, just before Mr. Thorwald knocked off my glasses, I noticed the man Mrs. Fletcher was running after wasn’t wearing an overcoat. He just had a short coat, a suit coat or sport coat, I guess.”
“I think he had on an overcoat,” said Daisy. “But you ain’t neither of you one hundred percent sure,” Gilligan snarled, throwing down his hopefully poised pencil. “Could this guy maybe have been wearing a short overcoat, like an automobile coat?”
“Maybe,” Daisy and Lambert chorused doubtfully.
“Aw, what the heck! It wouldn’t help much anyways ’less you was both dead certain he was running around in scarlet pajamas.”
Daisy had to stifle a giggle at a vision of a man strolling through the streets in scarlet pyjamas and a bowler hat.
“In that case,” said Lambert seriously, “he would have changed before leaving the building, or he would definitely have been noticed.”
“You don’t say! Wise guy!”
“Since he wasn’t wearing scarlet pyjamas,” Daisy said
soothingly, “we don’t need to worry about it. But do you know, now I come to think of it, I’m sure he was wearing boots, not shoes. He made too much noise on the stairs for ordinary shoes.”
“Whaddaya know?” marvelled Gilligan. “What we gotta find is a guy in a derby and boots that prob’ly left Noo York City on the first train.”
“If he crossed state lines to escape prosecution for homicide,” Lambert pointed out with undeterred enthusiasm, “it’s a federal offence and you can call us in.”
“Just what I need, another bunch of gover’ment men muscling in on my case.
You just ferget what I said about trains, bud.
I’m gonna solve this business right here on home territory, and before the election next week.
I’m not about to let the Hearst papers make any more cracks about the boys in blue.
Where the heck is Larssen with that mug book? ”
He went off to confer with Detective O’Rourke.
“What are the Hearst papers?” Daisy asked Lambert. “Someone mentioned them before.”
“Geez, I don’t know that much about it. I guess it’s local politics.”
Miss Genevieve had caught Daisy’s question and interrupted a vigorous argument with Rosenblatt to answer it.
“William Randolph Hearst is the proprietor of numerous major newspapers including some in New York, not to mention the International News Service, and a company producing ‘news reels’ for movie theaters.”
“Oh yes, I believe he owns several English magazines.”
“Very likely. He is also a Democratic politician, but he is bitterly opposed to the way Tammany Hall runs New York. Partly pique, of course. He stood for mayor of the
city and governor of the state but lost the elections, and later failed even to win the Democratic nomination for governor. His papers regularly sensationalize anything they can find to the detriment of Tammany. He’d have been delighted with the course of Carmody’s investigations.”
“I’m surprised Carmody took his information to Mr. Pascoli, then,” Daisy said. “Town Talk doesn’t belong to Mr. Hearst, does it? I’m pretty sure he doesn’t own Abroad.”
“No. I shouldn’t be surprised if Hearst’s political passions overcame his instinct for a scoop and he encouraged Carmody to disseminate his dirt as widely as possible. Besides, a weekly has a different readership from a daily, and goes into more depth, rather than concentrating on sensation.”
“Or maybe Carmody was double-crossing Hearst,” Rosenblatt suggested. “Maybe he had promised Hearst an exclusive and went behind his back to Pascoli. Hearst wouldn’t take kindly to that.”
“But I hardly think he’d resort to physical means to show Carmody the error of his ways,” Miss Genevieve retorted. “All he had to do to retaliate was stop Carmody ever writing again for any of his publications. You can’t get Tammany off the hook so easily.”
She and the Deputy D.A. resumed their argument about the likelihood of each of Carmody’s targets having sent a thug to dissuade him from publishing his discoveries.
Meanwhile Gilligan had sent O’Rourke off on some errand. He returned to Daisy and Lambert. Whereas he would probably have responded to a question with a justifiable refusal to say where the detective had gone, he succumbed without a struggle to Daisy’s enquiring look.
“Sent him to see if Pitt’s in, and if not, to search his room.
That’s off the record.” Glowering at the oblivious Rosenblatt, he complained, “Geez, I’d never get nuttin done was I to follow every nitpicking rule.
I can’t do everything all at once. First you gotta figure out who the suspects are and then you gotta find ’em. ”
“And it’s less than twenty-four hours since Carmody died,” said Daisy sympathetically. “Besides, you seem to have a huge cast of suspects.”
“Yeah. Me, I wouldn’t put this bird Pitt among ‘em. I mean, who’s gonna start shooting over a bunch of bits of paper with words scribbled on ’em?”
Daisy rather thought words on paper had started more than one war, though she couldn’t call to mind any precise instance. In any case, Pitt’s reminiscences seemed unlikely to contain anything inflammatory, and if they did, Carmody would have shot him, not vice versa.
On the other hand … But her reflections were interrupted by a knock on the door and Miss Cabot’s inevitable “Oh dear!”
Gilligan jumped up. “I’ll get it, ma’am. That better be Larssen or … Hey, where you bin, Larssen?”
“Downtown to get the mug book, Sergeant. You sent me, remember?”
“Smart-ass! You wanna get busted back to patrolman? O.K., Mrs. Fletcher, Lambert, lessee can you pick out the guy you saw.”
“Me?” Lambert protested. “I didn’t see his face.”
“Maybe sumpin’ll jog your memory.” Gilligan took the heavy tome over to Miss Genevieve’s desk.
Daisy sat down at the desk, with Lambert leaning over her shoulder. They studied lean, mean faces and broad,
brutal faces, coldly intelligent or piggishly stupid, some smooth-shaven, some with several days’ growth of beard. Several were nondescript, but not in quite the same way the man on the stairs had been nondescript, Daisy was sure. She tried to picture each topped with a bowler hat.
Her concentration was not assisted by Lambert’s mutinous mutter in her ear, over and over: “But I didn’t see his face.”
They were nearing the end of the book when again there came a knocking at the door, a peremptory rat-tat-tat.
“O’Rourke’s found sumpin!” said Gilligan hopefully, striding towards the foyer as Larssen opened the door.
Daisy heard a babble of voices, one shrill and female and vaguely familiar. She and Lambert turned to watch the sergeant.
“Who … ? What … ?” he said in bewilderment.
“Patrolman Hicks, Sergeant. I nabbed ’em,” a proud voice announced. “They was trying to sneak into Carmody’s room!”