Murder Is My Dish Page 6

  “The D.A.’s office could, with an indictment.”

  He shrugged again. “All right. Come down to the station and make a statement. We’ll take the widow too. But we don’t tell the D.A.’s office how to run its business.”

  There was nothing I could say to that. The sergeant and the patrolman took Grundy inside and showed him around. Grundy told them to wait for the coroner. He took Julio’s wife gently by the arm and led her down-stairs. I went down flanked by the other two homicide cops. It had stopped snowing.

  We drove down to Homicide Manhattan West headquarters in Grundy’s squad car. I made my statement. It was typed and I signed it three times. Grundy thanked me again. Julio’s woman began to talk haltingly. I hung around until she finished her story. She didn’t leave anything out that I knew of. Then I walked out of there and nobody tried to stop me. I felt pretty good until I remembered the gray man who was probably waiting for me in the Commodore lobby. Grundy probably couldn’t wait to see just what I was going to lead them to next.

  I called Eulalia Mistral from a drugstore down the block. I told her who I was.

  “I got home an hour ago,” she said. “I prayed you would call.”

  “There were three of them,” I said. “A seaman off a Parana ship tied up on the North River, and two Puerto Rican friends of his.”

  “Rafael—what about Rafael?”

  “He’s dead. I’m sorry. He was dead before I even saw you.”

  There was a silence. Then she said, “You did everything you could, Chet. You didn’t have to. I want to thank you.”

  “The guy on the ship saw them kill Caballero. I gather he wasn’t supposed to, but he did. He decided to kidnap a dead man, but he needed help. He was afraid to make the contact alone. There were two of them in the car. Only one of them came out after the money. The other two hung around to help. They helped him all right.”

  “What happened?”

  “They took me home with them. Then they got killed. The men did. The woman’s with the police.” I told her what had happened in Julio’s apartment. Then I asked, “What about the money?”

  “We’ll get it back. It’s ours.”

  “Sure, but can you prove it?”

  She sounded surprised. “Do we have to prove it?”

  “Maybe you won’t have to, at that. If no one else can claim it and prove ownership, you ought to get it back. Mrs. Caballero can prove she withdrew twenty-five thousand dollars of the Fund’s money, can’t she?”

  Eulalia said that she could. Then she asked me, “What will you do now?”

  “The man who shot the phony kidnapers could tell us about Caballero.” And Andy Dineen, I thought. “But by the time the D.A.’s men get on it, he could be halfway back to the Parana Republic. It’s a touchy thing, dealing with a foreign national. They might even want the Grand Jury to hand down an indictment first.”

  “But what about you? What will you do?”

  “Sleep. For about two weeks.”

  “No. Really.”

  “See Prino Blas Lequerica, I guess. Maybe he can fix it up so I can go aboard the Misral without masquerading as an F.B.I. man.”

  “Without doing what?”

  “I’m dead on my feet, kid. When I get like this I talk too much.”

  “Wait, please! Don’t hang up. Primo Blas won’t help you, Chet. Maybe he’s an international playboy and a diplomatic gigolo, like you read in the papers, but he’s loyal to our homeland.” Her voice caught, and there was a silence.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Our homeland. I was just thinking. Some homeland! But if you were born there and raised there it’s hard to—you can’t just—oh, I can’t put it into words. It’s still a beautiful country, even if Indalecio Grande does run it. The people are still good people. They haven’t changed. My father felt that way. He loved the country and the people. He died for them. I’m going home.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t sound so surprised. I do every Christmas, to see my mother.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” I said. “They’re still looking for Caballero’s manuscript. You probably know more about its contents than any living person. Don’t you think they know that?”

  “My mother’s a sick old woman. She looks forward to Christmas. They give me a visa. I’m not a fugitive. Besides, I’m an American citizen.

  “So was Caballero. You said so.”

  “Still.”

  It was no use arguing with her. She thanked me again and told me to be careful and asked me if she would see me again. I said I didn’t know and she said good by and waited. When I didn’t say anything else, she hung up.…

  I took a taxi back to the Commodore and dragged myself into the lobby. It was only a little after midnight but it felt like next year.

  The little gray man was waiting in a leather chair near the desk. I went over to him and said, “Hi there. I’m going upstairs to sleep now. I’d like to sleep late but I won’t be able to. In the morning I’m going to visit Primo Blas Lequerica, the Parana Republic’s permanent delegate to the United Nations. You can come along if you want. Then I’m probably going over to West Street to the Parana Lines building. You can come along. In fact, I wish you would. No more secrets. No more ducking out on you, cross my heart. Well, good night.”

  I left him sitting there with his mouth open. For all I know—and for all I care—he sat that way all night long.

  Chapter Seven

  I PAID OFF the taxi across Fifth Avenue from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A cold rain had fallen during the early morning, and was still falling. It was good weather for museums and indoor games and staying in bed all day, alone or with company.

  I walked through slush looking at the other side of the street. It was much nicer over there with the winter-bare trees as a backdrop for the museum and a busload of raincoated children storming up the wide stone steps with three grown women, probably their teachers. My side of Fifth Avenue was one continuous wall of concrete set back a little way from the street and expensive cars lined up contiguously at the curb as if they had been cemented there. A doorman with a visored cap poking out under the hood of his slicker came by with two disdainful-looking permanent-waved French poodles on a double leash. He appeared to be more miserable than I felt, so I smiled at him. He did not smile back.

  Primo Blas Lequerica had a terrace apartment in one of the buildings opposite the museum. I went in there and up in an elevator a little larger than an upright coffin. A city cop stopped me in the carpeted hallway near Lequerica’s door.

  “Sorry, Mac,” he said. “You can’t go in there. Mr. Lequerica ain’t seeing the press today.”

  “I’m not the press,” I said, fishing a card from my wallet and giving it to the cop. “He’ll see me.”

  Grunting, the cop took my card inside. I had only a soft lump on the back of my head and a bruise on my jaw for company, and here it was Saturday morning. But I felt a little better when I thought of Grundy’s little gray man waiting outside in the rain for me. After a while the cop came out and jerked his thumb toward the door.

  “Sorry, Mac,” he said. It seemed to be his way of beginning a conversation. “I thought you was a reporter.”

  I entered a living room not quite as big as the lower level at Grand Central. There was a fire blazing on the metal-hooded hearth on the far wall, enough ultra-modern furniture to overcrowd five or six apartments of the size to which I was accustomed, a couple of open suitcases, partly packed, and a Hollywood actress named Kiki Magyar standing near the terrace doors and watching the rain come down.

  Kiki Magyar turned around and came over to me. I held a dripping hat in my hand. She wore a diamond on hers which made the fire on the hearth look like an afterthought.

  She was one of those timeless women who happened to be in the chronological neighborhood of thirty-five. She could have been twenty-five or forty-five and would probably go on effusing sex till fifty-five. She was Mittel Europa’s answer to Marilyn M
onroe, and knew it, and let you know it by the way she walked, and smiled, and talked. She did such a good job of it I never even remembered what she was wearing.

  “Morning, Miss Magyar,” I said.

  She squeezed my hand. “Ah, but you recognize me.”

  “If Mr. Lequerica—” I began.

  “My hosban ees packing,” she interrupted me with the accent she had made famous in the movies because it came from absolutely nowhere. “May I help, Meesta Drum?”

  “Leaving town?” I asked. “In this gorgeous weather?”

  She rewarded me with her deep-throated, bubbly laughter. “We spend the holidays in my hosban’s contry, yes?”

  “If you say so, Miss Magyar. Look, I’m sorry to bother you and I realize your husband has never even met me, but he was instrumental in getting me the case I’m working on, and I’d like to see him about it.”

  She patted my shoulder and her beautiful green eyes got slightly luminous. It was a good trick. “Ah, he knows,” she informed me. “He knows of you. He knows you’re here. I show him your card, yes?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Now if you’ll—”

  “Hah-nee, please. All morning rings the telephone. All morning come the newspaper people. My hosban, he’s mad now. You see the newspapers? It—how you say—besmear his contry’s name. He say, ‘Kiki, you kiss the detective good-by for me.’ He very mad. He call for cop so reporters don’t pestair him. Now I kiss you good-by, hah?”

  The kiss, such as it was, was a check warmed by and folded between the cleavage of her breasts. She gave it to me. It was made out to cash for five hundred dollars.

  I looked at it and said, “I’ll still have to see him.”

  That was Lequerica’s cue, and he entered on it, through a door in the wall to my right. He was a tall, heavy-shouldered, narrow-hipped, long-legged fellow with glossy black hair, a Harris tweed suit, flashing dark eyes and the kind of looks which probably did for the women what Kiki Magyar’s did for the men. He offered a hand and a polo player’s clean, rich-living smile and said with no accent at all, “Drum, it’s a real pleasure. Pres Baylis has told me a great deal about you, all of it good. I’m sorry if Mrs. Lequerica gave the impression I was so much in a hurry I couldn’t afford a few moments for you, but we do have a plane to catch.”

  He was a smooth one. In one breath he charmed you, said he was delighted to see you and let you know, all smiles, you could only have a moment or two of his time.

  “Papers giving you a bad time?” I asked.

  He shrugged and showed me his teeth again. He looked at Kiki Magyar, who went through the door he had used and closed it behind her. “A man in my position’s used to it,” he told me.

  “Do you think Caballero’s dead?” I asked suddenly.

  I watched for a break in the smooth façade, but there wasn’t any. He was a man who showed the world plenty of glittering surface and nothing of what was underneath. His type would make a good diplomat or a good gigolo. He was both, the latter despite or perhaps because of Kiki Magyar and the three wives who had preceded her.

  “Certainly not,” he said. “This won’t be the first time Rafael Caballero has gone off by himself without leaving word. And it won’t be the last.”

  “Sure,” I said. “That explains it. So he beat his own bodyguard to death to make sure Mrs. Caballero didn’t find out where he was.”

  Lequerica was still in there pitching with his smile, but it was wearing a little thin. “Exactly what can I do to help you, Mr. Drum?” he asked.

  “I want to go aboard the Parana Lines Ship Mistral. I want to see a fellow named Duarte. I’d like a letter from you.”

  It didn’t get much out of him. It got, “Then you did read the papers this morning.”

  “No. Why?”

  “It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? That’s what a Mrs. Julio Hernandez told the reporters, that Caballero met with foul play aboard the Mistral.”

  “And?”

  “There isn’t any and. Thieves fall out, Mr. Drum, you know the old saw. Caballero’s missing. They decide to capitalize on it. They send a ransom note. They wouldn’t know Caballero if they bumped into him on the street. An unknown courier delivers the money.” Good old Lieutenant Grundy, I thought. I had become an unknown courier because Grundy still hoped I would lead his little gray man into the thick of things. Lequerica went on: “Then the phony kidnapers fight over the money, and two of them are killed. I’m a little surprised at you, Mr. Drum. You should have been able to see through the innuendos in the newspapers. My country isn’t very popular with the American press.”

  I said, “You’re forgetting one thing. Caballero’s disappearance wasn’t made public, Mr. Lequerica, so how did your phony kidnapers know about it?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea how,” he said. His smile was like New Year’s Eve party favors on New Year’s morning, when you’d rather have an ice pack. “Do you?”

  “One of the dead men was from the Mistral.”

  “The papers made a big thing out of it. But you know yellow journalism when you see it, don’t you?”

  “Caballero’s bodyguard was beaten to death a couple of blocks from the Mistral’s berth. That’s what he said right before he died. Mistral. I was with him.”

  “Let’s assume—but I don’t believe it for a minute—Caballero did meet with foul play. He could have had enemies here in New York. He’s an American citizen. What makes you think the Parana Republic—”

  “I never said what I thought. I intend to find out.” Grundy’s idea seemed like a good one to me. I didn’t mention my role last night. “I want to go aboard the Mistral with a letter of introduction from you.”

  “I’m afraid we’re back where we started from.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I won’t give it to you, Mr. Drum.”

  “Little odd that the second officer on the Mistral is a big shot in the Paranaian Security Forces, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said icily.

  “If Caballero—”

  “If Caballero has indeed met with foul play, Mr. Drum, it was through the failure of your agency to furnish the protection he was paying for. Under the circumstances you ought to accept my check and leave the investigation in more competent hands.”

  “Like Señor Duarte’s?”

  Just then Kiki Magyar came in with a birchwood tray on which were the fixings for drinks. Lequerica told her with a perfunctory smile, “Mr. Drum was just going.”

  She didn’t argue. I looked at him. I didn’t argue, either. It wouldn’t have helped. “Have a nice trip,” I said.

  I took another cab down to West Street through the cold rain. After the glitter of their apartment and Kiki’s diamond and Lequerica’s brittle smile, the slick cobblestones and dark expressway shadows were drab. It was a welcome change.

  I waited under the ramp for Grundy’s man. Pretty soon his cab pulled up. He got out and the cab rolled away and I said, “You know, we could take the same cab and split the fare.”

  He looked at me as if I’d told an off-color joke at a lady’s church social. “Oh, we couldn’t possibly do that,” he said.

  “I’m going aboard the Parana Lines Ship Mistral.” I pointed. “See it over there, the pier building where it says Parana Lines?”

  He was embarrassed. He didn’t know what to say.

  “I’m telling you this because it might be dangerous. It’s nice to know you’ll be around.”

  “Are you serious, mister?”

  “You’re damned right I’m serious. If I’m not back in an hour you better send for help or come looking for me or both. All right?”

  He smiled suddenly. He said, “Hey, you’re okay. You make it easy. You’re all right.”

  Armed with his approval and my Magnum—which the police had returned to me last night—I walked across the wide street to the Parana Lines pier building. It was tan brick and windowless. A couple of longshoremen wearing sou’w
esters went by pushing a trundle car on which three crates were stacked. I opened a small door in the bottom of one of the big galvanized freight doors and entered the building. I walked into an enormous room which had a cracked concrete floor and smelled of the sea. A few sailors were lounging around on packing crates. Somewhere behind a partition a typewriter was rattling away. An unseen girl laughed. It was a high, nervous sound. The rattle of typing stopped for a moment, then went on. A sailor swaggered into the huge room from the darkness to my left. He was smiling a satisfied smile. It was nice to make the girls laugh.

  One of the sailors lounging around had his arm in a sling. I had seen him outside the night before last, but he didn’t recognize me and I didn’t push it.

  I walked through the warehouse. At the far end was a second galvanized freight door with an open doorway looking no bigger than a mouse-hole at its right base. I went to the mouse-hole and found to my surprise I could fit right through it. No one stopped me.

  I stood on a pier jutting out into the river. The bow of the Mistral loomed dark above me in the rain. It needed a sand-blasting and a paint job, but because it made the banana run or the coffee run down to the Parana Republic and its home port in Ciudad Grande and did not need to impress anyone, it would get neither. It moved slightly on the water, up and down, and the gangplank creaked.

  The leathery-faced watchman was sitting over there, wearing a poncho and smoking part of a cheap cigar in his pipe. He looked at me with mild curiosity.

  “Drum,” I said. “Remember me? I’m here to see the Second Officer, Mr. Duarte.”

  His eyes blinked. His jaw moved up, then down. He sucked on the pipe and it made a bubbling sound. “Go ahead,” he said in Spanish. I went up the gangplank.

  A sailor in a pea coat was waiting for me on deck. He must have heard our conversation at the foot of the gangplank. He jerked his head without a word, and I followed him. We climbed metal stairs to the upper deck. There was some freight on deck, secured under canvas. The Mistral seemed ready to sail.

  The sailor rapped with his knuckles against a cabin door at the rear of the upper deck. From its location, it should have been the captain’s cabin. But Duarte, being who he was, would naturally have first crack at it.