Читать книгу The Affair of the Bottled Deuce - Harry Stephen Keeler - Страница 4

CHAPTER II

Report by Mr. Marchesi

The captain strode across the splintered soft-wood-floored, railed-off office to the windowsill that looked out on Chicago’s today dowdiest thoroughfare, West Chicago Avenue. Outside, motor trucks were rumbling, snorting, weaving in both directions, making a huge commotion, rattle and clatter, on the degenerated street that led into the North Side’s Honky-Tonk Row just around the comer. Passersby, in garments ranging from hand-me- downs to the loudly checkered suits of race-track poolroom “bookies”, shuffled or trailed lackadaisically by in each direction on the dirty sidewalk underneath the two now-unlighted purple lamps that hung on the front of the smoke-stained old greystone building, and marked it as one more police station. Directly across the street the grease-smelling hamburger stand, with once white-painted front now a dingy yellow, gave off with odors that reached clear to the open window of Captain Michael Simko’s office—the while the hands of the enormous clock on the hamburger stand’s front bespoke the hour to be a quarter to 3 in the afternoon, and time for all good men to eat hamburgers.

The Captain found his crimson-hued plastic pencil on the windowsill just where he had left it when the phone had rung, and which had been squarely atop the torn-off leaf from his Daily Weather Prognostication Calendar which he had been checking against the outside weather, a thing he did meticulously and religiously every day. The calendar leaf said, in huge black type, June 3rd, and the daily prognostication beneath it—and which doubtlessly had been written a year before!—and which was in the finest of print perhaps to discourage people from reading it—said: “Sunshiny. Balmy. Neither too hot nor too cold.” And had, as in more cases than not, been 100-percent correct. Alongside this item, he found also the pocket handmirror with which he had been about—also as the phone rang—to signal the hamburger joint across the way to bring over “two on rye”. He picked up the pencil and the calendar leaf, the latter so he would have something on which to sprinkle notes, also the handmirror, noting, as he glanced dourly into its reflecting surface, his 66-year old self, two years short now of retiring, with his bald head surrounded by the capuchin-like ring of greying hairs, the suggestion of a paunch under the tarnished brass buttons of his faded blue uniform coat.

With his retrieved objects, he repaired back over to the phone, in front of the wicket that faced inward of the station, put the mirror disgruntledly into his side coat pocket, the calendar leaf down blank side up so he could write on it, took up the phone again, poised his pencil-pen.

“Still on there, my informative friend?” he first assured himself.

“Waiting, Captain.”

“A’right. Well, let’s start right straight from the beginning now. A’right. first, what’s your name?”

“Mr. Marchesi, Captain.”

“The whole of it? First name, too?”

“Oh, it’s Joseph Marchesi. Joseph A. Marchesi.”

“Joseph—A.—Marchesi? That sounds kind of, sort of, familiar to me. Where have I maybe heard it—before?”

“Well, if you’ve ever been about Little Italy, Captain, in your police work—in other years, that is—you would have heard of me as instructor, in English, in the elementary Garibaldi School there. For I have had normal-school education in this country, you see. I flatter myself I have converted more little Italian boys, fresh over from Italy, into English-speaking Americans, than anybody. Later, I quit the schools—was in real-estate. Still later I acquired—”

“Where do you live, Mr. Marchesi?” the Captain out off what might become an extensive business biography.

“I live in the Marchesi Flats, on the corner of—well, they used to, once, long long ago, be called the Benedetto Apartments—”

“Then they’re in Little Italy, on the corner o’ Pelligrini and Leaf Streets. Big gangling 4-story red-brick dump, with rusted fire-escapes, and about 4 entrances, all in all, giving out on two streets, three on one, one on the other, and full of 3-room walk-up, coal-heated, cold-water, gas-lighted flats!”

“You do know Little Italy, eh, Captain?”

“Covered it in a squad-car for some years. And on foot before that. I know those flats. Raided many of ’em in my day, for illicit alky cooking during Prohibition, and to take in tight-lipped Mafia members with long knives! And—well, you must own those flats today, eh?—if they got your name today?”

“I own them, yes. For many years. I live in one myself. So I can watch my tenants, and all that goes on.”

“Good for you, Mr. Marchesi. If more slum-owners did as you do, there’d be less crime in slums. Most slum landlords I know live in Lake Forest or Winnetka. And—well, now who is this bird who’s killed himself? Roomer? No, not a roomer, for those flats only have three rooms in each, so—”

“Right, Captain. Well, he is a young man—oh, about twenty-three years old—who rented the particular flat that’s directly above me to write the—as he called it—the Great American Novel in.”

“Great American Nov—why’d he come down to your region to write it in? In your building—of all?”

“He wanted to be by himself.”

“Greta Garbo the II’d, eh? Well, there’s lots of places a guy can be by himself without—why did he even come to Little Italy? Did he want to write a novel about—Little Italy?”

“No, Captain. Actually, he did so to save money—at least he said, when he came here, about ten months ago, that he had no money to waste on high rent. He moved in with but four pieces of second-hand furniture—no, five pieces—well, six pieces. One kitchen table on which to write. One swivel chair in which to sit back in, while thinking what to write—or maybe what not to write. One kitchen chair alongside table or elsewhere, if he should have a visitor—which, however, he never did. One cot to sleep on, in the bedroom—one kitchen chair on which to undress—one chiffonier to put his clothes and all his other things in. Plus—yes, plus!—one typewriter—one frying pan—a couple of cooking pots—a few cracked dishes—a big gas-heater he used all of last winter but since then sold to me—a mop and pail—a desk incinerator—a—”

“You mean one of those gadgets to burn up discarded papers in, right on your desk?”

“Correct. They are today sold in all stationery departments, particularly in—”

“What did he want a desk-incinerator—for?”

“For burning up, each day, the discarded pages of—”

“—the Great American Novel, of course! Yeah, I get it. Well, what’s his name? Or had I better put it now—what was his name?”

“His name was Lythgoe Crockett.” Mr. Joseph Marchesi painstakingly spelled out the name of his tenant.

“Lythgoe—Crockett, eh? Very Anglo-Saxophonish handle, if you ask me! Well, now, Mr. Marchesi, when did you last see him alive?”

“I saw him about one hour ago. And even talked with him in the half-opened door of his flat. He was dressed, as usual, only in bathing trunks and grass slippers—”

“Bathing trunks? Has he got a play-beach in his flat?”

“He believed clothes are un—unhygienic. Or shall I put it—unnatural. He went about—inside, that is—at least now that summer has come on, in bathing trunks and heelless grass slippers.”

“Well, that’s a man’s priv’lege, I guess, in the priv’cy of his own domycile. All right. Well, what did you and him talk about? Listen—I hope he ain’t alive all the time we’re gassing here, and bleeding to death—”

“He is as dead as a doorknob, Captain. He’s so dead, Captain, that— Listen, Captain, if he’s not dead, I’ll give you the Marchesi Flats.”

“I don’t want ’em, Mr. Marchesi. I got troubles enough already. Well, what did you and him talk about? Were you giving him 24 hours’ notice or something?”

“Oh, heavens no. He was always paid up on his rent. Always. No, I was asking only if he would not like a certain nice little flat down on the lowest floor, on the other street. So that my signora—” Mr. Marchesi had unconsciously slipped into his own tongue at this moment, or perhaps it was a term definitely showing affection. “—and I could take his flat. For my signora has become, as she has become older, fearful of cat burglars—”

“Cat burglars? Now I know what that would mean to me as a policeman. But does it mean the same thing to you? You don’t mean prowling cats, I take it, but burglars who come down from roofs, or off fire-escapes? Is that right?”

“That is correct, Captain. And Mr. Crockett’s flat has swinging steel gratings, each locked with stout Yale steel padlocks, on the inside of every window in it, from front to back—”

“Steel gratings? Swinging, padlocked steel gratings—on every window? Why, did he put these in—”

“Oh no, no, no. A bootlegger of absinthe, the sale of which, it seems, is forbidden in this country—I’ve even heard rumors the fellow was a dope seller, too—who lived here when I took the flats over, he had the gratings put on. He evidently was afraid, continuously, of being assassinated. When I took over, and heard the rumors about him, and realized from the gratings he was no good, I was just about to take action in court to eject him. But fortunately he was assassinated in some other district, and solved my problem in that way. Sam Bellanco never even got to return to his flat; so—”

“Bellanco? Sam Bellanco? Yes, lone wolf. Lived alone and liked it! Stabbed to death, in the back, around Orleans Street and West Superior. He was a drug-dealer—far more than an absinthe bootlegger. Sold badly-cut drugs, and some addict finally gave him whats-what.”

“You know the crime-history of these parts, Captain! Well, Bellanco had this flat we’ve been talking about, and I didn’t have to put him out. For the reason that the day I went into court for an ouster order, he never came back, being dead, dead, dead. And it is those gratings, of Bellanco’s, still there today on the windows, I do surmise, that induced Mr. Crockett to rent that flat.”

“No doubt! He didn’t want nobody to steal the gre–e–eat American novel from under his nose. All right. What next? What did he say when you tried to subtly shoehorn him out of his luxur’ous quarters?

“He said, indignantly, ‘I like it here—I like it right where I am—I am going to stay right here, by godfrey—I have a lease—you cannot throw me out—I—

“I said, ‘All right, all right, Mr. Crockett. If you don’t like to move, you don’t have to move. I want you to be happy. Good day, Mr. Crockett.’”

The name “Crockett’ was coming up so frequently now, and sounding so much, at least to the Captain, like “croquette”, that he was licking his lips. And making mental reservation that, when this conversation was over, he would phone the hamburger man across the way and tell him to bring over turkey-meat croquettes on toast, instead of hamburgers on rye. Went on.

“We don’t seem to be getting to the vital thing here, Mr. Marchesi—the suicide. However, we’ll carry on—now that we’ve embarked on the ins and outs of slum real-estate business. All right. What next?”

“Well, next, I am downstairs—at the front door—the street entrance door, that is—thinking how much it might cost me to have, for my signora, steel gratings put on all the windows in our own flat—when comes along the postman. A black Negro. Yes, mail-delivery we have last of all in Little Italy. And the Flats Marchesi at roughly 2:15 p.m. each day. Well, the black postman he had, it seems, for Mr. Crockett, what he said was a first-class package. You know? All sealed? Wrapped in white paper with gold spicules in it? You know—”

“Spicules? My daughter calls those things sparklets. Gift paper, in short. Go ahead?”

“Well, he said, this black postman, ‘This package is too big to go into Mr. Crockett’s mailbox, there on the wall with all the rest—nor can I leave it on the stairway here, for the children will steal it. Now you, sir,’ he said, ‘are the landlord; you have to take it up yourself.’”

“I said to him,” Mr. Marchesi recounted indignantly, “‘Listen here, Mailman, you are paid to deliver first-class mail to the door—whenever it is a big package, or anything like that—I don’t do Uncle Sam’s work for him—I only pay him his income taxes, that’s all.’ Said he, ‘All right. Stairways and dogs—dogs and stairways—what a life!’ And he trudged upstairs with his mailbag on his shoulder and the package under his arm. I, after him. But to go to my own flat. I turned off at Floor 3—where my own flat was. And as I searched for my key so as not to bother my signora, I heard him knocking on the door above—I heard Mr. Crockett come to the door—heard him say ‘Ah there, my Senegambian friend, what brings you skyward?’—I heard the postman say ‘First-class package for you, Mr. Crockett’, and I heard Mr. Crockett say ‘Thanks a million for bringing it up. I’ll reward you when my ship comes in.’ And I heard the door close. And as I finally found my key, and went in, I saw the Negro coming down, muttering again about dogs and stairways—stairways and dogs—then I closed the door and was home.”

“Home sweet home, eh? Well, what next?” The Captain was beginning to wonder at this juncture whether they must not be at the pivot of things now. And, as proved to be the case, a second or so later, they were!

“I greet my signora—” Even Captain Simko knew that when an Italian moves into the present tense, the footlights are coming on green, and the orchestra is playing low music! “—who is laid up with a slight indisposition on our couch. And then sit down and chat with her. Continuing, indeed, to do so. For all of twenty minutes. Or maybe thirty—let’s call it between twenty and thirty, yes? When suddenly—I hear a shot! A shot, yes. One only. And above me. It—the sound of it, I mean—comes through my and my signora’s ceiling. I think—first of all—that Mr. Crockett has had an accident with a gun merely going off in his hands—and I wait to hear casual footsteps up there. To be quite frank, I do not believe I would have heard such had there been such—for the floors of my old building are thick and staunch and—Anyway, I heard nothing suggesting footsteps, anyway. I wait. I wait a little longer. My signora urges me to go up and see if all is right. I wait a little longer. Then I decide to go straight up, and ask him if everything is all right. So I go out. Upstairs. And knock I do. No answer! I knock louder. No answer. Whereupon I peer through a sort of gap at the side of the door—yes, a gap between the door and its casing, on the lock side—it is wide enough to see plentifully. He is sitting there at his kitchen table desk, slumped forward upon it, sidewise to me. He is, in distance from my eye, actually no further than about 7 feet, if that. He had been facing rearward of the flat—away and off from the too-brilliant front windows—and the bright sun from the afternoon sky is full upon his bare back—his bare torso—his bathing trunks—his writing table or what of same is not occluded by his slumped person. Off to the further rear corner of the table, neatly laid out like a trio, are his—his literary accouterments, if I may call them such!—his typewriter with even yet a presumed page of his novel in it—stack of already written pages alongside it—the brass desk incinerator alongside them. But in the fullest of visibility is—or shall I say now was?—the big red gory hole in his right temple—rather destruction in that area, and from which blood was dripping, dripping, dripping to the table, and therefrom off to the floor below—the unmistakable powder burns about the area—the black gun-metal gun in his right hand, his hand and arm hanging downward. All tell the tale. If not indeed the wrappings of that package he had taken in, on the floor back and off from his chair a few feet.”

“The stuff with the gold spiculies in it, eh? And doubtlessly protecting carton that had been inside? And maybe stuffing, too?”

“All that, yes. The paper with the gold spicules. Carton. And excelsior, yes. While on the desk directly in front of him was—still is, of course—a flagon-like glass transparent bottle that had not been there at all, at all, when I had talked to him earlier—a glass bottle sealed with something at the top, and containing inside itself only a playing card—a deuce of diamonds, as I said, for it is turned sufficiently doorward to make it out. And—”

“Well, why didn’t you go inside at once—and examine him closer? From your description to me of that destruction in the temple region I fancy he’s deado as dead ever was. Still, why didn’t you go in, on general principles, and examine closer? Feel his pulse, anyway? For of course you must have duplicate keys. And—”

“For two reasons, Captain,” said Mr. Marchesi dignifiedly. “One being that I would prefer that in any violent event occurring in my flats, the police themselves be first to enter—or to examine. But, whether or no, I had no choice in this matter. For Mr. Crockett had put a special Yale lock on this door, when he came, and a powerful hand-bolt to boot. The hand-bolt is shot. You can see that, on looking through the gap.”

“Well, how about the one other door of that particular flat, leading on to the same hall? The—the kitchen door, it would be?”

“Same thing! A Yale lock. And a hand-bolt. Also shot. For I took a look there, too. Also thanks to a very slight gap between the door and its casing. Nobody could get in.”

“I suppose you thought to go downstairs and out one of your own windows—front or back—and up the fire-escapes to his—for on a balmy day like this he undoubtedly had his gratings open—some of them—”

“Not for one single minute, sir, did I think of doing anything like you say. I—I am too old myself to be clinging to precarious fire-escapes, and stumbling along the platforms lying at each level. And besides, these steel gratings on all Mr. Crockett’s windows are as impenetrable on a balmy day as on another kind of a day. In short, he would open the windows for air—but keep the gratings locked and—”

“I guess I am an idiot, at that. After all, a grating will let balmy air through just as well locked as open. Well, how about the people in the other flat that leads out to the same hallway—and have a fire-escape exit on same level platform as his? They know anything?”

“That flat is vacant just now. I—I have been asking too much for it, I fear. It being a fourth story. I must come down on it a bit. I—”

“That’s an economic law, Mr. Marchesi. It’s called the Law of Demand and Supply. Well, how about the flat under that, but on your floor level—the one adjoining your own? Do its occupants know anything at all? Like—”

“The man and woman occupying it both work. Are never home daytimes.”

“Yes, I see. Well, have you anything further you can tell me now?”

“Quite nothing, Captain. I have related everything from—from the proverbial A to the proverbial Izzard. I am myself, just now, here in my own flat, where we have a phone. A private phone. And on which I am doing my talking.”

“Very good. Well, it kind of looks, offhand, Mr. Marchesi, as though your tenant, Mr. Lythgoe Crockett, Esquire, just didn’t like the gift that was sent him, doesn’t it? Yeah, the deuce of diamonds sealed up in a bottle! Whether it warned him, or scared him, or what, is at present something of a guess. The wrappings, however, will have a corner-card on them. And the sender can tell us why he sent the contents. In fact, will have to—if he doesn’t want to taste the taste of rubber ho—ah—of intensive interrogation. Well, now I’ll send over two men, who will have authority to bust in the door. And for all damage done, you can bill the department. For we pay for those things, now. Yeah, out of yours and other taxpayers’ money! Now have you got a jimmy on your premises—ah—a crowbar—”

“I have a crowbar, yes, a powerful one, on the premises.”

“Well, one of these men,” went on the Captain, “was a male nurse in the County Hospital long ago, and the other was in the medical corpse in the late war. The two together are’s good as any doctor. Now you stick right around there from here on.”

“I will even stand downstairs in the doorway—so they can see, as they come up, which is the entrance to where they are going.”

“Do that. Stand down there. Have the crowbar back inside. Be very casual. So that we don’t drum up a crowd!”

“Will do all that, Captain. Will, incidentally, be in the Leaf Street entrance.”

“Oh yeah, Leaf Street. I remember. All right. Goodbye.”

And the Captain hung up. Went wearily through the swinging wooden gate in the wooden railing which closed in, for most of its extent, the wicket-encased “desk”. Here he turned toward a closed room diagonally across the station area. A young man in bright lavender suit, and Panama hat, came up the low stairs leading from off the street.

“Hi, Cap? I’m Spayley. New man on the City News Bureau. Anything of interest breaking, broke—or to break?”

“Not a damned thing, Spayley,” said the Captain with a moue.

“Okay. I’ll run on then.”

The Captain continued his progress toward that further closed room.

“If there’s anything I hate,” he said emphatically to himself, “it’s the Press barging in and messing in on even such a mere thing as a suicide. Least of all a suicide because of—of a bottled deuce. Phooie! Now the case can be in the exclusive hands of two guys who’ve had some experience in crime, suicide, murder, whatnot.”

To which he added:

“Lousy Lou—and Butterball!”

He had reached the room now that was his objective. Was turning the doorknob.

“Maybe,” he said, “this’ll make ’em think for a change. Lousy Lou and Butterball—thinking—in mut’al company. That’ll be something—for the birds!”