The Burglar in the Closet Page 16

  “When did Knobby close up, Dennis?”

  “Who knows? Two, three o’clock. Who pays attention? Why?”

  “He went back to his place but he didn’t stay there. He packed a suitcase and left right away.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “Maybe he got on a plane,” I said. “Or maybe he met somebody and got into trouble.”

  “I don’t follow you, Ken. What’s Knobby got to do with what happened to Frankie?”

  I said, “Well, I’ll tell you, Dennis. It’s sort of complicated.”

  CHAPTER

  Twenty

  I was ten minutes early at the Central Park South office. I’d spoken to Jillian around two-thirty and she’d told me that the meeting with Craig and his lawyer was all set, but I wasn’t surprised that they weren’t there when I arrived and I had the feeling they wouldn’t show at all. I planted myself in the hallway beside the frosted glass door, and at 3:58 on my watch the elevator doors opened and all three of them emerged, Craig and Jillian and a tall slender man in a vested black pinstripe suit. When he turned out to be Carson Verrill I was not wildly astonished.

  Craig introduced us. The lawyer shook my hand harder than he had to and showed me a lot of his teeth. They were good teeth, but that didn’t surprise me either, because it stood to reason that he patronized the World’s Greatest Dentist. We stood there, Verrill and I shaking hands and Craig shifting his weight from foot to foot and clearing his throat a lot, while Jillian sifted through her purse until she found the key and unlocked the office door. She switched on the overhead light and a lamp on Marion the Receptionist’s desk. Then she sat in Marion’s chair and I motioned Craig and Verrill to the couch before turning to shut the outer door.

  There was a little nervous chatter, Craig supplying something about the weather, Verrill saying he hoped I hadn’t been waiting long. Just a few minutes, I said.

  Then Verrill said, “Well, perhaps we should come to the point, Mr. Rhodenbarr. It’s my understanding that you have something to trade. You’ve threatened to tell the police some story of my client’s alleged involvement in a burglary of his ex-wife’s apartment unless he underwrites the cost of your defense.”

  “That’s really something,” I said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “To be able to talk like that right off the bat. It’s an amazing talent, but can’t we put our cards on the table? Craig arranged for me to knock off Crystal’s place. We’re all friends here and we all know that, so what’s with this alleged business?”

  Craig said, “Bernie, let’s do this Carson’s way, huh?”

  Verrill glanced at Craig. I got the impression that he didn’t appreciate Craig’s support quite so much as he’d have appreciated silence. He said, “I’m not prepared to acknowledge anything of the sort, Mr. Rhodenbarr. But I do want to get a firm understanding of your position. I’ve talked with Miss Paar and I’ve talked with Dr. Sheldrake and I think I may be able to help you. I don’t have a criminal practice and I don’t see how I could undertake to prepare a defense per se, but if your interest lies in turning yourself in and arranging a guilty plea—”

  “But I’m innocent, Mr. Verrill.”

  “It was my understanding—”

  I smiled, showing some good teeth of my own. I said, “I’ve been framed for a pair of murders, Mr. Verrill. A very clever killer has been setting me up. He’s not only clever. He’s adaptable. He originally arranged things so that your client would wind up framed for murder. Then he found it would be more effective to shift the frame onto my shoulders. He’s done a pretty good job, but I think you’ll be able to see a way out for me if I explain what I think actually happened.”

  “Miss Paar says you suspected this artist of murder. Then he was in turn murdered in your apartment.”

  I nodded. “I should have known he didn’t kill Crystal. He might have strangled her or beaten her to death but stabbing wasn’t Grabow’s style. No, there was a third man, and he’s the one who did both killings.”

  “A third man?”

  “There were three men in Crystal’s life. Grabow, the artist. Knobby Corcoran, a bartender at a saloon in the neighborhood. And the Legal Beagle.”

  “Who?”

  “A colleague of yours. A lawyer named John who occasionally made the rounds of the neighborhood bars with Crystal. That’s all anybody seems to know about him.”

  “Then perhaps we ought to forget about him.”

  “I don’t think so. I think he killed her.”

  “Oh?” Verrill’s eyebrows climbed up his high forehead. “Then perhaps it would help if we knew who he was.”

  “It would,” I agreed, “but it’s going to be hard to find out. A woman named Frankie told me that he existed. She’d say ‘Heeeeeeeeere’s Johnny!’ just the way Ed McMahon does it. But sometime last night she drank a lot of gin and swallowed a whole bottle of Valium and died.”

  Craig said, “Then how are you going to find out who this Johnny is, Bernie?”

  “It’s a problem.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t even fit in. Maybe he was just another friend of Crystal’s. She had a lot of friends.”

  “And at least one enemy,” I said. “But what you have to remember is that she was at the hub of something and somebody had to have a good reason to kill her. You had a reason, Craig, but you didn’t kill her. You were framed.”

  “Right.”

  “And I had a reason—to avoid getting arrested for burglary. I didn’t kill her either. But this Johnny had a real reason.”

  “And what was that, Bern?”

  “Grabow was a counterfeiter,” I explained. “He started out as an artist, turned himself into a printmaker, and then decided to forget the artsy-fartsy stuff and go for the money. With his talents, he evidently figured that the easiest way to make money was to make money, and that’s what he did.

  “He was good at it. I saw samples of his work and they were just about as good as the stuff the government turns out. I also saw the place where he lived and worked, and for an unsuccessful artist he lived damn well. I can’t prove it, but I’ve got a hunch he made those counterfeit plates a couple of years ago and passed bills himself, moving them one at a time across bars and cigarette counters. Remember, the man was an artist, not a professional criminal. He didn’t have mob connections and didn’t know anything about wholesaling big batches of schlock bills. He just ran off a few at a time on his hand-cranked printing press, then passed them one by one. When he had enough turned into real money he went and got himself some good furniture. It was a one-man cottage industry, and he could have gone on with it forever if he didn’t get too greedy.”

  “What does this have to do with—”

  “With all of us? You’ll see. I’d bet that Grabow covered a lot of ground, stopping in a bar long enough to cash a twenty, then moving on to another one. Somewhere along the way he ran into Crystal and they started keeping company. And maybe he wanted to show off or maybe she asked the right questions, but one way or another she learned he was a counterfeiter.

  “She was already having a now-and-then affair with Knobby Corcoran. He was a bartender, but he was also a pretty savvy guy who probably knew how things could be bought and sold. Maybe it was her idea, maybe it was Knobby’s, but I’d guess that the lawyer was the one who came up with it.”

  “Came up with what?” Jillian wondered.

  “The package. Grabow was printing the stuff up and unloading it a bill at a time. But why should he do that when he could wholesale a big batch of the stuff and coast on the proceeds for a year or two? The stuff he was turning out would change hands at a minimum of twenty cents on the dollar in large lots. If he could set up a deal for a quarter of a million dollars’ worth, he could put fifty thousand dollars in his pocket and not wear out his liver buying drinks in bars all over town.

  “So the lawyer set it up. He had Crystal show Knobby some sample twenties. Then Knobby could find somebody who was willing to pay fifty thou, say, f
or the counterfeit. Crystal would be in the middle. She’d get the real dough from Knobby and the schlock from Grabow, and she’d turn the dough over to Grabow and pass on the counterfeit to Knobby, and that way they wouldn’t ever have to see each other. Grabow was crazy about his privacy. He didn’t want anybody to know where he lived, so he’d be glad to work a deal that kept him out of the limelight.”

  “And the lawyer set this up, Bern? This guy John?”

  I nodded at Craig. “Right.”

  “What was in it for him?”

  “Everything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everything,” I said. “Fifty thousand in cash, because he didn’t intend for it to go to Grabow. And a quarter of a mill in counterfeit, because that wouldn’t go to Knobby. He got each of them to deliver first. They were both sleeping with Crystal so each of them figured he could trust her. Maybe Crystal knew the lawyer was setting up a double cross. Maybe not. But when she got the money from Knobby she turned it over to the lawyer, and then Grabow delivered the counterfeit dough and she told him he’d get paid in a day or two, and then all the lawyer had to do was kill her and he was home free.”

  “How do you figure that, Mr. Rhodenbarr?”

  “He already had the money from Knobby Corcoran, Mr. Verrill. Now he kills Crystal and takes the counterfeit and that’s the end of it. He’d have kept his own name out of it. As far as the others are concerned, Crystal’s in the middle, setting up the exchange. When she’s dead, what are they going to do? If anything, each one figures the other for a double cross. Maybe they kill each other. That’s fine as far as the lawyer’s concerned. He’s home free. He’s got the cash in hand and he can look around to make a deal on his own for the counterfeit. If he gets an average price that’s another fifty thousand, so the whole deal’s worth somewhere around a hundred thousand dollars to him, and there are people in this world who think that’s enough to kill for. Even lawyers.”

  Verrill smiled gently. “There are members of the profession,” he said, “who aren’t as ethical as they might be.”

  “Don’t apologize,” I said. “Nobody’s perfect. You’ll even run across an immoral burglar if you look long and hard enough.” I walked over to the window and looked down at the park and the horse-drawn hansom cabs queued up on Fifty-ninth Street. The sun was blocked by clouds now. It had been ducking in and out of them all afternoon. I said, “Thursday’s the night I went to Crystal’s apartment looking for jewels. I wound up locked in the closet while she rolled around in the sack with a friend. Then the friend left. While I was picking my way out of the closet Crystal was taking a shower. The doorbell interrupted her. She answered it and the lawyer came on in and stuck a dental scalpel in her heart.

  “Then he walked past her to the bedroom. He hadn’t just come to kill her. He was picking up the counterfeit money that she was holding, presumably for Knobby. She’d told him Grabow had delivered it previously in an attaché case, and he walked into the bedroom and saw an attaché case standing against the wall.

  “Of course it was the wrong case. The case with the counterfeit was probably right there in the closet with me all along. I think that’s probably where Crystal had stowed it, because why else would she automatically turn the key and lock me in the closet? She kept her jewelry where it was easy to get at. But there must have been something in that closet that she wasn’t used to having around or she wouldn’t have been such a fanatic on the subject of keeping the door locked.

  “Well, the lawyer just grabbed that attaché case and took off. When he got home and opened it he found a ton of jewelry all rolled up in enough linen to keep it from rattling around. It wasn’t what he’d wanted and it was too hot for him to unload it easily, but at least he had the fifty grand in cash free and clear and he could probably raise close to that much again on the jewelry when it was safe to show it around.

  “Maybe he even planned to go back and take another shot at the counterfeit money. But Knobby Corcoran didn’t give him the chance. Knobby switched shifts with the other bartender the day after Crystal was murdered, and he was the one who broke the police seals on her door and gave her apartment a second run-through. Maybe he knew where to look, maybe she’d said something like ‘Don’t worry, it’s all here on a shelf in my closet.’ Because he broke in and went home with the counterfeit money and tucked it away on the shelf in his closet.”

  “How do you know that, Mr. Rhodenbarr?”

  “Simple. That’s where I found it.”

  “That’s where you—”

  “Found the case full of counterfeit twenties. How else would I know about them? I left them there to keep from rattling Knobby.”

  Jillian knew better. I’d told her something about stowing the funny twenties in the bus locker and hoped she wouldn’t pick this time to remember what I’d said. But she had something else on her mind.

  “The scalpel,” she said. “The lawyer killed Crystal with one of our dental scalpels.”

  “Right.”

  “Then he must have been a patient.”

  “A lawyer named John,” Craig said. “What lawyers do we have as patients?” He frowned and scratched his head. “There’s lots of lawyers,” he said, “and John’s not the scarcest name in the world, but—”

  “It wouldn’t have to be a patient,” I said. “Try it this way. Crystal’s been to Grabow’s loft on King Street. She saw the dental instruments he used for his printmaking work and recognized them as the same line Craig stocks. That was a coincidence and she happened to mention it to the lawyer. And that made his choice of a murder weapon the simplest thing in the world. He’d use one of the dental implements. It would point to Craig, and if Craig somehow managed to get out from under, he could always find a way to steer the cops toward Grabow.”

  I’d been pacing around. Now I went over and sat on the edge of Marion the Receptionist’s desk. “His plan was a pretty good one,” I said. “There was just one thing to screw it up and that was me.”

  “You, Bern?”

  “Right,” I told Craig. “Me. The cops had you in a cell and you were looking for a way out, and you decided to throw them your old buddy Bernie.”

  “Bern, what choice did I have?” I looked at him. “Besides,” he said, “I knew I hadn’t killed Crystal, and if you were in her apartment, and one of my scalpels, hell, it started looking as though you were trying to frame me, and—”

  “Forget it,” I said. “You were looking for a way out and you took it. And Knobby broke into the apartment and snatched the counterfeit money, and that break-in made it obvious there was more going on than a simple case of a man killing his ex-wife. The lawyer saw that he had to move quickly. There were loose threads around and he had to tie them off, because if the police ever really checked into Crystal’s background his role in the whole affair might start to become evident.

  “And he was worried about Grabow. Maybe the two of them had met. Maybe Grabow knew about the lawyer’s relationship with Crystal, or maybe the lawyer didn’t know for certain just how much talking Crystal might have done. For one reason or another, Grabow was a threat. And Grabow himself was nervous when I saw him. Maybe he got in touch with the lawyer. Anyway, he had to go, and the lawyer decided he might as well kill Grabow and tighten the frame around me at the same time. He managed somehow to get the artist over to my apartment, killed him with another of those goddamned dental scalpels, and planted a couple of pieces of Crystal’s jewelry there to tie it all together for the police. Now why I would kill Grabow in the first place, and why I would kill him with a dental scalpel in my own apartment, and why I would then leave Crystal’s jewels around, that was all beside the point. It might not make any absolute sense but it would certainly make the police put out a pick-up order on me, and of course that’s what they did.” I drew a breath, looked at each of them in turn, Jillian and Craig and Carson Verrill. “And that’s where we are,” I said, “and that’s why we’re here.”

  The silence built up rat
her nicely. Finally Verrill broke it. He cleared his throat. “You see the problem,” he said. “You’ve developed a convincing case against this nameless attorney. But you don’t know who he is and I gather it’s not going to be terribly easy to track him down. You mentioned a woman, a friend of Crystal Sheldrake’s?”

  “Frankie Ackerman.”

  “But did you say she killed herself?”

  “She died mixing alcohol and Valium. It could have been an accident or it could have been suicide. She’d been brooding about Crystal and something was on her mind. It’s not impossible that she got in touch with the lawyer directly. Maybe he fed her the booze and pills as part of his process of tying off loose ends.”

  “That sounds a little farfetched, doesn’t it?”

  “A little,” I admitted. “But either way she’s dead.”

  “Exactly. And a chance to identify this lawyer seems to have died with her. Now this bartender. Corcoran? Is that his name?”

  “Knobby Corcoran.”

  “And he has the counterfeit money?”

  “He had it the last I saw of it, but that was yesterday evening. I’d guess he still has it and I’d guess he and the money are a long ways from here. After he closed the bar last night he went home and grabbed a suitcase and left town. I don’t think he’ll be back. Either all the killings scared him or he’d been planning all along to cross his mob associates. He was living on tips and leavings and maybe the sight of all that money was too much for him. Remember, it looked like a quarter of a million bucks, even if you could only get twenty cents on the dollar for it. I’ll bet Knobby took a cab to Kennedy and a plane to someplace warm, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of counterfeit twenties turn up in the West Indies between now and next spring.”

  Verrill nodded, frowning. “Then you don’t really have anything to work with,” he said slowly. “You don’t have any leads to the identity of this lawyer and you don’t know who he is.”