“Just last night, right there in my building’s elevator. That’s when I knew I was in over my head. I remembered a friend had used your services some months back, so here I am . . .”
Jack nodded. The dame was right. She was in over her head.
“Mr. Shepard, I think Joey Lubrano is going to try to use those photos again, this time to extort money from Sarah’s husband. If it gets out what happened—that Sarah posed for nude photos with her lover—the scandal would socially ruin and devastate not just him but his father. You know who his father is, Mr. Shepard?”
“Sorry, enlighten me.”
“He’s the fundraising director for St. Bernard’s.”
Jack nodded. St. Bernard’s Episcopal Church was a Fifth Avenue institution. Its members included prominent politicians, judges, and financial scions.
“I get it, honey.”
“Do you?”
Jack’s interest piqued as he watched Emily close her long-lashed eyes and take another long pull on the Lucky Strike.
“And your parents . . . they don’t know their little girl smokes, do they?”
Emily opened her big brown eyes and levelly met Jack’s stare. “They don’t know their little girl does a lot of things.”
Jack’s eyebrow rose. “I’ll need more information from you, Miss Stendall, before I can get started.”
“But you’ll take the case?”
“Yeah, honey,” said Jack. “You just hired yourself your own private dick.”
A few minutes later, Jack was escorting Miss Emily Stendall from his warm office to the hot elevator, then to the steamy Manhattan streets.
“Seven million people in this city,” said Jack Shepard, “and every last one is hailing a cab.”
When the tenth hack went by, already hired, Jack muttered, “Nuts to this.” He considered suggesting they each cough up a dime for the subway, but he doubted very much Miss Stendall would agree.
“Mr. Shepard, a lady of class cannot be seen taking the subway,” one of his clients once had told him when they’d been stranded by her driver and no cabs were in sight. And, of course, what Jack understood was the idea of the act itself was not as repugnant as being “seen” committing it.
“Hungry?” Jack asked his client, because he was.
Emily nodded. So he rolled down his sleeves, put on his jacket and fedora, and took her into Little Roma, a cozy Italian joint near his office, ten wooden tables covered by red-and-white checkered tablecloths and wine bottles with candles stuck in the tops. Nothing pricey but no dive, either. Every table was taken. Ceiling fans moved a pleasant breeze through the room and the smell of fresh rolls and garlic stoked their appetites. They shared a bottle of chilled Chianti and ate thinly sliced veal cutlets made into a melt-on-your-tonsils dish he could never pronounce.
When they stepped back onto the street, the hot day had cooled a few degrees with a breeze off the Hudson, and the hour was well past quitting time. Not for everyone though . . .
Ten blocks north, clouds of steam continued to waft from pressing machines in sweltering loft factories. Long into the night, the Garment District would still be making dresses like the polkadot halter number Miss Stendall wore; while ten blocks south, men without faces had forgotten what quitting time even was. Theirs was a world of shuffling feet and bottomless bottles, outstretched palms, sidewalk beds, long steady stares, and in the end, Bellevue.
Jack doubted Miss Stendall had even been down near the Bowery—he couldn’t blame her. For that crowd, the Depression had never ended, and Jack didn’t like to be reminded of those days, either. He’d had his bad luck like everybody. His mother dying young, his father at a loss for what to do. Putting the two girls in a convent orphanage and Jack left to fend for himself.
He’d boxed some, knocked around, then on a lucky break became a cop. And when the war broke out, and the draft began, that’s the time even more bad luck had blown his way—and he thought it best to enlist his way out of it.
Maybe that’s why he liked Manhattan mostly at night. He’d seen it on leave during the war, when an official dim-out had shut down the bright lights of his town, darkening its marquees and skyscrapers, shrouding even the Statue of Liberty in shadow as a precaution against marauding German subs. Wartime New York had become a somber ghost of itself.
Stepping into this postwar evening, Jack happily eye-balled the forest of buildings, all lit up like torches. This was the reason he’d never leave the city. The lights of night transformed a country boy’s night into a working stiff ’s brand-new day, blazing the pathways to movie theaters and restaurants, gin mills and nightclubs, allowing pursuits of pleasure long past the time the suburban rube and farm boy had been forced to put up their feet.
He flagged a taxi easy now and held the door. The address was Upper East. A tree-lined street tucked between fashionable Park Avenue and utilitarian Lexington. Park was where the opulent building had been erected for tycoons past and present, and Lex was where their help shopped for groceries, took their cleaning, and bought the goods that kept them living in the style to which they’d become accustomed.
Miss Stendall’s building sat exactly between the avenues. The redbrick facade matched the others on the block, with its tall set-back windows and canopied entrance.
“Good evening, miss.” The doorman looked to be in his early sixties. Gray hair, gray eyes, and the flushed cheeks of a man who liked to sneak a nip or two—short jacket and cap the same color as the building’s forest-green canopy; pants black with a side stripe the same shade of green.
“Good evening, Benny.” Emily stepped out as Jack paid the hack. He’d paid for dinner, too. They were Miss Stendall’s expenses, and she’d be charged for them eventually.
The cliff-dwellers never liked to be “nickel and dimed” as they saw it. One big bill was more their style—so they could write Jack one big check. Jack was willing to shell within reason, especially when it came to female clients. Having a dame pay his way wasn’t up his alley anyway. Made him feel like a snot-nosed kid being treated to an ice cream by his mommy.
They crossed the lobby—marble floor, oak wainscoting, forest-green walls with paintings of landscapes hanging from picture rails. A high oak counter for the doorman’s station, across from it armchairs upholstered in gentleman’s club burgundy leather and a matching sofa.
Miss Stendall breezed in with head high, striding. Her white-gloved hand reached out to call the elevator, but Jack’s fingers closed on hers before she could push the button.
For a moment, they stood there alone, holding hands. She looked up at him with surprise.
“Let me handle him,” Jack advised, his voice steel.
“But—”
“Keep your lips zipped, doll,” he warned. “That’s what you hired me for. To handle him.”
Her mouth made a little-girl
Emily sighed. “It’ll be a minute. When things are slow, Joey likes to listen to a radio he keeps on the third floor. He comes when he hears the bell.”
“I see. And his boss allows it?” Jack asked gesturing to the doorman.
“Benny’s not his boss. The building superintendent is. He lives in the basement, and I’ve never seen him emerge from his rooms unless there’s a problem with the plumbing. One can only hope he’d emerge for a fire, should one occur.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “One can only hope.”
When the elevator finally arrived, Jack stepped to the side. Emily didn’t seem to notice, but Joey would be forced to think that she was all alone. And Jack was curious to see Joey’s initial reaction. This was a killer after all —a man who’d drugged and drowned his ex-lover and seemed intent on threatening Jack’s client.
Keeping his body loose, Jack got ready for almost anything—from throwing punches to pulling his rod clear. With a rumbling jolt, the elevator car halted. The door noisily retracted and a white-gloved hand pulled back the gate. The glove wasn’t lost on Jack—part of the uniform. No suspicion on the part of the victim. And no fingerprints.
“Emily . . .” said a deep voice, slightly urgent. “We have to talk.”
Emily blinked and looked beside her, suddenly realizing Jack had stepped out of Joey’s line of sight. Instantly,
