spoken to him or seen him, since then.”
Schwarzkopf stepped in and smiled warmly. “You’re doing fine, Miss Sharpe. Just fine. Now, if you can just fill in a few blanks…”
She turned snippy again. “What sort of blanks?”
“Names would be a good start.”
“I told you before! I don’t remember any names.”
“You don’t remember the name of your date? You went for a ride with him on that Sunday afternoon, spent an entire evening with him…”
“I can’t remember.”
“Look,” Welch said, “we know you’re nervous. Just relax and the name will come to you.”
“I am
“What about the other couple?” Schwarzkopf asked. “Can you remember who they were?”
She cocked her head and smiled with tight sarcasm. “No. I can’t remember their names, either.”
“You were out with these people a little over a week ago,” Welch said, “and you can’t remember their goddamn names?”
The steno paused, wondering whether to record “goddamn.”
Violet folded her arms across her chest, and her chin was raised high; but she was trembling. And she didn’t dignify Welch’s badgering with a reply.
“What movie did you see, Violet?” I asked.
Welch and Schwarzkopf looked at me, a little surprised that I’d get into this.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“My name’s Heller. I’m a police officer, like the rest of these men.”
“You have no business prying into my private life. None whatsoever!”
“Take it easy,” I said. “Just tell us what the movie was about. Something, anything, about the movie you saw-the actors in it, anything.”
Red Johnson had passed a similar test with flying colors.
But Violet Sharpe said nothing.
“What was the name of the theater?” I asked.
“It was in Englewood. That’s all I know.”
Welch and Schwarzkopf looked at me and I shrugged. I wasn’t doing any better than they were.
“Thank you, Miss Sharpe,” Schwarzkopf said. And to Welch, he said, “Send her back to Englewood.”
Schwarzkopf left, and I went along, following him back into the bustling garage command post.
“I have half a mind to turn her over to Welch,” Schwarzkopf said, “and let him work his magic on her.”
“If you do that,” I said, “you do have half a mind.”
“What would you suggest?”
“No rubber-hose technique-just some in-depth, sustained questioning. She was frustrating to interrogate, I’ll grant you, but you shook her loose when we’d barely begun.”
Schwarzkopf stopped in his tracks; sighed. “She’s one of Mrs. Morrow’s favorite maids. We push her too hard, we’ll get in trouble with the Morrows.”
“So fucking what?”
Schwarzkopf made a face. “If we get in trouble with the Morrows, we’ll get in trouble with Colonel Lindbergh.”
“Hook her up to a lie detector, then. Hell, hook up all the Lindbergh servants, and all the Morrow servants, too.”
“Don’t you think I’ve thought of that? Colonel Lindbergh won’t have it. It’s an invasion of privacy, and an insult, to his employees, he says.”
Half an hour later, Constable Willis Dixon of the Hopewell P.D. showed up, grinning. He reported to Schwarzkopf.
“Some interesting items in that maid’s room,” he said, with his gap-toothed grin.
So Schwarzkopf had sent Dixon, not his own men, to do a search of Violet’s room at Englewood, while she was here being questioned. Schwarzkopf was smart, in his weasel way: why get his own people in trouble, if the Morrows got owly about harassment of their favorite servant?
“First of all,” Dixon said, “the servants over there say Violet’s been havin’ an affair with an older man-a butler, they say. I figure it’s this guy Septimus Banks.”
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“The Morrows’ head butler,” Schwarzkopf explained. “History of drunkenness.”
“Anyway, I sure found some good stuff in her room, gents,” Dixon said. “A handwritten book of dirty stories. An address book with twenty-six names. And a savings book on a New York City bank.”
“You didn’t take any of these with you, did you?” Schwarzkopf asked, anxiously.
“No! But I did do some browsing. You know, Violet makes a hundred bucks a month, and’s been working less than two years. And I was told she sends a good chunk of her pay home to her folks in Great Britain.”
“So?” I asked.
“So,” Dixon asked in return, “why does she have almost two grand in her savings account?”
11
Bonfires burned orangely against the night, flames fighting the icy wind, kindled by troopers keeping vigil on the periphery of the Lindbergh estate.
Inside the command-post garage, two members of the New Jersey State Police were keeping vigil with a deck of cards. The two troopers-a kid named Harrison and a guy about thirty named Peters-had joined Constable Dixon and myself for a quiet game of poker. At a little after midnight, the rest of the skeleton crew of troopers were stretched out and snoring on army cots.
The only guy on duty was a fellow named Smith who was on the switchboard; but he was slumped and sleeping, too. The only calls that came through were those directed to the troopers themselves; Lindbergh had rejected Schwarzkopf’s request that calls to the house be routed here first for monitoring purposes. Every call, crank or otherwise, from anybody savvy enough to wrangle the unlisted number of the Hopewell estate, went straight to the phones inside-one on Lindy’s desk, another in the hallway, another upstairs (though at night the latter was disconnected).
Once Inspector Welch had answered the hall phone and Lindbergh snapped at him, “What the hell are you doing?”
And it was fucking rare that Lindbergh cursed.
“It rang and I answered it,” Welch had said.
Lindbergh’s expression and tone rivaled the weather in coldness. “I want it understood very clearly, and right now, that neither you nor any other policeman is to touch that phone for any reason. You are here through my courtesy and I ask you not to interfere with my business.”
On the other hand, Mickey Rosner, pride of New York’s underworld, frequently answered the phone and had full access to it.
Dixon, the two troopers and I were sitting at one of the tables where mail was sorted; bags of the stuff were crowded up against the wall behind us, like Moran’s men in that Clark Street garage where Capone held his St. Valentine’s Day dance. The picnic-type table was littered with nickels and dimes and quarters. The majority were piled before me. It was my deal.
“Black Mariah,” I said, dealing them down.
“What the hell is Black Mariah?” Peters wanted to know. A chain-smoker, he was a brown-haired, rosy- cheeked guy whose eyebrows were almost always knit, as if he were suspicious people smarter than him were taking advantage. Which they often were.
“Seven card stud,” I said. “High spade in the hole splits the pot.”
“Oh,” Peters said, and sucked in some smoke.
