The February Doll Murders Read online

  “Clyde!” he yelled. “Clyde was taking Lola down to the F.B.I. Is he one of them, too?”

  “Is there a Santa Claus?”

  “Come again?”

  “I can’t answer that one until we phone the F.B.I. and ask for him. Chances are he’ll be there, though. I bet my money on Brad, not Clyde. Clyde looked okay.”

  Which evidence is not enough for any self-respecting captain of Homicide. Monks growled his disapproval and kept waving the crowd off. I waited with him for some policemen to come running and help us with the brand-new corpse.

  Clyde was the goods. Lola Langdon was in custody.

  We had Chatty Cathy. We pulled her musical string, and after a series of “Nice baby!” and “Hi, Mama!” and “Cookie all gone!” and such, she talked her lovable head off. A message to the effect that all the Red tentacles in New York were to set themselves for a massive sabotage effort against the United Nations, which the Russians would then blame on American “fascists.” The message had a lot of technical instructions; I could see why it couldn’t have been delivered orally. The security of the world would have been menaced. Only Kyle Crosby’s latter-day Americanism had changed things. Lola Langdon did some talking, too. Enough to jail some very prominent big fish. Their names shocked people all over the country.

  The Federal Bureau of Investigation, as if to erase forever the blot of Lynch and Brad on its records, went to town. There was an official inquiry and a cleanup of the entire New York department. Two bad apples were not going to besmirch the reputation of a proud branch of public service.

  They let me see Lola just once before they shipped her off to a private cell where she would be watched day and night. She didn’t look the same. Her hair was severely plaited in two dark braids, and she wore no makeup. The mink outfit was only a memory. Drab prison gray made her look like Joan of Russia. But I couldn’t help thinking of her as the Paris one. She had made a sacrifice of sorts.

  She was still thinking about Kyle Crosby. I didn’t have to mention his name. Her eyes were two smoked-out, crying ruins where the fires of love had once burned.

  “Lola, do this standing on your feet. Don’t be a sap.”

  “What are you saying, Ed?”

  “Forget the L-pills. No suicides, please. Don’t walk out on life. Tell them all they want to know, and you’ll see. They can be pretty damn lenient when they want to be.”

  “I don’t care about their mercy. Can’t you see that?”

  “Yes, I suppose I can. Is there anything I can do for you, Lola?”

  She looked at me just once more before turning away toward the barred windows.

  “Yes. You can walk out of here and leave me alone. I don’t wish to talk to you ever again.”

  I did as she told me. We weren’t on the same planet, anyway. We never had been.

  In the end, I went home to the mouse auditorium and to Melissa Mercer. I found her waiting for me when I got in. She’d been phoning contractors all day trying to make arrangements about fixing my blasted-out apartment. She was alert, bright-eyed, and ready to hear all that had happened. So I told her.

  Kyle Crosby was being shipped home to Wisconsin for a funeral with honors. No one would ever know what had happened to the kid with the Silver Star and the different face. I didn’t hear any more from Amos Glass, either.

  I took out the dollar bill and stretched it full-length in my hands. It was still green, but faded now, creased and wrinkled from all the years I had carried it since that day in Le Havre. When was that? A million years ago, maybe.

  I thought about the guys in the squad. All of them. Melissa had never had the time to check them all out, thanks to Samarko and Rollo interrupting her schedule. It didn’t matter. After what had happened, maybe it was better to let sleeping dog tags lie.

  “Ed?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You were a million miles away just then.”

  “Not really. Only about three thousand miles and maybe twenty-one years away.”

  “You’re still bothered about your friend, about Kyle?”

  “Could be. This little old buck — I never thought it would amount to any more than something I would carry around in my pocket.”

  She reached into the center of her desk and held up a book of matches. Her eyes were fixed on my face. “Take the matches. Burn it.”

  I shook my head. “Wouldn’t prove anything. Besides, it’s a perfectly fine buck. Could buy somebody some groceries. Like a bum, maybe.”

  She sighed. “You’d do yourself a favor if you got rid of it. The way you’re constituted, you’ll think of Kyle every time you look at that thing.”

  She was right. She knew me like a book.

  So that afternoon, on the way home, I gave the bill to the first bum who approached me on Times Square. I watched his rheumy eyes water with gratitude as I shook him off. I had cast my bread upon the waters. Set the buck into motion again. Let it bring some measure of happiness to somebody instead of becoming a moth-eaten, dog-eared relic in a succession of wallets and billfolds.

  I couldn’t help wondering if the bill would ever, through some fatal magic, find its way back into my hands.

  After all, even at my age, I still believed in miracles.

  I honestly think Melissa did, too.

  18

  The Spying Eye

  This is only a footnote to what has gone before. I was done with dolls, dollar bills, and espionage, but there was no accounting for the miracle of what happened exactly one week after the case was closed.

  It was a rainy Monday. The last day of the month, I think. I was in the office making out some checks for my personal bills when Melissa came into the inner office.

  “Ed?”

  “Yes, golden girl?”

  “You have a visitor. I’m announcing him because I think you would have given me the horselaugh over the intercom, and I didn’t want your visitor to think you were just a comedian.”

  I stopped what I was doing and looked up. I had never seen Melissa Mercer’s serene face so excited and schoolgirlish during office hours.

  “Give me that again. Slow.”

  “You have a visitor.”

  “I got that part, thank you. What’s so special about one more client?”

  She swallowed nervously. “Ed, it’s J. Edgar Hoover!”

  “Sure it is, Mel.” I stared at her. “Are you crazy?”

  “No, I’m not. He’s here and he wants to see you and there’s F.B.I. men all over the building and —”

  She wasn’t crazy, and I wasn’t hearing things.

  My visitor was J. Edgar Hoover.

  But that’s another story, which I’ll tell you more about later.