The cops had (reluctantly, I was betting) pursued this lead, and by Thursday they had discovered not only that Guldensuppe had been living for a long time with a lady friend, a certain Mrs. Nack, in a house in Hell’s Kitchen, but that said lady friend had recently developed an attachment to another man in their building, Martin Thorn.
Guldensuppe, Nack, and Thorn had been seen and heard by other residents of their neighborhood openly fighting about the situation. Mrs. Nack was quickly found by the bulls and given a dose of the old third degree: she confessed, after twenty-four straight hours of brutal treatment, that she and Thorn had killed Guldensuppe together and then chopped up his remains. Thorn, however, was nowhere to be found, and the only way for the police to keep the matter interesting was to set up checkpoints at railroad stations and shipping piers all over the city, and to call for first a cross-country and then an international manhunt.
“He’s still here,” was Detective Sergeant Lucius’s reaction to all the noise coming out of Mulberry Street. “You mark my words, Stevie, the man never left and never will leave this city.” Only time, again, would tell; but I wasn’t betting against the detective sergeant, that was for sure.
Friday brought word from Kat, saying that she’d secured one of Libby Hatch’s jackets and was ready to turn it over; but she had a feeling that maybe Ding Dong knew that she was up to something, so she wanted to make the delivery somewhere other than at the Seventeenth Street house: apparently the Dusters knew I lived and worked there. I told her to bring the jacket that night to Number 808 Broadway, where the detective sergeants had set up their equipment and were ready to perform their tests-tests what would tell us, once and for all, whether Nurse Hunter had taken Ana Linares and was holding her in some deep recess of Number 39 Bethune Street.
CHAPTER 22
Kat showed up just after nightfall, and I went down in the big elevator to fetch her. She was shuffling from foot to foot on the marble floor of the building’s lobby, humming a little tune and jerking her body around in time to it. At the elevator’s approach she spun to face me, and even from that distance I could tell that she’d been at the burny again.
“Stevie!” she called, with a big, disturbing sort of smile. “I got the goods!” She held up a medium-sized parcel, plain brown paper tied with some twine.
As I dragged the grate open, she jumped inside and threw herself against me, laughing out loud at nothing at all. “Kat,” I said, trying not to sound as disappointed-even angry-as I felt, “get a grip on yourself, okay? This is serious.”
She frowned, mocking me. “Oh. Sorry, Inspector.” Then I closed the grate, and as we started up in the near darkness she threw her arms around me, moving her lips close to my ear. “Want to have another go, Stevie? Right here in the elevator? Been a long time…”
I slammed the control handle of the machine into the STOP position, so hard that Kat was jerked away from me. She gave out a little squeal as she fell backward.
“Kat!” I said, still trying to control myself. “Why the hell did you have to show up in this kind of condition?”
The blue eyes turned mean, a meanness made all the worse by the cocaine. “Don’t you take that tone with me, Stevie Taggert! Ain’t I spent the whole week risking my neck to get you and your friends what you wanted? If I allow myself to celebrate a little, now that it’s over, then I hope I can be forgiven by your high-minded self!”
Letting out a frustrated burst of air, I nodded at the package. “Maybe you should just let me take it,” I said. “I’ll meet you later, bring you the money and the ticket.”
“Oh, no,” Kat shot back, holding the package away from me. “I know that deal! I’m gettin’ paid now, and I’m gettin’ paid in person! If you’re so damned embarrassed by me, don’t worry, I won’t stick around long! Who’d want to? Bunch of mighty strange types, is what you all are, and I mean to celebrate my good fortune tonight with them what knows how!”
I grabbed the elevator handle and threw the thing back into motion. “All right,” I said, “if that’s how you want it.”
“How I want it? That’s what you want, ain’t it?” She faced the elevator grate and tried to fix her hair. “Damn me… the airs some people take on, just because they find themselves on the other side of the tracks…”
The rest of Kat’s visit didn’t go much better. Her anger made her keep her words to a minimum, but it was still obvious to me-and, I’m sure, to everybody else-that she was loaded with burny and that hers was no chippy (which is to say, irregular) habit. Oh, she had the goods she’d promised, all right: we opened the parcel up on the billiard table next to the detective sergeants’ vials of fingerprint powder and their comparison microscope, and found that it contained one tight-fitting, bloodred satin jacket-with, to order, large, flat black buttons. Kat wanted to get paid right there and then, and her temper wasn’t improved when the Doctor said that she’d have to wait for the detective sergeants to verify that the jacket belonged to the woman we knew as Elspeth Hunter. Kat declared that she’d wait for the fingerprinting to be done, but no longer-she couldn’t imagine what else we wanted the thing for, and she wasn’t going to wait to find out. The deal she’d struck required her to show up with one jacket belonging to Libby Hatch, she said; after we’d all agreed that she’d lived up to her side of the bargain, she’d take her leave. Having said this, she threw herself sullenly into one of the big easy chairs.
The process of lifting the prints didn’t take long. The buttons being black, Marcus used a camel’s-hair paintbrush to dust them with some fine, gray-white aluminum powder, which he then blew away, revealing a clear set of waving lines what he held up against a photograph of the lead pipe they’d found in Central Park for comparison. Nodding to the Doctor, Marcus said only, “It’s a match,” at which point Kat, figuring that was her cue, got to her feet and marched up to the Doctor.
“We all square?” she said to him, a little frantically.
The Doctor-who, I could see, was worried by both Kat’s physical state and her attitude-attempted to be cordial. “We are indeed all square, Miss Devlin. Can we offer you anything by way of thanks? Some coffee, or tea, perhaps-”
“My money and my ticket,” Kat said, holding out a hand. Then she thought to add, “Thank you very much, sir.” Looking my way, she narrowed her eyes and spat out, “I wouldn’t want to overstay my welcome, or make anybody uncomfortable.”
The Doctor glanced from her to me and back again. I think he was on the verge of saying something more, but finally he just nodded and took an envelope from his breast pocket. “Three hundred dollars in cash,” he said with a smile, “and one ticket to San Francisco. Valid at any time during the next six months. Oh,” he added, as Kat near grabbed the envelope, “and the ticket is for a first-class compartment. To show our appreciation.”
That melted her a bit, toward him if not me. “That’s-very decent of you, sir. Thank you.” She glanced at the envelope and smiled just a little. “I ain’t never traveled first class. My papa, he used to say-” Seeming to catch herself, she went rigid again. “I’ll be on my way now, sir. If that’s all.”
The Doctor nodded. “I’m sorry you can’t stay.” She’d just turned when he added, “Miss Devlin-” He took a business card from another pocket of his jacket and handed it to her. “I operate a-school, of sorts, downtown. For young people who want or need to make a change in their lives. Here is the address and the telephone number. Should you ever find yourself in New York again and be interested in such-assistance, please do not hesitate to telephone or stop by.”