28. Jake Goes to Staten Island

Jake felt a sense of exhaustion and futility. There had been no further word from Helene. Malone had gone out somewhere and not returned. After an hour’s fruitless waiting, he’d decided to go ahead where he left off yesterday.

He’d gone over to Brooklyn to see Bertha Morrison’s uncle, George Lutts, who turned out to be a gentle, slightly deaf, overweight, real-estate broker, not as successful as Bertha’s father had been, but mildly prosperous. He didn’t manage Bertha’s property, he explained to Jake, a Mr. Proudfoot did that. Abner Proudfoot. He was in the phone book. Jake made a note of the name.

He didn’t remember ever having heard of Dennis Morrison, Gloria Garden, Puckett, Wildavine Williams, or anyone else connected with the case. “I haven’t seen so much of Bertha since she grew up,” he explained apologetically. “Anyway, since her father passed away. He was a fine man, but I’ve always thought he should have made me Bertha’s trustee. Not that she wasn’t capable of managing her own affairs. Anything else I can do for you?”

A look of pain came into his mild blue eyes when Howie’s name was mentioned. Jake wished he hadn’t had to mention it. Howie was in trouble again. Of course Mr. Justus must know that, if he’d seen the papers. Jake nodded, and thanked heaven that Helene’s name had been kept out of the story, and his own.

Howie had always been a bad boy. Not that everything possible hadn’t been done for him. Old George Lutts’ face looked tired and drawn. Howie had been arrested at eleven for stealing hub caps off parked cars and put on probation. “He never was a vicious boy,” George Lutts said. “He had a real nice nature. Only he just never could seem to resist temptation.” Howie had been arrested at fourteen for stealing cigarettes and candy from a cigar store. “Not that he hadn’t been in trouble before that,” George Lutts said, “only not with the police.” At seventeen he’d been picked up on a morals charge. “Not a girl, you understand,” George Lutts said, looking embarrassed and unhappy. “Howie, he never would have anything to do with girls. Once we thought maybe he’d fall in love with Bertha when he grew up, only it didn’t work out that way. A person never can tell about those things.”

Howie had been committed to the House of Refuge. At eighteen he’d been paroled and given a job in a filling station. He’d worked as an usher, an office boy, and a soda jerk. “Howie never could keep a job very long,” Mr. Lutts said. At twenty-two Howie, in the company of three friends, had held up a junk dealer. The three friends had been arrested, convicted, and sent to Elmira, but Howie had got away. “I hid him out, I didn’t tell,” George Lutts said. “Heaven forgive me. Only his mother was so sick. She died in a coupla months, and she never knew about Howie.”

He’d been picked up looting the till of a filling station, and served four years. After he’d come out he’d returned home, borrowed a hundred dollars, and disappeared. George Lutts had only seen him once or twice since then, when he’d come back to borrow more. “Now he’s in jail again,” George Lutts said, sighing. “Too bad. Howie had such a nice personality, too.”

Jake got away as soon as he could. He hoped that Howie Lutts would draw a long term, at hard labor. He hadn’t learned anything of value from George Lutts, nor did he learn anything at Abner Proudfoot’s office, where a pimply-faced young woman informed him that Mr. Proudfoot was out of the city and not expected back for six months. This, by golly, was going to be his last visit today. He knocked lightly on Melva Engstrand’s door in the Beaux Arts Apartments, resolving that if he didn’t learn anything here, he’d give up and go back to Chicago. He said, as the door opened, “I’m a reporter, and I wanted to ask you a few questions—”

“Oh,” Melva Engstrand said. “How thrilling! Come right in!”

She was a big, buxom woman with bright-red hair and a well-made-up face. She had on a jade-green housecoat that rustled as she walked, and tinkling little silver earrings. The apartment was expensive-looking, and tastefully decorated. Melva Engstrand mixed him a drink, offered him a cigarette, and curled up on the couch across the room from him, looking coy. “You reporters do get around! How did you hear about my divorce suit so soon?”

“Oh,” Jake said. He sipped the drink. “Oh—well, we get around. Tell me all about it.”

She did, and it took an hour and a half. Her first husband had been a dear, but far too old for her. She’d been just a child out of school, and she’d wanted to go out and have fun. They’d finally parted friends, and he’d settled a very nice sum of money on her. Her second husband had been a simply terrible person, he’d obviously married her for her money, and as soon as he saw he couldn’t get his hands on it, he’d left her. Her third had been a brute, an absolute brute. They’d quarreled all the time, every minute of it. Would you believe it, she’d actually had to go to a sanitarium for a nervous breakdown. And mean! The way she’d had to fight to get any alimony! And now? Well, Arthur Engstrand had a lovely disposition and he was so generous, and he had a fine business, but he was unbearably conventional. He’d actually objected to her going to the race tracks, and that had been the last straw.

Besides, she was engaged. She giggled and said, “Please, you mustn’t tell anybody, because I haven’t gotten my decree yet. But he’s such a dear! Wait, I’ll show you his picture!” She produced it, a thin-faced young man with sideburns. “He’s a poet. Tell me, since you’re on the case, what do you think my chances are of getting a cash settlement out of Arthur?”

“Excellent,” Jake said, “and all this has been very interesting. And while I’m here, there’s something else I wanted to ask you about. Didn’t you know Bertha Morrison—Bertha Lutts?”

“Know her,” she said, “why I’m her very best friend! I nearly went out of my mind last night when I thought she’d been murdered, honestly I did. We were so close. Why, she used to tell me everything about herself, everything.”

Jake lit a cigarette to conceal his sudden excitement and said, “She did? Do go on.”

“We had lunch together just last week,” Melva said. “She told me all about her young man. How he was just fabulously rich, and came of such a wonderful old Southern family, and he’d been pursuing her—really pursuing her—for months! He was madly in love with her. Can you imagine? Bertha? Not, of course, that she didn’t have a lovely nature and all that, but—well, I guess you never can tell.”

For just a minute, Jake thought he had something. Further questions, though, brought out that Melva hadn’t seen a great deal of Bertha since boarding school, except for class reunions and the bridge club that had been organized last year. In fact, as she talked, the friendship seemed to dwindle down to a faint and not too amiable acquaintanceship. She, Melva, hadn’t liked Bertha very well in school, she’d been too much of a dud. And terribly stingy. She’d spend plenty of money on herself, but never on her friends. She, Melva, had borrowed a little money from her a year ago, and Bertha had positively hounded her until she paid it back.

Jake remembered the clothes, the perfumes, and the beauty aids in Bertha Morrison’s apartment, and the letter she’d written to Wildavine, refusing a loan.

“Not,” Melva said, “that I’m not devoted to her, because I am. She may not be pretty but she has such a sweet disposition, even if she is opinionated and stubborn. And I was so relieved to hear from her this morning and know that she’s all right.”

“You must have been,” Jake said absent-mindedly, reaching for a match. His hand froze in mid-air, and he said, “What?”

“When I got her letter,” Melva said, “I was so relieved. After all that had been in the papers. It just shows how they exaggerate, doesn’t it?”

“Oh!” Jake said. “Oh, yes. Her letter. Of course. Could I see it?”

Melva giggled and said, “Well—I don’t see why not. It doesn’t have any secrets in it.”

She found it under a box of chocolates on her writing desk and gave it to him. He recognized the paper, the blue typewriter ribbon. The envelope was postmarked April 11. It had been mailed from Niagara Falls.

My dear Melva:

Thank you for your good wishes and your lovely gift. Niagara Falls is beautiful beyond description. Tomorrow we are leaving for the West. We are deliriously happy. As soon as we are home, do come and call on us. Until then, all my love.

Bertha

Jake read it through three or four times, and then handed it back, saying, “Thank you.” His throat felt numb. Had Bertha Morrison gone insane, or had he?

“Isn’t that the silliest thing you ever heard of?” Melva Engstrand cooed. “I read in the papers that the police seemed to think that body in the morgue was Bertha’s. As though Bertha would ever have such a thing happen to her! And that the nice young man Bertha married was in the hospital, a victim of an attempted murder! While she writes me from Niagara Falls that they’re deliriously happy! It just goes to show, you can’t believe a thing you read in the papers. Honestly, sometimes I believe these newspaper reporters cook up these stories just from sheer sensationalism.” She glanced at Jake, remembered why he was there, and added hastily, “I don’t mean you, of course.”

“I’m sure of it,” Jake croaked. He rose and reached for his hat.

“Oh, must you go? When we were just beginning to get so nicely acquainted! Really, I never thought a reporter could be so charming, and I’ve known so many of them! Won’t you come back and visit me again—I mean, informally—one of these days?”

“I’ll call you up sometime,” Jake said. “We’ll have lunch.” He fled.

Bertha was murdered. But she’d mailed a letter, yesterday, from Niagara Falls. Bertha was alive and well. But she’d written that she was deliriously happy, and yet, her bridegroom was still here in New York. What the hell? He stopped at the nearest United Cigar store. Maybe he ought to call up a psychiatrist. Or maybe he ought to call up the police. He finally called the hotel and asked first for Helene, then for Malone. Neither was in.

Well, there was still one thing left on his schedule for the day. He’d go over to Staten Island and have a talk with old Dr. Puckett. Jake looked at his watch. Yes, there was plenty of time left to go there, get back, dress, and be at Wildavine’s at the appointed dinner hour. He walked to Grand Central Station, took the subway, and rode to South Ferry. A boat was waiting, he got on, found a seat in the cabin, picked up an abandoned newspaper from the seat beside him, and began working the crossword puzzle. The movement of water past the boat made a lovely sound. He closed his ears to it. If he looked out the window, he could see boats in the harbor and the Statue of Liberty. He didn’t look. If he went out on deck, he could look back and see the New York skyline. He stayed where he was. Someday he’d take this same ferry ride, and Helene would be with him. He’d wait until then to do his looking. What was a six-letter word beginning with l, meaning Egyptian skink?

He got off the boat, went to the information booth in the ferry building, looked again at the address of Dr. Puckett’s sister-in-law. Mrs. Mabel Puckett. The information clerk told him what car to take and what station to get off at. Jake had never been on Staten Island before, but he resolutely kept his eyes and his mind on the crossword puzzle, abandoning it only when his station was called. By then he’d got hopelessly stuck with a seven-letter word beginning with poc, defined as a genus of oceanic ducks.

He’d started his trip in the center of a great city; now, forty minutes later, he stepped off the car in a very small and very neglected town. He walked past a tiny, weather-beaten station and plowed his way through knee-high weeds to a wooden sidewalk. The address he was seeking proved to be up a slight hill, a block and a half down an unpaved road, and across a vacant lot to where four small brick houses stood desolately along a paved street, a memorial to what had once been planned as a Development. The last house of the four was Mrs. Mabel Puckett’s. There was a vacant lot beside it, newly spaded and raked, and carefully laid out with plant markers and cord. Dr. Puckett was there, in old corduroy overalls, planting radishes. Jake picked his way carefully across the damp ground. “Early for planting, isn’t it?” Jake asked cordially.

Dr. Puckett stood up, grinning, and wiped his brow. “Well, might be. I don’t think there’ll be another frost, though. Just thought I’d get in Mabel’s garden for her while she’s away, and while I’m here.”

Jake said, “Don’t let me stop you. In fact, let me help. Where do you want to put in these carrots?”

“Right over there,” Dr. Puckett said. “Next to the beets. Don’t pat ’em down too hard. You gotta be careful with carrots, this time of year.” He straightened up for a minute, rubbed his back, and said, “I gotta put my own garden in, soon’s I get home. Ma isn’t real well, and Irma—that’s my son Ed’s wife—don’t care much for gardening. And Ed’s busy all day in his garage.” He carefully raked the moist ground over the radish seeds. “But since Mabel’s down in Florida, and since she was kind enough to let me stay in her house while I was here—not that she didn’t always ask me to stay here, which I always did—and since she’s my dead brother Henry’s wife, well, I thought the least I could do was put in her garden for her. Look out you don’t step on that hose line.”

Jake put in a long row of carrots, being careful not to pat them down too hard. The feel of the moist earth was good on his fingers, and when he straightened up, he took pride in the evenness of the row. After all, he’d been brought up in a little town, and there had always been a garden in the back yard. He wondered how Helene would like living on a farm someday.

“Looks pretty good,” Dr. Puckett said contentedly. “Fine sandy loam here. Well,” he sighed, “seed and weed, that’s the way it goes. You plant, but you never know what’s going to come up. Same way with people.” He stooped, picked up a stone, and tossed it out of the garden. “I remember, I delivered five babies in a family, good, honest, God-fearing people. All nice, healthy, handsome kids. Three boys and two girls. One girl’s a school principal now, a fine respected woman. Her sister’s married and has a nice little family, she’s president of the PTA in Grove Falls. One boy runs a grocery store, the other’s a real good farmer. The third boy ran away from home twice, got sent to the reform school once, stole a car, held up a bank, shot the cashier, and got hanged. It just goes to show.” He rubbed the dirt from his fingers on the seat of his pants and said, “Let’s go in the house and have a bite to eat, I’m hungry. Got a cigarette with you?”

Jake was hungry. He’d missed lunch. Come to think of it, he hadn’t had any breakfast, either. Dr. Puckett led him into a neat little kitchen, washed his hands and handed Jake the soap, brought out a half-gallon bottle of beer, a loaf of bread, a carton of eggs, a bowl of butter, a frying pan, and an onion. He put the frying pan on the stove to heat, poured out two glasses of beer, and said, “Drink up,” put a hunk of butter in the pan and waited for it to brown. “Hope you like an egg sandwich,” he said. “That’s one thing a country doctor knows how to make.” He chuckled, breaking the eggs into the pan. “You go out to a farm to deliver a baby. Five o’clock in the morning you’re ready to go home, but you’re hungry. Somebody’s thought to put a pot of coffee on the stove for you, but nobody’s thought you might like something to eat. So you look in the icebox, and there’s never anything but eggs. You make an egg sandwich, and go home.” He shaved onion into the frying pan and said, “Why did you come out here, anyway?”

“Frankly,” Jake said, “I’m damned if I know. I guess I just wanted to talk to you.”

“All right,” Dr. Puckett said. “Go ahead, talk.” He sprinkled salt, pepper, and celery salt in the frying pan. “Only maybe you’d better eat first.” He flipped over the eggs, sauced the browned butter over them with a big spoon, and slid them expertly on the thick slices of bread he’d been warming in the oven.

Jake took one bite and said, “Boy!” He took another bite and said, “I never knew anybody in my life could make egg sandwiches like this, except my grandpop.” He took two more bites and said, “Funny, this is one of the things no woman can cook right.”

“Ma never learned how to make a good egg sandwich,” Dr. Puckett admitted. “But you should just taste her devil’s-food cake once.”

“I’d love to!” Jake said. He licked the last bit of egg off his fingers. “You’d never believe it to look at her, but my wife makes the most wonderful corned-beef hash.”

“You should taste Ma’s watermelon preserves sometime,” Dr. Puckett said. He refilled Jake’s beer glass and his own. “Hazel was a fine cook, too. Won a blue ribbon at the county fair for her grape jelly one year.” He reached for his pipe. “Now, what was it you wanted to talk to me about, son?”

Jake lit a cigarette and stared for a long time at its smoke. “I want to find the man who murdered your daughter.” He held the cigarette so tight that it went out. “I started out to, for the most selfish reasons in the world. Now, well”—he dropped the dead cigarette in his saucer—“I guess it’s just—” He looked up. “I’d like to see the son-of-a-bitch in the electric chair. I came out here to pump you for any information that might lead me to him, that’s all.”

Dr. Puckett said, “You don’t need to be so vehement about it, son. Murder’s a terrible crime, but I don’t know as it does any good to revenge yourself on the murderer. Murder brings its own punishment, one way or another. Now you take Lew Hays, back home. I knew he’d poisoned his wife the night he called me in to treat her. She died just a little while after I got there. In a way it seemed like an act of justice, because Minnie Hays had been an awful mean woman. Frankly, I always thought she starved her father while she was taking care of him on his deathbed, though when she inherited his farm she found out it was mortgaged. And I knew for sure she was behind driving a little schoolteacher out of town just becase she’d made sheep’s-eyes at Lew. The schoolteacher hanged herself out of the back window of a house of ill-fame in St. Paul six months after she’d been driven out of town. Still, you hate to see a person die like that, even an awful mean person like Minnie Hays. From poison that acts that way, I mean. Not just so much because it was painful, but because it must have been embarrassing. She was conscious all the time, and Minnie had always been a terrible prim woman. Still, maybe she had it coming to her. Well, anyway, next month Lew married a blonde girl who’d been working in Wirke’s Variety Store, and she’s made his life a hell. She’s twenty years younger than Lew, and I guess she found out there wasn’t as much money as she’d expected, and she has a lot of boy friends. Maybe it’s just as well I made out the certificate ‘Death from Natural Causes,’ instead of calling up the sheriff. Seems to me like most people get punished for what they do, one way or another. Now that blonde girl who married Lew, she got herself a mother-in-law who’s an old—” He paused, knocked his pipe against the side of the table, and said, “What were we talking about, anyway?”

Jake gulped down the rest of his beer and said, “The man or woman who murdered your daughter.”

“Oh, him?” Dr. Puckett said. “Don’t worry. He’ll get his comeuppance, someday.” He rose. “I’d better go out and wet down those seeds I put in. Hazel was a pretty girl, and her ma’s going to feel awful bad about this, but she wasn’t perfect either.”