JASPER TULLY HAD THOUGHT of the will. It was one of the things he had expected to see, spending Saturday night and Sunday in the country, and since he had been given carte blanche in the General’s rooms, he had searched it out among the old gentleman’s papers. A very simple affair it was: leaving both his assets and his debits to his only legitimate son, James Ransom Jarvis. It had been drawn up in 1945, and interestingly, initialed and dated in the presence of a notary once a year since. It was a blister of notary stamps. And the obvious intention was to show it as the one and only testament of Ransom Jarvis.
Just one more item of interest in the legend of the General. Tully was rapidly filling his notebook with them. At this rate he could soon write the old rake’s biography himself.
Meanwhile the detective had undertaken to do his own leg work, from broker’s to broker’s—the pawn brokers’ shops of Eighth Avenue. Many a rookie cop walked this beat. He had pounded its like himself—too long ago. Here was the dividing line between respectability and the downbeats. A woman fed the pigeons—clouds of them—from a paper bag, the two-bit con men spotted tourists and gave them the damnedest welcome to New York City, Buddy, can you spare five bucks? The jukeboxes moaned the whole day long; old time vaudevillians met as though by chance and regaled each other with the same old tales of going on the road so long ago the dust rose from the wagon wheels; actors sped to rehearsal, last night’s rolled drunks to pawn five-dollar cuff-links for the price of morning coffee, lonesome old whores were walking their breedless dogs, the crippled beggars squeezed out happy music, the children of God knows who—Miguel and Joshua and Patrick—flipped pennies at the wall.
It was a long day’s walk and the old man’s mention of Eighth Avenue might well have been a figure of speech. Tully put his question for about the thirtieth time just when the lights were going on outside the shop. The man behind the counter—a great flabby lump whose face had the grayness of nightfall in it—opened his mouth and closed it. Then he shrugged.
Tully repeated his question, adding: “Seven decorations in all, including the Croix de Guerre and the Congressional Medal of Honor.”
“I know,” the man said wearily. “I can tell you the why of all of them, what he did to get ʼem and how he got some of ʼem for things which he didn’t do.”
Tully permitted himself a little sigh. “A talkative old fellow, eh?”
“A salesman, he should’ve been a salesman. You know why he talked, don’t you?”
“More money?”
“That’s it, my friend. Five dollars worth of tin and alloy and forty-five bucks of talk. I’m a sucker for talk.”
He was a sucker for good custom, too, Tully thought. He must have had the General’s decorations in and out many a time. The General might talk up the loan, but there were no odds at all on his chance of talking down the interest rate. “Did he give you much talk last Friday?”
“I got the talk when he brought them in. I got abuse when he’d take them out. He’d curse me out for a usurer, a flesh-bleeder. I wish you could hear the words, some of them I never heard, a foreign language.”
“Did he give you the treatment Friday?” Tully persisted, having in mind the old man’s reported abuse of the desk clerk.
“Nope. You see he didn’t come in for them himself. It was his girl friend.”
“That’s interesting,” Tully said. “I’ve been wanting to meet her.”
“Yeah? She ain’t so much, not for a man of his…but what the hell? I used to think he was a four-flusher. Then he’d come in here, and by Chris’, he did sound genuine.”
“He was,” Tully said patiently.
“I know. I read in the papers all about him. The real thing.”
“Tell me about the girl friend. Do you know her?”
The big man settled himself on a stool behind the counter, maneuvering his bottom on it to get comfortable. Tully was aware of the ache in his own feet. “No, but I’ve seen her around, I think.”
“You mean without the General?”
“Maybe, but I don’t know where. What I mean is, maybe she’s an ex-singer, something like that, see?”
“Could be she is,” Tully said. “Got a name for her? Did she sign a receipt?”
The pawnbroker shook his head. “Cash, merchandise, tickets. No signatures needed. That’s household finance stuff. We’re specialists. She had the ticket, she got the medals.”
Tully at least got a good description of the woman. It tallied well with the hotel clerk’s. “What time was she in?”
“Along about now. I have to put the lights on special in the window, and I was up there by the switch when she came in. I saw her outside looking up at the number first.”
Tully looked at his watch. Six-twenty.
“What did you think you were going to get from her?” Tully asked. “Or did you know her from having been in before with the General?”
“That was her first time, I think.” The big man rubbed his chin and you could hear the scrape of his hard thumb on the stubble of beard. “Funny, you ask that. I got a beautiful watch here. It came in a week ago, a guy from out of town, green, scared. I figured she came to get it for him. Class, you see. Whatever she was, she had class. Not enough maybe for a general. But class.”
“Just the same,” Tully drawled, “you figured her to be…whatever she was.”
“Oh sure.”
“Would you say she was worried? Upset?”
“Not a care in the world, I’d say. Looked all around. Inquired what I fed the parakeet.”
Tully noticed the bird for the first time. It would be a safe conjecture then, that the General’s mistress was mistress also to a parakeet. Nothing at all so far indicated her a woman capable of violence.
“How much was the ticket? Have you got that on the books?”
The big man heaved himself up and went to his ledger. He found the page and ran a pudgy finger along the entries. “Forty-three dollars and fifty cents—including interest.” He closed the ledger. “And I tell you what she paid it out of—a hundred dollar bill.”
That was no great surprise. It merely toted up the General’s pocket money to a thousand dollars. “Anything else you remember about her?”
“She asked me if the bird talked. I said I wouldn’t have a bird around which talked, meaning it double, you see. She caught on. She gave me a kind of wink. Real soft and southern lady, she was. ‘Mine always says the proper thing,’ she said, and going out she said: ‘good evenin’.”
It was downright disgusting to see this hunk of a man go mushy talking about a woman, Tully thought. He thanked him for his cooperation and clapped his hat on.
“Good evenin’,” the big one called after him in a mock southern accent. Tully looked back from the door. The pawnbroker was churning with laughter.
Something, nothing. Something, nothing. The words kept time with his footfalls. He took a cab back to the office, and there, called up for the tracer on the license number Helene Joyce had got at the funeral.
“Sorry, Tully. Somebody goofed on you. There’s no such number issued by the state.”
Tully sat back and thought about that. Mrs. Joyce was a competent woman. But this was the second license number taken in this business that might have had great relevance: a drunk had memorized the license on the black limousine that took The Rock on his last mile, and there was no such number. Somebody was using plates of his own manufacture for these special occasions. And then there was the round-faced gentleman with the fading sunburn: he had put the finger on the General outside Minnie’s that night, saying he was Johnny Rocco. He drove the limousine in which a fair blonde lady attended the General’s funeral. Maybe they wouldn’t add up yet, but you could count ʼem: one, two, three.
Jasper Tully enjoyed his dinner.