Reporters were camped out in front of 250 West 57th Street. Uniformed cops had set up barriers to keep the area in front of the building free. A wagon from the medical examiner’s office was parked at the curb, along with several police cars. It took a while, but I convinced one of the cops to call upstairs to Whitfield's office. The cop escorted me to the elevator and then returned to his post at the front door.
Upstairs, office workers buzzed about the outer office door, with one guard holding them back. He let me in, but the guard just outside Whitfield's door needed extra convincing. I was fussing at him when the door behind him opened and the words died on my lips.
Whitfield's office was lousy with people—uniformed cops, a photographer, a medical examiner and a plainclothes detective. A flash bulb threw the whole group into a merciless bright light. Everything was black and white and shades of gray, with a frozen tableau of men dancing around a dead guy in a three-piece suit.
Whitfield sat upright in that huge chair of his, his head slumped to the left, his eyes open. His left arm hung over the armrest; his right rested in his lap. Blood spattered the right side of his face. It had run down from his nostrils and dripped into his open mouth. Blood had also soaked the left side of his collar. The ME, a bony man named Cory, was examining him.
I started forward. The cop put a restraining hand on my elbow.
“Let her in,” a voice called.
The patrolman glanced over his shoulder, saw who’d given the order and stepped aside.
Blackie had caught the case. He was an all-right guy in his mid-forties, with thick, beetle black eyebrows and muddy brown eyes. He stood next to Whitfield's desk, smoking a thin cigar. Blackie had a weakness for expensive smokes. He nodded at Whitfield.
“Not a pretty sight, but I’ve seen worse.”
Whitfield's right eye was swollen and bruised, but that wasn’t the worst of it. A bullet had opened up his right ear. The edges of the wound were star-shaped and blackened. The fingers in his lap were loosely curled around the handle of a Colt .45.
Cory lifted Whitfield's head. “Entrance through right ear, exit through lower left jaw.”
I started to ask a question, but Blackie laid a light hand on my forearm, looked past me and spoke to Cory, who was busy scribbling on a form.
“So doc, how long’s he been dead?”
Cory answered without looking up. “At least twelve hours.”
“So you’d say around midnight?”
“Thereabouts.”
“Suicide?”
“I’d say so. Gunpowder traces on his hand.”
Blackie turned to me. “Seems like your column did the trick. You should be proud of yourself.”
I’d never been accused of driving a man to suicide before. Blackie made it sound like a compliment.
“Would you be?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
A fly darted around Whitfield's open mouth. Where’d a fly come from in the middle of winter?
“You talk to him yesterday?” Blackie asked.
“Around three.”
“How was he?”
“As you’d expect. Angry.”
“You’re lucky he didn’t shoot you, instead of shooting himself.”
The fly crawled inside Whitfield's mouth. I wondered, idiotically, if it would get stuck in there, in the thickened blood. I turned away, having seen enough.
“Lanie, you don’t need to be here.”
“No, that’s okay. I … I wanted to ask—was there a note?”
Blackie nodded. “He mentioned your column.” He watched me to see how I took that bit of news. “You ain’t got nothing to feel bad about.”
“Who says I feel bad?”
“Aw nuts, Lanie. We go back a long way. I remember how you were when the Todd case first broke. You sank your teeth into it and you were never gonna let go. Then that thing happened with your mother and, well … I know what the case means to you. I talked to Bellamy and I know that—” He caught himself.
“Know what?”
His mouth turned hard. “I know that without your column, this guy would’ve walked. I remember when Bellamy and Ritchie had their little talk with him.”
Shocked, I said, “When they what?”
“I wasn’t in on it, just heard about it. They found about his connection to the Todd girl, came down here and had a little chat. Everything was on the QT, given who he was and all.” At my expression, he said, “Didn’t you know?”
“I had no idea.” I’d asked Bellamy, asked him directly about the tax collector, and he’d lied to me. Why?
“So, what happened?” I asked Blackie.
“Nothing. Whitfield buttoned up tight. Wouldn’t say a word about the night Todd disappeared.” He shrugged. “Of course, then it didn’t matter.”
“How so?”
“Bellamy and Ritchie found out that Whitfield had an alibi.”
“The arrest in Jersey?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Oh, you know about that?”
My gaze went back to the gun. “The Colt. It’s definitely his?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Who found him?”
“The secretary in the next office over. About an hour ago. She dropped by to chat with Whitfield's secretary, but she wasn’t here. So the girl knocked on his office door. It swung open and she found him.”
I’d forgotten about Hilda. I could kill him, she’d said. Just shoot him dead. Had she done just that? I wanted to believe that she was at home, checking the job ads—or at the hospital, watching over Mabel.
“You’ve met her?” Blackie asked.
“Who?”
“The secretary?”
“Yeah.”
Blackie read something in my eyes. “Look Lanie, this was definitely a suicide and, despite what Whitfield told you, he was definitely guilty.”
Something in his tone said he wasn’t operating on general suspicion.
“What’ve you got?”
He reached into a pocket and pulled out a folded handkerchief. He laid it in his palm and opened it. I suspected what he was about to show me.
“We found this with the note.”
Esther’s long-lost earring: It lay sparkling in his hand.