CHAPTER 19

The Things That Really Happen

He and Lambert had agreed to begin afternoon tours next day to spell another team, one of whose members had a daughter who was getting married. But Ryan dropped into the station house at twelve-thirty when he knew Bauer would be at lunch, telephoned downtown, and without explaining his purpose quietly set in motion the identification machinery that would give him the names and records of all known criminals in the metropolitan area who had two vital characteristics: a physical resemblance to Harry Derby and a working method of robbing women as Mrs. Connors had been robbed.

Then, since it was still early, he walked to the apartment where the murder had occurred. The afternoon was bright and warm; north of the city snow was melting among Westchester’s hills, wetting the sunny rocks and making rivulets for children to play in on their way home from school. But amid Manhattan’s concrete and steel geometry there was no snow except where a taller building cast, in this brightness, a blue shadow across lower rooftops. Even so, you felt the catch of distant spring in your throat.

Mrs. Lombardi sat on the steps, a heavy shawl over her shoulders, a cigarette between her lips. “How are you?” she said.

Ryan asked about Mrs. Anders and Betty Leonard and learned that Mrs. Anders had since moved to Tulsa. Gloria Connors still had the apartment but was living with friends and was moving out the first of the month—maybe sooner if she could arrange about the furniture. Meanwhile, it was being shown. Ryan asked if he could borrow the key and Mrs. Lombardi said she didn’t know why not and took it off a large key ring she fished from her pocket.

“Thanks. Oh, one other thing I wanted to ask you. Remember you identified this guy Derby without any trouble? You picked his picture out right away, and then again that night at the precinct and so on?”

“Sure I did.”

“Well, there’s one thing I’m curious about. Was there anything about that guy when you saw him, either at the precinct or later in court, that made you think he might not be the right one after all? I mean, maybe just one little point that might have made you wonder?”

A landlady’s perpetual suspicion squinted at him through her half-closed eyes.

Ryan smiled easily. “I guess it sounds nuts, now he’s convicted and all that. But I’m making a—a sort of study of witnesses’ observation, Mrs. Lombardi. I was just wondering how the whole process of identification struck you.”

“It struck me,” she said, “that you fellows did a pretty good job of locating him fast. When I looked at that picture there wasn’t any doubt. And then when I saw him…” Her forefinger skillfully flicked the cigarette butt into the street. “But I’ll tell you one thing. Maybe it was having seen the picture that did it. But I sort of got the feeling when I saw him in court that I’d seen him before—I mean some place else. You know what I mean?”

“Did you ever live near the piers? Or have anything to do with stevedores?”

“No. My sister’s husband’s cousin is a steward on the Roma, though. We go down and visit with him when the ship’s in sometimes.”

Ryan shook his head. “Did you and the other ladies talk about this afterwards—Mrs. Anders and Miss Leonard, I mean?”

“Well, you think something like that happens every day around here?”

“I just meant, did either Mrs. Anders or Miss Leonard say anything that might suggest they weren’t as sure about the identification as they might have been? In other words did they notice any single point that didn’t quite correspond—that they remembered later, as sort of out of key?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Did the man’s voice sound the same in the courtroom? Did he wear his clothes the same way? Did the way he walked correspond with what you remembered?”

She shook her head continuously to the questions.

“Or did any of the others say—”

“Listen, why don’t you ask them? You’re a detective.”

“I will,” said Ryan. “Thanks, Mrs. Lombardi.”

He went into the building. A girl he had never seen before answered the door of Betty Leonard’s apartment and explained she was Betty’s roommate. Ryan told who he was, and the girl said Betty was working days now and would be for the next couple months. Betty would be very sorry she missed him, the girl added, and Ryan recognized that he had been the subject of sororal discussions. He said he’d be sure to drop back a few evenings from now.

When she had closed the door he let himself in the Connors apartment as quietly as he could, although the front door stuck a little at the bottom. This was the beginning, he told himself.

It hadn’t really changed since he was last here. Someone had cleaned up the living room and straightened the chairs, and now it was simply a gloomy, overheated living room, furnished cheaply and in need of airing—hardly the appropriate background for murder.

Ryan sat down in a chair, pushed his hat back on his head and lighted a cigarette. He could not really expect to find anything. The lab boys and the various squads who had been here were good, and at the time they had worked under the stimulating pressure of having to crack the case in a hurry. He could not easily imagine finding anything that had been overlooked, here or elsewhere. Yet he had to.

When he had smoked a few minutes he rose and began examining everything in the room, touching things gingerly. He tried to imagine how it had happened, how the man would have pushed his way in and how the old woman would have backed up, crying anxious, unfinished questions. The invader would have shut the door. And then… He went over every physical action that could have happened in the handful of seconds in which it all did happen.

Then he sat down again and looked around, breathing in smoke from the cigarette hanging between his lips. He thought of Ed Furtig and how Ed had sat here in this same chair, smoking and wondering. Then it had been Ed’s to carry.

Ryan got up. This was getting nowhere.

Well, he could always come back. He yanked at the door knob angrily and the door gave and then stuck. He remembered it sticking when he came in and he yanked harder. The door stuck at the bottom near the threshold. Ryan lifted on the knob and it opened. He went into the hall, slamming it behind—Before it could slam he wheeled and held it open. Suddenly things were whirling in his head. There was a closet door at home that stuck often, especially in winter. To open it he always…

Ryan went back in and closed the door firmly, hearing its lower edge grate on the threshold. He was a murderer now and in his imagination in the next few seconds he had killed an old woman. He took a deep breath, then he grabbed the knob fast like a man in a hurry and yanked, and again the door partly opened and stuck at the bottom, an inch of it wedged tight. Ryan’s hand went automatically up to the top corner that was free to pull on it as he lifted the knob, just as he did at home when the closet door stuck. Just, he thought, as any man would do naturally and unthinkingly. And especially one set on escape.

He stood looking at the door a long minute. He could not dare to hope that much. Yet thoughts of how doors stuck only at certain seasons and at certain temperatures and humidities thronged his mind; this was a warm day, possibly the warmest since Mrs. Connors died.

Ryan opened the door carefully, got a chair and stood on it to examine the upper corner with his small flashlight. On the inner surface there were only smudged streaks that could have been made by anything. And on the other side there was only dull green paint.

The vital part was the door’s top edge. Where a man’s fingertips would naturally grab and press. He raised up on his toes and pressed the flashlight’s tiny button.

Its beam revealed grimy, worn wood innocent of any mark.

Ryan put the chair away dispiritedly, too let down to care about anything. Somehow he had felt so sure, so intuitively certain…

He pulled his hat down over his eyes and yanked the door doubly hard. He almost ran into a woman standing before him on the threshold.

“Why, what are you doing?” she demanded. Her sallow face went yellow around the cheek bones. She held a key.

Ryan said, “Who are you?”

She turned, frightened, seeking help.

“Wait a minute. Miss. I’m the police department.”

She turned back.

“I’m Detective Ryan. I’m—I’m just rechecking some of the evidence.”

“But…I thought the man was all sentenced and everything.”

“Oh, he is. But there’s always a chance of an appeal at the last minute. We want to be ready for it. I got the landlady to let me in.”

“I see. Well, you didn’t find anything new, did you?”

“That’s right. But as long as you’re here I’d like to ask a few questions.”

She walked rapidly past the spot where her mother had lain and threw up the window as though fresh air would clean the room of its cruel memories. She said, “Know anyone who wants to buy some bedroom furniture?”

“Not at the moment, but I’ll keep it in mind, Miss Connors. Tell me something. You saw this Harry Derby in court, eh?”

“Yes.”

“Did it occur to you that you had seen him before?”

“No.”

“Did he remind you of anyone?”

“No. No, he was a complete stranger.”

“There was just you and your mother in the family?”

“And my brother Philip in Chicago.”

“Miss Connors, this will strike you as an odd question, but did any of you have any enemies?”

She shook her head mutely.

“Your mother especially—she hadn’t had any trouble with anyone shortly before she was attacked? Think back, please.”

“Who could have had trouble with my ma?” she asked sadly, and Ryan felt a pang of sorrow for her.

“How long had you lived here?”

“Six years going on seven.”

“No one ever broke in before—into your apartment or somebody else’s?”

“No.”

“After—after the murder, you didn’t hear from anyone, or find anything around the house that in any way might have had anything to do with what happened?”

“No.”

It was hopeless. At best these were the routine questions you asked as a last resort. Anyway he was simply going over ground that had been covered before when the trail was fresh and memories keener.

“Well…” Ryan twirled his hat in his hand. “Thanks, Miss Connors. If anything does occur to you I wish you would call me. At the Seventeenth Squad. Plaza 3-4483. The name is Ryan.”

She got up too, but as Ryan moved toward the door she walked into a bedroom without answering. I suppose she feels pretty bad, he thought.

The door was about to close on him once again and finally, when he heard her say from inside, “Wait a minute, detective. Maybe you can explain—” She was holding something in her hand, something that glittered.

“You may remember that the cops—the officers, who were here at the time, found a cuff link near my—near mother’s body.”

“I remember. It was one of hers.”

“That’s right. One of the officers said that the other one might have been carried away by the murderer—that it might have caught in his clothes or something.”

“That’s possible. But it never turned up, Miss Connors.”

“That always puzzled me a little. You see, Phil had given those links to ma with a shirtwaist. It was a birthday present. She had packed the shirtwaist and I always figured she wanted to wear it with the links when we visited him—you know, to show she liked them. I thought she probably had the links in her hand when that Derby came in. And then in the struggle—well, you know.”

“That’s probably what happened.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t think it is. Look.” She held up something for him to see. It was a cuff link. “See this?”

“Sure. That’s what was returned to you after the trial, eh?”

“That’s right. But look at this.”

She spoke tartly, as though she expected him to understand something he clearly did not understand. She held out her other hand, thin and weedy, clenched tight. Then she opened it.

He saw two links in one hand—and one still held in the other. All three were of the same little silver scimitar design.

“I found these two in ma’s jewel box a week ago,” she said. “Just by accident. What do you think of that, detective?” It was a triumph for a vinegarish woman of lean, dark-browed homeliness, happy to discomfit a member of the sex that had long refused her.

What the hell! Ryan thought. “Miss Connors, are you sure you found those two links where they ought to be?”

“I told you I did. Ma had never gotten them out that day at all.”

“But why didn’t you ever find them before?”

“I simply never went through her things. I—I didn’t want to stay here and a friend of mine in Jersey asked me to stay with her. It was only the other night when I came by to—to sort of get ready to close up the apartment that I found this. But it doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

“No.”

But Ryan was paying no attention to the explanation. “Look. You’re sure this is the cuff link you got back from us? You didn’t mix the three of them up?”

“Yes. Of course I’m sure.”

She was an insurance clerk, probably good on details. She could be sure of something like that.

“And can you be sure that this set of cuff links didn’t contain an extra one—a spare, so to speak?”

“Of course. I remember when she opened the package on her birthday. Anyway, did you ever hear of a spare cuff link?”

Ryan was wordless. He looked at the three links. God! he thought again. Things like this didn’t really happen. And yet they did. He knew they did. That is how things really happened. The most unlikely, farfetched, one-in-a-million chance, that is what happened, even though you could not believe it when you saw it face-to-face.

“It doesn’t make any sense, does it?” she asked again with acid triumph.

“Maybe it does,” said Ryan. “May I borrow these, Miss Connors?”

“Are you sure I’ll get them back?”