I didn’t grow up with light. I grew up in tenements.
—Martin Scorsese
THREE HOURS LATER, I was pulling blankets up to my chin and hiding my head in the pillow. “I feel like Hamilton Burger,” I moaned.
And I’d love a Coney Island hot dog. But what does chow time have to do with anything?
“It’s Hamilton Burger, Jack. He’s the DA who always loses when he goes up against Perry—ah, never mind.”
I was in no mood to spar with the ghost. Frankly, I wasn’t fit to be around human or ghostly company. After tonight’s Quibblers’ meeting broke up, I was elated that I’d cleared Barney of suspicion and revealed the altruistic reasons behind the lies to his wife. But as I folded the chairs and cleared the refreshment table, that exhilaration faded because it dawned on me that I was right back where I’d started.
“Killer, two. Me, zero. I don’t like the score, Jack.”
Maybe we should play a different game.
“What do you have in mind?”
Another dame. Another time. Another case.
“Ruby Tyler and the Brock painting?” I sighed. “Normally I’d jump at the chance, but not tonight. I need to focus on the here and now. I have a lot riding on a very big launch party this weekend.”
So think of it as a vacation, but without the baggage.
“No, I need to lie awake here and think things through—”
If you stare at a picture too long, you can’t see what you’re looking at.
“Maybe,” I said on a yawn. “But I need to try.”
And trying too hard leads to headaches. Why not take a couple of steps back with me? Look at the case from a different angle.
“Your old case is fascinating, Jack, but it has no bearing on mine.”
It does, doll. Tricks of the trade are always useful. Believe me.
I didn’t. But despite my best intentions to stay awake and focus on my present reality, my eyelids grew heavier, my thoughts drifting toward dreams of the past.
“I don’t want to fall asleep, Jack. I object.”
The ghost chuckled. Objection overruled.
IN THE BLINK of an eye (literally), I was back in Jack’s time, sitting in the back seat of a Checker Cab. Opening my eyes, I realized my head was leaning on the detective’s big shoulder.
He grinned. “Just in time, Penny. We’re here.”
Here was the home of Ruby Tyler, a weather-beaten brown brick tenement on the southern tip of Hell’s Kitchen. Three rickety wooden steps led up to the paint-blistered front door.
Gaslighting the doorman wouldn’t be a problem, as there wasn’t one. Gaining entry was a snap, too. The locks on both the outer and inner lobby doors were broken.
Once inside, Jack scanned the bank of brass mailboxes.
“I found it. Apartment 414. And there’s another name on the box, too.”
“Audrey French,” I read aloud. “A stage name?”
“Yeah. French by way of Canarsie, Brooklyn.”
The halls were narrow and poorly lit, with empty milk bottles and old newspapers beside every door. From somewhere inside the building, we heard an infant crying. In another apartment, a man and woman yelled at each other in a foreign tongue.
We’d climbed the stairs to the fourth floor before we spied our first resident, an emaciated man who wore shabby clothes and shoes two sizes too large. Head twitchy, skinny shoulders slumped, he stared at the floor and muttered to himself. When he spotted us, he slunk off in the opposite direction.
Jack knocked on the flimsy wooden door of Apartment 414. Inside, the radio went mute. He knocked again, and I noticed a spear of light at the far end of the hall where an eye peered through a chained door. When the observer realized they were being observed, the door abruptly closed.
Meanwhile, a woman’s muffled voice emanated from within.
“If you’re the Fuller Brush Man, I ain’t buying!”
“I’m a detective, Miss French.”
The lock clicked, and a slim woman opened the door. Her ebony pageboy had not a hair out of place. As for her attire, she wore a long silk robe and obviously nothing else.
She gave Jack the eye.
“You’re better-looking than the other flatfoots.”
Then she spied me and frowned. “I hope you have better manners,” she added, tying her robe tighter.
“You’re Audrey French? Ruby Tyler’s roommate?”
“Who are you?”
He flashed his license.
“A PI, huh? Who are you working for? It sure isn’t Ruby’s family, because she hasn’t got any.”
Jack brushed her question aside. “What do you know about Ruby’s murder?”
She scanned the empty hallway, with an extra glance at the peeper’s door.
“Come inside, I don’t want the whole building to know my business.”
The apartment was far less shabby than the building’s exterior—but sad compared to the glamour that was the Albatross. “Miss French” led us to a living room with Japanese screens, lacquered blackwood chairs, and tables with brass fittings.
Our hostess stopped in the middle of the room and met Jack’s stare. Then she pointed to the stained Persian rug under her bare feet.
“I found Ruby lying here when I got home that night. The coppers said she’d been knocked around and hit her head against that table there.”
She pointed to a solid-looking end table with sharp corners.
“Ruby was still breathing when the ambulance took her away. But I got a call the next morning that Ruby wasn’t expected to live more than a few hours.”
“Who called?” Jack asked.
“Ruby’s boss—”
“Hugo Box?”
“Yeah, that creep.”
“Do you have any idea who might have done this?”
“Sure I do. And I fingered him to the cops, too. It was that skinny kid artist Ruby was modeling for. Nathan Brock.”
“How do you know? Did you see them together?”
“He always walked her home after a modeling session. She posed for him that very afternoon. I figured he walked her home that day, too—”
“You may have figured wrong,” I said.
She shot me a cold stare. “Look, toots, I’m never wrong. I even told the cops I was willing to testify that Brock killed her.”
“Ruby didn’t know other men?” Jack pressed. “She didn’t have a boyfriend or a sugar daddy?”
“Lots of guys were after her at the Albatross, but she kept her life private from that bunch. Never told them where she lived. It would have ruined the fantasy, anyway. Nobody wants to think ‘glamour girls’ live in run-down tenements.”
Jack asked a few more questions, but it was clear he’d hit a wall. So he slipped Miss French his card, and we left.
In the hallway it was Jack who spied the peeper this time. Again, when the peeper saw us looking, the door closed. Jack didn’t let that stop him. He walked right up and knocked.
The door barely opened a crack, this time not even enough to strain the chain. From what little I could see, the peeper was an older woman, gray hair undone, a scowl on her weathered face.
“Who are you?” she demanded, voice like a scratched LP.
“A detective,” Jack replied.
Her eye narrowed suspiciously. “You might have fooled that young girl, but not me. You’re not a real copper.”
“You’re right,” Jack said brightly. “Because no real copper would hand you a five-spot.”
Jack sparkled with charm as he waved the bill.
I wasn’t surprised. As Jack had once told me, The laws of physics are upside down in the PI game. A piece of flimsy green paper opens doors faster than the biggest crowbar in your toolbox.
Sure enough, the peeper’s eye widened at the sight of Jack’s offer. Then it narrowed again. “What do I gotta do for it?”
“Just tell us what you saw and heard the night the ambulance took Ruby Tyler away, because I’m willing to bet you heard and saw plenty.”
Jack shook the bill again. “If I like your story, there’s more cabbage where this came from.”
The door opened wider. I caught a whiff of cigarettes and whiskey. A clawlike hand reached out and snatched the wrinkled bill.
For a moment I thought the woman was going to slam the door, but the enticement of another payoff was too much to resist.
“I did see and hear plenty,” she said, “but I ain’t gettin’ involved. You understand? If you tell the cops I told you this stuff, I’ll tell ’em you’re a liar.”