Corpus Corpus (11 page)

Goldstein said, "I have not accused any of you of being criminals. But you are material witnesses in, to use Mr. Dearborn's term, an incident to which the police department has been called and whose duty it is to investigate. It may very well be that Mancuso killed himself. I'd even go so far as to say that his death evi-dendy seems to be a suicide. But until I know for sure, this will remain a police matter. Now, I need to hear for myself what hap-pened, and I don't give a damn which one of you tells me."

The three exchanged anxious glances but remained silent.

"Very well," Goldstein said, sliding into a large armchair opposite them. "Because he's senior man, I pick Mr. Dearborn."

With a shrug of resignation and a sigh he asked, "Where do you want me to start?"

"How long has the DA's office had Mancuso stashed here?"

"About three weeks."

"Did he in those three weeks ever attempt to kill himself?" 

"A few moments ago."

"What's your name?"

"Anthony Dearborn."

"Are you the senior man here?"

"Yes."

"How long have you been in the DA's office?" "Three years."

"How long with the criminal division?" "Since my second year."

"Then you surely ought to have learned by this time that the investigation of a suspicious death such as this is the province of the police." 

"Not that I know of. We were with him only on weekends."

 "On those three weekends were you all assigned to him?" 

“Just two of us. Davis joined the team Friday a week ago." 

"Why was that? Why did two suddenly become three?" 

Davis interjected, "It's a training assignment."

 "How long have you been with the criminal division?" 

"About eight months. Before that I handled civil cases." 

"I know how the system works, Mr. Davis. Now, Mr. Dearborn, on the weekends what was the routine you followed?"

"What do you mean by routine?"

"The question seems clear to me, young man. I want to know what went on from Mancuso's getting up in the morning to his going to bed at night."

"He had breakfast, lunch, and dinner and between them he was either watching television, playing cards with us, or reading."

"What about questioning him or going over his testimony?"

"All that was handled during the week."

"About the meals. Where did they come from?"

"Room service, mostly."

"And when they didn't come from room service?"

"Sometimes we'd call out for pizza or Chinese."

"We'll need to know from which pizza and Chinese places."

"What for? He wasn't poisoned. He jumped out a window."

"According to my information, Mancuso had been in protective custody someplace else for several months before settling down in this hotel three weeks ago. Suddenly, he decides to kill himself. Is it not reasonable to assume that something happened after the move to prompt him to make the big leap into eternity? I doubt it was displeasure with the accommodations."

"Nothing . . . happened."

"Besides members of the DA staff, who had contact with him?" 

"No one."

"Hotel staff? Maids? Cleaning women?" 

"We did all that ourselves." 

"Food delivery people?"

"The food was usually delivered to the desk in the lobby and Davis went down to get it and bring it up." 

Goldstein smiled at Davis. "The wages of being at the bottom of the pecking order, eh, son?"

"I welcomed the chance to get out of this damned room."

"Back up a minute. Mr. Dearborn said the take-out food was usually delivered to the desk. Were there times when it wasn't?"

"Last Saturday for lunch I walked over to Third Avenue to a deli. Paulie had a craving for a corned beef sandwich."

"What about today's?" He looked at his wrist watch. "That is, yesterday's meals?"

Dearborn answered, "Breakfast and lunch came up from room service. Dinner was Italian, from a ristorante Paulie knew about on First Avenue. It was delivered to the lobby."

Bogdanovic blurted, "Are you telling us you let Paulie pick the take-out places?"

"Why the hell not?"

"I could give you lots of reasons not to. Especially if he recommended Italian. What did he order?"

"I believe it was spaghetti and meatballs."

Goldstein asked, "What did you do with the container?"

"What do you think? We threw it out with a lot of other garbage that accumulated during the day. It went into a big plastic bag. Davis shoved it in a trash chute at the end of the hall."

"How soon after dinner did Mancuso go to his room?"

"We ate around seven o'clock. We watched a little TV until eleven or so. He went to bed to read."

"Where did he get the book?"

"His wife sent him a bunch."

"Excuse me? His wife sent him books?"

"Well, she didn't send them directly. She didn't know where he was. She sent them to him by way of our office."

"Did she ever write to him?"

"There were a few letters. But they were read by someone in the office before he got them."

"Did he ever talk to her on the phone?"

"Are you nuts? Phone calls can be tapped and traced."

"What about the books?"

"What about them?" 

"Were they examined before he got them?" "Certainly."

"How were they examined?"

"The pages were looked through and then they were turned upside down and shaken. If there'd been anything stuck between the pages it would have fallen out."

"What mood was he in before he went to his bedroom to read?"

"He was fine. For a lowlife and thug he was an amusing guy, always making jokes. I assure you there was nothing about him to suggest he was thinking about taking a swan dive."

Goldstein sat silent a moment, gave a nod, and stood. "Where is Mancuso's room?" 

STANDING BESIDE DANE in the doorway at the end of a short corridor as Goldstein went into the room, Bogdanovic peered into a space that seemed barely larger than the state prison cell that certainly would have been in Mancuso's future if he had not cut a deal with the district attorney to testify as the star witness in a series of major trials against his former associates in crime.

Motionless in the middle of the room, Goldstein stood with hands loosely clasped behind his back in a stance that brought to Dane's mind the image of another short, balding, and middle-aged detective. But her glance at the reflection in a mirror above a bureau of the clean-shaven face dispelled comparison to Hercule Poirot. Nor did she find any resemblance to the other sleuths in whom Harvey Goldstein found much that was admirable and eminently quotable for the instruction of his detectives.

As she watched him opening and closing the bureau's drawers, she saw nothing about him physically that came close to the tall, thin, hawk-nosed automaton that Dr. Watson had described as the deductive reasoner of 221B Baker Street. Nor did Goldstein as he poked around in the single closet of the spartan but comfortable hotel room invoke a picture of a corpulent but sedentary deducer in a house on West Tliirty-fifth Street.

Should she take up the writing of the mystery novels which Goldstein extolled as valuable textbooks for his true-to-life detectives, she decided as she and Bogdanovic observed him from the doorway, she would have to invent something distinctive for him. Holmes had his pipe, Inverness cloak, deerstalker cap, and ever present magnifying glass. Agatha Christie had bestowed upon Poirot a ridiculous waxed mustache and required him to wear spats long after they had gone the way of gentlemen's walking sticks. Rex Stout made Nero Wolfe an expert on orchids and beers. And in countless other mysteries other authors had created hallmarks to set their detectives apart from the growing pack. The little old lady from the quaint but illuminating English village of St. Mary Mead. A dapper Nick and chic Nora Charles belting down martinis. Suave and erudite Chief Inspector Roderick Alley n. Mozart-loving, lonely, and tormented Inspector Morse. Hard-boiled, trench-coated Samuel Spade, Philip Marlowe, and Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer. Early-years Ellery Queen, the supercilious aristocrat before he got a sense of humor. Pigeon-English, aphorism-quoting Charlie Chan. Columbo with his battered French car, rumpled raincoat, and cigar. Kojack sucking a lollipop and asking "Who loves ya, baby?" Jane Tennison with her fierce feminism. The streetwise New Yorker cops of
Law and Order
, the fouled-mouthed detectives of
NYPD Blue
, and the partner-teams working the murder beat in the City of Baltimore on
Homicide, Life on the Streets
, so far removed in time and place, as well as reality, from monosyllabic Sgt. Joe Friday of
Dragnet
.

Yet here in this room with unexceptional hotel furnishings and a wide-open window of death was Harvey Goldstein, chief of detectives of the greatest police force in the world, looking at Man-cuo's unslept-in bed as if he were the traveling shoe salesman Willy Loman about to unpack a suitcase filled with samples of products that customers no longer wished to order.

Standing beside the bed, Goldstein directed his attention to the nightstand next to it, and to a stack of six books atop it.

Picking up the one on top, he turned a few pages and broke into a smile. "Well, well, well, what a small world we live in," he said. "Come in and check this out, John. You, too, Maggie."

Bogdanovic crossed the room, took the book, and exclaimed, "A small world indeed. Janus for the Defense!"

"Look inside at the tide page," Goldstein said.

Scrawled across it in handwriting in black ink was:

To Paulie Mancuso, a man of honor 

who loves his wife and children and will always 

do the right thing for them.

Theodore R. Janus

Bogdanovic passed the book to Dane and with a contemptuous sneer said, "This was obviously intended as a carefully crafted warning to Mancuso. It's a threat. If you want to protect your wife and kids, do the right thing. No wonder he took a header." He thrust the book to Dane. "No wonder your friend and colleague Janus is called the mouthpiece for the mob."

"How very interesting," Dane said, studying the inscription. "The trouble with that theory, John, is that Theodore Janus did not write this."

Goldstein grabbed the book. "What's that?"

"It's a forgery."

"Cite your evidence, please."

"This is not Janus's handwriting. He always signs his books in green ink. And he invariably autographs them Theo Janus, not Theodore R. Janus. He is scrupulous about never using the exact signature that he puts on legal documents and checks."

Goldstein frowned. "You're certain about this, Maggie?"

"I am, but you don't have to take my word for it. Take that book to Janus and he'll tell it's not his hand."

"Of course he'll deny it," Bogdanovic retorted.

"If you don't want to believe him," Dane snapped, "then get examples of his writing. Then have your lab check the damn book for his fingerprints."

"All right, folks, cool down." Goldstein pleaded. "We're on the same side in this unfortunate fiasco. From here on we'll be treating the demise of Paulie Mancuso as a homicide."

Bogdanovic shook his head. "That's going to make a certain district attorney look pretty foolish."

"If Vanderhoff's people had been on their toes, this mess wouldn't have happened. John, get the ball rolling by having Red and Al take formal statements from the three blind mice. Then I want a complete background check on them. Get a crime scene unit up here. I want prints lifted from all these books. Come morning Leibholz and Reiter are to find Mrs. Mancuso and inquire 

"Absolutely okay!"

"Maggie, do you know where Janus is likely to be found on a Sunday morning?"

"He'll probably be at his ranch. It's about three miles west of Newtown."

"Ah, that's in Stone County," Goldstein exclaimed. 'John and I have a good friend up there. Her name's Arlene Flynn. She's the top gun on the investigating staff of DA Aaron Benson. John and she worked a murder case a couple of years ago."

"Then Janus jumped in and kept the killer from landing in a cell on death row," Bogdanovic said in disgust as excited voices coming down the hallway drew his attention toward to the door.

A moment later the familiar figure of the district attorney burst into the small room.

Customarily pictured in newspapers in double-breasted pinstriped suit and glowingly described in articles as taciturn and stoic, he was wearing a navy blue blazer, pale blue polo shirt with open collar, and gray slacks. Looking around the room with ice blue eyes and an expression of unrestrained anger, he demanded, "What's going on here?"