Crime of Their Life (2 page)

The cabbie swung around on his seat, started to say something. He took a good look at Liddell-—the set jaw, the angry ridge between his eyes, the splashed coat—and decided against it.

“You could bust the glass right outta the window, you know?” he complained mildly in a hurt tone. “Glass like that costs money.” He turned back to his wheel, stared forward through the windshield. “Where to?”

“Lüchow’s. On Fourteenth.”

The hurt tone was back in the cabbie’s voice as his eyes met Liddell’s in the rear mirror. “I know, I know. I’m not just pushing this hack since yesterday.” He swung away from the curb, underscoring his resentment that a fare should try to tell him the location of a landmark.

In New York City at the turn of the century 14th Street was the heart of the musical, theatrical, literary and political life of the town. Tammany Hall was located catty-cornered from Lüchow’s. Tony Pastor’s famous variety house was on 14th Street as was the original Academy of Music where Mrs. Fiske, Julia Marlowe, Sothern and others appeared. Steinway Hall was there for the music buffs. Literary greats like Arthur Brisbane, O. O. McIntyre and O. Henry trekked uptown from Park Row to meet their cronies and swap reminiscences and lies.

Today all that’s left of the old 14th Street is the restaurant founded by a German immigrant named August Lüchow. Little has been changed and the old, high-ceilinged, dark-paneled dining room that stretches from 14th Street through to 13th is still the gathering place for The Names of stage, politics, music and finance. Leonard Bernstein has replaced Paderewski; Helen Traubel represents opera as Caruso once did; Billy Rose, rather than Ziegfeld, carries the standard for producers and Bob Considine takes the place of O. Henry. The table where Victor Herbert called a meeting of fellow composers to form ASGAP is still known as the Victor Herbert comer.

Johnny Liddell shucked off his damp overcoat in the checkroom, ambled in toward the back room that was originally an open-air beer garden. As he stepped into the Garden, Julius Richter, the leader of the string trio, tapped his bow on his music stand. The music stopped, then the strains of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” reached out to welcome Liddell.

He forgot his wet shoes and cold feet, waved a greeting. The blond owner of the restaurant, Jan Mitchell, hustled over from a table where he was welcoming an out-of-town columnist.

“Long time, Johnny,” he greeted Liddell.

“Too long. I don’t get downtown as often as I should.” He glanced around the big room. “Connie Michaels get here yet? I was supposed to meet him for dinner.”

Mitchell nodded. “He’s back in the new room. He said you’d want some privacy. The new room doesn’t usually fill up until later.” He turned, led the way through the tables back to what was originally the stables where Lüchow kept his horses before Prohibition.

Connie Michaels waved a greeting from a comer table as Liddell walked up. He stuck a beefy hand across the table at Johnny, crushed his hand in a welcoming grip.

“Tough day to drag anyone out of their office,” he apologized. He sank back into his chair, waited until Liddell was seated.

The restaurant man excused himself to greet another newcomer.

“How busy are you, Johnny?” Michaels wanted to know.

Liddell scowled, ordered a scotch and soda from the waiter who had materialized at his elbow and then hustled away.

“I could be a helluva lot busier and still qualify for unemployment insurance,” he growled.

“Good.” The man across the table nodded his satisfaction. “I want you to handle something for us. Something big.”

Liddell waited until the waiter had slid a drink in front of him then shuffled back toward the bar. “That what you wanted to see me about in such a fever? You have an office on 47th Street and I have one on 42nd Street, so we make a meet on 14th Street?” He tasted the drink, approved. “Not that I’m complaining. But why?”

“I didn’t want anyone around the Diamond Exchange to see you with me,” Michaels told him. His face was heavy, serious. In the ten years Johnny Liddell had known the man, he had changed very little. The jowls were a little heavier, the network of lines under the eyes had become more intricate, the hair had receded farther on the pate of his head. But Connie Michaels’s jaw was still strong, his eyes direct and commanding. “How would you like to take a Caribbean cruise, Johnny? At our expense?”

“Sounds interesting,” Liddell conceded. “What’s the gimmick?”

The heavy-set man across the table picked up his glass, stared down into the amber liquor. “We’ve got some man-sized troubles, and we think the answer to them could be found on this cruise.” He looked up, frowned at Liddell. “It won’t be just a junket. We had a man on the ship I want you to take—”

“Had?”

The big man bobbed his head glumly. “We just got word that our man cannot be found aboard and must be presumed to have been lost at sea.”

Liddell considered it soberly. “Couldn’t have been an accident?”

“You know Harry Landers?”

“Landers was your man?”

Michaels nodded.

“It was no accident,” Liddell grunted. He took a swallow from his glass, set it back on the table. “Okay, so let’s talk about these problems of yours.”

“Diamonds,” the heavy-set man told him. “Somebody’s been smuggling diamonds in, dumping them and kicking hell out of prices.”

“I thought you boys controlled the output. Where are they getting them to smuggle?”

Michaels drained his glass, set it down. He managed to look unhappy. “We do control practically the whole world output. Every place except South America. And that’s where the damn things are coming from.”

“South America?”

“Brazil.”

Liddell looked puzzled. “I thought South American diamonds were industrial diamonds.”

“A lot of it is industrial stuff. They call it carbonado. But a lot of valuable gem diamonds show up down there, too. Half their output is gem quality. The Star of the South they found down there weighed 261 carats and the President Vargas was even bigger. Weighed over 725 carats.” He caught the eye of the waiter, signaled for two refills. “But those big babies we’re not worried about. We’re worried about the two-, three-, four- and five-carat stones that have been flooding the market. They’re murdering us.”

“That serious, huh?”

Michaels reached into his pocket for a balled handkerchief, swabbed his face and jowls. “Serious enough that if we don’t find a way to put the cork in the bottle there could be a complete price collapse.”

The waiter was at the table, removed two empty glasses, replaced them with fresh drinks. Liddell waited until he was again out of earshot.

“And you think they’re being brought in on this cruise ship?”

“Harry Landers did. He’s been working on the case for over a year. Three weeks ago he showed up at the Exchange all excited. He had finally gotten a break through some of the lines he had out. He was confident that by the time the
Queen Alexandra
returned home, he’d have the whole thing wrapped up.”

Liddell considered it, nodded. “He give you any idea of what the break was or how he was handling it?”

“You said you knew Landers? Then you know how he worked.”

“So we start from scratch.”

The big man reached out for his drink, swirled the liquor around the side of the glass. “Not entirely from scratch. We know he must have been onto something and that something was on the boat. She’s due to arrive in Barbados on Sunday. I’ve made arrangements for you to pick her up there and finish out the cruise. Maybe with luck you’ll latch onto what Landers was working on.”

“That gives me how many days?”

Michaels drew an envelope from his breast pocket, squinted at the scribbled notes on its back. “She docks back here a week from next Tuesday. That gives you roughly nine days aboard.”

“What am I going to do with all my spare time?”

Michaels sighed, returned the envelope to his pocket. “I know it’s a pretty tough assignment, Johnny, and I know you don’t have much time. But we’ve never been this close to them up to now. Before the people on that ship can scatter to all comers of the country, I want to take a crack at bagging them.” He eyed Liddell glumly. “You willing to take it on?”

Liddell took a swallow from his glass, shrugged. “Hell, for a chance to get away from this weather and get a look at the sun, I’d sign to find a spit in the ocean.”

The big man nodded his satisfaction. He held his glass up in a silent toast. Liddell clinked his against it, they drank.

“I can’t tell you what a load that is off my mind,” Michaels told him. “From now on I’m dumping it right into your lap. Just so there can’t be any possibility of a tip-off from this end, I don’t think we should get together again before you leave.”

“You think there’s someone working from this end?”

“Somebody fingered Landers. Somebody who saw him coming or going from our office. This is no petty larceny operation, Johnny, and these boys play for keeps.”

Liddell managed to look unimpressed. “How about my transportation, cruise tickets and stuff?”

The man across the table grinned. “I had all that sent over to your office this afternoon.”

“You were pretty damn sure I was going to accept,” Liddell growled.

“Why not? With all that slush and cold out there, if I wasn’t so damn fat and old, I’d go myself.”

CHAPTER 3

The
Queen Alexandra
dropped anchor in the harbor outside Bridgeton in Barbados early on Sunday morning. When the natives awakened and wandered down to the dock from Literary Row, Flower Pot Alley and the other sections of town, she lay bobbing and swaying at anchor out in the blue waters. Already preparations were being made to take off her passengers by tender. In a few hours, the regulars at the Paradise Beach Club, the Coral Reef Club and Sam Lord’s Castle would be complaining bitterly about the vulgar clothes and the loud talking of the cruisers. The island merchants would be agreeing with them, but would be less critical of the tourists’ equally vulgar squandering of money.

By 9 a.m., the first tender was loaded and headed for the dock. Men in shorts and slacks, all sizes, all shapes, with weird and wild straw hats protecting their bald pates from the beaming sun, lined the deck of the tender. Their feminine counterparts in halters and short shorts or gaily colored blouses and slacks two sizes too small were clotted in little groups busily comparing plans for the day in shrill and strident tones.

Johnny Liddell stood on the dock at Bridgeton, squinted out at the
Queen.
She was painted gray, her superstructure a pure white. Her two funnels were tilted at a rakish angle, the slight swirl of smoke rose lazily toward the blue of the sky.

Liddell watched the tender slowly draw away from the big boat and head toward shore. Overhead the cottony white clouds seemed to hang motionless in the blue sky. It didn’t seem possible that only twenty-four hours before he had been ankle-deep in slush, that the breeze that now cooled the perspiration on his body had been cold and cut through him like a knife. Instead of the blue skies and white clouds, New York had been in its tenth consecutive dark, dreary day with skies the color of lead.

When the tender had been secured in her berth, its chattering cargo scurried off, determined to pack as much activity into the day ashore as they could. Johnny Liddell walked over to a thin, darkly tanned man in summer whites.

“My name’s Liddell. I’m joining your cruise from here. Can I take my gear aboard?”

The man in white smiled, wrinkles dug deep trenches in the tan of his face, carefully capped teeth gleamed whitely. “Sure thing. I’m Jack Allen, cruise director for the
Queen Alexandra.”
He stuck out a heavily corded hand, gave Liddell a firm shake. “I’ll have one of the crewmen bring your stuff out. That it over there?” He indicated the two suitcases and the attaché case on the dock bench.

“That’s it.”

The man in the white uniform motioned for one of the crewmen to bring the luggage aboard the tender, turned his attention back to Liddell. “You’re pretty lucky to be picking us up here. Had quite a blow couple of nights back. We should have clear sailing from now on.” He squinted up at the sky. “Couldn’t ask for anything better than a sky like that, could you?”

“Looks pretty good to me,” Liddell conceded.

The cruise director nodded. From close, it was obvious that he was older than he had appeared at first glance. “Been having a pretty good stretch of weather down here the past few weeks?”

Liddell grinned. “Couldn’t prove it by me. I only flew in a couple of days ago from New York. Got my business cleaned up faster than I expected, so I figured I’d combine business and pleasure and take the long way home.”

The man in white nodded, raised his hand in salute to the tender captain who split the silence with two toots of his siren.

“You coming back to the ship, Mr. Liddell, or you planning on doing a little sightseeing? If you feel like it, you can stay ashore and catch a later tender.”

“Think I’ll get myself settled, get things squared away. I’ve already seen the island.” He followed the man in the white uniform on board. Slowly, imperceptibly, the tender started to pull away from the dock. Sluggishly, it felt its way past the breakwater to the deeper water of the channel. The shoreline began to fall behind, the people and liquor shack on the dock became smaller and smaller. The drone of the engine was steady, soothing.

Liddell stood at the rail of the tender, watched as the distance to the shore grew. The combination of the balmy air, the warm sun and the soothing sound of the motor made it difficult for him to realize that he was here to catch a murderer. It was hard to think of murder in connection with these surroundings. But somewhere behind them in the ocean, Harry Landers’s body was irrefutable proof that it could happen. And if he got careless, Liddell might find himself playing gin with Landers in Davy Jones’s locker.

It was still better than having wet feet and chills in New York!

The tender captain expertly maneuvered the small craft to the gangway on B deck forward, made it fast. Inside the open hatchway another load of impatient cruisers was lined up waiting to rush down the gangplank for their trip to the island.