The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues (12 page)

“Potato?” Dickory could hardly believe that anyone would want the word “Potato” tattooed on his arm. “Mother,” yes, or a sweetheart’s name. But “Potato”?

“And it was upside down,” George continued. “I had to lean way over to read it.”

“An upside-down tattoo that said ‘Potato’?” Dickory listened with some skepticism to her friend’s account of the meeting between Mallomar and the sailor.

George had followed the sailor into the café and sat down at the next table with his back toward him. “I was afraid the fat man would recognize me, but he was too upset to notice anything. Except the tattoo. He kept looking at the tattoo, trying to read what it said.”

“Why was he upset?” Dickory asked.

“The sailor wanted some sort of list from the fat man. He called him—what was it—Oreo, I think.”

“Mallomar.”

“That’s right, Mallomar. ‘Mallomar,’ the sailor said, ‘you’re nothing but a cheap crook. The big boss don’t like your busting in on his territory. He wants the list, now; and he wants you to move out of there and leave your files,’ or something like that.” George blushed at his clumsy imitation of the sailor’s speech. “The fat man swore a lot, and the sailor threatened him. Sounded like blackmail to me.”

“Who was blackmailing whom?”

“I think the sailor was blackmailing the fat man. Something about a murder in a clock shop. Anyhow, the fat man said that the list was in a safe deposit box and he couldn’t get to the bank until Monday. He sure sounded scared. The sailor said, ‘Okay, Monday, but don’t try anything funny because you’re being watched every minute. There’s a contract out on you if you don’t deliver.’ ”

George had been seeing too many movies, Dickory thought. It was all so confusing; and if true, made little difference whether Garson was being blackmailed by a little crook or a big one.

“Did you hear the sailor’s name?” she asked.

“Yes—no. Yes, I heard the name, but I forgot it. Something that begins with a flower.”

“Zinnia?” Dickory guessed, thinking that was close enough to Zyzyskczuk. She wanted to solve the next case all by herself.

“No, not Zinnia. I think it begins with an R.” That was the best George could do. He was doing even worse with his sketch of the pacing tiger. “I wish he’d hold still for two minutes,” he complained.

“Over here,” Dickory said. “The lions are asleep.”

“Asleep!” shouted the drawing instructor on viewing the displayed sketches. “Two drawings of sleeping lions, six drawings of people asleep on the subway, one infant asleep in a crib! This is supposed to be life drawing, not dead drawing. These were supposed to have been quick sketches, notes on movement.” Fists on his hips, he glowered at the class. “Choke-ups, that’s what you are. Afraid one line might be out of place. Maybe it’s my own fault for allowing the model to assume five-minute poses. Tomorrow she is going to move. Move, move, move. And you are going to sketch, sketch, sketch.”

Eyes downcast, shoulders slumped, Dickory scuffed along the Greenwich Village streets. The ridicule of the life-drawing teacher had been bad enough, but Professor D’Arches had harshly criticized her three-stroke complementary-color design. “A traffic light,” he had called it, and went on to rant about his pet peeve, the incompetence and clutter of street signs.

“I’m not much of an artist,” she confessed to George, who was shambling at her side.

“Cheer up, Dickory. If you did everything right you wouldn’t have to go to art school. The teachers pick on you because you’re good. They don’t want you to get lazy. Besides, artists have to get used to criticism, lots of it, so better now than later. I’d be happy just to have one of the teachers notice me, no matter what he said.”

With that sound advice and a sad wave, George left Dickory at the corner of Cobble Lane. He did not return to school to sketch, sketch, sketch.

Neither did Dickory.

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The Case of the Disguised Disguise

1

Cobble Lane was deserted when Dickory arrived. There was a deathly quiet in and around Number 12. Mallomar’s door was closed. She listened. There was no sound within. Garson’s door was open. She called. No one answered.

Suddenly an insistent doorbell shattered the silence. A stranger in a nylon jacket, carrying a square, battered case, pushed his way into the house. “Exterminator,” he announced. “From the way it sounds, I got to do the whole place. Lead the way—I’ll start from the top down.”

Dickory led the exterminator up the two flights to the top floor. He filled his can in the bathtub, pumped it, and began to spray. “You don’t have to stay; I’ll let you know when I’m done. The fumes are bad for you, you know.”

Dickory stayed. One of her qualifications for this job was being a born-and-bred New Yorker, and New Yorkers don’t trust anyone, not even exterminators. “You should come over to where I live. The exterminator our landlord sends around gives a squirt here and a squirt there, and is in and out in two minutes.”

This exterminator opened every closet, pulled out every drawer. He sprayed in every corner of every room. He sprayed so much he had to refill his tank five times before he came down to the studio floor.

There, too, not a cabinet or a shelf was left untouched. He removed drawers, lifted rugs; he even took the telephone apart and sprayed. And sprayed.

“How do I get in downstairs?” he asked.

“Follow me.” Dickory had to try several keys on her ring before the door to Mallomar’s apartment would open.

The elegant rooms she had seen on the first day of her job were barely recognizable now. Newspapers and empty bottles were strewn over the Oriental rugs; dirty glasses lined the fireplace. The only clean things in the bedroom, where the exterminator was now spraying, were the white suits hanging in the closet. He sprayed the white suits, the white shoes, and the pile of dirty white shirts; he even opened an empty suitcase and sprayed into the inside pockets.

“You’re making me nervous,” he complained to Dickory. “Don’t you have anything else to do?”

“No,” she replied, and followed him down the short, curved steps into the living room.

The exterminator opened a file-cabinet drawer.

“You can’t spray in there.” Dickory slammed the drawer on his nozzle. Papers incriminating Garson might be in there. Perhaps, after the exterminator left, she would return and. . . .

“I gotta spray in there,” the exterminator insisted, opening the drawer again. “I just saw a roach crawl out.”

Once more Dickory slammed it shut. The exterminator tried another file drawer; it was locked.

“I can’t guarantee this job,” he complained.

Dickory led the grumbling exterminator under the balcony into the kitchen, where he sprayed halfheartedly, into the furnace room, which he sprayed even less.

“Here’s where the roaches are coming from.” He stood before the padlocked storeroom door.

“I don’t know the combination,” Dickory said. “Why don’t you ask the man in there if he knows it?” She pointed to the guest room.

The exterminator knocked on the guest-room door and walked in without waiting for an answer, followed by the curious Dickory.

Blue-checked curtains hung on the windows of the neat and spacious room, matching the spread on the brass bed. There was evidence of woodworking on the workbench, but not a shaving was to be found on the blue rug, not a trace of sawdust hung in the air. Isaac Bickerstaffe, seated in an overstuffed chair, was staring at a large framed painting on the wall.

“Hey, buddy, can you open the padlock?” The exterminator poked the immobile deaf-mute on the arm. “Hey buddy—Awww!” Isaac’s awful one-eyed glare sent the intruder dashing out of the room.

Grunting, Isaac turned his one eye on Dickory; his jerking hands pointed to himself and to the portrait. It was a slick Garson painting of a handsome, carefree young man. A large and muscular young man, as he had looked before the accident that had transformed him into Isaac Bickerstaffe.

Isaac’s “ung-ung-ung” echoed through the basement as Dickory hurried after the exterminator. He was waiting in the front hallway, his equipment packed, trying to look composed.

“I’m afraid I can’t pay you now,” she said, opening the front door.

“You don’t have to,” he said, hurrying out of the house with his black case. “It’s all part of the contract.”

Manny Mallomar and Shrimps Marinara were standing on the stoop.

2

“Hey, boss,” Shrimps shouted, darting behind Dickory. “The door to our rooms is open!”

Counting on the fact that Shrimps hated to be touched, Dickory slowly backed down the hall, step by step, staring into the bulging eyes of her white-suited enemy. Step by step, Mallomar wobbled toward her, his fat hands outstretched like a clumsy child trying to catch a ground-feeding bird. “What’s that about a contract, huh, punk?”

Unexpectedly the riser of the bottom step creased Dickory’s calf. Her knee buckled. Mallomar lunged. One hand grabbed her neck, the other clasped her wrists behind her back. Struggling, stumbling, she was dragged into the apartment and down the curved stairs by the iron-fisted fat man.

“Get the rope, Shrimps,” he snarled as he forced Dickory into a straight chair. Dickory gave up her struggle, for each movement tightened the fat, manicured hand around her throat, pressing her chin upward until she thought her teeth would shatter.

“What were you doing in my apartment?” He leaned over her, growling his question into her face.

She tried to turn her head away from the foul breath. “The exterminator came and. . . .” Mallomar jerked her head up and back. Her teeth tore into her lip. She tasted blood.

“Who’s paying you to spy on me?”

“She works for the organization, boss, I keep telling you,” Shrimps muttered. “And she’s in with the cops.”

Dickory tried to move her head to indicate “no.”

“What’s your name, punk?” Mallomar loosened his grip slightly to allow her to speak.

If the sound of her name really made people happy, now was the time. “Dickory Dock,” she croaked hoarsely.

Mallomar tightened his grip on her throat and her wrists.

“She’s lying, boss. The cop calls her Hickory. It’s a joke, like the nursery rhyme, you know:

“Hickory Dickory Dock,
The mouse ran up the clock,
The clock struck one,
The mouse ran—no, run. . . .

“How does that go?”

“Shut up, you idiot,” Mallomar barked. His fingernails dug into the side of Dickory’s neck. Blood from her split lip dribbled down her chin. Before her, Shrimps was winding a knotted cord around his hands, a garroting cord that, with one snap against her windpipe, would kill her instantly.

“Let’s get this over with, fast,” Shrimps urged, walking behind her chair.

Upstairs, the telephone was ringing.

“One last time, you snooping brat,” Mallomar snarled.

“Shrimps is getting impatient. Now, what did you say your name was?”

“I am Christina Rossetti.”

The cord whipped down before her eyes. Hard knots against her throat. A hollow cracking. Telephone ringing. Tin cans falling and bells chiming.

“Oranges and lemons,”
say the bells of St. Clements;

The cord fell slack into Dickory’s lap.

“You owe me five farthings,”
say the bells of St. Martins;

Afraid to look behind her, around her, Dickory ran to the door to the garden at the far end of the room.

“When will you pay me?”
say the bells of Old Bailey;

Hands trembling, fumbling with the rusted bolt, she at last jiggled it open and ran into what she thought would be the garden. She was trapped. Dickory shook the iron bars of the tall fence that enclosed the small triangular patch of concrete. Trapped.

“When I grow rich,”
say the bells of Shoreditch.

Sobbing with fear, Dickory ran back through the room, to the stairs, into the arms of. . . . She stared down at the colors: chrome yellow, chrome green, cadmium red, cobalt blue. “Potato,” she read aloud.

At her feet lay the lifeless bodies of Manny Mallomar and Shrimps Marinara. Mallomar’s white suit was splotched with crimson; his popped eyes stared at the high ceiling.

“Get out of here, hurry!” The tattooed sailor shoved her toward the door.

Dickory stumbled on a curved step, scrambled to her feet, and ran out of the house. “Police!” she screamed, clutching the cast-iron newel. “Somebody get the police.”

Someone came running. “I’m the police, what’s going on in there?” It was the blind man.

“Murder,” Dickory whispered, sinking down on the concrete stoop, holding her bruised throat.

Pulling a two-way radio from his pocket, the unblind detective called in his report. “Are you all right?” he asked Dickory, eyes on the front door.

She nodded. She was not all right, but there was nothing anyone could do about it. Numb and hurting, she patted the German shepherd as the street detective, his gun drawn, stood guard at the entrance to number 12.

3

Screaming sirens wavered and died as four patrol cars screeched into narrow Cobble Lane. Car doors slammed, radios crackled; heads popped out of the muntined windows of the historic houses as the sharp commands of police sergeants echoed through the gathering crowd and bounced off the brick walls.

“Are you all right, Hickory?” Chief Quinn asked.

Still slumped on the stoop, Dickory raised her head on hearing the familiar voice and nodded unconvincingly. The derelict-disguised detective nearly tripped over her as he trotted down the steps. “Nothing upstairs, Chief. I’ll go check out the back.”

“Do that, Dinkel,” Quinn said. He cupped his hand under Dickory’s chin and placed a finger on her bloodied lip. He raised her head and inspected the raw bruises on her throat. “The wounds aren’t serious, but they sure must hurt. Come, let’s go inside. Where’s Garson?”