The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues (13 page)

“I don’t know,” she replied weakly, staring at the curiosity-seekers who were pressing and swelling against the restraining arms of the uniformed police. The crowd looked exactly like the morbid mob that had stared through the windows of the pawn shop the night her parents were murdered. Rising, she turned her back on them and followed Chief Quinn into the house.

“Now, go wash your face and comb your hair,” he said, treating his dazed eyewitness as he would a small child. “Then I want you to tell me everything that happened here. All right, Hickory?”

“Dickory,” she corrected him.

“Dock,” he replied to humor her.

“Hickory Dickory Dock,
The mouse ran up the clock,
The clock struck five,
He’s still alive,
Just like Hickory Dickory Dock.”

Washed and combed, standing on the balcony overlooking the downstairs living room, Dickory once again ached with the remembered fear and pain. She clutched the railing to steady herself.

Cameras flashed. Photographers circled the black and white and crimson bodies like jackals around carrion. Then the detectives swooped down, like buzzards at a feast, and picked the bodies clean. A hand brought up a key ring, and a familiar-looking detective, the exterminator, hurried to the locked file drawer. Another hand passed a wallet to the blind man, who brought it to Quinn. The exterminator, the blind man, the derelict—all detectives. A lot of good they were, Dickory thought; she had almost been killed, right under their big noses.

“What’s going on here?” Garson bellowed, barging through the police barricade. “Where’s Dickory?” He hurried to her side. “What happened? Are you all right?”

Dickory pointed down to the ugly scene. She did feel better now that Garson was here.

The detectives had moved away from the two bodies to search the room. A long, black overcoat lay open, exposing a mass of wires, tape recorders, and miniature microphones strung over Shrimps’ skinny frame. Mallomar looked as repugnant in death as he had in life.

“The ugly dumpling and his mechanical man,” Garson said lightly. “Dead, I presume.”

Dickory did not respond. She was staring down at Mallomar’s corpse. From a gold chain across his bulging white vest dangled an open enamel watchcase painted with roses. Its chimes had unwound into silence.

Quinn ushered his trembling witness up to the studio floor, where Dickory related her terrifying tale. She described the scene as accurately as she could without mentioning blackmail, protecting Garson every step of the way. Garson sat with his head in his hands, uttering an occasional self-chastising moan. The chief listened attentively, his face impassive, his cigar still, even when Dickory told of Shrimps reciting the nursery rhyme.

“They wouldn’t believe my name, so I said, ‘I am Christina Rossetti.’ ”

Garson groaned and reproached himself for having put her in danger, for having left her alone in the house while he had gone to his health club for a workout.

“Do you have any idea why Mallomar or Shrimps wanted to kill you?” Quinn asked.

Dickory shook her head and slowly rose to answer the ringing telephone.

“I’ll get it,” the chief said firmly. “Hello? Sorry, she can’t come to the phone. This is Chief of Detectives Joseph P. Quinn. Yes, I’ll take the message. . . . What? Who is this? . . . Who? Would you repeat that? . . . What’s your address? . . . What! Yes, indeed, I know where that is. Stay there, I’m sending someone over right away.”

“Who was that?” Dickory asked.

Quinn looked puzzled. “I’m not sure. He says he’s a friend of yours.”

Dickory understood the chief’s bewilderment. “That’s his real name—George Washington.”

Quinn smiled. “I’m glad to hear it; with a name like that, he’s got to be telling the truth. He’s been trying to reach you to tell you he remembers the name of the tattooed sailor who was blackmailing Mallomar.

Dickory sank back into her chair shaken with pain, stunned by her near escape from death, and sickened by the fumes left by the exterminator and Quinn’s cigar. The name of the tattooed sailor was Rossetti!

4

“Hey, Dickory, isn’t that where you work?” Her brother Donald sat upright on the couch and pointed to the scene on the late evening news.

Dickory was drawing on a sketch pad. “What?”

“What do you mean, what? Isn’t that where you work, at that painter Garson’s house, where the murders took place?”

“Murders, what murders?” Blanche asked excitedly.

“I’d rather not talk about it,” Dickory replied.

“What do you mean, you’d rather not talk about it?” Donald said parrot-like. He walked to the dining table and took the sketch pad from her hands. “Look at me, Dickory. Were you in any danger there?”

Looking up she saw, not anger, but deep concern. Blanche sat down beside her and wrapped an arm around Dickory’s shoulder, drawing her close. “What happened, honey? Please, tell us.”

Pulling her turtleneck high on her throat to hide the bruises, Dickory shrugged off their distress. “It’s nothing, really. It all happened downstairs of the place where I work, not in the studio.” She smiled to put them at ease. “It had nothing to do with me or Garson. The television reporters are making a big fuss over nothing. A gangland killing, that’s all it was. Besides, it’s over.” She had to reassure them several times more before her brother and sister-in-law were convinced that she was safe in Cobble Lane.

“What are you drawing here?” Donald asked, realizing how little he knew about his kid sister.

“Just a sketch for school,” she lied.

“I think it’s very good, Dickory,” Blanche said, peering over her husband’s shoulder.

“Well, it’s sure better than that mess with the black dot you did, and the one with the three black lines,” Donald said appreciatively. “At least this looks like something. What’s it supposed to be, a sailor of some sort?”

“Sure, it’s a sailor,” Blanche said. “Can’t you see the earring in his ear and the tattoo on his arm?”

“Oh yeah,” Donald said. “It’s one of those old-time sailors like you see in the movies. Pretty good, Dickory.” He handed back the sketch pad and yawned. “Think I’ll get me to bed. Come on, Blanche.”

Refusing their offer to open the couch and help make the bed, Dickory mumbled “Good night” as she studied her sketch. It was not good, not good at all. The figure was awkwardly drawn; the man, lifeless. And Donald was right, the costume was out of a Grade-B Hollywood movie. Costumes, disguises, that’s all she had drawn, not the man, not even the actor beneath the disguise.

The whole scene seemed like a bad movie—the sailor’s costume, blackmail, threats, underworld contracts, even the wild coincidence of two people using the name Rossetti. The tattooed sailor must have chosen the name just as she had done, remembering the story Garson had told her. NO! Her thinking was muddled; she would start at the beginning, slowly, methodically, like Sergeant Kod.

Kod was Dock spelled backward, almost, like Noserag/ Garson. Huddled at one end of the couch, Dickory doodled around her sketch. She lettered Rossetti and tried it backward; Ittessor meant nothing, no matter how she fudged the letters. Start again.

She had seen Rossetti twice, once on Eighth Street when he had handed her the letter; then, standing over the dead bodies. George had seen Rossetti at a café with Mallomar. Therefore, Rossetti was someone Mallomar knew and someone she knew—or why a disguise?

Rossetti was a blackmailer, or was he a blackmail victim? A blackmail victim who murdered his blackmailer? No. Rossetti was not a murderer. He had threatened Mallomar just to get back the evidence against him. Rossetti was a blackmail victim, a Smith or a Jones, who had saved her life.

Dawn filtered through the dirty windows, waking Dickory from her short sleep. She was still huddled on the couch, sketch pad on her lap. Bleary-eyed and aching, she tossed the drawing of the tattooed sailor to the floor and stretched out to return to forgetfulness. Suddenly she sat up with a start and picked up her pad. A doodled word had screamed out at her: Garson. Gar Son. Ed-GAR SON-neborg.

Edgar Sonneborg, hidden by the large easel, was painting when Dickory arrived. From the studio doorway she watched the back of the canvas heave with the furious strokes of the master artist. Then the canvas was still. Sonneborg threw his crimson-dipped brush upon the pile of squeezed tubes on the messy taboret top, sighed deeply, and covered his canvas with the red velvet drape.

“Hi, Garson,” Dickory said.

Startled, Garson stepped away from the easel and stared at her with cold, questioning eyes.

“I just got here,” Dickory said quickly, pretending she had noticed nothing. “I—I didn’t much feel like going to school.”

Garson covered his alarm with a stream of talk. “I did ask for a quiet assistant, didn’t I? Poor kid, you probably didn’t get a wink of sleep. Neither did I, what with those dreadful happenings right in my own house. I still can’t believe it all happened. Honestly, Dickory, if I had any idea you would get involved in this filthy business, I—well, never mind. We’re going to find that Rossetti, you’ll see. I’m going to paint the most accurate portrait ever painted from eyewitness testimony.”

“Garson, I’ve been thinking,” Dickory said. “Rossetti saved my life. Maybe you shouldn’t paint his portrait.”

Garson did not seem to hear. “Shouldn’t paint his portrait? Of course, you are absolutely right. It is Inspector Noserag who will paint the portrait of Rossetti. Quick, Sergeant, the hats.”

Still wondering how to get through to him, Dickory put on her helmet and opened a drawer of the inspector’s taboret. “Garson, please, it’s too late for games. I’ve—I’ve seen through your disguise.”

Standing rigid as a statue, except for his trembling hand, Garson tried to read her haunted face. “Observant Dickory, I trained you too well, I’m afraid. The last thing in the world I wanted was for you to get hurt. If only I hadn’t told you the story of Christina Rossetti, all this might never have happened. If I hadn’t let those thugs live in this house; if I had been home; if, if, if. It’s all so complicated, I scarcely know how to tell you about it.”

Dickory helped him along. “Why are your paintings kept secret—the Sonneborgs?”

Garson gasped, then emitted a loud, hollow laugh that could have been a cry. Slowly his mask melted away, revealing a sensitive and anguished face, the face Dickory had occasionally glimpsed, the face and now the voice of the Kind One.

“I never imagined you guessed that,” he said sadly. “Was it seeing me at the easel this morning?”

“No, I knew before that, Garson.” She emphasized the name Garson to prove his secret was safe with her.

“And do you know where the paintings are now?”

“In the locked storeroom, I guess.”

Garson nodded. “My lawyer has instructions to protect them, to destroy them if necessary. They must not be shown until all of the sitters are dead.”

“But why, Garson?” Dickory argued. “They are great paintings; they must be, if they are anything like the one in the Panzpresser Collection.”

“They’re better, I’m afraid. Better and crueler. Garson paints people’s dreams; Sonneborg shatters them. Shatters them so cruelly that the shards would tear their very souls. No one, Dickory, no one can be confronted with such terrible truth. No one deserves to stand naked and maskless before complete strangers, before the ogling world. ”

“They are great paintings,” Dickory repeated.

“The world can get along without them,” Sonneborg mumbled. “I should have destroyed them long ago. Vanity and greed.”

Dickory studied the great artist, the compassionate artist, the guilty artist, with tenderness and awe. He was no real stranger to her. The blue eyes were still blue, but warmer; the waist was still trim. His right hand still shook. His blue jeans were still paint-smeared and the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up. She had not seen his sleeves rolled lately. She had not seen his bare arms lately. Dickory looked down at the open drawer of acrylic paints, paints which could be peeled off the skin, leaving no trace. Five tubes had been used: black (The Case of the Horrible Hairdresser), chrome yellow, chrome green, cadmium red, cobalt blue (the colors of Rossetti’s tattoo) . The upside-down tattoo, because the artist had painted it on his own arm—on his left arm, so no one would notice his shaky right hand.

“Quick, Inspector Noserag,” Dickory shouted to Garson, who was standing before the easel, lost in thought. “We’d better hurry with the portrait of Rossetti so the police can get on his trail.”

5

For the first time in the partnership of Noserag and Kod, a portrait of the perpetrator was being painted. The moustache on the manikin was not large enough or dark enough, the striped jersey was the wrong color, the earring was silver, not gold.

“You said Rossetti was thick around the middle, Sergeant?” the artist asked. Dickory had not padded the manikin.

“Very thick. Flabby.”

“And his hair and moustache were black?”

“Naturally black, with highlights. Not a wig,” she replied with authority.

“Congratulations, Holmes,” Chief Quinn boomed, arriving unexpectedly. “I see you have apprehended the suspect.” He pointed to the costumed manikin. “Hope you don’t mind the intrusion, the kindly police officer at the door let me in.”

Noserag and Kod removed their hats. “Either the pipe or the cigar has to go,” Dickory said, trying to make light of their embarrassment. “This place has been fumigated enough.”

“Speaking of fumigators, Quinn,” Garson said, “I thought exterminators needed search warrants these days.”

The chief shrugged good-naturedly. “You know how it is, Garson; besides, Detective Finkel didn’t take anything. How do you expect us to nail a blackmailer if none of his victims will testify?”

“You don’t,” Garson retorted. “And while we’re at it, how about vandalism—like introducing cockroaches?”

“Somebody did that to you?” the chief exclaimed in mock horror. “Tsk, tsk. If I were you, I’d file a complaint with the authorities. Well, you look better today, Hickory. Let me see, what number are we up to? Six, isn’t it?