Oliver Bleeck - Brass Go-Between

At one o’clock we pulled into Washington’s rococo Union Station, almost an hour late. It was still raining hard and I had to wait fifteen minutes for a cab. By the time I got to the Madison and into my room, it was a quarter to two. I called down for a large breakfast and then went into the bathroom to get rid of my beard and the grubbiness of the train.

After breakfast, I called Lieutenant Demeter. “Nice of you to check in,” he said. “How’s the bag-man business?”

“They called a fake switch in a motel about halfway across New Jersey to see how well I follow instructions.”

“But they didn’t show.”

“No.”

“Maybe you’d better drop around and tell me about it.”

“I can’t,” I said. “I was supposed to check in here at twelve-thirty, but the planes aren’t flying and I had to take a train so I was late. They’re supposed to call me here.”

“Have you got the money with you?” Demeter said.

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Here. In my room.”

Demeter exploded. “For Christ sake, St. Ives, get it into the hotel safe. Maybe it’s different in New York. Maybe the people up there are all beautiful and gentle and fond of flowers, but I wouldn’t walk across the street in this town with more than forty bucks cash in my pocket.” He seemed to turn his head away from the phone. “He’s got the money in his room, for Christ sake.” He must have been talking to Sergeant Fastnaught.

“I’d planned to put it in the safe.”

“Quit planning and do it. Where you staying, the Madison again?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your room number?”

I told him.

“We’ll be there in half an hour.”

With the money safely stored in the Madison’s vault, I went back up to my room and stood by the window and watched it rain some more. Twenty minutes later there was a bump at the door; not a knock, but a bump that was followed by a dry, scratching sound as if someone were trying to peel off the paint. I moved to the door and opened it. It was Ogden and his face was screwed up into a wrinkle of pain as the tears ran down cheeks that had all the color of old paste.

“Lemme in,” he said. “Lemme in.”

I let him in, and he stumbled. He was wearing a tan raincoat and he pressed it tight against his belly with both hands, but even the raincoat didn’t stop the blood from seeping through his fingers.

“On the bed,” I said, and grabbed his arm and helped him over to it. He wouldn’t lie down. He sat there on the edge of the bed and held his stomach.

“Oh, God, I hurt! Get a doctor, get me a doctor.”

I picked up the phone and dialed the operator. “Send a doctor up to 429,” I said. “A man has been injured.”

She didn’t argue or ask questions. “I’ll call the emergency ambulance.”

“Do something,” I snapped.

Ogden had fallen over on the bed, his head rested on the pillow, his feet were still on the floor, and his hands still clutched the widening red stain on his raincoat.

“In the lobby,” he muttered. “He used the goddamn knife right in the lobby.”

“Who?”

“Both of them were there. That bitch giggled when he did it.” Ogden groaned and the groan grew into a scream. “Why do I have to suffer so?” he moaned, but I couldn’t think of an answer.

“Who was in the lobby, Ogden?” I said.

“Get me a doctor. Get me a goddamn doctor.”

“He’s on his way. Who was in the lobby?”

“You got the money?” he said, and struggled to get up. “You got the money? Lemme see it. Lemme see the money.”

“It’s not here; it’s in the vault. Who stabbed you, Ogden?”

“I saw ’em on the train and then they came here and the bitch giggled when he did it.”

“Who, goddamnit?” I said.

“That pimp, Freddie. That pimp and his whore.”

“Freddie who?”

Freddie something he started to say but the blood bubbled out of his mouth, and then there was a big gush of it that went all over the pillow, and Lieutenant Kenneth Ogden of the New York Police Department’s vice squad lay still on the bed, very still and dead.

The phone rang and I picked it up. “We’re downstairs and on our way up,” Demeter said.

“You’re too late,” I said, and hung up.

The assistant manager of the Madison gave me another room on another floor and looked as if he wished that I would go to another hotel, preferably in another town. After I had told my story to three plain-clothes detectives from the homicide squad who had been summoned by Lieutenant Demeter, I told it again. And then, just to make sure that I’d left nothing out, I told it a third time. When one of the homicide detectives asked for a fourth rendition, I turned to Demeter, who leaned against the door and stared at the body of his former FBI Academy classmate, Lieutenant Kenneth Ogden of the New York Police Department. Fastnaught was at the window looking at the rain.

“The fourth time won’t be any different from the third or the second or the first,” I said.

Demeter didn’t look at me; he kept on staring at the body on the bed. “Just tell it, St. Ives. Just tell what happened.”

So I told the three homicide detectives how Ogden had died on the bed in my room. One of the detectives was a weary fifty, a stocky man with spiky inch-long gray hair that formed a kind of a dull halo around his face. It was the face of a disappointed listener who had grown tired of waiting for punch lines that never came.

“Start with last night this time, Mr. St. Ives,” he said. “When Ogden approached you in your hotel in New York.”

After I told it for the fourth time they removed the body of Ogden on a wheeled stretcher. Technicians and blue coats had been in and out of the room, poking into the medicine cabinet, counting my socks in the bureau, and making themselves generally useful. Somebody took some pictures of Ogden’s body, but no one bothered about fingerprints. The assistant manager had been in and out twice, looking mortified the first time and despondent the second. The third time he showed up while they were wheeling the body out and this time he looked alarmed. “Down the service elevator, please, down the service elevator,” he said, turning to Demeter. “Can’t you tell them to take it down the service elevator?”

“We’re parked out front,” one of the ambulance attendants said.

“The service elevator,” Demeter said, and I thought the assistant manager might kiss his hand.

“It’s awful,” the assistant manager said to no one in particular. “It’s just God-awful.”

“Tell you what you do,” Demeter said.

“Yes, yes,” the assistant manager said. “What? What?” He was very nervous and he ran a thin pale hand through his ample black hair, which looked as if it had been cut by a razor, teased, and sprayed.

“Get him another room,” Demeter said, and jerked a thumb at me.

“He’s going to stay?” and there was shock and disapproval and even a touch of horror in the question. “You’re not taking him with you?”

“No, he’s not coming with us. He likes it here, don’t you, St. Ives?”

“Because it’s so homey,” I said.

The assistant manager shook his head and this time he registered despair. He had an extremely mobile face. “I’ll send a man up with a key,” he said, and left.

Demeter turned to the detective with the spiky gray hair. “You got what you need from St. Ives?” he said.

“Such as it is.”

“I like the part where Ogden wanted in on the $250,000,” Demeter said.

“They’re going to like that up in New York, too,” the homicide detective said. “Oh, they’re going to like it all just real fine. What they’re really going to like though is Ogden’s wanting to zing the thieves after he got the money and the shield. They’re going to eat that right up.” He got up from the chair he’d been sitting in, walked over to me, and stood there for a few moments. “Anything else you’d like to add, Mr. St. Ives?”