Jonathan Craig - The Case of the Petticoat Murder

I grinned at Stan. “Wonder of wonders,” I said, covering my phone. “And still people always mumble in their beards over the way cops work with stools.”

“We'd be dead without them,” he said. “It's symbiotic.”

“It's what?”

“Symbiotic. My God, how ignorant can you get?”

“What'd you do, just look it up

“As a matter of fact, did. You like it?”

“I'm not sure. Give me a moment to think about it.”

“You sort of have to let it grow on you. Like with avocados.”

Benny's voice came back on the wire. “Pete?”

“Yes?”

“Flossie says to tell you he was rigged out in a real jazzy red cowboy shirt with lots of buttons and stitching and stuff all over it, and real tight overall pants. And she says he had on these jerky half-boots, You know, like they flop around the ankles and they've got like dog chains crisscrossed over the insteps so you clank like hell every time you take a step.”

I got out my notebook and wrote rapidly. “How old is he, Benny?”

“Flossie says about thirty.”

“And Flossie has no idea at all where we could pick him up?” I said. “If he happened to mention any place he hung out, Or—”

“He didn't,” Benny said. “Me and Flossie beat that all out before I tried to get you at the squad room,”

“What was the name of this bar?”

“Corchetti's.”

“That's the place on Greenwich Avenue, just off Twelfth?”

“That's the one. You gonna try to grab this Mary C.

“If we can.”

“I don't know how much of a thing they had going, Pete. Maybe nothing. Flossie says, from the way he talked, he hadn't scored with her.”

“You know her, Benny?”

“No, and neither does Flossie. We've just seen her around. But they'll know her in Corchetti's. She hangs out there all the time.”

“Whore?”

“Who ain't? But a junky, for sure. Even has to wear long-sleeved dresses in the summertime. You'd think a girl would have enough sense to shoot herself in the leg.”

“What's the rest of her name, Benny? Do you know?”

“That's all they ever call her,” he said. “Mary C. It's like it was one of these double names. Mary Ann. Like that.”

“We'll be going right down there,” I said.

“I know you won't be forgetting this, Pete. You got a real wonderful memory.”

“We'll have to break this up, Benny,” I said. “There's even a chance this Johnny Farmer changed his mind and went back to Corchetti's.”

“Sure, Pete. And give my love to Stan Rayder, will you? There's another wonderful guy. Wonderful.”

“So long, Benny.”

I hung up and stepped out of the booth.

“That Benny's not only a hell of a stool,” Stan said, “He's also a hell of a comedian.”

“Why so?”

“You hear what he said about your wonderful memory? Boy, that's very funny. Here you are, a guy that can't even remember to give the operator his badge number to save himself a dime.”

“You'd do better worrying about Mary C.”

“Yes, but half the time it isn't even your own dime. It's mine.”

I looked at my watch. “It's six thirty-five,” I said. “How long do you think we should keep Mary C. waiting, Stan?”

“No more than twenty minutes,” Stan said. “I've a hunch she's a very impatient girl.”

EVEN with Stan's expert jockeying, it still took us more than twenty minutes to reach the Village. By the time we'd parked the Plymouth half a block beyond Corchetti's and walked back, my watch said seven twenty-three.

It was, for most of the Village's residents, a favorite time of day — a time when the Village is, perhaps, more nearly characteristic of itself than at any other. The tourists don't swarm in until later, nor do the uptown New Yorkers who tour the bars and observe the natives.

“You ever been in this place before?” Stan asked as we stepped into Corchetti's.

“Not unless they've changed the name since then,” I said.

“Then you haven't,” he said. “Nobody's changed anything in this dive since the day before the world began.”

There was a long bar with a sprinkling of after-work drinkers, a larger number of round-the-clock drinkers, and two very young girls who didn't look as if they were old enough to be drinking there at all. Against the wall opposite the bar was a row of narrow booths with very high backs, and, midway between the booths and the bar, a half dozen tables about the size of a breadboard.

“Yesterday's tablecloths and last week's sawdust,” Stan said as we approached the bar. “And if you're wondering what that slush is you're wading in, it's liquor. There's more of the stuff on the floor than there is in the glasses.”

“No Johnny Farmers here,” I said, glancing about.

“And no Mary C., either,” Stan said. “No femme junkies at all, so far as I can see.”

“Take a look in the can,” I said. “I'll brace the bartender.”

While Stan walked out to the men's room, I found a space at the bar and beckoned to the bartender.

Unlike Stan, I look like a cop. I look so much like one that I'm rarely or never taken for anything else. Whether this is a curse or a blessing, I've never decided. Perhaps it averages out pretty close to fifty-fifty.

The bartender came over immediately. “Yes, Officer?”

“Seen Johnny Farmer around lately?” I asked.

He was a pink-faced, balding man with a few long strands of graying hair brushed across the middle of his skull from left to right. “I don't know a Johnny Farmer, Officer,” he said.

I gave him a fast description, and he nodded.

“There couldn't be more than one man that unlucky, could there?” he said, grinning. “He was in, Officer.”

“He been in here before?”

“Not when I've been on duty. A man with that much height and that kind of a face would be hard to forget.”

“How about Mary C.?” I said. “She been in today?”

“She practically lives here, Officer. Today she was in about the same time as this Johnny Farmer.”

“But they didn't leave together?”

“No. Mary left a little while after.”

“You know where I can find her?”

“I know where you could try. She goes for this Italian coffee. Told me she drinks eight or ten cups of espresso a day.” He picked up a couple of empty beer glasses and dropped them in the tank behind the bar. “Try around the corner. Nero's Coffee House. She practically runs a shuttle between here and there.”

Stan had come up behind me. “No Johnny Farmers in the can,” he said.

“Let's drop around the corner,” I said. “I hear Mary C. drinks a lot of coffee.”

Nero's Coffee House was like most of the other coffee shops in the Village — a place no larger than the average shoe-repair parlor, with huge, gloomy, time-blackened paintings on all the walls, banquettes along three sides of the room, and, at the rear, a short counter with an enormous espresso machine glittering with nickel plate, surmounted with eagles and cupids, and festooned with a dozen or more spigots jutting out from all sides and at almost all possible angles.

There was a tired-looking old man dozing behind the machine and a thin, hollow-eyed blonde girl sitting at the far end of the banquette to the left of the door. There was no one else.

“I'm buying,” Stan said. “What'll it be?”

“ Capuccino,” I said.

“Espresso for me,” he said. “It may not show, Pete, but mine is starting to drag.”

The old man opened one eye long enough to manipulate the machine; then we carried our coffee back to the banquette and sat down near the girl in a way that hemmed her into the corner. She was watching us sullenly, sniffing softly now and then, her thin shoulders outlined sharply through the thin material of her grimy, long-sleeved blouse.