Ten Little New Yorkers Read online

  “No killing is random in the true sense of the word, my dear Watson. Or, very possibly, one could say all of them are.”

  “I see,” said Ratso, staring down intently into his matzo ball soup.

  “What’re you looking for?” I said. “Matzo ball leaves?”

  “No, I’m just thinking, Sherlock. Do you believe the same perp committed these murders?”

  “Judging merely from the proximity in time and geography, Watson, I would say there’s a good chance they were done by the same hand. I haven’t really looked into it.”

  “I have, Sherlock.”

  “Say what?”

  “I’ve looked into it,” said Ratso, with a not inconsiderable measure of pride. “Of course I haven’t held conversations with the cops like you and McGovern and that vicious diesel dyke, Winnie Katz.”

  “Ah, Watson, you are blessed with such a forgiving nature. Just because she tossed you out of her lesbian dance class.”

  “Mad cow was named after her.”

  “After all, it is a lesbian dance class. Or at least it was a lesbian dance class. I think she’s decided to take a break.”

  “I’d like to hire Joe the Hyena to break her legs.”

  “She speaks very highly of you, Watson,” I said, as the waiter brought a huge corned beef sandwich for me, a huge reuben for Ratso, and a large bowl of pickles. “I’m rather in a pickle myself these days because of this singular matter of the wallet.”

  “That’s why it’s so perfect, Sherlock! What better revenge? We solve the case ourselves right under Cooperman’s and Fox’s noses! We’ve done it before! We can do it again!”

  “Maybe you’re on to something, Watson. You say you’ve been looking into it? Marvelous! And what have you gleaned from your explorations?”

  “Well, I’m sure the cops know more than they’re telling us, but I have been studying the papers, the coverage on television, and the Internet.”

  “How ingenious of you, Watson! And you discovered precisely what, might I ask?”

  “Well, for one thing, not to state the obvious, but all the victims have been men.”

  “Ah, Watson! Does nothing escape your scrutiny?”

  “If all the vics turn out to be fags, it could be a homophobe. Or maybe a fag killing other fags.”

  “The hand of the killer supported by a limp wrist? I doubt it, Watson.”

  “There’s also the fact that three of the four murder victims were divorced. That’s quite a bit higher than the national average.”

  “Clever, Watson, clever! No detail too superficial or ridiculous for your rapacious eyes to divine! Perhaps the killer is a disgruntled marriage counselor.”

  “I lean to the homosexual theory.”

  “Don’t lean too far, Watson! Don’t lean too far!”

  Over coffee and cheesecake, I imparted to Ratso the cutting-the-dick-off and the knitting-needle-up-

  the-nose tidbits. He, of course, had not heard these details before and it took him a short while to process this new and rather graphic information. Ratso habitually made the fatal, and quite irritating, mistake of thinking of everything that happened as “clues.” The clues he didn’t like, he ignored. The ones that appealed to him he mindlessly embraced and ruthlessly followed, like some men follow their penises around the world. It is a futile exercise and, indeed, if you take it far enough you invariably wind up fucking yourself in your own large, Jewish, slightly pear-shaped buttocks.

  Yet, to paraphrase my sister Marcie, despise no thing and call no man useless. There was always something for some sad Sherlock to learn from the Watsons of the world. One of the most important things I myself had learned was never to rely on them to pick up the check.

  “You may have something with this homosexual business, Watson,” I remarked, as I lighted a cigar out in the street. “Perhaps we should start with me interviewing McGovern and you interviewing Winnie.”

  “That’s fucking brilliant, Sherlock. She fucking hates my guts.”

  “Have I not already told you, Watson, that she speaks very highly of you? She says you have more balls than any student she’s ever worked with. Of course, it is a lesbian dance class.”

  “You’re serious, Sherlock?”

  “I’m always serious, Watson. That’s why I’m Sherlock. To paraphrase Billy Joe Shaver, I’m a serious soul nobody takes seriously.”

  “I take you seriously.”

  “That’s why you’re Watson,” I said.

  And so it was decided that the two of us would once again sally forth into that cauldron of imagined urgency that was New York to do battle with the criminal element and the powers that be. Who was behind this ugly little string of killings I had not a clue, or should I say, I had no idea. There was, in fact, only one point upon which Watson and Sherlock entirely agreed. At long last, by God, we had a case.

  Sixteen

  The next morning I met McGovern at a little breakfast place in the Village called La Bonbonniere. It was run by a charming Frenchman named Charles, who was currently the only Frenchman I knew or liked. Unless you wanted to count Victor Hugo or Joan of Arc, the latter, of course, not technically being a French-man, though, no doubt, she would’ve performed admirably in Winnie Katz’s lesbian dance class had it still been in session. I had no idea what La Bonbonniere meant and I didn’t really want to know. The food was good and the ambience was very basic and the café was located almost precisely midway between McGovern’s place and my loft. That was why the large Irishman and I were dining there that morning. Of course, there also was the little matter of some unfinished business between us.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” said McGovern. “Shit happens when you’re working on deadline. The guy was on a skiing vacation. He never came to your loft. We’ve already printed a retraction.”

  “Printing a retraction,” I said. “That solves all the problems in the world, doesn’t it?”

  “Of course not,” said McGovern reasonably, as he studied the menu scrutinously as if he hadn’t seen it thousands of times before. “But now I think you have an even bigger problem.”

  “What to order?”

  McGovern laughed his loud Irish laughter. Several nearby diners looked over. McGovern did not appear to notice.

  “I wish that were your problem, Kink,” he said at last. “I think your problem is obvious to both of us as well as the cops by now. If the murder victim was on a skiing vacation and was killed shortly after arriving back in the city, then how did his wallet get into your loft?”

  “If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn’t be having breakfast in a funky little café with a large, jovial Irishman.”

  “I’m jovial? You should tell that to my ex-wife.”

  “Jesus Christ, McGovern. I didn’t know you were ever married.”

  “It was only for a week. We tried everything. Nothing worked.”

  I waited for McGovern to laugh, but he didn’t. He just signaled the waiter and ordered two scrambled eggs, a sausage, and a croissant. I laughed inwardly—quiet, Jewish laughter. Then I ordered two eggs looking at me, like my father always used to say, and a toasted poppy-seed bagel. Oscar Wilde was right, I thought, as the waiter departed. The human soul was unknowable.

  “So what are you going to do about the wallet?” asked McGovern, sipping his coffee.

  “Nothing,” I said. “The cops have it.”

  “I know that. Like Ratso would say, ‘I have my sauces.’ ”

  “What else do you know?”

  “Ask specifics, Kink. The Shadow knows.”

  “You know about the fifth murder?”

  “The one in Chelsea with the knitting needle? Where the hell do you even find a knitting needle?”

  “In a knitting haystack. Do you know how victim number four was killed?”

  “Yes,” said McGovern, “but let’s not talk about it now—the waiter’s just bringing me my sausage.”

  “I see,” I said.

  And, of course, I did see. McGovern, like a
ny good, veteran journalist in the field, knew a lot of things he didn’t necessarily care to divulge. For one thing, his knowledge was the brick and mortar of his livelihood. For another, he had to always be conscious of protecting his “sauces.” McGovern was also, I suspected, in somewhat of a snit because I’d expressed indifference to the investigation early on and now, admittedly, was coming back to him to try to weasel information. If I was going to get his help on this one, I’d have to play it sensitively. And sensitivity was not my long suit.

  “Look, you big, obstinate fuck,” I said. “Why can’t we work together on this case?”

  “Oh, now you want to work together on this case. Now, after I’ve been working my sources night and day. After you abandoned ship and went down to Texas leaving me holding the bag, or the wallet, as the case may be. Now after I’ve slaved for you for twenty-five years, you want to try to save our marriage.”

  “McGovern, I’m being rather serious here. You’re having breakfast with a man who could well be the target of the NYPD’s investigation. Believe me, this case is getting very close to home. I need your help.”

  “Those are the words I was waiting to hear,” said McGovern, as he cut into his sausage. “How can I help?”

  I told McGovern some of the directions in which I wanted to go with the investigation and some of the kinds of information that I would be needing. I told him that with five murders under his belt, we were already starting out under the gun, so to speak, as far as ferreting out the killer. McGovern rather pointedly asked me whose fault that was. I told him that assessing the blame should be left to God and drunks and small children, all of which—I thought but didn’t mention—McGovern was capable of behaving like. Nevertheless, McGovern took it personally and said it was character assassination and I told him that if I wanted to assassinate his character I would’ve had to resort to nuclear weapons.

  Our little brunch ended amicably enough, however, with McGovern pledging to aid the investigation in any way he could and me pumping up his balls a bit by assuring him as to how vital a role he would be playing. We’d gone through this charade many times before, it seemed, and it had always been rather tedious. The results, notwithstanding the ennui experienced in gaining them, had been indisputable. Like it or not, McGovern and I were a team.

  “I’ll be in touch with you, Watson,” I told him as I left the place.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” he said.

  I went back to my empty loft and my empty life, but at least now I had something to do with my mind. To paraphrase Sherlock, the man is nothing, the work is all. Everybody in New York had a project and I was no exception to the rule. I would catch this killer who had already taken five lives. That was my project. It made for a rather cold, loveless hobby, but as a project, it was passionate.

  I called Rambam and, as fate would have it, I reached him on his shoe phone. As fate would also have it, he was in the neighborhood. This was good because I didn’t really know where in the hell to start on the case, and on the personal side, I was only a few steps away from attempting to commit suicide by jumping through a ceiling fan. This was bad because I needed all the fans I could get.

  “I’ll be right over,” he said. “I always enjoy hanging out with people who are targets of murder investigations.”

  “Thanks, pal,” I told him.

  It was a sunny, cold day outside. Inside the loft it seemed dark and numb and threatening, something you could only guess at by the way it felt in your bones. I sat down at the desk, lit a cigar, and looked to Sherlock for answers. He didn’t have any. Neither did I. I was losing my hair and losing my mind and losing what little faith I had left in my fellow man. I’m losing, said Frank Sinatra just before he died. I’m losing, too, I thought. And the funny thing was I didn’t really give a shit. By the time Rambam showed up, it was ten minutes too late to make any difference.

  “Fuck!” said Rambam. “This place not only feels like a tomb, it’s as cold as a tomb.”

  “I didn’t notice.”

  “Jesus! There’s no sign of life!”

  “Oh, please. Just sit down.”

  “I mean, the cat’s gone.”

  “Brilliant! What else do your powers of observation tell you?”

  “I don’t even hear the lesbian dance class pounding away up there.”

  “Winnie’s giving the class a break. She’s spending her free time collaborating with the cops.”

  “Never trust a lesbian.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “Never trust a lesbian.”

  I looked at Rambam sitting across the desk from me in the client’s chair that seemed to have been so empty for so long. There was no question this was the kind of case any private investigator would give his pebbled glass to sink his teeth into. The killer, clearly a psycho, was at least imaginative. Rambam looked handsome and clean-cut and efficient. He looked like a thinking man’s Archie Goodwin. And if he was Archie Goodwin, then I must be Nero Wolfe. Sherlock was thin and Wolfe was fat, and the only qualities they shared were a passion for the truth and the fact that they both were very lonely men.

  “Okay, Archie,” I said. “Report.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Archie Goodwin was a great investigator. He was Nero Wolfe’s eyes, legs, and sometimes, his heart.”

  “I’m probably the only one of your friends who even knows who Archie Goodwin was.”

  “That’s why you’re him.”

  “You really have gone around the bend, you know.”

  “Archie! Report!”

  “Okay, Mr. Wolfe, here we go. We don’t have shit. How’s that? We have to rely on your drinking buddy McGovern and the cops for our information, and the cops aren’t sharing. So, in short, Mr. Wolfe, we’re fucked.”

  “Hardly, Archie. You know as well as I that we’re far from fucked. Perhaps you are merely being slothful and indolent. There have been a myriad of cases that the NYPD has failed to solve that subsequently have evolved into metaphysical notches on our belt.”

  “And that’s a hell of a big belt.”

  “Stop mumbling, Archie. I can’t hear you.”

  “This is insane,” said Rambam, laughing to himself in a dangerous-sounding way and looking at me with unbridled pity in his eyes. “As you’ve said on many occasions, Mr. Wolfe, the cops have all the manpower and all the resources and we can’t compete with them in those areas.”

  “ ‘Areae’ is the Latin plural.”

  “What we need to do, not to mention a few sit-ups on your part, is to approach this case from an angle the cops may have ignored. Maybe tackle it from behind.”

  “You’re not suggesting anal sex?”

  “All I’m saying, you sick, sedentary bastard, is that I’m going to crank up the ol’ hard-boiled computer and then we’ll see what it has to say about the backgrounds of the five victims. The cops have been over this ground already, of course, but there’s always something you miss on the first go around. I’m sure a man of your genius will be able to pick up on the details they’ve missed. You may actually have to leave the brownstone for some of this. I may need some backup.”

  “Are you suggesting anal sex?”

  “I’m suggesting you better go upstairs and water your tulips before I punch you in the nose.”

  “Orchids, Archie. Not tulips. Tulips are so pedestrian. I think I will go upstairs and water my orchids.”

  “I’ll warn Winnie.”

  “Maybe I’ll just ring for some beer. Thank you, Archie. You’re dismissed.”

  “Hell,” said Rambam, as he goose-stepped toward the door. “It’s almost enough to make you miss Sherlock.”

  “Right you are, Watson,” I said.

  “Almost enough,” he said.

  Seventeen

  I once asked the famed Texas defense lawyer, Racehorse Haynes, if he would be willing to do some pro bono work on a case with which I was involved. Before Racehorse could answer, our mutual friend and
brilliant lawyer David Berg piped up: “The words ‘Racehorse’ and ‘pro bono’ are never used in the same sentence.”

  That was kind of how it was with Rambam. I was aware, of course, that Rambam had a right to earn a living. Though the work he’d done for and with me paid very well in the coin of the spirit, it was never going to help him pay the rent. The problem was that Rambam’s other work tended to be of a global nature, taking him suddenly off to solve the strange matter of The Giant Rat of Lower Baboon’s Asshole at almost precisely the moment I needed him most right here in little old New York City. I never begrudged Rambam for taking a paying gig, but as a friend and fellow investigator, the timing of his travels did tend to irk me. It seemed ungracious to complain too much, however, especially considering how many times he’d actually laid his life on the line for the Kinkster.

  Thus, it was not surprising when, several days later, I met Rambam in Chinatown and he informed me that he had good news and bad news. We were at a new place of Rambam’s choosing, and the beef chow fun with black bean sauce and the salt and pepper shrimp were definitely killer bee. Big Wong’s still took top awards for the soup, however. A bowl of won ton mein at Big Wong’s could cure almost all the ills of the world. Almost all the ills of the world. It was another cold, dreary afternoon in the city and the moods of its occupants paralleled the weather fairly closely. Rambam seemed, however, in what for him was a rather cheerful, almost chirpy frame of mind. By trained deductive reasoning I concluded that he’d soon be traveling to sunnier climes. This, I suspected, was the bad news. As to the good news, I didn’t have a clue.

  “This fucking place has Big Wong’s beat hands down,” said Rambam, as he went to work on a whole steamed flounder that took up nearly half the table.

  “You’re just mad because a waiter there splashed hot tea on you. That’s how they wash the tables. They splash hot tea on them. It’s one of the colorful traditions I like at Big Wong’s. You just made the mistake of sitting down before they’d finished cleaning the table.”