Fallen Sparrow (2 page)

“Tobin. William Tobin.
Inspector Tobin.
Toby.” The name kept coming out of his mouth like hailstones.

“His office’s down at Centre Street,” the cop began.

“Don’t give me that,” Kit said. “He hangs out here. He always has. Ever since he first got his rookie badge and was assigned to this precinct. Where is he?”

The cop took his pen out of his mouth. “Who wants to know?”

He said, “I’m Kit McKittrick.”

Maybe the cop recognized part of the name; maybe he merely decided Kit was harmless. He said, “If you’re so damn smart, you find him. He might be around somewhere. Usually is.” He yawned. “I don’t know where he’s at. I just come on myself.” He opened a tabloid across his face.

Kit let his grip thump to the floor. “Thanks,” he said. “Keep an eye on my bag. I don’t want it hooked.” He pushed through to another room; it smelled worse of golden oak than the first. There wasn’t anyone in there. He opened another door into a smaller room with a roll top desk taking up most of it. Tobin wasn’t here either. There was only another copper on a bench hiding behind another tab. This one had a Dublin face. He’d be kind to old folks and children but he was big enough to be able
to
push his knuckles against any crook’s map without worrying. He was as big as Kit McKittrick.

He let the tab down an inch and said, “Want something?”

“Where’s Tobin?”

“Not here.” He wasn’t smart like the cop outside; he made matter-of-fact statement, put up the tab screen again. That ended it for him.

It didn’t end it for Kit. He demanded, “Where is he? Do you know where he is? If he isn’t here and you don’t know where he is, what’s his home address?”

The cop inched the paper down with righteous reluctance. “You want to see Tobin?”

“Yeah.” Kit didn’t say: What the hell do you think I’m doing, paying off a bet? He didn’t say it because the dumb cop was polite not smart, even if he did prefer the news to Kit’s conversation.

“Can I help you out? I’m Sergeant Moore.”

It didn’t matter who he was and the name didn’t mean anything except that the map of Ireland on his face wasn’t phony. Kit said, “No. I want to see Tobin.”

Moore was ready to return to the sports page. He said, “He’s washing his hands or something. He’ll be back.” He moved his feet off the bench so Kit could sit down. Kit didn’t. He stood there with his top coat pushed back and his hands jammed in his trousers pockets. He’d meet Tobin standing on his own two feet and no nonsense about it.

He hadn’t seen Toby for maybe fifteen years but he wasn’t particularly astonished that the Inspector wasn’t as big as he remembered. He himself hadn’t been six foot two, weight 187, when he was a twelve-year-old kid. Tobin came in through another door pretty soon. He was thin with a thin face and he couldn’t have been more than five eleven. He kept his hat on his head and his cigarette in his mouth. He didn’t look like Princeton ’18. He was surprised to see a stranger in his private hideout because he put his eyebrows up, but he didn’t say anything. He let Kit do that.

Kit said, “You’re Inspector Tobin?” He knew it but he wanted to be sure.

Tobin kept on walking around his big desk until he was sitting in the squeaky old revolving chair. He said, “Yeah,” without moving his mouth or his cigarette.

“Inspector Tobin, the head of New York City’s homicide squad?”

“Yeah.” If Tobin was puzzled, his hat hid it.

Kit’s voice was loud and harsh. “Why the hell did you give out that Louie’s death was accidental?”

Tobin looked up sharp at that and Moore dropped the tabloid. The Inspector’s eyebrows were close together. But his voice was quiet “You mean Louie Lepetino?”

“Yeah.” Kit stood there firm as a hunk of iron, as if he’d never known what it was to shake and shiver and not be able to stop it.

Tobin pushed his hat over to the other side of his head. “Because it was,” he said.

Kit let his voice be very quiet now. “That’s a lie.”

Sergeant Moore asked perplexed, “Who are you, Mister?”

Kit shrugged him off as if the cop were touching his coat sleeve. “What’s that go to do with it?” He said, “For the record, if you have to have it, I’m Kit McKittrick.”

Tobin’s eyebrows were slanted now. “Old Chris McKittrick’s son.”

“Yeah. I’m Chris McKittrick’s son.”

Moore said, “I knew him.”

Kit didn’t look at him. All the coppers knew Chris McKittrick some time or other. He kept watching Tobin, waiting for an answer.

Tobin gave it when he yawned. Kit knew then that it wasn’t going to do any good his coming here with anger for the Inspector. Tobin talked through the second yawn just as if he were some gossipy old hen at a hen party. “I knew Chris myself. So he was your father—”

Kit took the conversation away from Chris. He said, “That hasn’t anything to do with my being here. I want to know about Louie.”

Tobin didn’t yawn now. He opened a penknife and began paring at his thumb nail. “What about Louie?”

“I’m asking you.” Kit’s anger was solidifying; he was calmer outside but inside he was uglier. “I’m asking you what happened to him? And why you called it an accident?”

“Suppose I ask you what you have—had—to do with Lieutenant Lepetino?” He pared his forefinger next.

Kit’s voice was hard. “He was my best friend.” Louie was his only friend. The others didn’t count, not even Ab; college friends, society friends; bar friends, International Brigade friends. Louie was his real friend. And the god-damned New York police sat on their tails and said it was an accident. He’d never believed they were crooked before because he was Chris McKittrick’s son and Chris had pounded the pavements at one time himself. Someone had bought them off. They knew Louie hadn’t jumped out of a hotel window.

“Where you been hiding out?” Tobin shot that one.

Moore elucidated. “You weren’t at the church. Louie had a swell funeral.”

Kit kept his hands clenched in his pockets. “I haven’t been hiding out. I’ve been—” He hesitated. Silly word he had to use, him looking like a well-tailored ox. “I’ve been recuperating at a ranch out West. I didn’t know Louie was dead. No one sent me the papers. I wouldn’t know it now only my mother happened to mention it in a letter.”

Sandwiched it in between a new hat she was getting from Det and a meeting of London Helpers at the Astor. Somebody she hadn’t seen since the night Louie Lepetino was killed. And, more casually, “You know he fell from a window at The George.”

Kit had known then it was a lie. And he’d driven eighty miles to Tucson the next day because the University there kept files of the
Times.
He’d read the whole story and made certain it was a lie. Then he’d driven eighty miles back to the ranch, packed his things, taken the next train east. He couldn’t fly because he hadn’t that much money on hand. He couldn’t cash that large a check so late in the month. And he didn’t wire the trustees for money because he didn’t want anyone to know he was returning to New York until he arrived and began making trouble. He didn’t want the murderer to be ready for him. He couldn’t ask Geoffrey Wilhite for help although Geoffrey had been a good stepfather for twelve years, two years less than old Chris had been dead. Too good to him; he couldn’t ask more. Moreover, he didn’t want his mother to tell him he’d promised to stay a year out West and get on his feet again.

The train had delayed him enough and he didn’t like Tobin delaying him further, holding out on him. He made cold statement. “You know damn well Louie didn’t kill himself.”

Tobin pared complacently. “I didn’t say that. I said it was an accident.”

“You know damn well he didn’t fall out of any window.” Louie’d been raised on New York windows, tenement windows, not guarded like hotel windows.

The Inspector shrugged.

Kit took a step forward. “You know damn well he was pushed.”

Moore asked then, “Do you have any proof of that?”

“Proof? Proof?” He swung on the copper and then he controlled again. “I knew Louie.”

Tobin’s voice was flat. “How well’d you know him?”

His mouth curled. “I knew him from the time we wore diapers.”

Even Tobin lifted his eyes on that. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He sucked his breath in. “And I know Louie wouldn’t jump out of a window or fall out of one. Not in his right mind.”

Tobin got up out of the chair and sat on the edge of the desk. “Maybe he wasn’t in his right mind.” His eyes were half-shut. “Maybe you know he’d got mixed up in a pretty fast crowd—your kind of a crowd, Princes and Duchesses and what. Or maybe you don’t know if you’ve been playing cowboy for more, than a couple of months. What do you think of that, Mr. Wise Guy?”

Kit held on tight to his pockets.

“Maybe you think you know more than the whole New York homicide squad. Maybe you turned kind of psychic on that dude ranch. Or maybe you just got bored and are trying to drum up a good murder.” He scratched a match on his shoe and blew it out. “Arizona lets you rich kids play cowboy as long as you pay for it but I’ll be damned if New York is going to start letting you play detective even if your name is McKittrick. Run along now. Forget it. You’ll have more fun at the Stork than here.”

Kit kept holding on tight until Tobin finished his piece. There was a white line around his lips. He said, “Louie Lepetino was murdered. I’m going to find out who did it. And I’m going to find out why you wouldn’t find out who did it.”

Tobin scratched another match. His voice was sharper and his eyes hard. “Run along, oil can. You stink.”

Kit took his hands out of his pockets. They clenched again and then he relaxed them. He took his time buttoning his top coat. He spoke softly. “All right, gramps. I’ll twenty-three skidoo. Your patter’s as corny as your ideas.” He cocked his hat. “If you ever get the lead out of your feet and the seat of your pants—and your alleged brains, maybe you’ll think of some of the answers without being psychic.”

He walked loud on the battered wooden floor. He turned around at the doorway. He was even grinning a little. “Louie got me a permit from the Commissioner to carry a gun. His being in an
accident
doesn’t rescind that, does it?”

Tobin said, “Good for a year,” and he asked as an afterthought, “Why do you want to carry a gun?”

Kit grinned wider but it wasn’t funny. “To shoot people, dope. To shoot people.” He was laughing as he banged out, through the empty second room, into the stuffy lighted front. The cop was still reading the paper. Kit swung up his bag, said, “Thanks for nothing, Sarge,” and went out into the dark of evening.

He gulped the air thirstily as he walked to Lexington. It seemed hours he’d waited for Tobin but it wasn’t. His wrist said eight-twenty. He hailed a cab, gave the Park Avenue address, and settled against the leather. He might as well go home and make some plans before proceeding. It was even possible that his mother might help out. She’d remembered Louie enough to notice his death. One thing certain she couldn’t be less help than Tobin. And she ought to know that he’d returned so she could double the grocery order. All at once he felt good. He wasn’t at all nervous or depressed. He knew he was going to avenge Louie. Maybe he was psychic after all.

The foyer looked just the same, something conceived by Dali. Lemon puffed satin and darker lemon wood. Old Chris would have fled. The maid who admitted him wasn’t the same. It didn’t surprise him any. Second maids came and went with monotonous regularity in the Wilhite apartment. Geoffrey was an old woman about dusting and not dusting and the way a napkin should be folded. Kit put down the bag, handed her his hat and coat, asked, “Anyone at home?”

She said, “No, sir.”

He showed the girl he was no salesman by walking into the living-room without her suggestion. It hadn’t changed either; he felt about it as he always had, that he had wandered into a beautiful and priceless wing of the Metropolitan Museum. The Wilhites had a wing there but it had nothing on this room. Kit removed the cover from a bit of Chaucerian china, selected a violent pink from Geoffrey’s French gum drops, and ate it happily.

“Where is Mrs. Wilhite?” he asked.

The maid had followed him. She said with stupid eyes on his gum drop, “Mr. and Mrs. Wilhite are in Florida, sir.”

He should have known. Geoffrey Wilhite’s perfect inherited taste hadn’t gone wrong when he’d convinced Beatrice McKittrick she should marry him. No one would ever guess she’d come up the hard way. She’d forgotten it herself. Neither she nor the upper crust she’d cavorted with for twelve years would ever have a picture of a young bride hanging diapers out a tenement window. Maybe she’d laughed more when she and Chris were courting at Tammany’s Fourth of July picnic; hearty laughter didn’t exactly fit in a Wilhite drawing-room; but she had more fun now. And part of it was Palm Beach in season.

He walked to the window, looked out, looked fourteen stories down to the street. He’d never liked living on Park, nothing but the tops of taxicabs to see. On Riverside there was the river, the smoky little tugs. But Riverside wasn’t smart enough for the Geoffrey Wilhites. To Chris it had been an achievement. He turned back to the dumb girl.

“Is Lotte here?” Cooks didn’t come and go; not when they could cook like Charlotte. Someone should welcome him.

“Cook’s night out?” No, that wouldn’t be until Thursday.

“She’s gone to her niece’s in New Jersey. To help with the twins.”

That was that. He said, “I’m Kit McKittrick.”

She didn’t blink an eye to show she understood. “Yes, sir.”

He explained, “Mrs. Wilhite’s son.” There wasn’t a picture of him less than ten years old in the apartment. She couldn’t know. But she wasn’t surprised.

“Yes, sir. I’m Elise. Anything I can do, sir.”

She didn’t look up to a meal. He said, “Bring me a double brandy and soda.” She certainly wasn’t too smart and he warned, “Don’t mix it, just bring me the tray. Never mind about food. I’ll be going out.” He’d known it as soon as he’d learned his mother was away. He was going to see Barby.

He didn’t have to apologize to himself as the shower rained down on his dark head. It was necessary to see Barby, to tell her that he wouldn’t be seeing her for a while. God damn rationalization. It was necessary to see Barby because she was an itch, and she’d been an itch ever since Ab Hamilton had her down for Junior Week six years come spring. He must be under her skin some way too or she’d be married by now. She was twenty-four, three years younger than he. There wouldn’t be a lack of offers. The combination of looking like a model for top hat illustrations and being the daughter of the Burr Tavitons wouldn’t leave her unasked. And she wasn’t like some, take marriage without the ceremony. He might have been married to her himself, not that the Dowager Taviton made any pretense about Chris McKittrick’s son being good enough for a Taviton heiress, but Geoffrey Wilhite’s stepson was a horse of another hue. He and Barby married—that was what he’d wanted for six years. But no, he’d gone junketing off four years ago with an idealistic yen to save Spaniards from other Spaniards. He spat the shower water out of his mouth; definite end to that kind of thinking. But it was healthy that he could think about it again. He dug at his shoulders with the rough towel. When he’d docked last year he couldn’t have. When they’d shipped him out to Arizona five months ago he couldn’t have. But now he didn’t hear deformed footsteps any more.