Murder Keeps A Secret Read online

  Reuben took a shower and got dressed, turning over in his mind as he did so what he would do next. He had to make at least two calls—to Harrison Rowan, and to his friend in the New York City Police Department, Homicide Detective Luis Bautista.

  Frost called Bautista first. By now he felt he knew the police officer well, having worked with him first in connection with the poisoning of his partner Graham Donovan at Chase & Ward. Frost, in luck, reached him the first time he rang. He explained that a friend, David Rowan, had jumped or been pushed out a midtown window the night before.

  “Yeah, I know about it,” Bautista said. “There’s pressure from downtown to take the case away from the guy who caught it at the precinct. If I’m real lucky I may get it.”

  “If a detective is being assigned, does that mean it’s definitely murder and not suicide?” Frost asked.

  “Not necessarily. But ninety percent sure, yes. Off the record, the guy’s office was all roughed up and there were signs he had a real struggle with somebody. But we’ve got to wait for the Medical Examiner’s report to be certain.”

  “You don’t sound too happy about getting involved.”

  “I’m not. I hate political cases.”

  “Political cases?”

  “Yeah, when the Mayor or somebody else downtown gets personally interested. I understand the Mayor was friends with this guy, or his wife, or something, so everybody got the no-stones-unturned speech this morning.”

  “I guess I should tell you I’m interested, too,” Reuben told him. “David Rowan was the son of an old, old friend of mine. He was also my godson.”

  “I’m sorry, Reuben. So what the hell. It looked like I was going to get the case anyway. If you get involved and help me, I’ll go and sign up.”

  “Luis, I’m relieved. I’m going to talk with his father now. Shall we get together later?”

  “Sure. What time?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t figure how long I’ll be.”

  “Look, I’m going to be here on other stuff all morning. Why don’t you call me when you’re finished.”

  “Fine. I’ll do that.”

  Minutes later, Frost was out on Park Avenue, heading for David Rowan’s apartment on Seventy-fourth Street. He had called there after talking with Bautista and had reached a very distraught Harrison Rowan.

  As he went up in the elevator to the apartment, Reuben steeled himself for what awaited him. He realized all too painfully that every encounter he had ever had with the man, except at the time of Valerie’s death, had been pleasant, sometimes exuberantly and joyously so. The apartment door was unlocked, so he entered without ringing. Harrison Rowan was standing in the living room and he walked quickly to greet his visitor. But the sight of his old friend set him to weeping, in deep, uncontrollable sobs. Frost enveloped Rowan with a bear hug, repeating “Harrison, I’m sorry” over and over in a low voice as he tried to calm him.

  Harrison Rowan seemed frail and helpless, his voice weak. He passively sat down after Frost maneuvered him to a chair.

  “My life is over, Reuben,” he moaned. “First Valerie and now … this.” He began sobbing again, his eyes pink and his normally jovial face distorted in unkind caricature.

  “I know, Harrison. I’m very sorry.”

  “It’s not fair. Just when David’s piling up honors one after the other, he has an accident like this.”

  “You think it was an accident?” Frost asked, as gently as possible.

  “What else could it be?” the father answered. “Not suicide. No Rowan has ever done that. That leaves murder, and that’s preposterous.”

  Frost decided not to pass along the sketchy information Bautista had conveyed to him earlier, none of which was consistent with a conclusion that David’s death was accidental.

  “What does Grace think? Is she here?”

  “One question at a time, Reuben, I’m totally drained. Where is she? In her bedroom back there. She was up all night—we both were—and insisted on doing her broadcast this morning. Then she came back here and collapsed.”

  “Didn’t she talk to the police? Doesn’t she have any ideas?”

  “Two questions again, dear Reuben. Yes, she did talk to the police, but she told me they were noncommittal.”

  “And does she have any theory?”

  “She’s uncertain. And with her guilty conscience, I’m not sure her judgment wouldn’t be clouded anyway.”

  “What do you mean, guilty conscience?”

  “Why, her relationship with Tom Giardi.”

  “Who? What are you talking about?”

  “Tom Giardi. Owns a restaurant a few blocks from here. She’s been having a fling with him for months now.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I visit here a fair amount, you know. He seems to be on the telephone ten times a day, talking to Grace while David’s at his office. He came here to see her a couple of times and the two of us went to his restaurant for lunch once. You can’t fool an old man. I could see something was going on.”

  “Did David ever say anything about it?”

  “Oh, no. And I never raised it with him.”

  “So there was no estrangement, no quarrel that you know of?”

  “No. I’m confident it was Grace’s little secret.”

  “She and David weren’t married, were they?”

  “Not to the best of my knowledge. He only got around to divorcing Nancy about two years ago. Or, I should say, she divorced him. She’s a lawyer now, you know.”

  “So there was no reason for this Giardi to wish David any harm?”

  “Reuben, Reuben, what an imagination you have! I’m sure it was an accident. A sad, stupid accident.”

  Frost drummed on the coffee table in front of him as he thought over what he had been hearing.

  “Harrison, I’ve talked to the police,” Frost said, reversing his earlier decision to remain quiet. “The one thing that’s clear is that it wasn’t an accident. David’s office was ransacked. The chances are very, very high that it was murder and very, very low that it was suicide. And I would say zero that it was an accident.”

  Rowan seemed to take in what Frost was saying very slowly. It was several moments before he asked, “When will they know?”

  “I’ve talked to a homicide detective—actually a friend—who says he hopes to have a preliminary report this afternoon.”

  “I forgot. You keep getting mixed up with murders—that partner of yours, then the choreographer, and that food heir.”

  “I certainly wish I’d avoided this one,” Frost said. “But since I haven’t, who could have done it?”

  “My son could be a difficult fellow, but I’m sure there was no one out to kill him.”

  “You can’t think of anyone?”

  “He’s had a lot of problems with the women in his life,” Harrison said. “Not that they would try to kill him.”

  “Like Nancy?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what about Grace Mann?”

  “Oddly enough, I think they were getting along,” Harrison said. “She seemed perfectly happy with David as long as she had her little affair on the side.”

  “And what’s her name, Marietta, Marietta Ainslee?”

  “Oh, yes. She was mad as hell at David.”

  “While we’re on that subject, can you tell me a little bit about this sex code old Ainslee had? Cynthia told me about it after the dinner on Monday.”

  “Yes, and I told her yesterday not to tell anybody else.”

  “I know.”

  “David didn’t say too much about it. Just that Ainslee put down an O each time he had sex. Some days there were as many as three.”

  “Hmn,” Frost said. “How on earth did David figure it out?”

  “He was obsessed by the Os, which were all through Ainslee’s entries in his engagement calendars. Then, when he started interviewing people for the book, he talked with a woman who had gone out with Ainslee after his wife died and befor
e he hooked up with Marietta. She was rhapsodic about a ten-day cruise they took together. David, when he tried to fix the exact dates of the trip from Ainslee’s records, saw that there were a a really large number of Os during the cruise time.

  “At that point he had a suspicion of what the Os were about,” Harrison went on. “There were other ups and downs that confirmed it: none at all for the first few days after his first wife’s death—decent fellow, there. And Os coming off the page when he first met Marietta Greer.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily sound so scandalous,” Frost said. “He could have been a monogamous old fellow, taking one woman at a time.”

  “David didn’t think so. He was convinced that Ainslee kept track of sex only if it was out of wedlock. The Os disappeared for several months after he and Marietta got married.”

  “But then they came back?”

  “Yes, yes. Right up to the day he had his heart attack.”

  “How old is this Marietta, do you know?”

  “She must be fifty-five by now.”

  “Could she have killed David?”

  “Good Lord, what an idea, Reuben.”

  “I hear she lives with some kind of weightlifter. Do you know anything about that?”

  Harrison fitfully described what he had read, mostly in the Washingtonian and the Style section of The Washington Post, about Marietta Ainslee’s “pet,” a thirtyish former championship bodybuilder named Ralston Fortes. The woman had apparently met him at a party, taken him home and immediately tried to uplift him, thus accounting for his enrollment in a creative writing course at Georgetown and the completion of a first (but as yet unpublished) novel Marietta had publicly declared to be “stunning.”

  “I take it you haven’t met this Mr. Fortes,” Frost asked.

  “Oh, no. But his picture’s in the paper a lot—crew-cut and block-headed, in a literal, and probably a figurative, way. Clearly the beneficiary of the new trend that sees bodybuilders as fashionable.” Harrison attempted to speak lightly, but without success; his voice remained dead and unanimated.

  “Do you think I can see Grace if I wait around?” Frost asked, changing the subject.

  “I think she’ll be asleep for a long time,” Harrison answered. “She’s exhausted. As I told you, she was up all night.”

  “What about a funeral?”

  “I haven’t even given it a thought. I suppose I’ve got to. Me … me and Grace, I guess,” Harrison said, sounding old and tired.

  “Would you like to come and stay with us, by the way?”

  “No, no. I’m all right here, as long as Grace will have me.”

  “Well, I hope you’ll let us know if there’s anything we can do,” Frost said, standing up.

  “Reuben, if what you say is true about my son’s death, there certainly is something you can do.”

  “Of course. Anything.”

  “Find the murderer! Find the one who took away the last joy I had in my life!” Harrison Rowan shook with anger as he exhorted Frost, his voice rising.

  “Harrison, I will do everything I can,” Frost replied. He embraced his old friend one last time and hurried out the door.

  Frost briskly walked the four blocks back home. With Harrison Rowan’s plea fresh in his mind, he was determined to talk to Bautista immediately and get started. The murder of his godson must be solved, for his own peace of mind and that of his old friend.

  5

  Getting Started

  Frost called Luis Bautista almost precisely at noon and suggested that they have lunch.

  “I want to go to a place I’ve heard about but have never been to,” Frost said. “It’s called Giardi’s. Do you know it?”

  “I’ve heard of it. But I can’t go there.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a Mafia joint—off-limits to the police.”

  “You mean Tom Giardi is a gangster?”

  “The answer to that is yes. Why are you interested in him anyway?”

  “I’ll tell you over lunch,” Frost said. “If Giardi’s is unsuitable, why don’t we go to my club?”

  “Good. I like that old place. Even if it is sexist. Fifty-sixth Street, right?”

  “Yes. At Fifth. Is one o’clock okay?”

  “Make it one-fifteen.”

  “Fine.”

  Jasper Darmes, the jocular doorman at the Gotham Club, advised Reuben when he arrived that he had a guest waiting in the reception room (a pleasant enough Siberia, but Siberia nonetheless, where nonmember guests were relegated by the portly young Darmes until their hosts arrived; it would not do to have strangers roaming about unaccompanied in the staid premises of the Club).

  Luis Bautista rose to greet Reuben when he came to offer deliverance.

  “Luis! Good to see you,” Frost said. “You’ve shaved off your beard.”

  “Yes. You and Cynthia and Francisca win,” Bautista said wryly. “None of you liked it so I gave up.”

  “You did the right thing,” Frost confirmed, looking up at the handsome face of the detective. “You’ve been South.”

  “Francisca and I went to Florida for a weekend. Only three days.”

  “It looks like you were in the sun longer than that.”

  “Not me, Reuben. My ancestors. They were in the sun a lot.” Bautista laughed easily as he spoke.

  “How is Francisca?” Frost asked, referring to Bautista’s long-standing girl friend.

  “She’s just fine. Scared there for a while when they announced a big cutback at her firm. But she survived okay. The guy she’s secretary to got promoted to chairman of the place.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. They would have been fools to get rid of someone as capable and pretty as Francisca.”

  Once seated in the dining room of the Gotham, Bautista apologized for not being able to go to Giardi’s, and added, “We’re also safer here. Don’t forget there was a gang killing at Giardi’s about six months ago.”

  “So there was. But that doesn’t mean you’ll avoid the Mafia by coming to the Gotham.”

  “Here?” Bautista said, looking incredulous.

  “Not the kind you mean—the crime Mafia. But every other kind. Look over there: the editorial director of a major publishing house, one of the city’s most successful literary agents, the editor-in-chief of one of the news magazines and a couple of capos I don’t know. The literary Mafia.

  “Or over there. The President of the City Council, the head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the Chairman of First Fiduciary Bank, a Deputy Mayor. The political Mafia. Or the political Mafia meeting the chief of the banking Mafia.”

  “I see what you mean, Reuben,” Bautista said, laughing. “What are we? The homicide Mafia?”

  Bautista’s attempt at humor had a sobering effect on the two men, and focused their attention back on the serious business that had brought them together again.

  “Any word from the Medical Examiner?” Frost asked.

  “Not yet. But, as I told you, I think you can assume the decedent was murdered.”

  “No chance of its being a suicide?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  In response to Bautista’s request, Frost described the late David Rowan, his work and his private life, including the three women—his former wife, his mistress and his patroness—who might have been angry with him. He told the detective, as best he could, about the women.

  “It’s curious,” Bautista said after Frost had completed both his narrative and his chopped steak.

  “What?”

  “Those women. All three of them seem to have a man under their thumb, or at least around. Mrs. Rowan has her son, Grace Mann has Tommy Giardi and Mrs. Ainslee has her bodybuilder.”

  “What do you make out of that?”

  “Nothing right now. Except that any one of those able-bodied men could have heaved Rowan out the window.”

  “I have no idea whether they’re all able-bodied. I certainly don’t know about Tommy Giardi, since you won
’t let me get a look at him.”

  “Reuben, if Giardi isn’t able-bodied, I can assure you he has a lot of friends who are.”

  Over coffee in the Club library, Frost and Bautista continued their discussion in lowered tones.

  “Who else might have killed him?” Bautista asked.

  “I’ve told you everyone that I know about. Couldn’t it have been an ordinary robber off the street?”

  “Not likely, as you can tell by looking at the mess in his office. You want to see it? I think you should.”

  “Sure.”

  “Now?”

  “Why not?”

  The two men walked down Fifth Avenue to Forty-fourth Street. Turning right, Bautista pointed out the building from which David Rowan had fallen.

  “Here, Reuben. Let’s cross the street, so we can get a head-on view.”

  They jaywalked to the south side, in midblock.

  “He fell from the fourth window over on the tenth floor,” Bautista explained, pointing upward. “He landed right in front of the curb, there across the street.”

  What had been a dramatic scene on television had now returned to complete normality; there was no evidence, no mark, that an important American historian had died there less than twenty-four hours before.

  “Now take a look at the lobby,” Bautista said. Frost did so, and saw a narrow expanse, with an arched ceiling, extending from Forty-fourth Street through the block to Forty-fifth. They stood in the ornate passageway, with its vermiculated arches, as Bautista explained the building’s security arrangements.

  “At night, the Forty-fifth Street entrance is closed after seven o’clock. After that a guard sits in the lobby, south of the two elevator banks. Everyone who enters or leaves after seven has to go in or come out through Forty-fourth Street and is supposed to sign in or out.”

  “David fell about seven-fifteen, is that right?”

  “Correct.”

  “So the person who pushed him—if there was one—could have entered the building before seven without signing the register.”

  “Correct again.”

  “But that person would have had to sign out.”

  “Theoretically, yes. But this is a very busy building—two big law firms, an advertising agency and a magazine, all with lots of traffic. Federal Express messengers, photo-finishers, pizza-delivery guys—plus lots of people working late and leaving after regular hours. The guard really only makes people sign the register when he’s suspicious—or feeling mean.”