Penelope Read online

  “Not a dress, a suit.”

  “Is the back door in the pantry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it kept locked?”

  “Not during the day,” Martha answered.

  “Then anyone could have walked in and stolen the suit?”

  “We don’t have thieves in our building.”

  “I’ll give you a medal of honor,” Comaday said nastily, then cut the connection. He sat back in his chair and Bixbee took over in a quietly professional manner, asking Penelope:

  “Who are your cleaners, Mrs. Hastings?”

  “I think—well, I think that now we are using the Two Square Cleaners on Third Avenue.”

  “Lieutenant,” Bixbee turned to Rothschild, “go out and put a fire under them. I want to know who picked up that yellow suit—if it was picked up—and what time and exactly what happened to it.”

  Rothschild nodded and left the room, and those who remained in the commissioner’s office remained in silence—broken finally by another pronouncement by Hastings, concerning the police and their methods.

  “You have top brass right here, Mr. Hastings,” Comaday said bitterly. “We’re doing what we can. Do you want me to call the mayor?”

  “It might not be a bad idea—”

  Whatever this might have led to was interrupted by the buzzing of the commissioner’s intercom, and when he switched it on, the voice of his secretary informed him that a detective from the Nineteenth Squad was outside with a priest, and that they had been sent up to his office by the sergeant at the desk downstairs.

  “Why not?” Comaday shrugged. “Why not send everyone up here? Yes, I’ll see them.”

  They came in. There was Detective Eagin, and with him a small, sad-eyed man introduced by Eagin as Father Mike Donnelly from St. Ignatius.

  “What can we do for you, Father?” Comaday asked. “We’re kind of busy and kind of personal here tonight.”

  “I think it fits in,” Eagin ventured, only to be halted by a glare from Comaday.

  “Well, my goodness,” Penelope said, “I have always felt that there is a kind way and a nasty way of doing everything. Mr. Comaday’s just in the habit of being a policeman,” she explained to the priest. “He has a heart of gold. Please sit down, Father.”

  The priest nodded. He was not young, and hardly in the best of health, and he seated himself with the gratitude of those who suffer from chronic fatigue. Comaday opened his mouth and closed it, and Cohen observed that Penelope always caught the commissioner off balance, like a small but adroit boxer. The priest glanced at Penelope with the intimacy of recognition, and then realized that he had mistaken her for someone else. Penelope smiled helpfully at him.

  “Do make yourself comfortable, Father,” she said. “I do think that police stations are such grim places—built to scold people, not to comfort them. But I suppose they are as inevitable as sin.”

  The priest nodded, and Penelope took upon herself the introductions, and she did not slip once except with the first name of Captain Bixbee. She always felt that both first and last names should be used in a proper introduction, and now she was quite proud of herself. She knew that her husband considered her shortcomings as a hostess one of her great failings, and among those shortcomings was a form of paralysis that overtook her and frequently caused her to forget her husband’s name, among others.

  When she had finished, the priest took out of his pocket an envelope, and out of the envelope a slim package of bills, which he laid on the commissioner’s desk. He sighed regretfully.

  “What the devil—” Comaday began.

  They were thousand-dollar bills. The men crowded around the desk. Bixbee counted the money, just separating the bills with his fingernail. Then Penelope picked them up, smiling with pleasure, and Cohen said, rather sadly:

  “There could be fingerprints on that money, Mrs. Hastings.”

  “No. Oh no. These aren’t real.”

  “Real they are,” Comaday nodded.

  “Could I see them?” Hastings asked.

  “You might as well. Everyone else has handled them. Are they yours, Mr. Hastings?”

  “But thousand-dollar bills!” Penelope protested.

  “I imagine they are part of it,” Hastings said. “They’re coin of the realm, all right. I can’t be sure until we have a chance to check the numbers, but I strongly suspect there are no other thousand-dollar bills floating around the city at this moment.”

  “You mean it’s stolen money,” the priest said with resignation.

  “I’m afraid it is, Father,” Cohen replied. “Could you tell us how you came by it?”

  “One does hope,” the priest sighed. “I won’t say I prayed, but I did hope. You know, it’s a common opinion that we are loaded with money, especially at a place like St. Ignatius, but that is not so, not at all. And ten thousand dollars … we could take care of the poor of the parish for years.”

  “You’re in charge of the St. Vincent de Paul Society?” Comaday asked.

  “Yes. Today, I went to the poor box in the church, and I found this. I suppose I knew all along that it wasn’t real.”

  “Then you don’t know who put the money in the box?” Cohen persisted.

  “I just may …” He looked from face to face uncertainly.

  “This is not privileged, Father?” Comaday said.

  The priest shook his head.

  “You must not be intimidated by them, Father,” Penelope said. “On the other hand, I cannot believe that the church would shelter criminals.”

  “That’s just it,” the priest said unhappily. “Can I believe that she was a criminal? Do criminals give to the church?”

  “Then it was a woman!” Cohen exclaimed.

  “‘Give to the church!’” Comaday snorted. “Just what did she give to the church?” He picked up the bills and threw them down on his desk. “This isn’t money. It can’t be spent. No bank will change these bills. What did she give you?”

  “Oh, Mr. Comaday, that’s hardly fair.” Penelope smiled. “To take away from Father Donnelly the solace of an act of charity … one can sell such bills anywhere in Europe—at least for fifty cents on the dollar, and in Switzerland for eighty or ninety cents on the dollar. Even I know that, so surely a clever thief would be possessed of the same knowledge.”

  “I’m afraid she’s right,” Larry Cohen said, “for what ever comfort it gives you, Father Donnelly. And this is a very clever thief indeed. You did see her, then?”

  “I think so.”

  “Clearly?”

  “Churches are not well lit. But I saw her.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Well—about my size, trim, some deformation of the nose, as if it had been broken at one time, black hair—”

  “And what was she wearing?”

  “A fur coat of some kind. It might have been mink. I can’t say for sure.”

  “What kind of a women, Father?” Larry Cohen demanded. “Cultured, educated?”

  “I really wouldn’t presume to say,” Father Donnelly answered, shaking his head and smiling apologetically.

  “A good woman?” Cohen asked thoughtfully.

  “I don’t understand that.”

  “You’re a priest,” the district attorney persisted. “You are concerned with good and evil—”

  “You mean was she a woman of ill repute?”

  “I think you know exactly what I mean, Father.”

  “Oh, come off it, Larry,” said Comaday. “That’s a Goddamned annoying question, and I don’t see how it enters.”

  “But I do,” Penelope cried. “I think it’s a wonderful question, Mr. Cohen, and I do believe I know what you’re after.”

  “What is this money?” Father Donnelly asked quietly. “I believe that you must tell me. I know that you have your own methods, but I wish to know what this money is and how it got into our church.”

  “You tell us,” Bixbee growled.

  “You’re an old bear,”
Penelope said to him. “The fact is, Father, that my husband’s bank was robbed today, and he thinks this money is part of the loot. And I think it is wonderful and romantic that it got into your church; and I have no intention of sitting here and watching them take it and letting you go away empty-handed.”

  “But they must take it, my dear,” the priest sighed—his eyes caught meanwhile by the still photos that lay on Comaday’s desk. He picked one of them up. “I do believe that’s the same woman. I couldn’t be sure, and I think there’s a difference in her face—it could be a mark of some kind. But that might be on her other cheek.”

  Bixbee handed him the other photos and he glanced through them, nodding. “Oh yes—yes, it could very well be the same woman.”

  During this, Rothschild re-entered the room. Cohen whispered a quick explanation to him; and Penelope took her checkbook out of her purse and began to write. When she had finished, she tore the check loose and waved it back and forth to dry the ink.

  “Penelope,” her husband said slowly and ominously, “just what the devil do you think you are doing?”

  “Drying the ink on a check,” she answered matter of factly.

  “For what?”

  “For Father Donnelly’s church,” she said casually, handing the check to the priest.

  He looked at it, thanking her automatically in the turmoil of his own thoughts. “My dear Mrs. Hastings, this is so kind of you, so very thoughtful, but you have no obligation, really …” and then his voice trailed away and his thin hands began to shake.

  “Are you all right, Father?” Cohen asked.

  “This check,” he whispered, “it’s for ten thousand dollars …”

  “Which is the amount you lost,” Penelope nodded. “We never did get around to answering Mr. Cohen’s question—”

  “She was a good woman, I think,” the priest answered.

  “Then should her gift be wasted?” Penelope began—and was interrupted by the crash of her husband’s exclamation. She had never quite believed the delayed reactions so beloved of the television and film people, yet here it was in fact—the long interval before James R. Hastings shouted:

  “What?”

  “James …” Penelope tried.

  “Did you say ten thousand dollars?” he roared at Father Donnelly, the little priest practically shriveling under the wrath of his shout. “Goddamn it to hell, did you say that she gave you a check for ten thousand dollars?”

  The policemen struggled for patience and control. Larry Cohen, on the other hand, had inherited enough from his father to make the district attorneyship more of an avocation than a vocation, and he said to Hastings:

  “Oh, come on now, Mr. Hastings, you have no call to talk that way to Father Donnelly. He didn’t ask for any money, and he did his damn best to help us get to the bottom of this. It was your bank, not his church, that was robbed, and I think you owe him an apology.”

  “For what? For conning me out of ten thousand dollars?”

  Cohen was at the point of losing his own temper now, and he shouted back at Hastings. “A remark like that is damn close to being actionable, sir. I don’t know how priests feel about such things, but if I were in Father Donnelly’s place, I would sue you for every nickel you own.”

  “Please, please,” Father Donnelly protested. “I don’t want trouble, certainly not between a man and his wife—I don’t want to be the cause of trouble—”

  “And we’re not even Catholics!” Hastings shouted.

  Father Donnelly held out the check toward Penelope, but she ignored it and said, “James …” The icy edge of her own voice astonished her, but there it was. “James, I think we have heard quite enough. I never thought we would have to discuss such matters in front of strangers, but may I remind you that this is my own money, my own bank account—and deriving from my own inheritance. I can do as I wish with it.”

  And to the priest, “Keep the check, Father Donnelly. I doubt that it comes from as good a source as those thousand-dollar bills, but it will help.”

  She turned to her husband. “And now, James—I think we have been here long enough.”

  She walked to the door. Lieutenant Rothschild opened it for her and held it after she had passed through. Hastings looked around the room, from face to face. Nothing was said. Then he walked out after his wife.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  After Penelope and her husband had departed, silence descended upon the men in the room. Commissioner Comaday sank into his desk chair, studied the ten nails on his ten stubby fingers, and then—when the silence had become heavy enough to suit his mood—addressed himself to the priest.

  “If I were you, Father,” he said glumly, “I would get me to the bank at the stroke of ten and cash that check.”

  “We need money,” the priest said defensively. “We don’t throw it away. We teach children, and we feed the hungry—”

  “Don’t apologize,” Comaday said shortly.

  Larry Cohen took the priest’s arm and led him through the door. Outside for a moment, Cohen grinned and said:

  “Don’t let it keep you awake, Father.”

  “You mean the check’s no good?”

  “I mean the check is as good as gold, tomorrow or next week. You know, I have a notion—I have a notion that this was something she never did before.”

  “It’s possible,” the priest said.

  “And it’s almost as if the same person gave you ten thousand dollars twice,” Cohen said lightly.

  “Now that you mention it,” the priest smiled, “it is. I have had a very curious day, Mr. Cohen, believe me.”

  “Indeed, I do believe you,” Cohen nodded, and then he said good night to Father Donnelly and went back into the room, where Lieutenant Rothschild was reporting on his brief investigation regarding Two Square Cleaners.

  “You guessed it,” Rothschild said to Bixbee. “Sure, it was obvious. They never picked up the suit. It was stolen. Someone had opened the pantry door, reached in, and walked off with it. Just like that—it was a standing invitation.”

  “Why?” Larry Cohen asked.

  “Why?” Rothschild snorted. “So you tell me why! Why does someone pay eleven hundred dollars for a dress or a suit or whatever the hell it was? Why does someone steal it? How the hell do I know? Am I a philosopher?”

  “No price tags on it,” Cohen said. “I’d hate to tell you what my wife pays for her clothes, Lieutenant, because if I did you’d be damned if you’d stay in the same room with me.”

  “I got an open mind, Mr. Cohen. I’m a Democrat.”

  “What are you getting at, Larry?” Comaday asked. “You ask me, you got a habit of putting your foot into it. So it did my heart good to hear you talk up to Hastings. The hell with my heart! He’s only the president of the City Federal Bank with thirty branches in the five boroughs—that’s all. I like being commissioner. It gives me ulcers, but I suppose I like it—otherwise, why the hell would I be police commissioner? I suppose Bixbee likes being a district commander. You don’t enjoy being a district attorney?”

  “It breaks up the day,” Cohen shrugged.

  “So you can tell me what your wife pays for her clothes,” Rothschild said. “My own wife sticks to Abraham & Straus, but that’s because we are Brooklyn peasants.”

  “I bleed for you,” Cohen said pleasantly. “The point is; Lieutenant, that I can’t tell what my wife’s clothes cost any more than you can—”

  “She tells me,” Rothschild said. “We got channels of communication.”

  “And my wife tells me—only our own channels of communication get somewhat eroded. She figures I’m a rich man’s son, and so a price tag should be meaningless. All I’m getting at is that no one can see a woman’s suit lying on a counter, worn, crumpled, and know what it’s worth—unless this is an expert.”

  “Okay,” Comaday said. “So the thief did not know what the suit was worth and only needed a yellow skirt to pull a job.”

  “And got one that fitted perfe
ctly.”

  “It happens,” Comaday said. “At least you got to admit that it gives us the lead we want. Whoever pinched the suit went in and out of that building.”

  “We’re on it already,” Rothschild said. “There’s twenty stories of large Park Avenue building and it could have been a maid or a delivery boy or a contact of one of them—maybe three, four hundred possibles, but we’ll go through them and we’ll turn up that suit.”

  “Or maybe you won’t,” Cohen said.

  They all looked at him now, and Comaday wanted to know just what he knew that the others didn’t, and why. Cohen shrugged. “I don’t know one blessed thing right now, I’m just spinning. But if you have some sporting blood, Commissioner, I’ll put twenty to a hundred that I can guess where that yellow suit is.”

  “I don’t break my own laws,” Comaday growled, “not with cops watching, anyway; and if you’re so goddamn smart, where is the suit?”

  Cohen sighed and picked up the telephone on Comaday’s desk and said to the police operator, “Would you call the New York Times society page and find out who is the volunteer in charge of the Sloan-Kettering Thrift Store, the one on Second Avenue in the Eighties, I believe. And when you get the name, locate her and put her through to Commissioner Comaday’s office.”

  “I’d like to see your nose rubbed in the mud this time, Larry,” Comaday said. “I don’t know where the hell you are going or what tack you are on, any more than I know what pulled me into this.”

  “Thirty branches in five boroughs,” Cohen grinned.

  “Go to hell.” He was going through his pockets. “Where the devil is my wallet? That’s another thing—”

  “I think you’ll have it in the morning,” Cohen said smugly; and whatever Comaday might have replied was interrupted by the ringing of his telephone. He motioned to Cohen, who picked it up, and then Comaday flicked the loud-speaker switch. The tooth-locked tones of a well-bred, well-educated East Side New York lady demanded to know why she was being called by the New York City police—as if this were not only unheard of, but insupportable.

  “This is Mrs. Hendley Johnson,” she began, and then Cohen explained gently and carefully to Mrs. Johnson that he was speaking for Commissioner Comaday, who apologized abjectly for disturbing her at her home—she had guests—but had to know who was in charge of the Second Avenue Sloan-Kettering Thrift Store between twelve noon and closing time today.