I was still wondering about the detective’s hurried trip down here when I saw him approach the fire chief. “Lieutenant Fisk. I was upstairs on a related investigation when the precinct relayed your call to me.”
“Here’s what we got, lieutenant. A body in the Dumpster. Pretty badly burned, but it looks like a young Caucasian male.”
“Oh my God!” Clare Goddard gasped at my side. I steadied her with my hand.
A fireman produced a short ladder, and Fisk climbed up to take a look. “We’ll want someone to identify him, if possible.” He glanced across the garage and saw Fenton and Robock coming from the elevators, with Susan close behind.
“We heard there was a body,” Robock began.
“Which one of you can identify him?”
Les Fenton stepped forward, running a tongue over his dry lips. “I can.”
He climbed up on the ladder, took one look and started to retch. “I... I think so. He’s so badly burned I can’t be sure.”
“It’s Rager?” Susan asked.
“I think so,” Fenton repeated.
She let out a low scream that grew in volume. Clare hurried to her side and led her away.
“What do you think now, Simon?” I asked.
“It would seem that Satan gave him a very brief view of Hades, and then tossed him back with the rest of the rubbish.”
It was late in the afternoon, nearly six o’clock, before Lieutenant Fisk got around to questioning Simon and me. “I’m sorry you had to wait so long, but I’ve been busy following up leads,” he told us. The hotel had reclaimed its Skytop Restaurant and the questioning sessions had been transfered to a small meeting room on the third floor. Now, however, the Millbrook Manor seemed to be swarming with uniformed police and detectives. Fisk was no longer alone.
“Has the body been positively identified?” Simon asked.
“It’s Rager, all right. We haven’t completed the fingerprint and dental checks, but Thomas Robock has also identified him, in addition to Fenton. And Susan Yantz has described a small strawberry birthmark on the back of his neck that matches one on the body. If she’s feeling better tomorrow, she’ll view the body, too.”
Fisk’s attitude seemed to have changed completely from the earlier session. What he’d viewed as a publicity stunt had turned into a particularly ugly death. Now he was even willing to admit he knew who Rager was. “With rock stars,” he went on, “the first thought is always that the death could be drug-related in some way. Maybe he was high and set himself on fire. Maybe he had a fight with a dealer over money. We’re looking into everything.”
“At the close of his act he called upon Satan to take him to Hades,” Simon pointed out.
“Yeah, well, that’s more in your line than mine, Mr. Ark. There’s no way I can hang this on Satan, so I’m looking for a more down-to-earth explanation.”
“Have you looked into those fireballs of his?” I asked.
“Yeah. His manager says they’re purchased from a magicians’ supply house. It’s a fast-burning sulfur compound, though Rager was always fooling around with variations for his act. The idea is, it burns fast and goes out quickly, before there’s any danger of the fire spreading.”
“One of them could have ignited in his pocket, though,” I said.
“After he conveniently climbed into that Dumpster?”
Simon Ark stirred restlessly. “You two are concentrating on the death of Rager rather than his disappearance from that elevator. The disappearance is the key to the case. If he was not transported to Hades, what did happen to him?”
The detective turned back to me. He seemed uncomfortable conversing with Simon. “You’re a publisher or editor, or whatever. Are there any books about disappearances from elevators?”
“Not that come to mind. Certainly there have been murders in elevators. Fatal Descent by John Rhode and Carter Dickson is one such novel, and James Yaffe’s first short story, “Department of Impossible Crimes,” is another example. Both use entirely different solutions. Ronald Dahl’s “The Way Up to Heaven” does not have an impossible crime, but in a sense it too is about a murder in an elevator. Cornell Woolrich’s “After Dinner Story” has a murder among several people trapped in an elevator at the bottom of the shaft. Unfortunately none of these fictional situations applies to the present circumstances.”
Lieutenant Fisk shook his head. “A man is seen by several witnesses to enter a glass elevator which takes him up sixty floors and makes no stops on the way. He is observed inside the elevator. Yet when it reaches its destination he has vanished, replaced by a ball of fire. Can such things be, or is everyone in this case lying?”
“The ways of the Devil—” Simon began, but Fisk immediately interrupted.
“Let’s rule out the Devil as a suspect for the moment. He’s beyond my jurisdiction. Any idea why someone might want to kill Rager, assuming it wasn’t drug-related?”
“None,” I said. “But then we never even got to meet the man.”
“We don’t really know Rager, do we?” Fisk fretted. “Maybe if we knew him better this whole thing wouldn’t be so much of a mystery.”
He was finished with us, but as we were about to leave, Thomas Robock came into the room unannounced. “I have to speak with you, lieutenant. It’s about Rager.”
Fisk motioned the bald man to a chair; Robock barely glanced in our direction, and since Fisk didn’t order us out I could see Simon was intent on remaining. “All right, what is it?” the detective asked.
“There’s a great deal of money involved here. I made contract payments to Rager last week, advances on his next album. I believe I may have been swindled.”
“How could Rager swindle you if he’s dead?”
“That’s just the point. Are you certain that body is his?”
“Reasonably certain. His dental records are in England, but Fenton identified him and so did you.”
“I wasn’t that sure. The face was badly burned.”
“The clothing seemed to be his, what was left of it. He had a birthmark in the right place on his neck. Physically the body was the right size.”
“The clothing could have been switched. And you could find someone that age and size any time of the day right over on 42nd Street.”
“Let me get this straight, Mr. Robock. You believe Rager faked his own death as part of a plot to swindle you out of some money?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time such a thing has happened.”
Simon Ark spoke up from the sidelines. “Mr. Robock, does your company carry an insurance policy on the lives of your recording artists?”
“What? Well, yes, on some of the biggest stars. Quite often our projections of sales are based upon the star’s continuing to perform and promote the album. Not everyone is Elvis Presley or the Beatles. If they die or stop performing, they can be quickly forgotten by today’s kids.”
“Did you insure Rager’s life?”
“I think so, yes.”
“For how much?”
“A million dollars,” he said quietly.
“So Rager was worth more to you dead than alive?”
“Hardly. His records had a potential for making five times that much. If I was after the insurance money, would I be sitting here trying to convince you Rager might be still alive?”
“We’ll know soon enough whether it’s him or not,” Fisk promised. “His fingerprints are on file, and Susan Yantz is going to view the body in the morning.”
The disappearance and apparent murder of Rager was all over the TV news that night, and was still good for front-page headlines in the following morning’s papers. Shelly knew of Simon’s interest in the case, but she didn’t ask me too many questions. Perhaps she thought by not talking about it the whole thing — and Simon Ark — would simply go away.