I nodded. “How long had she worked here, Mr. Schuyler?”
“Let’s see... Oh, about three months. I can check and be exact, if you wish.”
“That’s close enough,” I said.
“Wait!” He leaned forward. “Maybe I can help you after all. You asked about her friends. Well, up until about six weeks or two months ago Lucille used to receive calls from some man. Someone named Vince. He called quite often. I’d hear her mention his name when she said hello, of course.”
“But he hadn’t called her recently?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Were their conversations friendly, would you say?”
“Yes. Judging from Lucille’s tone of voice, I’d say they were a bit more than friendly — if you know what I mean.”
“You ever hear her mention his last name?”
“No, I’m afraid not. I couldn’t help but overhear, of course, but I didn’t make a point of tuning in. I’d just hear her say ‘Hello, Vince,’ or ‘Good-by, Vince,’ — you know.”
“Uh-huh. Can you think of anything else that might help us, Mr. Schuyler? You remember anything else from these telephone conversations — anything to indicate that she and this Vince might be planning to get married?”
“Married? Why, no. I’m sure she would have mentioned such plans to me, though. That is, if she planned to take some time off, rather than just quit outright. She’d almost have to, you know.”
“Yeah. Well, is there anything you can tell us, Mr. Schuyler?”
“I only wish I could. As I said, I was very fond of Lucille. I’d be only too anxious to help, if I could.”
On our way down in the elevator, Paul turned to me and grimaced. “A real cold fish,” he said. “As long as something doesn’t scratch him or his own family, he doesn’t give a goddamn. But I’ll bet if one of his daughters got looked at cross-eyed by some guy, he’d be after us to put the guy in the electric chair.”
5.
We drove back to the station house, checked the message spike for calls, read the flimsies in the alarm book to see if there had been any new arrests or detentions that concerned us, and then I called the morgue at Bellevue to see how Lucille Taylor’s autopsy was coming along.
The assistant M.E. to whom I talked said it had just been completed. The cause of death had been a severed spinal cord, resulting from a blow or blows to the back of the neck and head. The lacerations appeared to have been made with a blunt instrument, such as a length of two-by-four. One or more of the blows had dislocated the vertebrae enough to sever the cord, after which the vertebrae had slipped back into place. The assistant M.E. seemed quite pleased that he had discovered this so quickly.
I told Paul the result of the autopsy, changed the official designation of Lucille Taylor’s file from “Suspected Homicide” to just plain “Homicide,” and added the autopsy finding to the original Complaint Report form.
Then Paul and I got down to routine. We collected all the arrest records for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, divided them equally, and began going through them for pickups made near the Hudson River. It was our hope that Lucille’s killer might have been pulled in on some other charge after he had put Lucille in the water. There had been several pickups, but most of them had been too far downriver to look right for us.
Next, we checked the list of men pulled in for morning lineups, starting with the one held Tuesday morning. There was nothing for us there, either.
The phone on my desk rang and Paul, who was closer, answered it. He nodded to me, and I picked up an extension. It was Schuyler, the photographer for whom Lucille Taylor had worked.
“I’m afraid the shock of Lucille’s death affected my memory,” he said. “I’ve just recalled that I did hear her mention that man’s name. That ‘Vince’ I told you about. I remember now that she called him once, while I happened to be passing near her desk. She asked someone to call him to the phone, and she used his full name. I don’t know why, but for some odd reason the name seems to have stayed with me.”
“Fine,” Paul said. “What is it?”
“Donnelly. Vince Donnelly. I remember distinctly.”
“Thanks very much, Mr. Schuyler,” Paul said. “That’s a real help.”
“Well, I certainly hope so. It was unforgivable of me not to have thought of it sooner.”
“It’s only natural, sir,” Paul said. “We appreciate your calling us.” He spoke a moment longer, and then hung up.
“We’ve got a package on a guy by that name, Paul,” I said.
“Yeah. I know. Want me to pull it?”
“Uh-huh. Seems to me he lives on Seventy-second Street, just the way Lucille did.”
Paul went to the next room, brought back the package on Vince Donnelly, and put it down on my desk. “You’re off again, Jim,” he said. “He lives on Seventy-third Street.”
“All right,” I said. “So fire me again.”
Vince Donnelly was twenty-three years old, had drawn a suspended sentence in 1950 on a grand larceny charge in connection with a stolen car, and had been convicted on a similar charge in 1951. He had done eighteen months. Since then he had been pulled in twice for questioning, but had not been booked. He lived less than two blocks from the address where Lucille Taylor had lived with her aunt and uncle.
“Maybe we’ve got ourselves a boy, Jim,” Paul said.
“Maybe. Let’s see what he’s got to say.”
6.
We spent the better part of two hours looking for Vince Donnelly, and then gave up and went back to the station house. Donnelly had moved from the Seventy-third Street address some two weeks before, and we were unable to turn up anyone who knew his present whereabouts.
I called Headquarters, gave them Donnelly’s description, and asked that an alarm for him be sent out. In a few minutes the teletype machine in the squad room began to clack, and Paul and I walked over to it and watched the words form across the paper, just as they were doing in all the other squad rooms in New York.
ALARM 4191 CODE SIG L-1 AUTH HBR SQD. 4:31 P.M. HOLD FOR INTERROGATION — VINCENT C. DONNELLY — M-W-23-5-9-165 — LIGHT BROWN HAIR — BROWN EYES — MUSCULAR BUILD — BIRTHMARK OVER RIGHT EAR — SLIGHT LIMP — UNKNOWN BUT HAS REPUTATION AS FLASHY DRESSER.
“I haven’t eaten yet,” Paul said. “How about some chow?”
I nodded. “Good idea.”
“How about the Automat? I like those pecan rolls.”
“Okay. Sign us out, will you, while I put Donnelly’s package back in file?”
“Check.”
When we got back to the squad room there were two messages for us. One was from Lieutenant Mason, at the Twentieth Precinct, saying they’d picked up Vince Donnelly and were holding him for us. The other was a note to call a Miss Peggy Webb, who had phoned to say she had important information in connection with Lucille Taylor’s murder.
I called Miss Webb at the number she had given. She impressed me as intelligent and sincere, and very tense. She assured me she knew who had killed Lucille Taylor, but she said that she didn’t want to talk about it over the phone. When I asked her to come down to the station house, she refused. I arranged to meet her at the entrance of the Jacoby Camera Supply, on Sixth Avenue between Forty-seventh and Forty-eighth.