I located Schuyler’s home address in the directory, picked up Paul Brader at the Twentieth, and we drove downtown toward Schuyler’s apartment house.
8.
In his office, Schuyler had been as cool as they come. Standing in the doorway of his apartment, with his wife and daughters just behind him, he was something else again. We had counted on surprise and the presence of his family to unnerve him, and we weren’t disappointed. He had divided his life into two parts, and we had suddenly brought the parts together. He stared first at Paul and then at me, moistening his lips.
I had the engagement ring in the palm of my hand, and now I opened my fingers slowly and let him see it.
“What is it, dear?” his wife asked, and one of the girls moved a little closer, her eyes questioning me.
“I–I can’t talk here,” Schuyler said, in what he probably thought was a whisper. “My God, I—”
“Get your coat,” I said.
He nodded rapidly. “Yes, yes — of course.”
We rode down in the self-service elevator, phoned in a release for Vince Donnelly, and crossed the street to the RMP car. Paul got behind the wheel and I got into the back seat with Schuyler. Paul eased the car out into the heavy Lexington Avenue traffic.
“We have the ring, Mr. Schuyler,” I said. “We got a positive identification of it. You returned it after Lucille Taylor had been murdered. We’ll have no trouble taking it from there. Not a bit. We’ll put a dozen men on it. We’ll work around the clock. We’ll get a little here, and a little there — and pretty soon we’ll have you in a box. The smartest thing you can do — the only thing you can do — is make it a little easier on yourself.” I paused. “And make it a little easier on your family.”
“My girls!” Schuyler said. “My God, my girls!”
“Tell us about the other girl,” I said softly. “Tell us about Lucille.”
It was a long moment before he could keep his voice steady. “She threatened me,” he said at last. “She said she was going to my wife and daughters and tell them about — about us. I knew I could have patched it up with my wife, but — my daughters... God, I—”
“You admitted to Lucille that you’d never intended to divorce your wife and marry her?”
He nodded almost imperceptibly. “I had grown a little tired of her. She was pretty, but so — so immature. I told her, and she became enraged. I was surprised. I hadn’t thought she was capable of so much fury. We had walked down Seventy-second Street to the river. We were sitting on one of those benches down there, watching the tugboats. When I told her, she began to curse me. She was almost screaming. I couldn’t see anyone else nearby, but I was afraid someone would hear her. I tried to calm her, but she got almost hysterical. Then she slapped me, and I grabbed her. I–I don’t know just what happened then, but somehow I made her head hit the back of the bench. And then I kept doing it — kept beating her head against the back of the bench.” Suddenly he covered his face with his hands and his body slumped. “And then — and then I carried her to the railing across from the bench and threw her into the water.”
I watched the neon streaming by. “But not before you stripped that ring off her finger, Schuyler,” I said. “You sure as hell didn’t forget the ring, did you?”
He didn’t say anything.
As we neared the Harbor Precinct, I could hear a tugboat whistle, somewhere out there on the cold Hudson, a deep, remote blast that was somehow like a mockery.
“God,” Schuyler murmured. “My poor girls, my poor little girls...”
And don’t forget poor little Lucille Taylor, I thought, while you’re feeling sorry for your victims.
Swamp Search
by Harry Whittington
I noticed the blue-gray Caddy on my road, but had no time to watch it twist and bounce the twenty miles through Everglades sawgrass, palmetto and slash pine from the Tamiami trail to my place.
I’d been out all morning in the helicopter hunting for strays and just as I glimpsed the Caddy, I saw one of my Santa Gertrudis heifers caught in a bog. Lose a cow in that ooze, you never see her again. I needed every cow I had, every penny I could earn on my farm. I was in hock, even paying for the ’copter on installments.
I engaged the pedals, the wings rotated slowly and I hovered over the bawling cow. The pinch-rig I’d made was an ice-tong affair of steel and leather I let down on my cable.
“Take it easy, baby,” I told the cow. “You’re too valuable to lose in that goo.”
The cable winched down, I closed the pincher about her belly and started upward. The sucking noise of the ooze and bawling of the cow rose above the revving of my motor.
I let the heifer swing a moment to impress her, then set her down in high grass, cussed her once for luck, reeled in my line and peeled off toward the house where the Caddy was parked in the yard.
She was sitting in the Caddy looking around when I walked toward her. What she saw was bare sand yard without even a slash pine growing in it, brown frame house of four rooms and porch, coal-oil lamps and outhouse. Rugged, but beautiful to me. It had belonged to my folks. They’d died while I was in a Chinese prison camp. It got so this lonely place was what I’d dreamed of coming back to.
“How’d you get this far off the trail?” I said. “My road is hard to find.”
She got out of the car, smiled. Except for her shape she wasn’t terrific; wavy brown hair, deep-set brown eyes and squared chin. “Not as hard to find as your house. I had a ball getting here — the car scraped between the ruts.”
“It’s been dry or you’d never have made it.”
“I’d have made it.” Something about her voice made me look at her again, closer.
Her gaze touched my helicopter, and didn’t move on. She smiled again. “You Jim Norton?”
I nodded and she said, still watching the ’copter, “I’m Celia Carmic... Mrs. Curt Carmic.”
Carmic. I stared. The whole state had been alerted in a search for Curt Carmic. He had crashed in his private plane on an Everglades hunting trip. After a week of intensive searching, the Coast Guard had abandoned him as dead.
I invited her up on the porch. “I’m sorry about your husband, Mrs. Carmic.”
“Yes.” She shook her head as though still unable to believe it. She made a wad of her handkerchief. “Curt and I were — very happy, Mr. Norton. He was — well, several years older than I, but he was a vital man, had the world in his hand.” Her head tilted. “I don’t say Curt didn’t have enemies. Every strong man does.”
Her eyes were moist, her voice sounded full of tears. She told me about Carmic. She glossed over the way he got a discharge from the Marines in 1943, but said that from 1945 he’d had great success, headed two companies making parts for the Korean police action, Carmic Defrosters.
“Curt was due in Washington on the Monday following his trip. They were investigating his war profits. Curt was ill at this injustice, his doctor told him to rest. His idea of rest was a weekend hunting trip in the Everglades. But more than anything, Mr. Norton, he wanted to come back and clear his name.” Her chin quivered. “I can’t believe Curt is dead.”
I didn’t know what to say. All I wanted down here was peace, and a chance to make a living my way. I’d been in the world she talked about. I’d had it.
“They searched for Curt for a week. I know they were thorough and didn’t find a trace. I can’t give up. Can you understand that, Mr. Norton? I’ve got to find him. That’s why I came to you.”