But I was losing him and Abby knew it. “Oh, yes, Detective Flannagan, please tell!” she warbled, batting her lashes like crazy, striving to soothe his disgruntled male ego with an ooze of feminine charm.
It worked. Flannagan’s face turned from purple to pink. He smirked, loosened his tie, leaned way back in his chair and put his feet up on his desk, filthy shoe soles facing me. “In the first place, Mrs. Turner,” he said, “I never even came close to arresting Willard Sinclair for the murder. We didn’t have enough proof for that. A matching blood type is strong, persuasive evidence, but it isn’t conclusive. So, however low your opinion of the NYPD may be, your precious faggot friend wasn’t in danger of going to prison or receiving an unjust death penalty. That’s not the way we do things around here.”
“Oh, no? Then why were you constantly harassing and abusing Willy-calling him a queer and a pervert and a psychopath, and insisting that he was the one who killed Gray? Is that just the way you get your kicks?” I took one last drag on my cigarette and angrily crushed it in the ashtray.
Flannagan jerked himself up straight and put his feet back on the floor. “You have no right to question my methods, Mrs. Turner,” he said, speaking through clenched teeth. “And you’re wishing on a goddamn star if you think I’m going to explain my investigative procedures to you.”
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. “But will you at least tell me why you put Black-I mean, Detective Dash on my tail?” I went on. “Did you really believe that
I was the murderer? I know that the person who discovers the body often turns out to be the killer, but how could you possibly think-”
“I didn’t!” Flannagan interrupted, unaware that the hasty placement of his words made his response very funny (to me, at any rate). “I never for one moment thought you were the killer,” he grumbled. “I had you followed for different reasons entirely.”
“Oh?” I said, curiosity mounting. “And what would those reasons be?”
In spite of his vow not to explain himself, he did.
“I had a hunch you were going to snoop around on your own,” he began, obviously eager to reveal and extol his own skills of detection. “I had heard about the other murder cases you meddled in and wrote articles about, and I figured you would try to do the same stupid thing in this case-especially since you and your friend discovered the body.
“So I decided to have you followed,” he continued. “I called in Johnny Dash and told him to stick to you like gum, for two simple reasons-one, to see if you might turn up any good clues or actually track down the killer-and two, to protect you if you did. And considering the fact that Dash saved the lives of you and your friend today, I’d say my decision was a damn good one.”
He had a point.
A damn good one.
“I see,” I mumbled, staring down at the floor, ashamed that I’d been giving Detective Flannagan such a hard time when he’d been doing such a good job (or so it seemed).
If it weren’t for Flannagan and Dash, I humbly admitted to myself, Abby and I would be on the way to the city morgue right now-or in transit to the Staten Island landfill. I was trying to find the right words to express my heartfelt apologies and gratitude when Abby jumped in and saved me the trouble.
“Hey, bobba ree bop!” she whooped, catapulting out of her chair and darting over to Johnny Dash, who was standing to one side of the desk, leaning against a wooden file cabinet. “You’re my hero!” she cried, flinging her arms around his neck and planting a huge (and I’d be willing to bet openmouthed) kiss on his unsuspecting lips. Then she hopped over to Flannagan, threw herself down on his lap, pulled his face down close to hers, and repeated the procedure.
Both men were shocked, but pleased. Breathless and blushing. And for several long minutes after Abby danced away and returned to her chair on the other side of the desk, their chests were so puffed up with pride I thought they’d pop.
I hated to put a damper on the friendly fireworks, but I was still curious about the case. “Was Detective Dash following me the night of the Fourth, when I went to the party at the Keller Hotel?” I asked. “The night I got hit on the head?”
“Yes, of course he was,” Flannagan answered. “Who do you think called us when you were assaulted? How do you think we got there so fast?”
“So Blackie… I mean, Detective Dash was the anonymous caller you told me about?”
“Right.”
“That settles it then,” I said. “The man who knocked me out was Aunt Doobie.”
“The one and only,” Flannagan said. “But his real name is Christopher Dubin. He’s a thirty-four-year-old lawyer with a wife and two kids. He’s also a covert homosexual who was so terrified you would find out who he really is and expose his sordid secret to the world and his wife, that he bashed you on the head with a rock and took off like a bat outta hell.”
Christopher Dubin. Married. Two kids. “How did you get all this information?” I sputtered, begging for more. “Did you find him at the Mayflower Hotel? Did he confess to hitting me? Did he admit that he was Gray’s lover?”
Blackie, not Flannagan, answered my first question.
“Never went to the Mayflower,” he said. “Didn’t have to. After Dubin hit you, he took off in a black limo and I memorized the plate number. Then-after I made sure you weren’t hurt too bad-I called the station for help and put out a citywide bulletin on the car. As soon as Detective Flannagan and the boys arrived at the scene, I jumped in one of the squad cars, got a location on the limo from the radio, and then tracked the vehicle to its final destination-an East 65th Street brownstone owned by one Randolph Godfrey Winston.”
“Baldy,” I mumbled.
“Yeah, the guy
is bald,” Blackie said. “Completely. I saw that when he and Dubin got out of the car and went into the building.”
“So what happened next?” I asked. “Did you go inside and question them both together?”
“No, he did not!” Flannagan broke in, obviously annoyed that Blackie was claiming so much attention. “Detective Dash stayed outside and kept watch on the building until I got there-which wasn’t until after midnight since you took so goddamn long to tell me the truth about the attack and your own little private investigation.”
“I’m sorry about that,” I said, really meaning it. “I was wrong. I should have told you everything from the very beginning.”
“You’re goddamn right you should!” Flannagan snapped, tossing me such a gloating, self-righteous sneer I considered retracting my apology.
I didn’t do it, though. I was still aching for more details about the case, and I was afraid Flannagan would clam up if I crossed him again. “So you conducted the interrogation yourself, Detective Flannagan?” I probed. “That night in Baldy’s brownstone?”
“I sure did,” he boasted, sitting back in his chair and lighting up a Camel. Then, snorting two streams of smoke from his nostrils like a dragon, he launched into the longest, most drawn-out, most self-aggrandizing monologue you ever heard in your life. I’m not kidding! He described and explained every single moment of his session with Baldy and Aunt Doobie (i.e., Winston and Dubin), but his focus was on
himself, not the subjects of his inquiry, and his zeal was reserved for his own “extraordinary” (his word, not mine!) powers of discovery. (He determined this, and he uncovered that, and then he established this, and he exposed that, and then he… well, you get the picture.)
After all was said and done, Flannagan had delivered a lot more details than I’d bargained for. (Don’t worry! I won’t make you wade through a word-for-word account of his grandiose dissertation. I’ll edit out all the pretentious stuff and repackage the rest in a nutshell. Am I a considerate writer, or what?)