“That’s all. And then before I knowed it, she gone away again, and I never seen her no mo’ after that.”
Clerk at Globe Liquor Store:
“Yes, I remember selling this. A thing as unusual as arak we don’t sell more than a bottle a year. No, it was not her suggestion. I happened to come across it on the shelf and I thought it would be a good opportunity to get it off our hands, as long as she’d asked for something unusual and at the same time potent. She said she was making a present of it to a friend, and the more exotic it was the better pleased he would be. I’d already shown her vodka and aquavit. She decided on arak. She admitted she’d never sampled any of it herself. One funny thing: on her way out she gave me a peculiar smile and said, ‘I find myself doing so many things these days that I’ve never done before.’
“No, not at all nervous. As a matter of fact she deliberately stood aside and told me to go ahead and wait on a man who wanted a bottle of rye in a hurry, while she was making up her mind. She said she wanted to take her time making a selection.”
Wanger’s superior said a week later: “So you think the two cases are related in some way, do you?”
“I do.”
“Well, in just what way?”
“Only in this way: the same unknown woman is involved in both.”
“Oh, no, there’s where you’re wrong, it couldn’t possibly be,” his chief overrode him, semaphoring with both hands. “I’ll admit I had some vague notion along those lines myself when I spoke to you last week. But that won’t stand up, man, it won’t wash at all! Since then I’ve had time to look over the composite description Cleary obtained of her and sent in. That knocks it completely on the head. Take the Bliss one out of the files a minute, bring it in here... Now just look at the two of them. Put them side by side a minute.
There’s not even a similar modus operandi involved, or anything like it! One pushed a young broker’s clerk off a terrace. The other dropped cyanide into the drink of a seedy ne’er-do-well in a mangy hotel. As far as we know, the two men not only did not know the women who brought about their deaths but had never heard of each other. No, Wanger, I think it’s two entirely different cases—”
“Linked by the same murderess,” Wanger insisted, unconvinced. “With these two diametrically opposite descriptions staring me in the face, I’ll grant you it’s like flying in the face of Providence to dispute. Just the same, all those physical differences don’t mean much. Just break them down a minute, and look how easy it is to get the smallest common denominator.
“Blonde and redhead: any little chorus girl will tell you how transitory that distinction can be.
“Five feet five and five seven: if one wore a pair of extra-high heels and one wore flat heels, that could still be the same girl.
“Fresh and sallow complexions: a dusting of powder takes care of that.
“The difference in eye coloring can be an optical illusion created by the application of eye shadow.
“The seeming difference in age is another variable, likewise dependent on externals such as costume and manner.
“And what else is left? An accent? I can talk with an accent myself, if I feel like it.
“A point to remember is that no single person who saw one of these women saw the other. We have a complete set of witnesses on each of them separately. We have no single witness on the two of them at one time. There’s no chance of getting a comparison. You say there’s no similarity in modus operandi, but there is in every way. It’s just the method of commission that was different; you’re letting that mislead you. Notice these ‘two’ unknown women involved. Both have a brilliant, almost uncanny faculty for disappearing immediately afterward. It amounts almost to genius. Both stalk their victims ahead of time, evidently trying to get a line on their background and habits. One appeared at Bliss’ flat while he was out, the other cased Mitchell’s room — also while he was out. If that isn’t modus operandi, what is? I tell you it’s the same woman in both cases.”
“What’s her motive then?” his superior argued. “Not robbery. Mitchell was a month and a half behind in his room rent. She bought out an entire loge at $3.30 a seat, and threw two of the seats away just to be sure of getting to meet him under favorable circumstances. Revenge would be perfect, but — he didn’t know her and she didn’t know him. We not only can’t fit a motive to it, but we can’t even apply the explanation that usually goes with lack of motive. She’s not a homicidal maniac, either. She had a beautiful opportunity to kill the Hodges girl — and the Hodges girl is the juicy, beefy, lamebrain type that’s almost irresistible to a congenital murderer. Instead she passed it up, warned the girl off for the girl’s own sake.”
“The motive lies back in the past, way back in the past,” Wanger insisted obdurately.
“You sifted through Bliss’ past — broke it down almost day by day — and couldn’t find one anywhere.”
“I must have missed it then. I’m to blame, not it. It was there, I didn’t see it.”
“We’re up against something here. D’you realize that even if these two men were still alive they themselves couldn’t throw any light on who she is, what she did it for — because they didn’t know her themselves, seem never to have seen her before?”
“That’s a thought to cheer one up,” said Wanger glumly. “I can’t promise you to solve this, even though you’ve turned it over to me. All I can promise is not to quit trying until I do.”
Wanger’s record on Mitchell (five months later):
Evidence: 1 envelope, typed on sample machine on display at typewriter salesroom, without knowledge of personnel.
1 arak bottle, purchased Globe Liquor Store.
1 ticket stub, Loge A-1, Elgin Theater.
Case Unsolved.
Part Three
Moran
Like the beat beat beat of the tom-tom
When the jungle shadows fall,
Like the tick tick tock of the stately clock
As it stands against the wall—
I
The Woman
It was his experience that grownups always asked such dumb questions. Questions about things that were so self-evident that you yourself had long ago learned to take them for granted. But they always had to know the answer. Especially when you wanted to do something else. Something really worth while, like bouncing an oversized brightly colored ball along the sidewalk. Like this lady that was holding him up right now. Bending down and being so kind and all that, and keeping him from having any fun.