She took a handkerchief from the front of her housedress and touched it to the inner corners of her eyes. “There wasn’t anything like that. She’d take a drink now and then, but she certainly never used anything stronger. And she never went out with a married man in her life, that I know of. It’d be ridiculous. Why she could pick and choose from... from just hundreds of them.”
I got out my notebook. “We’ll have to have a positive identification. Can you tell me her next of kin?”
“She doesn’t — didn’t have any relatives here in New York. She was from Kansas City, Missouri. I think her brother’s still there. Her mother and father are dead, I know. She said once that that’s all the family there was, just she and her brother.”
“That her real name — Barbara Lawson?”
“Yes.”
“You know her brother’s first name?”
“Alan. She talked about him all the time.”
“We’ll contact him. What else can you tell me? Just remember that everything’s important.”
She sat staring at the wadded handkerchief a moment. “Well, she didn’t concentrate on any one man. She liked modeling, and she wanted to stay in it a few years yet before she settled down. She’d already been in it quite a while, because she started when she was only seventeen. She did a lot of juvenile work.”
“Was she pretty successful?”
“She used to be. But it isn’t like being an actress or a singer or something like that. After you’ve been in it a few years, say four or five, the agencies think people are tired of your face. Then you have to start taking just about anything you can get. Barbara was as pretty as anybody, and she was only twenty-one, but she’d been around quite a while.”
“It was getting a little tough, then?”
“Well, yes. The really good assignments were getting farther apart — but she could have worked for another two or three years. No matter what kind of modeling she did, it would still have paid her more than she could make almost anywhere else. And she wasn’t trained for anything else, you know. It was either model or get married, and she wasn’t quite ready to get married yet.”
“Let’s get back to her men friends. You ever hear any of them threaten her, or did she ever tell you about a threat?”
“No. Like I said, she didn’t go out with any one man in particular. When a man would start to get serious about her, she’d shy away from him. You know. She’d just keep turning him down when he asked for dates, until he gave up.”
“Any of these men take it hard?”
“I guess maybe they did, but she never said anything about it. I think she would have told me, if any of them had threatened her or anything.”
“You’d needn’t be hesitant about this, Miss Tyner. We’ll keep what you say confidential.”
“There isn’t much to tell. She led a pretty normal life, I’d say. She got along with almost everybody, and everybody seemed to like her. She... she was one of the nicest girls in this town, she really was.” Her voice was strained now. “I... I feel a little sick. I think I’ll go home.”
“I have a police car downstairs. I’ll drop you off if you like.”
“Thanks. Just give me a minute to get out of this dress.”
It took her closer to five, and when she came back in a blouse and skirt, carrying her man’s hat box, I noticed she’d been crying.
I kept questioning her, as gently as I could, all the way uptown to West Seventy-second Street. It didn’t add anything to what I already knew. I let her out of the RMP in front of her brownstone and had just started away from the curb when she came running back to the car.
“I just this second remembered something,” she said breathlessly.
“Good. What is it?”
“There was somebody who bothered her. Somebody who wouldn’t take no for an answer, I mean. But all this was months ago, and I’d forgotten about it. It was somebody from her home town, from Kansas City. She met him when she went home on a visit. He must have fallen pretty hard, I guess, because he followed her here to New York. She tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen. She said he even quit his job so he could come.”
“This was several months ago, you say?”
“Four or five.”
“What happened?”
“He got her phone number and address from the directory and kept calling her up and waiting for her outside her building. Once he even went up and waited for her in front of her apartment. But she wouldn’t let him in, and she wouldn’t go out with him, and finally he called and told her he was going back to Kansas City.”
“She ever mention him to you again?”
“Yes, she did. That’s just what I’m getting around to. He showed up again... let’s see... it was about two weeks ago. She said he’d called her and begged her to let him see her, and that she felt sorry for him, but she just couldn’t stand him and she didn’t want to let him think she was encouraging him. She told me he was crying on the phone, and everything, but that she didn’t know what else to do.”
“What was his name?”
“Carl. I don’t know his last name. She mentioned it a couple of times, but I just can’t seem to remember it.”
“Did she appear to be afraid of him?”
“No. If she had, I would have thought of him right off when you asked about men threatening her. No — she seemed to just feel sorry for him, because he’d worked himself up so, and all, but she never hinted that she thought there was any harm in him. He was kind of a nuisance, and he embarrassed her, I guess, but I’m pretty sure she wasn’t afraid of him.”
“We’ll get on it right away,” I said. “Thanks very much, Miss Tyner.”
“You think he could be the one?”
“He sounds pretty good, from what you’ve told me. We’ll see what he’s got to say.”
“If there’s anything I can do for Barbara, will you let me know? Maybe you’d want me to pack her things... or something...” She turned her head away quickly.
“We’ll let you know if there’s anything like that,” I said.
She nodded, without saying anything, and walked slowly back toward her brownstone.
8
It was almost three o’clock when I got back to Barbara Lawson’s apartment. The uniform sergeant who had been subbing for me said I’d had calls from both the BCI and the detective I’d asked to check the super’s alibi for me. I called the detective first. He told me Gus Brokaw had been where he’d said he had been. The detective had checked with the woman and her common-law husband, and he was convinced that Walt and I could cross Brokaw’s name off our list of suspects. He had told the vice men about the woman and her husband, and the pair would be placed under surveillance by detectives specializing in vice work.
I called the BCI and found that they had no package or prints on Edward Henderson or Gus Brokaw, but that they did have a package and prints on the switchboard operator, Benjamin Thomas. Thomas’ rap-sheet extended back to 1937, showing six jail terms for disorderly conduct, four for vagrancy, one for unauthorized use of an automobile, two for petit larceny, and one for felonious assault. He’d finished the sentence for felonious assault in April of 1951, and there was no record of his having been in trouble since then.
The tech crew had finished and gone back to Headquarters. I called the crew’s chief and asked him to match Benny Thomas’ prints with those the crew had lifted in Barbara Lawson’s apartment. He told me they were already at work on it, because BCI had told him as soon as they’d pulled the package on Thomas and seen the rap-sheet, and that he’d let me know if they made a match.
The uniform sergeant had been watching me as I talked on the phone.