Stewart Sterling
Toast and Coffins
Chapter One
Things in the Vault
The fire was out. Forked tongues of incandescence no longer licked out from gaping windows, high above the street. Cascades of glittering sparks had died down to an occasional glowing sprinkle. The loft building was nothing more than a gutted seven-story chimney spewing up a monstrous toadstool of smoke against Broadway’s red glare. Yet now, with pumpers uncoupling and hose companies taking up, the commotion in West Thirty-eighth Street was at fever pitch.
Brassy gongs clanged the recall for hook-and-ladders. Soot-smudged men in wet rubber sloshed through gutters dragging limp serpents of canvas. Ruddy light from emergency truck headlamps turned sidewalk pools into mirrors reflecting the crowd surging at the fire lines. Still, the tall, lean-faced man kneeling on the curb paid no attention to all this roaring activity at his elbow. He squinted morosely down at the figure stretched out on the sidewalk... and his nostrils flared like those of a horse at a feared, familiar smell.
The corpse before him resembled nothing human. A fringe of silvery hair still circled one shrivelled ear. But the rest of the blackened skull was like a charred potato left too long in a camper’s fire. No one could possibly have identified the body from the cracked, charcoal mask that had been a face...
“Poor old son-of-a-gun!” The tall man laid a palm flatly on the gray fluff which was all the flames had left of the dead man’s shirt front. Slowly and steadily he pressed, watching the split and swollen lips. Presently he scowled up at the apple-cheeked individual perched beside him on the running-board of the insurance patrol. “No smoke in his lungs, Shaner.”
The other puckered up his face as if he’d tasted something bad. “Don’t necessarily signify, Marshal. One of the boys lugged him down the ladder; all the fumes could of been squeezed outa him.”
Chief Fire Marshal Ben Pedley shook his head. “Even if they’d used prone pressure to resuscitate him, there’d still be traces. This guy was cooled before he had any chance to breathe in smoke.”
The cold night air made the crisped skin of the fire’s victim contract with a curious squeak. Deputy Marshal Shaner turned away; made a retching sound. He wiped his lips with a handkerchief. “Cop on the fixed post at the corner claims Whitey had a bum ticker. Old geezer was pretty feeble to be a night watchman, anyways.”
“Hell. He wasn’t too feeble to phone in the alarm.” Pedley’s eyes held the grim bitterness of a surgeon’s witnessing an unsuccessful operation. “Or to go scouting around to locate the blaze. Boys said they found him inside that lacquer shop on the third floor. Took some strength to shove the fire-door back and get in there.”
“Prob’ly figured he could put out the fire with an extinguisher, before the apparatus got here.” Shaner glanced up at the pall of smoke against the midnight sky. “Most likely a flareup from those chemicals hit him soon’s he stuck his puss through the fire-door. Autopsy’ll show if he swallowed flame.”
Pedley pried the fingers of the corpse’s left hand away from the strap of a blackened leather case. He turned the case over, exposed the shattered dial of a watchman’s punch-clock. The hands of the timepiece had fused against the metal face. “Maybe,” the Marshal tapped the case, “when they cut Whitey open, they’ll find out how he could have telephoned the Fire Department at twelve twenty-five, when his clock went on the fritz at quarter past.”
Shaner’s mouth opened. He came over, squatted on his heels beside the body, examined the check-in clock. “Oh, oh! That makes different.”
Pedley said: “It makes something stink. In spades. See what dope you can Jig up on him. Get a couple of pix of this clock-face. And tell ’em to rush through that Med-exam’s report.” He turned toward the building, collided with a paunchy individual picking his way over broken glass. The fat man tripped on a hose-coupling, would have sprawled backward against a hydrant if Pedley hadn’t grabbed him.
“Somebody’s hurt in the fire?” the stout man panted.
Pedley kept his grip on the other’s arm; shifted his position to block a view of the body. “Who wants to know?”
“I’m a tenant. Meyer Rossman. Rossman’s Beautifurs. So was somebody—?”
“How’d you hear about the fire?”
Rossman pushed a protesting hand against the Marshal’s grasp. “I’m not hearing about it. I’m only coming to my office. So I see the fire. Natural I should make a civil inquiry. Ain’t that okay?”
Pedley let him go. “Queer time to be going to your office, mister.”
“What’s queer about it? Overtime I don’t have to pay myself.” The furrier swung around to goggle at an ambulance backing in to the curb. He laid his fingers alongside his cheeks, pulling down the corners of his mouth. “That ain’t no crosstown bus. Who gets hurt?”
“Watchman.” Pedley eyed him, coldly. “Know him?”
“Whitey? Absolutely I know him.” Rossman peered around the Marshal, moaning: “Mine God! Is that thing... on the stretcher...?”
“What’s left of him. Yair.”
The fur man hunched his shoulders and slid his fingers up over his eyes. “To a cinder he’s cooked! I couldn’t look.” But Pedley noted the relief in the man’s face; the absence of concern in his voice...
Rossman sidled toward the building entrance. “There wasn’t anybody else... up there?”
Pedley scratched a lump of scar-tissue on the angle of his bony jaw. “Why? Any your employees working late tonight?”
The plump man clasped and unclasped his hands nervously across his paunch. “About this I ain’t positive.”
“Thought you’d been up in your office, yourself?”
The furrier avoided his eyes. “Did I say so?”
Pedley reached out, seized the V of the man’s coat-lapels, yanked him up on tiptoe. “Don’t give me that. Where you been tonight?”
“No place but mine home.”
“Where you live?”
“Flatbush. Is Brooklyn.”
“So all of a sudden, in the middle of the night, you decide you ought to come to New York and do some work!” Pedley released him with a shove that sent the fat man staggering back against the dripping wall.
“Please!” Rossman ducked his head, held up an arm to ward off a blow. “One hundred percent truth I’m telling. I’m home, listening on the radio—”
“You didn’t hear about the fire on the radio.”
“I don’t hear about it at all.” The furrier lowered his arm. “It’s only on account of this phone call, I’m getting worried.”
“Who called you?”
Rossman straightened his necktie. “I couldn’t tell. It’s about twelve o’clock. The telephone rings. Right away I’m answering. But there ain’t nobody on the line.”
Pedley slipped a hand under the furrier’s elbow, pushed him along the sidewalk, into the lobby. “You get jittery every time somebody calls a wrong number?”
“It ain’t then I’m worried.” Rossman’s eyes bulged at the confusion of plaster, charred wood and glass. “Only after I’m thinking maybe it’s Miss Fallucci trying to get me and I’m calling the office without getting her.”
“Is Miss Fallucci your office manager?”
“Mine bookkeeper.”
“Was she working here tonight?”
“Was here when I left around half-past six. Figures we got to get ready for my lawyer.”
“Why’d you say you didn’t know if any of your employees were up there?”
“Am I positive? Do I know how late she’s staying? I’m expecting she’ll give me a ring before she leaves. Natural, when I don’t hear nobody on the wire, I suppose it’s her, trying to get me. So I call back. When I don’t receive no answer, I’m wondering.”