“Deeply appreciated, Abe, and convey my thanks to Paul.”
Tony Cerutti spoke up. “I have information on Emily Tunbull’s brother, Chester Malcuzinski,” he said, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice.
“Ah! The Florida businessman! Shoot, Tony,” said Carmine.
“I had an anonymous call from a guy with a Texas accent you could cut with a knife,” Tony said. “According to Tex, Emily Tunbull’s brother has a criminal history in New York state. He went by the name Chez Derzinsky — skee with a ‘y’— and was known in certain circles as the Pollack. He frequented New York City midtown between 1957 and 1964, and ran a scam using a really beautiful foreign woman as bait. Not prostitution, Tex says. Extortion. The girl, who was simply his pawn kept obedient by threats to harm her family, would batten on some rich old guy visiting town — conventioneers mostly — and tell him she was going to be kidnapped by a gang of Germans and forced into whoring. Chez pretended to be a German thug, and the old guy would cough up anything between five and ten big ones to buy her freedom. None of the victims would ever press charges, but Tex gave me the name of an NYPD Vice detective who would confirm the story.”
Everyone was sitting up straight, astonished at any kind of break in this damnable case.
“What did the Vice detective have to say?” Carmine asked.
“Tex’s story was true. Our Chester Malcuzinski’s prints match their Chester Derzinsky, who served a year in Sing Sing for fraud when he was twenty. His only conviction. Just when New York started to heat up, Derzinsky and the girl disappeared. Derzinsky reappeared a few months later in Florida as the realtor Chester Malcuzinski — his birth name. He is Emily Tunbull’s brother. The girl totally vanished, but she sounds a lot like Davina Tunbull,” Tony said triumphantly.
“Good work, Tony,” Carmine said. “Finally the pieces are beginning to fall into place.”
Still suffering the backlash of his stupidity in questioning Mr. Q.V. Preston, Tony glowed.
“If the girl’s Davina, how much does Max know?” Donny asked.
“He doesn’t suspect Davina,” Abe said positively. “It would kill him, I think.”
“Maybe not, if your wife has enough power over you to con you into printing twenty-thousand books without authorization,” Donny said quickly.
“I don’t think it affects C.U.P.,” Buzz said. “Tinkerman and what was in the drawer are more important by far. The longer the case goes on, the more the Tunbull deaths look like a detour on a highway, and that goes for John Hall as much as for Emily.”
“I agree that Tinkerman holds the answers,” Carmine said, looking suddenly brisk. “Certainly Emily posed no threat to the killer because her death is utterly divorced from Tinkerman’s. She threatened Davina, and it was Davina poisoned her. She got the tetrodotoxin from our man, but she wouldn’t kill to protect him. Just herself.”
“You’re right,” Abe said, nodding, “though John Hall is a mainstream murder our man committed.”
“Emily’s just dust in our eyes?” Buzz asked incredulously.
“No! Emily represented a different threat to a different person — Davina,” said Carmine. “I have no idea what the threat was, but Davina knew it as dangerous to her welfare.”
“We need search warrants for the Tunbull premises, Carmine,” Abe said. “Printery, Imaginexa and home.”
“I’ll see His Honor today.”
Carmine met Judge Douglas Wilbur Thwaites upstairs in Commissioner John Silvestri’s eyrie at five o’clock. Jean Tasco had laid out plates of olives, cheese-and-pickle nibbles, and pâté thickly spread atop savory wafers. The drinks cabinet was full, the ice bucket was full, and the assortment of glasses were all of the thin, plain type the Judge was known to favor. Auspicious.
He was sitting with Silvestri and the Captain of Uniforms, Fernando Vasquez; the latter, Carmine had been thrilled to sense, was earmarked as Silvestri’s choice to replace him when he retired as Police Commissioner. As Carmine had feared he himself would be John’s choice, Fernando’s advent had come as an unexpected gift from heaven. No way Carmine wanted the pains, politics, predicaments and pussyfooting around that the Commissioner’s post involved. Fernando was a shoo-in.
Of course he was holding the floor, and speaking with fervor about his passion — paper.
“It’s not the same world, Judge,” he was saying earnestly. “With the hotshot defense attorneys taking more and more of the limelight and bigger legal staffs researching old cases, you as a judge have no idea what you might be hit with. Including flaws in police procedure or disruption of the evidence chain. I tell you, police procedure and method has to be more than just perfect — it has to be documented in quadruplicate.”