Drop Dead Cadillac

Chapter One

September 1951
At dead low tide, the air smelled like a rotting corpse. I parked my
Olds 88 on Avenue X alongside the creek that wound in off Dead Horse
Inlet and fought the urge to hold my breath when I stepped out of the car.
That section of Marine Park in Brooklyn had a history as a dumping
ground for mobster-related trash. Their activities actually had little to do
with the odor, but a lot to do with the frequent deaths that local residents
never thought to report to New York City police.
Wiping my brow and then my hands on a clean white handkerchief, I
followed the sidewalk to the front of the house where I had scheduled the
morning's appointment.
The two-story structure on the creek side of the road dangled over the
edge of the swampy wetlands. The building's condition fit in with the
older section of the neighborhood. GIs had rebuilt most of the other
houses after returning from the war.
The front door looked like unpainted oak bleached silver from age and
long time exposure to saltwater. The bottom panel appeared layered with
salt residue as if sprayed by surf for decades.
The doorknob, and a knocker shaped like a head I’d expect from a
Dickens story, appeared bronze with a dark green patina. The knocker felt
coated with a sticky film I did not want on my hand.

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Without again touching the knocker, I rapped on the door, which

echoed inside the house, and heard a deep male voice shout, “Come the
hell in! You do not need to bang down the damn door to get my attention.
I’m right upstairs waiting for you, for Christ's sake.”
His gruff voice carried through an open window directly above me.
After dislodging mud from my shoes by kicking each foot against the
doorsill, I turned the knob, and pushed open the door. It stopped as the
hinges squealed as if locked by corrosion, and left a gap about six or seven
inches wide.
“Use your shoulder if you can't figure out how to get it opened,” he
yelled down as if he expected me to have trouble with the door. I thought I
detected amusement in the harsh tone of his voice.
“Right, why didn’t I think of that,” I admitted, but not loud enough for
him to hear. Money was tight. I needed the job.
The door popped open after two bone-jarring shoves. I entered an old
foyer with a tall oak coat rack, a spittoon, and a ceramic umbrella stand
with two monkeys cast into it. One chimp clutched both ears, eyes wide
with fright. The second had its hands defensively and cleverly molded into
the casting so it appeared trapped and unable to escape its imprisonment,
like a French white-faced mime.
Good God, I thought, what the hell have I gotten into this time?
Several hats and coats hung draped over the coat rack. Dried flowers
that looked like roses and multi-color coneflowers leaned sickly over the
edge of the spittoon. Three partially closed black umbrellas, one with two

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 Drop Dead Cadillac

ribs torn loose from the material, by a strong wind from the looks of it,
and a well-used walking stick with a brass and ivory handle carved into a
duck head stood in the ceramic monkey stand. The duck's beak leaned
over the monkey with its ears covered.
All I could think of that might be missing was an organ grinder, which
I began to suspect I might find upstairs too.
Cheap entertainment. I chuckled wryly, and sniffed the humid,
mildewed air.
A thick almost greasy-looking layer of dust covered the floor, except
for a narrow path down the center where he obviously walked to pick up
his mail and maybe the morning paper. I did not know if he left the house
for any other reason, but suspected that he must, on occasion, to breathe
clean air if for nothing else.
“You coming up, or was the door a bit too much for you, young man?”
he shouted with obvious impatience.
“On my way, sir,” I announced and shook my head as I climbed the
stairs, cautiously stepping over and around tottering stacks of books,
magazines, and weeks' old newspapers judging by the copy of the New
York Times on top of one pile.
I really had planned to arrive without preconceived notions as to what
I might expect from a man known by millions of his readers around the
world. He was a famous mystery writer and notoriously eccentric.
Interpret the last word using its strictest definition.

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 Drop Dead Cadillac

A reporter I knew with The New York Daily News warned me:
“Regardless of the fact that he writes terrific novels, the man is a certified
fruit cake.”
From the looks of the writer's home, I was beginning to believe the
reporter's assessment.
Overhead, I heard him stabbing the keys of a typewriter as if he
wanted to drive each letter through the paper and the carriage behind it.
Before my foot reached the top landing, I heard what sounded like him
pounding on the machine with both fists. I glanced up in time to see him
lift the black machine high. As my line of sight cleared the landing, I
watched him slam the typewriter on his desk hard enough to rattle window
glass, and he shouted, “Death of God! Why doesn’t this damn thing ever
work the way it’s supposed to work? The damn keys jam and the ribbon
twists into knotted balls of crap. Whoever invented this piece of shit
should be castrated and sent straight to hell as a moronic eunuch. If I could
get my hands on the slimeball for just a measly five-seconds his life would
be changed beyond his belief!”
The writer sounded as if he believed an unknown inventor who hated
writers and obviously desired to censure the writer's actual existence by
driving him insane had built the typewriter specifically for that purpose.
That had me wondering if he was armed, or, like the central
protagonist of his stories, despised guns.
One can only hope, I thought with a chuckle I dared not allow escape.

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I entered the room in time to watch him stand with bare feet in his
tattered blue and white striped robe and yank a sheet of half-typed unlined
cream-colored paper from the typewriter. It burped out like a Tommy gun.
I could see the watermark as he passed the paper in front of the
window to his right and dropped the sheet on a stack of finished
manuscript, or letters. He lifted the machine and slammed it on the desk
several times. I expected the key covers to fly off like bits of shrapnel
from an exploded grenade.
Then, he casually opened the window overlooking the creek as if he
needed a breath of air not tainted by rage, turned for the offensive
machine, hefted it, and literally pitched the typewriter through the opened
window.
It made a pitiful whistling noise as it dropped through the moist air,
slammed into the water with a loud splash and sank with a contemptuous
gurgle of gas bubbles exploding as if from a newly stirred boiling witch’s
caldron.
Bat's ears and all. I shook my head, reached under my jacket, and
patted my Colt .45 for a sense of security.
A quick glance behind me let me know I was alone with him. I started
to wonder how good an idea that might prove to be. A look around his
office did not reveal a weapon, but showed me that he seemed neat and
organized. Two walls lined with bookshelves were filled with hardback
books. They stood according to height, with the shortest at the extreme left

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on each shelf. They all had colorful dust jackets, and author names both
familiar and not.
When I finally turned back to him, he glared at me and shouted, “Well,
don’t just stand there looking like you lost your goddamned little brown
and white puppy, go in the back room and get me another one of these
worthless piece of crap machines.” He stabbed the air with an ink-stained
forefinger that indicated the door to his left.
“Okay,” I agreed defensively. “I think I can easily manage that, sir.” I
did not want to get within arm’s reach until I had truly sized him up,
which I thought I was close to accomplishing.
“Good. Any time this morning would be perfect, kid.” He sat and
folded his arms over his barrel chest.
In spite of my trepidation, I found I liked him and grinned as I obeyed.
However, after I walked across the creaking wood plank flooring and
swung open the door to the next room, I froze.
I faced a room lined with shelving. Nearly every shelf in the twelve by
fourteen foot room held sealed cartons. Each carton contained a new
Royal typewriter. Every one that I could see was of the same make and
model, a Quiet De Luxe.
No irony there, I thought with a widening grin.
I started to count and stopped at two dozen.
Nut job is correct, I decided, selected the box nearest the door, and
carried it to him. As I did, I read the side panel: built-in silencing features
and full-length tabulator.

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 Drop Dead Cadillac

I shook my head in wonder. Modern technology that doesn’t work

better, I thought. At least not for him.
The writer pointed to the bare spot on his desk. “Take it out will you
and put the bastard right there.” His thick forefinger tapped the location.
As I tore open the box, I asked, “How long do they work before they
jam up?”
“I guess that depends on the moron who built the damn piece of crap.
Mother of God, these idiots like to try my patience.”
I placed the machine on the desk, tore apart the box, and put it on a
pile of similar boxes alongside the door. He rolled in a fresh sheet of paper
and started typing as if I’d left and he wanted to finish what I had
interrupted.
The machine worked flawlessly, thank God. He typed away for several
minutes, and then sat back and looked in my direction.
“Now here's the reason I wanted you to come by this morning,” he
said as if nothing at all had happened, and turned in his chair to face me.
That was the first chance I had to look at his face carefully, and realized he
had sharp blue eyes, a good set of teeth, most of his hair, and needed a
shave.
Hell, I thought, for a guy in his seventies, he’s looking pretty damn
healthy.
He pointed out the window he’d used earlier to dispose of his
typewriter.

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“See that car over on the other side of the creek? The third one from
the right.”
I counted bumpers, came up with a total of nine visible currently, and
said, “They've been busy. What about it?”
“There were ten of them last night but only nine now. The tenth one
sank into the mud like all the others before it.”
A glance at his profile let me know he was not smiling. “So which one
do you mean? The red Caddy, the blue Ford, or the black Willys?”
This time he tilted his head up and glared at me. “Don’t give me that
wiseass shit to prove how good of a PI you are. I know already since, I
called around to some people I'm acquainted with before phoning you.”
He shook his head with disgust. “All you can see are bumpers, Mr.
Black.”
“Yeah, but I know my bumpers.” I stuck to my guns and felt like we
were trying out for an Abbott and Costello movie. Who’s on first and
why? Right, why’s on second.
I would have considered escape through the window, but knew that the
creek below was littered with raw garbage and maybe dozens of half-worn
out typewriters.
“Like I said before it’s the third one in from the right. Count them if
need be.” He continued as if we were playing five-card stud and he was
unhappy with his hand.
Aces are wild with this guy.

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 Drop Dead Cadillac

“The Caddy.” I pointed to clear up my opinion with some visual

references.
“Must be if you say so, junior, you being a bumper expert and all. Are
you this good with the ladies too?”
Best to ignore that one, I thought, but could not contain a wry chuckle.
What I won't do for money when times are tough.
“What about the Caddy?” I knew we were looking at a local mobster’s
dumping grounds. They would jam a body in the trunk and push the car
into the creek at high tide. Nature, crabs, fish, and gravity did the rest by
erasing evidence and identifiable body parts. However, the mob boys did
not give a damn about that aspect of the dumping. They did it for effect, to
prove a point you did not want to ignore if you waded into the bad side of
a life usually of their creation through drugs, loose women, or gambling.
“Late last night I heard thumping coming from the Caddy. I sleep with
the windows open. It keeps your mind sharp. When the tide came in, the
thumping noise and the rocking stopped.”
“And you're sure the noise came from the Caddy? Why do you think
that?” I mentally filed his open window reference since maybe breathing
the filthy air explained his odd behavior.
“The car bobbed up and down like it was filled with air and someone
inside struggled to escape it, or they got unfortunate while experiencing a
little wild outdoor sex. Moreover, I saw yellow light on inside the trunk.
You could see it oozing out around the edges.”

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“Shit,” I exclaimed without thinking. Mostly, the mob kills them

before dumping the bodies. Would not want them to escape or anything
like that.
Whoever the unfortunates in the Caddy’s trunk were, they must’ve
really pissed off the wrong guy something bad.
“And you called me because you want me to investigate it? What, pray
tell, is wrong with calling the cops instead?”
“I called them first, but they thought I was drunk.”
Or just plain nuts, I added mentally. “Were you drunk?”
“Perhaps some, but not that much. Look,” he said and opened a drawer
on the left side of his desk. Inside was a stack of greenbacks.
Why am I not surprised?
He counted off five twenties and handed them to me.
“There's a hundred bucks. Check it out for me, that’s all I ask. You can
rent a boat and motor at the dock about five hundred feet to the left of my
house for a few dollars.”
“Okay,” I said. “I can do that much.” I really did need the money; rent
came due in just over a week.
“I’ll let you know what I discover when I get back.”
“All I ask,” he said and returned to his typing. He nodded and added,
“Yes, that would be quite satisfactory.”
Getting outside of his house felt good. I walked toward Flatbush
Avenue until I located a small rundown establishment that rented twelve-
foot wooden runabouts with seven horsepower Evenrude outboard motors.

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 Drop Dead Cadillac

When I enlisted to go overseas and fight to defend our nation, I chose

the Army. I never was much of a swimmer so the navy was not even in the
running.
While I was a boy, my father used to take me out in a rowboat several
times each summer. Back then, I was still innocent enough to trust fate to
conclude activities in my favor.
My father, an Elizabethian scholar who named me for his favorite
author, Christopher Marlowe, could not swim and neither could I. Still
can't for that matter. However, I never knew and never found out how I
would fare if I fell overboard.
The wood-framed screen door, had a Wonder Bread metal push panel
across it at waist level, and squeaked when I swung it open. I entered the
rundown shack where, according to the sign outside, one might rent a boat
for an hour or a day like a hotel off 42nd Street.
Seated behind the counter I found a middle-aged guy with his head on
the counter's scarred and battered surface as if he needed to sleep off a
hangover.
I rapped loudly on the scratched, chipped gray Formica and checked
my knuckles for any dirt or slime that might cause disease. The counter
looked like no one had bothered washing it for several years and even had
layers of dried fish scales stuck to the front edge where a metal band
protected it.

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The proprietor leaped to his feet, brown eyes wide and bloodshot. His
mouth moved soundlessly for a few seconds while he used his fists to
scrub at his eyes.
“Any chance I might rent a boat and motor for an hour or two?” I
asked and did not attempt to hide my grin.
“Two bucks a day.” He shook his head sharp and hard, which sprayed
sweat from his long stringy brown hair.
After handing him the cash, I asked, “Which one should I use?”
“Any of them that runs will do. Go ahead and pick your own, buddy,”
he advised and stuffed the money into his shirt pocket. “Grab a can of gas
first to fill the tank. You pay later for what you use.”
Wondering if he was serious, I stared at him until he looked away, and
then went out and found a full gas can.
Reluctantly, I took a shot at the only boat without water in it. The
motor coughed twice and started when I yanked the rope, but sounded like
a TB victim.
The ride out to the Caddy took five or six minutes of serious
trepidation. The boat did not take on water, but the motor sputtered often
enough to make me nervous, and there was only one oar, I noticed too
late.
Honestly, I did not know anything about repairing any type of engine,
gas, diesel, or electric. They started, I drove or whatever. They did not
start; I called a mechanic or repairman. Simple as pie.

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The hood and front bumper of the Caddy were stuck deep in the mud,
wedged in at an angle that kept the trunk and rear seat dry at low tide.
Water from my activities lapped over the bottom of the steering wheel.
The passenger compartment, front and rear, looked empty. The keys
hung from the ignition in the on position. The driver’s side window sat
cranked down completely into the door. Eventually, the car would be
swamped and sink into the mud where the crabs waited, sharpening their
spiked blue claws.
I reached in, twisted the key off, and pulled it out. It hung from a
keychain with a dangling red metal heart.
Suddenly, I did not want to open the trunk. Sometimes, I got a feeling
that I was about to step into a mess, find things that would make my life
more difficult, more dangerous.
That's exactly what I felt when I examined the red heart. No man in his
right mind would be caught dead with a red heart on his key chain.
A glance back at the writer’s house let me see that he was watching
through binoculars. I resisted the urge to wave.
Without waiting another second, I aimed the boat for the rear of the
car, and when I floated behind it, I jammed the key in the trunk, turned it,
and pushed the release button.

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 Drop Dead Cadillac

Chapter Two

Caddy trunk lids are huge, and they weigh a ton. This one had giant
coil springs and when I lifted it, the lid flipped up like a jack-in-a-box.
However, there was no clown inside with a smiling face to frighten and
then amuse a child. The trunk held a pair of nude corpses and several
happily dining blue claw crabs. I could not see how they got inside, but
there they were, and the dead did not seem to care.
Not surprisingly, one of the human victims was female, the other one
male. For reasons I will never understand, the crabs seemed partial to the
male's lower anatomy.
Both victims lay in love’s final embrace. I did not see any clothing, but
obviously, from the way their distorted expressions of terror froze their
features while water filled the trunk, both of them had fought like hell to
escape. Once resigned to their fates, they held onto each other and died
while they continued to scream in unison until the water flooded their
lungs, I decided.
So much for his wild outdoor sex theory, I thought wryly, and winced
as one of the crabs moved for a tastier morsel of otherwise restricted
masculine flesh.
Ironically, the tide had withdrawn and left the trunk high and dry after
the bay's salt water had drowned the Caddy’s victims.

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A quick second examination of the trunk showed me that there was

nothing to identify either of them. I did see a new Goodyear spare tire with
a wide whitewall, an unused jack, a jack handle, and, I learned after
flipping it on, a dead Eveready flashlight.
I closed the lid with a reverberating thud and restarted the boat motor.
The sharp crack I heard as I pulled the starter cord was either a sign
that the engine was about to explode, or a gunshot.
A second later, a second crack and the sharp acrid odor of gasoline let
me know that what I heard came from the barrel of a rifle. The small
outboard motor began to burn where the bullet pierced its gas line and
sprayed the fluid onto Epson and all that the side of the engine.
Quickly, I released the hose connection to the external red fuel tank
that sat on the floor by the motor, loosened the hold-down screws, lifted
the engine off the transom, and dumped the motor into the creek. It hissed
and bubbled as it sank to join God alone knew what else that lay in the
mud below. Including a growing catacomb of slightly used and greatly
despised Royal Quiet De Luxe typewriters.
May they rest in peace, I thought ironically.

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 Drop Dead Cadillac

Chapter Three

With one oar, I needed the better part of a half of an hour to get back.
The man from whom I rented the almost seaworthy craft, stood on the
dock with his arms crossed over his narrow chest, above his protruding
beer gut. His white tee shirt bore stains I'd never try to identify.
He tapped his foot, scowled and waved at the spiral of smoke that rose
into and watered his eyes from the cigarette hanging loosely from his thin
pallid lips.
To display my annoyance, I tossed the oar into the boat after using it to
assist me in getting back onto dry land.
“You’re lucky if that’s the only thing I do with that oar, pal,” I advised
him. “Why the hell don’t you have two oars in the boat?” I knew I should
have looked before leaving, but decided to turn it against him.
“There were two in each boat early this morning.” He said defensively,
and glared as if he knew that it was somehow my fault, that the other oar
came up missing.
I walked down the line and checked the other runabouts. All had only
one oar.
“Not any longer, pal,” I said, glanced around and saw a pile of them in
the back of a rusted-out green prewar Ford pickup truck, parked to fade
into eternity behind the building he must’ve used to store his miserable
array of boats over the winter.

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When I pointed at them, he shook his head, ignored my gesture and

demanded, “You owe me fifty bucks for the motor and add a buck for the
gas. Altogether, that’ll be fifty-one dollars.” He held out his dirt-encrusted
hand. It trembled, as if he also needed a stiff drink.
I really did not have patience for people like him; walked over real
close so he could feel my anger, read it in my eyes, and closely examine
the .45 tucked securely into a holster under my left arm, should he desire
to see a possible outcome for his misconstrued decisions.
I reached and grasped his shirt, twisted it hard and pulled him closer.
"What I owe you, pal, could be weighed on the back of a mosquito
with room left over. I didn’t shoot the goddamn engine.”
He put his hands on my upper arms, gripping me as if he wanted to
cause me pain or detain me for a reason his mind struggled to contrive.
Without looking from his face, I released his shirt, lifted the Colt,
jacked in a round, and jammed the end of the barrel against the underside
of his now quivering chin.
“You’ve got five-seconds to release me, pal.”
He dropped his arms and stepped back three paces, bumped into some
pilings.
“Where’s your phone?” I walked in his direction. Judging by his
expression, I thought he might turn and run, maybe dive into the creek and
join the crabs.
“Inside,” he said and followed me into his office.

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After finding some semi-clean rags, I wiped the handset, dialed the
operator, and had her direct my call to the 61st precinct.
“Yeah,” I said to the desk sergeant when he asked if he might be of
help. And then I informed him of what I discovered and where he might
locate the Caddy.
“If you hurry,” I added. “The tide’s coming in. And you might want to
bring a tow truck to drag the car out of the creek.”
“You know I’ve heard about you, Black,” he announced with
something in his voice that sounded like an ominously disdainful warning.
“You’re more fortunate than most,” I told him with phony
cheerfulness. “Want me to wait here for your arrival? Or can you boys
handle this without my assistance?”
“Wait there for us, wise guy. Or we might just find that it's necessary
to drag you down here in chains for our entertainment. Crime has been off
lately, things are a bit slow. The guys are feeling a little bored bringing in
street peddlers and hookers."
My reputation had grown since my fiancée was murdered. I had caught
her killer despite the New York cops, who wrote her death off as a suicide,
which got me thinking that maybe that kind of status was not always such
a good citation.
I told him my employer’s name and finished the call with, “I’ll be
waiting at his house.”
I dropped the handset on the receiver before he could respond, placed
a twenty-dollar bill on the counter, went but if her outside, and sucked in a

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deep lungful of spoiled air, which was an improvement to what I smelled

inside the fishmonger's shack.
The writer still watched through his binoculars as if he wanted to
develop my personality into a character for one of his novels.
He could title it “Sucker for Hire" I thought and walked back.

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