CHAPTER SEVEN
Though Ava was starting to earn the respect of some of the men at the station, she and Frank both knew they’d have a much easier time of things if Frank was the one who went searching for the information regarding yesterday’s witness. It was easy enough to do: just a simple check of the logs from the day before and then speaking to the officer on the scene.
They had a name and address within five minutes. As they headed back out to the street, Ava took a moment to appreciate the way in which she and Frank were starting to work very well together. It made her wonder if the romantic spark between them might actually be something of a hindrance. The argument from the previous night still hung between them, but they both seemed to have done a good job of letting it take a back seat as they forged on with this case. A case, she reminded herself, that Frank had made sure they got.
“The witness’s name is Albert Long,” Frank said as they got back into the car. “Interestingly, he lives just about two miles or so away from the Candle’s Wick.”
“Any explanation as to why he didn’t stick around for very long?” Ava asked.
“No, and I did ask that very same question. The only answer I got was that Mr. Long was in a hurry—he had places to go and people to see. Was in the middle of business errands. And because the story was so basic and easy to believe, they let him go.”
“Yeah, that sounds about right.”
“What do you think about the rest of the band?” Frank asked. She could tell he was simply trying to get in the way of her anger toward the way most of the precinct approached these things. And that was fine. Maybe they did need to reanalyze things before they spoke with Albert Long.
“I think they’re trying to protect their friend, first and foremost,” she said. “But I think they also might be hiding something as well.”
“It’s the witness who is throwing me off. That part of town, a wealthy white man calling out that he saw a murder and then wanting to get away as quickly as possible once the cops show up. In my experience, it’s usually the other way around. Anything they can do to seem important or to feel as if they’re helping…they’re never going to miss that opportunity.”
“And alternatively, the band doesn’t seem to be all that hung up on it at all,” Ava pointed out. “The one man who claims to have seen the murder and could prove it is nowhere on the scene and they just…what? Accept it?”
There were just too many questions remaining for Ava to feel as if she could get any sort of handle on it. She thought it through as Frank led them back in the direction of Harlem. She also started to contend with the fact that every time she stepped back into a club, she realized just how much she missed performing. It opened her eyes to the idea that maybe she wasn’t ready to put that part of her life behind her after all. Of course, she had no idea how she’d also manage to include singing in her now-packed schedule—not if she wanted to remain a somewhat present mother to Jeffrey.
She wrapped these thoughts up as Frank pulled the car along the side of the street. The building they’d arrived at was a two-story brick building. In the main window along the front were the words Banking Solutions and Trust. Frank led the way and Ava did not complain. She’d grown accustomed to it in situations like this. Much like most manual labor, the financial field was another area where women simply weren’t treated as equals. She thought it was stupid, especially given the shape the stock market and banks were currently in. Still, she understood the social structure and also knew when not to upset conventions.
Immediately upon entering, they stepped into a sizable foyer. The floors were made of a sleek wood and there were two very nice, elegant chairs in the back corners. The place smelled of papers, cigars, and pipe tobacco. Directly off of this foyer was a large room occupied with just three desks and several polished filing cabinets. Only one of the desks was occupied, taken up by a spindly man with gray hair. He was scribbling something down in a ledger while a pipe lolled out of the side of his mouth.
He barely looked up as they entered, though he gave a very vague greeting. “Good afternoon,” he said. “Can I be of some help?”
“Yes,” Frank said. “We’re Detectives Wimbly and Gold, NYPD. We’re looking for a fellow named Albert Long.”
At this, the man looked up. He offered a confused smile but little else. “That’s me. Detectives, are you? Is this about the murder I witnessed yesterday?”
“It is,” Frank said. Without being invited to do so, he stepped out of the foyer and into the larger room.
When Long got up from his desk, he did so with the gait and annoyance of a man who wanted it to be well-known just how inconvenienced he felt. “Well, I’m not sure what else you need me to say,” Long said. “I told the two officers that arrived all I had seen.”
“We understand that,” Frank said. “But we also understand that you got out of there pretty fast.”
“I did. I’m very busy these days. With the banks in crisis and money taking a nose-dive…things are quite busy. It’s just been me these last two weeks. One partner quit and the other…well, if you must know, he hung himself in his bathroom. So it’s been me, trying to salvage all of this work by myself as of late.”
“Okay, so let’s make this very quick,” Frank said. “As you can imagine, we have a man currently being held in prison over a murder you say he committed. But you are the only man who saw the murder. So I need you to go back through what you saw. Every little detail you can recall is going to help us tremendously.”
Long sighed, but put his hands in his pockets and reclined against his massive oak desk. “I was coming back from a client’s office. It’s a smaller financial firm, just getting up on its feet about two blocks over from the club—the Candle’s Wick. As I was coming along, I saw a colored man in an alleyway, standing over what looked to me like a dead body. From where I stood, it looked as if the colored man was in the middle of his attack.”
“And you’re sure the man was dead?” Ava asked. “You never heard the two men speaking?”
“No. I just saw the colored man standing by a fallen white man. I was close enough by that point that I able to look down the alleyway and actually see them. And the moment they came into view, the colored man not only saw me, but he was in the middle of his attack.”
“And how did he attack?” Frank asked.
“There was something in his hand. I’m not sure what it was. Maybe some sort of musical instrument. He used it to hit the man over the head. The man dropped right away. His knees sort of went to jelly, you know? And right away, I yelled. I’m ashamed to say that was about all I did. I’m not exactly young anymore, not in great shape, so I wasn’t going to run up there and assault the man. I’m not the police, of course. So I simply yelled.”
“And what happened then?” Ava asked. She thought she saw a piece from his testimony that didn’t line up at all, but she needed to analyze it a bit more.
“And then two people came out of the alleyway door. They saw what had happened and yanked him back inside.”
“And you stayed there until the police arrived, right?” Ava asked.