“Honestly, it’s hard to say. There are so many men that work here that took hard hits when the market crashed. I had over a dozen men quit and a few that tried to stick it out but just couldn’t recover. Alfred wasn’t one of them, though.” He chuckled here and then pointed up to the ceiling “Honestly, I think Alfred only stuck around to see how tall they could make this building.”
“What do you mean?” Pawlowski asked.
“You gals haven’t heard of the Race to the Sky?”
A bit of anger flared up in Ava. Even when they showed badges and it was known they worked for the NYPD, so many men still saw them as gals, broads, dames…whatever the current popular term might be. It was insulting but the sad part was that she didn’t think most men were even aware of it.
“Just the basics. It’s some competition between William Van Allen and H. Craig Severance, right?”
“That’s right, exactly. There are three buildings here in the city and the owners are in this really immature but exciting little competition to see who can go the tallest. It’s our building here, the Empire State Building, and the Chrysler Building.”
“You’re right,” Pawlowski said. “Thatdoessound very immature.”
“And who is in the lead at the moment?” Ava asked, finding it hard to envision a building taller than the one she’d climbed earlier in the morning—though she did know that the Empire State Building might be very close.
“Sad to say, it’s the Chrysler Building,” White said. “The very same building Alfred used to…well, you know…” He cleared his throat and seemed to shift his emotions a bit. “That spire on top of the Chrysler Building was a surprise. No one knew it was going to go on there and then Walter Chrysler had the spire put up without even telling anyone. Damn thing pretty much went up overnight. And that put it in the lead by a large margin. It wassomething of a bet around here. Alfred was in on it, too. Sort of a running joke to see which building was going to hit God’s feet first.”
Ava had seen the spire he was talking about as they’d approached the building that morning but had forgotten all about it when she and Pawlowski had been standing on the unfinished floor, looking out to the sky. Just knowing that huge spire had already been attached to the structure before the very walls and supports of a few floors beneath it had been completed made her tremble a bit. All of that weight had been over their heads, and all of that open space had been out in front of them. It was dizzying to think about.
“Is Mr. Perkins’s office unlocked?” she asked, wanting to wipe the thoughts out of her head.
“Should be. And as far as I know, nothing has been touched. I had someone get in touch with his wife and they let her know she was free to come when she wanted just in case she wanted to take some of the personal items. But if you need anything else, just let me know.”
They left White’s office, Ava latching on to one key detail she’d taken away from their conversation. She now knew that Alfred Perkins had at least some sort of interest in the Chrysler Building. If he was truly enamored with the so-called Race to the Sky, then the building would have been on his mind here and there throughout the day. That now meant that the Chrysler Building wasn’t just a random location in his life.
They came to Perkins’s office door and found it unlocked, just as White had said. Ava pushed the door open and found an office that showed signs of a busy, frantic worker. The desk that was located in the center of the room was littered with several piles of papers. A typewriter sat in the center, with a sheet of paper fed through. A ceramic coffee cup sat next to thetypewriter, and there was a lightweight coat tossed over the back of the chair that was pushed under the desk.
The back wall of the office was mostly covered by old bookshelves that were stuffed with notebooks, papers, and folders. It was orderly, but a bit chaotic as well. As Ava studied all of this, she noticed the window along the back wall, nearly obstructed by the bookcase. She looked down to the street four stories below.
“You think that would kill someone?” she asked Pawlowski. “A fall from this height, I mean.”
Pawlowski came over and looked down. “I think if itdidn’tkill you, it would cause enough problems to make you wish it had.”
“He had a window right here. He had a four-story drop. So why hike all the way over to the Chrysler Building to kill yourself?”
“You heard White,” Pawlowski said. “Perkins and a few guys were obsessed with these tall buildings. If Perkins wanted to go out in a big way, four stories just wouldn’t cut it, right?”
“I guess not. Plus, his wife said he liked to dobig things.” She looked around the office again, wondering if she was doing something that Frank had often accused her off: making more of a case than was actually there. Of course, whenever she’d done it in the past, there had indeed been a bigger crime to be found. As such, she’d learned to trust her gut. And right now, her gut was telling her that there was a deeper story here—something more than just another devastated investor that had lost everything and then taken his own life.
Ava went to the desk and looked at the papers that were on top of their respective piles. She saw lots of numbers, little notes scrawled in ink, and terms she didn’t understand. However, on a small pad close to the typewriter, she saw a list of names. There were six in all. She didn’t feel that she needed to removeanything from the office just yet, so she grabbed a pen from Perkins’s desk, found the nearest empty page on the pad, and copied the names down.
“Are you thinking those might be clients?” Pawlowski asked.
“Yes. And even if they aren’t, they might be people that would be able to give us more details into what Perkins was like during his final days.”
With the list copied down, she once again looked at all of those papers and binders stuffed into the bookshelf. She was sure there were stories of financial success in them, as well as tales of financial ruin. She couldn’t help but wonder if someone with expertise in finance might be able to look through it all to give them a clear picture of how bad things had been for Alfred Perkins at the end of his life.
A clear picture was what she needed. So far, all of the small and scattered details made her feel uncertain. A fourth-floor office that had been left messy during his final day. A late-night trip to a building that wasn’t yet complete. It was like looking at the cover of a book and deciding what it was about—a plain and simple suicide—but knowing there was more to the story in the pages that waited.
And to get the rest of that story, she’d have to go back to the original source.
CHAPTER NINE
“I want to go back to the Chrysler Building.”
The comment was out of Ava’s mouth before she was aware she was going to speak it out loud. They’d just left 40 Wall Street and were looking for a cab. She could tell just from Pawlowski’s posture and ho-hum attitude that she was more than willing to call it a day and label the death of Alfred Perkins as a suicide.
“What in God’s name for?” Pawlowski asked.