The Removal Company Read online

  Vance seemed irritated, reflecting again on the world’s varied injustices to blue-bloods, then went on: “He was doing some background work on an article on the Greenways, and he came upon this six-month-old clipping in the paper’s ‘morgue.’ It was he who sent it to me. He himself said it was Katharine!”

  I looked at Vance skeptically. “Merriwether said this was your wife?”

  Vance backed off. “Well, not in so many words.... But he sent it to me because he felt there was a striking resemblance!”

  “Okay, let’s say for the sake of argument that this Elena woman does look like your wife. What of it? What are you saying or suggesting?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” Vance said, now a bit tentative. “But there’s something funny going on—something very funny indeed....”

  “Vance, I’ll go even farther. Let’s say this actually is your wife. What do you think happened?—that Sanderson brought her back from the dead, and that he then gave her some entirely new personality? Look at the clipping, Vance: Elena Cavalieri, of Cattolica, Italy. Whoever wrote this article—I presume it wasn’t Merriwether himself—must have been supplied this information. What reason do you have, aside from some supposed resemblance to your wife, that this woman isn’t who it says she is?”

  Vance said nothing.

  “How about this?” I suggested. “You say this Gene Merriwether knew your wife, although apparently not well.” I looked up at him to confirm this assumption; when Vance made no remark, I felt I was on safe ground. “Then how well does he know Elena Cavalieri? Did he cover this wedding?”

  “No,” Vance said in a small voice.

  “Has he ever seen or met Miss Cavalieri—now Mrs. Greenway?”

  “I don’t think so.”—even smaller.

  “So,” I concluded, with a sigh of impatience, “on the basis of a photograph in a newspaper clipping that someone who doesn’t know your wife very well thinks looks like her, even though she supposedly died a year and a half ago, you’ve come to me to investigate this matter.” It was again a statement, not a question.

  Vance was looking down at his plate, with its untouched dessert. “Yes.”

  “I think you’re wasting your time and your money.”

  He glanced up quickly, simultaneously alarmed and crestfallen. “Does that mean...that you won’t do anything?”

  Suddenly I felt an overwhelming pity for the fellow. He really was in a bad way. “Mr. Vance, I think you’ve gone through a horrible experience; I think you’re tormented with guilt at what happened, even though I for one don’t think you’re in any way to blame in all this. And now you’re grabbing at straws. Maybe you should just accept the fact that your wife is dead, and get on with your life.”

  Vance sat quiet for a few moments—then exploded with rage. “Who are you to tell me what to do, Scintilla? Don’t you dare preach at me! Whose side are you on, anyway?” He had turned bright red and was breathing heavily and irregularly.

  “I’m not on anybody’s side,” I said with all the calmness I could muster. “I don’t know that there are any sides to be on. My feeling is that the matter doesn’t warrant investigation. There’s too little to go on. There are a variety of ways to look into it, and there’s a lot I could do in terms of checking the backgrounds of all these people, but I very much doubt that the end result will be anything you want or hope for.”

  “But what about this Removal Company? Don’t you think it’s a fishy operation? And it’s right here in your own back yard....” Vance now seemed more desperate than angry.

  “I’m not the police. Even if I find this Sanderson fellow, I can’t make any arrests. Anyway, if I did go to the police, that would get you into a bit of trouble, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.” Vance rubbed his chin. “But please: could you just look around a bit? Do whatever you can—don’t go to the police, but just report back to me if you come up with anything...peculiar. I just want to set my mind at ease.” Vance leaned back heavily in his chair and closed his eyes.

  I put my napkin down on the table and called for the check. “All right, Vance. But I’ll tell you one thing: I’m not likely to use a fraction of that ten thousand dollars you plumped down on my desk. So I’ll get to work, and take whatever fee I think appropriate for my time and expenses, and give back what’s left. And I suspect a lot will be left. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Vance paid the check without looking at it.

  “I may need your help a bit more,” I said. “In fact, we may have to work in tandem at some points. I don’t do that very often, but this is a special case. Are you prepared for that?” I wasn’t so sure about this, but I felt I had to give Vance some encouragement.

  “Yes!” he shot back eagerly—perhaps as eagerly his wife did when she had herself knocked off.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  There were, as I said to Vance, a number of ways to pursue this investigation. I could think of three offhand:

  1. Try to learn the whereabouts and true function of the Removal Company. Was this Dr. Sanderson really a noble servant of those people who genuinely wished (for whatever reason) to dispatch themselves, or was he merely a con artist? Was there anything suspicious in the high fee he charged Vance for his “services”? (This may sound naive, but in spite of my coughing fit I later came to the conclusion that, if Sanderson was on the up-and-up, he would require both the large wad of dough and the written guarantees from Vance in order to shield himself from the severest punishment our legal system could inflict.) What of the rigmarole with the blindfolds and mysterious location? This could conceivably be explained the same way—or, conversely, could make it harder for anyone to track the Removal Company’s operations.

  2. Get some background on Elena Cavalieri. Was she what she claimed to be? How did she come to marry Harry Greenway? Who, indeed, was Harry Greenway? Frankly, this avenue of investigation seemed to me the least promising—or, at any rate, the most difficult and time-consuming to follow up. Aside from her fancied resemblance to Katharine Vance, there was nothing at all to connect Elena to the case.

  3. Do some background checking on Dr. William Grabhorn. It was he, after all, who had given Katharine Vance that card from the Removal Company. Was there anything suspicious about that? Was he a regular “channeler” of clients to Sanderson? Even if that were the case, was there anything intrinsically odd about that? The same things that could be said for (or against) Sanderson could be said for Grabhorn: either he was a self-sacrificing idealist or a crook. The fact that, as a psycho-analyst, he was supposed to help his patients overcome depression, suicidal thoughts, or whatever other problems they may have had was not really to the point: some patients weren’t curable, and that was all there was to it.

  The fundamental point was this: I had to find something—anything—that was not quite right, something that would lead me to believe that this whole Removal Company operation was not what it seemed. One item out of place, and possibly the whole thing would unravel.

  I am always one to choose the easiest and simplest solution to a problem. Why not call the Removal Company’s number and see what happened? Vance had been spooked almost into a fainting fit when I had first suggested the idea, but that was before he had explained the whole story to me. There couldn’t be any reason not to follow up on this now that I knew the background. If, by some chance, the number was still active, I could simply say that I had a “reference” for the Removal Company’s services—another client who might cough up a hundred grand to be relieved of the burden of living.

  Or I could even offer myself up as the next victim.

  I didn’t call the number directly, however. Instead, I called Central and asked the switchboard girl to dial it for me.

  I could have predicted the outcome.

  “The number has been disconnected, sir.” She sounded weirdly cheerful, but I guess they’re trained to sound like that.

  “Is there any forwarding number?” I asked.

  “No, sir, I
’m sorry.”

  “Any address given for that number?”

  “No, sir.”

  “All right. Thanks.”

  So much for that. But it was only what I’d expected.

  How I could possibly track down the location of the Removal Company—or at least its location when Vance and his wife went there a year and a half ago—was another crux. I knew that New York City had published no city directories since 1926; if they had, it might be possible to find Sanderson’s place of business. Instead, there was a “Residential Directory” for Manhattan and the Bronx, and as I strolled to the 42nd Street library to consult it I found the following:

  There were thirteen Sandersons listed as living in Manhattan in the 1931/32 residential directory; eight men, and five women. None of them were in Murray Hill—but then, he could be living somewhere other than his “office.” After a few phone calls, I quickly found that none of them were doctors. Of course, it was highly probable that Sanderson wasn’t even his real name. In that case, the residential directory was useless.

  This course of inquiry was rapidly proving fruitless. Sanderson was clearly too clever not to cover his tracks. He could be long gone by now—could be in Boston, or Miami, or Chicago, or anywhere else in the country or the world.

  I needed to get in touch with someone who actually knew Sanderson, and knew something about his operation. And the person at the moment who fitted that bill, aside from Vance himself, was William Grabhorn.

  I called Vance at his uncle’s apartment.

  “Tell me something about Grabhorn. How did he come into the picture?”

  I could hear Vance choking or sputtering. I had already gotten the feeling, from his earlier account, that he didn’t care much from Grabhorn—that he perhaps held him directly or indirectly responsible for what happened to his wife. I wasn’t far wrong.

  “That two-bit Freud! If I could only get my hands around his neck....” More sputtering.

  “Settle down, Vance. This is not helping. Tell me anything you know about him. How long had Katharine been seeing him?”

  “God, it must have been about two years before her...you know.... It started just after her father...died. I never met the fellow more than once or twice, but I never liked him.”

  “Why?”

  He seemed to have difficulty with that question. “I just don’t know—you’ll probably think it’s my imagination, or because of what happened later.... But he—he just seemed—” Vance could say no more.

  “A quack?” I supplied.

  “No, not exactly that.” Vance was calming down a bit. “I don’t know. I guess I just didn’t like Katharine seeing him. I didn’t think she really needed it. Or maybe”—his voice suddenly got eager, as if he had come up with an inspiration—“maybe it’s because she actually seemed dependent on him. I remember now once suggesting—just suggesting, mind you!—that she stop seeing him, and she went into such a tantrum.... It was awful....”

  “How did she come upon him?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I guess he was pretty well-known as an analyst who specialized in cases of depression. And of course he wasn’t cheap. His clientele was pretty rarefied. He wasn’t going hungry, I can tell you that.” Vance’s tone was getting rather snide.

  “Did he seem to be helping Katharine at all?”

  “Oh, I guess so”—grudgingly. “It was up and down. I’ll have to confess that he did seem to help her at the beginning—I think she was more suicidal then than she ever had been before...until the end.” A hard swallow. “But after a few months I really couldn’t see much improvement—not consistently, anyway. I think going to him just became kind of a habit for her—almost like a drug.”

  “But she liked him—she wanted to keep on seeing him?”

  “Yes”—very grudgingly. “Yes, she did.”

  After a pause: “Can you take me to him?”

  Vance seemed confused for a moment. “What do you mean? Now? You want to see him now?”

  Patiently: “Yes, I think it would be a good idea to go to Los Angeles and talk with him. And, if you don’t mind, can we take a plane? It will be a bit faster than the train.”

  Vance replied bitterly: “Mr. Scintilla, I don’t think I ever want to ride a Pullman again as long as I live.”

  * * * *

  The ride on American Airlines from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn was a three-legged journey, the plane having to refuel in Chicago and Omaha. Landing late in the afternoon at Los Angeles International Airport, we were promptly picked up by the Vances’ chauffeur—a lean young man whom Vance didn’t bother to introduce to me, but whom he addressed as Jackson—and were on our way to the family home in San Marino.

  I had never been in L.A., and hadn’t been in California since I’d tagged along with Henry Mencken on his 1920 visit to San Francisco to cover the Democratic National Convention, and to booze it up with that old reprobate George Sterling. As an Easterner, I found the landscape bemusing. Palm trees in the heart of a city are nice if you like that sort of thing; but what struck me most about Los Angeles—aside from the subtropical weather and the architecture it engendered—was, first, its newness compared with the centuries-old East, and, second, its fundamental lack of focus. Maybe I was too used to New York, where development was upward rather than outward; but this grotesque sprawl didn’t seem unified. It didn’t hang together. It was just a sprinkle of juxtaposed communities, each aggressively preserving its own character.

  Things changed a bit when we crossed an open patch of ground next to Griffith Park and entered the small, tightly knit community of San Marino. I laughed to myself at the choice of this place for the Vances’ residence. No doubt they chose it because of its exclusivity—only the very rich allowed—but I knew that the town had been established only a few decades ago by Henry E. Huntington, Collis’s nephew, and there was a rich irony in the fact that Henry Vance, who had bamboozled the Huntington heirs over the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, decided to plant his roots right in their back yard. We drove by the stately museum, library, and botanical gardens on Oxford Street that Henry Huntington had endowed, and not long afterward turned into an immense driveway whose curving, tree-lined path nearly concealed the towering mansion resting importantly at the end of it.

  More servants greeted us, quietly and efficiently attending to our bags. Arthur Vance walked right in; only a quick turn of the head indicated that I was to follow. Inside was all elegance—a little overdone, perhaps, and a hodgepodge of architecture, furniture, and ornament, but not quite as tasteless as some of the (very few) New York millionaires’ homes I’d been granted the privilege to enter.

  I met Mrs. Vance, a very proper, colorless woman who regarded me with a kind of mingled apprehension and distaste, as if it were somehow disreputable for a family of their stature to hire a private detective. Arthur had, of course, notified her of my arrival, and his story was not far from the truth: he claimed that he had found some leads on Katharine’s whereabouts and had called in a professional to help on the job. I couldn’t tell whether Mrs. Vance really wanted her daughter-in-law found or not; perhaps it was also disreputable for a member of her family, even one only connected by marriage, to have disappeared.

  Mrs. Hawley, Katharine’s mother, was not present, and somewhat to my surprise I never saw her during my entire stay with the Vances. Arthur explained that her disappointment at not hearing from her daughter had so embittered her that she had lapsed into a kind of depression herself, and was unlikely to be of much help. He had not told her of his suspicions that Katharine might still be alive, lest he get her hopes up only to have them dashed if nothing was found.

  Dinner was a quiet, somber affair. Service was only for three: Henry Vance was, inevitably, away on a business trip. Arthur himself seemed to want to get the meal over quickly, and excused us as soon as tact allowed.

  “What now, Scintilla?” he asked when we had settled into an upstairs study.

  “We should get to work right awa
y. Of course, there’s nothing to be done to-night. But I presume you have a phone number and address for Dr. Grabhorn’s office?”

  “Yes, of course.” He had come prepared, and handed me Grabhorn’s business card: 1633 Wilshire Boulevard, EXposition 2171. Vance told me the place was near Beverly Hills. I wasn’t surprised, given what he had told me about the economic status of Grabhorn’s clientele.

  “When was the last time you tried to reach him?” I said.

  “By telephone?” Vance asked.

  “Yes.”

  He tousled his hair in thought. “Probably not for a year or more. I didn’t have any reason to call him, really. Katharine just went to see him—twice a week, driven there by Jackson—and came back.”

  “Ever been to his office?”

  “Yes...but even longer ago than that. I took Katharine there the first time, back in 1929, and then went there maybe once more a little after that. That’s all.”

  Next morning, after breakfast, I set to work. Somehow I wasn’t surprised when I learned from the switchboard girl that EXposition 2171 had been disconnected. I asked her how long ago, but she didn’t know.

  There needn’t be anything suspicious about that—Grabhorn could just have moved. Nor was it odd that he wasn’t listed in the current Los Angeles white or yellow pages: Vance told me he hadn’t been listed even when Katharine had been going to see him. His referrals came strictly by word of mouth.

  “Vance, are you up for a drive to Wilshire Boulevard?” I said.