Too Soon Dead Read Online Free

him. Just run down three flights and pick him up in the lobby. Okay. Good luck.”
    While Brass was talking I went over to the table and took a look at the pictures, leafing through them one at a time. There was little to attract the connoisseur of smut to them. Were it not for the prominence of some of the practitioners, they were trivial and repetitious examples of the art. The only conclusion I reached was that stout elderly men should not allow themselves to be photographed in compromising positions; they looked ridiculous. One of them was actually young and handsome, and fairly athletic-looking. He seemed to be enjoying himself. Three of the oldsters also looked like they were having fun; the remaining few looked grim, as though it was a difficult job, but somebody had to do it. The girls—and each fellow seemed to be with a different girl—were uniformly young, well built, and happy-looking.
    I tossed the pictures back on the desk as Brass got off the phone. “If this is the latest thing in calisthenics,” I said, “it ought to sweep the country.”
    “What do you think of our friend?” Brass asked.
    I shook my head. “He’s using you for something.”
    “So he intimated. But what are his goals, his motivations? What, if anything, does he see in these pictures besides couples coupling? Is he a simple blackmailer? But then, why give me the pictures?”
    “I give up,” I said.
    Brass handed me the photographs. “Go down to the morgue and see if you can identify these men. I’m pretty sure about two of them, but I’d like it verified.” He tapped the picture of the handsome young man. “In this case,” he said, “I think the identity of the lady is what will interest us.”
    “Oh,” I said. “I didn’t think of that.”
    “I thought it was obvious,” Brass said.
    I grunted and headed for the door.

3
    T he research department of the
New York World
, which we experienced newsies called “the morgue,” a huge room punctuated by two rows of pseudo-Greek columns, took up much of the sixth floor. It was the domain of Michael Fredric Schiff, a skinny old man with large ears, a thin, pointed nose and chin, oversized, arthritic knuckle joints, and an encyclopedic knowledge of everything that had happened in the world for the past half century. Schiff guarded his rows of file drawers full of clippings and photographs with the zeal of a mama bear guarding her cubs, and he always seemed to be able to go right to any required bit of information. After thirty years in this country he still spoke with a vaguely middle-European accent. The rumor was that he had been a college professor in his native land, but had been forced to flee when he was caught in the bed of the daughter—or, some said, the wife—of an anti-Semitic government official.
    Schiff kept the room cold, probably to discourage loitering, and wore a dark brown wool sweater with a row of tiny buttons, keeping all but the top one buttoned so that just the knot of his tie peeked out. He sat behind his battered oak desk and peered at me as I posed the problem to him.
    “Let me see the pictures,” he said, pulling over a swinging-arm desk lamp and snapping it on. “I might be able to save you some time.”
    “I’m not sure if I should show them to you,” I said.
    “You might as well,” he said. “They’re going to end up in here sooner or later anyway.”
    “I doubt that,” I said. “These are—different.”
    “Oh,” he said. “Like that. We’ve got those in here too, my boy. Listen, you see that cabinet?” He pointed to a dark corner of the room.
    “Which one?”
    “Never mind which one. It is sufficient for you to know that it exists: a cabinet full of pictures that would shock a Swiss pimp.”
    “Are they particularly unshockable?” I asked him.
    “So it is believed where I come from,” he told me. “But if you don’t want me to see your photographs—”
    “Here,” I said, passing them over to him.
    He examined each