Vanish in an Instant (18 page)

“I don't suppose you ever looked up this Miss Falconer.”

“No, but I tried to find out where she lived just out of curiosity. There was no Miss Falconer—or Faulkner—listed in the 1951 or ‘50 Arbana directories. The ‘48 direc­tory listed a Jemima Falconer as a secretary and gave a Catherine Avenue address, I believe. It may or may not have been the same woman, and besides, a lot can happen in four years.”

“What about the Detroit vicinity?”

“I found several listings under both spellings, which was as good as a dead end for me. I hadn't the time or inclina­tion to try and track down the woman, especially since the only evidence I had of her connection with Claude was that chance meeting in Hudson's, and Lily's intuition. You've no doubt had some experience with female intuition, in court and out of it. It's almost as fallible as tea leaves or head bumps.”

He took Meecham's coat and hat out of the hall closet.

“I repeat, it was nice of you to come out and talk to Lily. I think now that she's gotten a few things off her chest she'll be better.”

“Probably.”

“Send your bill to me. Please don't be hesitant about it. That was our arrangement over the phone.”

“Let's leave it on the cuff,” Meecham said. “I might want a favor from you some day.”

“Any time. My office is in the First National Build­ing and my house is in Grosse Point.”

“I'll remember that.”

They parted with a very hearty handshake like a pair of old alumni after a homecoming.

Meecham crossed the wet driveway and got into his car. He drove in low gear down the steep grade to the entrance gate.

During the hour that he'd been in the house the snow-lady had been melting in the soft air like butter in the sun. The icicle was still sticking through her heart, though her
nose and her remaining eye had fallen out and the scarf clung moistly to her shrinking head. By morning, if the weather held, she would topple into an indistinguishable mass of gray slush, and no one would remember her exist­ence except two children.

18

Gurton's café
was
on State Street at Main, be­tween a haberdashery and a department store. Gurton had been installed there for thirty years, the chef for nearly twenty, and for five Meecham had been eating his dinners there several times a week. He knew the menus, the waiters, Gurton's children and their children, and every picture on the wall. When the place closed for repainting once a year, Meecham missed it. It was the closest thing to a home, a social continuity, that he had ever had in his solitary life.

Gurton came to the door to meet him, smelling heavily of the cloves he was always chewing. “How've you been, Meech?”

“Fine.”

“Somebody's got your table.”

“That's all right. I'll sit someplace else.”

“I thought you weren't coming. I figured you were out of town. You haven't been around.”

“I've been working.”

Gurton was an enormous man. He ate too much, and drank too much beer in his off-hours, and the only exercise he ever got was shuffling to the front door to greet his friends and counting his money at night after the place was closed. He enjoyed counting his money and he always took the day's receipts home with him. To protect himself he carried a Colt automatic. He knew, theoretically, how to use it, but he was actually more terrified of the automatic than he was of any robber. Gurton was convinced that someday, in spite of the safety catch, it would go off accidentally and cripple him, or explode in his pocket and blow him to pieces. Like a man putting all his eggs in one basket, Gurton had loaded all his worries and fears into the automatic.

“You got your name in tonight's paper,” he said.

“Did I?”

“I rang up all my kids and said, Meech has his name in the paper. You want to see it?”

“No.”

“You aren't human.” Gurton shook his head and his jowls flapped like a turkey's wattles. “I knew this guy Lof­tus that you found dead. Not by name, but once I saw his picture I recognized him. He used to come in here about two, three years ago, with his girlfriend, a tall bright-looking redhead. They used to sit and drink coffee, never saw a pair that could drink so much coffee. After a while they stopped coming in and I thought they must have broken up or got married.”

“They got married,” Meecham said, “and moved to an­other town.”

“Is that a fact? It didn't mention that in the paper.”

“They were divorced after a short time and the woman was killed in an auto accident out West.”

“That's too bad. I always feel sorry when people get di­vorced or don't get married at all, which is even worse.”

Meecham knew what was coming and tried to avoid it by picking up the menu.

It came anyway. “It's no good for a man, always being alone. You ought to get married, Meech, start having a few kids to put a little zip in your life and to give you some­thing to leave behind you. Take this guy, Loftus, what did he leave behind him, eh?”

“Seven hundred and sixteen dollars.”

Gurton looked disappointed. He hadn't expected or wanted an answer. “Now how come you know that?”

“You're getting nosy, Gurton.”

“I've always been nosy.”

“It's bad for business.” Meecham put the menu back in its metal holder. “I'll take the veal cutlets. Mind if I use the phone in your office?''

“Go ahead. The cutlets are no good, it's the wrong time of year for veal.”

“It doesn't matter.”

“That reminds me, you know what the priest said to the butcher at confession? He said, you're cutting up too much.”

“That's a howl.”

“
I
consider it funny,” Gurton said with dignity. “Thank God I don't work so hard that I have no sense of humor left, like some people.”

Gurton's office was a small room on the mezzanine. In contrast to the meticulously neat kitchen downstairs, the office was littered with papers and letters, magazines, can­celed checks, watch folders and half-empty packs of cig­arettes.

Meecham closed the door and sat down in the swivel chair behind the desk. It took him five minutes to find the telephone directory, which had fallen into the wastebasket. Hearst was listed as Jameson R. Hearst, 611 Division Street. He dialed 2-6306.

Emmy Hearst answered the phone. She sounded as if she'd been crying again and he knew she must have found out about Loftus by this time.

“Hello.”

“Hello. Mrs. Hearst?”

“Yes.” There was a hum of activity in the background, voices and music and bursts of laughter. It was seven o'clock; Mrs. Hearst's “boys” would all be home. Meecham recalled the first night he'd gone to see Loftus' room; how incongruous it had seemed to him that Loftus should live in a house so full of youth and vitality.

“This is Eric Meecham. Is Mr. Hearst in? I'd like to talk to him.”

“What about? Jim doesn't know anything.”

“It's a trivial matter,” Meecham said, hoping that it was. “I don't want to bother you about it, you've had a bad time.”

“I wish I were dead,” she said in a low flat voice. “I wish I were dead.”

“Words aren't much good, I know, but I'd like to assure you that he didn't suffer. I saw him afterwards.”

“He didn't leave any note, any message?”

“No.”

“It said in the paper that he talked to the guard all night.”

“To the orderly, yes.”

“Did he talk about—me?”

“I guess he talked about everything.” He couldn't give her the bald truth, that Loftus had talked only about Birdie. Mrs. Hearst didn't even know of Birdie's existence. The first night when she discussed Loftus with Cordwink she'd said,
Earl tells me everything and he's never men­tioned a wife.
It would be a cruel blow to her when she found out about Birdie. Meecham knew that eventually she must find out. He said, “I know it's hard to be realistic in a situation like this, Mrs. Hearst. But the fact is, Earl had very little time left anyway. He would have died soon.”

“I can't—talk about it anymore. I—I—I'll call Jim.”

There was a long pause, then the sudden sharp slam­ming of two doors and the background noises ceased.

“Yes?” Hearst said. “Who's this?”

“Eric Meecham.”

“The lawyer?”

“Yes.”

“I don't get it. I expected to hear directly from her.”

Meecham made a little sound of surprise, then covered it with a cough. “She couldn't manage it—too many people around.”

“She's got no business calling a lawyer in on a thing like this. I don't like it.” There was a moment's silence. “Is the agreement ready?”

“She's still thinking it over.” He wasn't sure yet who the “she” was—Virginia or Mrs. Hamilton—and he had no idea what agreement she was supposed to have made. He made a blind guess: “Your asking price is a little high.”

“I never mentioned money,” Hearst said. “I'm an hon­est man. If she said I mentioned money she's a liar. I wouldn't take a red cent from her. Just try me. Offer me money and I wouldn't take it, see?”

“What exactly do you want?”

“I told her what I want.”

“She didn't make it clear to me. She was quite upset.”

“I want a chance. A future. There's no future in a town like this for a man like me. I can do things once I get a chance.”

“So?”

“Well, supposing she buys a new car and needs some­body to drive it back to California for her.”

“You'll drive it back.”

“Sure, that's right. And then when we get there, she's got a lot of connections, she could fix me up with a job, maybe around a movie studio, maybe as her regular chauf­feur.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

“Sure, it's reasonable, Mr. Meecham.” He sounded al­most pathetically eager. “She's got nothing to be upset about. All I'm asking is a favor in return for the favor I'm doing her.”

“She didn't tell me what your favor was.”

Hearst hesitated, like a small boy playing cards, want­ing to win the game on his own but tempted to show every­one what a good hand he had. “It's a personal family mat­ter,” he said.

“I see.” Meecham was sure now that the “she” was Mrs. Hamilton, and the “family” was Virginia, and the only connecting link between them and Hearst was through Lof­tus. But he didn't know what this link was. Loftus had not been friendly with Hearst, he wouldn't have confided in him; in fact, he had never even confided in Mrs. Hearst with any degree of truth.

“What I want,” Hearst said, “is an agreement.”

“What kind of agreement?”

“One that's written down and legal, like a contract.”

“You'll have to specify the exact terms. I can't draw up a contract without ...”

“Sure, sure, I know that.”

“We'd better have a talk about it some time,” Meecham said, deliberately evasive.

“
Some
time. Say, what do you think this . . .?”

“How about the day after tomorrow at four, or early next week?”

“Stop trying to stall me. It's now or never, as far as I'm concerned. I want that agreement.”

“All right.” Hearst had reacted as he expected. “I'll pick you up and we'll go over to my office. Say in about half an hour?”

“I'll be ready.”

“Good.”

Meecham hung up, replaced the telephone directory ex­actly where he'd found it, in the wastebasket, and went downstairs to his table. His dinner was waiting for him, not the veal cutlets he had ordered, but a platter of fried chicken over which Gurton was hovering and clucking like a fat old hen.

“Gurton.”

“Now listen, Meech, the cutlets were no damn good, understand? Not fit for my mother-in-law. Not fit for a . . .”

“Are you still carrying that Colt automatic?”

“I have to.”

“How about lending it to me for a while tonight?”

“What for?”

“I'm going calling on a few friends.”

“You with a gun, Meech? That don't make sense. No sir, I wouldn't lend you my gun no more than I'd serve you those cutlets. Suppose it goes off and hits you in the leg and then you have your leg amputated? How about
that
? Anyway, what kind of friends are these, that you've got to carry a gun?”

“That's what I'm going to find out.”

“You're mixed in with funny people, eh?”

“Some of them are funny. Some of them are quite seri­ous.”

“Bejesus, Meech, I think you're kidding me. You don't want my gun.”

“Maybe I don't.”

“Guns are for crooks and crazy people and suckers like me who have to carry money around on a dark night. Now here's a funny thing—nobody's my friend in the dark. I see a guy coming up the alley on my way home, and I know him and he knows me, but he's not my friend, understand? I always want to turn around and run. That's what dark­ness does to people.”

“Or money does.”

“Well, anyway, I'm glad you were kidding. For a minute there I took you honest-to-God-serious.”

“Yes, so did I,” Meecham said.

All during dinner he wondered what kind of crazy im­pulse had made him ask Gurton for the automatic.

I'm nervous, he thought, like Gurton carrying his money in the dark. I have no friends. I know them and they know me, but I want to turn around and run.