A Few Minutes Past Midnight (13 page)

“You found Fiona Sullivan’s body?” I guessed.

He shook his head, “no.”

“Sawyer?”

“No” again.

“What?”

“I’m thinking about retiring,” he said, now looking into his cup.

“You? Never.”

“I could get a security job,” he said. “Regular hours.”

“Not you,” I said as someone screamed in the squad room. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman.

“Sometimes I think we’re losing the war,” Phil said, moving behind his desk.

“We’re winning,” I said. “Germans and Japs are on the run.”

“Not that war,” he said. “The war against them.”

He nodded toward the door.

“They keep coming. New crop when the old ones get caught or die.”

He still hadn’t looked at me. His eyes were fixed on the wall across from him. His head was nodding slightly at the truth he had just spoken.

“You won’t quit.”

“I suppose not,” he said. Then he looked up at me. “Ruth won’t make it this time.”

I sat in the chair across from my brother.

“They said that last time.”

“No,” he corrected. “Last time they said she
might not
make it. This time it’s locked in. Talked to the doctor. Got a second opinion and a third. I’m either quitting or taking time off to be home.”

“Starting?”

“Day after tomorrow,” he said. “Maybe next week.”

I didn’t say anything.

“She’s an easy woman to live with,” he went on. “And I’m a hard man to put up with. I don’t think we’ve had a big disagreement in ten years. She supported Roosevelt. I didn’t. She was right.”

He held up a pad of paper and took a long slug of coffee. He made a face. It was either bitter or cold or both.

“I made calls about your list,” he said. “No Howard Sawyer connected to any of the dead women.”

“Pultman,” I said.

“She ever tell you she knew him?”

I thought about it. She never had.

“No. But Fiona Sullivan was engaged to him.”

“As far as we know, she’s not dead.”

“Okay,” I said. “So Sawyer’s not his name. He used different names.”

“Why?”

“To get their money.”

“No man coming near your Sawyer’s description got money from any of the dead women. Three of them just about had a pot to piss in. Only one besides Pultman was murdered, and I talked to the detective in Philadelphia on that one. He’s sure it was a murder/robbery. Woman left an estate valued at four hundred dollars to her only daughter. One left what she had, which wasn’t all that much either, to a granddaughter who lived with her.”

“He made them look natural,” I said. “Those women were murdered.”

“Why? They have nothing in common that we can find. No relatives. Never met each other. No common interests. Hell, one was a Negro.”

“Maybe he’s a nut, like in the circus,” I said.

“The circus?”

“Never mind,” I said. “He has some reason other than money. How much did Elsie Pultman have? Who gets it?”

“That I’ll know by tomorrow,” said Phil. “There’s something you’re not telling me, Tobias.”

“No.”

“Who’s your client? Who are you working for on this if it’s not the Sullivan woman?”

I could have told him it was Chaplin back when the whole thing started, but now we had at least one clear murder connected to me and, through me to Chaplin. If Chaplin’s career was in trouble when I first walked through his door, it would be gone if he got into a scandal like this. Headlines:
CHAPLIN MEETS LADY KILLER. CHAPLIN WITNESS IN WIDOW MURDER CASE. WAS KILLER INSPIRED BY CHAPLIN MOVIE PROJECT
?

“Can’t tell you, Phil,” I said.

He nodded again. It was the answer he had expected. I hadn’t disappointed him.

“Why did he leave the body in front of your place?”

I could tell Phil’s heart wasn’t in it. He was going through the motions.

“I’m getting to him, getting close to him. It’s a warning. He was going to kill her anyway, so he thought he’d leave a message for me to stop looking for him.”

“He’s afraid of you.” Phil smiled, a smile saying, “That’s what I expect from my brother, from the world.”

“Something like that.”

“It doesn’t add up,” Phil said.

“I didn’t put the numbers down,” I said. “He did.”

“We’ll keep looking for Fiona Sullivan,” Phil said.

“If she’s dead,” I said. There’s still one more living woman on the list. Blanche Wiltsey.”

“We’re looking for her. Any ideas?”

“No,” I said, thinking that whoever Blanche Wiltsey was, she might be dead by now and that would be the end of Sawyer’s list and our leads.

“Go,” said Phil.

“I’ll come by the house on Sunday,” I said.

“Do that.”

“All right if I bring Anita?”

“Sure,” he said swiveling his chair away from me.

“Now what?” I asked.

“I go home,” he said. “I go home.”

My hand was on the doorknob when he said, almost to himself, “Charlie Chaplin.”

I turned. His back was still away from me. I waited for the bomb he was going to drop.

“Charlie Chaplin,” I repeated. “Okay. He’s my client. Sawyer threatened him, mentioned the movie he’s writing about a guy who murders women, gave him Fiona Sullivan’s name.”

Phil ran his fingers through his bristly hair and looked up at me.

“Didn’t I just say Ruth and I haven’t had a big disagreement since F.D.R. was first elected? Actually we have one, ongoing. She thinks Chaplin is getting a bad break from the papers and the government. I think he should have his ass kicked out of this country. Ruth thinks he’s the funniest man who ever lived. I don’t get it.”

“Who do you think is funny?” I asked, and I really wanted to know.

“Nobody’s funny,” he said.

“You know Juanita?”

“The fortune-teller in the Farraday,” he said, turning away. “So?”

“She … forget it. I’ll see you.”

I left with my brother’s broad back to me and went into the squad room.

A very old man wearing a dark suit with no shirt under the jacket was sitting on the waiting bench across the room.

His eyes were closed and he was rocking back and forth, singing “On the Good Ship Lollipop” in an amazingly good falsetto imitation of Shirley Temple.

I paused at the desk of a detective named Quirst who had lost an eye in World War I and never seemed to be affected by anything that happened around him. Quirst, who was known as Popeye, was looking at the old man. The squad room was about half full now.

“Peters,” he said. “You here to cheer up your brother? Or maybe bring him back to life?”

“I’m trying,” I said. “What’s his story?”

I nodded at the rocking, singing old man on the bench.

“Him? Name’s Corkindale. Killed his wife with an iron skillet. Then he killed the family dog, a poodle. Keeps singing and saying ‘Lola.’”

“Lola? The dog or the wife?”

“Dog,” said Quirst. “World’s full of crazies. My philosophy: Don’t expect anything good and don’t expect people to make sense. Then you won’t be disappointed.”

The old man on the bench sang, “And there you are. Happy landings on a chocolate bar.”

I left.

There were no police cars and no blue Ford in front of Mrs. Plaut’s when I got there a little after eleven. I had stopped for a couple of hot dogs and a milk shake at a drug store on Hollywood Boulevard.

I was tired, and I had a prayer: Please God, don’t let Mrs. Plaut catch me tonight.

This time God answered my prayer. I took my shoes off at the front door, opened it slowly, and moved cautiously across the entryway, avoiding the familiar spots, which were guaranteed a loud creak. I went up the stairs, expecting that voice behind me. I couldn’t face giving a shouted explanation or hearing the tale about Elsie Pultman’s body parked outside on Heliotrope.

I made it to my room, flicked on the light, looked at Dash who was on his back next to the refrigerator with his eyes closed. When the light came on, he looked at me, put one paw over his eyes, and went back to sleep.

When I took my coat off, I heard something crinkle in the pocket. I pulled it out. It was the sheet Jeremy had handed me at the cab stand in front of Union Station.

It was a poem with a note above it. The note read: “Here is the poem I told you I was going to write.”

It read:

Edgar Lee Masters laying in his bed

returned to the town he had created,

the Spoon River that lived inside his head

where every Miniver and Luke was fated

to seclusion within the mind of the master

who coughed, took his medicine and walked

in his reverie in the moonlit night ever faster

seeing children he had borne and with whom he talked.

“You are me and I am you and we are each other,”

he explains to one man by a mill accident crippled.

“I know,” says the man moving slowly in pain.

At the river the poet pauses and looks at a rippled

pool in the water created by a sudden rain.

“Time for your medicine,” a hushed voice comes.

Eyes open, he takes a pill. As the nurse softly hums.

Reality it too often seems

comes he thinks to test our dreams.

I put the poem on the table, got undressed, decided to shower and shave in the morning, and lay down on my mattress on the floor after I turned out the light.

The rain was back. Whatever gods there might be couldn’t make up their minds. I listened to the sound of the rain pinging against my window. The window was open for Dash, just enough for him to get in or out. It might be raining in. I didn’t want to get up to find out.

I felt Dash move next to me, curl against my left side. I touched him and fell asleep.

I dreamed of dead women and a judge who looked like Orson Welles. He sat on a chair above me looking down, his voice echoing in a room about the size of the ballroom at the Hotel Roosevelt.

“What is the connection?”

“They’re all dead,” I said, craning my neck to look at him.

“So is almost everyone who has set foot on this earth. There is a connection.”

Then I realized that there were people behind me. I heard them muttering. I turned to see a tier of basketball bleachers filled with people: Shelly, Jeremy, Mrs. Plaut, Gunther, Chaplin, Anita, Elsie Pultman, Fiona Sullivan, and lots of strange women, all on the older side.

“There is a connection,” they said in unison.

Rita Hayworth danced out from behind the bleachers wearing something you could see right through, something billowing and white. She danced around me, the silky costume brushing my face, and she whispered, “There is a connection.”

Orson Welles sounded bored when he called down: “Figure it out. Three days and then a decision.”

“About what?”

Welles was gone. Dash was seated in his place. Rita Hayworth’s silk sleeve gently trailed across my face and a door burst open.

I woke up. Dash’s tail was in my face. Mrs. Plaut, broom in one hand, the other on her hip, said: “It is seven in the
A.M.
and you have a telephone call from Mr. Voodoo.”

“Thanks,” I said, trying to sit up.

She came in, looked around, and addressed Dash.

“You are not to enter my rooms. You are not to eat any more of my birds.”

“He hasn’t eaten your birds,” I said, getting to my knees. “He isn’t interested in your birds. He can make his own way in the world.”

“So you say,” she said.

“He is a free spirit,” I said.

“You’d better talk to Mr. Voodoo,” she said. “And then I wish to know if you know anything about the poor woman who died outside my house yesterday.”

She bustled in, and I managed to stand.

“Why should I know anything about it?” I asked.

“Because you are an exterminator,” she explained.

I checked to be sure my shorts were still on, grabbed a T-shirt from my top drawer, and headed for the telephone on the landing. It was dangling from the cord.

“Peters,” I said, feeling my stubbly chin.

“Chaplin,” he answered. “I have decided not to hide any longer. I rejected Mr. Butler’s offer of continued sanctuary with proper and sincere appreciation, but I feel it would be somewhat hypocritical of me to hide when I am publicly telling American and Allied forces to face death. I am at home. My wife will return tomorrow. I just spoke to her. She misses me. I certainly miss her.”

“I’ll send someone to be with you,” I said.

“I will not act as if I am under siege,” he said. “And I do not wish to alarm my household or my wife when she returns.”

“They’ll stay outside, in a car. I’ll have them introduce themselves and stay out of your way.”

“Very well,” he said with a sigh of resignation. “Any news about Miss Sullivan?”

“No,” I said.

“The police? Are they aware of my involvement in this matter?”

“My brother is,” I said. “I had to tell him. But I don’t think it will go beyond his office walls unless he needs you to make a statement when we catch Sawyer.”

“I understand. I have had a restless night. Something is gnawing at me about this whole affair. Something is odd.”

“Something is odd,” I agreed.

“I want you to do your utmost to find and protect the last woman on that list you have.”

“Blanche Wiltsey,” I said.

“Blanche Wiltsey,” he repeated. “And I want you to find Howard Sawyer or whoever he really is and bring him to justice.”

“I’m working on it,” I said, turning to see Gunther emerge from his room, fully dressed in a blue suit with a maroon tie. I nodded. He nodded back.

“Let me know as soon as you have any information.”

“I will,” I said.

Chaplin hung up. So did I. I turned to Gunther who stood, hands behind his back, waiting.

“There is a connection,” I said. “Between Sawyer and all those women.”

“Yes,” said Gunther. “At least one of which we can be reasonably certain.”

“What?” I asked, gauging the distance to my room and then to the bathroom further down the landing. It looked like four or five miles. I wasn’t waking up.