As a Favor (21 page)

She jumped back into the bedroom and slammed the door.

I grabbed for the knob just as the lock clicked in place.

“Open up! You’re just making it worse. There’s nowhere to go!”

But there was somewhere to go. I rushed to the window in time to see her leap down to the roof of the next building.

Pushing open the living room window, I jumped after her, my feet hitting hard against the tar and gravel. She had fifty feet on me, racing across the rooftops, her long legs moving with ease under the loose dashiki. I remembered her bedroom. She was an athlete, probably in as good condition as I.

I cleared the wall onto the second-to-last building, my equipment belt banging heavily on my hipbones. She was on the last roof. I ran to it, clambering over the wall, just in time to see her lower herself over the far edge.

Racing across, I looked down—twelve feet—grabbed the roof and pushed off, coming down hard.

“Stop!” I yelled. But she was gone. Nothing moved; no door stood open; no dust floated up from the alley.

Behind me was the row of buildings we had just run across. The metal doors were shut. To my right was an open field. In front were houses, each with a fenced yard. She had to be in one of them—one of the closer ones; she’d had only a few seconds on me.

That narrowed the choice to four. Dismissing one with a see-through picket fence, and two with eight-foot hedges, I headed for the remaining one.

I boosted myself up till I could see over the six-foot fence. The yard was made for a fugitive. It held a tool shed, garbage cans, thick bushes. There was no sign of her, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t there. It was a chance I had to take.

I hoisted myself to the top and as I was coming over, a rock smashed into my hand. Blood flowed. I dropped to the ground.

She stood by the shed, a sharp, flat rock poised in her hand.

“Put it down!” I yelled.

She turned, hurling it like a shot put. I jumped to the side. The rock slashed my face.

I started for my gun, but stopped. There could be people by the windows in the house. A bullet could ricochet.

I moved in.

She grabbed a spade. “Come on, cop.”

“Put it down!”

“Come on!”

Her bare legs were planted wide apart. Both hands were on the shovel, ready to swing. If I went for my gun now, she’d have the spade on my neck. Where was the back-up unit? Would they be able to find me when they arrived?

She moved toward me slowly. She was three feet away, judging her shot.

I stepped back.

She leaped forward, hoisting the spade. I grabbed the shovel end, the metal searing into my fingers. Lunging forward, I jammed the handle at her chest. She jumped away, dropping it. It banged into my leg.

She made for the gate. I grabbed her leg, pulled her to the ground. She rolled over, kicked into my stomach. I fell. She yanked my hair. My scream sounded distant.

Joining both hands, I smashed them down, but she rolled free and pushed herself to her knees. Gasping for breath, I turned and brought my left hand down hard on her neck.

She lay stunned.

I clambered up, grabbed my gun and held it over her.

She lay there, dashiki covered in dirt, her Afro wig lying against the wall, her own hair blond with dark roots.

I said, “Get up, Anne.”

“Y
VONNE
M
C
I
VOR WAS REALLY
Anne Spaulding?” Lt. Davis’s forehead was lined in amazement.

The doctor had looked at my bruised face and the cuts and scrapes on my hands. I felt like a six-year-old. Lt. Davis had counted my overtime toward Watch and given me the rest of the day off. And Anne Spaulding was in a cell, refusing to talk, waiting for her lawyer. It was nearly eleven
A.M.

“Yes. Anne had used the disguise to collect the checks from the dummy cases. That’s why she had two different shades of make-up, why she had a sunlamp, why she sunbathed only one week a month.”

“Smith.” He shook his head again. “I just can’t believe a white woman could impersonate a black all that easily.”

I suppressed a grin at the lieutenant’s bruised racial pride. “It wasn’t easy. It was very careful and well-planned. Spaulding’s one outside interest was the theater. She wasn’t doing this part cold. She had all the accoutrements—the wig, the dashiki, and a lot of experience with make-up. She’s seen plenty of black women in the welfare office, enough to pick up speech patterns, to observe gestures and movements.”

“Still, another black would know.”

“Maybe, Lieutenant, but Spaulding in the person of Yvonne McIvor didn’t come into contact with other blacks. She walked into hotels, waited silently and walked out. Probably the only time she had to talk was when she cashed checks, opened bank accounts, or when she signed for the safe-deposit box. There are enough white people around so she would never have to deal with a black.”

“Maybe.”

“It worked, Lieutenant. If someone had pressed her she could always be rude, tell them to fuck off. When that happens the first question that comes to your mind isn’t, ‘Is this person really black?’ ”

“Yeah, okay.” He fingered my report. “Give me your reasoning.”

I settled back. The Morning Watch commander had let us use the office. It was relatively tidy, only a few papers spread around, but Lt. Davis pushed at the edges, and I knew if it had been his shift, everything would have been in squared-off piles. “When Delehanty threatened to report her for taking bribes, Anne Spaulding realized that the dummy case racket would also be exposed. She couldn’t be sure Delehanty hadn’t told someone already. The safest way out was to have Anne Spaulding disappear. Fortunately, she had plenty of identities to melt into.”

“And she chose McIvor?”

“No. Initially she just lit out of the apartment, leaving her purse and all her belongings, which she wouldn’t be able to use anyway, and she contacted Effield, her partner. Then, when I demanded to see one of the dummy cases, Effield let me choose one. Whatever name I chose, Anne took.”

“But how did she get the McIvor apartment?”

“I can’t be sure till we check with the landlord, but probably Anne and Alec had rented it when they started the dummy case scheme and Anne used it as a place to go in the McIvor disguise, after she’d collected the checks. It was perfect for that—cheap and secluded.”

Lt. Davis fingered his moustache. “Then Effield was responsible for leaving Spaulding’s clothing by the Bay?”

“He had to get rid of the clothes, and doing it that way he could give the impression her body had been thrown in the Bay.” I paused, reordering my thoughts. Taking a breath, I said, “When I was at the McIvor apartment, I looked into the bedroom, which, incidentally, was in the same state of disorder as Anne’s own apartment. Mixed in with her black trappings, she had a ski-wear magazine. Welfare clients don’t have ski-wear magazines. They don’t consider what will be fashionable on the slopes; they worry about where next month’s rent is coming from.”

The lieutenant nodded.

“But the real tip-off was the NCR note acknowledging Yvonne’s rent receipt. Welfare clients carry all their important papers in their purses, because they may need them at the welfare office. It’s like a briefcase to a lawyer. If Yvonne really had been a client, she would have had the NCR note in her purse Thursday. She would have looked there first But there wasn’t any NCR note. She took her purse into the bathroom to write one in, of course, Anne Spaulding’s own handwriting. Then, always careful to cover herself, she had Effield put the copy in the case folder. But I had checked the folder before—there was no NCR copy in it.”

“Yet and still,” the lieutenant said, “it seems like Anne Spaulding put a lot of trust in Effield. What was to keep him from leaving with the money any time?”

Anne Spaulding had said nothing, but I’d given this question some thought. “For one thing, there was Anne’s personality and Alec’s. No question who was the strong one. Alec must have known Anne wouldn’t let him get away with that. I suspect when we get the court order and open that box we’ll find virtually the whole amount of money still there.”

The lieutenant said nothing.

“We went over Effield’s flat very carefully. There was no safe-deposit key. We found it in the McIvor apartment. That was Anne’s insurance. I doubt Effield saw that key any time but the day he made his deposit. So Anne had the key and Alec had the signature. Neither one could get the money without the other.”

The lieutenant smiled. He’d been up since he got the word on Effield. Nothing happened to one of his officers without his knowing. But he didn’t look tired. He was running on success. “Good job, Smith.”

“Thanks.” I pushed myself up. The elation I had experienced a few hours ago had worn off. The image of Alec Effield’s body remained. I walked toward my desk, ready to assemble my notes and dictate the report before going home.

The case was over—almost. One loose end remained. Nat.

I was exhausted, but at the same time wired. If I went home I wouldn’t sleep. If I sat in the sun, I’d think about dealing with Nat. Neither of us would be at his best now, but that wouldn’t matter.

Nat looked spent as he opened the door of his house. His hair hung uncombed from his center part, his skin was gray and sagged into the hollows of his cheeks. He looked like he was running on caffeine alone.

All my anger evaporated. I could berate him, as he well deserved, but there’d be no satisfaction from that. Watching him walk into the living room and sink onto the sofa, I felt a rush of the old tenderness, the protectiveness I’d felt at those rare moments when he’d revealed to me some fear or sense of desolation he could uncover in front of no one else. I wanted to hold him to me and to make it all right.

But I could change nothing. And reviving that very unrepresentative aspect of our past would help neither of us. I sat on the chair opposite him.

“Do you know about Anne?”

“Yes.”

“The dummy cases? Picking up the checks from the hotels?”

“Yes.”

“And that she killed Alec Effield?”

“Yes.” His voice was as gray as his face.

“Nat, you owe me an explanation of… of what you didn’t tell me.”

“Not now.” He didn’t look up. His voice was barely audible. It was almost as if, to him, I weren’t even there.

“Now,” I said.

“Jill, I’m too stunned to deal with all that.”

My tenderness was gone. “Nat, I realize this is a bad time for you. It’s not great for me. Twelve hours ago I found Alec Effield’s corpse, with his throat cut. I’ve been up all night. I’ve been in a fight. But I started this investigation as a favor to you. Now I’m calling in that favor.”

Nat hesitated.

I waited.

“Okay.”

“Tell me what really happened with Anne, with your pen, and why you called me to begin with.”

“I…” He stared down at his knees. “I don’t know. I thought I knew. I thought Anne was so special. She was so interested in literature, in Yeats, in my thesis. We were so close: two kindred souls mired in the absurdity of the welfare department. Or so I thought. Apparently I was wrong, totally wrong, totally deceived, used. It never occurred to me that Anne could be a thief. I couldn’t have imagined it.”

“Did you think she was more honest?”

“I…it’s not that.” He pushed the hair back out of his face and said slowly, “I thought she had pierced through the bourgeois etiquette of life. I thought she was beyond that.” He paused, looking away. “But she wasn’t.”

I could have reminded him she had fooled many others. But I said nothing. This was something he’d have to deal with alone.

I wanted to ask him what exactly his relationship was with Anne. Just close friends? Or were they lovers? But I caught myself. I didn’t need to know for the case. And for myself, suddenly it didn’t much matter. Instead, I said, “Why weren’t you honest about your pewter pen?”

“I couldn’t be, Jill. One night when I was at Anne’s apartment, she asked to borrow it. She was taken with it, with its design. It was nice to be able to give her something of mine she admired. But I couldn’t have told you that. If I’d even admitted that I gave it to her, you would have suspected what that meant, and I would have had to explain my whole relationship with Anne. I called you on the spur of the moment. I was afraid something had happened to her. People are hurt, in accidents, attacked by psychos. If Anne had been in the hospital, no one would have called me. I would have had no way of knowing, you see.”

I nodded.

“But then, by the time you asked me about the pen, it was clear Anne had not just been in an accident, that something more was going on, and that I really didn’t know Anne at all. I…well, I just couldn’t deal with telling that to you.”

“And so you let me go on investigating in the dark, wasting days, endangering my whole career because I trusted you!”

“I didn’t think.”

“And you…never mind.” I was going to tell him that his silence may well have given Anne enough time to kill Alec Effield. But there was no point. He’d think of that soon enough.

I was tempted to ask him what he would do now, if he would stay on at the welfare department. But I didn’t.

I stood up. “Goodbye, Nat.”

The scene with Nat must have drained what energy I had left. It had been only two in the afternoon when I got home, but I’d crawled into my sleeping bag. I had slept through whichever of the numerous pieces of electrical equipment Mr. Keppel had chosen to attack his lawn that Saturday afternoon; I’d slept through the evening and all night and had barely pulled open eyelids that seemed cemented shut when I heard a knock on the door.

“Who’s there?”

“Howard.”

“Howard?” I checked my watch. It was nearly ten
A.M.
I wriggled out of the bag, pulled on my robe and ran my fingers through my hair as I walked to the door.

“Did I get you up?” he asked, grinning down at me.

I laughed. “I can see I’m not likely to get much sympathy from you. It’s nothing urgent, is it?” Howard had never just dropped in before.

“No. I can wait while you take a shower or whatever. I’ll make us some coffee. If I remember your kitchen, it’ll take me that long to find your Melitta.”