Beware the Solitary Drinker (20 page)

“In those letters she sent, did Angelina mention an older man?” I asked Janet.

The question startled her out of her drowsiness. “What? An old man?”

“Never mind, we'll talk about it tomorrow. Why don't you sleep here?” I said since she was almost asleep anyway. There may be things to look into elsewhere, but in the meanwhile there was one giant question looming over me that I couldn't put off any longer. “I'm going out for a while.”

“Where?” she asked, opening her eyes but not lifting her head.

“To see Carl.”

Mumbling, Janet curled up on the couch. I threw a blanket over her and went in to kiss Kevin on his forehead before I left, then walked down Broadway in the pale light of morning toward Strauss Park and West End Avenue.

Chapter Ten

I grabbed some coffee and a couple of hard rolls at the donut shop at 109th Street. Then I stood outside 811 West End watching through the window. Carl sat hunched over his desk in his small cubicle, writing. I considered not disturbing him but screwed up my courage and went in. He didn't seem to mind stopping what he was doing.

We drank coffee and ate hard rolls. “Is that a poem?” I asked.

He picked up the notebook he'd been writing in. “I write different kinds of poems at night. When I'm tired like this, they're fragmented with these weird images. But not a poem yet.”

I found myself pacing around his tiny cubicle. Carl's owl expression replaced the peaceful, pensive face I'd seen when he was writing. He watched me pace but didn't say anything.

“I don't know what to do next,” I said finally. “I'm trying to figure out which one of my friends is a murderer.”

Carl began very deliberately breaking up the plastic lid of the coffee container into tiny pieces. He nodded solemnly.

“What would you do?”

“I'd pretend I was Angelina. Why would she let herself get murdered?”

“What about Ozzie?”

“He let himself get murdered because he was too afraid to stay alive.”

“Angelina?”

Carl stopped breaking up the container lid to brush the tiny pieces he had already broken off into two equal piles. He let his gaze travel back in my direction. Looking him in the eye made me nervous, so I looked at the walls. “Something was going on that we didn't know about. I thought it was the porno flicks, but it's something else.”

“Do you remember her talking about a sugar daddy? After she started working at Hanrahan's, she was spending money like a drunken sailor.”

Carl carefully scooped up the piles of container lid chips and dumped them in his wastebasket. “A mysterious stranger, eh?” He nodded judiciously. “She never told me about anyone like that. But, then, she didn't very often tell me about men in her life.”

“Well, she told me,” I said defensively. “But, then again, everyone lies to me.”

“You seem surprised.”

“Where were you the night Angelina was killed?”

Carl's eyes flickered but his expression didn't change. “Here.”

“The night Ozzie was killed, too, right?”

“Not much of an alibi, eh?” Carl said calmly, starting to work on the lid again. “I could have slipped away. The only way I could get tripped up is if someone tried to get in and I wasn't here to run the elevator. You'd have to check with every apartment in the building, though. That's a lot of work. And you still might not come up with anything because the odds are no one would be coming in the building at those hours.”

“Did you find Angelina's apartment for her?”

“How'd you find that out?” Carl eyes opened wider.

“I asked the super.”

“Good thinking.”

“Why didn't you tell me you knew Angelina in Montauk?” I could hear the hurt in my voice.

Carl's eyes shot open again. “All right!” he said, the same tone he used to use for one of the Pearl's finger-roll lay-ups. “You are getting good at this.”

“It wasn't me, it was Janet.”

“Quite a team,” said Carl, putting the remains of the second lid down on the desk and pushing it and the new pile of plastic bits away to the far corner of the desk. He pulled himself up out of the old wooden office chair he'd been sitting in.

“You aren't going to tell me?”

“I have to check the boilers.” When he looked at me from the doorway, his eyes held that mournful Snoopy look. “What good would it do? You wouldn't believe me, so you'd have to investigate anyway.”

I stared at him.

“Who else are you checking up on besides me?” He seemed to accept being a suspect without animosity.

I felt foolish answering him. “Reuben. Nigel. Maybe Eric. Maybe Danny, after all. It might be someone else we don't even know about. I'm going to see what I can find out about her life at Hanrahan's.”

Carl raised an eyebrow. “It usually turns out to be the person you least suspect.”

“I think that's only in books. In real life, I think it's usually the person you most suspect.”

“You should still keep your eye on the people that look innocent.”

“Why?”

“Brecht said the guilty have proof of their innocence in their hands.”

***

When I woke up in the early afternoon, Janet was playing chess in the kitchen with Kevin. Over bagels, we agreed that we would continue to check up on everyone: Nigel, Carl, and Reuben from Oscar's, and anyone else we turned up from Hanrahan's. Janet's first foray would be to Stamford to talk to neighbors and maybe the Barthelme's hired help and find out all she could about Nigel's younger years. Kevin wanted to go to Stamford with Janet. At first, I said no, but then thought better of it. Going with her was probably safer than staying in my apartment.

I walked Janet and Kevin to the subway and then called Peter Finch to ask if there was any way to check discreetly with Carl's tenants to see if any of them noticed if he was missing from his post on the nights of the murders.

“I could have it done by a detective agency if you think he's the man. I find that hard to believe though.”

“Me, too.” I wouldn't believe Carl was a murderer if I found him standing over the body with a smoking gun in his hand. “I just want to rule it out.”

“I'll do it,” Peter said. “By the way, Danny said he's sure he left his jacket in Oscar's, the one they found with blood stains. Do you remember seeing it?”

I thought back through a blur of nights and customers, trying to pick Danny out of a crowd, trying to guess what his jacket looked like. I didn't know if, without saying so, Peter was asking me to lie, so I hemmed and hawed.

“Don't worry about it,” Peter said. “Even if you told the truth, they'd think you were lying.”

***

Still high on my new determination, I headed up Broadway to the law library at Columbia. If bartenders knew people by what they drank, it followed that librarians must know people by what they read. Sure enough, the librarian who'd been on that Thursday night did remember a massive, aging, light-skinned black man wearing glasses who'd been poring over the Domestic Relations sections of the New York State statutes, remembered him just as certainly as if he'd been drinking rum. He stayed all evening, leaving shortly before midnight when the library closed. That still gave him time to stop off and kill Ozzie on his way down to Oscar's for a drink, but, even if Reuben had lied about seeing Ozzie earlier the night he was killed, he had at least told me some truth. Every little bit would help.

Next, I went looking for Nigel. I thought it might be better to talk to him before he found out Janet was snooping around in Stamford. The Upper West Side being a kind of French cafe society, I checked a few places where he might be before I made bold to call him at home. When I did, he invited me up.

His building, familiar as it was, gave me the creeps. The marble lobby was unpolished and worn and, even though the door had a security buzzer, the lobby felt haunted. Death had met Angelina in that lobby and walked with her to the park. Death had picked up Ozzie in the lobby another night, following him to his apartment. I looked over my shoulder while I listened to the elevator creaking toward me. I jumped when it shuddered to a stop and danced around nervously as it moaned and groaned its way to the ninth floor. It was tiny, like a coffin stood on end, and I couldn't get over the feeling someone was in it with me. The door opened onto a deserted hallway. I walked uneasily to 9D and rang Nigel's bell.

He led me down a narrow hallway lined with bookshelves to a small living room cluttered with typewriters and computers, with printers and drills and hand tools and various gauges and clocks. Had I been on the trail of the mad bomber, I was home free.

“What do you do anyway?” I asked Nigel.

“Install and program computer systems. All this is just a hobby.”

The apartment had all the clutter of long inhabitancy and eccentricity. Nigel spent a great deal of time in this place and had built a life out of being alone.

“I'm trying to figure some things out,” I said in a voice that sounded much more casual than I felt. “Maybe you can help.”

“Try me.” Nigel smiled ingratiatingly. Ushering me into this facsimile of a small appliance repair shop, offering to make coffee, he seemed both pleased and uncomfortable that I was there, reminding me of a little kid always willing to please and never able to. Maybe me as the little kid.

“Who do you think killed Angelina?”

Nigel pursed his lips and doubt flickered in his eyes. He sat on a straightback chair at a desk he used as a repair bench. “I hate to say this, but I think Danny did.”

“And Ozzie, too?”

Nigel nodded.

“Where did you first meet Angelina?”

“In Oscar's.”

“Where were you before you came to New York?”

Nigel's eyes stopped smiling. “I don't like the third-degree, Brian. This is the second time. What are you trying to do?”

“Figure out why someone would say you knew Angelina before she came to New York.”

“Who said that?” Nigel's body tensed, his eyes hardened. He stood up and leaned over me.

I stiffened my back to keep from giving up. “Take it easy, Nigel,” I said, but sank further into his sagging couch all the same. “Lots of things get said. I'm just asking you.”

He calmed. I'd gotten better at lying than I thought.

“What else are you hearing?” He chuckled. The sound rattled around the room like the false laughter after a bad joke. He sat back down in his chair.

“About a girl named Sharon Collins.”

Nigel had pretty good control of himself now. When I mentioned the girl's name, his expression didn't change, not even a blink. After a few seconds of looking thoughtful, he asked, “Who's she?”

“The girl who accused you of raping her.”

“Jesus,” said Nigel, sighing. “Is this coming from Danny? Or from Reuben?”

I didn't answer.

He stood up slowly. He didn't seem upset, bothered maybe, but not really agitated. “Danny's trying to save his own ass by frying mine?” His smile was bitter, his tone indignant. “Check it out, Brian, if that's what you're doing. It's better for me if you do. I don't want whispering behind my back.”

“I'm asking you to your front.”

“The girl was crazy. She never saw me before in her life. Ask the cops. They checked out the whole story.” He shook his head. “You oughta know about people pointing fingers at other people.”

A voice told me to let it go. Instead, in the hallway of the tall bookcases, as I was edging my way out, I said, “Ozzie was drunk enough to pass out the night he was killed.”

“He did pass out. I dumped him on his bed, and he went out like a light.” He looked at me steadily. “He was alive when I left him there, Brian.” His eyes pleaded with me. “Come on. Three or four people in the building heard shots hours after I dropped him off.”

While he stood in his doorway, and I stood in the lonely hallway, I asked one more question. “Suppose Danny didn't kill her, who did?”

Nigel didn't answer for a long while. “I have no idea. It could have been anyone.”

The feeling I was being followed returned as soon as I got on the elevator. I expected a man with a gun to be standing facing me, inches away, when the elevator door opened.

As the door opened, I caught a glimpse of a gray coat and screamed. Betsy Blumberg screamed right back at me.

“Are you crazy,” she yelled when the door had fully opened and we stood facing one another.

“This building gives me the creeps.”

“Maybe you ought to give up searching around for murderers before you scare yourself to death.” She looked me over. “Wanna have lunch?”

I did, so we went to Tom's.

In her daytime clothes, a gray suit and running shoes, with her dress shoes in her handbag, Betsy looked like one of the thousands of New York everyday working women you see on the streets of midtown. She seemed efficient and normal, and, for all that, I guess she was, in the context of New York being a pretty lonely place and everyone having his or her own store of secrets.

“What do you know about Nigel?” I asked, when we were seated in a booth.

“Is he your latest suspect? I thought Reuben was.”

“I'm beginning to think it might be me.”

Betsy wrinkled her eyebrows and pursed her lips before she spoke. “Nigel is strange. I guess he's really smart, and he's always Mr. Helpful. The old ladies in the building love him. He's always carrying packages and opening doors and changing light bulbs and fixing sinks. The funny thing is I think he really is nice like that. He's a do-gooder. But he's such a loner. And I don't know why he hangs around bars all the time if he doesn't drink.”

“Do you know anything bad about him?”

“He doesn't seem to have a family.”

“Do people visit him? Women?”

“No. But he goes to prostitutes.”

“How do you know that?”

She wrinkled her eyebrows again. “I've seen him near my office where they live—or work, I guess. My block is a prostitute block. Not streetwalkers, the high class kind. I'm always being mistaken for one.” Betsy eyed me suspiciously. “Do I look like a whore?”

“You look sweet and caring, and you're adorable, a true Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.” I picked up her hand, holding it for a second.

“Thank you,” said Betsy.

“What's the address of this house of ill repute?”

“Are you going there?” Betsy stared at me with her turkey sandwich halfway to her mouth.

“For information.”

“Men are sick,” said Betsy, dropping her sandwich back onto her plate.