Day of Wrath (12 page)

Frances Shelley was sitting with a young blonde girl at
one of the tables. For a brief second, in the dim terrace light, I cherished
the foolish hope that the girl was Robbie Segal. But as I walked up to
her, I realized that the only thing that she and Robbie had in common was
blonde hair; and even that proved to be an illusion, because this one's
hair was peroxided. It covered either side of her thin face in curly muffs,
like a poodle's ears.

When Frances reached over to brush some of the hair from
the girl's cheek, the blonde shook her head and growled, "Cut it out, Fran!"
in a husky, unpleasant voice. Frances dropped her hand immediately and
glanced at me, as if she'd hoped I hadn't noticed what had happened. The
girl stared at me, too.

"Harry," Frances said in a weak voice, "This is my friend,
Sophie." She turned to Sophie, who was still giving me the evil eye, and
said, "Sophie, this is Harry Stoner. A good friend."

I sat down at the table and, for a moment, none of us
said a thing. After a while, Sophie unfastened her eyes from my face and
looked off into the night.

Frances was watching her closely, as if she were taking
her cue from what Sophie did and said. She was watching her with her heart
in her eyes; and as always happens when you show your heart, you show all—what
you love and what you fear.

"You see why I was nervous?" she said to me with a strained
laugh and glanced quickly at Sophie.

"What the hell are you apologizing to him for?" the girl
said, without turning her head. "And quit ogling me. You make me nervous."

"I'm sorry," Frances said.

"
Cut it out, Fran," Sophie said again. "We've got nothing
to be ashamed of," Frances laughed unhappily. "For some reason, it doesn't
feel that way."

'
He's· the reason," Sophie said. "Can't you see that?"

"I haven't said a word," I said.

The girl turned on me with the quickness of a big, prowling
cat. "You don't have to say anything. In fact, the less you say, the better."
She stared at Frances. "Where's the money you talked about, Fran? Let's
get this over with."

"Sophie knows the name of the woman in that photograph
you showed me," Frances explained.

"It'll cost you a hundred dollars," Sophie said smugly.

"Al1 right," I said. "Who is she?"

"I'll get to it." The girl reached down beside her and
pulled a pack of cigarettes out of a canvas bag. She tapped a cigarette
into her hand, lifted it to her mouth, and looked at Fran. "Light me,"
she said coldly.

Frances snapped open a lighter and lit her lover's cigarette.
Sophie puckered her lips and let the smoke dribble out of her mouth like
a pale, white fluid. Then she licked her upper lip with the tip of her
tongue and laughed hoarsely.

I was beginning to feel sorry for Frances. A one-sided
relationship isn't much fun no matter who's involved in it. A politicized
relationship is even worse. And this one looked like it was bound to end
in heartbreak. Sophie reached across the table and clicked the lighter
shut. "You'll burn yourself, sweetie," she said with a sort of honeyed
malice.

Frances ducked her head in embarrassment.

"
About the woman?" I said.

Sophie passed her thumb across the tip of her cigarette,
knocking the dead ash into a glass ashtray sitting on the table. "The money
first," she said.

I took my wallet out of my coat and handed her four twenties
and two tens. She plucked them delicately from my fingers, as if she were
trying to avoid touching my flesh. "Her name's Irene Croft," she said,
as she folded the bills and stuck them in her bag.

"
No relation to the Crofts?" I said lightly. The Crofts
were one of the first families of the city. Like the Tafts or the Scripps
or the Procters of Procter and Gamble.

"I kind of doubt it," Sophie said wryly. "It would be
pretty funny, if she were."

"How so?"

"
She's kinky, that's why."

"
And what does that mean?"

Sophie smiled wickedly. "She used to pay me money to have
sex with her on the phone. Real dirty sex. She'd tell me what to do and
then I'd tell her what to do. It usually lasted a couple of hours. Lots
of heavy breathing. That kind of kinky."

Frances flushed and stood up. "That was a lousy thing
to say in front of me," she said bitterly and ran across the terrace to
the bar. Through the picture window I watched her go into the lady's room.

"Maybe you better go after her," I said to Sophie.

"
Maybe you better mind your own fucking business," she
said in an ugly voice. "Fran knows the way things are." She took a deep
drag off her cigarette and flipped the butt over the terrace wall. "She's
got a lot of growing up to do, that's all. She was divorced a couple of
years ago and she's still into that desperate married mentality. She still
wants to belong to someone—wants to be their property. I'm nobody's property.
And I'm sure as hell not going to take someone else on. Especially someone
who hasn't got her shit half-together"

She was something, Sophie was. A truly ugly character
who lived by sexual whim and would probably die by it. I just hoped she
didn't take my friend with her.

"About Irene Croft?" I said. "What else can you tell me?"

She shrugged. "She used to come to the club a lot practically
a charter member. But I don't see her much any more. I think she might
have straightened out a little, because I caught a glimpse of her a few
weeks ago cruising Fourth Street with a leather boy. Irene digs leather.
Definitely not my bag."

Sophie looked up as Fran walked back to the table. Her
eyes had a red, scrubbed look behind her glasses and her cheeks were flushed.
She stared at Sophie and said,

"I think we better go."

"One last question," I said. "Do you know where Irene
Croft lives?"

Sophie picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder.
"In the Highland House. " She started to put her arm through Frances's
arm, and Frances pulled away. Sophie laughed lightly and sauntered toward
the terrace door.

Frances scowled after her, then turned to me. I could
tell what was coming from the look on her face. She'd been humiliated and
I'd witnessed it. Perhaps she felt I'd been the cause of it. ln any case,
she was searching for someone other than Sophie to blame.

"I don't think we'll be seeing much of each other for
a while, Harry."

"If that's the way you want it, Frances."

"That's the way I want it." She started to follow Sophie
out the door, then looked back at me. "Sophie's just a little wild, that's
all. But then she isn't very old. She hasn't seen a lot of life. And she
just doesn't know how badly she can hurt me."

I said, "I think she knows exactly how to hurt you, Frances.
I think she's good at it."

"
Oh, for chrissake, Harry!" Frances cried. "Don't put
that trip on me now. I don't need that trip. It's been a bad enough evening
as it is."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I shouldn't have said it."

"Anyway, she's not always like that. She can be very sweet."

"If you say so, Frances."

"
Oh, Harry," she said.

For a second we just looked at each other across the terrace.

"I gotta go," she finally said.

"If you ever need to talk about it, Frances."

"You're the one I'll come to," she said. "By the way,
I ran that check for you and didn't turn anything up. Your girlfriend isn't
at a shelter, if that's any help."

"
You've been a big help."

She nodded and walked into the tap room. Through the window
I saw her exchange a few words with Sophie. Then they joined arms and walked
out of the bar.
 

THERE WAS A COLD WIND RUNNING DOWN THE STREET when I stepped
back out into the night. It shook the branches of the mulberry trees on
the hill and whistled in the downspouts of the bleak boxy houses. I pulled
my sports coat shut and, shoulders hunched, walked up Oregon to my car.

Once inside, I sat for a moment, thinking about Frances.
The fact that she was a lesbian hadn't bothered me. Or only a little. It
was her lover, Sophie, who made me sick at heart. It just didn't seem fair
that someone as vulnerable as Frances should end up with someone like Sophie
for a lover. Only, fair or not, that was what usually happened. It was
just too damn easy to find someone with all the answers—someone so self-involved
that he or she didn't care whether or not they were the right answer for
you. Which made me think of Robbie Segal.

I started up the Pinto and circled down to Baum Street—a
stretch of concrete so run down that even a Mt. Adams realtor couldn't
find a way to dress it up—then back up Monastery to Celestial, at the
top of the hill. I'd thought I was going to sidestep the bright, hazy lights
that evening. But the Highland House was right in the middle of them—a
huge steel high-rise on the crest of the hill, with its own barber shop
and restaurants and saunas, like a little piece of Miami Beach on the banks
of the Ohio. It was where the woman named Irene Croft lived. And, at that
moment, Irene Croft was my only lead.

I parked in the guest lot across from the apartment house
and stood there for a minute, with the wind riffling my hair, studying
that huge rectangular monolith, full of picture windows and railed cement
porches and curtain-filtered lamplight. There was only one way in—past
a doorman in red livery, posted beneath a canopied entryway at the foot
of the building. And the doorman wouldn't buzz me through to the elevator
room until he'd checked with Irene Croft, who wasn't about to let a private
detective named Stoner come up for a chat. So I couldn't get directly into
the apartment house, but I could go into the Celestial—the posh, glassed-in
restaurant that occupied most of the ground floor of the high-rise. Then
I could wait in the Celestial lobby, across from the elevator room, until
a Highland House resident came downstairs for a late night stroll. And
when he'd unlocked the inner door that led to the elevators, I'd I manage
to slip up to Irene Croft's apartment.

I was thinking about how to get her apartment number as
I walked up to the doorman—an elderly black man with a face like a rubber
mask.

"
Cold night," I said.

He smiled pleasantly. "Too cold for April. Are you for
the restaurant or the apartments, sir?"

"A little of each," I told him. "I'm supposed to meet
one of your tenants for a drink. Her name's Croft."

The black man cracked a broad grin. "Miss Irene," he said,
as if he'd raised her from a pup. "You want me to give her a buzz?"

"No," I said. "She said she'd meet me in the bar. If she
isn't there, I'll take you up on your offer."

"
No need to come back out in the cold again," he said.

"
There's a house phone in the lobby."

"
Well, to be honest, I don't remember her apartment number."

"She's 2201," he said.

"
High up."

"'
Bout as high as you can get. Man, that's the penthouse."

"I'll be damned," I said.

I walked past him into the restaurant lobby—a dark ante-room
with red flock walls and gilt trim and a couple of plush chairs for furnishing.
Through the portal on the far wall, I could see a
maitre d'
sitting
at a purser's desk, bent over his guest list like a conductor studying
a score. Beyond him, the dining room shimmered with crystal and silver
and snow-flake linen. It was too late for the dinner crowd—nine-thirty
by my watch. But there was still a faint drone of table talk coming from
inside the room. The high-pitched, vital sounds of men and women at play.
I tucked myself away in a corner—on one of the upholstered chairs—and
kept an eye on the plate glass doors leading to the elevators.

A few couples sauntered past me out of the restaurant.
The men in business suits, looking flushed and pompous as only the well-fed
can look. The women in evening gowns, leaning on their men with laughter
in their eyes. I sat there like an unbidden guest, watching them come and
go. And watching the inner door. And around ten o'clock, the elevators
clicked open and I got to my feet.

A plump blonde woman in a tartan plaid poncho stepped
out and walked to the inner door. She was leading a 5 miniature poodle
by a leash. The woman fumbled with her key, trying to keep the dog in line
with her free hand. But he was capering around like a lunatic, making little
leaps at the plate glass door and humping her leg furiously.

She finally managed to open the lock. And I held the door
open for her as she came out.

"
Bless you," she said with distress.

Then the dog broke into a run—its black nails scrabbling
across the tile floor—and the woman flew after it, like someone blown
away by a sudden wind. I slipped through the door and walked over to the
bank of elevators. A minute later, I was on the twenty-second floor.