Day of Wrath (13 page)

It wasn't until I actually walked up to the wood-paneled
door of Irene Croft's apartment that I began to wonder what I was doing
there. It had occurred to me that I had only the vaguest idea who the woman
was and nothing but the photograph to connect her with Robbie Segal. And
that wasn't much to go on.'Her sex life, as sordid as it apparently was,
didn't interest me, except as it might have involved Robbie. And whether
she was one of the Crofts, which seemed more likely given her penthouse
in Mt. Adams, was none of my concern, either. Every family has its black
sheep, even the ultrarich, ultraconservative ones. The Crofts just had
a doozie, that was all. I decided before I knocked that all I was really
interested in was the man in the beret. If I could wheedle his name and
address out of Irene Croft, I'd leave her to her obscene phone calls and
her leather boys.

It wasn't a very specihc plan of action, but it was the
best I could come up with. I went ahead and knocked. To my surprise, Irene
Croft herself answered a few seconds later. She was taller than I'd expected
from the photograph and boyishly thin. Tiny breasts, slender hips. She
wore a black shirt with western piping and black leather pants with a silver
belt through the loops.

"Yes," she said. Her voice was as mellow and vibrant as
a plucked guitar string. "Who are you?"

"My" name is Stoner," I said, and, unable to think of
anything better to say, added: "I'm a friend of Robbie Segal's."

"Oh, yes?" the woman said with enough curiosity in her
voice to make me think that she recognized the name. "What do you want?"

"]ust to talk to you for a few minutes—about Robbie.
She's been missing for several days and we're worried about her."
"
You're a friend of the family's?"

"Yes."

The woman looked me over for a second. She had the blackest
eyes I'd ever seen—almost all pupil with just a hint of dark blue iris
at the circumference. The rest of her face seemed ridiculously ordinary
by comparison. Thin lips, off-white teeth, pug nose, square jaw, short
gray hair. She would have looked like a tall, skinny Dorothy Parker, if
it hadn't been for those eyes. They gave her an inert, fathomless stare—like
a doll's dead glass gaze.

"Who sent you to me?" she said mildly, as if it hardly
mattered.

"If I could come in for a minute . . .?"

She pulled the door open and stepped aside. ."Certainly."

The entry hall ran behind a huge sunken living room, then
continued back to the unlit rooms at the rear of the penthouse. Irene Croft
led me down a short stairway to the living room and pointed to a Z-shaped
chair. I sat down and took a quick look around me. The entire west 
wall was plate glass, and the city glowed behind it as if it were a piece
of incandescent sculpture designed for that room alone. It was the most
breathtaking view of Cincinnati I had ever seen. And it so absorbed me
that, for a moment, I didn't notice that the other walls were  hung
with remarkable paintings. Picassos, Braques, Cezannes. Giacomettis on
the creamy enameled tables. What looked like Moores in the corners. Even
the furniture was special-sleek, Italian modern pieces in wind-swept shades
of blue. The only light in the room—in the whole apartment, for that
matter—came from the picture window and from the tiny white spots trained
on the various artifacts. It made me feel as if I were sitting, after hours,
in a museum. A vaguely privileged and slightly uneasy feeling. But then
great wealth generally has that effect on me.

"You like my living room?" the woman said with a tickle
of pride in her mellow voice.

"Very much. It's beautiful," I said, although I was really
thinking about the distance between it and the Rostow's living room.

"I've tried to make it as beautiful as I could. If I have
to live in this city, I can at least surround myself with  beautiful
things?"

"You don't like Cincinnati?"

"Only the people who live in it," she said with a mild
laugh. "But I'd decorate my rooms like this no matter where I lived. Collecting
fine art is one of my weaknesses."

"
That's an odd way to put it."

"I'm an odd woman." She laughed, exposing her tiny, off-white
teeth. "You haven't come to rob me, have you, Mr .... I don't believe I
caught your name."

She said it so casually that it shook me—as if she were
used to being vandalized, as if she expected it. But then if what Sophie
had told me were true, she'd probably had her share of expensive, unreliable
friends. "My name is Harry Stoner. And l've come to ask you a few questions
about Robbie Segal."

"And how did you get up here, Mr. Harry Stoner?" she said
in that same blasé tone of voice.

"I sneaked in," I told her.

She laughed again. "So enterprising and so handsome. What
an unusual combination? She sat down on one of the blue Italian sofas and
tented her hands at her lips. She would have looked quite at home, if it
weren't for her eyes. Those eyes would never look at home—no matter what
city she lived in.

"
I asked you a question a few minutes ago and you haven't
answered me yet," she said from behind her tented lingers. "Who sent you
here?"

I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the snap-shot
of her and Bobbie and the man in the beret. I passed it over to her, and
she held it up to the window—to catch the city light.

"Not a very flattering likeness," she said softly. "Have
you talked to Theo, too?"

I didn't even have to think about it. I said, "Not yet."

She gazed out the window at the winking lights. "He's
a very great artist, you know," she said with a tremor in her voice. The
sudden depth of feeling was surprising, given the cynical way she'd talked
about everything else—including the possibility of being robbed. She
must have heard it herself, because she straightened up in her chair and
crossed her legs, as if showing her feelings were just another kind of
bad posture. "He's one of the finest jazz guitarists this city has ever
produced. One of the finest in the country." She said it flatly, like a
tour guide reading from a Baedecker.

"
I guess I'll have to hear him play some time.". .

"You must," she said. But her voice had shifted again—back
into its cynical, blasé mode. "You really must, Mr. Stoner."

"Where does he play?"

She smiled knowingly, as if I'd suddenly begun to speak
her idiom. "You don't know who Theo is, do you?"

"Just the name."

"Don't try to con me, Mr. Stoner. I've been conned by
the best. You didn't know his name until I mentioned it a moment ago."

There was no sense in lying, because I figured she was
right. A woman with her tastes had been conned by the best. Or the worst.
I told her the truth. "No, I didn't."

"It doesn't matter," she said with a toss of her head.

"Everyone lies. Theo Clinger plays in Mt. Adams. At The
Pentangle Club in Hill Street. There's no reason you shouldn't know that."

"Is that where the photo was taken? At The Pentangle Club?"

"Why do you want to know?" she said curiously, as if she
were anticipating another lie.

"I told you. Robbie's run away and we're worried about
her."

"We?"

"Her mother," I said.  I pulled my wallet out of
my coat, slipped the photostat of my license out, and handed it to her.

"My, my, my," she said with just a touch of resentment
in her voice. She handed the license and the photograph back to me. "Your
nose is going to grow two inches, Mr. Stoner, for all the little fibs you've
told me. I have nothing to hide. Why didn't you tell me you were a detective
right away?"

"Some people don't like talking to detectives," I said.

"Some people?-"' she said. "Or this particular person?"

"I came to you to talk about Robbie. Nothing more. At
the moment you're the only lead I have. You and that photograph?

"Well, she's not here. I can assure you of that. And as
far as I know she's not with Theo, either. To be uncharacteristically honest
with you, I met her only twice. Once on the occasion that the picture was
taken. And once at The Pentangle. Both times she seemed a sweet, intelligent
young thing. Stunningly attractive, although I don't think she realized
it. She seemed preoccupied with her mother. Life was apparently too restrictive
at home."

She glanced out the window again and said, "I could certainly
sympathize with that. She was with a boy on both occasions. I don't remember
his name, although I'm sure that Theo would. He played the guitar and Theo
seemed to think he had real talent. I remember that the young man seemed
very attached to Robbie? "

"'And how did she behave toward him?" I asked.

"Quite lovingly, I would say. But then I'm no expert on
love, Mr. Stoner, as you may have heard. I had the feeling that she was
more mature than he was, despite their difference in age. She seemed quite
taken with the people she met at The Pentangle. The boy seemed a little
jealous of that. But then I was a little jealous of him. If I were you
I'd be looking for that boy. Robbie's probably with him."

"I hope not," I said. "The boy's name is Bobby Caldwell
and he was murdered yesterday."

"Cood God!" the woman said and put her hand to her mouth.
"I see now why you came
to me. You must be very worried about Robbie."

"Worried enough," I said with a sigh. "You're sure that
she didn't run to Theo?"

"Positive," she said. "I was with him yesterday. Besides,
he has a family of his own to look after." She made a strange face, but
I didn't know what to make of it.

"Irene?" someone called from behind us.

I jerked around in my chair and the woman jumped to her
feet with a furious look. The voice came from the entryway. A naked boy
was standing on the stairs leading down to the living room. He was eyeing
us with a sort of vain insouciance—one hand cocked on his hip and the
other resting on the banister. He was about eighteen or nineteen, with
hair the color of gun metal and a thin, cold, copper-colored face as pretty
as a brand new penny. He was tanned from head to foot and built like a
weight lifter.

"I told you to stay away," the woman said through her
teeth.

"
You tell me a lot of things," the boy said and ambled
into the room. He sat down on one of the chairs and stared at us with a
pleased, naughty look—like a kid who's just gotten away with murder.
"Who's the dude?" he said, nodding toward me.

Irene Croft sat back down and shook her head woefully.
There was anger on her face. But it was mixed with a number of other feelings.
A touch of pride, I thought, as if in spite of it all she couldn't help
admiring the kid's bravado. And a bit of laughter at my expense and at
the expense of all the other straight arrows in the city. And something
else. Something that brought her dead eyes to life for the first time since
I'd met her. Something that filled them with fire and cunning. Something,
I thought, very much like lust.

"Rudy, meet Mr. Stoner." She turned to me and said, "This
is Rudy—my pet."

I nodded to the boy and he grinned foolishly.

Irene Croft got out of her chair and walked over to where
the boy was sitting, and knelt down in front of him. "I think you better
leave now, Mr. Stoner," she said, staring at the boy's body. "Unless you
want to join us."

"I'l1 take a rain check."

"Then I hope you won't mind if I don't show you out."

"I don't mind."

I got up and walked to the door. I looked back once from
the landing. Rudy had his legs draped over the arms of the chair and Irene
Croft's head was buried between them.
 

MAYBE IT WAS THE AFTERSHOCK OF HAVING MET A cultivated
monster like Irene Croft, but I felt buoyant and alert as I walked back
to the car. I was on to something. For the first time in a couple of days.
Whether that something would lead me to Robbie Segal, I didn't know. Irene
Croft had assured me that it wouldn't. But then Irene Croft was a fundamentally
dishonest woman. If she had told me the truth about Robbie, I figured she'd
done it for a reason that had nothing to do with concern for the girl's
safety. She'd done it to help herself, because, at bottom, that was the
only reason she really understood.

I got in the car and drove up to Hill Street. A few stragglers
were staggering along the sidewalks—drunk and melancholy, weaving lonely
patterns through the April night. Most of the buildings were closed up—the
houses, the shops, the groceries. But here and there, a bar door stood
open and through it came a sudden roar of life—guitars, drum sets, voices,
all mixed together with the clanging of pinball machines and the tinkling
of glass. A hundred feet farther on, the street would go quiet again, except
for the muttering drunks and the occasional sightseers, still wandering
arm in arm up the steep, windy sidewalks.

I found The Pentangle Club on Hill, where it intersected
St. Gregory. It was located on the first floor of a made-over, three-story
Victorian, with twin gables and a long front porch. A sign hanging from
the porch roof read Pentangle. There was a placard set up beneath it, with
the names of the artists who were performing there that night. Theo Clinger
wasn't among them. I decided to go inside anyway—just to nose around.