False Negative (Hard Case Crime) (26 page)

Mollie put down her bag, watched the couples traipse around the floor. They were out of step with the music, a waltz, and with each other, limber young women with frozen smiles partnered by stiff-kneed men. Atlantic City made its name on girls playing to the fantasies of old men, the sweet, public face of blood sport. Similar rules applied in a dance studio.

The pop tune pouring over the transom one floor up was more to her liking. She freshened her makeup to a Rodgers and Hammerstein ballad. Pix Pixley came to the door wearing a light meter around his neck. A rigid smile patterned after those downstairs made her feel she was being laughed at behind her back. The same rules for a game turned on its head.

He put his cheek against hers, and kissed the air. All men, she believed, wanted to have her. Even the air-kissers, who put up a shy front, but whose fevered skin gave them away. Pixley was different, clammy cool.

He moved her bag inside. “You just got in?”

“I took a cab straight from the train station.”

“Do you have a place to stay? I’ve got tons of room.”

“My old roommate will be glad to have me back,” she said, “for the weekend. You’re kind to ask.”

“No trouble. If you change your mind—”

In front of a backdrop representing a desert landscape a man as short and slight as Pixley lay on his back in bright light resting a spear against his thigh. Make that a javelin, she told herself. Aside from leather sandals he was nude, not the least
self-conscious. He was around twenty, with short bleached blond hair, and the physique of a prepubescent boy. The sharp point of the javelin was aimed at a camera on a tripod.

“Marcel and I,” Pixley said, “are doing a spread for
Today’s Sun Worshiper
.”

Marcel tilted his head to imaginary high noon, a heroic pose with the javelin raised above his ear.

“Lower your stick, Marcel,” Pixley said. “You might puncture someone.” He turned to Mollie. “I’m so happy to see you again. If we had to count on Adam Jordan to arrange a session, we’d be waiting forever. He’s one of those fellows—yours truly excepted—who make promises they have no intention of keeping. Sometimes I don’t know why we have anything to do with them.”

Marcel laughed, and shook his spear.

“Not you, dear,” Pixley said to him. “I know
precisely
why.”

“When can you find time for me?” Mollie said.

“When are you going back to New York?”

“Maybe never.”

“Poor girl, you must be delirious. Are you certain you wouldn’t rather stay with me?”

She glanced at Marcel, who seemed ready to let fly with the javelin. “You’re busy. I don’t want to be in the way. I’ll call in the morning.”

“You traveled all this way just for me?”

“Well, one or two other things.”

“I won’t ask who
they
are,” Pixley said. “I do hope you’ll stay a while. I have friends, influential people, who would love to meet you.”

“Can they do anything for me?”

“It depends on what you do for them...” Pixley balanced his chin on the back of his hand, and smiled. “...when they see your look.”

She was at the door when he said, “Oh, Mollie?” A flash went off as she turned around, and she rushed her hand in front of her face. “You shouldn’t,” she said. “I look dreadful.”

“You couldn’t.”

He watched her down the stairs, then went back inside and squared Marcel in the viewfinder.

“Who’s
that
?” Marcel said.

“Hold still.” He got the shot. “A new friend.”

Marcel thought it was hilarious. Pixley snapped him laughing.

“I didn’t know you had girlfriends.”

“There’s plenty you don’t know about me, Marcel.”

“Fill me in.”

“If you don’t quit annoying me, I’m going to shove that pigsticker where it hurts. Oh, but that much you already knew.”

Marcel’s nostrils flared. Pix took more shots. “Good,” he said, “just what the doctor ordered. A few more, and you can put on your pants. You did bring pants?”

“Very funny.”

“Is it? What we’ll do next time, you’ll come back Tuesday in a middie blouse and bell bottoms. I have some ideas for
This Man’s Navy
.”

Pixley rolled up the backdrop, sat down with a magazine while Marcel dressed.

“What are you reading?”

Pixley showed him the cover.

“
Real Detective
? You can’t be interested in that trash.”

“It so happens I do a lot of work for them.”

“I get it. You like looking at the pictures.”

“You don’t get anything, Marcel. You should pick up a detective magazine, you might learn something. Can you read? You’ve never mentioned it.” He didn’t wait long for a comeback before supplying one himself. “Frowning will put lines in your face.”

Marcel smiled.

“Better,” Pixley said. “Actually, it’s the articles I enjoy most. Every issue is a sort of handbook full of practical information.”

“For detectives?”

“Yes, for them, too.”

“Good day, it’s two o’clock. Two p.m.”

“What the hell if it is? You woke me,” Jordan said. “Who are you?”

“Your wake-up call, sir.”

“Oh,” Jordan said. “Uh, thank you.” He let the receiver down three times before it found the cradle.

He felt as if he’d been put through the wringer, and decided that he had. His legs ached from the long run over sand. A painful bruise on his shoulder was a mystery with a hundred solutions. He stepped into the shower, brushed his teeth, got dressed. His foot didn’t fit inside his shoe. He checked for swelling, filled an ashtray with sand.

It had been 6:30 when he’d gotten in after catching a ride with a
Press
delivery truck. When he mentioned that he used to work for the paper himself, the driver launched into a damning tirade against management, capitalist exploiters, the ruling class, and the hoity-toity sons of bitches in the new Packard sedan racing from Brigantine who cut him off.

It was too late for breakfast from the coffee shop. There was a television in the room. What he wanted to do was to get under the covers and spend the day watching it. He slouched against the headboard keeping his feet on the floor. If he pulled them into bed, he’d go out like a light. He reached for the phone again, asked the switchboard for an outside line.

“PixleyPix!”

“It’s Adam Jordan.”

“You have a terrible connection, or a hangover. Where are you?”

Jordan guzzled tepid water from a tumbler on the nightstand. “The Columbus Hotel.”

“That dump? When did you arrive?”

“Yesterday.”

“How long are you staying?”

“Let me ask the questions,” Jordan said. “What do you know about Anita Coburn?”

“The girl they fished out of the ocean? I meant to call.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I was waiting till the police had more than a corpse and a few sordid facts.”

“What have you got?”

“Nothing they don’t.”

“You must have heard something.”

“Heard it from whom?”

“I’m asking the—”

“You listen now. I’m a commercial photographer. Not a newshound. When your boss snaps his fingers do you come up with information the cops don’t have?”

“It’s most of the job,” Jordan said. “Look in your files for photos of Miss Coburn.”

“My files are in my head,” Pixley said. “And, sorry, there’s not a thing there.”

Jordan gave it a bigger laugh than it deserved. Pixley was right. He had no business badgering him. The mild joke was Pixley saying no offense. Not yet.

“She wasn’t a nobody,” Jordan said. “She’d won a raft of beauty contests, and was on the card at the Alcazaba with her uke.”

“Girls like her are a dime a dozen,” Pixley said. “Some, you don’t need a dime.”

Talk about offensive. “Can you get the photos?”

“I don’t see the rush when you don’t have a killer, but I’ll do what I can. By the way, your friend, what’s her name, I haven’t heard from her.”

“Mollie?”

“Not her. The colored girl. Does she still want to sit for me?”

“Cherise doesn’t have regular habits,” Jordan said. “I’ll tell her you’re waiting.”

“Not forever.”

Two o’clock on a Saturday afternoon in a cheap hotel, and Jordan didn’t know what to do with himself. Would it hurt to turn on the TV? He was paying for it, wasn’t he?

A man in a safari suit holding a leopard cub in his lap was talking to a woman with a transparent smile. The cub was full of energy, all claws and teeth, and the woman was keeping her distance. Jordan put his heels up on the mattress a second before a test pattern replaced the picture. He picked up the phone again, asked for long distance.

“I’m sick of murder,” he said. “Talk to me about something else.”

“I’m sick of it, too. Who is this?”

“It’s not a great time for games, Mollie.”

“If you say so. Which murder?”

“This
is
President 9-9297?”

“You have the right number. The wrong girl.”

A honeyed drawl bolstered a plausible case that he’d been pursuing the wrong roommate.

“I’m Gina.”

“Is Mollie there?”

“Not till Wednesday, or Thursday. She went to Atlantic City. You still haven’t told me about the murder.”

“Leave a message that Adam Jordan called.”

“Why do I know the name?”

“I edit
Real Detective
. She did some work for me.”

“Say, you wouldn’t be in the market for a fresh face? I’ve been thinking of going into modeling myself. Modeling, or taking up Speedwriting.”

“Let’s discuss it another time,” Jordan said.

“You’re no fun,” Gina said. “Someone who is is bringing Mollie to a party tonight. She couldn’t wait to tell me.”

“Someone?”

“A name I
don’t
know. First she’s going out to buy new lingerie. Why do you suppose?”

A picture that wouldn’t stop jumping bumped the test pattern. The leopard was gone. The same woman was in a kitchen beating eggs in a bowl.

“Did she say who these everybodies are?”

“How do I know
you
are who you say you are?”

“You don’t mind talking about her underwear,” Jordan said, “you can tell me who’ll be at the party.”

“I don’t like the way you talk, mister,” Gina said, and hung up.

The woman on TV slid a pan into an oven, and took out a perfect cake. Jordan was thinking that if he wanted to see a fake, he’d tune in the channel with professional wrestlers. He switched off the TV, dialed a local number.

“Greenie, it’s Adam Jordan.”

“How’s it hanging?”

“
Comme ci, comme ca.
”

Jordan had two distinct images of his reaction, the half-smile the crack deserved, and the hangdog frown that was Greenstein’s walking-around expression.

“You called because you feel bad about the money you owe me?”

“Enlighten me, why don’t you?”

“There’s my fee for helping with the Stolzfus case. And for putting you together with Cherise.”

“You charge for introductions now?”

“I charge for everything.”

“You’re not embarrassed?”

“Often I am,” Greenstein said. “But not around you. Think of me as Cherise’s business manager. I hear you and her are hot and heavy.”

“Not that hot,” Jordan said. “I’m looking for a party.”

“First pay up.”

“Do this for me, and you can write your own check.”

“Scout’s honor?”

“We’re not Boy Scouts, Greenie.”

“What kind of party are you in the market for? Another Negro girl, or something a little more exotic?”

“A party,” Jordan said. “Not a woman. A
party
.”

“You’re looking for a good time, I can move you up in class from Cherise.”

“When did I ever want a good time?” Jordan said. “Where’s tonight’s party?”

“This is Atlantic City. There’s parties all over town.”

“A party like the one where Chuckie Stolzfus picked up Cherise.”

“It wasn’t at a party. You don’t remember what she told you? The other girl fixed them up, the one who was killed.”

“Cherise likes her friends thinking she’s a hooker, because working on her back is a step up from what she does.”

“Depends how you look at it.”

“I look at it like she does,” Jordan said. “I’d like to catch her act. Stolzfus paid it the ultimate compliment.”

“Everything’s an act with her. You’re lucky your heart didn’t give out like his. She must’ve taken something off her fastball.”

“Where are you—you and Beach—sending her tonight?”

“Call her, and ask.”

“I want to surprise her.”

“You’re the one’ll be surprised.”

“Are you going to tell me, or do I drop a nickel for everything I have on you?”

“Hold your horses,” Greenie said. “It so happens there’s a housewarming on the beach. Cherise is working a single. It starts out a single, and then...you get the idea. Twenty Ocean Grove Boulevard in Margate City.”

“Whose place is it?”

“You’ll recognize him when you see him. Figuring no one sees you first, and gives you the boot.”

A haircut was in order, and nicer clothes. Considering his chance of making it through the door, shopping would be a waste of time. A trim, a shave, and hot towels didn’t do much for what the mirror showed. Probably nothing would.

He woke up starved from a nap. Room service was on the line when he put down the phone. Who crashed a fancy shindig on a full belly?

Jordan hopped a Checker at the head of the hack line, and told the driver to go south. Ten minutes from downtown they’d put the bright lights, every light, behind.

Margate City was nothing to see, if he didn’t count a wood elephant sixty-five feet tall and almost as long, first cousin to the Trojan horse. “Lucy” was built in the 1880s, when zoomorphic architecture was the rage, and had been a tavern, a hotel, a post office. Today she stood with nothing to do, a backdrop for tourists’ snapshots, and an embarrassment to the town fathers developing the old blue collar Riviera into a modern resort.

Ocean Grove Boulevard was a thin strip of asphalt from the highway to the sea. Shallow pits in the sand looked to Jordan like miners’ claims in a boomtown goldfield. A few foundations had been poured, but much of the new construction would go up on stilts. The Jersey Shore was a hurricane landfall subject to fierce tidal surges. Winter storms carried a wallop as well.