Night My Friend (15 page)

S
AM CLINTON HAD TRAVELED
nearly a thousand miles to stand here before the empty, snow-blanketed parking lot of the Bayshore Amusement Park, and now, seeing it by fragile moonlight, he wondered if the trip had been worth it. There seemed to be no one about, though he noticed that the double gates in the high wire fence had been left ajar. Perhaps he would find somebody inside, lurking beneath the great snow-covered roller coaster.

The place was strange to him, as such places were even in the summertime. There seemed to his mind no way of explaining the logic of amusement parks with their tinkling gaiety and ten-cent charm, waiting with great open mouths to swallow up the innocents who came hand-in-hand every weekend. Perhaps this was evil—evil as practiced in Twentieth Century New England, where they no longer hanged their witches.

This night, if there were evil, it had been covered by a two-inch fall of sticky snow blowing in off the Atlantic. As Clinton plodded along, leaving his virgin prints in the unmarked white, it seemed to him that even the elements had conspired against him. He passed the shuttered Fun House, the Shooting Gallery, the Airplane Ride, the Dragon Coaster without seeing evidence of another living soul. But then, as he was about to abandon the fruitless quest, a line of tiny, Friday-like footprints crossed his own path. He followed them with a growing sense of elation, knowing now that all was not yet wrong with the world.

Ahead, in the damp, fog-laden night, he saw the lights that told him he was not alone in this place. They were in the oddly circular building which housed the merry-go-round, and the tiny footprints he followed led directly to its door.

“Hello,” he said from the doorway by way of warning. “May I come in?”

From somewhere in the maze of resting animals, a girl in jeans and a paint-stained shirt appeared. “I don’t know. Who are you?”

“Merry-go-round inspector,” he said, stepping in and closing the door firmly behind him.

“What? Look, mister, the park is closed for the winter.” She put down her paint brush and hopped to the floor to meet him on equal terms. He guessed her age to be about twenty-five, and he couldn’t help admiring the contour of her legs beneath the tight jeans. When he reached her face, he saw an impish upturned nose and deep blue eyes that sparkled with challenge. She wore no makeup, but just then she didn’t need any.

“Sorry,” he said. “I am here on business. Is there a manager around the place?”

“In the middle of winter? My father owns the park, and he goes south every December for two months. I just came down to touch up a few of the animals. Want to help me paint the stripes on the zebra?”

She had obviously judged him and found him harmless. Many people did, and he’d almost come to expect it. “I’d be happy to,” he told her. “I’ve always wanted to paint stripes on zebras.”

She smiled then, and introduced herself. “I’m Jane Boone. Don’t let me scare you in this costume.”

“I won’t. Sam Clinton—I’m a lawyer.”

“Really?” She was back on guard at once. “Then this really is a business visit.”

“Afraid so. I’ll try to make the next one more pleasant. Is there somewhere we can talk?”

“Right here is the best place. It’s warm and private, and I can go on with my work while you talk.” She pulled herself back onto the merry-go-round, and he was forced to follow. There, in the inner row of prancing animals, was indeed a paint-peeled zebra badly in need of first aid.

“You’re pretty skillful with that brush,” he said. “Aren’t you ever afraid, working here alone nights? Anybody could walk in here.”

“The gate’s usually locked. Besides, a friend of mine always stops by for me. He should be coming pretty soon, so don’t get any ideas.”

He felt himself beginning to blush. “I wasn’t thinking of myself, believe me.”

She daubed a bit at the wounded zebra. “You said you’re a lawyer.”

“That’s right. I’ve traveled here all the way from Chicago because a man died there with your name in his pocket.”

“
My
name?”

“The name of the amusement park—Bayshore—and the city, and a date.”

“A date? What date?”

“Tomorrow’s, as a matter of fact. January 14th. What’s happening here tomorrow?”

She pursed her lips, and carefully curved a thin black line over the zebra’s tired flank. “Same thing that happens every day during the winter. Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing. Who was the man that died?”

“A client of mine. His name was Felix Waterton.”

“I never heard of him. I can’t imagine what he would have been doing with our name.”

“Might he be a friend of your father?”

“I doubt it. I help out in the office and handle all the correspondence. I never heard the name.” She looked up and her eyes were suddenly shaded. “How did this Felix Waterton die?” she asked casually.

“You may have seen it in the papers. He…” But the door opened behind him at that moment, and Clinton turned to see a tall young man enter, stamping the clinging snow from his feet.

“Hi, Dick. You’re early.” She started to put down the paint brush, then changed her mind and went on with it. “This is Sam Clinton, Dick Mallow. Mr. Clinton’s a lawyer from Chicago on business.”

They shook hands and Clinton felt the firmness of the other’s grip. “I finished my business early,” he explained to the girl. “Two calls and nobody home.” Then, by way of explanation to Clinton, “I sell insurance.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Clinton said, deciding he looked the type.

“What say you knock off on that zebra, and we hop across the street for a drink,” Mallow said to the girl.

“Well… I was talking to Mr. Clinton…”

“He can come too. Heck, man, I’ll buy you a beer or something!”

“That’s very nice of you. I’ll admit I could use a beer.”

“Then it’s settled. Down with the paint brush, woman.”

They left the lights burning in the merry-go-round, perhaps as a reminder to the zebra that they’d be back. Dick Mallow blazed a heavy-footed trail through the snow of the parking lot, while Jane Boone and Clinton followed behind. The place across the street proved to be an uncertain little neighborhood bar that seemed to lead a double life. The signs of summertime were still visible almost everywhere—in the exhausted blue balloon hanging from the bar mirror, the dusty college pennants tacked to the walls, the faded Polaroid snapshots of clowning teenagers. But now it was winter, and the bar led its other existence—quiet, dim, waiting, catering to the few who made the neighborhood their home, waiting for another summer.

Dick Mallow ordered three beers, and they clustered around a little cigarette-scarred table in one corner. It was obvious to Clinton that he was being allowed to participate in a nightly ritual, and when he noticed Mallow’s hand beneath the table he managed to drop a cigarette on the floor so he could retrieve it and confirm the fact that the hand rested in Jane’s.

“So you’re a lawyer,” Mallow said, skimming the foam from his lips with an experienced tongue. “From Chicago.”

“That’s right. We don’t have any snow there. Not this week, anyway.”

“You were telling me what brought you here,” Jane Boone reminded him.

“A dead man with a note in his pocket. It said simply,
Bayshore Amusement Park, Rhode Island, January 14th.
So I came to find out what’s happening here tomorrow.”

Dick Mallow scratched an ear with his free hand. “What’s happening, Janie? You giving away free kisses or something?”

“Nothing. I told Mr. Clinton that already. I haven’t a clue.”

Mallow suddenly snapped his fingers. “You forgot the General! It’s the second Friday of the month; the General’s coming tomorrow night!”

“Of course. The General…”

Sam Clinton tensed with interest. “What General? What’s he coming for?”

“Major General Tracy Spindler, U.S. Army, Retired,” the girl recited. She took a quick swallow of beer and hurried on, “He rents our bingo hall for his meetings, once a month during the winter. My father figures it’s income, but I figure it’s just a pain.”

“What sort of meetings?”

“You wouldn’t believe it. They have some crazy club that believes we all came from Mars or some place. I sat in on one of their meetings a few months back, but after ten minutes I’d had enough.”

Clinton frowned over his glass. “It doesn’t sound like the sort of thing one finds in the depth of New England. It has more a New York or California sound about it. But I’d like to come out tomorrow night, if it’s an open meeting.”

“They let me in,” she said. “I suppose it would be all right.”

Dick Mallow downed the rest of his beer with a few quick gulps. “You think this dead guy might have belonged to the General’s club, huh? Any good reason?”

“It’s a possibility. Right now it seems to be the only possibility.”

“What did you say his name was?” Jane Boone asked.

“Felix Waterton.” Clinton watched Mallow’s face, but his expression was frozen into a bland sort of nothingness that didn’t change at the name. “He was a client of mine.”

“And what did you say he died of?”

“I guess I didn’t say. He was murdered.”

Mallow got unsteadily to his feet. “Let’s have another round of beers,” he called to the sleepy bartender. Then he disappeared into the men’s room, leaving Clinton and Jane alone.

“You’re some kind of a detective, aren’t you?” she asked.

“I told you I was a lawyer.”

“I know. I guess I just don’t believe you. Maybe it’s because I couldn’t ever picture you in court, before a jury.”

He smiled at that. “You’ve been watching too much television. There are lawyers and lawyers.”

Dick Mallow came back just as the bartender returned with the second round. He slid into the booth next to Jane and his hand disappeared from view once more. “Beer is the staff of life,” he said, licking at the foam. “Pretty soon I’ll be ready to go back and help you paint zebras all night.”

As the second round gradually disappeared from the glasses, Clinton saw quickly enough that he was no longer to be a part of the ritual. He finished his beer and got to his feet. “I have to be going. I would like to stop by tomorrow though, Miss Boone.”

“Sure. Come ahead.”

Outside, it was beginning to snow. He stood for a moment looking across the street at the deserted amusement park with its monuments of white. The night was very quiet, and he wondered if the zebra would ever get painted.

Felix Waterton had been a strange man in life. Born in the closing days of the First World War, he’d spent his teen years fighting for survival in the streets of a depression-racked Chicago. His father, a minor figure in the vast complex of bootlegging, had come home one Christmas night bleeding to death from three bullet wounds in the side, and the shock of it all had put his frail mother in an institution from which she never returned.

Even in those early pre-war days when Sam Clinton first met him, Waterton spoke almost incessantly of avenging his father’s death. He carried a loaded gun with him at all times, a tiny French automatic he’d procured from somewhere, and Sam Clinton was just enough younger than Waterton to be impressed and a bit terrified. The war years had separated them, and after it was over Clinton had returned to Chicago and studied law. He’d set up practice in a one-room office in the Loop, then sat back and slowly starved, until the day Felix Waterton walked through the door.

After that, things had changed in a somewhat oblique manner. Waterton managed a position for him with a leading law firm, and Clinton found himself on the rise. He began to specialize in tax law, at Waterton’s suggestion, and the man threw him a good deal of business. This had gone on for better than ten years, through the economic boom of the Fifties and into the Sixties. Felix Waterton grew with the years, and became wealthy while other men, sometimes better men, had sunk into the mire of failure and futility.

Waterton’s large holdings were mainly in Chicago real estate, though Sam Clinton had heard frequent rumors of other, less respectable, activities. The man was a known associate of midwest underworld characters, and if he still carried the little French automatic it was no longer to avenge the death of his father. Oddly enough, Clinton’s activities on various tax problems for Waterton enterprises had left him with surprisingly little knowledge of the man’s sources of income—little knowledge, that is, until he’d spent an evening with a friendly and talkative secretary who told him how he’d been played for a sucker all those years.

Clinton had been carefully groomed by Felix Waterton to fill a specific need in the organization. As a tax lawyer, he’d been used to throw up a smokescreen, while Waterton and his associates systematically diverted funds from their own real estate holding companies. When Clinton accused Waterton of the protracted swindle, the man had merely laughed. And fired his secretary.

That was where things stood on the night Felix Waterton was murdered.

The brief snow of the previous night had given way to rain, and the parking lot of the Bayshore Amusement Park was a shimmering sea of slush by the time the first cars began to pull in. Sam Clinton watched it all from the shelter of the roller coaster, shorn now of its sticky white coat, and he noted with interest that the arrivals for General Spindler’s meeting seemed not at all what he had expected. They were neither beat nor bearded, and for the most part seemed to be just ordinary people, men and women, bundled in raincoats against the wind-blown drizzle.

“Here you are,” Jane Boone said suddenly, coming up behind Clinton. “I thought I’d find you.”

“Well, I said I’d be back. Finish your paint job?”

She nodded. “Finally.” Her hair was covered with a pale blue scarf and the wide collar of her coat was turned up against the weather. He could see that she still wore the paint-stained jeans from the previous night.

“Going to the meeting?” he asked.

“I’ll sit in with you for a few minutes, near the back. By the way, I’ve already spoken to the General and told him you’d be around. He said it’s all right.”

“Just what did you tell him?” he asked, trying to concentrate on her face in the rain. It was a pretty face, and he guessed that it was not at the height of its beauty.