Soft touch (16 page)

I'd been afraid of that. "I'm sorry, Paul, but I threw that out. I threw both notes out. Hell, you took down what they said."

"The Maltons aren't certain the note was in their daughter's handwriting."

"But it was!"

"If it's gone, it makes it sort of toueh to prove."

"I don't see what the hell difference it makes. Lorraine will tell you she wrote it."

"It would just make it easier if you still had it, Jerry. That's all."

I went over to the desk and opened the drawer and made a pretense of hunting for the warehouse receipt.

He stood up and said, "Mind if I look around a little?"

"What for?"

"Just so I can put in my report that I looked the house over. That's expected. I'd have to do it even if I had to get a warrant, Jerry."

"Why don't you book me for murder?"

"Don't get nasty. Let's do this the easy way. Hell, I

don't think you killed her. But what I think doesn't matter. I just investigate, like I'm told to do."

"Okay. Go look around. I'll hunt for the receipt."

He went out into the kitchen and I heard him go down the cellar stairs. For one cold moment I couldn't remember whether any of the money was still there. My mind wasn't working well. It had been misted by gin and by an excess of Tinker. I took the receipt from its hiding place, straightened it out and waited until I heard Paul coming back up into the kitchen. I took it to him. He looked at it, nodded, pocketed it.

"Tomorrow morning we'll go take a look at the crate."

"Why, for God's sake?"

"Because if we don't, I get asked why we didn't and then do I say it was too much trouble?"

"Okay, okay. So we look at the crate. We'll take every stinking book out of it and read every page."

"I'm trying to make this easy, Jerry."

"I'm sorry, Paul. I know that. I'm just edgy. I guess I'm upset about throwing her note away."

"Would it still be in the trash, maybe?"

"No. I tore it up and threw it out the car window."

"Too bad."

"But it can't be critically important, can it?"

"No. I wouldn't say that."

He was frighteningly thorough. He asked a hell of a lot of questions. He picked up the comb from Lorraine's dressing table, and pulled a tuft of crisp red hair out of the teeth and looked at me.

"A ... a friend of Lorraine's. Mrs. Velbiss. Tinker Velbiss. Lorraine had borrowed something of hers and didn't return it before she left, so when Tinker came over I told her to come on up and get it."

"So she combed her hair."

"Okay, Paul, damn it. She came over to talk about Lorraine, and it ended up in a way we hadn't planned. I guess I'm . .. vulnerable."

"Jerry, look. Don't he to me. Not in little things. Not in anything. Don't he to me. That's important."

"Okay, Paul. It won't happen again." 122

"I was going to ask you about Mrs. Addams in the office. I heard a rumor you've been friendly. A thing like that could be considered a motive."

"She's a splendid person. I like her. But that's all there is. I wish I'd married her instead of Lorraine. But I

didn't." m .

He made me make a list, from memory, of the things Lorraine had taken with her. He looked the station wagon over carefully. He checked the garden tools. He thumbed dirt off the shovel I had buried her with and crumbled it between his fingers. I watched him, trying to breathe normally. He asked no questions.

It was well after dark when he finally left. He said he would meet me at the warehouse at nine in the morning.

He apologized again for having to bother me. I said it was all right. I apologized for being irritable.

Chapter II

Paul Heissen was waiting for me when I got to the warehouse at nine o'clock. I had brought a screwdriver along. They made a fuss about the trouble this was causing them and quieted down when Heissen said he was from

the police.

I unscrewed the lid. Paul lifted out books. He uncovered the brown paper packages.

"Old records," I said. "Business papers. House plans. Architectural magazines. Stuff like that. Want me to open

one?"

He prodded a package with a thick thumb. "No need

of that."

We fitted the books back in. I screwed the lid on. He thanked the warehouse man and we walked out. He walked to my car with me and said, "That bartender at the Hotel Vernon said you were in around ten o'clock and pretty well loaded."

"I guess I was."

"If you'd ordered a second drink you wouldn't have gotten it. He said you were complaining about wife trouble."

"That's what I had."

"I guess you did."

"What happens now, Paul?"

"We wait and see if we can get a line on the car. Now she's missing under suspicious circumstances. We can put it on the tape. We have already. Nationwide. But quiet like. It won't alert any nosy newspaper people. You don't have to worry about that."

"And if you don't find her in a hurry?"

"I'd say if we don't find her in two weeks, then we'll have to go through this whole thing again. Bring you in and get a complete and detailed statement."

"You people could keep bothering me forever."

"Not forever, Jerry. Just until we find out what happened to her."

"Oh."

I started the car motor. He started away and then turned back and leaned on my window and said, "Say, a funny thing about this Biskay."

"What is that?"

"Usually they're fast down there. They check the military prints against the central FBI files and give us a fast no or a fast yes with details. This time it sounds like they're stalling. I never had that happen before. Maybe it ties in with there being strangers in town."

"Strangers?"

"I don't know much about them. They checked in as a matter of courtesy. They could be Treasury people. It would look like maybe Washington is interested in this Biskay. That's just a guess. They been to see you yet?"

"Not yet."

I drove to the office. Liz was at her desk. She looked at me with complete and perfect indifference. For a time I had been a part of her life. But all that had been very quickly canceled out by a redheaded slut on a staircase. A suburban type, country-club, gin-fed, plump-legged,

mischievous, meaningless slut—as exclusive is a roller towel, as standardized as beanwagon coffee, as significant as a handshake.

It seemed such a hell of a waste.

But I was becoming a specialist in waste these days. Of myself and everybody else. But there was still the money, wasn't there? And a glorious golden future. No sweat. No strain.

I asked Liz if E. J. was in.

She got up and went to the door to his office, tapped on it, opened it halfway and spoke to him in a low voice.

"Jerry?" he bellowed to me. "Come on in, come on in."

She held the door all the way open for me. I passed close to her. Close enough to catch the fragrance of her. And close enough to sense how she shrank away from me without actually moving. The way she would avert her eyes from a nuisance on the sidewalk. She closed the door behind me.

"E. J.," I said, sitting down at his gesture of invitation, "the police are prying around because it seems you and Edith have some crazy idea I killed Lorraine."

It was more blunt than he had anticipated, I am sure. His face turned red quite quickly. "We . . . uh . . . Edith and I, asked that every possibility be investigated, Jerry. If they seem to be excessively diligent . . ."

"Come off it, E. J."

"Our children have always been very close to us, Jerry. I mean it has been a good relationship. Even if Lorraine did run off with your . . . friend, Edith seems to think she would let us know, somehow."

"If she ran off? What else happened to her, E. J.?"

"That's what the police are investigating."

"So where do I fit? It makes it pretty damn awkward trying to work for you. It makes it a hell of a situation."

He looked down at his neat little pink and white hands and folded them together atop the green desk blotter, and they massaged each other tenderly.

"I really think, Jerry, it would be best if you took a leave of absence until . . . this is all settled."

The door opened behind me and Eddie came striding in. He stood over me, feet planted, face working. I don't know who he was imitating. Kirk Douglas or Burt Lancaster. He didn't do it very well. He was as awesome as Bugs Bunny.

"What have you done with my sister, Jamison?" he snarled.

I stared at him, and then I yawned at him.

He stamped his foot. It is a gesture no adult male can get away with. "I asked you a question!" he said, but his voice was half an octave higher and he was trembling.

"Go crumple your hanky," I said. He swung at me with a wild roundhouse right. I snapped my head back and felt the breeze of it across my lips. The miss spun him off balance so that he sat on my lap. I pushed him up and away. He yelped something that I couldn't understand and went storming out, slamming the door behind him. I looked at E. J. He looked shamed and apologetic.

"Eddie is very upset," he said.

"So am I."

"They were very close," he said.

"Past tense?" I asked.

He pinched a trout Up and pulled on it and let go. "I keep doing that," he said. "Edith becomes hysterical when I do it. I do it without thinking. It's a kind of instinct, I guess. Something tells me she's dead. And logic doesn't do any good. Last night I dreamed about her and she was dead."

"I'll bet she's dead," I said. "Dead drunk. She's probably baking it out beside a swimming pool out in Palm Springs." I got up. "Okay, I'll take a leave of absence. With pay."

"With pay, Jerry. No hard feelings."

"There are hard feelings. But before it becomes official I'll go out on the job and wind up a couple of details. With your permission."

"Of course, of course."

I left him sitting there. I did not glance toward Liz Addams as I left. There was no break or hesitation in

the rippling staccato of her typing. It followed me until the street door closed behind me and cut it off.

I sat behind the wheel of the wagon for a few minutes before starting it up. In E. J.'s office I had been big and brave and bold. But I'd left a trail of sawdust all the way to the car. I felt meager and shrunken. I didn't like him dreaming she was dead. I had not dreamed at all since ... it had happened. I hoped I wouldn't. I didn't want to do any more dreaming, not so long as I lived. I felt that should I dream they'd both come after me. Vince and Lorraine. And I might not wake up.

It seemed a very bad thing that E. J. had dreamed her dead. When Irene had served me my breakfast, she had told me about all the questions the man asked her. I remembered Paul Heissen's thick thumb prodding the baled money. I remembered the long tumbling sound of Vince's fall, with three leaden pellets in his head. I remembered that the hole was too narrow for her, that she lay on her side in the bottom of it. She always slept the best on her side, but not cold and straight in a tarp—curled and warm and tousled, with the high mound of hip that dipped down into the indentation of her slim waist, and then the long straight line from waist to shoulder. But they didn't bury people the way they liked to sleep. There had been air trapped in the Porsche. A little air. Probably enough to turn it again under water so that it would be resting on its wheels. So that Vince slept sitting up. In the water.

I shook myself like a weary horse in fly season and turned the ignition key and drove out to the job.

I was nearly through explaining to Red Olin what I wanted done when they showed up. They got me aside. There were two of them. They drove a rental sedan, a red and white thing with towering tail fins like a rocket to Mars. They looked like Yankees during the off season, when ballplayers sell bonds and insurance and real estate. They were neatly and carefully dressed, and they had that curious air of courtesy plus arrogance that you would expect from any Yankee on or off the diamond. The

big brown-haired one with all the shoulders was name< Barnstock. He would be an outfielder, a power hitter. Give him a reasonable piece of the ball and he'd hammer it out of the park, even hitting to the wrong field. Quellan, the other one, black-haired, limber, rangy—six three, with big knobby hands—was obviously a pitcher. When he was right he would whistle them in. Nobody would dig in and get comfortable batting because of that tendency towards wildness.

I asked to see identification and Quellan showed me his. I said I had never heard of the agency. "We don't spend a dime on public relations," Barnstock said.

I asked for another fifteen minutes on the job, and then they could have me for the rest of the day, if they wanted that much time. They waited.

Barnstock rode with me in the wagon. I followed the big tail fins. We put both cars in the lot across from the side entrance to the Hotel Vernon. We said it was a hot day, and it looked like a long hot summer, but of course that was what you had to expect in this neck of the woods. Long hot summers. They had a small suite on the eighth floor. We got all comfy in the sitting room. Barnstock broke out the tape recorder, put a big new reel on, set a table mike in the middle of the coffee table. I sat on the couch. Quellan sat beside me with a stenographer's notebook open on his knee, a fat green pen in hand. Barnstock pulled a chair over so that he sat on the other side of the coffee table, facing me.

"Mr. Jamison," Quellan said, "this is not a formal interrogation. It may take quite a long time. Tape is better than notes or memory. I hope you have no objection to our recording what you say?"

"Not at all."

Quellan nodded at Barnstock. He started the tape up, counted to ten slowly, reversed the tape, played his voice back over the monitor speaker, erased the count, reset the tape and said, "Monday, May nineteen, eleven-twenty a.m. Interrogation by Quellan and Barnstock of Jerome Jamison in the matter of Vincente Biskay."

Quellan took the first question. "Mr. Jamison, in your 128

own words I would like you to tell me the circumstances of your first meeting with Mr. Biskay. Be as thorough as possible. When we want anything clarified, we will interrupt you and ask additional questions."