Walk a Black Wind (4 page)

“Fortune?”

He grew smaller and smaller like a mirage fading down a tunnel. His head became as small as a pin, and his thick body stretched up and up to touch the ceiling.

“Fortune?” he said. “It's John Andera. You okay?”

He slipped into focus, became normal size, and I saw that he was standing over me where I lay on the floor of the corridor. John Andera, not the man who had hit me—unless?

“A man tailed me,” I said, my jaw stiff and heavy. “A little shorter than you, not as broad. Brown eyes, camel's hair topcoat. Know him?”

“No,” John Andera said. “What did he want with you?”

“I was going to find that out by ambushing him.”

Some ambush. I wondered if I was ever going to learn that even with two arms I'd never have been a fighter. My “victim” had been a fighter, maybe a real one, the way he had moved.

“Did Francesca know any ex-professional fighters?”

“I don't know,” Andera said. “I came for a report.”

I sat up. My left eye was puffed, my face hurt, and my belly ached. But it was all bruises—too fast to have done much damage. I had gone down, stunned, but not really out. I stood up. It could only have been minutes or less.

“You didn't see anyone coming out of here?” I said.

“No, no one,” Andera said.

“Come on.”

I went down the stairs as fast as I could on stiff legs with John Andera behind me. In the gray noon only a few people walked along my street. Andera stood beside me, and I saw the green Cadillac. It was double-parked across the street with its motor running.

“There!” I said to Andera.

I heard the three heavy shots as something slammed into my head and the street went black.

A pale green ceiling, and a chemical smell. The ceiling was supposed to be a dirty ivory, my corridor. Why did my corridor smell of chemicals? I was on the floor of my corridor, I'd been knocked there. I … but why was the corridor so soft, my hand sinking in when I pressed?

I
was
on the floor outside my office. I had to be, of course. The man in the green Cadillac had …

What slammed into my head?

Shots. I'd been shot!

The shadow bent over me, close. A face.

“Did you see anything, Dan? Who shot you?”

Captain Gazzo not John Andera looked down at me, very close, and he was standing up, so I was high off the floor. How could a man float off the floor on a soft cloud if he was still alive and …

“Dan? Did you get a look at who shot you?”

“No,” my own voice said from somewhere.

“A guess?” Gazzo said.

“No.”

The pale green ceiling was a hospital room. The antiseptic smell. A soft, high bed. Now I knew that, so some time must have passed. A lot of time, or a little?

“How bad am I?” I said to the ceiling.

A face appeared over me. Captain Gazzo—again or still?

“That was this morning,” Gazzo said.

I must have asked him out loud. I hadn't thought I had.

“You're okay,” Gazzo said. “One shot creased your skull good. Probably a forty-five. We found you out cold on the sidewalk. You've got a nice groove on your head, and a fair concussion. No real harm, you're full of dope. You were alone, Dan? You didn't see who shot?”

I hadn't seen who shot. The Cadillac, yes, but there were other green Cadillacs, and I hadn't seen where the shots had come from. Had I been alone? No, but yes. For now.

“I didn't see,” I said. “I was alone.”

“You're bruised up from something else, too.”

“I was hit,” I said. “Earlier. Small man, didn't know him. He hit good. I'm tired, Captain.”

It was dark outside when I sat up. They told me it was still Saturday. Still? Then I'd lost Friday already. I managed to eat. John Andera came to see me after dinner. He was nervous and different. His face was neutral. The shock was gone, the stunned look, as if my shooting had steadied him. Or maybe it was only the way he reacted to action and real danger he could come to grips with.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Not bad. You weren't hit?”

“No. I didn't see who shot, I was down on the sidewalk.”

“What about the green Cadillac?”

He shook his head. “I didn't notice a Cadillac. There wasn't one when I got up, when the police came.”

I said, “Someone is scared of me. It means that Francesca wasn't killed by chance, or in some robbery. She was killed for a reason someone wants to stay hidden.”

“But you don't know who,” Andera said, “or what he wants to hide, so it's no use to me. What else did you find?”

I told him about Mayor Crawford and his political fights, what Celia Bazer had said about Francesca and men, and about the blond, Frank Keefer. “Keefer threw Celia Bazer over for Francesca in Dresden, then she threw him over. I don't think he'd have liked that. Did Francesca ever mention him?”

“No,” Andera said. “She mentioned no one.”

“She seems to have been pretty isolated down here,” I said. “What did she talk about on your dates?”

“Us.”

“Where did you meet her for your dates?”

“At restaurants. She didn't want me to come to her place, I never knew where she lived.”

“No mention of a Harmon Dunstan or Carl Gans?”

“Do your women talk about other men on early dates?” Andera said. “Will you need more money, Fortune?”

“I'm covered for the hospital, mostly. I'll give you a bill. I'll probably go to Dresden. That means expenses.”

“When you need them, tell me. I'll come back.”

He left. I lay in the hospital bed feeling all my bruises, and the deep groove in my head hidden under a mound of gauze. Francesca Crawford hadn't died in a random killing, no.

I rested and slept all day Sunday. My concussion was gone, and my appetite was fine, and they would let me out on Monday. I was in no hurry. In the hospital I was safe. But I wouldn't fight to stay in after Monday. I was getting mad, and three days is a long time for a trail to grow cold.

Captain Gazzo came again after lunch on Monday. I was up in a chair, ready to dress when they told me. Gazzo took another chair, straddled it. I told him about what Celia Bazer had said, but not about Frank Keefer. I didn't want Keefer chased or picked up yet.

“We talked to Dunstan, Gans and the Emerald Room,” Gazzo said. “No help I can see. What about who shot you?”

“Nothing I can tell. I'd just tried to ambush a tail on me, got clobbered. I went down to the street, and wham,” I said. “All I saw of the man tailing me was a camel coat, brown hat, green Cadillac, and fast fists. He may have been an ex-pro fighter the way he handled himself.”

Gazzo shook his head. “Not enough to help. We've combed her neighborhood for anyone who might have seen anything, or for signs of anyone hanging around her place. Nothing we don't already know, no one saw the killer enter or leave.”

“Celia Bazer says Francesca was in New York before she moved into the Eighty-fourth Street place.”

“Sure,” Gazzo said. “She came to town two months ago, took an apartment on Carmine Street. None of the tenants there seem connected to her. She went to that Harmon Dunstan for a job, but got Dunstan himself for a while instead. For two weeks she didn't work, just dated Dunstan. Then she took the job at the Emerald Room, began to see Carl Gans, and moved to the Bazer girl's place.”

The Captain rubbed his tender jaw. “Her job was below what she could have gotten, I can't see why she took it. She wasn't running in any kid crowd, she wasn't after a career, she was solitary but busy, and she told no one anything.”

“No young men, no female friends except Bazer,” I said. “Unusual. Not the standard young girl in the city for fame, fortune, or husband.”

“Two men in two months, both old for her, and what do they have in common?” Gazzo said. “Dunstan is a businessman, Carl Gans is the bouncer at the Emerald Room. You tell me?”

“They're men,” I said.

“And both have alibis, more or less.”

So did my client, and he was a third man—also over forty. That was some pattern. Only I was sure that my client's alibi would hold up. That didn't make it a true alibi, but it did mean that Andera was sure no one could break it. And it looked like Gazzo hadn't turned up Andera yet.

“Without witnesses, or some solid evidence,” Gazzo said, “nothing down here points to anyone, Dan. I've got Sergeant Jonas up in Dresden, but if he doesn't find anything we can use, we're stumped. The killer's a ghost.”

“Maybe it was only bad luck in the big city.”

“And the man who shot you is protecting the city,” Gazzo said, leaned over his chair. “There's a missing month, you know? Between leaving Dresden, and coming here. I can't send a man without a lead, Dan, but you can tackle that. Do that for me, Dan. Find me that missing month.”

I nodded. It wouldn't be easy to trace a hidden month in the life of a dead girl. The way she had stayed to herself, used a false name, we might never find where she'd been at all. While I thought about it, I realized that Gazzo was thinking, too. He was rubbing his face again, thoughtfully.

He said, “You know who owns the Emerald Room, Dan?”

“No.”

“Abram Zaremba,” Gazzo said. “Commissioner Zaremba to you and me. He had some state job once—Fish and Game Commission, I think. He likes to be called Commissioner.”

I knew the man. Upstate, Abram Zaremba was a man to know. Whatever business you did, Zaremba could help. Power, money, and a lot of influence. No one said he was illegal, exactly, but he had a lot of “friends” who would do anything he wanted done. And Martin Crawford was a reformer, a crusader.

“I didn't know he operated in the city here.”

“He has businesses here. He lives near Dresden, Dan.”

“You've talked to Zaremba?”

“About a bar waitress with a phony name? I'd just warn him away, and a judge would talk to the Chief. I know three judges who drink his booze every week. I'd need a reason.”

“He wouldn't go to a judge about me,” I said. “I can try a talk with Carl Gans, and look around.”

Gazzo was silent for a time. He knew what chasing Abram Zaremba could mean, and it was no TV game. He sighed.

“You've got to be some use to me,” he said.

A joke, but it really wasn't funny. I might smoke something out when a cop never could—because me Zaremba would be sure to try to stop fast if there was anything to smoke out. A cop might scare him to cover, but I wouldn't scare him. He'd know what to do with me. I'd been shot once already.

A detective captain has a hard job. Maybe I could help him, and it was his job to use me even if I ended up dead. It was my job, if I was going to do my work, to take the chance.

6.

I left the hospital at two o'clock that Monday, too early for the Emerald Room. It was a momentary reprieve, and I took the Long Island Railroad out to Hempstead.

It's a suburban town a lot like thousands of small, busy, middle-class cities all across the country. It could be in Colorado, except for a total lack of natural beauty. There was only one Harmon Dunstan in the telephone book. I got a cab, and it took me to a large, pleasant brick house on a quiet street not far from Hofstra University. A flawless lawn surrounded the house under trees that were all but leafless now. An empty swimming pool was at the side next to a large patio under a green awning. There was a busy feel to the house, as if it was worked on a lot.

As I walked up the brick path, I was aware of eyes at the front window, and a slender blonde of about thirty-five opened the door. Her face had the residue of the too-perfect beauty you see in magazines, and her body was still good. She wore loose slacks and a dirty shirt as if she had been cleaning.

I said, “I'm looking for Mr. Harmon Dunstan.”

“About what?”

“It's private. I'm a detective. You're Mrs. Dunstan?”

She nodded. “Come in then.”

So Harmon Dunstan was married. To a wife who wasn't surprised that a detective would call. I followed her into a big living room that was arranged and polished like a jewel. She headed for a home bar in a corner.

“A drink, Mr.—?”

“Dan Fortune. Too early for me, thanks.”

I saw that she was a little drunk. Her blue-gray eyes had a film on them like thin plastic as she mixed herself a Bloody Mary. I heard the man behind me.

“Too early for anyone,” the man said, but there was no anger in his voice, only a kind of concern. He held his hand out to me. “Harmon Dunstan, Mr. Fortune.”

We shook hands. It was a hollow gesture, like the polite handshakes of enemy diplomats. He was about five-seven-or-eight, thin and dark-complexioned. Dressed all in gray, in a strangely old-fashioned way—gray fitted topcoat, gray business suit, gray gloves, gray tie, gray homburg, and black shoes, as if he had been about to go somewhere. The elegance of thirty years ago, as if he dressed in a style he had seen and wanted when he was a poor boy, and had never forgotten. Changes in fashion had not affected his dream.

“Can we talk in private?” I said.

The wife said, “He's a detective, Harmon,” and she said to me, “I know about Francesca Crawford. Harmon told me.”

Dunstan said, “I recognized her picture in the Thursday paper. I knew her as Fran Martin, of course. I told Grace.”

“You went to the police?”

“No, I didn't. They came anyway,” he said. “I had hoped it wouldn't come out, Fran and me. I'm a financial counselor, a delicate business. I can't have scandal, you see?”

But he had told his wife. Why?

“I have to ask some questions,” I said.

He sat down, still in his topcoat, as if he'd forgotten he had it on. There was something peculiar about the way he moved. It was his eyes. They seemed to react to what he was doing only some seconds after he had moved. I sensed that he could sit unmoving for hours, and that his eyes never revealed what he was going to do until he had done it.