“Maybe you could ask your mother.”
Janet shook her head slowly.
“What do you mean, no?”
She winced but continued to shake her head. “The arrangement was that mother never divulge his name. I’m not even sure she knows.”
“She must know what he looks like.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?” I snorted. “Maybe she wouldn’t remember the person who raped her ten-year-old daughter?” I glared at Janet, as if it were her doing. But she hadn’t raised her eyes from her lap and didn’t see me.
With a good deal of effort, I convinced Janet that she had to go back to Springfield and find out all she could about what happened, no matter what she thought her mother would say. But there was a price to pay. Janet demanded I go with her. I tried to squirm out of it but finally agreed to go on Tuesday, my night off. Maybe something would break in the meanwhile. We’d teach the horse to talk.
In the meanwhile, I asked, apologetically, if she’d find out a couple of things about Carl for me.
“Why?” She acted like I’d kicked a baby.
I was embarrassed myself. I didn’t really think Carl killed Angelina, and I wasn’t accusing him of anything, so I thought it was okay to turn Janet loose. “I don’t want to, myself,” I said. “I don’t want to find out things about him he doesn’t tell me himself. It’s not the same for you. You only have to tell me things if it’s relevant, which I don’t think it will be.”
“If you don’t suspect him, why are we doing this?”
I tried to be placating. “We have to check out everyone if we’re going to do this right,” I said in what I thought passed for a reasonable tone. “What you shouldn’t do is accuse anyone, talk about your suspicions, or tell anyone what you find out.” I sounded very wise to myself.
Janet rolled her eyes like she knew I was full of shit but went off to call her mother and make arrangements to go to Springfield and to find out what she could about Carl. I went over to the dope store on Amsterdam to buy a couple of joints for work and ran right into him. Despite the fact that he looked more sinister now that he was under investigation than I ever would have thought possible, Carl was just as friendly and distracted as ever.
“I’ve got some information for you,” he said brightly.
“Oh?”
“The girl in the movie with Eric the Red and me. Her name is Sharon Collins. She used to work at the Buffalo Roadhouse in the Village.”
“Maybe she still does?”
“Maybe, but I haven’t seen her there.”
Now why did he tell me that? I wondered as he walked away.
I didn’t drink that night at work. The next day, I couldn’t reach Janet on the phone, so, to take my mind off everything for a while, I took in a Rip Torn movie I wanted to see and went to work feeling virtuous. When I got home, there was a message from Janet telling me things were set for visiting her mother on Tuesday and she hadn’t found out anything about Carl but would call when she did.
The following day, I couldn’t reach Janet, and she hadn’t picked up my message by that evening. I began to worry—less that something had happened than that she was now shacking up with Peter Finch.
To avoid drowning my sorrows in the Terrace, I took the train to the Village that afternoon. The Buffalo Roadhouse, made of glass and blonde wood, looked like a joint you could make a buck in. The brunch crowd filled all of the tables; the bar had a good crowd, too. Whenever I ate brunch, I got filled up on sugar and booze and felt waterlogged, then went to sleep for the rest of the day. I ordered a soda with lime.
“I’m looking for Sharon Collins,” I told the bartender when he put the drink down. He ignored me. I pushed the change from my five into the rail on his side of the bar.
“She doesn’t work here anymore. She went back home a couple of months ago.”
“Where’s home?” He looked me in the eye. The change from a five was a good tip, but not enough to sell out a friend. “I’m not after her for anything. She’s a friend of mine. I work uptown at a place called Oscar’s.”
He’d heard of it. His name was Jack, and he knew David from the Terrace. We shook hands.
“Some place in Connecticut. A nice kid, but she burned out on the city real fast.”
“Where in Connecticut?”
He shrugged.
I took a guess. “Stamford?”
“That sounds like it. I thought it was in California.”
While I was downtown, I thought I’d try to trace Ozzie’s travels the night before his murder, so I walked a couple of blocks up to the Lion’s Head, where I knew Ozzie drank sometimes after work. I knew the day bartender slightly. He was another actor, named Willie. We’d worked together for a short time at Tavern on the Green.
He didn’t know Ozzie by name but recognized the guy who drank Jack Daniels and water and never sat down.
He also remembered a big guy—maybe a light-skinned black guy—who drank straight rum who came in with Ozzie.
“Often?”
“Not very often.”
“The last time?”
“I think so. I didn’t pay much attention.”
“Try to remember.”
Willie wrinkled his brow. He still thought so but wasn’t positive. Tall and handsome in a really traditional way, Willie was nonetheless dumber than a bag of hammers. Already, though he was a lot younger than me, he looked middle-aged, like he should be settled down with a family and running a hardware store in Peoria. He was filled with that middle-west contentment that New Yorkers associate with cows.
What pissed me off was that he didn’t pay enough attention to things to be a really good bartender, expecting, no doubt, he would soon make it as an actor and forget his sordid past. Every time I leaned forward I found myself sticking to the bar. My thinking was that if he was a lousy bartender, he’d be a lousy actor, too. Not that that would stand in the way of success, of course.
***
When I got home, I had a message from my answering service that told me to call Janet. I was relieved to hear her voice. She was quite excited.
“News,” she said, “on two fronts.”
“What?”
“Eric the Red is an illegal alien.”
“So are ninety percent of the other kitchen workers in New York.”
“Oh,” said Janet. “Well, he’s involved in a phony marriage with a woman I think is a prostitute. Suppose Angelina knew about it and was blackmailing him?”
“The marriage is so he can get a green card. Anyway, does turning him in sound like something Angelina would do?”
“No.” Janet kind of hummed to herself while she thought things through. “I guess it doesn’t mean anything, does it?” She brightened. “I have more. I found out that Carl used to work in Easthampton during the summers.”
“So?”
“Angelina went to Easthampton two summers ago, so I rented a car and took a quick trip out there.” She paused. “Some of what I found out you’re not going to like.” I waited. She went on. “Your friend Carl has been lying to you. He knew Angelina before she ever came to New York. They worked together in a hotel in Easthampton two summers ago.”
“Oh,” I said, trying not to sound disappointed that one more of my friends was not to be trusted. I remembered that Carl went out to Long Island for a couple of summers. I hadn’t thought much about it because that kind of coming and going wasn’t unusual in the neighborhood. Someone fell in love and moved to Brooklyn or got a summer stock part in Connecticut or a teaching job in Ohio for a year. Carl used to work as a chef in the summer. Most everyone came back after a time; others disappeared forever into a new life. That Carl knew Angelina in Easthampton was a pretty big surprise, though, and his keeping it from me a pretty big secret, as secrets go.
“How did you find out?”
“After Eric told me Carl worked as a chef in Easthampton, I went there and found the hotel Angelina worked at and talked to the manager, who remember
ed both of them by name and description.”
“Okay, I believe you. Now what?”
“Well, I guess we know now why Angelina came to the Upper West Side instead of some other part of the city.” Her voice was soft. “Should I tell the police?”
I hemmed and hawed. I didn’t want her to. But I didn’t know how to say so. “You can if you want,” I said grudgingly.
“Do you want me to wait?”
“Maybe…until I talk to him.”
“Okay.” She didn’t hide the reluctance in her voice. “There’s something else about Carl that isn’t directly connected but I think you should know.” Her voice took on a whispery, secretive tone that I didn’t like.
“If it isn’t directly connected, I don’t want to know.”
She itched to tell me; I could feel it even over the phone. The silence now bristled with disapproval. “It might be important.”
“You decide. If it’s important, tell me. If not, don’t, until you’re sure it is.”
“I understand.”
“Will you come to Oscar’s tonight?”
“No,” she said and hung up.
A minute later she called back. “I will come in later, with Peter.”
***
Peter and Janet, in their casual dress, had the aura of young professionals about them; I had to admit they matched each other. Anyone’s grandmother would take one look and say “nice couple.” I let them sit at the bar for a good few minutes before I took their order.
“You’re in your usual good mood,” Peter said.
“Bartenders are supposed to be surly,” I told him.
“Danny sends his regards.”
“What do the cops say?” Despite being a defense lawyer, a defender of blacks, and a progressive, Peter got along well with the cops.
“They know the case sucks. I’m going to meet with the ADA who has the case on Monday.”
Janet smiled a little self-consciously, sitting beside Peter. I could tell she was pleased to be with a hot shot New York criminal lawyer.
“We’re going to Springfield on Tuesday,” I said. Just to let Peter know he wasn’t the only one who did things with Janet.
Janet’s eyes opened wider. “Are we still going to do that?”
I nodded.
Peter raised an eyebrow in mild interest. “To see your mother?”
Janet nodded.
“It’s probably a long shot,” Peter said. “But a good idea.”
Meanwhile, empty glasses cluttered the bar and the winos were getting restless. Troubled faces bent forward, looking my way as if for a lost son. One or two of the better fortified of the group had the temerity to bang an empty glass on the bar until I shot a withering glance at them. A couple of snarls and snaps of my whip and they all quieted, waiting patiently while I slid along the bar, replenishing the scotches and bourbons, the gin and tonics and vodka martinis, sliding a drink here and there to a regular, knocking on the bar in front of him in lieu of payment, the frowns becoming smiles. In less than five minutes I’d recovered my former standing. I returned to Janet’s corner of the bar and was pleased as Punch to note that Peter was saying goodnight and Janet would hang on for a while.
Ntango’s arrival a few minutes later gave me an idea. I suggested Janet ask him to take her downtown to visit a couple of places around Hanrahan’s to ask questions. Since he drove a horse hire, Ntango didn’t have to account for where he was or how many trips he made. I handed him a twenty out of the cash register as Oscar’s contribution to the investigation.
“For Danny?” he asked. I didn’t know how he knew, but I nodded. When they left, I figured out Janet must have told him. She hadn’t learned well enough yet about keeping her mouth shut.
Before I left that night I asked Oscar if he remembered if Nigel had been in the bar the night Ozzie was murdered.
“Yeah,” Oscar answered without hesitation. “He was here.” Then, closing one eye, he looked at me shrewdly with the other.
“Are you sure?” He hadn’t even thought about it for a second.
“I’m sure,” Oscar said. “One hundred percent.”
Chapter Nine
On the bus ride to Springfield, I remembered the cab driver who’d brought Angelina to the West Side that first time and later tried to break into her apartment. I’d totally forgotten about him. I wondered if the police knew. Finding him would be next to impossible, unless he was a legitimate driver who kept a trip log. I told Janet about him, and she said Angelina told her about the crazy cab driver in a letter. She didn’t remember if Angelina mentioned his name. But she would look for the letter when we got to Springfield.
Janet also told me about her previous night’s trek through the bars near Hanrahan’s with Ntango to see how the regulars at those places stacked up against Oscar’s first team. Most of the places didn’t remember Angelina, much less anyone she hung out with. But one bartender did remember her. And a hefty, light-skinned black guy who drank straight rum also stood out in the crowd, as did a scarecrow-like guy with a southern accent who drank Jack Daniels. Both Ozzie and Reuben, it seemed, visited Angelina at Hanrahan’s and drank with her at a couple of other joints in the area.
Janet also caught up with the bartender who remembered Angelina coming in to The Pub across the street from Hanrahan’s with an older man, who, she said, was probably Ozzie, too.
“How do you know?” I asked her.
“He drank Jack Daniels,” she said smugly.
“Did he stand up all the time?”
“I don’t know.” She looked worried. “Why? Do you think it wasn’t Ozzie?…Who else would it be?”
“I don’t know who else it would be. I just wanted to know if the guy stood up. I forgot to ask last time.”
I went back to reading my book, a Ross Macdonald mystery I’d picked up at Port Authority. Lew Archer figured things out a lot more quickly than I did. I told Janet this in some perplexity.
“Maybe he’s smarter than you,” she ventured. “You just don’t like to admit the very real possibility that the person who killed Angelina came from Oscar’s. You’d like it if someone respectable was the killer, instead of one of your bum friends.”
Janet quieted down after this ringing defense of respectability, quieting down into her nervousness. As we got closer to Springfield, she practically danced in her seat from her nerves, every five seconds speculating about what her mother would do or say. When she ran out of her own speculations, she asked me for answers. When I said I didn’t know and tried to read my book, she pouted.
“I don’t know your mother,” I said patiently. “I don’t know what she’ll say. I hope she tells us what happened.”
“Do you think she’ll be mad?”
I tried to read my book, but Janet demanded attention, by her frenetic bouncing around if nothing else. “I don’t know,” I said finally.
“Do you think we should come right out and ask her?”
“Maybe.”
“Should we tell her what we already know?” Her jitteriness made her voice shrill; she was becoming a nag.
“Jesus, Janet. I don’t know. Tell her what you want.”
“We should have a plan.”
“How can we plan if we don’t know what she’ll say?”
“God,” said Janet. “I hate doing this.”
Her face shone white in the subdued light of the bus. High-strung and wired, she had that tension in the way she held her neck and shoulders that you see sometimes in a thoroughbred who really wants to run. Her cheeks were pink with excitement and the make-up she wore for the trip.
I thought about what might happen after we talked with her mother, when we would be alone together for dinner and then would find a hotel—when there might be some release of all the tension. We hadn’t slept together since that first time. I thought about dinner at that German restaurant Carl and I had found, a bottle of wine, a joint for later in the hotel room. I forgot, for the moment, that Janet lived with her mother
and might just stay in her own room by herself.
Her body a few inches from mine in the narrow bus seat, her thigh once or twice brushing mine, the slight scent of her perfume, I absorbed being next to her. Just north of Hartford, she started to doze off. I put my arm around her shoulder, pulling her gently toward me until she nestled her head in against my chest. I kissed her hair.
We picked up her car, a shiny red Toyota, at a gas station near the bus depot. On the drive to her mother’s, Janet pulled herself together. When we arrived at the small wooden frame house, she marched decisively up the walk, rang the doorbell, and then put her key in the lock and opened the door before her mother got to it.
Mom was twittering around in the cramped foyer as we entered. She brushed at her hair and her dress, complained that her house was a terrible mess, chastised Janet for not calling her, and kept saying, “I don’t know what Mr. McNulty will think of us,” implying that if I had my head on straight I would figure out they were high-class people, despite any appearances to the contrary. In short, Mrs. Carter struck me as a phony, all appearance, anything that might reveal truth tucked away and protected like the family heirlooms. Maybe a life works out that way: you learn to protect yourself at all cost, show nothing but a false front to strangers. None of this attitude had rubbed off on Angelina, though. Maybe, because she could never get behind that impregnable wall of her mother’s appearances, Angelina opened herself to everyone else, to me, to the college boy when she was ten, to the person who murdered her before she’d altogether grown up.
“It’s not something I like to talk about,” Mrs. Carter said after we were seated in a cramped, stuffy living room, and I asked her to tell me about the time Angelina was molested. Mrs. Carter’s hair was black going on gray and pulled back severely. She was controlled and conscious of herself, treading as carefully as if she were walking across a tightrope.
“She knew the boy. They had become friends.” Her challenging expression when she said this suggested I should realize I didn’t know as much about things as I thought I did. “She liked him. He didn’t jump out of the bushes and attack her. Angelina was always boy-crazy. She was a little flirt, maybe because she had no father.”
Beware the Solitary Drinker Page 16