Beware the Solitary Drinker

by Cornelius Lehane

  “Mom,” said Janet. “She was a child. She was cute. She wanted attention. All kids do. You’re making it sound like it was Angelina’s fault.”

  Mrs. Carter shot a sidelong glance at her daughter. Janet bounced back in her chair as if she’d been whacked.

  Having put Janet in her place without much effort, Mrs. Carter went on with her story. “The boy was heartbroken. Even I could see that he hadn’t meant to hurt her.” She took me into her confidence, ignoring Janet, indicating by this attempt at sincerity that I would understand the nuances of the situation she described, even if her daughter didn’t. “It was a tragedy for him, too. He was very nervous. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was having a nervous breakdown. His father was devastated. The boy had great promise. The family was wealthy.” She looked at me significantly then said again, “It was obvious they were cultured and wealthy.” Perhaps not obvious to an asshole like me, her tone suggested, but obvious to someone who understood such things.

  “How did Angelina feel about being molested?”

  This shot got inside the armor. She took some time to answer. “She was too young to know all of what was going on. I don’t think she realized what had happened. It was better for her that we kept it that way and didn’t make much of the whole situation.”

  “What was the deal you made?” I asked.

  Janet’s mother turned on her daughter so fiercely I thought she’d spring from the couch and go for her throat. “There was no deal,” she said. “Did Janet tell you there was?”

  “They gave you money…” Janet snarled.

  Mrs. Carter smiled faintly to show that she could rise above the perfidy of her daughter. “It was never that. Not money for a deal.” She shook her head to ward off the accusation. “I understood the boy needed treatment. He wasn’t a criminal. He’d gotten carried away…made a mistake… Angelina went along with it, you know?”

  “Mother!” Janet shrieked.

  Unruffled, Mom went on. “You know what I mean.…It was wrong but it wasn’t an attack.” She looked at me again. “The family was rich and could provide the help the son needed. He would go to a hospital and be treated. What good would it do for him to be sent to jail? Angelina consented to whatever happened. I’m sure she didn’t know what she was doing. But she might have led him on.…Boys at that age, you know.…”

  I stared at this woman in amazement, but she didn’t notice. She was floating on a cloud with her eyes closed.

  “I agreed with the boy’s father that prison wouldn’t help anyone. Angelina least of all would want the boy to go to prison. They were grateful that I saw it wasn’t really a criminal matter. That was all of any deal.”

  She tried to look saintly as she said all this. It didn’t work on me but seemed to on her. Her eyes closed again like a child’s when she drifts off to sleep.

  Keeping my tone soft as befit the mood she’d established, I whispered, “And the money?”

  Her eyes sprang open. The corners of her mouth curled. I thought she would spit. “The family wanted to do something for Angelina, for all of us. Money meant nothing to them. I had no husband, Mr. McNulty. I couldn’t make ends meet. Should I have let my pride impoverish my family?”

  Actually, I didn’t disapprove of the things she was most defensive about. Sick people should go to hospitals instead of jail; rich people should give money to poor people to make their lives better; poor people shouldn’t be ashamed to take it. Yet the entire episode reeked of betrayal and selfishness. Everything had been done to satisfy greed: the boy’s greed for the little girl, the family’s greed for their good name; Mrs. Carter’s greed for money, and her willingness to sacrifice her daughter because of her greed for the good opinion of the rich. I realized nothing in the world could make this woman admit she’d sold her daughter down the river for a few bucks. I understood how much Mrs. Carter needed the falsity that surrounded her. The truth would drive her screaming over a cliff.

  The tension between her and Janet was near the exploding point. It looked as if there had been some unspoken agreements about things they wouldn’t talk about, but Janet was talking about them. Mrs. Carter was furious and all during our conversation cast pointed glances at her daughter, while Janet, for the most part, kept her eyes averted.

  “Did you ever hear from or about the boy again?” I asked Mrs. Carter.

  She shook her head.

  “Where was he from?”

  “They never said. He was attending college near here.”

  “What was the boy’s name?”

  Mrs. Carter gritted her teeth and tightened her face, as if to say torture wouldn’t get the name from her.

  I played my trump card. “Was his name Nigel Barthelme?”

  “No,” she said. “That wasn’t it.”

  Janet stood behind her, looking like she’d just discovered a body. She recovered herself quickly though. “Was his name Carl van Sagan?”

  “That wasn’t it either,” her mother said haughtily. “I’m certain he’s no one you would know.”

  “Mother, you must know his name or the family name. You have to tell us. This could be the key to everything.”

  Mrs. Carter blustered up like Foghorn Leghorn. “Don’t be ridiculous, Janet. How could something that happened so long ago have anything to do with Angelina’s death? She was in New York, for God’s sake. In those terrible slums, doing the Lord knows what, associating with low lifes. How dare you bring all this up! How dare you divulge our family affairs in front of this—this…”

  “Low life?” I ventured.

  ***

  Janet went to her room to pick up the letters Angelina had sent her from New York. I stood alone with Mrs. Carter for an uncomfortable few minutes.

  “Aren’t you staying?” Mrs. Carter asked Janet when she came back.

  “No, I’m going back to New York. I took a few days off.”

  “You have phone calls and messages. Don’t you want to see them? Mr. Riggs from the bank?” Her tone was loaded with not so subtle hints of a gentleman caller, not just a colleague.

  “I’ll be back in a few days, mother. I wish you’d think over being more helpful. Whatever you promised that family, I’m sure it doesn’t bind you in this situation.”

  “You haven’t been at the bank long enough to go traipsing off for a few days, even if there has been a family tragedy. Someone in an important position like yours is expected to carry on in the face of difficulties.” Mrs. Carter was pointedly ignoring me now, talking above and beyond me, implying I was of the elements dragging her daughter down.

  ***

  Before we got down the front steps, Janet climbed all over me with questions. “Why did you ask about Nigel? Do you know something?”

  “Just a guess. He’s the right age. He comes from a rich family.”

  “But you had a reason…. Tell me.”

  “He doesn’t drink. I don’t trust people who don’t drink.”

  She almost smiled through her peevishness.

  “In fact, we should have a drink right now,” I said. “I know a great German restaurant in Springfield near the bus depot.”

  “The Student Prince. How did you know that?” I put my arm around her, but she walked out from under it as we headed toward her car.

  Lew Archer got paid expenses. He wouldn’t even track down a murderer except if someone paid him. I had to come up with expenses myself, and this dinner wasn’t going to be cheap. Maybe I could ask Oscar to put me on a per diem to clear the joint’s name. Maybe Danny could hock his bass guitar.

  Angelina’s suitor, the cabbie—Janet found his name in one of her letters—was, fittingly enough, named Romeo. He was Romanian. She read the letter at the restaurant while we waited for dinner, and cried again, while I drank a gigantic glass of Wurtzburger from the tap. I didn’t know if Janet cried because the letters got her to thinking about Angelina again or because the recent episode reminded her how awful her mother was.

  “Mother’s pretty hard to tak
e sometimes,” she said in answer to my unasked question. “She can be so cold. That’s how she was with Angelina, just so cold…”

  “Why do you still live with her, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  Janet blushed. “I don’t know, really. I lived away from home for years, in Boston. The position at the bank in Springfield is recent, or fairly recent. I planned to stay with Mother for a few weeks until I found a place. At first, it was fun because Angelina was there, and I spent some time getting to know her again as an almost grown-up. Also, she and mother fought all the time, and I was a kind of buffer.” Our dinner came and Janet looked it over like it was leftover stew from Sam’s hash house. “Since Angelina left, I’ve been meaning to move out. But I guess I feel sorry for my mother. She’s sad and lonely.”

  “Meanness does that to you.”

  Midway through dinner, Janet pointed to a gray-haired man in a blue suit who’d tucked away three martinis while I was drinking my beer and who I expected was now about to go face down in his wiener schnitzel. “That’s the DA,” she said. “Rumor has it that he’s been coming in here and getting drunk every night for the past ten years.”

  “Was he the DA when Angelina was raped?”

  “Probably.”

  “Let’s go say hello.”

  Janet hesitated, her eyes narrowed with worry. “I don’t think people are supposed to notice when he’s drunk.…The bank is very sensitive…our position in the community…”

  I waited. She stood and walked to his table.

  “George,” she said, as he raised his gaze. He reminded me of a basset hound. “This is Brian McNulty.” She raised an eyebrow in my direction. “He’s a private investigator from New York.”

  I raised an eyebrow myself. But I did have a suit on—albeit borrowed—I was fortified by the Wurtzburger, and had finished the first third of a Lew Archer book. What the hell!

  “Pleased to meetcha,” he garbled, holding out his puffy, pink hand, and looking at me droopily with his bloodshot eyes. “What can I do for you?”

  “A number of years ago,” I said in what I imagined was a hardboiled tone—I really needed a hat and a cigarette to bring this off—“a number of years ago, a ten-year-old girl was molested by a college student. Do you remember it?”

  “No,” said the DA, hovering over his martini like he suspected I might steal it. We might have gotten along better if Janet had introduced me as a bartender.

  “Try,” I said. “I doubt they’d bury that kind of case without you knowing about it. Maybe you keep a file of cases that never got prosecuted.”

  “Not if there were no charges,” he said.

  I didn’t get it.

  “We can’t force parents to file charges, can’t force a kid to testify if the parents say she’s too traumatized, they just want her to forget it and get on with her life.” The DA’s eyes shone with cunning through the red lines and puffiness. “Ask her.” He nodded toward Janet. “It was her sister.”

  “I know. I want the name of the suspected molester.”

  “No can do.” He dismissed me with a wave of his hand and returned to his martini.

  I didn’t take the hint. “Can you tell me what you remember?”

  He rolled his eyes toward Janet, hinting that she should take me away. But he did answer. “Something allegedly happened between the boy and the girl, but both families got involved. They agreed something happened. But they agreed also that nothing criminal had happened.”

  “Was the girl examined by a doctor?”

  “I don’t know.” He turned on Janet. “Tell your friend who doesn’t take hints to ask his questions during office hours. I come here to relax.”

  Janet began sputtering an apology.

  “Just a friendly chat,” I said.

  “Good. Nice to see you.” Genial, nary a slurred word, he held his liquor well, polishing off another martini while we spoke.

  “Our dinner’s waiting,” I said.

  “I don’t have anything to hide,” the DA said as we walked away.

  ***

  Janet wanted to leave for the city. This time she was driving back and keeping her car. But, optimist that I am, I talked her into spending the night in Springfield and driving back in the morning. We found a hotel a few blocks from the restaurant. It was connected to an inside shopping mall, so after we registered we walked around for a while browsing in stores.

  Janet asked again why I’d become interested in Nigel, but I didn’t have anything to tell her. It was the sort of feeling I’d had about Danny’s innocence. And it had to do with the girl Sharon Collins who’d accused Nigel of raping her. Since her accusation was probably false, I didn’t want to tell Janet.

  “Tell me everything you know about the night Angelina was murdered,” I told Janet when we’d found our way back to the hotel and to a small lobby bar.

  “She left Oscar’s with the band,” Janet said.

  “Right.”

  “She went with them to that person Max’s apartment on 114th Street where they jammed for an hour or two. Maybe they drank and did drugs. The police lab found alcohol and marijuana in her blood.”

  “But not much.”

  Janet let the information register. She was tired; it showed in her eyes. The tension was gone, yet not from any release, just weariness. It took effort for her to go on. “She left with Danny.”

  “They went for breakfast,” I said.

  “Right. That was in the laboratory report also.” She rubbed her eyes and rested her face in her hands. “They walked up Broadway, right? I’m having a hard time remembering.”

  “Right. They’d been in the park.”

  She leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes. “How do you know?”

  “Danny said that’s where they’d been. Angelina wasn’t wearing a sweater.”

  “Where were they heading?”

  “Danny said he walked her home and left her in the lobby.”

  She sat up in her seat again, alertness returning to her eyes. “Why wouldn’t she bring him home with her?”

  “That’s strange, isn’t it? Angelina wasn’t shy about bringing men home.”

  “Maybe she was tired.”

  “Maybe someone was already there.”

  Janet’s eyes registered surprise. “Who?”

  “Good question. Less than two weeks later, Ozzie gets killed in the same building, in his own apartment. How did the murderer get in?”

  “The police said there was no forced entry.” Janet sat back in her chair. She hadn’t touched her drink. “Ozzie must have opened the door.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe he forgot to lock the door.”

  “Maybe.”

  I ordered one more cognac for each of us. “I feel creepy,” Janet said. “It seems like we must almost know who killed Angelina. Yet we don’t.”

  “We’ve pretty well narrowed the field,” I said, sniffing my brandy instead of taking a drink. What I didn’t tell her but expected her to realize anyway was that the closer we got the more likely it was that the murderer would know it.

  ***

  Janet and I shared a double room. To cut down on expenses, she’d said. I’d had grander plans.

  “It’s funny,” Janet said, having changed in the bathroom into a wooly, floor-length Planned Parenthood nightgown. “You’re the most disreputable person I know. Yet I feel totally safe sharing a hotel room, despite your tough guy facade and your alley cat sexual morals.” She looked at me apologetically. You might say, with sympathy. “I don’t trust you romantically. I can’t bring myself to be with you that way again…not now. I don’t expect you to understand. But I know you’ll accept what I say.”

  Talk about deflating romance. I tried to see through her words to find the passion hidden by some fear, reluctance that might be overcome with patience and gentleness. But it was like looking into an adding machine. After a tentative embrace, Janet hung her head, said she was tired and needed to sleep. I didn’t have muc
h trouble sleeping either, despite my plans coming to naught.

  ***

  When we got back to New York, I went to try out a theory I’d developed on the way home. It followed from my thinking about Romeo the cab driver and led to my remembering how one gets an apartment on the Upper West Side. Janet went to see what she could find out about Romeo. I walked down Broadway to 103rd Street, turned east, and found the building Angelina had first lived in, a five-story walk-up in a Spanish neighborhood. I dug around in a few cellars until I came up with a super who took care of most of the buildings on the block.

  “Any apartments?” I asked. He shook his head and mumbled something in Spanish that suggested he knew nothing of apartments and didn’t recall ever having heard the word before.

  “My friend Carl at 811 West End said one might open up. I got three hundred dollars.”

  The super smiled. “Maybe for next month,” he said.

  “Remember the girl Carl sent? The blonde?”

  The super nodded sadly. So did I.

  ***

  I walked back uptown, remembering something I overheard my father telling my mother once. It was during the Inquisition in the Fifties, and he sat at the mahogany dining room table while my mother tried to persuade him to give up. He was drooped over the table. I can picture the tired and defeated look on his face. “It’s worse when you know too much,” he said. I didn’t know what he meant then, but it was so different from what he always told me about the importance of knowledge that it stuck in my mind.

  ***

  When I got back to my apartment, I knew right away someone had been in it. I noticed something wrong as soon as I turned from the foyer to enter my room, before I even saw my bedroom. My bureau had been torn apart, my books tossed all over the floor, Tolstoy dumped on his nose, the bookcase black and empty where he had stood. The gun gone. I’d never wanted the fucking thing in the first place; now it had gone off on its own to haunt me.

  To begin with, someone could still be in the apartment. Through the door beyond the foyer was the kitchen, behind the wall in front of me my living room, off to the other side of my room the bathroom. Someone might be hiding in any one of those places. I flung myself against the wall of my bedroom, sliding along with my back arched against it—for God knows what reason—until I reached the bathroom door, slamming it open and diving through—in hopes, I suppose, of catching my would-be assailant in the middle of a before-murder crap. The bathroom was empty. I went out along the short hallway to the living room, yanking open the hall closet door on the way. No one in the closet or the living room. This left only the kitchen. Unless, of course, the assailant was doubling along behind me, hiding now in the bedroom ready to leap into the bathroom as soon as I got to the bedroom again. No one in the kitchen.