It’s possible that tears came to my eyes. “That was sweet of them, Hobie,” I said.
“Yes,” he went on, “and the powers that be said they’d discuss it with that old fart attorney, Lemuel Whattsworth, before they decided what to do. Anyway, Dunk dear, I wanted you to know that you have some clout on your side.”
“Thank you, Hobie,” I said, all choked up. “You’re a darling to tell me about it. As soon as I get out from under, I’m going to call you for lunch. Okay?”
“You better,” he said. “I miss you, Dunk.”
Hobie missed me. Al Georgio missed me. That was comforting. I really wasn’t alone. But what about Jack Smack—my one-night stand? He hadn’t said he missed me. But that bastard probably didn’t miss anyone.
I reflected on what I had just heard. I thought I knew why Georgio and Smack were trying to get my job back for me. After that stupid letter I received, they were concerned for my safety. So they figured if they got me reinstated at Grandby’s, I’d give up my investigative work for the Havistocks and be out of the line of fire.
It was sweet of them, and I appreciated it. In fact, their kindness made me feel guilty about not telling them both about Vanessa’s visit to the East 65th Street brownstone and the Minchens’ porn parties. But I salved my conscience by deciding that they probably knew about that already.
I thought I understood their motives, but I wasn’t certain I understood my own. If their plea to Grandby & Sons succeeded and I was put back on salary, would I give up my investigation of the Demaretion theft?
Never!
And why not?
Because I wouldn’t be completely cleared until the real thief was caught. The moment I thought that, I realized how silly it was—pure rationalization.
The real reason I didn’t want to give up the search for the Demaretion was because it was challenging, exciting, and I enjoyed it. It made me come face-to-face with how empty my life had been before this whole thing started.
Also, the investigation had enabled me to meet two interesting men who seemed to be attracted to me. As they say in New York, that ain’t chopped liver!
I called the Havistock apartment, hoping to speak to the madame. I wanted to go over to East 79th Street and talk to Ruby Querita, but thought it politic to ask Mrs. Havistock’s permission first. But Ruby herself answered the phone and told me the lady of the house wasn’t in. Neither was Mr. Havistock. Neither was Orson Vanwinkle nor Natalie. So, remembering I had carte blanche from my employers to talk to anyone and everyone, I told Ruby I’d be right over to ask her some questions. And hung up before she could object.
She greeted me at the door pleasantly enough and led me into a kitchen that looked big enough to service a cruise ship. We sat at an enameled table, and Ruby busied herself peeling fresh garlic cloves while we talked. That garlic odor was something. We had a neighbor in Des Moines who ate them raw, washed down with slivovitz. He was a friend, but not a close friend.
Ruby’s dourness seemed to have lightened up since I first met her, and now she was almost companionable. I will not say she was ugly, but she was excessively plain—with a discernible mustache that didn’t help things. I felt sorry for her. She looked like a woman who had worked hard all her life, knew nothing but the miseries, and didn’t expect things to change much until she was put to rest.
I went into my spiel and took her through the events of that fateful morning. She answered all my questions readily enough. Yes, the caterer’s men had brought the food for the birthday party, then left. The Minchens arrived. Natalie was there. Then Vanessa and Luther Havistock came in. Everyone was assembled.
People wandered in and out of her kitchen, mixing drinks, sampling tidbits. Ruby was aware of my arrival. And then the guards from the armored van were brought into the apartment by Orson Vanwinkle. She seemed to know everything that went on that morning.
“You were in the kitchen, here, all the time?” I asked.
She thought a moment. “No,” she said finally. “Not all the time. A man comes with flowers—for the lady—I let him in. Then, also, I was in the living room. Also, I went to a back storage closet for a punch bowl and glasses. I was in and out.”
It all added up to a big fat nothing. I had to keep reminding myself that she could be lying. It was difficult to believe.
“I understand your brother is in prison,” I said softly.
She shrugged, concentrating on the garlic cloves, gently peeling away the silk with a little paring knife. “The devil’s got him,” she said quietly.
“The devil?” I asked.
She looked up at me, and suddenly those dulled eyes blazed. “He has forsaken our Saviour,” she said with great intensity. “He must pay for his sins.”
I took a deep breath. “I understand his case is being appealed. Are you helping him out, Ruby?”
She shook her head. “ ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’ ”
“Ruby,” I said, hunching toward her over the table, “who do you think stole the coin?”
“That I do not know,” she said, looking down at what her fingers were doing, “but it is God’s punishment on this house.”
I was shocked. “Why should God want to punish the Havistocks?”
She stopped her work, raised her head, glared at me. “Because of their sins! They have sinned in the eyes of God Almighty, and they must suffer for their transgressions. Did they think their crimes would go unseen? Oh, no! Bitter is the fruit thereof. The first shall be last, and the last shall be first. A camel through the eye of a needle…Bring the innocent unto me. And what shall it profit a man? Blood of the lamb. Be sure your sins will find you out. Set thine house in order. Whoever perishes, being innocent? Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him. The Lord is my strength and my shield.”
She finally ran down, and I rose hastily, thanked her for her cooperation, and practically ran out of there. I was really shook.
I walked home, and all along East 79th Street I looked up at the glittering windows of those big apartment houses and wondered what was going on inside. Suddenly they no longer seemed bastions of solidity, respectability, or even of rationality. They were just stone and steel facades, shining in the June sunlight. And within—darkness.
I was still gloomy when I arrived home and had to force myself to make notes on the interrogation of Ruby Querita. It was all religious gibberish, I acknowledged, but might there not be a germ of truth there? Ruby had been with the family a long time. She was in a position to know what was going on. So why her outburst? What were the awful sins of the Havistocks?
This was the kind of stuff I wouldn’t dast repeat to Al Georgio or Jack Smack. They’d tell me Ruby was a nut, and I was even nuttier to take her seriously. But that was masculine logic at work again. Sometimes you sense things, you feel things, and I felt Ruby Querita wasn’t entirely irrational; she knew something.
When I’m in an antsy mood like that, I have to eat, so I opened the refrigerator door and examined the possibilities. Depressing. I settled for a poor little potato that had already been baked and was now all shriveled. I heated it up and opened a can of brisling sardines. (Do you know what sardines cost these days!) I washed that gourmet lunch down with a can of diet cola. I really know how to live.
I spent the afternoon doing chores: took in some dry cleaning, picked up a pair of shoes with new lifts, bought some frozen dinners—Lean Cuisine and Stouffer’s—a loaf of French bread, treated myself to a jug of Gallo Hearty Burgundy and, throwing caution to the winds, purchased a Sara Lee cheesecake with chocolate bits. Enjoy a little, I told myself—remembering that depressing lunch.
I was stowing away my vittles when the phone rang—and the day’s roller coaster took its downward swoop. It was Al Georgio.
“You sitting?” he demanded.
“No,” I said, “I’m standing up.”
“Then hang on to something. I’m on East Eighty-fifth Street. The body of Orson Vanwinkle was found a couple of hours ago. T
he guy’s stone cold dead in the market. Murdered. Shot to death.”
Silence.
“Dunk?” he said anxiously. “You there?”
“I’m here,” I said faintly.
“I heard about it by accident. A buddy who knows I’m working the Demaretion heist got it on the squawker and alerted me. The homicide guys took over; I’m just hanging around the edges.”
“Al, what happened?”
“Dunk, it’s only two hours old; no one knows much. No signs of forced entry. Apparently shot twice in the head with a small-caliber weapon. That’s all we’ve got so far.”
“Al,” I said desperately, “you think this has something to do with the Demaretion?”
“You want me to guess? All right, I’ll guess. Yes, it’s got something to do with the theft.”
“Al, will you call me back if you learn anything more? Better yet, can you come over when you’re finished? I’ve got some frozen dinners and wine. We can eat, and you can tell me all about it.”
“It may be late.”
“I don’t care how late it is. Please, Al.”
“Okay,” he said. “Meanwhile, watch yourself, Dunk. Looks like the guy who wrote you that swell letter wasn’t kidding. Be careful.”
“I will be,” I assured him, and when he hung up, I went around to check the locks on my windows and doors, still stunned from what I had heard. Orson Vanwinkle dead? Murdered? I didn’t like the man, but no one deserves that.
I was so confused. Al said he thought it was connected to the Demaretion robbery, and I thought so, too. But how? I frantically consulted my notebook, looking for the magic clue. Found nothing, of course. So I popped two Anacin. I suddenly had a headache that just wouldn’t end.
Al called again shortly after eight o’clock and said he was on his way, but he didn’t show up until a little after nine. He was in a furious mood.
“Son of a bitch!” he said angrily, flopping on the couch. “This really screws things up.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve eaten today,” I said. “Have you?”
“What? No, I haven’t.”
“Have a glass of wine and try to unwind. I’ll put some food on. Your choice is meatball stew or vegetable lasagna. Which will it be?”
“I’ll go for the stew.”
“Good for you. Only three hundred calories. But we’ll have Sara Lee cheesecake for dessert.”
“So who’s counting calories? God damn it! I can’t figure it. Why Orson Vanwinkle? Why him?”
By the time I put things in the oven, poured us glasses of wine, and went back into the living room, he had calmed down a little, but was still brooding.
“Tell me about it,” I said. “What happened?”
He sighed. “We haven’t got a hell of a lot. Vanwinkle had a cleaning woman who came in twice a week. She had a key to his apartment. The super of the building let her in the front door. She found the body and called nine-eleven. No signs of forced entry. So he let in someone he knew—right? Almost two grand in cash in his bedside table, so it wasn’t a ripoff. Nothing else missing, as far as we can tell. He was shot twice in the back of the skull. Small caliber. Maybe a twenty-two. The ME guesses he died around midnight last night. Around there. We’ll have to wait for the autopsy to be sure.”
I took a deep breath, feeling a wee bit queasy. “Al, where do you go from here?”
“Not me. I’m not handling it, thank God. The homicide guys will try to trace his movements after he left the Havistocks’ apartment yesterday afternoon. Around four-thirty. They’ve got a lot of work. They found his little black book. Plenty of names, addresses, and phone numbers. Mostly women. You’re in it.”
“Me?!”
“That’s right,” he said, smiling bleakly. “The guy was either a Casanova or thought he was.”
“Al, I swear I—”
He held up a palm. “Hey, Dunk, I’m not accusing you of anything. I think you’ve got more sense than to play around with a creep like that. But you’re in his book, so you can expect a visit from the homicide dicks.”
“What should I tell them?”
“The truth. No more, no less. Actually, he had a kind of steady girlfriend. A frizzy blonde who looks like a nine-teen-twenties type. A real boop-boop-a-doop girl. A flapper. Not a brain in her head, but apparently they’ve been making nice-nice for almost five years. I think he’s laying a lot of loot on her.”
“Where was she last night when he was killed?”
Georgio looked at me admiringly. “You’re really learning the drill, aren’t you? She says she was visiting a sick aunt in Riverdale. They’re checking it out.”
I glanced at my Snoopy watch. “Our dinners should be thawed by now. Hungry?”
“Famished,” he said.
We ate at my dinky dinner table, about as large as a bandanna. I had the vegetable lasagna, and Al had the meatball stew. Thank God for that loaf of French bread; he demolished it. But while we ate and drank, we couldn’t stop talking about Orson Vanwinkle’s murder.
“Who do you think hated him enough to do it?” Al asked me.
“Probably everyone,” I said. “Natalie didn’t like him. Vanessa called him a vile man. And then there’s Ruby Querita…”
I decided to tell him about my conversation with her early that morning. He listened intently, and he didn’t seem to think me nutty to believe there might be something in what she said.
“These religious fanatics…” he said, “you’ve got to take them seriously. They’ll massacre and say God told them to do it. Like Natalie’s boyfriend, that born-again Muslim … Who knows what’s going on in his tiny, tiny mind? But my big problem is that the homicide guys are going to be tramping all over my investigation of the Demaretion heist.”
“You still think the two are connected—the theft of the coin and Vanwinkle’s murder?”
“Oh, hell yes,” he said, sitting back, dunking a crust of bread in his red wine, then munching on it—I never saw anyone do that before. “I think it’s all one case. But I don’t like the idea of being pushed aside by the homicide squad. God damn it, it’s my baby.”
“Of course it is.”
“All I can do is trade with them,” he said thoughtfully. “One for one. If they’re willing to cooperate, I’ll cooperate.” He looked at me with a bleak smile. “Interoffice politics,” he said, “but that’s the way things work. We’re all trying to protect our backs and claim credit due.”
“That’s understandable,” I said. “It was the same way at Grandby’s. And talking about that, thank you for making a pitch to get my job back. You and Jack Smack.”
“Oh, you heard about that, did you? Well, we figured that after you got that threatening letter, it might be smart to try to get you out of the target area. Now, with Vanwinkle scragged, I think it’s more important than ever. Dunk, give it up, will you?”
“No,” I said instantly. “The Havistocks are paying me to do a job, and I mean to do it.”
He stared at me. “You might get your ass shot off,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”
“Not me,” I said. “Not enough ass to aim at.”
He laughed at that. “You’re always putting yourself down. You happen to have an elegant ass.”
“I think,” I said, “this would be a perfect time to have the cheesecake.”
I didn’t ask him if he’d like to stay the night, and he didn’t ask if he could. It was just generally understood.
He insisted he smelled like a goat and had to shower. So I gave him a fresh towel and let him go ahead while I cleaned up and washed the few dishes we had used. I took the wine jug and our glasses into the bedroom, turned down the lights, undressed, and slid between the cool sheets. It was delightful and frightening at the same time—if you know what I mean.
He wasn’t half as expert as Jack Smack, but twice as sincere. I didn’t have to wonder if he was putting on an act, or think of how many women he had been with to learn the things he knew. Al didn’t know a
ll that much. But he was tender and solicitous, and there was a kind of brutal power there that Jack could never have. All I can say is that we had us a time. A good time.
Later, sitting up in bed, both of us sipping wine, he said, “We just sinned. I’m Catholic—did you know that?”
“Going to confess what we did?”
“Nah,” he said, laughing. “Why should I get a poor priest all stirred up? It’ll be our secret. I guess I’m not a very good Catholic.”
“I was raised a Methodist,” I told him, “but after I came to New York I got out of the habit. I haven’t been to church in I forget how long.”
He patted the mattress. “This is as good a church as any, Dunk.”
“I agree.”
“After I got divorced,” he said, “I played around some. Not a lot, but enough. Mostly one-night stands. Fun and games. Not very satisfying.”
“No,” I said, “it isn’t.”
“I like being with you, Dunk. I mean really like it. Not just the sex—though that was great. I mean talking and laughing. Being together. We can keep on doing it, can’t we?”
“I’m counting on it.”
“You have no special guy?”
“No,” I said, “no one special.”
“Well, I have no right to ask you to devote your entire life to me. That’s too heavy. But I just wanted you to know that while I’m seeing you, I’m not going to do any tomcatting around. I guess I really am a one-woman man. I’m not telling you that to get you to change your way of living. Nothing like that. I just wanted you to know how I feel.”
I turned to kiss his wine-sweet lips. “You’re a dear man, Al, and I love being with you. But I can’t make any promises I won’t keep.”
“I know that,” he said, “and I’m not asking for any promises—except that you’ll keep seeing me. For a while.”
“That I can promise,” I assured him. Then, because he was being so loving, I said, “Al, there’s something I have to tell you.”
The Eighth Commandment Page 16