She looked over her shoulder and smiled at him, the well-practiced smile of a young woman used to being appreciated.
“Thank you, I guess. Madam is on the balcony.”
“If we hurry,” Trace said, “maybe we can get there in time to save her.”
The maid giggled. She turned left from the hallway into a theater-size living room. It wouldn’t have surprised Trace if a string and flute quartet had been practicing in one corner of the room. Next to the living room was a formal dining room, only half its size, but still bigger than the first floors of most private homes.
This was one of the only two ways to live reasonably in New York, he decided. Be very rich, where you didn’t have to worry about parking fees for your car or where to buy gasoline or get your snow tires changed, and could afford to have people do it all for you. The very rich could live in Manhattan. And so could the very poor because the government made it possible for them to survive. Everyone in the middle lost. He reached behind him and turned on his hidden tape recorder.
They made another left turn.
“Should I leave a trail of beans so I can find my way back out?” Trace asked, then saw Martha Armitage. It was like a scene from a Hollywood movie. She sat at a glass-topped table on a large balcony that overlooked Central Park and Trace’s hotel a half-mile or so in the distance. New York’s broad avenues, from this distance, removed from the horn honking and the creative swearing, looked beautiful and Parisian instead of maniacal and ugly.
Mrs. Armitage was wearing a satin robe in the color of Homer’s wine-dark sea. A breakfast plate was laid out in front of her. Trace again thought she was very beautiful and she responded to his thought by giving a very beautiful smile to him and the maid.
“This is Mr. Tracy, ma’am,” the maid said.
“Thank you, Cheryl.”
“Yes, thank you, Cheryl,” Trace said.
“How do you do, Mr. Tracy? Please sit down. Would you have some breakfast?”
“Just coffee,” Trace said.
Mrs. Armitage nodded to Cheryl, finished her orange juice, and handed the maid the glass. “Coffee for Mr. Tracy and would you please make me another orange juice?”
Cheryl took the glass and was off like a shot as Trace sat down across from Mrs. Armitage. He wondered again if Chico had been right. Had this woman and Sarge gotten it on together? She was certainly beautiful enough to have been worth the effort, he thought. Her beautiful eyes looked around warily.
Martha lowered her voice. “I’m glad you came, Devlin. Of course, this is the first time we’ve met.”
He didn’t like her calling him Devlin, as if she were already a member of the family, but he just nodded and said nothing. He noticed she was wearing a lot less makeup than on the previous day, and her hands had ceased their nervous fluttering.
“How are you doing?” she asked. “Any progress?”
“Not much. Is your husband here? It’s really him I was hoping to see.”
“He’s sleeping. He generally works late hours, you know. But if he’s not up soon, I’ll call him, although I don’t know exactly what kind of reception you’re going to get.”
“Warm, I think,” Trace said. “I usually get warm receptions. People like me a lot.”
“I wouldn’t have thought so. I’m happy to be proved wrong,” Martha said.
Cheryl swished back onto the balcony with a small porcelain coffeecup and saucer and a matching pot of coffee which she placed in front of Trace. She put down a large water tumbler of light-colored orange juice in front of the woman. Martha picked up the glass and drank half of it greedily, then said, “That’ll be all, Cheryl.”
Trace wondered for a moment what he was doing there. It had seemed important the night before to talk to the Armitages, but he began to think that maybe he had just wanted to see Martha again, just to satisfy his curiosity. He was about to ask her when she had met Sarge when Nick Armitage, wearing trousers and a white shirt opened at his thick bull neck, came onto the balcony.
“Who’s this?” he asked his wife brusquely.
“Oh, Nick. I’m glad you’re up. This is Mr. Tracy from the insurance company.”
Armitage looked coldly at Trace, then said, “I know you, don’t I?”
“We met at your club the night before last,” Trace said.
“You didn’t call yourself Tracy then.”
“No.”
“What’d you call yourself?”
“I forget,” Trace said honestly.
“Why? Why use a different name?”
“I thought it’d get me a better table,” Trace said.
“I don’t think I like you,” Armitage said.
“You made that clear when you sent your two morons to follow us back to our hotel.”
“Oh.” Armitage was obviously surprised that Trace had spotted the men. “Well, what do you want here?”
“Mr. Tracy is looking into Tony’s death,” Martha interjected.
“Let him talk for himself, Martha,” Armitage snapped. The man had made no attempt to shake Trace’s hand and now he pulled a chair back from the table as if to keep his distance, turned it around, and sat with his arms folded against the back of the chair, staring at Trace.
“What do you want here?” he repeated.
“You like some coffee?” Trace said. “Maybe it’ll improve your mood.”
“My mood’s fine. Or it will be as soon as you get out of here. I’ll ask you only one more time. What are you nosing around for?”
“Insurance,” Trace said. “Before we pay, we look into the death.”
“So, you’ve been looking into. You find anything with all your looking into?”
“Not much.”
“I didn’t expect so,” Armitage said. “Cops didn’t find anything, you wouldn’t find anything.”
“You never know. Sometimes we get lucky.”
“Look. I don’t care what you people do. Pay the money, don’t pay the money, I don’t give a damn. My lawyer handles that crap anyway. But why don’t you just get out of our lives? My wife doesn’t need this and I don’t need it. Someday I’ll find out who killed Tony.”
“And?”
“And I’ll take care of it my own way.”
“What does that mean?” Trace asked.
“Anything you want it to mean.”
“Until then, why don’t you humor me? Let me ask a couple of questions.”
“Go ahead,” Martha said quickly.
Trace glanced at her. The food on the plate in front of her was cold and untouched, but she had finished her glass of orange juice.
“And then you’ll get out of here?” Armitage said.
Trace nodded.
“Go ahead. Make it quick.”
“That mask your son was wearing. Did either of you ever see it before?”
“No,” Mrs. Armitage said.
Her husband looked disgusted and shook his head.
“You never heard him mention it?” Trace asked.
“No.”
“Not even in a joke?” Trace said. “Chuckles. Ho, ho, costume party, guess-what-I’m-wearing kind of talk?”
“I said no,” Armitage said. “Move it along.” He took an untouched cup of coffee from in front of his wife and sipped at it.
“Did your son hang out in your nightclub?”
“No. I didn’t like him there.”
“Why not? I thought you ran a clean business.”
“I run a clean restaurant upstairs. Downstairs is for degenerates. How clean can degenerates be?” Armitage said.
“You don’t think much of your customers,” Trace said.
“Just enough to take their money.”
“You think they’re sex fiends? Druggies? Like that?”
“I don’t let drugs in my club,” Armitage said quickly. “But anybody who wants to be with orangutans jumping around to some kind of weird noise, I don’t want my kid hanging out with. So I told him to stay out of the club.”
“What did yo
u think of Tony’s roommates?” Trace asked. He noticed that Martha Armitage had moved back slightly from the table and folded her arms across her bosom, content to watch and listen, a small placid smile on her face.
“What’s to think about?” Armitage said. “The guy’s some kind of hillbilly whacko. The mulanyam’s all right for a mulanyam.”
“You didn’t like her because she was black?”
“Take it or leave it,” Armitage said with a shrug.
“Is that why you dumped on Tony, because he was sleeping with her?”
“Who told you that?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Trace said.
“Well, it’s not true. He wasn’t going to marry her, was he? He wants to dip his wick anywhere he wants, let him. That’s how you grow up,” he said.
“You went up and talked to both of the roommates after Tony died. Why’d you do that?”
“Because it looked like the cops weren’t getting anywhere. I wanted to know if they knew anything.”
“Did they?”
“Not so’s you’d notice,” Armitage said. “They were both out of town.”
“You didn’t think that was strange?” Trace asked.
“I don’t know. It could have been strange. Maybe not. They both went where they said they went. I checked. Is this getting us anywhere.”
“Maybe. Did your son use drugs regularly?”
“What the hell kind of question is that?” Armitage snapped.
“Did your son use drugs regularly?”
“I woulda busted his ass if he did. And I think you’ve maybe asked enough questions.”
“He had Quaaludes in him when he died.”
“Somebody put them there. Tony didn’t use anything.”
“I thought he might have got in with bad people,” Trace said. “Drug dealers. Stuff like that.”
“No, he didn’t and you can stop fishing. I hope you’re done now because that’s all you get here.” He hesitated. “You were with the little slope in the restaurant the other night.”
“Mr. Armitage, I’m going to do you two favors.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m going to make believe I didn’t hear that crack because I didn’t have a drink yet today and I’m not feeling so good and I might just have to pound it down your face. And second, I’m not going to tell the lady about it because you might just wake up one morning and find your intestines neatly piled on top of your chest.”
“Yeah?”
Trace shook his head. If there was anything he hated before he had a drink, it was snappy dialogue. “You might ask your two house idiots.”
“What are you talking about?”
“They came after us in the disco last night. She left one of them lying on the floor. He may walk with a limp for a while.”
Armitage looked confused and Trace realized he had not been told what had happened the night before. His two muscle men had probably been too embarrassed to let him know.
“Oh,” he said.
Cheryl came onto the balcony and handed Armitage a note. He read it, nodded, and put it into his pocket.
“You’re going now, Tracy, right?”
“I guess you’re not going to invite me to spend the weekend,” Trace said.
“You guess right,” he said as he rose to his feet. Without a word to Trace or to his wife, he walked from the balcony.
Cheryl still stood there. “I’ll show you out, Mr. Tracy,” she said.
“Thank you.” Trace stood and looked at Martha Armitage. Her face had a confused expression on it, as if she had been subjected to an information overload and was having trouble processing all of it.
“I’ll see you again, Mrs. Armitage,” Trace said, but the woman just nodded, without looking up to meet his eyes.
As he followed Cheryl through the living room, Trace noticed that a door in the room, disguised to look like one of the room’s walnut wall panels, had been left partially open. He moved over toward the center of the room, and when he glanced through the door’s opening, he saw reflected, in a mirror on the wall inside the room, the image of Nick Armitage. He had his arms around a woman and was kissing her. He released her and they both stepped out into the living room. The woman looked at Trace with open curiosity.
Trace thought she looked like a younger version of Martha Armitage. She had the same large, wide-set eyes, and although her hair tended more toward red, she had the same snow-white complexion. She was a little shorter, a little more bosomy, and had a wider, fuller mouth.
“Hi,” she said.
Trace stopped. “Hello.”
She turned to Nick. “You going to introduce me to your friend?”
“He was just leaving,” Armitage said.
“Devlin Tracy,” Trace said.
“I’m Anna Walker.” She reached forward and shook his hand vigorously. “Sure you have to leave? Nick says you’re a very interesting conversationalist.”
“I think it’s leave or be thrown off the balcony,” Trace said. “I don’t think Mr. Armitage likes me.”
“Just go, will you please?” Armitage said.
“Sure. I’ll be around.” Trace nodded to the woman and followed Cheryl out into the long hallway that led to the front door.
He stopped alongside a small Chippendale table and lighted a cigarette. While he was dropping the match into the ashtray, he noted the number on the telephone atop the table and repeated it softly so that his microphone could pick it up.
“What’d you say?” Cheryl asked.
“Sorry. Just clearing my throat. Who was that?”
“Miss Walker. That’s Mrs. Armitage’s sister,” the maid said.
They were at the door. “I guess this is goodbye, then,” Trace said.
“It seems that way, doesn’t it?” the maid said.
“What a pity.”
“Life is filled with tragedies,” she said, biting off the words with her brittle British accent. But she was smiling.
Just then, Martha Armitage came down the hall. “I’ll show Mr. Tracy to the elevator, Cheryl.”
“Very good, ma’am. I want to finish the grocery list.”
She left and Martha walked into the outside hallway with Trace.
As she spoke to him, he realized her voice sounded a little thick, muffled, and slurred.
“Was that true?” she said. “Was Tony sleeping with that black girl?”
“Yes.”
“Did Nick break them up?”
“I think so.”
“Nick is…well, he’s very bossy. He pushed Tony very hard,” she said. “He wanted Tony to be a lawyer.”
“What did Tony want to be?”
“I think he just wanted to be young for a while. A lot of people never are.” They were at the elevator and she seemed to be looking past Trace, gazing off into space.
She came back to him and said, “It didn’t go so well, did it?”
“He’s got a short fuse,” Trace said.
“I gather you do too,” she said.
“Sometimes. Before a morning drink,” he said.
She nodded agreement.
“I hope you won’t let him stop you,” she said. “Please try hard, Devlin. I don’t want him to be the first to find out who…who killed Tony. It’ll be real trouble.”
“I know. A memory like an elephant. I’ll try to find out. My father and I both will.”
“Patrick promised me that last night,” she said. “But I wanted to hear you say it.”
“You look a lot like your sister,” Trace said.
“Anna? Everybody says that.”
“Except you’re more beautiful.”
“They don’t all say that,” she said.
“What do they know?”
He heard the elevator approaching their floor. A woman came from the floor’s other penthouse apartment, hurrying toward the elevator. She was holding a miniature poodle in her arms.
“Thank you, Mr. Tracy, for your trouble,” Martha
said loudly. “Mr. Armitage and I appreciate it.” She turned to the woman and said, “Hello, Mrs. Bentley.”
“Hello,” the woman sniffed.
The elevator door opened. The dog snarled at Trace as he backed carefully into the elevator.
The July heat slapped across Trace’s face as he stepped from the air-conditioned lobby out into New York’s humid air. He walked a few steps away from the canopied entrance to the apartment building, then leaned back against the fender of a car to wait. The fender was uncomfortably hot through the fabric of his trousers.
He lit a cigarette and thought that there should be a way to impregnate cigarettes with liquor, so that a person could smoke and drink at the same time. He gave this vision ninety seconds before regarding it as hopeless. If God had wanted there to be a product like that, He never would have invented marijuana.
He heard high heels tapping on the flagstone walk from the apartment building, and a moment later, Cheryl turned up the sidewalk toward him. He tossed his cigarette away, turned on his tape recorder again, and walked over to her. Under her arm, she was carrying a folding grocery basket.
She smiled when she saw him. “Well, well,” she said. “Fate’s been kind, after all.”
“I was just in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by,” Trace said. “Did you know that eighty-one percent of all the women who go grocery shopping in this neighborhood are mugged? And it goes up to ninety-two percent if they’re pretty? With you, that makes it a certainty. You’re lucky I’m here to protect you.”
“I won’t be able to pay you,” she said.
“Your company is payment enough.”
“Keep it up. I love it.”
As they strolled down the street, Cheryl asked, “Just what is it you do, Mr. Tracy?”
“My friends call me Trace,” he said. “I’m an investigator. I’m looking into Tony Armitage’s death.”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you. I don’t know anything about it,” she said.
“Well, then, we’ll just walk. Did you see Tony much at the apartment?”
“Not generally,” she said. “But I work days and I guess he’d be in school most days.”
“I guess. Did you like him? When you did see him?”
“He was nice,” she said.
“Friendly?” Trace asked.
“Yes.”
“Overfriendly?”
When Elephants Forget (Trace 3) Page 10