Dirt

by Stuart Woods

“I guess I can get myself together by then.” She gave him the address. “It says Dunhill on the bell. Ring twice, then once; the intercom’s not working.”

  The townhouse had a limestone facade and only four bells; each apartment occupied a floor, and Hickock’s mistress was on the third. Tiffany Potts had done very well for herself. Stone rang the bell twice, paused, then once more. The lock clicked, and he was inside a mahogany-paneled foyer. The elevator door stood open; he took it to the top floor.

  She was smaller than he had thought she would be, less blonde, and prettier; the scandal sheet had been right about her bustline. She was wearing well-fitted jeans and a chambray shirt. She stepped back and held the door open. “Please come in,” she said, offering her hand. “I’m Tiffany Potts.”

  The apartment was quite handsome – crown moldings, nice curtains, good furniture, good pictures, lots of books. She showed him to one of a pair of sofas facing each other before the fireplace. “You have a very nice place,” Stone said. “Who’s your decorator?”

  “I am,” she said shyly.

  “You have very good taste.”

  She rewarded him with a small smile. “Thank you.”

  “What did Mr. Hickock tell you about me, Miss Potts?”

  “Please call me Tiff; everybody does. He said you’re looking into this DIRT thing for him. Are you a private detective? You don’t look like what I’d imagined.”

  “I used to be a police detective, Tiff; now I’m a lawyer.”

  “What should I call you?”

  “Stone will be just fine.”

  “I like that name. Names are important to actors.”

  “Is Dunhill your professional name?”

  “Not really; Dick didn’t want my name on the bell. I chose Dunhill; it’s sort of a joke. Believe me, I wouldn’t call myself Tiffany Dunhill; it sounds like a stripper.”

  Stone smiled. “You’re an actress?”

  “An actor,” she corrected. “A student, really.”

  “Where are you studying?”

  “At the Actor’s Studio.”

  “That’s very impressive; you’d have to be very promising to be accepted.”

  “Dick got me the interview, but I got in because of my audition,” she said. “I expect all you know about me is what you read in that DIRT thing, but I’m not a bimbo, Stone. I have talent as an actor.”

  “Have you appeared in anything yet?”

  “Two off-Broadway plays, one of them a lead; I got good reviews.”

  “Do you mind answering my questions?”

  “No; Dick said to tell you the truth.”

  “How long have you known Dick?”

  “About fourteen months. He came to a backer’s audition for one of the plays I did.”

  “Did you start seeing him right away?”

  “No; I knew he was married, so I refused to go out with him. But he came to our opening a few weeks later, and to the party afterward, and I really liked him. I decided to overlook his wife. I know that doesn’t sound very moral, but I’m a big girl; I take full responsibility.” She waved a hand. “He gives me this, and I give him… companionship. Sex is only part of it. He leads a very pressured existence, and he’s able to relax completely with me. I don’t expect him to leave his wife; at some stage it will end, but right now it suits us both.”

  “How often do you see him?”

  “Somewhere between once and three times a week, depending on when he can get away.”

  “Where do you go?”

  “Usually here. I cook for him. Once or twice he’s picked me up at the Studio, and we’ve gone out for dinner in the Village.”

  “On any of these occasions did you run into anybody who knew him?”

  “No. When he’s not wearing a business suit, he’s really quite anonymous.”

  “Anybody who knew you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Has there ever been a mention of you two in any of the gossip columns?”

  “Not once; not until this DIRT thing. Dick is very upset about it; his wife doesn’t seem to know yet, but he thinks she’ll find out now, that some ‘friend’ will mention it to her. The fact is, he loves his wife. He just needs something more than she’s giving him.”

  “Tiff, have you ever had the feeling that somebody was following you?”

  Her brow wrinkled. “No, I haven’t; do you think somebody might be?”

  “It’s a possibility; after all, whoever is publishing this sheet seems to know where you live.”

  She looked worried now. “I hadn’t thought about that. Do you think I’m in any danger?”

  “No, I shouldn’t think so. In fact, you may have already heard the last of this. Whoever’s doing it just wanted to needle Hickock; I don’t think you were the target.”

  She looked relieved.

  “Have you ever discussed your relationship with Dick with anyone else – a friend, maybe – somebody at the Studio?”

  “No, never; it’s always been our secret. God, I wouldn’t want anybody I know to think that I’m the mistress of a married man, which is – let’s face it – what I am. I come from a small town, where people don’t do this sort of thing. I would never want this to get back to my parents. They wouldn’t understand at all.”

  “I don’t think it will get back to them,” Stone said. He handed her his card. “I don’t want you to get paranoid about this, but if you ever feel that someone is following you, or if anyone tries to photograph you on the street, please go straight to a pay phone and call me. I’ll try to find out who it is.”

  “Thank you, I’ll do that,” she said.

  Stone stood up. “Well, that’s all I need to know for the moment,” he said. “I’m sorry to intrude on your privacy.”

  “That’s all right,” she said, smiling. “To tell you the truth, if I weren’t seeing Dick, I’d welcome the intrusion; sometimes I get a little lonely.” She opened the door and held out her hand. “I hope you’ll come and see me if I ever get in another play.”

  Stone took her hand. “I’m sure you will, and I’d like that very much.”

  She closed the door behind him, and he took the elevator down. He liked the girl; he thought Hickock was a lucky man. If his wife didn’t find out about Tiffany Potts.

  Chapter 20

  Arnie Millman came out of the movie house on Third Avenue and checked his watch; nearly five. Arnie had spent the day at the movies because he didn’t have any work to do. It kept him out of the house, and that was okay with his wife. Tonight was her bridge night, and his apartment would be full of cackling hens. He always ate out on her bridge night, but he wasn’t hungry yet.

  It occurred to him that he wasn’t all that far from the address Stone had shown him, Amanda Dart’s place, where the secretary, Martha, worked. Maybe he’d give Stone a couple of free hours; after all, he had nothing else to do until dinner-time. He walked briskly uptown and west, until he came to the apartment building where Amanda Dart lived.

  He hung around outside until Martha came out, just after five-thirty. She was as Stone had described her – plump and a little on the plain side – and he began to follow her home. Except she didn’t seem to be going home. Martha lived on Third Avenue in the Sixties, but she crossed Third and walked uptown to Second Avenue in the Eighties. Her step was light; Arnie thought she must be in a very good mood.

  She went into a fancy grocery store, and Arnie followed her. He picked up a basket and began idly dropping things into it, watching her as she moved through the aisles. She spent most of her time at the deli counter, buying a big chunk of smoked salmon, a small tin of very expensive caviar, and some cheeses, testing them for ripeness. She picked up a bunch of fresh flowers and, finally, a bottle of very good domestic champagne. Somehow, Arnie didn’t think she was planning supper alone at home. He put down his basket and ducked out of the store as she stopped at the checkout counter.

  A few minutes later, she came out and headed uptown, carrying a shopping bag in
one hand and her purse and the flowers in the other. Arnie followed, half a block behind her. He was right in the middle of the 19th Precinct, his old beat, and he knew virtually every shop and restaurant along the way. He was enjoying the walk.

  Then something peculiar happened: the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. It used to happen when he was in a dangerous situation, when he was hyperalert, going down a dark alley after somebody with a knife, that sort of thing. Now it was happening for no apparent reason.

  Martha stopped at a corner for a traffic light, and Arnie turned toward the window of an antique shop, apparently studying its contents. With little visible motion of his head, he checked down the street in the direction from which he had come. He had the odd feeling that he was being followed.

  The streets were busy, lots of people on the way home from work, many of them with briefcases or groceries. He could detect no one who made him suspicious. Normally, if he had thought he were being followed, he would have checked the other side of the street as well, but he dismissed the notion from his mind. He remembered an occasion, many years ago, when he had been followed, on Second Avenue, right around here. Some part of his brain must have reacted to that memory.

  The light changed, and Martha continued uptown, turning east down a street in the low Nineties. Arnie crossed the street and followed her down the other side, continuing when she stopped at a building. He saw her open a wrought-iron gate and disappear down a flight of steps to what must have been an outside door to the basement. He crossed the street, walked to the building, and looked down the stairwell, just in time to see her entering the apartment, stopping on the threshold, apparently to give someone a kiss. He couldn’t see who it was. The door closed, and Arnie was left standing on the sidewalk, frustrated.

  He walked up the front steps of the building and checked the mailboxes; the one for the basement apartment was marked DRYER. Arnie stood on the stoop and looked up and down the street. It looked as though Martha was there for dinner, at the very least, and while it wasn’t his own dinner-time yet, he had no great wish to spend the next two or three hours standing in the cold outside this building waiting for Martha to come out, especially since he wasn’t being paid to do so. Even if he did wait, what would he accomplish? What he wanted to know was, who was Dryer, and what were they talking about in that apartment?

  Arnie walked down the steps, tipping his hat to a middle-aged woman who was on her way up, and at the bottom turned right. There was a narrow alley beside the building, and he walked down it, hoping there might be a window opening into the basement apartment that he could see through. He found nothing but a solid brick wall.

  Still, basement apartments often had gardens, didn’t they? He took out a penlight and shone it down the alley; it stopped at a brick wall another forty feet along. He walked on down the alley until the brick changed to a concrete block wall, which went up only a couple of feet higher than his head. The wall seemed to separate him from a garden, and there would be windows on the other side of it.

  Arnie found an empty garbage can with a lid and carried it over to the wall. He steadied himself against the concrete blocks and tried to step up on top of the can, but it was too big a step for him. A few years ago, he’d have had no problem doing that, but now… Using his penlight, he found a wooden box full of excelsior down the alley. He carried it back and placed it next to the garbage can; it made a nice step up.

  Arnie stepped onto the box and, grabbing the top of the wall with his fingers, stepped up onto the garbage can. He was head and shoulders above the top of the wall now, and he could see a row of glowing windows on the back of the building, with shadows moving across them. Must be the kitchen, Martha and her friend, Dryer, would be preparing the things she had brought from the grocery.

  Arnie figured that, in spite of his years, he could hoist himself to the top of the wall and down the other side, so he could look through the windows. He was about to try this when the hairs on the back of his neck began moving around again. Then there was a tug on the tail of his raincoat, and, alarmed, he turned around to see who was there.

  “What the fuck…” he managed to say aloud, before he began to fall off the garbage can.

  Chapter 21

  Stone worked late on a memo advising a Woodman & Weld client how to handle a drunk driving charge for an employee’s wife. It was nearly eight when he had finished the memo and faxed it to Bill Eggers, and he had just turned out his office light when the phone rang. He switched the light on again and picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  “Stone, it’s Dino.”

  “Hi, Dino.”

  “Can you meet me at Elaine’s in half an hour?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good.” The detective lieutenant hung up.

  Dino could be curt when under pressure, Stone remembered; he wondered what was going on. He felt grungy, so he had a quick shower and changed into some casual clothes before leaving the house and hailing a cab uptown.

  Dino was already at a table along the right wall when Stone entered, and he looked grim. Stone’s immediate thought was wife or father-in-law trouble, but he was wrong. He sat down, ordered a bourbon, and looked at his former partner. “So, what’s going on? You look a little down.”

  Dino nodded. “Down is a good word for it. Somebody wasted Arnie Millman around six this evening.”

  Stone stared at Dino. “Jesus, I saw him only this morning.”

  “Not since then?”

  “No, not since nine-thirty, ten, I guess. This is terrible; has somebody called his wife?”

  “I drew that duty,” Dino said glumly. “I sent a policewoman out there to be with her until some family could be rounded up.”

  “What happened, Dino?”

  “Was he working on something for you?”

  “No.”

  “Stone, your check for sixteen hundred bucks was in his pocket.”

  “He was working on something; we finished up this morning, and I paid him.”

  “Any loose ends?”

  Stone thought about Martha, but dismissed the idea. “No; he checked two people out for me, gave me his report this morning, and that was it.”

  “Anything about these two people that could have hurt Arnie?”

  Stone shook his head. “It was a straightforward surveillance, a background check. Both people were no problem to my client, so that was it.”

  “Any chance either of them could have known Arnie was following them?”

  “You know Arnie better than that, Dino; he was good.”

  “Yeah.” Dino opened his notebook and showed Stone an address in the low Nineties. “That address mean anything to you?”

  Stone shook his head again.

  “Yeah. You sure this address doesn’t match up with either of your people?”

  “Absolutely; one lives in the West Fifties, the other in the East Village. Who lives there?”

  “My guys talked with all the tenants, but nobody admitted knowing Arnie or anything about him. One woman saw him coming down the front steps as she was going up; that was about five-forty-five. Arnie bought it in an alley beside the building shortly after that.”

  “How?”

  “Small-caliber handgun, looks like. He took two in the head. It wouldn’t have made much noise.”

  “Robbery, maybe?”

  “Maybe. They took his gun; I remember Arnie using the old standard Smith & Wesson thirty-eight, two-inch barrel. His wallet was beside him and the money was gone, but who knows? That could have been window dressing.”

  “Look, Arnie wasn’t the sort of guy to attract a pro hit. He worked Robbery for most of his career, never had anything to do with the wiseguys.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “It just doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What was he working on for you?”

  “Are we off the record here, Dino?”

  “Sure, it’s just between you and me.”

  “You remember that DIRT thing
. He was checking out two of Amanda Dart’s employees; both of them came up clean. It isn’t the sort of business to end up with a shooting like this one. It’s all ego, vanity.”

  “Two good motives for murder.”

  “Not in this case. Neither employee had any thought of being followed by Arnie; he’d have known it if they did. There’s only one other employee, and I didn’t assign Arnie to her; I was going to check her out myself, if it came to that. I don’t think it will.”

  “Where does that employee live?”

  “ Third Avenue in the Sixties.”

  “Nowhere near, then.”

  “No. She’s a secretary; not the type to shoot a retired cop.”

  “I’ll take your word.”

  “When do you get the ME’s report?”

  “He’s working on Arnie’s body now; he’ll call me here when he’s finished.”

  “No witnesses, of course.”

  “None. Like I said, it wouldn’t have made much noise, wouldn’t have attracted any attention unless somebody had been walking right by the alley at the very moment.”

  “And nobody was?”

  “Nope. Let’s have some dinner while we wait for the ME to call.” He signaled a waiter for a menu.

  They ate in glum silence. It was a ritual with them; in the circumstances they were either supposed to talk about Arnie, or not at all. Stone tried to remember some anecdote or other about Arnie, but he couldn’t. “Funny,” he said after a while, “all I can remember about him in the squad room is he never took his overcoat off in winter. He’d sit there in his coat with the steam heat going and type arrest reports.”

  “He had some good busts,” Dino said. “I never partnered with him, but I remember he had a reputation for being tenacious, for not giving up on a case, for going the extra mile in an investigation.”

  “I knew that, I guess. That’s why, when he called me for work – this was three, four years ago – I gave it to him when I could. He was reliable, he had a good nose. That’s why I don’t think either of the people he was working on for me could have been involved. Arnie would have smelled something. Do you think this could connect to some old case of his?”