Westlake, Donald E - Sam Holt 04

by The Fourth Dimension is Death (v1. 1)

  “If the rift is reparable,” he pointed out, “it would be better to repair it. The only reason to make a public issue of this would be a desire to annoy the police officers involved.”

  “I do have that desire,” I said, “but I can see you’re right. All right, I’ll tell Terry no.”

  “Try not to tell him anything else along the way,” Mort suggested.

  I laughed. “He already pumped me dry.”

  “I might have known.” Mort sighed again, and said, “Well, I’ll call you when there’s anything to report.”

  “Thanks, Mort.” I was about to hang up when another thought struck and I said, “Wait a second. Mort?”

  “Yes, I’m still here.”

  “Do you have today’s paper handy?” I knew he would, an infinitesimal part of the dumpster that was his office. “The one with Kim Peyser’s death in it.”

  “Why?” he asked, suspicion deep in his voice.

  “I want to know the address. Was she killed at home? She lived on West 74th Street.”

  “Sam,” he said, “tell me something. Is our friend Packard taking an interest in this case after all?”

  “No no no,” I told him, hearing myself protest too much. “I just want to know where I was supposed to be while I was walking home from lunch with you.”

  “Hold on,” he said, and I could hear shuffling and rattling in the background, and then he came back to say, “Here it is. An apartment at 497 West End Avenue.”

  West 74th Street crosses West End Avenue, so it could still be the same place. “Would that be in the seventies?”

  “Well, let’s see,” he said. “I have my trusty Manhattan guide here, for the cross-streets. Let’s see; West End Avenue. Drop the last number, divide by two, add fifty-nine or sixty. No, that would be just below 86th Street, a block or two.”

  So she wasn’t killed at home. Whose kitchen floor was that? “Thanks, Mort,” I said.

  “Be good,” he warned me.

  “I’ll do better than that,” I assured him. “I’ll be careful.”

  11

  It was just a few minutes after I called Terry back, when we’d reluctantly agreed that Mort was undoubtedly right that I should keep my mouth shut in public for a while, when I noticed that I had written the same address twice today on the scratch pad on my desk. 497 West End Avenue. Once, it was the address Mort had given me of the place where Kim Peyser had been found murdered. The other time, it was the address in the phone book for the J Kaplan who had lived with Dale Wormley.

  Kim was murdered in Dale Wormley’s apartment? What on earth was she doing there?

  I found out an hour later when Julie Kaplan phoned, sounding frightened and subdued, almost whispering.

  She’d been reluctant to give Robinson her name, and when I got on the line she sounded as though she might hang up at any second. “You did call me, didn’t you?” asked the small voice.

  “Yes. I wanted to know what happened to your friend.”

  “The police . . .” Her voice faded away, then came back, but fainter than before. “They think it was supposed to be me.”

  “Supposed to be you? What was?”

  “The— The victim. What did you call about?” she demanded, sounding rattled and rebellious and on the verge of hanging up.

  I said, “Wait a minute. The police think the killer was after you? Why?”

  “She borrowed my coat,” she said, sounding merely harried and weary now. “And she was in my place, and— You didn't do it, did you? I mean, no, never mind, forget that, of course you didn’t.”

  “The police showed you the picture, with the letters?”

  “Yes.”

  I considered explaining the normal method of writing a letter H to this girl and realized she was beyond that kind of comprehension. So I merely said, “They showed me the picture, too. I don’t know how much they believe in it.”

  “Neither do I. I said it was crazy. I told them, the same ones as before.”

  “Did they ask you if you’d met me?”

  The long silence gave me the answer before she finally half-whispered, “Yes. I had to tell them the truth.”

  “Of course,” I agreed, wondering if that had been any part of the reason for Feeney and LaMarca’s aggressive attitude toward me.

  Almost plaintive now, she said, “I don’t see why you want to call me.”

  “I want to know what’s going on. Does this, this thing, make any kind of sense to you?”

  “None!” she said, suddenly at full volume. “I never did anything to anybody in my life! And here I’m, I’m hiding!" As though reminded of that fact, she lowered her voice again, saying, “I can’t go back to Kim’s place, not now, and I’ll never go to that, that other.”

  The apartment she’d shared with Dale Wormley, she meant, where her friend Kim had died, possibly in mistake for her. Which would make the killer an amazing blunderer, if all the guesses were right. According to those theories, first he killed Dale Wormley in front of my house, having mistaken him for me, and now he’d killed Kim Peyser in mistake for Julie Kaplan. Somehow, I didn’t believe any of that. I believed the killer’s moves were deliberate and careful, and that he’d done what he meant to do. Which didn’t necessarily mean Julie Kaplan wasn’t in danger. I said, “Where are you now?”

  I could sense her hesitation, her reluctance to tell me where she was, and I felt a sudden shiver along my spine. By God, she thinks it’s possible that I am a killer! But then, in a small voice, she said, “I’m at Kay Henry’s, my agent. In the waiting room. I can hang out here.”

  So she was an actress, too, with the same agent as Dale Wormley. Possibly they’d met while hanging out in Kay Henry’s waiting room; it wouldn’t be the first time that had happened. But it was no solution now to Julie Kaplan’s problem. I said, “You can’t stay there forever, you know.”

  “I know. I can’t figure out where to go or what to do. The police want me in the city, but if I go to anybody's place, anybody I know, he could— Somebody could find me there. Wherever.”

  I said, “I have a suggestion.”

  The wariness in her voice gave me that cold feeling in the spine again, as she said, “What suggestion?”

  I tried to speak calmly, normally, as though I had heard nothing wrong. “There’s a woman I know,” I said, “a friend of mine, she runs a restaurant in the Village. Her apartment is upstairs over the restaurant. She’d be happy to put you up for a couple of days, and since you don’t know her, nobody else can know you’re there.”

  “A restaurant?” She sounded bewildered. “What restaurant?”

  “It’s called Vitto Impero, in the West Village. You could—”

  “Oh, I know that place!”

  “You do? That’s good.”

  “We ate there once after a show at the Cherry Lane. Dale and me. It was very good, we—” She stopped, and I heard a kind of shuddering sigh. Much more subdued, she said, “If you think it would be all right . . .”

  “Her name is Anita Imperato,” I said. “I’ll call her now and tell her you’ll be showing up some time this evening.”

  “You’re sure it’s all right.”

  “It’s better than sleeping on a waiting room sofa,” I pointed out.

  That at least got a small laugh out of her. “It sure is,” she said. “Thanks.”

  “I’ll call her now. The name’s Anita Imperato.”

  “Will you be there?”

  The question had been neutrally phrased, and I wasn’t exactly sure how to answer. “I could come over if you’d like,” I said carefully. “If you’re up to a restaurant meal. It’s up to you.”

  “Maybe,” she said slowly, “maybe we should talk. About all this.”

  “Fine. I’ll come over late, around ten, so Anita can eat with us.”

  She agreed that that sounded good, so then I phoned Anita and told her what I’d just volunteered her for. “Sure,” she said. “Is somebody really out to get her?”

&nb
sp; “Beats me.”

  “Should be interesting,” she decided.

  12

  I did it to Julie Kaplan again.

  Maybe I should have remembered, and guarded against the situation somehow, but I’m not sure how. And in any event, I didn’t remember. So I just walked into Vitto Impero a few minutes after ten that evening, saw most of the tables still full with people dawdling over their meals, saw Julie Kaplan and Anita at a table against the rear wall, both of them in profile to me, and simply moved toward them, threading my way through the diners. Anita glanced over, aware of every movement in her restaurant, smiled when she saw me, and Julie Kaplan’s eyes followed. Abrupt shock turned her face into a black-and-white cartoon, all circles and ovals. The piece of roll she’d been holding fell from her hand, bouncing to table to floor, and she turned her head away, that heavy mantle of hair moving like a reproachful shroud as she leaned toward the wall.

  Anita gaped at us both in astonishment as I reached the table. “I do look like him,” I told her, feeling stupid, and said to the back of Julie’s head, “I’m sorry. I forgot.”

  She took a long quavering breath, then turned to look almost fearfully at me, as though my hair might be made of snakes. “I’ll get used to it,” she said, in a low voice, and grimaced in self-irritation and embarrassment. “I’ll have to, I guess.”

  I took the other chair, with my back to the room, and we got past the awkward moment with the help of menus and Smalltalk about food. Angela the waitress took our orders and brought us bottles of Pinot Grigio and San Pellegrino water, and then Julie said, “I was just telling Anita, I’m only going to be a pest for two days. Nights, I mean.”

  “Oh? How come?”

  “Kay got me a job,” she said. “You know, Kay Henry, my agent?”

  “You were hiding out in his waiting room.”

  “Well, not hiding. Taking sanctuary, I guess.”

  I laughed. “I never thought of an agent quite like that before.”

  “Well, he sure came through for me,” she said. “He knew what had happened, of course, and I told him I couldn’t go stay in either of those places, so he got on the phone, and just before I left there he came out and said I’ve got a job in Orlando starting the day after tomorrow.”

  “In Florida? Where, at Disney World?”

  She laughed, though a little shakily, and said, “No, I’m not going to be Minnie Mouse or anything like that. It’s dinner theater, some kind of musical of Our Town. ”

  Some kind of musical of Our Town. A chorus singing in its graves. Not all theater is wonderful. I said, “So you’re a singer.”

  “No,” she said, with a little ironic smile. “I’m an actress. I’ll be acting a singer.”

  “I hope you don’t have to pretend you can carry a tune.”

  “No, that I can do.”

  Angela brought the appetizers, then, and as she distributed them I said, “How long’s the job?”

  “Four weeks. It’s just perfect. By then . . .” She shrugged, and looked down at her moules mariniere.

  “Right,” I said.

  We were quiet a while, then, Julie eating her mussels, me ingesting calamari, and Anita picking at a radiccio salad. Being around food so much, Anita has a dismissive attitude toward the stuff, which is why I suppose she’s so thin.

  Finishing her mussels, Julie said, “If only it was tomorrow I was leaving.”

  “Hey, come on,” Anita said. “The food’s better than that. ”

  “The food’s great,” Julie told her, with honest enthusiasm. “It’s Dale’s mother I was thinking about.”

  “Dale’s mother?”

  “She’s coming to town tomorrow. You know, take care of details, then bring Dale back to Iowa.”

  Iowa. Another proof of my belief that everyone in New York is from the midwest. (On the other hand, everyone in Los Angeles is from New York; I’m not sure how that works.) I said, “I get the feeling you and she don’t get along that well.”

  Julie grimaced, then waited while the busboy cleared plates before she said, “She’s a stage mother, you know?”

  I said, “Wasn’t Dale a little old to have a stage mother?”

  “That was the problem, all right.”

  “Oh.”

  “Mom was going to be an opera singer,” Julie explained, “but it didn’t work out.”

  “It usually doesn’t.”

  “Dale’s father is dead,” Julie went on, “and his mother’s a secretary for an insurance agency in Iowa City. Dale sent her money when he could, and she kept all his clippings and theater programs and all that, and he was just terrified of when she’d be old enough to retire, because she already told him she was coming straight to New York to live with him and be his manager.”

  “Oh, goody,” I said.

  Anita said, “Living through her son. This has to be rough on her now.”

  “I wish she were a little more likable,” Julie said, and paused while Angela put down our main courses, with another tiny salad for Anita. Angela made her runic passes with the peppermill and went away, and Julie said, “Actually, it’s mostly that she never liked me. She’s stuck in Iowa, and I was right there with Dale. He wasn’t keeping me away.”

  Anita said, “Where will you be seeing Mom?” “Well, that’s a kind of a problem,” Julie told her, looking uneasy. “She’ll be staying at Dale’s place, and I just don’t want to go there again.”

  Anita said, “Do you want to give her lunch here?” “Could I? I wouldn’t get you involved at all, I promise.”

  “That’s right,” Anita assured her. “I’ll be busy. Bring her around.”

  I said, “I’ll keep my distance. I don’t want to do to Mom what I keep doing to you.”

  Julie studied my face. “I’m getting used to it,” she decided. “And the funny thing is, once you start talking, you don’t really look that much like Dale at all.”

  “I never thought I did.”

  13

  Since Julie’s presence in Anita’s apartment meant Anita and I would spend every night apart— Anita should be there with Julie, but I should not—I was very grateful that her agent had moved so quickly to get her a job out of town. Walking home across the dark and quiet Village after Vitto Impero closed— Anita had grinned and winked at me through the glass as she locked the front door—I considered that I’d brought it on myself; which didn’t help.

  The other trouble I’d brought on myself recently, being the bad blood between me and detectives Feeney and LaMarca, came to a head the next afternoon, in Mort’s office up in the Graybar Building. Mort phoned in late morning to ask if I was available at three for a meeting with the detectives, and I said I’d be delighted; which we both knew meant I’d be delighted when it was over. “Some friends of ours have spoken with friends of theirs,” Mort explained delicately, “and it’s been agreed feathers were ruffled on both sides.”

  “No comment,” I commented.

  “Retain that attitude, please.”

  “Oh, I will, I will. Where’s this meeting?”

  “Here,” he said, surprising me. “I spoke with Feeney just now, and it was his suggestion you might be more comfortable with me present.”

  “He wants to drag you into it,” I said. “He wants to question you, too, about interfering with his witnesses.”

  “Well, we’ll see,” he said, unruffled. “And in any event, Sam, you will let me fight my own battles.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  That afternoon, preparing to go uptown, I spent longer than usual deciding what to wear. I don’t normally worry about such things, and I was disgusted with myself for thinking this way now, but I knew it would be best to appear like a regular guy and not like a star or a rich fella or anything else Feeney and LaMarca might be irritated by. I finally chose loafers and slacks and a button-down-collar striped shirt without a tie, plus my scruffiest windbreaker and cap. Shielded in my armor, I walked uptown, arrived five minutes early, and Feeney and LaMar
ca made us wait nearly half an hour.

  Mort and I filled the time with other business, and in fact when the detectives finally arrived Myrtie let them into the office just in time to see me finish signing contracts in connection with a Japanese animated television show version of PACKARD (contractually forbidden from ever being shown in the United States, happily), which pretty well eliminated any advantage my costume might have bought me. “Well, here we all are,” Feeney said, smiling falsely at me, offering neither apology nor excuse for their lateness.

  “Nice to see you again,” I lied, and gave him back his false smile doubled. Nobody offered to shake hands.

  We all seated ourselves, me in a chair at right angles to Mort, in front of his desk and to his left, and the detectives side by side in a green naugahyde sofa facing the desk. We all watched Mort finish putting the contracts away in their manila folder and the folder on an already teetering pile of paperwork, and then he smiled at us all and said, “Yes. Here we all are. To clear the air, if that’s needed, and for Sam to cooperate in your criminal investigation in any way he can.”

  “That’s nice,” Feeney said.

  LaMarca gave me a cold look: “How did you come here today, Mr. Holt?”

  I knew she was hoping I’d say I came here by cab or limo, so she could use that fact to try to demolish my earlier statement that I’d been walking home from this office at the time Kim Peyser had been killed. Deadpan, I said, “I walked. I almost always do.”

  LaMarca pursed her lips, but Feeney gave me a quizzical smile, saying, “Now, that’s what I just can’t get over. Do movie stars walk around the city? How come I never see any?”

  “In the first place,” I said, “I’m not a movie star. I’m a former television star. In the second place, New York is a walking city, in good weather, and most people here will leave famous faces alone when they see them. Because they do see them. New York is full of them.” Looking at LaMarca, I said, “Your Senator from Nebraska is all over this town.”

  Mort said, “Beg pardon?”

  I raised an eyebrow at the detectives. “Care to explain?”