Late Payments

by Michael Z. Lewin

  Painter came in. He saw Martha Miles. He said, “As I was telling your pistol-packing pal here, I got a problem with the toilet I want sorted out. It’s kind of, you know, urgent.”

  “Couldn’t it wait until the morning, Mr. Painter?”

  “It’s backing up and not flushing right.”

  Powder looked at the man.

  Painter said, “Look, I’m not feeling real well.” He rubbed his stomach. “You know?”

  Martha Miles said, “Well, I don’t know how to fix toilets.”

  “You’re the landlady, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So it’s your responsibility.”

  “I’ll call a plumber on Monday.”

  Painter looked stricken. “Monday!”

  Powder looked at the floor, aware of a silence. He sighed, and volunteered to look at the offending fitting.

  Powder was led upstairs to the bathroom. “Do you have any tools?” he asked.

  The question seemed to surprise Painter. “Well, I’m not sure. Are you going to need them?”

  “Plumbing problem? Bound to.”

  “Oh.”

  “Maybe Mrs. Miles has some. Go down and ask her while I have a look.”

  Painter hesitated.

  “Do you want this goddamned thing fixed or not?” Powder thundered.

  Painter went downstairs.

  Powder had a quick look around the apartment.

  Everywhere it was orderly and clean. Both twin beds were immaculately made; magazines in various rooms were neatly stacked; there were no dirty dishes; even the empty beer cans were arranged in a cardboard box.

  When Painter returned. Powder was rummaging in the broom closet in the kitchen.

  “Hey! What are you doing?”

  “Looking for a vacuum cleaner.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “I may make a mess. I’ll want to clean up after myself.”

  “Well, I haven’t got one.”

  “How about a dustpan and a broom?”

  “Look,” Painter said, “I’ll do any cleaning up that’s required. You just fix the thing, OK? I got you some tools.”

  Painter held a screwdriver, a claw hammer, a plane and a T-square.

  “Is that all you’ve got? They’re no good for plumbing jobs.”

  “I don’t have any!” the man said exasperatedly. “These are what Mrs. Miles gave me.

  “No pipe wrench?”

  “No pipe wrench!”

  “How about some big pliers?”

  “It’s all she gave me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure!”

  “Gee, I don’t know what I’m going to be able to do without a pipe wrench,” Powder said.

  “You can at least look at the toilet instead of poking around in my closet,” Painter said.

  “Yeah, I suppose I can do that,” Powder said.

  He walked through to the bathroom. Painter followed. Powder turned to him. “I never work with somebody looking over my shoulder,” he said.

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” Painter said. He left Powder alone.

  Powder closed the door and sat on the edge of the bathtub. He thought for a while, then rose and looked through the medicine chest. Everything in it seemed ordinary enough, except for a small bottle of black hair dye. Powder took the bottle out and examined it. About a third gone. He held it, thinking for a few moments. Then he put it back and turned his attention elsewhere: to a pile of towels, to the bathtub and shower, to the houseplants on the window sill.

  Finally he turned to the toilet. He took the top off the tank and saw immediately that the plunger was disconnected from the flushing linkage. He bent the wire at the top of the plunger and rehooked it. He replaced the lid on the tank. He dried his hands and then sat on the tub again. He rubbed his face.

  He considered going down to his car and bringing up the tool kit he kept in the trunk. Turning the water off. Banging on some pipes.

  But then he felt stupid, because he didn’t know exactly why he had the inclination to do things like that.

  All he knew was that he felt uneasy.

  He flushed the toilet and waited for the tank to refill. He flushed it again, gathered the tools and rejoined Painter, who was sitting in the hall outside the door.

  Painter all but jumped up as Powder emerged. “Is it all right?”

  “Yeah,” Powder said. He went to the stairs and descended.

  Painter followed him. They entered Martha Miles’s living room.

  “Leroy, have you fixed it?”

  “It was a struggle, but I managed.”

  “Does that satisfy you, Mr. Painter?”

  “Yes,” Painter said. “I just came down to thank you both.”

  “You’re welcome,” Martha Miles said formally. “Good night.”

  “Good night, Mrs. Miles,” Painter said. “And Mr . . . ?”

  “Smith,” Powder said.

  “Good night, Mr. Smith. And thank you again.”

  “Any time,” Powder said. “Maybe I’ll stop by in a day or two just to make sure it’s still functioning correctly.”

  Painter frowned slightly but, already on his way out, he continued without saying anything.

  When the door was closed behind him, Martha Miles said, “I am terribly grateful to you, Leroy. That man gives me the creeps something awful.”

  “I’m going to go on now, Martha,” Powder said.

  “But I’ve made a meal.”

  “I don’t smell cooking. It will keep, won’t it?”

  “Well, yes. I didn’t know exactly when you’d be coming.”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you sure you won’t stay?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “But it’s only . . .” She looked at her watch. “It’s only eleven forty-two.”

  Powder looked at his own watch. “So it is,” he said. “Eleven forty-two.”

  “The night is young,” Martha Miles said.

  “But I’m not. Suddenly I feel terribly tired.”

  “Oh. All right.”

  Powder went to the door.

  “Thanks again for coming, Leroy.”

  Powder nodded and left.

  Chapter Twenty Four

  As he started his car he glanced at Miles’s front window. She was watching him through the curtains again.

  And why not? he thought.

  He drove off, turned the corner and parked.

  Slowly he walked from shadow to shadow to a dark position across the street from the house.

  He stood there for half an hour. He saw no one enter. No one leave. Nor did the lights in either apartment go out.

  All that happened took place in dialogue with himself. In the course of it he reasoned that to have a genuine chance of seeing something interesting, he must be ready to stay outside all through the night.

  “Setting aside the question of whether there would be anything interesting to see,” he asked himself, “are you prepared to spend the whole night?”

  “How can you set aside the question of whether there would be anything to see?”

  “All right. What are you expecting to see?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you’re suspicious.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Something felt wrong to me from the day Martha Miles came to the office.”

  “What?”

  “Bottom line?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Her memory of our time together when we were kids has to be a sour one, not a happy one. But she acted like it was roses, roses, roses.”

  “Mmmmm.”

  “Bed was a disaster. We had nothing to talk about. I hardly remember how we got together, except that she used me for a while to make some other guy jealous. In the end it was her who broke it off. I had become really sweet on her and that wasn’t the way she liked her ‘men.’ She broke it off with a scene, and she said a lot of unspeaka
ble things. It was ugly. It was memorable. There is no way she could have been half-yearning for me over the years.”

  “So, she’s lying.”

  “About something. Yes.”

  “But she was friendly enough the other night.”

  “That’s true. But it didn’t fit.”

  “Seemed a pretty good fit to me.”

  “And tonight . . .”

  “What about tonight?”

  “A lot of little things.”

  “OK.”

  “I just don’t see her hanging around all day being lonely, waiting for me to call.”

  “Yet ...”

  “It’s the things together. Not just alone. Take this Painter guy.”

  “What about him?”

  “One, why wait till eleven to insist on your toilet being fixed, if the landlady has been in the house all day?”

  “Mmmm.”

  “But within a few minutes of me being there, he’s at the door.”

  “Maybe he thought she was out until he heard you come in?”

  “Nice try. No evidence for that hypothesis.”

  “Nor any against it.”

  “Two, I open the door with a gun in his face and he acts like it happens that way to him every day.”

  “Some people are better at facing surprises than other people. He comes from a criminal stable. Maybe he’s used to guns.”

  “I felt he already knew I was a cop.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “ ‘I came down to get Mrs. Miles to fix it. Is that a crime all of a sudden?’ ”

  “Anybody could say that.”

  “He just wasn’t surprised enough that I was carrying a gun. And another thing, three, he wasn’t surprised when I called him by name.”

  “If you can’t surprise a guy by sticking a thirty-eight up his nose, he isn’t going to faint when you know his name. Maybe he assumes you talked to Martha about him.”

  “True. Some people are arrogant enough to expect people to know who they are.”

  “Four, why’s his apartment so clean?”

  “She says he spends a lot of time at home. Maybe he cleans house.”

  “When he hasn’t got a vacuum cleaner?”

  “You going to arrest him for not having a vacuum cleaner?”

  “She also says she hardly ever sees him. Yet both times I’ve been there he’s materialized.”

  “But what does that prove?”

  “His apartment felt specially cleaned up.”

  “So maybe he’s a tidy-minded guy.”

  “Five, why did Martha make such a production number of the exact time when I left?”

  “No, I didn’t like that either. But maybe she was just doing what she said, telling you the night was young.”

  “Yet when I said I wasn’t, she just accepted it. Didn’t say anything like `You were young enough the other night, Roy, babe.’ ”

  “First you complain because she’s too hot for you. Now because she’s too cold?”

  “I am noting an inconsistency, especially if she’s been so low all day.”

  “So . . .? Does all that together mean you’re prepared to stand out here all night long?”

  “How long has it been now?”

  “Nearly half an hour.”

  “Hmmmm.”

  “Could be a long, quiet night.”

  “That’s true.”

  “So, you staying or not?”

  “I wonder if there is any way to get somebody else to do it for me.”

  “What, you mean one of the guys on night patrol?”

  “Maybe a word in the right ear.”

  “But what would you tell them to look for?”

  “That’s hard. But Jesus, look at the house. Lights on upstairs. Lights on downstairs.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Why are they both staying up?”

  “What else should they do?”

  “Go to bed.”

  “Maybe Martha is going through her little black book to find someone who is less prissy about filling lonely time.”

  “I was hardly prissy the other night.”

  “No, but as far as you were concerned you were on duty.”

  “I said I was suspicious from the start.”

  “But you liked it.”

  “Yeah, I suppose I have to say I did. It, if not her so much.”

  “You’re a callous bastard. Powder.”

  “So people keep telling me. Bet my mother wouldn’t have thought so, though.”

  “Your mother is dead.”

  “Yeah. Well. All right, so why is our friend Painter still up when he claims to be sick?”

  “Maybe he’s cleaning up after you. He said he would.”

  “There was nothing to clean. And here’s another thing. Six, is it? The plunger being disconnected. I’d swear that it couldn’t have just slipped out.”

  “He pulled it out himself so the toilet wouldn’t work, did he?”

  “That’s what I feel.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, damn it. I don’t know.”

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Powder left his shadows and drove to the Police Department. As he walked through the quiet halls, he considered stopping to see how Tidmarsh was getting on. But first he went up the stairs to the Night Cover desk.

  Harold Salimbean was on the telephone, sweating, looking frantic. When he hung up, he snapped at an officer across the room to get moving. Then he made another call. Only after that was done did he acknowledge Powder’s presence with a nod.

  “Something up, Harold?”

  “It was looking like being quiet for a Saturday,” Salimbean said, “but we’ve just had a nightclub owner shot in his own club.”

  Powder suddenly became alert. “A nightclub owner. Not Jimmy Husk?”

  Salimbean looked puzzled. “No, a guy called Sorenson.”

  “What club?”

  “The Blue Boot? You know it?”

  Powder considered. “No,” he said.

  “Out Pendleton Pike,” Salimbean said. “Look, did you want to see me about something. Lieutenant?”

  “Yeah. I wanted you to have the patrols keep an eye on a house where I think there might be something happening.”

  “What kind of something?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Oh,” Salimbean said.The immediacy of the shooting overwhelmed any interest in Powder’s vague request. “Look, why don’t you put the observation call through yourself?” Salimbean said. “You know how. We still run by your book up here.” He rose and left.

  Powder sat at the desk. He gave the order to the dispatch officer, who passed it on to the appropriate district patrolmen. It was all easily accomplished and made Powder feel rather comfortable. An old slipper, this Night Cover procedure which had for so many years been his life.

  He leaned back at the desk.

  His nostalgic luxuriation lasted only for a moment. He got up and walked the halls to the Computer Section.

  A counter with sliding glass panels opening onto the corridor abutted the section door. Through the glass, far across the room. Powder saw Fleetwood and Tidmarsh. They seemed engrossed in their activities.

  Powder wanted to go in. What they were doing was a direct result of suggestions he had made to Tidmarsh and he wanted to know how things were working out.

  But somehow even a brief update seemed, at the moment, a self-indulgence.

  Powder walked on, went down to his car and drove to Pendleton Pike.

  The Pike was not exactly an Indianapolis “strip,” but there were a number of clubs dotted along it. They were interspersed with restaurants and several drive-in movies—including the first in Indianapolis, one of only a dozen in the country when it opened in 1940. All in all it was a social part of town.

  The Blue Boot was a mile and a quarter closer to town than Leonardo’s. It was also far more garish, its ambience beginning on the outside, where a huge neon h
ostess endlessly beckoned passersby to stop in.

  The club was full of police. By flashing his badge and his scowl. Powder was able to pass through the lines to the office area of the club.

  There a tall patrolman stood guard by the door of the room in which the murder had taken place. He gave Powder the basic story: Sorenson had been in his office with one of the club’s hostesses when a man burst in and shot him three times; the woman wasn’t physically injured, and the man had run out into the hall and to the parking lot by way of an emergency door.

  The patrolman said that the man had also wounded two of Sorensen’s bodyguards as they tried to prevent his entry into the office. The two men had been taken to the hospital but were not seriously injured. Between them and the hostess there was every chance of a good description. The car had probably also been seen. A lot of people had been in and around the private section of the club. It was the way Sorenson liked things.

  While they spoke, Harold Salimbean came out of the room. He stopped when he saw Powder.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Only dropped in on my way somewhere else, Harold.”

  Salimbean frowned.

  “I won’t interfere, but if you don’t mind I’d like to ask a few people some questions.”

  “Do you know anything about this case?”

  “Not really.”

  “What does ‘not really’ mean?”

  “No, I don’t know anything about the case.”

  Salimbean shook his head impatiently. “I don’t have time to screw around,” he said. “Stay and listen if you have to, but please, no questions.”

  “All right.”

  Salimbean continued on his way.

  The tall patrolman studied Powder. He said, “You look like you got things on your mind. Lieutenant.”

  “Something is eating at me,” Powder said. “But whether it’s on my mind or somewhere else I couldn’t tell you.”

  “Well, I always say if you feel it inside, you got to follow it up.”

  Powder looked at the man. “You’re right, of course.”

  “Yup,” the patrolman said.

  “I think I better have your name,” Powder said.

  “Dave Hunt.”

  “Ever think about trying for detective, Dave?”

  “Nope,” Hunt said. “I always felt that it would likely be more hassle than it was worth.”

  Powder stayed at The Blue Boot another forty-five minutes. He learned that the killer was in his twenties, dark, with a thick moustache, and about five nine; that the hostess, relatively new at the club, had been arranging an assignation with Sorenson; that the car the killer had escaped in had been abandoned less than a mile away in a shopping-center parking lot.