Day of Wrath

by Jonathan Valin

  I pushed the yellow pad away from me, as if I were pushing the thought out of my mind. But the bad feeling had already started up—the dread. Two and a half days were scarcely enough time for Robbie to lose the Caldwell boy entirely. Even if she’d wanted to lose him, he wouldn’t have let go that quickly. And in spite of the way I’d been speculating about her, there was no indication that she hadn’t felt an affection for the boy who’d helped her run away. In fact, she might have loved him as deeply as he’d loved her and still have wanted something more—some forbidden excitement, some deep, improbable sin, to wipe out all those years of decency and of Mildred. And if she’d loved him at all, she wouldn’t have ditched him the day after she’d left home. That would have been too cold, too calculating. And the girl I’d been looking for—learning about and partly creating—wasn’t capable of that kind of callousness.

  I stared at the pad again—at that last entry. And wrote down one name: Clinger? I needed more information on him, and I knew where I might be able to find a bit of it. I picked up the phone and dialed Dino Taylor, a disc jockey at WGUC. I got through to his secretary, who told me that Dino wouldn’t be free until three o’clock. That left me two hours to kill. And as I hung up the phone, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to spend them sitting in the office, staring at the bare, yellow walls. Not in the mood I’d worked myself into.

  So I got up and walked out the door. Took the elevator down to the lobby and stepped into the daylight. I didn’t really have a destination in mind as I headed up Vine Street, but once I got to the Square, I found myself walking north, amid the car sounds and the slick, made-up faces and the white blanketing light of the afternoon sun, toward the Enquirer Building on Sixth. I had a few contacts on the paper—one man in particular who wrote a weekly pop music column. I figured there was a decent chance he could tell me something useful about Clinger.

  I pushed on against the flow of afternoon shoppers, stopping once at the dark, diamond-shaped windows of The Cricket restaurant, where the sweet, oily smell of grilled meat and the brothy aroma of dark German beer held me for a moment. I managed to pull myself away and walk twenty feet farther up the sidewalk to the bronze revolving doors of the newspaper office. Inside the lobby the elevator captain showed me to a car of my own. And a moment later I stepped out into a paneled corridor with the paper’s logo fashioned in metal on the wall. A pretty, black-haired receptionist in a camel-colored sweater smiled at me as if I’d been expected.

  “Who did you want to see?” she said sweetly.

  “Jack Leonard,” I told her.

  She looked at me as if I’d broken her heart. “I’m afraid he’s out of town on assignment. Is there anyone else who could help you?”

  Outside of a few hooligans on the sports desk, the only other staffer I knew well enough to mention was Marcie Shaeffer of the society, gossip, and weddings page. And I wasn’t so sure I wanted to talk to Marcie. I’d actually done a job for her several years before, and it had left a very bad taste. At the time she’d been divorcing her husband, an architect named Leo Shaeffer. Her lawyers had hired me to look after her until the legal proceedings were completed. I’d thought I’d been hired for protection—that was certainly the impression that Marcie gave me. In fact, I’d worked up quite a grudge against Leo by the time we met in court. But he turned out to be a gentle, neurotic young man with the caved-in, dark-eyed, peccant look of failure already written on his face. He sat on the bench, head bent, vacant-eyed, listening to the lawyers as if, in his mind, he was as guilty as Marcie had claimed he was. By the time the hearing was over, I’d begun to think that the only thing the poor son-of-a-bitch was truly guilty of was loving his wife.

  Marcie Shaeffer was a rich, pretty, spoiled girl who’d been raised to believe that she had a gift for anything she put her hand to, as if talent were one of her guaranteed rights. But like most talentless people, her only real gift was for self-indulgence. She dabbled in everything from water colors to modern dance, saw a shrink four times a week, and came home to torment Leo for standing in the way of her fulfillment. The sad part was that the poor son-of-a-bitch believed her. He’d spent six years tripping over himself, trying to get out of Marcie’s way. And one afternoon, when he hadn’t moved fast enough, she’d attempted suicide and nearly broken him in two. She filed for divorce the next day, which was the best thing that could have happened to Leo, although he didn’t know it. I wondered, at the time, if he ever would. She’d gone on to a career as a gossip columnist, where she could spread the blame for her failures more evenly among her friends. As for Leo, I didn’t know what had become of him, although as I stood there in front of the pretty receptionist, trying to make up my mind about whether or not to ask for Ms. Shaeffer, I wondered if he’d finally found the strength to forgive himself.

  Thinking about Leo certainly didn’t make me feel like talking to Marcie. She wasn’t likely to know anything about Theo Clinger, anyway. He didn’t run with her crowd, although it occurred to me that Irene Croft probably did.

  Not that I considered the Croft woman a likely suspect in Robbie’s disappearance. She seemed like too big a leap for a teenage runaway from Eastlawn Drive to make in her first days away from home. But Irene was linked with Clinger. Judging from the throb in her voice when she’d mentioned his name and the look of rapture in her eyes in that photograph, she was one of his most devoted followers. And if worse came to worst, I might need someone like the Croft woman to lead me to the Lost Prince—someone I could pressure into cooperating with me.

  I sighed aloud and told the receptionist, “Marcie Shaeffer, then. Tell her Harry Stoner.”

  The girl jabbed a button on her intercom, whispered my name into a speaker, and looked up at me with a satisfied smile. A moment later, Marcie came strolling down the hall.

  She had gained a few pounds since I’d last seen her. They added fullness to her hips and a bit of sag to her fleshy jaw. But aside from that, she looked like the same, bitchy, self-involved young woman I’d known three years before. Rusty blonde hair, swept back in a bouffant that hugged her round face like a tiara. Wax-red lips. Pale gray eyes shaped like tear drops. Cleft chin. Heavily powdered and dressed to the nines, she looked like Cincinnati’s idea of royalty, although the idea was entirely her own. She wore a gold charm bracelet on her right wrist. It tinkled like crystal when she raised a cigarette to her lips.

  “Harry?” she said in a voice as dark and sticky as damson jelly. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’d like to talk to you for a moment.”

  “Why not?” She jerked the cigarette from her mouth, scattering ashes on the receptionist, whirled on her high heels, and sauntered back down the hall. I glanced at the receptionist before trailing after Marcie. She was staring at her desk as if she was searching it for a weapon.

  Marcie led me through a glass door to her cubicle in the editorial section. The big white room was lit by fluorescent panels and filled with metal desks and shirt-sleeved reporters and the faint hum of computerized typewriters. Sitting there in that black wool skirt and gold bodice, Marcie looked like a showroom manikin that had been dropped off at the wrong address.

  “So what can I do for you, Harry?” she said in a tone that was meant to suggest that I was already getting in her way—like poor, hapless Leo—keeping her from important, fulfilling work. Three years of independence hadn’t changed her much and it depressed me.

  I pretended she was human and said, “What can you tell me about Irene Croft?”

  Marcie arched an eyebrow and made a little, noiseless “o” with her lips. “Is she a client of yours?”

  I shook my head.

  “You aren’t fucking her, are you?” she said with malicious delight.

  I shook my head again, but she smiled knowingly.

  “I could see it. She’s supposed to be a pretty good piece of tail. Or thigh. Or whip, maybe?” Her laugh was like the sound of her bracelet. “What did you do? Pick her up in a bar down on Fourth Street? Did she
take you up to the penthouse and show you the sights?”

  I let her have her laugh, then said, “It’s quite a view.”

  Marcie’s mouth dropped open in a cloud of cigarette smoke. “You’re kidding,” she said. “You really did go up there with her?” She wagged her finger at me. “Better watch out. She’s too rich for your blood, Harry, old boy. I’d advise you to stick to your cocktail waitresses and go-go girls. This one is a Croft. And you know what that means.”

  “Old money,” I said.

  “Old money and clout,” she said with an explosive “t” at the end of clout. “They could knock you right out of this life, if they wanted to. Better steer clear of her, Harry. You’re stepping way up in class.”

  “You think she’s classy, Marcie?” I said drily.

  She smirked at me and said, “I think she’s nuts. Totally bonkers. But she’s also a Croft, even if her family would prefer to think otherwise. They’ve been trying to sweep her under the rug for years. But she just won’t stay swept. They’ve tried to commit her. They’ve tried to probate her. They’ve tried shipping her out of the state. But she’s outsmarted them every time. She’s like a very bad penny. The Crofts can’t get rid of her, so they pretend to ignore her. At least, they do until someone like you comes snooping along. Then all bets are off. The Crofts are a very neat family, Harry. There’s been a lot of money spent, a lot of strings pulled to keep Irene on the sweet side of notoriety. They’re the kind of rich for whom cover-ups were invented. Old English stock. Fifteen generations of Puritan blood. Cofounders of Ivorydale and the squeaky clean ethics of this town. They’re the closest thing to aristocracy we’ve got. They’re the Olympians. And all they do is sit up on that hill of theirs in Mt. Lookout and spruce the family tree. Irene was inevitable. If she hadn’t come along, they’d have had to invent her.”

  “Why couldn’t they just cut her off without a cent?” I said to Marcie.

  “She’s got her own trust. Iron-clad millions. And, to be honest, she’s fairly shrewd about money. After all, she is a Croft. What she spends, she spends wisely. On art and on budding artists.”

  “Which artists?”

  “Oh, she’s gone through quite a few. Some of them are famous now. She sets them up. Promotes them. And when she gets bored, she moves on to someone new. But she never forgets to get her money’s worth—in paintings and in guarantees of future work. Like I said, she’s a shrewd lady.”

  “Who’s her protégé at the moment?” I asked.

  Marcie shrugged. “I don’t know. Could be anybody. Sometimes Irene bankrolls a loser, simply because he is as strange as she is. I think it’s her way of making friends.” Marcie eyed me shrewdly. “She’s got some pretty kinky tastes, Harry. The kind you’ve got to pay to indulge.”

  “You mean kinky sex?” I said, thinking of Rudy and Sophie.

  “Drugs, too, from what I hear.”

  “Does the name Theo Clinger ring any bells?”

  “No,” she said. “But it’s a full-time job keeping up with Irene. Is he her newest find?”

  I said, “He might be.”

  Marcie stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray, brushing the butt back and forth against the glass as if she was dabbing paint on a canvas. “I might be able to use that,” she mused. She dropped the butt delicately into the tray and asked, “What does he do?”

  “He plays the guitar,” I said. “Jazz.”

  “That’s a new one. Where can I find him?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Why don’t you ask Irene? And if you find out, give me a call.”

  “I might,” she said lazily.

  I got up from the chair and said, “Thanks.”

  Marcie leaned back and gave me a frank look. “You still haven’t forgiven me for Leo, have you, Harry?”

  “There was nothing to forgive,” I said. “What happened was between you and him.”

  “No,” she said with a wistful laugh. “I think this argument is between you and the world.” She leaned forward again and smiled affectionately. “You’re like a kid, Harry. That’s your charm. You’re still living in a place where good and bad are something more than scary little words from the past. I’ve never really understood that.”

  “I know,” I said.

  Her eyes veiled and she stared at the ashtray on her desk. “You’re all alone, Harry. Just like the rest of us. And no one cares.” She dipped a forefinger in the ashes and stirred them listlessly. “No one cares, so why should you?”

  I started to tell her, but she held up a hand and waved goodbye with her fingertips. “I don’t really want to know,” she said.

  17

  ON MY way back down vine I stopped at the Cricket’s front window again, and this time went inside, into the dark tap room, and treated myself to some of that beef and dark German beer. I felt as if I’d earned a break after talking to Marcie Shaeffer, whose bitchiness seemed untempered by the years. Still, I’d felt a bit sorry for Marcie that afternoon. Perhaps because she seemed worried that I disapproved of her. Perhaps because I did disapprove. I sat in one of The Cricket’s dark wood booths, eating noodles and roast beef and thinking of Marcie and of Irene Croft—two spoiled women without a talent for anything but the easy art of self-indulgence. They just got their kicks in different ways—Marcie by bitching and tattling and Irene by indulging in gilded depravities. But then I didn’t really have the right to point a finger at either one because I could use what Marcie had told me, and I was beginning to think I could use Irene, as well.

  If the Croft woman did, in fact, have a patron-client relationship with Theo Clinger, it would go a long way toward explaining the look on her face in the photograph and the throb in her voice when she’d mentioned his name. If he was her newest “discovery,” it might have given her a reason to steer me away from him. Which wasn’t to say that she’d been lying to me when she’d said that Robbie Segal had been nowhere near Clinger earlier in the week. Just that she could have had a reason to lie—an investment to protect.

  I stared out the diamond-shaped windows at the snowy glare of sunlight reflecting off chrome bumpers and shop doors, and decided to pay Irene Croft another visit, after I’d talked with Dino Taylor. I swallowed the last of the beer, which had begun to taste like sweet beef tea, paid my chit at the cash register, and walked back out into the day. I ambled through the sunshine to the Parkade. Picked up the Pinto and headed north again—to Clifton and WGUC.

  It was almost three when I got to Central Parkway, and a quarter past by the time I pulled into the cool, multilevel concrete garage of the College Conservatory of Music. WGUC was the University of Cincinnati’s radio station. Unlike most college stations, it was a very classy operation, run by professionals for the most part rather than by students, and geared exclusively to the NPR crowd. It seemed an odd place for an old-fashioned D.J. like Dino Taylor to be working. But in spite of his top-40’s voice and sleek good looks, Dino was almost an academic when it came to the music he loved. His daily jazz show was as classy as the rest of the GUC operation—a pleasant combination of old standbys and new wave, spiced with the affectionate patter and personal anecdotes of a man who’d spent his whole life among musicians.

  I’d first met him at a reception I’d been hired to chaperon. But I hadn’t ended up doing much chaperoning that night, mainly because the rock group for whom the reception was being given didn’t show up until the wee hours of the morning and by then the boys were too drunk and fagged out to cause any mischief. I spent most of the evening talking with Dino, or listening to him talk about the music he loved. We’d bumped into one another a couple of times since then, and, although I didn’t consider him a friend, I thought I knew him well enough to ask him about Theo Clinger.

  I took the elevator from the garage to the ground floor, followed a series of arrows through wandering corridors full of pretty girls in tights and toe shoes and thin, bearded, serious-looking young men carrying buckram instrument cases, and eventually wound up at the GUC
complex in the north end of the building.

  A secretary sitting at a desk inside the plate glass door directed me to an empty office. And a few minutes after I’d sat down, Dino stepped into the room.

  “Only got a minute, Harry,” he said in his smooth announcer’s baritone. “Have to go to some goddamn meeting at the Convention Center.”

  He seated himself behind the desk and gave me a grin that was as smooth and pally as his voice. He was a bit of a con man, Dino. But then most D.J.s were. In a business where you have to make your voice smile and caper for three to four hours every day, it’s hard not to develop the thin, theatrical mannerisms of an actor. The fulsome warmth and instant rapport grated on me a little, after the time I’d spent with Marcie Shaeffer. So did Dino’s razor-cut good looks, which struck me that afternoon as being too controlled and too varnished, like a brand new toupee. They were the perfect match for his facile voice and easy air of intimacy; and for that very reason seemed vaguely phoney, like Marcie Shaeffer’s brand of sophistication.

  “C’mon, Harry,” he rasped. “Time’s awastin’.”

  “What can you tell me about Theo Clinger,” I said to him.

  He folded his hands behind his immaculate gray hair and smiled benignly. “Ah, Theo. Hell of a musician. He could have been something else, ten years ago. That is, if he hadn’t gotten stuck in this jerkwater town.”