“Don’t play guessing games, Fortune.”
“Maybe you killed Mark Leland, or knew who did, and Francesca knew that?”
He moved in his chair, restless, as if making up his mind about me. Reluctant to decide. But decide what?
“I’ll level, Fortune, this once. I’ve got a feeling that someone is using me. A private matter, okay?”
“Used you to kill Francesca?” I said.
He watched my face. “You know, I wonder if you do know anything? If you have a client after all? You’re pretty free with the accusations, maybe shooting wild, hoping for a hit.”
“But you don’t know, and until you do you won’t do anything to me, will you? No, you couldn’t. You’re stumped.”
“Are you so sure?” he said.
“I’m sure,” I said. I could bluff too.
“Then let’s have a drink, and talk man-to-man, okay?”
He went into Tabor’s kitchen, out of my sight. When he came back he had a bottle of cognac and two snifters. He poured the brandy where I could see him, but he had the glasses hidden in his fleshy hands. I couldn’t see if anything had been in the glasses before he poured. Smiling, he handed me a glass. I looked at the dark brown liquid, the pungent smell of brandy hiding almost any other odor.
“Drink up, Fortune,” Zaremba said, still smiling.
He knew what he was doing. Anything could be in my glass. If I refused to drink, his men could be in the room in seconds-if there were any of his men hidden and watching. I had to hope that I was right, that he was bluffing, putting a subtle pressure on me. I drank.
“You’re a brave man,” he said.
There was a taste to the brandy.
“Just relax,” he said, purred. “You’ll be fine soon. I really have to be sure, you see?”
I sat, and his face slowly began to dissolve like molten liquid. He became hazy. I tried to stand. I fell over. I was on the floor. I knew he was bluffing. Just a… drug.
I knew he was… bluffing.
… I knew…
11
I opened my eyes. There was muted light. Not in the room where I lay, in some other room. I had a headache.
A headache!
I was alive. It had been only a drug. Alive!
Drugged, why? To take me somewhere, of course. So where was I? I looked at my watch. Eleven o’clock? The darkness said it was night, so unless I’d been out over twenty-four hours, less than an hour had passed. Then I couldn’t have been moved far. I sat up.
I hadn’t been moved at all. The same TV set seemed to watch me like a cyclops’ eye. The same room, Abram Zaremba smiling at me from the same chair but with the lights out. The only light was from the kitchen. I stood up, swaying on rubber legs.
“Okay,” I said to Zaremba, “you slipped me a knockout. Why? To prove you could kill me if you wanted to?”
I think I hated Abram Zaremba at that moment as much as I had ever hated any man. The way he sat watching me shake with the effects of his power. He enjoyed it-making a man less than a man. There is nothing slimier on earth than one man making another less than a man out of very human fear. Fear is in all of us, can be used against all of us, and no one should enjoy that fear in another.
“Goddamn you, Zaremba,” I said. “You hear me?”
He just smiled-and I saw the blood.
I swayed against a table. His white shirt was dark with blood in the dim light. He didn’t hear me, no. He didn’t hear anything. Zaremba was dead. In that chair, bloody and dead with a rigid death smile.
I held onto the table. I breathed to clear the drug from my head, and stepped closer. I touched him. He was still limp. Less than half an hour. The blood had dripped from his chest onto the floor under the chair, and had dripped nowhere else. Someone he had known then? Killed in that chair facing his killer, unaware of the danger?
With me lying drugged on the floor not ten feet way? The killer unconcerned about me? Or maybe very concerned, hoping I’d be accused of Zaremba’s murder?
I began to search around the room, the floor, the furniture. My legs were steady now, the adrenalin pumping inside me. I found nothing that meant anything to me. No trace of blood, not a book out of place. There was nothing to do now but call the police. My hand was on the receiver when I heard the footsteps outside, and a key turned in the door. I had my gun out when George Tabor walked in. He stopped, blinked.
“Fortune? You’re still-”
“You expected me to be somewhere else by now?” I said.
Tabor stood in his coat. “Zaremba said he’d take you with him somewhere, talk to you.”
“Did you ask how he planned to ‘talk’ to me?”
“No,” he said.
He didn’t seem to care about my pistol. Still in his coat, he walked to the television set, turned it on, like a lemming obsessed only by the sea somewhere ahead. As if his whole consciousness was bound by the TV set and the simple world on the small, gray screen. No disappointments, no traumas, nothing to have to depend on for joy or happiness but the TV-a friend and lover that wouldn’t let him down.
I said, “You must have been awfully afraid of Zaremba.”
“Very afraid,” he said, his eyes on his safe images on the screen. “I’m a sane man. I-”
My words must have suddenly struck him, the tense-“You must have been awfully afraid…” He turned, stared around the room, aware that I wasn’t supposed to be here, and that if I was… He saw Abram Zaremba dead in the chair.
“You killed him?” he said. “You killed-”
“No,” I said. “I had no reason. I want answers, and dead men don’t help me. I might have defended myself, but Zaremba had no weapon, he must have been alone. But you were scared of him, and you just used your key to get in. You must have locked the door again when you went out, so who else could have come in and killed him except you, Tabor?”
“Me?” He still stared at the dead and bloody Zaremba as if afraid the dead man would rise up and hurt him. “Locked? The door? I don’t know. Did I lock it? I-”
He stopped, blinked again as if my words were taking minutes to reach his brain. “Me? I didn’t kill him! I just came back! I wasn’t here!”
“Back from where?”
“Where? Walking. A drink. I stopped for a drink. Some tavern. I don’t remember which one. A few blocks.”
I said, “You had to know more about Mark Leland and what he was doing than you say you do. Zaremba believed you knew more or he wouldn’t have paid you off. But men like Zaremba know that a more permanent solution is better than a payoff in the end, and maybe you guessed that, too.”
Tabor stared at the dead businessman, and then at his TV screen where some smiling man was giving violent news. There was a longing in his eyes for the haven of the TV. The haven of a man whom life has burned, whose woman is asleep alone in the bedroom indifferent to him and without passion for him, whose friends have been buried. The TV is better than brooding in some dark corner and going insane with fear, or love, or despair. A peaceful illusion of reality.
“You better talk to me,” I said. “Unless you want to wait for Zaremba’s ‘friends’ who might think what I think.”
Tabor collapsed inside, and came to life at the same time. He sat down, his back to the TV. Zaremba had had a lot of bad friends, and Tabor shivered. He had been afraid of Zaremba, and he was more afraid of Zaremba’s friends. Sometimes fear brings a man to life better than joy or love.
“I didn’t kill him, Fortune. I swear it. He gave me his work, I was no danger to him. I knew that Mark was investigating Black Mountain Lake, but he hadn’t gotten anywhere as far as I knew. It was all legal. Mark said that it favored Zaremba, and smelled, and if he could stir up enough trouble, maybe Albany would have to suspend it, start a real investigation. But that was all he had. Maybe he could rock the boat enough to get the project suspended.”
“Why did he go to Francesca Crawford?”
“She was Mayor Crawford’s daughter, Mark smel
led good publicity in her. She already opposed the project. He was going to try to show her that her father was at least unethical in the deal. And he knew something from Crawford’s past, some legal shadiness, he hoped to use to make the girl help him by working against her father from inside.”
“What did he know from Crawford’s past?”
“I don’t know. Neither did he, not for sure. Just a hint that Crawford had hidden something in the past.”
I said, “Let me see your hands.”
There was no blood on them, and they were grimy, unwashed. There was no blood on his clothes. Still, it didn’t prove much.
“You just walked around, stopped for a drink?”
Tabor nodded. “Then I came back and waited down outside for a while. You or Zaremba didn’t come out. No one came out, except… A woman,” he looked up at me from his chair. “A woman came out about ten minutes before I came up. I didn’t see much-just a woman, a tweed coat, maybe young. She walked off fast, with a swing, you know? A young walk… maybe.”
A woman, maybe young. Athletic. Or who seemed young. Felicia? Celia Bazer? They were young. Katje Crawford? Mrs. Grace Dunstan? They could look young in the dark.
I went to the telephone now and called the police. With Tabor here, I couldn’t just walk away this time, no. I gave the police my name, the address, and told them Abram Zaremba had been murdered. They would come fast. I hung up.
George Tabor was back at his TV set. He still had his coat on, but he wasn’t in the room now. He was on the screen with some tall cowboy riding into a western town just after the Civil War. I joined him in that safe, distant town.
12
I sat alone, fighting sleep from Zaremba’s drug, in the office of Lieutenant Oster, Dresden Police Homicide Division. I had been there since they’d brought me and Tabor in from the apartment. It was past 1:00 A.M. before Lieutenant Oster, and Sergeant Jonas from the New York police, got back to me. Oster sat behind his desk, Jonas leaned on a wall.
“Let’s hear your story again,” Lieutenant Oster said.
I told him. “Whoever killed Zaremba thought I was dead, or didn’t care about me.”
“Or maybe your story is all phony,” Oster said.
Jonas said, “No knife in the apartment, Lieutenant.”
“Knives can be dumped,” Oster said.
“Zaremba was stabbed?” I said, my brain fuzzy.
Oster nodded. “Once in the heart. M.E. says he died instantly, a good hit. Never got out of that chair.”
“The same M.O. as Francesca Crawford,” I said.
Oster said, “You were alone with Zaremba.”
“What’s my motive?”
“Fear could be enough,” Oster said. “We don’t know you up here. Maybe you’re working for the killer. Who’s the client?”
I’d promised to let John Andera know before I named him, but if we could keep all our promises this would be a different world. I had no way of knowing if Andera had an alibi this time. I’d gone as far as I could go in protecting him.
“His name’s John Andera, a sales representative for Marvel Office Equipment in New York. All I have is his office number.”
I gave them Andera’s number, and Sergeant Jonas got on the telephone to New York. I told Oster what Andera had told me as his reason for hiring me-just a man who’d liked a girl. Oster thought about it.
“Tabor’s sticking to his story,” he said. “You have any ideas about that woman he says he saw?”
My stump had that gnawing pain. Maybe it was only the effects of the drug, or maybe it was that uneasy feeling I have when I’m thinking what I don’t want to think.
“Felicia Crawford,” I said, and told Oster about her coming to me in New York. “Maybe she’s back in Dresden on her own.”
“She had a gun? No one reported her missing,” he said. “Why would she kill Abram Zaremba?”
“Maybe she thought, or knew, that he killed Francesca.”
Jonas came back and leaned against his wall again. My client was being checked on now in New York.
“Or,” I said, “there’s Celia Bazer. She and Francesca were mixed with the same man. Women have killed each other for that before. Or men have had to eliminate one of the two women. Maybe Zaremba just knew who had killed Francesca, and was putting on some pressure.”
“What man were they both mixed with?” Oster asked.
“Frank Keefer.”
“We’ll check,” Oster said. “Anyone else, Fortune?”
“Mrs. Katje Crawford. Her daughter was killed.”
“We’re back to maybe Zaremba killed Francesca Crawford?”
“He was knifed for some reason, Lieutenant,” I said.
“Okay, I’ll work on all three women,” Oster said.
“Make it four,” I said, glanced at Sergeant Jonas. “There’s a Mrs. Grace Dunstan in New York. I can’t tie her to Zaremba, but she was tied to Francesca Crawford.”
Jonas went back to the telephone. Oster closed his eyes.
“George Tabor isn’t anxious to get turned loose, either,” Oster said. “He seems happy in jail. Safe.”
“Zaremba wasn’t nobody,” I said. “If I even might have killed Zaremba, I’d be scared. Mark Leland was his partner, and Leland was trying to wreck a big deal of Zaremba’s.”
“That project is all legal,” Oster said. “In three months we’ve found no tie between Leland and Commissioner Zaremba.”
“Zaremba fixed that,” I said. “But you know.”
“I work here, Fortune,” Oster said. “The Mayor pays my salary. I investigate crimes, not public business.”
“You like your job?”
“I have for fifteen years.”
“What’s your verdict on Mark Leland?”
“A man looking for a political edge. Digging for dirt. There’s two sides to any business, Leland may have had his side, but I don’t know why he was killed. A man like that makes a lot of enemies. We’re investigating his private life.”
“Muggers too? Investigating transients?”
“That’s right, standard procedure. Leland was stabbed on a public street in his car, his wallet was missing. We may never solve it, or maybe some hobo shows up with the wallet.”
“There was a witness.”
Oster shook his head. “Francesca Crawford’s description could fit ten thousand men. She picked no one from any mug book. She had no information on Leland except rumor. We followed every lead she gave us. Tabor knew nothing, Zaremba had an alibi, and the project is all okay.”
“So Francesca was no danger to anyone?”
“Not that we can see. She knew nothing important, and it’s been over three months. Who would be afraid of her?”
It was what had been said before-and it was solid. If Francesca had been a danger, the killer wouldn’t have waited three months to silence her. Whatever she might have known, she would have told everyone by then. Unless she had kept something back, and the killer had just learned that. It was a slim possibility. Why would she keep anything back?
“Zaremba was eager to know who hired me,” I said. “It’s possible he just knew who killed Francesca. No connection to Leland and the project.”
Jonas returned from the telephone. “You mean maybe he was protecting someone? Or blackmailing? What about that Anthony Sasser? He spends a lot of time around the Crawfords, he knew the girl, and he works with Zaremba. Not on the Black Mountain Lake project, but Sasser worked with Zaremba on other business.”
“Sasser killed Francesca?” Oster said. “Christ, Jonas, Tony Sasser is like an uncle to those girls. What reason?”
I said, “Francesca’s grandfather talked to her before she left town. How did the grandfather happen to die, Oster?”
“In bed, natural causes,” Oster snapped. “Emil Van Hoek was eighty-two, had a bad heart and emphysema. He was about to die for years. Don’t come here and beat bushes for straws!”
“We’ve got three stabbings, and a natural death,” I said. �
��They have to be connected. If not by business, then somewhere in their private lives. That includes the grandfather.”
Sergeant Jonas said, “Trouble in Zaremba’s organization?”
“A business organization, not a gang,” Oster said.
“Business that was always legal?” I said.
“As far as I know. Legal here,” Oster said. “Okay, a man like Zaremba is killed, you have to think of a power play, a business battle, but this hasn’t got the feel. Simple murder with Fortune left alive. It’s crude, messy, too open. No plan to it, and if it had been business there would have been a neat, careful plan.”
He was a better cop than he had seemed. As good as his job allowed in a small city where pressure and influence were the way men lived. And he was right.
“Hate,” I said, “not greed. A witness didn’t matter.”
“It looks private,” Sergeant Jonas agreed.
“Everyone has a private life,” I said.
We were all thinking about that when Oster’s telephone rang. It was New York for Sergeant Jonas. He didn’t talk for long. When he returned this time, he sat down.
“The Dunstan woman is out of New York,” Jonas told us. “Her husband says she’s visiting relatives in New Haven. He just got home himself maybe half an hour ago. We haven’t found your client, Dan, he’s not at his home. His office says he’s in Philadelphia on business. We had to roust the office manager out of bed to talk, and he says Andera isn’t due to call and report until tomorrow morning. His place is staked out.”
There was nothing more I could do now, and I was close to passing out again. I left Lieutenant Oster and Jonas sitting in silence, and went down to my car. I drove to my motel, and fell onto the bed.
13
In drugged sleep I dreamed of running down a long tunnel after my missing arm that floated always ahead of me, mocking me to be a whole man again.
I woke to a gray morning heavy with a feel of rain coming, and the scent of pine needles outside. I reached for a cigarette. Abram Zaremba had given me the dream. I had let him slap me without hitting back because his men might have been around. I had meekly drunk the brandy trusting to my brain that told me it wasn’t poisoned, instead of throwing it into his face because no man should ever crawl like that. If it had been poison, I’d have drunk my death for fear of possible death that just might be there in his hidden men.
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