Walk a Black Wind df-4

by Michael Collins

  Now I lay with the drug boiled out of me like the venom of a snake bite. Abram Zaremba had bitten me, and for a time I would feel that more was missing than my arm, but it would pass, a man goes on living with himself somehow. Zaremba, at least, would bite no one else with his moral poison, make no one else crawl to his power. In the end I had won-I was alive. But who had bitten the snake? It could have been anyone he had ever dealt with, but, like Oster, I had the feeling that this had not been any power murder, any “business” play. Zaremba had come alone to me in his arrogance. He had died alone without his “help” near him, his death as much a surprise to him as to everyone else. He had not expected danger, or he would not have come alone. If he had been in a power fight, that he would have known and come protected.

  Unless he had not come alone, and one of his own men had killed him. That was not uncommon in his world. But, again, that would have been carefully planned, and there was something unplanned about last night’s murder.

  Then, of course, it could have been George Tabor.

  I heaved myself out of bed and went into the shower. I stayed under the hot water a long time. Partly to ease the pains from my bruises, and partly because I didn’t really want to start looking again. George Tabor said he had seen a woman, maybe young, and Felicia Crawford was somewhere. I didn’t want to track down Felicia if she had killed the man who had murdered her sister. But until I did find her I wouldn’t know if she had done anything or not. You have to risk the wrong answer to find the right answer. Unless you are ready to exist with no answer, just drift in a blind embryo of dead, passionless safety.

  I dressed, slipped my old pistol into my pocket again, and went out for some breakfast. I had eggs, over light, and looked up the name of the “friend” Francesca Crawford had sent letters to with notes in them for Felicia. Muriel Roark was the name, and her address was listed. When I went out to my car, a cold October drizzle had started.

  The address was in the University section of Dresden, an old area torn down and rebuilt into low apartments and residence halls. Muriel Roark lived on the second floor of a garden apartment where the shrubbery was already sodden with rain.

  A dazzling brunette opened the apartment door. Small and round, with a bright face that made me want to sing for youth, and feel old at the same time.

  “Yes?”

  “Miss Roark?”

  She nodded, smiled. “Have we met? I like your face.”

  “Dan Fortune,” I said, smiled back. “I want to talk about Francesca and Felicia Crawford.”

  Her face became serious. “Come in.”

  She ushered me to a long couch in a small living room. The couch was covered by a throw rug in the European style. All the furniture was old, covered with throws, and marked as her own. She flopped on a great, shapeless sack in the center of the room, showing smooth, hard thighs that had muscles. She saw my eyes looking at her legs.

  “I’m a dancer,” she said, raising her leg out stiff so I could see the muscles cord. “I teach modern dance at the University, a graduate fellow. What about Francesca?”

  “You were good friends?”

  “We understood each other. She was a private person, so am I. With her it was her scar, her identity. With me it’s my dancing-no one touches that, not ever.”

  “You can’t be touched?” I said. I liked this girl-woman.

  She laughed. A warm laugh. “All I’m careful about is my muscles. You’re looking for who killed Fran?”

  “And for where Felicia is,” I said. “You had some letters from Francesca? You showed them to Felicia?”

  “No, I didn’t show her my letters. I gave her two notes enclosed for her. I didn’t read her notes, either.”

  “Damn,” I said. “You can’t tell me anything about what was in those notes to Felicia?”

  She pulled her knees up to her chin. There was something pure and innocent about her body and its free actions.

  “No,” she said, “except that the first one was from somewhere out west. The letter I got was mailed from Chicago, but Felicia said the note had been written in Arizona, or Colorado, or somewhere like that.”

  I remembered the Indian jewelry. “You can’t say which?”

  “No, I’m sorry. The second letter was from New York just after Fran moved in with Celia Bazer.”

  “She wrote she was with Celia Bazer?” I said, sat up. “Did anyone else know that up here?”

  “Only Frank Keefer. He’d come around a few times after Fran left to ask if I’d heard from her. I guess he was pretty unhappy about losing her. Anyway, about two weeks ago was the first time I could tell him anything, so I did.”

  “That Francesca was living with Celia Bazer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where does Keefer live?”

  She told me. I stood up. She watched me, and seemed to stretch. Not a dancer showing her muscles this time. She stretched her whole slim, curved body.

  “You have to leave?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you lose your arm?”

  “I usually say in the war,” I said. “But I really lost it in a fall into the hold of a freighter I was robbing when I was sixteen. I got away, but I lost the arm.”

  “Will you come back again?” she said. “Come back. Call me first. In the evening.”

  I could still see her lying there on that shapeless sack as I went down the stairs.

  Frank Keefer’s house was in a middle-class tract on the eastern edge of Dresden. There were flower beds around the small house as if someone spent a lot of time in the garden. I didn’t think it was Keefer, but you never can tell-axe murderers have grown prize roses. The garage was empty, but I saw movement in the house.

  Celia Bazer answered my ring. She had a discolored left eye, and her face was puffy. In the last few days she had changed from big city career girl to a small city woman, not even as pretty suddenly. She wore an old house dress, and her eyes were vacant as if she had been thinking of something important when I surprised her.

  “You?” she said, groped for my name. “Mr. Fortune?”

  “Yes. Can I come in?”

  “Here?” she said. Her voice was vague, distracted, almost drugged. “I mean, have you found who killed Fran?”

  “I’m still looking,” I said.

  An alarm must have sounded in her head. “How did you find me here?”

  “I didn’t. I want Frank Keefer. Is he home, Celia?”

  “Frank?” Now her eyes were wary. “No. Why do you want Frank?”

  “I’ll tell you inside,” I said, and gently walked her backward into a small living room. She didn’t resist.

  There were chairs and sofas in the living room, but everything was hidden under piles of paper, and a mimeograph machine stood on a table. The room was shabby, but not from poverty as much as from neglect. I saw a littered kitchen through an open archway, stacked with the same mimeographed pages.

  I said, “I know about you, and Frank, and Francesca. Where is Frank?”

  “I don’t know. He never came back last night. After he did this,” she touched her battered eye, “he went out with Joel.”

  Her voice was a monotone, as vacant as her eyes. “A year I was away, and he whistled, and here I am. He’s a bastard, and a fake, but he turns me on. It’s that simple, I guess, even with blackeyes. Some women have no brains. I don’t know, I feel… safe with Frank, you know? Without Joel maybe…”

  She trailed off, her voice almost wistful, like some beaten-down wife who dreamed of her man being better some day, sure that underneath he was a good man or why would she want him?

  “You know where they were all night?”

  “No. Part of their new scheme, I guess.” She nodded toward all the piles of literature. “Joel talked a couple of local shopping centers into a throwaway newsletter, said he could get it into the northwest suburbs, the rich people. He told them he could get a special deal because he’s with the city, everything cut-rate. All the merchants in the
centers take ads, and Frank runs the things off on the mimeo. I hope they make the price of the ink.”

  “You don’t distribute leaflets at night,” I said.

  “Maybe they got into a poker game, or another deal.”

  “Do either of them know Abram Zaremba?”

  “Commissioner Zaremba? You mean personally? Maybe if they shined his shoes once.”

  “They know anything about the Black Mountain Lake project?”

  She nodded. “Joel got the Mayor to appoint him an inspector of the drainage district out there, and he got Frank in to sell lots. Only it was hard to sell them so early, Frank didn’t like the job.” She stopped, surprised. “What’s that got to do with Francesca?”

  “Maybe a lot, Celia,” I said. “Frank lied about not knowing Francesca was with you in New York.”

  “Lied?” Some life came into her voice as she realized the only way I could have known Frank Keefer had denied knowing that Francesca was in New York with her. “You were at that hotel. You followed me there. What makes you say Frank lied?”

  I told her what Muriel Roark had told me. “Frank admits he was in New York when Francesca was killed.”

  “But he never saw her.”

  “Didn’t he? He was asking about her since she left. He’s not a man who gives up, is he? He went there to see her, Celia. After she was dead he turned to you, maybe to cover up.”

  “No, he loves me. All right, he lives big dreams, so if he could marry Francesca, swell, but she dropped him.” Her monotone was flat again. “Anyway, he wouldn’t kill her.”

  “Unless maybe he made a mistake, Celia?” I said. “You said that in the hotel. A bad mistake, you said.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  “Yes you do,” I said. “Francesca died in your bed. She had slept in your bed that night. A mistake, maybe, made by someone who wanted to kill you not her?”

  She had thought about it. “My bed was better, that’s all.”

  “Frank Keefer wouldn’t have known that. What could you have told Francesca that would have finished Frank with her for good if it wasn’t over already?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’ll find out somehow, Celia. I have the police on my side, they’ll check out his life with a microscope. If he tried to kill you, got the wrong girl, you’ve got to know one way or the other, don’t you?”

  She shook her head again. Wildly, like a rag doll, but it had no meaning now. Her monotone cracked.

  “He was in prison once for wife-beating,” she said, her voice so low I could barely hear it. “In Pennsylvania. He’s still got a wife there. A boy, too. He sends money sometimes. I don’t care. I didn’t like New York, I didn’t like the men there. I just want Frank.”

  “He’s married, but he’d have married Francesca?”

  “Why not? Who would know? His name was Pender then, like Joel’s. He lives lies, even believes them himself. It isn’t what a man is, it’s what he thinks he is-Joel says that. It isn’t who you are, it’s who people think you are. Joel’s got a million sayings.”

  “If Keefer tried to get Francesca back, went down there to make a play, would that have made you tell Francesca what you knew? Would he have tried to stop you telling if he thought he had a chance with Francesca?”

  She was silent. Then, “I always wanted Frank, even when he threw me over and I went to New York. He knew that. I might have told. But Frank’s no killer, it’s not in him.”

  “A man who lives by lies, believes his own lies?”

  She didn’t answer. I wanted her to think about it.

  I said, “Who’s Joel Pender, Celia?”

  “Frank’s uncle. From out west somewhere, always talking about cowboys. He’s been all over, I guess, a drifter. Frank always looked up to Joel, the exciting uncle when Frank was a kid in Pennsylvania. To me Joel’s a bum, but he’s mean and tough for his size. Half Frank’s size, and Frank’s afraid of him. When he’s drunk he boasts about being some kind of bodyguard once, running gambling games. I’ve seen him carry a gun sometimes even now.”

  “Why does the Mayor give him jobs? Patronage?”

  “Who knows? The Mayor likes him, I guess. He worked for the Mayor once a long time ago. Worked for that old man Emil Van Hoek, too. The Mayor’s wife’s father, you know?”

  “Celia,” I said, “if Frank killed Francesca, and someone knew that, Frank would kill again, wouldn’t he?”

  “Frank wouldn’t kill any-”

  They were there in the living room. Two of them. One was Frank Keefer. The other was a scrawny little man with a dark, weather-beaten face, his small eyes sunk in deep sockets. He wore a cheap suit, looked sixty but I knew was younger, and stood tall for his five-feet-six or so. He moved more like his real age-maybe forty-five despite the aged face. To my left, low and fast toward my armless side, while Frank Keefer charged straight at me.

  I tried to duck, and took a roundhouse right lead on my head that knocked me over a chair. The chair got in Keefer’s way, and I got up and jumped to the right away from the small man. I dug into my pocket for my pistol.

  “Keefer, hold it!” I cried. “I just want-”

  Keefer wasn’t listening. He charged like a bull, and I evaded again, staying away from the little man. Celia Bazer was screaming at Keefer. The small man grabbed her, slapped her face, and Keefer came on again, his big fists ready. I had no choice. I slipped aside again, he was an awkward amateur, and hit him across the face with my pistol.

  He howled, a long line of red blood on his cheek, but tried once more. I hit him on the mouth with the gun. Blood spurted at me. He grabbed for his broken mouth, sat down on the floor, and stared up at me in disbelief.

  I waved the gun at the scrawny one. “Get over near him.”

  The small man went. In the corner Celia Bazer nursed her slapped face. The two men glared at me, Keefer moaning.

  14

  “You’re a rough pair, you are,” I said. “Why?”

  “You always go around accusing people of murder?” the scrawny one said.

  Now I saw that his cheap suit had been retailored to look handmade, his shirt was dazzlingly white, and something glittered in his tie. A stickpin, with a chip diamond set to look twice its size.

  “You said I killed Fran!” Frank Keefer mumbled through blood and broken teeth. He stared at a tooth in his hand, incredulous and afraid of any injury.

  “Did you?” I said.

  “Why would he, mister?” the small one said. “That kid was our trip to heaven. If you’re here, you know that.”

  He had drifter and con man written all over him. His cheap clothes made to look flashy with fake touches a drifter learns in a hundred vagrant tanks. I guessed that there had been times when he’d had newspaper for a shirt and burlap for shoes. The kind of sharp, clever face that always lost out no matter how much he schemed, because he was never quite smart enough to carry a scheme through. But there was violence, too. Violence of the kind that is dangerous when it has a bigger power behind it-bodyguard, vigilante, deputy sheriff.

  “You’re Joel Pender?” I said.

  He didn’t like my knowing his name. It was pure habit-a man who automatically tried to hide himself.

  “I don’t know you, mister,” he said.

  “Dan Fortune. I’m a private detective looking for Francesca Crawford’s killer. The New York police are in my corner. All I have, to do is whistle.”

  “Then whistle and damn you!” Frank Keefer said through his broken mouth. “Look at my face!”

  “It’ll heal and give you character,” I said. “Why start fights when you can’t fight? Maybe you just thought it would be easy to beat a one-armed man? Fight cripples?”

  “You were pumping Celia, cripple,” Joel Pender said. He was a sweet man. “Why don’t you talk to us straight?”

  “Fine,” I said. “Keefer, what did you talk about down in New York with Francesca Crawford? When you visited her?”

  “I never
went down to Fran-”

  Celia Bazer spoke from her corner. “He was in that hotel, Frank. He heard us talking.”

  “Heard?” Frank Keefer said, licked blood.

  “Heard,” I said. “All of it, including lies. Muriel Roark told you Francesca was with Celia, and you got down to New York on Tuesday-the day she was killed.”

  “I never went near her!”

  “You didn’t know she was alone in the apartment?”

  “No! I didn’t know Cele wasn’t back until after-”

  Joel Pender said. “Shut up, Frank. This guy’s got something in mind.”

  I said, “You thought Celia might be back, would be in her own bed that Tuesday night?”

  “I didn’t go near the place until Wednesday,” Keefer said.

  “No,” I said. “You were seen Tuesday evening. Maybe you came back that night, climbed in the window looking for Celia who would tell Francesca you still had a wife, had served time for wife-beating. You had made a new play for Francesca, maybe she gave you some hope. But if Celia knew, and talked…? So you came to kill Celia. It was dark, you were scared, Celia’s bed was occupied. Who else would be in that bed? So you stabbed her-only Celia wasn’t back, and you killed Francesca.”

  Frank Keefer forgot his bleeding mouth. Only abject fear would make him do that. A fear that saw himself facing a judge, convicted, waiting to be sentenced to some narrow cell for the rest of his natural life-no more schemes, no more women, no more dreams of a golden future.

  “You’re a liar!” he said.

  Joel Pender faced danger a different way-with a sharp, cool calculation. His teeth ready, careful.

  “He’s fishing, Frank,” Pender said. “If it happened like he says, no one could prove it, and he wouldn’t be talking.”

  “Unless Frank was seen that night,” I said.