“And when was that?”
“About three weeks ago.” She stopped shuffling papers to turn and look directly at him. “What is all this about Al?”
Ben said stubbornly, “Just a legal formality. Why?”
“You seem so—so intense about it.”
“That isn’t it at all. I—maybe Lorene told you. I’ve had troubles of my own.”
“Oh yes. Your wife. Is she better?”
“No. No, she isn’t.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, and sounded as though she really was. She went back to rooting in the desk. Ben sat and smoked and sweated and watched his hands shake. They fascinated him. He had no control over them at all.
“Here it is,” she said, and rose and handed him a piece of paper.
He took it. The number was scrawled in pencil and identified with Al Guthrie’s name. He put the paper carefully in his wallet.
“Thank you,” he said.
“He probably isn’t there any more.”
“He may have left a forwarding address. Come on, I’ll buy you that lunch.”
“You don’t have to do that, Mr. Forbes. Thanks anyway, but I’d just as soon grab a sandwich. Really.”
Ben let her talk him out of it. It crossed his mind that he was making her nervous because he was so wire-drawn himself, and that she was anxious to get rid of him. He did not worry about it. He let her out where she asked to be let out and thanked her again, and then promptly forgot her.
The next problem was a telephone. The office was out and it would take too long to go home. Downtown there were too many people he knew, including Ernie MacGrath. He did not want to meet anybody right now. He kept on driving until he saw a service station with a public booth. He left his car at the pump and went into the booth and dialed the number.
A man’s voice answered. For one wild moment he thought it was Al Guthrie’s. Then he knew it was not.
“Yeah? This is Muller speaking.”
“Mr. Muller, my name is Forbes. I’m an attorney here in town. I was given this number for a Mr. Albert Guthrie. Do you—”
“Guthrie?”
“That’s right. Al Guthrie.”
“Oh,” said Muller. “Him. He’s gone.”
“Do you know where?”
“No, I do not.”
“It’s quite important that I get in touch with him, on a legal matter. Is this an apartment house?”
“Rooming house is what my city license says.”
“What’s your address?”
“4909 Lanterman. But I can’t help—”
“Please, Mr. Muller. Perhaps you can. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Ben rushed out of the booth and paid for his gas and roared away north toward Lanterman.
eleven
Lanterman ran east and west, and it was a street in transition. Small plants had crept in along it, a lumber company, two or three trucking firms, an auto-wrecking yard. There were still houses on it, mostly two-and three-story frame buildings with too many porches and cupolas on the outside and too much room inside for these servantless days, even if the neighborhood had not run down. Some had businesses in their lower floors. Some had been converted into flats. Most of them were rooming houses. All of them needed paint and their yards cleaned up.
Number 4909 was a light gray house with green shutters, sooty and faded. A long block beyond it on the corner was a tavern with a neon sign that said THE LANTERNMAN and showed an old man holding a lantern. The tavern was brick, the newest building on the street. Ben parked behind a red pickup truck and went into the rooming house.
A big hard-looking gray-haired man came out of the first door on the right.
“Mr. Muller?”
“Yeah.”
Ben got out one of his business cards and gave it to him. “I just spoke to you over the phone.”
“Yeah,” said Muller. “Well, like I told you, I don’t know anything about Guthrie or where he went.”
“I understand that,” Ben said, “but I thought he might have said something to you, or perhaps to someone else here, that might give an idea.”
“He never said nothing to me,” Muller said.
A short, hard-looking, gray-haired woman with a cigarette in her fingers came and peered through the door.
“Is this the man?” she asked.
Muller said, “Yeah.”
He handed her the card. She read it and then thrust her head forward toward Ben. “What did you want with Mr. Guthrie?”
“It’s in connection with his divorce. Just a formality.”
“He didn’t get in any trouble while he was living here? Like with the police?”
“No, Mrs. Muller. This has nothing to do with the police.”
“I don’t see what difference it makes,” Muller said. “I still can’t tell him where Guthrie went.”
“No,” said Mrs. Muller, “but Schaney might.” She explained to Ben. “It was Schaney brought him here. They used to work for the same truck company. They went around together a good bit even after Guthrie quit. I kind of think Schaney even loaned him some money. He’s a real goodhearted fellow. You ask him.”
Muller looked at his watch. “Schaney’s got a haul tonight. I’m not supposed to wake him for another couple of hours.”
“I’m sorry to inconvenience him,” Ben said, “but there’s a time limit on this thing. You understand? I can’t wait.”
“Well,” said Muller grudgingly, “okay. Come on.”
Ben followed him up the stairs and down a narrow hall to the back of the house. The place was shabby but decent. The floors were swept and the wallpaper had been cleaned that summer. Muller knocked on a tall old-fashioned door with a black china knob.
“Schaney,” he called. “Hey, Joe. You got a visitor.”
Sounds of grunting and heaving came from inside. Muller continued to knock. In a minute Ben heard Schaney’s feet hit the floor, and then the door was wrenched open and a stocky red-faced man said, “God damn it, Fritz, what the hell you waking me up at this time of day for?”
He had been sleeping comfortably in his long underwear. He had a bald freckled head with a fringe of corn-colored hair around it. His face was round with thick blunt features, and his eyes were as heavy and dazed as a child’s when it is wakened too suddenly. Ben felt sorry for him, but in a relative way. Schaney had all the time in the world to catch up on his sleep.
“I’m afraid it’s my fault,” he said, and explained. “I’m a lawyer. I’m looking for Al Guthrie, and they said you might know where he is.”
“Al,” said Schaney. “What’s he done?”
“I’m not a criminal lawyer and this isn’t a police matter.”
“Oh,” said Schaney. His feet were bare and he rubbed the sole of the right one up and down on the calf of his left leg and then reversed the action, as though they were cold.
“Were you expecting him to do something?” Ben asked.
“That guy’s nuts,” said Schaney. “It wouldn’t surprise me whatever he did. Listen, come in while I put my pants on, will you? I’m freezing.”
Ben thanked Muller and went into Schaney’s room. It was a back corner bedroom, papered in faded roses, with an iron bedstead, a chest of drawers, an easy chair, a straight chair, and a small table. It was neat, as the rooms of old bachelors often are. Schaney motioned him to sit down, fumbled for a cigarette, took three long drags on it, sighed, and began to put his clothes on.
“I can tell you straight off,” he said, “Al didn’t tell me where he was moving to. And I can tell you why.”
“Can you?”
“He owes me fifty bucks,” said Schaney, and Ben, who had started violently in the chair, settled back again and hoped that Schaney had not noticed.
“Tell you what,” Schaney said, “if you catch up with that slob, can I hire you to get my dough back from him?”
“I’ll see what I can do. When did he leave here?”
“Couple of weeks ago.”
/> “Exactly?”
Schaney frowned. “Make it ten days.”
“And he didn’t even mention what part of town he was moving to, or whether he was leaving town?”
“Not to me, he didn’t.” Schaney sat on the bed and laced his shoes. “He’d been acting kind of crazy for a long time. I was sorry I’d got tied up with him at all.”
“How do you mean,” said Ben carefully, “crazy?”
“Oh, you know. Broody. Asking for trouble. Got in a row and lost his job and then spent all his time days running around—I don’t know what the hell he was doing. He said he was looking for work but he never could tell you where he’d been. Finally he got so nasty I quit asking him. Then nights he’d drink. Boy, and I mean drink.”
Schaney stood up and pulled the blankets straight on the bed. “I know he was having woman trouble, but I never saw it eat on a guy like that before.”
“Did he talk much about it?”
“Only when he had a few drinks in him. Then he’d get going on divorce. Jesus. You’d think the whole thing was invented on purpose just to torment him. I guess he never thought his little woman would go through with it, but she did, and he was plenty wild.”
“I know,” said Ben. “I got his wife the divorce. Listen, Mr. Schaney, did you ever hear him make any threats against her?”
Dangerous ground. But you had to ask.
Schaney brushed his hair down carefully all around the curve of his skull. “I don’t particularly remember any. You know how it is, I had a few drinks myself, and a guy does a lot of blabbering and cursing around but it doesn’t mean anything. But I wouldn’t put it past him. He sure beat the hell out of Selma.”
Ben said, “Selma?”
“One of the local hustlers. You didn’t figure Al was living like a monk, did you? His heart wasn’t that broken.” Schaney picked up a greasy leather jacket and put it on over his plaid shirt, and then he looked at Ben with a peculiar expression and said, “On the other hand, maybe it was at that.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, that’s why he beat her. Because all of a sudden he thought of his wife and Selma made him sick. That’s what Selma told me, anyway. Boy. There’s a real slob.”
“Could I talk to this Selma?”
“Mister, anybody with five bucks can talk to Selma.”
“I’m not joking. Where can I get in touch with her?”
“Well,” said Schaney, “when she isn’t working or sleeping, she’s usually in the Lanternman getting a little of what makes life easier to live. She has a place right around the corner from it, three doors down.”
Ben got up. “Can I buy you a drink, Mr. Schaney? I owe you something for disturbing your rest.”
“Well,” said Schaney, “some coffee would be more like it. I got to pick up a load of steel at four-thirty.”
Schaney put a red leather cap on his head and they went out. Schaney continued to elaborate on the dangers of driving steel and what could happen to a man when a 45,000-pound load came in on him through the back of the cab.
“A guy explained it to me once, scientifically. It’s something called inertia, see? The cab stops, like when you ram something, but the steel keeps right on traveling.”
They got into Ben’s car and Ben drove to the corner and into the parking lot behind the Lanternman. There were five or six other cars there.
“Slack hour,” Schaney said. He pointed down the street. “That’s where Selma lives, the brown house. Her and three other dames. If she isn’t here.”
They went into the Lanternman. It was a typical prosperous working-stiff joint, clean and modern without any attempt to be fancy. It smelled of beer and hamburgers. Schaney peered around and then pointed to a booth near the bar.
“There she is.”
They walked to the booth. Selma looked up and nodded to Schaney. She looked at Ben and then back to Schaney and said:
“You know the rules, Joe. You trying to get me thrown out of here?”
Her hair was brilliant with new henna, lacquered into an improbable heap on top of her head. Her face reminded Ben of an Easter egg with features painted on it too boldly and in too bright colors. She wore a grubby pink sweater buttoned over her ample breasts, toreador pants printed in lozenges of black and white, and pumps with run-over high heels. She was nursing a beer.
Schaney shook his head. “He just wants to talk to you about Al Guthrie.”
“Him,” she said, and a hot light came into her eyes. “That bastard. I should of had him arrested.” Then she looked at Ben. “What’s your angle?”
Ben explained. By now he and Schaney had sat down and the bartender had come up. Ben said it was on him. Selma ordered a double bourbon and Schaney decided he would have a steak along with his coffee. Ben ordered the first thing that came into his head, not caring, thinking that this woman was just about his last chance and wondering bleakly what he would do next.
She asked him, “What did you want to know about Al Guthrie?”
“Did he tell you anything about his plans, where he was going?”
“Not in so many words, no.”
“Well, did he hint at it? Anything at all, even a chance word.”
She shook her head. “He talked so crazy that night. I don’t know.”
“What did he say?”
“Well, he was pretty drunk, and all of a sudden it seemed like he just flipped. We were sitting there talking and he gave me this funny look and says, ‘You got red hair but it ain’t like Lorene’s.’ I asked him who Lorene was and he said his wife. I told him let’s leave her out of this, and he says that’s fine, now he isn’t even allowed to talk about her. He says I’m like all the rest, trying to keep him away from her. I tell you, mister, he was real gone.”
She paused to shake her head again angrily.
“I told him he better go home. But he wouldn’t. It seemed like he had all this boiled up inside him and had to take it out on somebody. He said nobody was going to keep him away from her. He said he had it all figured out and he’d got the house already. He said he was going to get her back.”
“House,” said Ben. “House. Didn’t he tell you where it was?”
She gave him the same kind of an odd glance that Mary Catherine Brewer had given him.
“No,” she said, “he did not. He only said it was in a part of town where nobody knew him and nobody would ever find him. Then he said I made him sick and he started to hit me. I yelled and the other girls came, and he left. I never saw him again. I guess he moved the next day. Does that help?”
“Oh, God,” said Ben, “why couldn’t he have told you where?”
He got up and left the tavern. Schaney and the woman looked after him curiously.
“What’s with him?” she asked. “Damned if he doesn’t act as crazy as Al.”
“You got me,” said Schaney.
He ate his steak, chewing sturdily.
twelve
The feeling that Ernie MacGrath had had on Friday night was still with him on Saturday morning.
He did not like it any better then than he had before. He left the house before Ivy could get too accurate in her attempts to guess what was bothering him. He checked in early and sat waiting glumly for Bill Drumm in Detective Division’s shabby and overcrowded quarters, alternately staring out the window at the backside of the Sears and Roebuck warehouse and then across the room at the door that said Martin Packer, Chief of Detectives.
All right, thought Ernie savagely, let’s hear how it sounds. Quote. “Chief Packer, I think maybe a good friend of mine murdered his wife and hid her body somewhere and reported disappearance. I think maybe his motive was a redheaded dame.”
“And what reason do you have to think this, Detective MacGrath?”
“Because this good friend went to see this redhead last night in her apartment, and wouldn’t tell me where he was going.”
“Do you know anything about this woman? Can you prove a connection? Can you produce a
ny evidence that a murder actually has been committed?”
“No, sir. It is only a hunch I got because my friend acted in a suspicious manner.”
“And what the hell kind of a detective are you, Detective MacGrath?”
And what the hell kind of a friend.
Ernie did not go into Packer’s office.
Instead he went down to Missing Persons. They had nothing new. He returned and checked the bulletins received overnight from sheriff’s offices and other police departments in and out of the state. There was the usual amount of stuff but nothing he could use, no unidentified woman living or dead. He was glad when Bill Drumm came and took his mind at least partly off it.
The morning developed into a repetition of the day before. They interviewed four or five people who should have been witnesses to a grocery-store holdup but were not. The grocery store was a known numbers drop and Ernie was pretty sure that more than petty cash was involved, but everybody was determined to keep his or her nose scrupulously clean. Finally at ten minutes to one Bill said:
“Have we earned a lunch, or do we have to starve right on our feet?”
Ernie said he thought they could take time for a hamburger. The neighborhood they were in was for people with stronger stomachs than he had, and he suggested going up Norland Avenue, which was not far away, to a good drive-in.
Bill said okay, and relaxed in the front seat. He was a tall thin young man with knobby joints and pale yellow hair and fair skin that did not seem ever to have needed shaving. He ate like an anaconda and never gained a pound. Ernie was beginning to quarrel about the way the dry cleaner kept shrinking his pants around the waistband. He kept warning Bill, who only smiled and ate.
Ernie drove. He glanced once or twice at Bill, who appeared to be catching a short nap. He took a roundabout way to Norland. It went past the apartment house where Ben Forbes had gone the night before to see Mary Catherine Brewer or Lorene Guthrie, whichever one had red hair. He didn’t know what he expected the outside of the building to tell him. He just wanted to look at it again by daylight.
Ben Forbes’ car was parked in front of the building.
An Eye for an Eye Page 7