by S. J. Rozan
“I get your point. I’ll be over later, okay? If you do hear from Jimmy, try to talk him out of anything stupid.”
“Spent half my fuckin’ life tryin’ to talk him outta stupid things. I’m no good at it.”
“Try again. He might listen this time.”
We hung up. Eve Colgate was still upstairs, giving me privacy while I used her house as a public phone booth.
I looked at the number Tony had given me for Mark Sanderson, started to dial it, but stopped. I called the state troopers instead.
“D Unit. Sergeant Whiteside.” It was the same officer I’d spoken to yesterday.
“Ron MacGregor, please.”
“Hold on.”
Thirty seconds of electronic silence; then, “MacGregor.”
“It’s Bill Smith. You get any sleep lately?”
“You kidding?”
“Well, I’m glad to know country cops work as hard as city cops. Can I have my gun back?”
“Yeah. Come get it.”
“What killed Wally Gould?”
“He was shot.”
“Oh, come on, Mac. Is it a secret?”
“What interest you got in this investigation, Smith?”
“I’m a friend of Tony’s and Jimmy’s. As long as Jimmy’s a suspect, I’m interested.”
“That’s it?”
“Why, he’s not?”
“Yeah, he is. You know where to find him?”
“No.”
“Would you tell me if you did?”
I thought about it. “I’d tell you I knew. I’m not sure I’d tell you where he was.”
“Wait, let me get this straight. You want information from me on an ongoing police investigation, but you’re not sure you’d turn over my chief suspect if you had him?”
“I’m not sure I wouldn’t. What killed Wally Gould?”
He paused. “Three close-range shots from a nine-millimeter.”
“When?”
“About four A.M.”
“You found it?”
“The gun? Not yet.”
“Well, I have two you can look at.”
“Two what?”
“Nine-millimeters.”
MacGregor exploded. “Goddammit, Smith! If you’ve been holding out on me again I’ll lock you up!”
“I didn’t hold out on you about the keys and I’m not now. I took a pair of Ruger nine-millimeters off two of Grice’s monkeys yesterday.” I told MacGregor the rest of the story, my conversation with Grice, the green house, Otis and Ted. He didn’t ask what I’d been doing on the potholed road by Breakabeen and I didn’t tell him.
I also didn’t tell him that Otis and Ted had picked me up at the Park View while I was talking to Ellie Warren. I wasn’t paid to give him ideas.
“So Grice doesn’t know where Jimmy is,” he said thoughtfully when I was through. “And he’s willing to pay a lot to find out.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “I imagine it’s one of those fees I’d have a hard time collecting.”
“You could be right. You want us to pick them up?”
“Who, Otis and Ted? Don’t bother. Everybody’d deny it and I’m sure everybody’s got a nifty alibi.”
“Yeah, probably. We had Grice down here this morning on the Gould killing.”
“Let me guess. At the time Gould was shot, Grice was drinking tea with his congressman and the Bishop of Buffalo.”
MacGregor answered that with a grunt. “What do you think he wants Jimmy for?”
“Grice? I think the same as you, Mac. Grice knows something about Gould’s death and he’s looking for a fall guy.”
“Is that what I think? What else do I think?”
I left that alone. “I’ll be by this afternoon to pick up my gun.”
“If you have evidence to turn over, you’d damn well better make it this morning. Now.”
“An hour.”
“Half an hour. If not, in thirty-one minutes I’ll have every unit in the county looking for you.”
“I’ll be there.”
Now it was time to call Mark Sanderson.
“I’m sorry.” Mark Sanderson’s secretary’s voice was so carefully modulated and inflected that I regretted not being a radio producer calling to offer her her big break. “Mr. Sanderson is unavailable. Perhaps I can help you?”
“I don’t think I’m the one who needs help, but I could be wrong. Mr. Sanderson called me; I’m returning his call.”
“Oh, I see. In that case, please hold the line a moment.”
I did, passing that moment and some others listening to watery Muzak through the phone. I heard footsteps again from upstairs, the sound of doors opening and closing.
“Mr. Smith?” the modulated voice returned. “Mr. Sanderson will be right with you.”
A few more bars of Muzak, and then a man’s voice, deep but not booming, calm but with an edge somewhere behind it. “Mark Sanderson.”
That left me to introduce myself, which was silly, since we both knew he knew who I was. But it was his court, his rules. “Bill Smith, Mr. Sanderson. I understand you’ve been trying to get in touch with me.”
“Smith. Yes. I expected you to call before this; I left that message some time ago. I want you to come by here right away.”
This was a man who didn’t waste words. In fact he didn’t use quite enough of them for my taste.
“Mr. Sanderson, we don’t know each other.”
“We will. I intend to engage your services.”
No one said I had to make it easy for him. “As what?”
That threw him off his stride. There was silence; then, in the voice you’d use to explain to a gardener the difference between roses and ragweed, he said, “I understand you’re a detective. I have a job for you.”
“I don’t come up here to work, Mr. Sanderson. I can give you the name of a good investigator out of Albany, if you’d like.”
“No,” he said, struggling to hide his impatience, and losing. “It’s you I want. You in particular. How soon can you get here?”
From the newspaper photograph I remembered him as a broad-shouldered man with a receding hairline that emphasized the roundness of his face. I imagined that round face frowning now behind a heavy oak desk in a corner office with a picture-window view.
I asked, “Can you give me more of an idea what we’re talking about talking about?”
“Not over the phone. We’re wasting time, Smith. Where are you? At the bar where I left the message?”
“No. And how did you know to reach me there?”
“I was told you had no phone, but that the bar would take a message. I was also told there was a good chance you’d be there, whatever time I called,” he added nastily. “I’ll expect you in half an hour.”
“I have to be over by Bramanville in half an hour.” I looked at my watch, thought some unsatisfying thoughts. “I’ll get over to you as soon after that as I can.”
“Look, Smith—”
“No, you look, Sanderson. You want me. In particular. I don’t want your job, but you’re not listening when I say no, and I’m just curious enough to come over and hear you out before I say it again. If that’s not good enough, call someone else.”
Through what sounded like clenched teeth he said, “All right. I don’t suppose it will make that much difference, in the end.” He hung up without saying good-bye.
9
SCHOHARIE WAS A detour off the route between Bramanville and Cobleskill, but I thought it was a detour worth making. I’d dropped the Rugers with MacGregor, picked up my Colt, exchanged some small talk about civilians interfering in police work. I’d tried out the golden blond girl on him.
“Sounds like half the kids at Consolidated East. You got a picture?”
I shook my head. “She doesn’t ring a bell, part of Jimmy Antonelli’s crowd?”
“Not with me.”
An idea came to me. “You think your girls might know her?”
“I doubt it. My girls go t
o school in Albany. Adirondack Prep.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah.” MacGregor sighed. “This is a dead-end place, Smith. Kids got no future here. The boys join the service and the girls get pregnant.” He picked up a pencil, bounced it on the desk. “How long you been coming up here?”
“Eighteen years.”
He nodded. “Those days, you could make a good living around here. Farming; or the young guys from town, they worked at the quarry. Now the quarry’s down to one pit. And that one’s almost played out now, did you know that?”
I hadn’t. I shook my head.
“Yeah. Next year, maybe year after. Then that’ll be gone, too. My father-in-law had a dairy farm. My brother-in-law, too. My father-in-law’s place you could see from that window.” He pointed across his office but he didn’t look where he was pointing. “They’re both working for other guys now. Broke their butts all their lives, what’ve they got? What’ve their kids got?” He looked up from the desk. “Where my girls go to school, all the kids go on to college. It’s expected. My girls can speak French, play the piano, paint. Their friends are congressmen’s daughters.” Tilting his chair back, he stretched, smiled tiredly. “Aaah, what do you care? You got no kids. You don’t have to worry about this crap. You’re a lucky guy.”
I didn’t answer.
MacGregor raised his eyebrows. “What do you want this girl for, anyhow?”
Now was as good as any other time. “I’m working a case.”
“Goddammit!” The front legs of his chair hit the floor and his smile collapsed like a house of cards. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me that yesterday? What case?”
“Private problem for a private client.”
“Who just happens to be looking for a friend of Jimmy Antonelli’s when everyone else in the goddamn county is looking for Jimmy? What’s the case, Smith?”
“I can’t tell you. But it’s not police business and it’s not connected to Gould’s death. And the girl might not be a friend of Jimmy’s,” I added. “I’m just guessing.”
MacGregor sat motionless, looked at me. “God, I’m tempted.”
I knew what he was tempted to do. “What for?”
He threw down his pencil, stood, yanked open the office door. “Being stupid and ugly in public. Raising the blood pressure of a Senior Investigator. Get the hell out. I’ll be watching you.”
That had been about it, there, so I’d started for the Greyhound depot in Cobleskill. The Appleseed plant was west of town; I could make my appearance at Sanderson’s office after I got the silver squared away.
When I got on the highway, though, I had a better idea. I went east to 1A over the ridge, down into the softly quilted valley and through to Schoharie, same as yesterday. Main Street seemed exhausted under the leaden sky and leafless trees, as though it had stretched out for a rest and hadn’t yet found the strength to get up and move on.
The smell of coffee and bacon grease inside the Park View was warm and familiar. The windows were still steamy, and the two old men in hunting jackets were at the same table in the front. Or maybe it was two other old men. I slid onto a stool and waited for Ellie to finish bringing them sandwiches.
Ellie came back to the counter, spotted me. Her faded brows knit together above her sharp nose; she squeezed my hand. “Hon,” she said without preamble, “why didn’t you tell me yesterday that what you were looking for Jimmy for had to do with a killing?”
I wasn’t sure of the answer to that. “I didn’t want to worry you, Ellie. How did you find out?”
“Sheriff Brinkman was here. He’s going to call Chucky in North Carolina.”
“I thought you said Chuck was at sea.”
“Well, sure. And I suppose Sheriff Brinkman will find that out, sooner or later.”
She grinned and I grinned back. “They have telephones on ships now, Ellie.”
“Hon, I called him myself last week, for his birthday. You wouldn’t believe the red tape before they let you call a ship at sea.” She poured me a cup of coffee.
“Thanks.” I tasted it. Not as good as Eve Colgate’s, or mine; but still better than the 7-Eleven’s. I was getting to be an expert. “Did Brinkman ask you anything about Alice, or the blond girl you told me about?”
“No. I don’t think he knows about either of them. And Chucky won’t tell him.”
“I know he won’t. Listen, Ellie, try this: Tony says Alice’s last name is Brown, and that she bakes. It sounds to me as though she may do it for a living. If you were ordering desserts for the diner, where would you get them from?”
“What, this place? Ralph would kill you if he heard that.” She pointed to a sign over the glass-shelved pie cabinet behind her: All Baking Done On Premises.
“Okay,” I said. “But what if?”
She compressed her lips in thought. “I don’t know. You want to talk to Ralph? He’s here.”
Ralph Helfgott owned and cooked at the Park View. He was a large soft man with the look of a hard man gone to seed. The blue tattoos on his forearms were blurred and his white hair was unkempt and wispy. He followed Ellie out from the kitchen, wiping his hands on the apron that surrounded him.
“How’re you doing?” he asked, shaking my hand. “Haven’t seen you around in a while.”
“Haven’t been up. Finally got so I couldn’t stay away from Ellie another day, so I came back.”
He put a thick arm around her. “That’s my girl you’re talking about.”
She pulled away grinning, slapped his arm lightly. “Knock it off, Ralph. Bill wants to ask you something important.”
Ralph leaned over the counter, spoke confidentially to me. “She don’t know yet how crazy she is about me. But I got time, I can wait.” He slipped his hand below the counter, pinched Ellie’s rear. She let out a squeak, slapped him again. He straightened up and looked at me out of choir-boy eyes. “What can I do for you?”
I told him what I wanted to know, but not why. He massaged his chins. “Desserts? Baked goods, you mean?”
“Fancy ones, I hear. And good.”
“Well, there’s really no place around that’s any good. There’s Glauber’s, and there’s Hilltop, over in Cobleskill. But they’re both pretty lousy. That’s why I do my own. There’s nothing worse than serving a customer a soggy pie, you know,” he said earnestly. “Except wait a minute. There is a new place. I got a brochure or something. Wait, let me think.” He rubbed the stubble on his chins again with a hand like a rubber bath toy. “Yeah. Some girl called me. About six, eight months ago, I don’t know. A new bakery, commercial, but small. I told her no thanks, but she asked if she could send me a brochure anyway. Of course, I don’t know if they’re any good.”
“Did she send the brochure?” I asked. “Do you have it?”
“Of course he does,” Ellie said. “He has every piece of paper anybody ever gave him. Go find it, Ralph.”
“You want it?” he asked me; I nodded.
He gave Ellie a friendly leer and went off down the counter to the back. Ellie patted my hand and, taking the pencil from behind her ear, went to see to a family with three kids who’d taken over one of the rear tables. I watch the oversized Slush Puppie cup slowly rotating on top of the milk shake machine.
Ralph came back first. “Got it,” he said, spreading a flyer on the Formica in front of me. “This what you want?”
It was a price list, typeset on heavy stock. Cakes, pies, cookies, other sorts of pastry. At the top of the page was a line drawing of a cozy snowed-in house with smoke coming from the chimney, circled by the words Winterhill Kitchens.
“I hope so,” I said.
“Well, you can have it. I still think I’m going to keep baking my own.”
Ellie came back to the counter. “Find it?”
“Yeah. Kiss me?” Ralph closed his eyes and puckered his lips.
“Oh, in your dreams! Bill, hon, will this help?”
“I hope so,” I said again. “Let me call and see.�
�
I used the pay phone by the front door to call the number on the brochure.
The young woman’s voice that answered the phone was fresh and direct, the kind of voice that goes with a clear complexion and great skill at outdoor sports. I asked for Alice Brown. The fresh voice said that Alice Brown was at the market, and that she’d be back at three-thirty. Would I like to leave a message? I would, and did, leaving my name, identifying myself as a friend of Jimmy Antonelli’s, saying I’d call again. We thanked each other and hung up.
I went back to the counter, dropped some coins on it for the coffee. I squeezed Ellie’s scrawny hand. “I think we found her. I’ll see you later. If you think of anything, call me at Antonelli’s.”
“Found who?” Ralph asked. “What’s going on?”
“None of your business, Ralphie,” Ellie answered. “How’s Tony?” she asked me. “Should I call him?”
I shrugged. “You know him. The more trouble he has, the less help he wants. He’s got Jimmy convicted already.”
Ellie shook her head. Ralph patted her shoulder, and she didn’t pull away.
I walked back to my car, unlocked it, sat with the flyer spread on the steering wheel. The bakery had an address in Jefferson, in the south end of the county, far from here but not far from my place. I could be there in forty minutes if I stood up Mark Sanderson. I could camp out there, wait for Alice Brown to come back. And hope she knew where Jimmy was. And hope she’d tell me.
And hope Brinkman didn’t get there first.
I fished a cigarette from my pocket, put a match to it, started the car. I pulled out onto the empty street and headed for the bus station in Cobleskill. I didn’t know many of Jimmy Antonelli’s friends, but even law-abiding citizens didn’t have much use for Brinkman. He probably wasn’t getting a lot of cooperation from people who’d be in a position to help him. And MacGregor hadn’t asked me about Alice Brown when I was up there this morning, so he might not know about her either.
It seemed to me I might be a few hours ahead of the law on this. If that was true, I had the luxury of enough time to find out what was on Mark Sanderson’s mind.
The bus station in Cobleskill was in what passed for downtown, a shabby area of two-story industrial buildings and three-story frame houses on both sides of the railroad tracks. There were no trains through here anymore, and most of the industrial buildings were only half used, as warehouses now. I parked in front of a peeling brown house with a gate hanging on one hinge and bedsheets for window curtains.