“I suppose I could try,” Diggs said without enthusiasm. “Is this leading toward Doll Winter?”
“Maybe.”
“When I saw the two of you together at her house, I was watching you. You looked smitten, like a big tree ready to fall,” Diggs said. “Now you’re almost ready to believe she’s capable of something awful. You’re very changeable, aren’t you?”
“Dex, if I was wrong about you, I’m sorry.”
“If you were wrong?”
Horn swallowed. “You went to see Jay Lombard the other day. When his name first came up, you said you’d never heard of him. Why did you lie, and why did you see him?”
For the first time since sitting down, Diggs smiled, but there was no humor in it. “I lied about knowing him for the same reason I held back the truth about me and Rose,” he said. “I saw no reason to involve myself and dig up past indiscretions that could only hurt Evelyn. But it all comes out, doesn’t it? I could have saved myself the trouble.
“I’m going to have to get back soon,” he said, looking at his watch. “Jay Lombard is a loathsome little man. I have no respect for him. But for years, he made an effort to stay in touch with me, and I went along. I sensed that he wanted to reassure himself that I wasn’t going to incriminate him in any way in Tess’ murder, and I suppose I was looking for the same assurances. We were like two criminals, each wanting to make sure the other kept his mouth shut about their crime. Except that I didn’t kill her, and I have no reason to believe he did.”
“His girlfriend told me the same thing about him,” Horn said. “For a shyster, he sure has a lot of people vouching for his character.”
“Maybe you should listen, instead of making up your mind so quickly,” Diggs said. “Anyway, Lombard called me the other day, asking for another meeting. This one was different, because now Rose was dead too. We circled each other like suspicious dogs, each wondering if the other had anything to do with it. I assured him I knew nothing about Rose’s murder, and I left.”
Horn remembered something from his poolside talk. “Rose got in touch with Lombard to say she was going to the police, to tell the truth about what she had done,” he said. “There were four people on her contact list, including him. The others were Doll Winter, Alden Richwine, and you.”
“She never talked to me about that,” Diggs said. “I told you I hadn’t heard from her in years, and that was the truth.”
“She planned to, though. She was checking off four names from her list, one at a time, but she was killed before she could get to the last one. It looks like one of the three decided that he—or she—didn’t want Rose to go to the police.”
“For a while there, you had your eye on me, didn’t you?” Diggs said. “Now I gather it’s Doll.”
“Beginning to look that way.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Then Diggs spoke. “If it’s her—if it’s the two of them, for whatever reason—this won’t be easy, John Ray. She’s got a lot more clout in this town than you do. Hell, than either of us.”
“I know.”
“So be smart and tell the police. Where do I reach you?”
“My place or the casino. And if I’m not there, you could talk to Joseph. He’s got as much of a stake in this now as I do.”
Diggs nodded, opened the door, and swung his legs out. “You’re a bastard, you know it?” he said with little emotion. “You weren’t very fair to me or to my wife. You’re a typical preacher’s son, quick to judge people and full of self-righteousness.
“But, as you said, we go back a long way. I accept your apology.” He got out and leaned back in the window. “What are you going to do?”
“Right now? It’s time I did something about keeping my last promise to Cassie.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“That was good,” Madge said. “I like meat loaf. Earl never would eat it. After hard times and then the war with all the rationing, meat loaf reminded him of how we had to stretch things to make ’em last. But I like a good meat loaf. With chili sauce. He died during the war. His heart. Did I tell you that?”
“No.”
“I was hoping he’d get a chance to tuck into a steak some day. Nothing too expensive, you know, just a cut of real meat.” She trailed off, looking vague.
“I’m sorry, Madge.” They had gone down the street to the diner for an early dinner, and now they sat in Madge’s cramped room, she on the bed, he on the only chair.
Might as well get to it. He pulled the pint of Seagram’s Five Crown out of his jacket pocket and twisted off the top. “Why don’t we put on some music and have a drink? Where are your glasses?”
“Well, ain’t you nice?” she said, unpinning her little hat and laying it on the bed next to her. “They’re right over the sink.” She gave him a sharp look. “How did you know—”
“You’re partial to this brand?” He hesitated. Then, deciding there was no need to hold back the truth, he told her. “Cassie mentioned it to me.”
“Cassie? You knew her?”
“We were good friends,” he said, fetching two glasses from the shelf then using the dish towel to give each a couple of extra wipes. He poured a generous amount into her glass and less into his.
“Well, I’ll be,” Madge said, taking the glass. “She never told me.”
“Probably had no reason to,” he said.
“So sad about her,” she said, taking a sip. “So young. And so soon after Rosie. They had the same room. It’s this place. There’s death all over this hill. Everybody is sitting around waiting to die. The houses too. There’s this place down the street—the bulldozers have come. They’re coming for all of us.” She sat upright on her bed, legs straight out in front of her, clutching her glass. “Just a matter of time.” A small tic attacked her left eye.
He went over to the record player, a timeworn portable phonograph much like his own, and picked through Madge’s small collection of records. Most were sentimental songs from the war and earlier. He put on a Sammy Kaye recording of MyBuddy, Guy Lombardo’s We’ll Meet Again, and By the Light of the Silv’ry Moon by Ray Noble.
“See that one with the green label?” Madge said, pointing. “Put that one on too. Rosie gave it to me. Even taught me the words.” The almost-new record was an instrumental version of a song called Angel Eyes. He added it to the stack and started the player.
“Drink up,” he said, topping off her glass. The music seemed to put her into a relaxed mood, something unusual for Madge, and she closed her eyes and hummed along.
They sat that way for a long while. Periodically he would get up to freshen her glass or change the music. Outside, the sky began to darken.
The last record dropped onto the turntable. It was a slow ballad, the melody woven by a throaty tenor sax suggesting a late-night memory of something irretrievably lost. As the sax sighed out its final notes, Madge stirred on the bed and sang, slightly off-key: “’Scuse me while Idis-ap-pear.”
He had heard those words before. From Rose. On the last night of her life.
Two-thirds of the bottle was gone. He took the glass out of her hand, nudged her gently to make sure she was awake, and said, “Madge.”
“Huh?”
“Let’s talk about Rosie.”
“Okay.”
“How she told you about the party.”
“Party.”
“You remember. The party from a long time ago. It was in a big house.”
“Big house.”
“That’s right. With music, and people all dressed up. I know you remember what she said, because you told Cassie the same story not long ago. The two of you were at the Green Light, remember?”
“Rosie never hurt anybody.”
“I know. Her friends know that. But I need to find out exactly what she said to you. My guess is, you and Rosie were drinking one night, and she just started talking to you, because she trusted you. You put it away in your head, like you did with everything you thought was important. Now she’s go
ne, and only you can tell me what she said. She’d want you to. I was a good friend of hers too, just like you were.”
“Long time ago. Where’s my glass?”
“Right here.” He handed it to her, let her sip from it, and then placed it carefully on the bedside table. The room was fast going dark, but he didn’t turn on the lights.
“It’s in your memory, Madge. That special memory of yours. Nobody else could remember it the way you could. It’s time to bring it out again. There was music, and a man in a tux, and—”
“The lights went out.” She sounded almost surprised, as if the memory had suddenly reared up in front of her.
“Yes. The lights went out. What else?”
Nothing from her for a long minute, only her heavy breathing, louder than the faint traffic noises from outside and the occasional sounds of others moving about the rooming house. Then she began talking.
“And she screams. It’s the dark. The dark scares her most of all. But no one can hear her because of the music and all the people, crazy now and stirred up in the dark.”
The voice was Madge’s, but the words didn’t seem to fit her. Rose’s words.
“And the man—he just suddenly… He’s holding her arms, and when she screams, he turns loose of her and runs out of the room, so fast he hits the door, and then he’s gone. Frightened of her screaming. But so lucky, that man, to go when he does. So very lucky.”
Madge spoke in a monotone, like an actor rehearsing, rushing through a particularly boring part. She had retained Rose’s words but not their emotion.
“Tess still struggling, both of us wrestling on the bed. What do I do now? My plan falling apart. Dexter won’t come, and no one will help me show what a tramp she is. I feel like a fool. I’ll have to…
“Wait. Who’s that? Someone in the doorway. Doesn’t look like the same man. But hard to make out—just outlined by faint light somewhere in the hall. Candlelight? Carrying something. Champagne bottle. Comes in, and seems to understand what’s going on. Maybe even waiting outside, until the other one left. Tess growing wild now, thrashing about. But I’m stronger, and I hold her from behind, under her. My eyes are closed now, but I feel the extra weight on both of us, and I know what’s going to happen. My plan. I smell strong aftershave. Familiar. Almond. I always liked it….
“Tess gasping. I feel crushed under both of them. My hand brushes against satin lapel. Violent movements. Take that! Do you like that? Dexter will see her like this. I’ll find him, and this time I’ll make him come to this room.
“I struggle to get out from under both of them. Suddenly Tess screams again, but different this time. More of a groan, an awful, animal sound. I feel wetness on my legs, stickiness. What is it? Oh, no. My dress is…Oh, no. I reach around her, feel the bottle, huge and hard. Sticky, just like…Oh, no. I cry out—no words, just a cry. I push with both hands, hard as I can, feel the lapels again, the starched shirt. Something’s wrong. Can’t be. The mattress shakes, once, twice. I hear the door open and close. Tess and I are alone.
“She groans again, twitches once. Then quiet and still.
“Wet. I smell it now.
“What have I done?
“Tess.
“I’m lost….”
These last words were delivered in a thin, reedy voice, as if Madge had used up the last of her strength. She half-lay, half-sat on the bed, head on her chest.
“Who was it?” Horn asked, unsure if he was talking to Madge or Rose. “The man in the tux—who was he?” The only response was a tiny snoring sound.
He got up, turned on the light, and tugged on her legs until she lay fully prone. He arranged a pillow under her head, found a blanket, and spread it over her. “You sleep good,” he whispered. He opened her purse and put a few dollars in it. Then, taking her door key, he turned out the light, closed the door, locked it from the outside, and slid the key under the door.
He walked for a while, too excited to get in his car. Without aim or direction, he walked all over Bunker Hill, the narrow streets lit feebly by lampposts, the houses looming tall on either side, lights in some of the windows. The decay on the hill almost vanished at night, and the houses reassumed some of their old gentility, like an old dowager in an almost-forgotten movie who dimmed the gas lamps in her parlor until they flattered her.
He was haunted by Madge’s voice, Rose’s words. He had no doubt they were genuine. Through them, one more piece had fallen into place. Driven by jealousy and revenge, Rose had arranged and taken part in a rape—but one that turned horribly wrong. The result was death, and Rose’s responsibility was clear. She had not planned or foreseen the death, but to her that did not matter. All those years, she carried the guilt, and it impelled her to throw away her career, to descend into poverty. Once again, Horn saw Emory Quinn’s bloodied knuckles, and thought, No wonder they found each other. Both of them had learned how to punish themselves.
After such a life, finally telling the truth may have seemed to Rose a way to lighten the guilt, if only slightly. Could any punishment imposed by others equal what she had already done to herself?
He found himself nearly back at Rook House and his car. In front of him was a vacant space that only a few days earlier had been a rooming house. A bulldozer sat parked amid the rubble, waiting for its driver to return tomorrow and finish the job. To his surprise, he silently expressed the hope that Madge would die before the bulldozers came for her.
As he drove away, he could still hear the thin voice, breaking with tiredness.
I’m lost….
* * *
The next morning he was at the Anchor mission before nine. As he parked nearby, he spotted Emory Quinn sitting on a folding chair on the sidewalk, his back against the building, eyes on a book in his lap. A dozen or more men sat or sprawled nearby, some wrapped in blankets.
“Strange place to be reading,” Horn said as he approached.
Quinn looked up. “We turn everybody out in the morning and mop the floors. We needed to do that even more today, because somebody threw up in the sleeping area in the middle of the night. Anyway, the whole place will smell like disinfectant for a while. I like to come out here.”
“What are you reading?”
“Oh, something about a book with seven seals.”
Horn looked more closely at the black, pebble-grained Bible in Quinn’s lap. “I know that one,” he said. “The book no man can open. My daddy used to make me and my little brother memorize verses. Revelation was one of his favorites, because he knew it scared us, and scaring people was one of the things he did well.”
“Religion can be misused,” Quinn said. “Just like money. Or a gun.”
“We don’t need to argue. I came by to see how you’re doing.”
“You mean since the last couple of times we had words? I’m doing all right.” Each of his knuckles, Horn noticed, bore a small scab.
“There’s a book I’m opening,” Horn said. “When it’s open, things will come out.”
Quinn tilted his head, waiting.
“I know now what Rose did. I thought you might want to know too.”
“Did she do like she said? Kill somebody?” Quinn returned his eyes to the page, as if to turn away from the answer.
Horn spoke carefully. “Not everybody would call what she did murder. But the police might. And I can see why she did.”
“I don’t need to know any more,” Quinn said, eyes still down. “I knew her, and that was enough. Some of the people who come in off the street to be fed here still ask about her. I don’t have the heart to tell them she won’t be back. Whatever else she did, on balance she added to this life, instead of subtracting from it.” He looked up. “Do you know who killed her? Was it Lombard?”
“I think I’ll know pretty soon.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“It’s not just my decision. A friend is involved in this too. Both of us are going to have to decide what we want to do.”
Quinn
lifted the book from his lap. “There’s something in here about that too.”
“I know all about that,” Horn said, laughing. “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith theLord. That’s a big joke. Men take vengeance on each other all the time.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s right. Do you think Rose would—”
“I’m not Rose. Whoever killed her is going to pay for it. If the police get to them first, I won’t mind. But if they don’t….”
“Not long before she died, Rose asked me to pray for you.”
The thought did not comfort him. Hearing a voice call out across the street, Horn turned around. Two workmen were atop the marquee at the Follies Theater, attaching ropes to the giant likeness of Ruby Renfrew. Down below, leaning against the box office, stood her brightly colored, oversized replacement, a dark-haired stripper in a dancer’s pose and a costume that seemed mostly bananas. Horn could just make out the lettering: Rosie Torres, it said, the Cuban Spitfire. Slowly they began to lower her predecessor to the pavement.
“So long, Ruby,” Horn said under his breath. “You didn’t do me much good, did you?”
He turned back to Quinn. “Did she ever ask you to pray for anybody else?”
Quinn thought for a moment. “Just that friend of hers, the woman who’s been so generous. The one she called Doll.”
* * *
Braving the smell of Lysol, Horn went inside to use the phone in Quinn’s office. He dialed three digits for the Hall of Justice, then lowered the phone, hesitating. If Dolores Winter was behind Rose’s death, he desperately needed the help of the police. Dex was right: She carried more weight, more credibility, than any has-been movie actor and ex-convict. But Horn lacked all the answers, and he now saw a danger in talking to Luther Coby before he could make a convincing case against her. The detective, it appeared, had a most unprofessional crush on the actress. If Coby was not impressed by Horn’s collection of hunches, he might alert her and spoil everything. No, it was too early.
Instead, he dialed the number for Mad Crow’s office at the casino.
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