‘I think you killed her,’ I said.
I thought he was going to come over the desk. I braced and looked for a weapon. But he changed his mind and sat back and just watched me.
‘Did your wife worry you?’ I said. ‘Did Nancy get ideas?’
‘The police don’t think I killed her.’
‘They can change their mind.’
‘Not with my alibi.’
‘You’ve got no alibi. Anyone can turn a boat in the other direction.’
‘You have to prove it.’
‘I may try,’ I said. ‘I may do a little snooping around. I may even do a lot of snooping.’
Now he was scared, really scared, but it was not of what I might find.
He leaned at me. ‘You stay away from me! You hear? I don’t want you around my life! I don’t want…’
‘I don’t care what you want, Walsh,’ I said.
He sweated in that good cool office with its big desk and four windows. He changed his tactics from bluster to man-to-man comradeship. ‘Come on, Fortune, give me a break. If my wife… my kids
…’
What he was afraid of was his wife finding out — now. I mean, after all, why get caught now that he couldn’t get any use out of Nancy Driscoll?
‘I don’t care about you, Walsh,’ I said. ‘How about Nancy?’
He wiped at his face with a Kleenex from a monogrammed leather box. I don’t know anything. I called her on the Saturday. All right, I didn’t tell the police that. Why should I? I’m not involved really, and if my wife…’
‘You called her,’ I said.
‘She had this man with her. She was mad, said he was drunk, a rotten drunk kid. She said all men were cheats. This guy was there, you know? I mean, listen, Fortune, give me a break. Lay off my wife, my home. I mean… please?’
I got out of there. Maybe he killed her, and maybe not. (I was sure he had not killed her. His story checked the Brandt girl’s story.) But if he had done it, Gazzo would nail him. It looked like Gazzo was playing it soft, maybe to lull Walsh, or maybe to spare three kids who had hurt no one yet. But if Jo-Jo did not pay off, Walsh was in for a bad time. Walsh did not have a rosy future. That did not make me sad.
I needed something clean. There was only Marty. I called her from the lobby of the building. She was at home. When I heard her voice I had to see her. I had to. I had not seen my shadows all day. Maybe I could chance it. I had to see her if I died for it.
Which is an easy thing to say.
Chapter 12
‘You can’t catch what you can’t see,’ I said. ‘That’s called philosophy. I got that from the manager of some baseball team. His centrefielder had just dropped two fly balls.’
Marty was in her street clothes now. The apartment was cool with her air-conditioning. The bedroom was dark, the shades drawn over the closed windows and the night outside. I had drawn the shades partly out of propriety and partly in case my two shadows made a return appearance. So far they had not. The last time I had looked, the street had held no menace. I had not looked for some time, and I had finished my third beer while Marty dressed. She does not hide when she dresses or undresses. She knows that there is beauty in the simple fact of a proud and matter-of-course nakedness. She understands that it is important that there be as few hidden and private corners between a man and a woman as possible. It must be as complete and simple as possible, and after the love it is important to lie side by side and smoke, to talk easily, to finally get up and dress quietly together.
Now I had my fourth beer and lay dressed on the bed while she sat in the bedroom chair. It was almost time for her to leave for work.
‘It’s easier to face something when you know what it is,’ Marty said.
‘No,’ I said, ‘its not easier at all, but it’s better. If I knew what it was I’d probably be more scared than I am, but I’d feel better about it.’
‘It’s a mess, baby,’ she agreed. She twirled her martini on the rocks with her finger. She licked the finger thoughtfully. ‘All you really know is that a lot of people have been knocked around, Jo-Jo Olsen has vanished, and someone is looking for him besides you.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I know a lot.’
She was right, of course. That was all I really knew. I had a lot of guesses and a lot of possible connections, but what she had summed up was all that I really knew. Except that my client was in hospital and that for fifty bucks I had a good chance of joining him and that I could not get out of it now with any self-respect. Not with my client almost beaten to death. I could not even get out of it without self-respect. I thought of nicer things.
Marty was wearing a slim grey jersey skirt that curved well and had those folds across the belly that a woman with hips but no belly always has in her skirt. She wore a black turtleneck silk jersey top without jewellery and a grey jersey jacket like the coat of a man’s suit but tailored for a woman. On the jacket she wore a silver, star-shaped abstract pin I had given her. Her long suede coat was over the chair. Most of her clothes are tailored and stylish.
When she had first come to New York to be an actress she had dressed casually; she really cared little for clothes. But casual clothes got more stares these days, and she lived all night with stares since taking the job in the girl-show at Monte’s Kat Klub. (She had had to face the truth that it was not going to be easy to become an actress.) Most of her clothes covered her from knee to throat for the same reason. She favoured high turtle-necks. She said that she could not stand to be exposed even an inch below her throat when she came off the stage, where her working clothes might have had trouble covering a three-year-old midget.
‘You can’t forget it? Walk away?’ she said.
‘No,’ I said.
‘The boy?’
‘Partly,’ I said. ‘I can’t leave a client who’s got more bandages than hair. It isn’t done.’
‘Do you think Jo-Jo killed this Driscoll girl?’
‘No, but Gazzo does,’ I said. ‘No, Gazzo doesn’t think that either. Gazzo doesn’t think, he learns. He’s a good cop. He’ll find Jo-Jo before he thinks about guilt.’
‘If anyone finds Jo-Jo,’ Marty said.
‘They’re still looking,’ I said. I drank my beer. ‘What I don’t figure is Stettin. How does he fit in? They took it all, but what did they want? The gun? The billy? The wallet? What?’
‘Maybe just time,’ Marty said. ‘Maybe whoever did it is just cautious and wanted Stettin out of the way for a time.’
‘She’s young, Marty, but she thinks. She is too young for me, really, and I often ask myself why. I mean, why do I want a woman so young? All right, there is a normal reason — she’s nubile as hell. But there is more. We worship the young in this country, and a lot of the world has begun to follow us. But what we worship isn’t really the young, or even being young. It’s youth — the hope and innocence and immortality of youth. We want to be young not because it is physically good to be young and virile, but because to be young is to not yet know that the world is transient, incomplete, and not often what we want it to be. You cease to be young that first instant when you know that nothing is complete and that nothing can last forever ‘ not even your own dreams and desires. To be young is to see the world through eyes that think that all is possible. And one way to feel young is to have a woman twenty years younger, more or less. Marty is my illusion of youth, and she’s a smart girl.
‘All right, someone wanted Stettin out of the way,’ I said. ‘For what? Just to knock over one apartment? To make a getaway? In the first place the burglary took place before the mugging. The getaway theory is out, Stettin saw nothing. He doesn’t know why he was hit.’
‘Baby, it could all be coincidence,’ Marty said. ‘All coincidence, or part coincidence. Maybe Stettin is the piece that doesn’t fit. The patrolman isn’t involved. Your Jo-Jo just saw the burglar and can place him on the scene of Tani’s murder. Or maybe all Jo-Jo saw was who mugged the policeman, and the murder isn’t part of it. Either murder.’ She chewed her fingernail. ‘What I don’t understand, Dan, is something else. Those two men who are following you. I mean, are they Pappas’ men, and if they are, why does he warn you and have you chased? They’re not just tailing you, honey, they’re after you, and Pappas could talk to you any time.’