Still.
“Lights up there are pretty bright,” I said. “You probably can’t see the audience very well.”
“Not that bright. I can make eye contact. I saw you sitting here, didn’t I? Why?”
“You come out and sit out front like this, sometimes?”
“You think you’re the only man in my life? But I’m not reduced to pushing the champagne, I’ll have you know.”
“Just wondered if you’ve seen this man,” I said, and I showed her the 1952 photo of Mac Wallace.
“Well, sure I have,” she said, as if speaking to the village idiot. “He’s been in here three or four times a week all month. He’s here right now.”
“Yeah?”
She nodded toward the back, where I had to swing all the way around in my seat to see.
And I saw, all right, saw him in one of the pink booths lining the rear wall — the dark hair, the black-rimmed glasses, five o’clock shadow on a handsome oval face. He wore a dark suit and a dark tie, very undertaker-looking, and he was pouring from a bottle of booze into a glass of ice.
“I didn’t see him come in,” I said.
“He was here before the show went on. I think maybe he was upstairs with one of the girls. One of the strippers who doesn’t get billing, and could use a little cash.”
“They like to be called exotics,” I said, which was as witty as I could manage feeling this poleaxed.
She got up and leaned over and gave me another almost kiss. “Honey, I got to get ready for my next set. You be good. And if you can’t be good...”
“Be careful,” I said, “yeah I know.”
I was facing the stage again. Checking my watch, I could see the show’s second half would start in about ten minutes. Wallace didn’t seem to be going anywhere, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I tipped a waitress a buck to show me to a table toward the back, putting his booth just behind me to my left. When the lights came down, I would be able to adjust my chair to keep track of him without being obvious.
I did just that.
The second act was strictly strippers, the three girls who didn’t receive name billing, then the cowgirl and finally Jada again, doing an even wilder routine. My attention was on Wallace, however, who was sitting sullenly working on his bottle, a pint of Jack Daniel’s. He put it away slowly, but he put it away.
When the lights came up at midnight, there was no last call, because public imbibing, even the BYOB variety, was illegal past the witching hour. The Colony did serve sandwiches and coffee, and about a quarter of the audience stayed for that. But Wallace just sat there sipping bourbon on ice (he’d gone through several setups), and I overheard two waitresses arguing over who would tell him to stop.
“Not me,” my tuxedoed dark-haired doll from earlier whispered. “He’s got a bad temper, particularly when he’s tight.”
The other waitress, a blonde, whispered, “He doesn’t look tight.”
“He’s one of those gentleman drunks. You know, he says excuse me after he belts you one?”
I had spent the second half of the show trying to figure out what my move was with Wallace. If he hadn’t been drunk, or anyway tight, I might have just approached him, introduced myself, and said I wanted to talk to him. Like I would with any witness or potential suspect. But I decided to try a less direct approach.
I got up, and was walking past his booth in the direction of the men’s room when I stopped and pointed at him in friendly way, smiling tentatively, and with a little slur in my voice said, “I know you, don’t I?”
He was tipsy, so I was tipsy.
“I don’t think so,” he said in a mellow baritone touched with a tinge of Texas, his eyes half-lidded, dark and cold behind the lenses of the dark-rimmed glasses. His face was smudgy with beard — five o’clock shadow turned midnight blue. There was a slight plumpness to his cheeks and under his dimpled chin, adding a touch of baby-face to his slightly dissipated leading-man looks.
I didn’t overplay. No need for a full-on drunk act. The Colony Club already had enough corny comics.
“Maybe I don’t,” I admitted, then pretended to think. “Or did I see you in the paper? While back. Is that it?”
A small smile appeared under a Roman nose — just a curl at either corner of his rather full, sensual mouth, showing a slice of white teeth, startlingly so against the dark need-to-shave.
“I know you, though,” he said.
“Yeah? So where do we know each other from?”
The teeth disappeared but the slight smile otherwise remained. He nodded next to him in the booth, motioning me to join him.
What the hell — I slid in. Plenty of room.
He said, with an even slighter slur than the one I’d already abandoned, “You’re Nate Heller.”
Shit.
“So where do we know each other from?” I repeated, somewhat lamely.
“I know you from magazines,” he said. “Life. Look. I even read about you when I was in college — true detective magazines.”
He was in his early forties and I was in my late fifties, so that was possible.
“That’s who I am all right,” I said pleasantly, as if we were still just a couple of guys striking up a conversation in a bar.
“‘Private Eye to the Stars,’” he said. “Isn’t that something? And you worked on Lindbergh, too. And the Harry Oakes case in Nassau.”
He really had read those true detective magazines. That slur had gone from his voice, but his talkativeness bore the fluidity and slight over-enunciation of somebody inebriated trying not to show it.
I snapped my fingers. “And that’s where I know you from! I read an article in one of those magazines, too — on that murder you committed. Five-year suspended sentence for first-degree murder. You must know people, Mr. Wallace.”
The smile disappeared. He didn’t frown, though — he had a soft-lipped, blank look that was much worse than a frown.
“Call me Mac,” he said, and offered his hand.
I shook it, and his grasp was rather limp, and clammy, like shaking hands with a corpse.
“And I’m Nate. A couple of guys who made it into the true detective mags, having a little impromptu reunion. Too bad they don’t serve liquor after midnight in this town.”
He shrugged. His tie was snugged up, giving him a formal look. What kind of guy sat drinking brown-bag bourbon all night and never loosened his damn tie?
“There’s a little joint down the street,” he said, “called the University Club that has a deal with the police. We could go down there.”
“Well, okay. I’m buyin’.”
“All right.”
On the way out, I asked the black-haired tuxedoed waitress to let Janet, that is, Jada, know that I had run into an old pal, and that I would catch up with her tomorrow night. I let Wallace lead the way out, since I was not anxious to get pushed down a flight stairs, maybe in a sudden fit of despondency.
On the street he paused to light up a cigarette in front of the closed liquor store. He asked me if I wanted one and I said no, that smoking was one bad habit I didn’t have. A group of four businessmen emerged from the Colony, sloshed, and staggered over to the Adolphus.
Then Wallace said, “I’m not stupid, Heller. Just be straight with me. Who knows? Maybe I’ll answer your questions.”
“Why not start with, where were you on May 22, 1962?”
He gave me a dead-eyed baby-face stare. “I should know that, should I? That’s just fixed in my memory, is it?”
“Here’s a hint — it’s the day after they dug up Henry Marshall.”
He turned toward the street, as if gazing at the fancy hotel across the way. His eyes had narrowed slightly. “So that’s what this is about? That Plett suicide?”