“The times I interviewed him, he was with a younger boy and a good-looking woman.”
His smile faded. “That’s what I’m talking about, man. He started running with this kid, and they were using a shitload of coke, and flashing it around like there was quantity. Then the chick starts hanging out with the two of them, and Eddie falls for her. I told him that the bitch had no interest in him or his friend, she just wanted to be around the drugs. It was so obvious.”
“What was her name again?”
“I have n c"››“o clue, man. Never wanted to know.”
“The boy?”
“Uh-uh.”
I was losing him. “You don’t know where I can reach any of them now, verify my facts?”
He snorted. “You ain’t verifyin’ nuthin’ with Eddie. He left town with those two a couple of weeks ago. Headed south is what he said, whatever that means. I don’t know where he is.”
I didn’t bother to try and shake his hand. Heidel was staring out the window as I left, smoking and squinting, as if straining to see his friend Redman walking down the street.
At the foot of the stairs I noticed the girl who had answered the door, sitting with her legs draped over the arm of a shredded easy chair. She was watching a game show on TV while listening to Joy Division on the stereo. I walked in and turned the amplifier’s volume knob down. She looked over at me, only mildly bothered.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hey.”
“John said it was all right to ask you a couple of questions.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m a reporter.” An image of Jimmy Olsen came to mind.
“What do you want to know?”
“I need to talk to Eddie Shultz and the girl he was going around with.”
“Eddie left town,” she said, looking out the corner of her eye at the interchangeable horse-toothed host on the television screen.
“I know. You wouldn’t happen to know where they went?”
“Uh-uh. He and Kimmy just split, with that Jimmy kid. A couple of weeks ago.”
“Kimmy.”
“Yeah. Kim Lazarus.”
“She a local?”
“I don’t know,” she said, anxiously shifting her gaze to the screen. “Why don’t you ask Redman’s old lady. They live in Prince Georges County someplace. I was there with him once.”
“You remember the address? The street?”
“Something ‘wood.’ Edgewood, Ledgewood, some s hit like that.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Eddie and John were pretty tight, weren’t they?”
“They were, until this Kimmy chick came around.”
I readjusted the volume on the stereo, walked to the front door, and stepped out. I breathed cool, fresh air as the funereal bass trailed behind.
ELEVEN
Marsha picked up and responded in her usual cheerful manner when I phoned her from my apartment.
“Nutty Nathan’s,” she nearly sang.
“Hi, Marsha. It’s Nick.”
“Nicky! Where are you?”
“Home. Taking the day off.”
“That’s nice,” she said.
“Marsha, I need a favor.”
“Sure, Nicky.”
“Go to service dispatch and borrow their Hanes Directory, you know, the ‘crisscross.’”
“Okay.”
“Now write down this name.” I spelled Shultz for her. “In P.G. County, locate all the Shultzes for me who live on streets that end with the word wood, like Dogwood Terrace or Edgewood Road. Know what I mean?”
“Yeah?”
“That’s it.”
“Okay, Nicky. Want me to call you back?”
“Please. You’ve got my number?”
“Yup. I won’t be long,” she promised, and hung up.
I pulled the metro phone books from the hall closet and laid them out on my desk. There were about forty total listings for the last name of Lazarus, and I began calling.
It was early afternoon and many people weren’t in, though I left messages on their machines. Those that were home generally muttered the “wrong number” response and hung up quickly; a couple of elderly folks were eager to talk, but these too were not the homes of Kim Lazarus.
Two hours later I dialed the final listing and received the same treatment. I called Marsha back.
“It’s Nick, Marsha.”
“I’ve been trying to get you for over an hour,” she scolded.
“What have you got?”
“I found a Joseph Shultz on Briarwood Terrace in Oxen Hill,” she said. “And there’s a Thomas and Maureen Shultz on Inglewood in Riverdale.”
“Give me both phone numbers and the addresses.” She read me the information. “I owe you lunch, Marsha. Thanks a million.”
When I dialed the second number and asked for Eddie, Maureen Shultz told me he wasn’t in. I identified myself as DeG kmyszarus, arcey from the Washington Times and explained the sympathetic portrait of Eddie and his friends that I was struggling to finish on deadline. Could I come over to the Shultz residence to get those last few details? Sure, she said.
I drove north over the district line into Maryland, then made a right on 410, which wound, primarily as East-West Highway, through Takoma Park, Chillum, Hyattsville, and Riverdale. Inglewood was on my detail map. It was a street of Cape Cods with large, treeless front lawns. A row of oaks ran down the government strip the length of the street.
Judging by the number of nonrecreational pickups parked in the driveways, this part of the neighborhood was largely blue-collar and middle-income at best. But the properties and houses had been functionally kept with that quiet pride peculiar to the working class.
I knocked on the door of the address Marsha had given me and a heavy-hipped woman answered. Her worn housedress and graying, closely cropped hair made her appear older than I would have guessed from her phone voice. She let me into a house that was visibly free of dirt but smelled of dogs. One of them, an old setter, moved his eyes and nothing else as I passed with his mistress into the kitchen.
I sat at a table that had a marbleized formica top. She made instant coffee while I looked around the room. The appliances were avocado green and the refrigerator had no kickplate.
Maureen Shultz was an outwardly pleasant woman with whom it was fairly comfortable to sit and share coffee and conversation. But she seemed to get more anxious as we talked. Soon it became clear that she was interviewing me, and had apparently agreed to my visit for that purpose. She was worried about her son.
“When was the last time you saw him?” she asked.
“About two weeks ago,” I lied. “He was with an attractive woman and a younger boy.”
“An attractive woman,” she sniffed. “I suppose she was, on the outside.” She took a sip of coffee, visibly embarrassed by her display of judgement or jealousy. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t know much about her. It was just a feeling I had.”
“I got the feeling they didn’t belong together, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“He brought her over here once. Eddie’s friends were always welcome here. But you’re right. She might not have come from money, but she had done some high living. Eddie hadn’t, not yet.”
“What gave you that impression?”
“Small things,” she said, sipping her coffee. “She was older, for one, and the etiquette she used at dinner. She commented on my china, which isn’t actually very good at all. But the point is, Eddie wouldn’t know china from paper plates.”
“What about her background?”
“She never said, exactly. Neither did Eddie. She had a slight Southern accent that became more pronounced as her guard began to drop, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes.”
“She mentioned that she had a little college and worked in stores and restaurants before she moved up here. She said that she liked to go to the seashore back home.”
All of that information was meaningless. Kim Lazarus could have been from any coastal state south of the Mason-Dixon line.
“I talked to John Heidel today,” I said, dropping a name that perked her up a bit. “I got the impression he might know more about the girl, but he wasn’t eager to talk.”