Lemon steered Ben into another bar. This one was smaller and darker, with booths in the back. They sat in one of the booths and Lemon leaned close to Ben. “I had to know fast, kid. Like they say, time is of the essence — whatever that means. Now I owe you a drink.”
The effect of the judo blow had made Ben’s thinking fuzzy. “To hell with you,” he said thickly.
“I took the dough in case somebody give you a fast roll before you come out of it, kid. I couldn’t stick too close in case a cop should get interested. Okay, your story stands up. You fly airplanes. If you’d showed me the identification, you wouldn’t have a headache.”
“I can still call the police.”
“What’s the point? What do you prove? Assault? I didn’t even mark you. Robbery? I didn’t take a dime. Here comes your drink, kid. That’ll make you feel better.”
“Everybody walked right by.”
“This town! You can die on the street. Who cares? Anyway, I’ve got it figured now — what the cops wanted. Davis wanted to know if MacLane, before he got himself killed, ever said anything that would give Davis a lead on where the blonde went to. Give him any story?”
“No.”
“Which could mean yes. You’re hard to get along with,” Lemon said. “Every smart apple in town is laughing himself sick over the boner Gorman pulled. He doesn’t know it, maybe, or maybe he does, but he’s washed up even if he tags the dolly before Davis does. People have lost respect. His money is still talking, but if he tries to come back and pick up where he left off, everybody working with him will start crossing him. You got to have respect. As long as he’s all done anyway, my people would like him done up toasty brown. What they call the Ossining tint. That’s easier than trying to convince him he’s all through.”
“Why don’t you just get up and go?”
“Feeling better, I see. Well, we’ll be in touch.”
Lemon stood up, rumpled Ben’s hair and walked out. His big body filled the doorway and then he was gone. Ben carried his drink carefully up to the bar and sat on a stool, massaging the side of his throat. He ordered another drink and went into the men’s room and splashed his face with cold water. He was co-ordinating better. He wondered if he ought to report Lemon to Davis. But it wasn’t the sort of information that would help Davis.
Back at the bar again, he began to think about the girl. Three groups wanted her. They all wanted her badly. If her luck was bad, somebody loyal to Gorman would find her. He thought how, when he started to hide, he’d have an easier time of it. Nobody would be looking as hard for him. The memory of the people who had walked by him, who had looked and who had not stopped, was a new kind of nightmare. It could have happened to the girl like that. They could have dropped her on the stairs going down to the subway — where she was last seen — and the busy feet would go by, making a careful circle around her. You went around hoping the world was a warm place, hoping for approval and attention and love, but it was a cold place.
Something began to bother him — memories and impressions too faint to grasp. It was something Willsie had said, and something Dick MacLane had said a long time ago about a cold place. It was someplace where Dick had had to wrap his feet in blankets, and the cold had stiffened the oil in the typewriter so that the keys kept sticking. Ben pressed his knuckles hard against his forehead and tried to remember, but he couldn’t.
He paid and went out and found a drugstore and then dialed Willsie. When the familiar voice was on the other end of the line Ben said, “This may sound a little stupid, Mr. Willsie, but I got to thinking — about where she could go. And I can remember something about Dick working somewhere where it was cold. It came into the conversation once when we were talking about winterized equipment, and Dick spoke about wishing they’d make a winterized typewriter.”
“I know. I’ve told Lieutenant Davis about that, Ben, but I didn’t have enough to go on. When Dick got stuck on something, he’d get permission to take a couple of days off to work on it. He usually came back with something that pleased everybody. I know he went out of town, but he’d never tell me where he was going. He said it would be too easy to get in touch with him and give him bad ideas that would spoil his good ones. He was secretive about it. Once, in the winter, he came back with a bad cold and said the place was unheated. I’ve told Lieutenant Davis all that, but it wasn’t enough to work on.”
“I’m sorry I bothered you. I thought it might be worth something.”
“Davis thought so too, but it turned out to be a dead end. If you get any more ideas, Ben, don’t hesitate to call.”
Ben hung up. The pulsing in his head had settled down to a slow, rhythmic ache. He sat at the drugstore counter and asked for a Bromo. He looked across at himself in the mirror behind the counter. He saw his familiar bland mask, the quiet and ordinary face behind which he had always hidden, thinking of it in other years that it could be a bit leaner, a bit more vital and less placid.
MacLane had, with his irony, made the aircraft feel alien under his hands. And now the face seemed alien also. MacLane had once said, “A face is merely the front side of the head; on it is an arrangement of features that are designed for function instead of beauty. And by the size and placement of the features, we remember the identity of the animal. If a female animal has the size and placement of facial features that are fashionable in our era, Benny, we call her beautiful.”
Ben looked at himself: a two-legged animal sitting on its rump, torso erect, behind a counter, being served by other weary two-legged animals. He paid and left the drugstore, thinking of something else MacLane had said: “Philosophy is an attempt to answer two simple questions, Benny. Who am I? — What am I doing here?”
He had had his own good answers and now they were gone and there was no identity and no purpose. He walked slowly, forcing his mind back to the problem of Helen, knowing that the problem was in essence a sort of life raft. If he could keep thinking of her, then he wouldn’t have to think about himself.
Okay, think constructively, Benjamin Morrow. Dick had a place where he went. Make some assumptions. Helen knew about the place. He always went back to the same place. In order to have a place, there had to be a transfer of funds, for either rent or purchase. Payments are made by check. Banks have records. Davis, in his thoroughness, would have checked that aspect. Dead end.
Yet, was it completely a dead end? Dick had been secretive about his hideout. There was a chance that it had been rented or purchased under some other name — or, for secrecy’s sake, maybe Dick had paid cash. In that case, how could it be traced?
He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. A stout woman bumped into him, muttered angrily and went on. He walked ahead again, slowly. That night in the Tokyo Club, MacLane had said, “Men, we’re self-supporting. We pay income tax on base pay, right? There’re nine of us here. So they clip eight of us to pay the base pay of the other guy. Who is it? Which one of us is a leech being supported by the other eight? I argued this out with my tax guy. He’s a humorless little wretch named Freimak. Not that I make big enough money to need him, but figures confuse me. I sell articles to magazines, and Helen gets her modeling fees. Anyhow, Freimak says I’ve got the wrong slant.”
Ben repeated the name to himself: Fraymack. At first it sounded correct, but after a few repetitions it began to sound wrong, a word without meaning. It was like when he was a kid, saying his own name over and over until it became a series of grotesque sounds.
The information was too vague to check with Willsie. Again he found a telephone booth, with the fat directories hinged to the slanting rack. Though he tried various spellings, he could not find a name that seemed correct until he looked in the classified directory under Accountants. There he found an Anton E. Freimak with offices at a West 43d Street address. He called the number but, as he had expected, the phone wasn’t answered. The office would be closed on Saturday.