“I’m here, but it isn’t doing me any good, is it?”
“You give up too easy. What do I get out of this? And where are you coming from?”
“Mr. Wise hired me. I never met him until a few hours ago, when he sent some people to get me out of bed. He-”
“Well, at least I know you aren’t shitting me. That’s Abe all over. He’d never think of writing you a letter or calling you on the phone. So, he’s put you on the payroll. Good for you. Now, what’s my end?”
“What can I tell you, Mrs.-”
“Call me Paulette, for Christ’s sake! What does your mother call you?”
“Benny. I don’t have any money to give away, Paulette, not money that you’d call money. But I might be able to look into that Triumph business on the side. I know a few people in town. I can’t promise anything.”
“Hart’s not a bundle of joy to me these days, Benny. He’s more damned trouble than he’s worth. But, he’s mine. What am I going to do? I can’t let them send him to jail!”
“I’ll see what I can do. When can I see you?”
“Give me an hour to put my face on. You know where I live?”
“I’ve only got your telephone number. I heard that you used to live over the river in the States. When did you move back here?”
“Six months ago. I still don’t know what you’re after, Mr. Cooperman. I came back because after a lot of moving around, this is where I want to be. Besides, I’m getting to be of an age when it’s good to know where your doctor is when you want him and whether or not he can get you a hospital bed if you need one.”
“Are you in bad health, Paulette?”
“You’ve met Abe, haven’t you? Well, Abe has been bad for my nerves for forty years. And I was older than him when we met. I’m not getting any younger, Mr. Cooperman. But of course, you don’t mean to pry, do you?”
“I’m in a prying business, Paulette.” She laughed at that then gave me an address on Duke Street, not far from Montecello Park. I could walk there from my office in five minutes, if I didn’t run into too many people. I glanced at the clock. Why was it two hours earlier than I thought it should be? I should try to schedule a nap into my calendar for today.
I picked up the telephone again and did the same number I’d just done on Paulette with Wise’s second wife, Lily. She was more polite and cultured in her conversation, but she turned me down flat. She did it so well that it took me a moment to realize it. Lily had dealt with a lot of Fuller Brush people in her day. I had to hand it to her.
SIX
It was a big house with a catalpa tree on one side of the porch and a ginkgo tree on the other. There were no leaves on the trees to give me clues, but the long black pods on the one and a few brown fan-shaped leaves at the base of the other helped me make my diagnosis. I climbed up the broad front steps to the large, fan-lighted door. There was an old-fashioned doorbell with a hand-crank. I gave it a turn and heard a wheezy ring for my trouble.
I could see a figure moving from the front of the house towards me through the curtains that covered the glass panel in the front door. In the last century, when this house was built, nothing was as safe as houses. Glass in a door was as good as steel. Privacy was universally respected, except by professional and amateur burglars, which was to be expected. In general, a man’s home was his castle and a closed door was as good as a locked and bolted one.
“Are you Benny?” Paulette Staples asked as she opened the door. I nodded and she moved back so I could enter the hall. “Come in out of the cold,” she said. “I don’t know when this winter’s going to give up. Here, let me take those.” I shed my coat and hat and she hung them on the porcelain-tipped hooks of an ancient hall stand. I could imagine the original owner looking in the mirror, making last-minute alterations to his headgear before braving the cobblestone streets of the 1890s. As a matter of fact, I don’t think they were cobblestone: in Grantham they went from dirt to cement without any in-between stages.
Paulette led the way to the back of the house, where the old kitchen had been turned into a sitting-room. She had reserved, as I guessed, the front room for her sleeping arrangements. “I’ve got tenants upstairs,” she told me. I wasn’t sure whether that was a warning or just information. It was all grist to the mill; I simply filed it in an open and unlabelled dossier in my head. She indicated a comfortable wicker chair for me to sit on. I removed from it a cushion with a few months of accumulated cat hair and sat down.
Paulette Staples appeared to be a middle-aged woman with good skin and a look of having been around. Her clothes suggested that she wasn’t gadding about much any more. She was wearing a pant-suit with a flowered blouse. Her eyes were sharp and busy taking in the stranger. “Would you like a drink?” she asked, with an air of confidentiality and devilment.
“Why not?” I said. Why should I tell her that I hardly ever took a drink during the day. I didn’t have to make her a present of my whole life. She went to a cupboard, which hid a fair collection of bottles and asked, without turning: “Scotch?”
“Rye with ginger ale if you have it.”
“I thought you were a drinker,” she said, busying herself making comforting sounds with ice and glass. When she turned, she held two old-fashioned glasses and delivered one of them to me. Her eyes were a grey I hadn’t seen for some time. I could tell that she had been a great beauty in her day. Dave Rogers had said that she reminded him of Myrna Loy, the late and lamented Hollywood beauty queen. I wondered how many people would remember Myrna Loy’s side-glances that spoke volumes in the language of sex and humour.
“I don’t have to tell you that Abe isn’t my favourite character, do I?” She lit a cigarette, which seemed completely in character. She knew how to talk and time what she said with her smoking. It was an art and it was disappearing from the face of the earth. “I first met him when I worked at Diana Sweets.”
“I just came from there,” I said, trying to help break the ice with a fib.
“I was waiting on tables in those days and Abe was a young kid on the make. I knew what he wanted, but in those days that was what everybody wanted. I had this look or something. It wasn’t anything to do with me. I just had it and Abe wanted some.” She took a long sip of her drink, then set it down on a glass-topped coffee-table.
“When did you meet him? What was he like then?”
“I’m not good at dates, but this must have been in the fifties sometime. Say 1950 or ’51. He wasn’t twenty yet and I wasn’t much older. You knew I was older than Abe? Did he tell you?”
“I haven’t had a lot of conversation with him. I only met him this morning.”
“Ha! Yeah, you were telling me! Abe’s up with the birds. He doesn’t sleep more than four hours a night. Used to drive me crazy! Nobody but Abe is on the phone before five in the morning. He used to call me all hours of the night. He’ll probably call me after you leave. Does he have Mickey Armstrong following your every move?”
“That’s right.”
“I knew it. He always has a Mickey to do his legwork for him. In my day his name was … I forget. Billington! Christopher Billington! How do you like that for a tame thug?”
“So you met at the Di?” I hoped that she wouldn’t mind me attempting to stage-manage the interview.
“Yeah. I forget exactly the circumstances. He was always a good tipper and kept on teasing me about things. He was very glib and made with the fancy talk. I thought he was a salesman at first, but he was so young. I mean where did he get all that bright chatter from and him still in high school?”
“Did he try to take you out?”
“Sure. He was always trying to get me alone. But, in those days, ‘alone’ was the hardest thing for me to be. That’s why it doesn’t stick in my mind in particular.”