Heslip had fallen asleep in his rented Pinto outside 428 Madison Street, the address he had coerced out of the terrified Clifford Brown. He hadn’t wanted to fall asleep, but here it was the wee hours of Friday morning and his head hadn’t hit a pillow since those few hours in Fleur Lisette’s bed some forty-eight hours back.
Not that he would miss anything. Willie Brown wasn’t about to be home during the hours from dusk to dawn, if then: the neighbors had confirmed what Ethel’s husband had suggested with his remark about pimps and drug pushers. Johnny Mack would be the pimp in question; Willie, the drug pusher. Johnny Mack was intermittently there — the same could be said of Willie — but Verna wasn’t. And no baby had been seen.
He could have gone looking, but he didn’t know this town. Didn’t have a photo of Verna, not even a good description of Johnny Mack. This address was all he had, so he had to make this address work for him. Couldn’t even call DKA, find out how the hearings were going. Couldn’t call Corinne except at work, if there...
And he fell asleep, even freezing his butt off because he couldn’t chance a telltale exhaust that would alert careful dope dealer eyes. People who dealt in dope had careful eyes, or they passed quickly from the street scene to prison, or to the morgue, or into the sad hollow dreams they sold to the unwary.
Twenty-Six
When the phone rang at seven o’clock on Friday morning, Corinne Jones was sitting on the edge of her bed and marveling at what a good night’s sleep she’d had once she knew Bart hadn’t been fooling around with that topless bitch back in New Orleans. But the phone started it up again. Who called you at seven in the morning? The breather with another serving of filth? Or maybe just Toni to ask if she could open the office again.
“Ah... is this here... um... Corinne Jones?”
Unknown voice. Female. Southern Black.
“Yes. Speaking.”
“Your... um... Mr. Heslip gave me this number, said I could reach you evenings...”
“This is morning,” snapped Corinne. If Bart had given that topless bitch her unlisted home phone number...
“This here is an emergency...” The voice paused breathily but it was the breathlessness of extra poundage, not of menace. “Thing is, I done hear from my husband after all these years, an’...”
Damn the woman! But at least, with a husband, it wasn’t about to be that topless bitch.
“You’ll have to tell me who your husband is — and who you are.”
“Oh! Emmalina Rounds. It’s my little girl that—”
“Mrs. Rounds! Yes! Bart said... oh, and you’ve heard from your husband in New Orleans?”
“Uh... I guess ex-husband, cause he’s done remarried a long time ago. Thing is, four men come to see him an’ wanted Verna’s address. He wouldn’t give it to ’em, so they started to beat on him. He was callin me from the hospital, had some busted ribs an’ all, but he knocked one of ’em out so the police, they got him. An’ he didn’t tell ’em nothin bout where my Verna is at.”
“That’s wonderful, Mrs. Rounds.”
“Thing is, he wanted to get word to Mr. Heslip that there was men after my Verna. He had it wrong about Mr. Heslip, thought he was fum some gover’mint agency...”
They talked a little longer and hung up. Corinne sat, phone in hand, trying to think of what to do. She had no idea of how to reach Bart. He already knew other men were after Verna, but he didn’t know they were going for violence. What frightened her was that her Bart was the kind who would get in their way rather than let them do anything to the little former file clerk.
DKA. She had to let Giselle know, they would have some ideas. But she couldn’t call them because the phone was bugged. Maybe her phone was bugged too. Maybe even the office phone. Maybe...
The trouble was, you knew one phone was bugged, actually bugged like on TV or during Watergate, and all of a sudden you were sure every phone in the world was bugged. But if she went down the hall and used the Miltons’ phone...
Giselle Marc was supposed to be up at 7 A.M. herself so Dan Kearny could pick her up out front on his way through from Lafayette. But Giselle was a slow starter, so the phone ringing at 7:45 caught her slopping around the bedroom in pajamas and thinking that when you cut your foot on the shag mg, it was time to vacuum.
“Yes, Ms. Marc,” said a clipped vaguely familiar female voice, “This is ACT calling.”
“ACT?” What was this, a joke?
“American Conservatory Theater. Sony to phone you so early, but we do have your name on file and we are auditioning for Macbeth at 10 A.M. and—”
“Macbeth?”
“I do have the right Giselle Marc, do I not? You are familiar with the words of the Bard?”
“Of course, but—”
“We are casting the three witches on the moor.” The voice was suddenly emoting over the phone. “ ‘When shall we three meet again’...”
“ ‘In thunder, lightning, or in rain’ ” Giselle quoted back. She had it now. Corinne, doing a great job setting up a meeting in case tape recorders were turning in some anonymous little room. She and Corinne and Larry Ballard on a fog-swept corner outside the hospital where Bart had just come out of a seventy-two-hour coma, quoting that line to one another. “I’m delighted at the opportunity. I will be at the Sutter Street casting office as soon as I can.”
“We’ll look forward to seeing you.”
As they hung up, Larry Ballard was talking from a pay phone in Sacramento with Dan Kearny on a pay phone in Lafayette, and had just gotten the low-down on the bugged office and all the rest. The phone was just down the block from Madeline Westfield’s apartment, where he could keep a watch on the bus stop she’d likely wait at. He’d just told Kearny about her.
“Sounds like just a casual lay to me,” said Kearny thoughtfully. “If you laid all the cheating husbands end-to-end—”
“It wasn’t like that, Dan. He sure wasn’t any Casanova to her last night. More like a mailman delivering a letter.”
“Probably just normal civil service enthusiasm for his job,” said Kearny. “But try to get a run-down on her anyway. So far we don’t have anything suggesting any other irregularities in Greenly’s life, and Monday is it for us.”
Ballard waved sweetly to the woman standing on one foot first and then the other outside the booth. To hell with her, he was here first. He said to Kearny, “I can try to bust his home phone bill to get a run-down on his long-distance calls, but I don’t know the billing cycle here so the phone company might not have it until the end of the month. If he’s on the take, it isn’t showing up in the normal circles of his life. I asked retail credit to give me a full profile, not just a rating, and should get that today. But beyond that...”
“As a last resort try to bust his bank account with the state investigator gag. If it backfires, DKA’ll pick up your bail.”
“Thanks a lot,” said Ballard drily. “How’s Bart doing?”
“Nobody knows. He’s flying blind, we don’t even have a contact number on him.”
The way he likes it, thought Ballard as he hung up. He stepped out of the booth, put a hand on each of the irate woman’s shoulders, kissed her on the cheek, and beamed, “I’m engaged!” and started off down the street. When he looked back, the woman waved to him with a black-gloved hand. How often, he thought, did you get a chance to make someone’s day for them like that?