I say “these boys” because Norman wasn’t alone: he had a friend who was sitting on the couch, transfixed before the dancing images on the television screen. Norman cleared his throat and his friend rose from behind his tray and turned to greet us. He stood an inch or so over six foot and seemed sturdily built; his hands were big and roped with veins and hung loose on the ends of long arms. His hair was blond and very thin on top, with heavy, over-compensating brown sideburns; his forehead was broad over small, wide-set dark eyes and a tiny nose and tiny mouth. The weakness of some of his features was offset by a jutting, Steve Canyon-like jaw. He was wearing a yellow cashmere sweater and mustard bell-bottoms. He said, “Who’s he?” His voice was equal parts sandpaper and sinus trouble.
Stefan Norman said, “His name is Mallory, he says. He came up from Port City to talk to me about something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Something, I said.” He looked at me. “This is Mr. Davis.”
“Hi,” I said.
Davis nodded. “Funny time to drop in on people.”
Norman said, “Go back and watch the game.”
The big man shrugged, in a pouty way, and sat back down to his tray of turkey and reglued his eyes to the football game.
Norman said, “Would you like a drink, Mr. Mallory?”
“I didn’t mean to interrupt your dinner.”
“That’s all right, I’d eaten all I cared to anyway. When you spend a lot of time preparing a meal, you become bored with the food even before you serve it.”
I followed him over to the bar and sat down. Even the damn stools were covered with brown leather and stuffed like Chesterfield sofas. Norman said, “What would you like?”
“Anything.”
“In the spirit of the great American sports fanatic, we’ve been drinking beer today. Well, malt liquor, really. How would that be?”
“Sure.”
He got behind the bar and fiddled for a while, as though he had to brew the stuff himself, then handed me a filled glass. I drank half of it in two gulps, watching him as he stayed back of the bar, looking me over, trying to figure what to make of me, I guess. He sipped his glass of malt liquor.
I said, finally, “Did you know a girl named Janet Taber?”
He shook his head no. “No. No, I’m sorry.”
“You might have known her as Janet Ferris.”
“Ferris?”
“Yes.”
“Ferris. No, but let me think. No, I don’t think so.”
“Think some more. She worked as a secretary for your cousin during his Senate campaign.”
“She worked for Richard?”
“Janet Ferris.”
“Janet Ferris. Hmmm. Now, wait, that wouldn’t be that little girl from Drake? She was Richard’s secretary, you say?”
“That’s right.”
“I do remember her, now. Attractive girl. Brunette, isn’t she?”
“Well, she was a blonde when I saw her, but that’s possible.”
“You did say was, didn’t you? And you did say did I know a girl named Janet Ferris? What does all this use of past tense mean?”
“She’s dead.”
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. She was such a nice, enthusiastic girl. A real help to Richard, if memory serves.”
“She was killed in an automobile accident. Tuesday night. It was in the paper yesterday.”
“I so seldom read the Port City Journal, living up here as I do.”
“It was in the Davenport paper, too.”
“At any rate, I didn’t notice it. But I am sorry to hear it.”
“The crash was on Colorado Hill.”
“Really. I don’t see yet, Mr. Mallory, how this concerns me.”
“Richard Norman was killed in a crash on Colorado Hill.”
“So have any number of people been, which is unfortunate, but what exactly has that to do with me?”
“Janet at one time worked for your cousin, agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“She died in a crash on Colorado Hill. So did your cousin.”
“And you see that as some kind of, what? Connective tissue? Linking thread?”
“You might say that.”
“You’re reading a lot into a simple coincidence.”
“Coincidence, maybe. Not so simple.”
He studied me for a moment. Then he said, “What exactly is your interest in all this, Mr. Mallory? Are you a detective, public or private?”
“I just knew Janet Taber, that’s all.”
“Then this is not a… an official investigation.”
“If the cops were asking the right questions, I wouldn’t have to.”
He frowned; it was a thought-out frown. His facial expressions seemed calculated for the benefit of whoever he was talking to, rather than out of any real feeling or emotion.
“I hope,” he said, “this conversation begins to gather significance soon, Mr. Mallory. Your ‘urgent business’ is proving to be the delusion of what appears to be a not terribly stable mind.”
“You’ve come this far….”
He sighed. “Continue.”
“Do you know a man named Washington?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure.”
“He’s a black man.”
“How bothersome for him.”
“He’s big, and he has one eye.”
“Is that right?”
“He’s worked for your uncle for ten years.”
“Has he?”
“He has.”
Stefan looked at me, blankly.
I said, “And he has a sister named Rita.”
“And how many eyes has she?”
“What are you up to, Norman?”
“I’m up to here with you, Mr. Mallory. I believe this conversation is over. Can you find the way out?”
“Thanks for the beer.”
I trudged down the long hall and out the door and into the elevator and before two minutes were up I was again with Rita in the Rambler, and two people and one object were never more out of place as were we in the parking lot.
“Well?” she said.
I grunted. “He admitted knowing Janet, but only slightly. He claimed he didn’t know she’d been killed in an accident. He also didn’t respond to the name Taber.”
“What do you make of that?”
“What do you make of this: he says he doesn’t know you or your brother.”
“You figure that adds up to something.”
“It adds up to somebody’s lying.”
“Who do you believe?”
“You.”
That surprised her. “Why me? Why not Norman?”
“First off, you’re better looking.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Second off, Norman isn’t going back to Port City with me to arrange a meeting with a certain one-eyed gentleman. Right now.”
SIXTEEN
Rita said, “I don’t know how I let you talk me into this,” and sat staring at the phone on the coffee table in front of her. The faces in the posters on my trailer walls seemed to stare with her.
I came over, bringing a cold bottle of Pabst and a glass and joined her on the couch. I filled the glass, pressed it into her hands. She sipped from it eagerly. I leaned back and took my time draining the bottle and several long minutes went by and I said, “Go ahead and call.”
“I don’t know.”
“What don’t you know?”
“This is such a shitty thing to do to my brother.”
We’d gone back and forth about this all the way down from the Quad Cities, and though I still hadn’t won her exactly, she at least had agreed to come down with me and put the scene of the seesaw argument on my home ground. Her position was based on the premise that her brother Harold was incapable of committing and/or aiding-abetting a misdeed such as the one I’d outlined concerning Janet Taber. When I presented the bus station incident as counterevidence, she claimed that that could have been some other six-four, one-eyed black guy; besides, her six-four, one-eyed black brother wouldn’t go ’round sporting a bare socket: he always wore an eyepatch.