“Mr. Norman asked me,” he said, “to convey an apology to you for his abrupt show of bad manners. He said he enjoyed speaking with you, and hopes you aren’t offended.”
“Hardly. I was intruding.”
“That,” he said, sipping his coffee like a lady at a tea, “would seem as good a place as any to begin.”
I wasn’t fooled by any of this: I knew full well any moment he’d start pulling the arms and legs off me.
Rita said, “He was supposed to wait in the car, Harold, I was going to tell you…”
“That’s beside the point,” he told her. “And I’m not at all interested in how he got you talked into smuggling him in here. I’m sure it took some nice footwork, but whatever it took, done is done, you brought him here and here he is.” He turned back to me. “Now, do you mind telling me why you’re sticking your nose in around here?”
I said I didn’t mind at all. I told him how two days ago I’d seen him giving Janet Taber a very rough time in a bus station. I told him how that same night I saw her dead inside a car at the bottom of Colorado Hill. That she was supposed to be drunk-driving, only she didn’t drink, and she was supposed to have died in the crash, but her neck was broken like maybe a couple big hands did it. That that was when I started sticking in my nose, and I found out she used to work for a guy named Richard Norman. Who also died in a car crash out at Colorado Hill. Son of that guy upstairs in the bed. Who a certain Harold Washington worked for.
“Have you noticed yet,” I said, “that there’re a few connections between these people and incidents?”
“I see the connections,” Washington said. “I just don’t see yours.”
“My connection is I liked Janet Taber.”
“Knew her well, did you?”
“No. Somebody denied me that chance.”
“And coming around here bothering Simon Norman is supposed to lead you to the somebody who did that.”
“Maybe. The thought has crossed my mind that I’m talking to that very somebody right now.”
Rita shifted nervously next to me.
“Mr. Mallory…” Washington began.
“Call me Mal. Do you prefer Harold or Harry? I hear some of your pals call you Eyewash.”
“You’ve got balls, I’ll give you that much. Brains, that I’m not so sure about. Do you really think I broke Janet Taber’s neck?”
“You tell me.”
“I didn’t. Now ask me if I think it was a bad thing, her getting killed. Because I’ll tell you it was a good thing.”
“People getting killed is rarely a good thing.”
He had something prepared for me, I could see it in his eye, something gone over in his mind he was now going to get to let loose.
He said, “This woman, this woman you knew for minutes, this woman whose posthumous honor you’re out to protect, was a back-stabbing, self-serving, blackmailing bitch, and you better know that, know it well, before you waste any more time on her.”
Rita said, “Hey, come on, brother, this dead chick was all of that? You’re laying it on a little heavy, aren’t you?”
“The only way you’d believe me,” he said to both of us, “is if I told you, in detail, just what she was trying to put over on Mr. Norman. And obviously, since I wanted to see her kept quiet, I’m not about to pass on to you the things that died with her.”
Rita said, her voice quiet, hurt. “You got motive written all over you, Harold. No wonder Mal thinks you might’ve done it.”
I said, “He knows I’ve got him ruled out, Rita.”
Washington smiled and Rita said, “Oh?”
“Sure,” I said. “If he was going to kill Janet Taber, he wouldn’t have gone into that tough guy routine at the bus station. He wanted to scare her off, not kill her off. When that didn’t work, it was too late to kill her, if he’d wanted to, after the public scene he’d just pulled.”
“Balls and brains,” Washington said. “You’re right. I took off my eyepatch and went down there hoping to rattle her, scare her off. I didn’t know there’d be a white knight around.”
That’s what his sister called me earlier.
I pointed a finger at the ceiling. “All of that just to protect that old man from something?”
He nodded. “That was the reason, and you’re right again, he is an old man, a sad, sick old man. Who’s paid and repaid and then paid some more for whatever wrongs he might’ve done.”
“You can defend him. You’re paid to.”
“Come off it, Mallory. You saw him. Talked to him. Did you find him malicious? A ghoul? Did you want to strangle him with your bare hands?”
“Of course not.”
He leaned forward in the chair and shook a thick finger at me. “He’s been good to me. I’ve been with him ten years, and he’s helped me help myself, help my family. How do you think Rita got her education? Ask her about the two brothers of ours that are in college right now, and on whose money. How do you think I came from ghetto and gang-fights to those books over on the wall? I wasn’t even able to speak proper English before I came to him. He did it for me.”
“What about those other people, years ago? Ones he didn’t help?”
“Look, I happen to know that he personally has reimbursed as many families as he’s been able to locate. His records were destroyed while he was in prison back in the forties, but by searching his memory and from people who contacted him, he was able to pay back much of what he took.”
“And did he pay them interest? Did he give them a share of what he made investing their money?”
“I don’t know why I’m even bothering with you, Mallory. You’re just like everybody else, you probably don’t even realize that a good deal of the earnings from Mr. Norman’s various business holdings are turned over to cancer research-cancer and other diseases.”
“A function of the Norman Fund, I assume?”
“Yes, but none of this has any relevance to your dead Janet Taber.”
“Did the Fund give a research grant to Phil Taber?”
“Who?”
“My dead Janet Taber’s husband. Perhaps it was a grant for research into the drug problem, since he’s a doper himself. I saw him yesterday. Somebody rushed him into Port City, paid him at least five thousand dollars, and I suppose rushed him back out by now.”
“What? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Now you’re starting the I-don’t-know-what-you’re-talking-about-routine. Stefan Norman pulled it on me this afternoon.”
“What?”
“He denied knowing anything about Janet Taber, except that a long time ago she worked for Richard Norman. And he’d never heard of Phil Taber, either, and you know what else? He denied knowing you. Why would he do that?”
Washington got up from his chair and said, “Probably because he’s smarter than I am. He had the good sense not to encourage you. And I think I will, if it’s not already too late, learn from Stefan’s example, and ask you to leave. And take my sister with you, will you?”
TWENTY
I sneaked into my bedroom and reached across Rita, who was sleeping on her stomach in my bed, and groped around on the nightstand for a roll of Lifesavers. I brushed against her on the return trip and she shifted over on her back and let out a sexy little grunt and looked up at me, a bit shyly, pulled the sheet up to mostly cover her breasts and said, “… uh… haven’t you been to sleep yet?”
Though the room was dark, my eyes were accustomed to it after an hour of insomnia and I could make her out very well. Her cocoa skin looked satin smooth, like skin in a retouched photo.
“Didn’t mean to wake you,” I said. A little embarrassed to be intruding on her privacy; and, as I was in nothing but my shorts, a little embarrassed, period.