On Sunday night it was hard to sleep. People paraded through my mind, many people, all dead now. Ellen led the parade, of course, and too many people followed on her heels. There was Jack Garstein, a family man from Philadelphia. There was Scarpino and Johnny Carr and Leon Spiro and a tough little blonde with a slit throat. There was To Nat From Lou Baron and there was Porky, who hadn’t talked much. My private Hit Parade, which may or may not be a bad pun.
I got a wire Monday morning telling me what plane to meet. It was snowing out, big flakes that piled up in drifts. I ate breakfast and drove around in the Lincoln. I took a ride through the cemetery and managed to find Scarpino’s grave. I remembered him kissing his father and going for a final ride, the inevitable final ride. I remembered Scarpino’s face when he saw the grave, an open wound in the earth. And the dirt falling on him, and Tony and Angie and I walking silently back to the car.
Anne’s plane was supposed to land at nine. I was at the airport by eight-thirty. I had coffee and rolls in the airport coffee shop. Then I leafed through an early newspaper while I waited for the plane. It had stopped snowing sometime in the late afternoon and her plane was supposed to arrive on time. It did.
I tried to decide whether I felt like a man waiting for a mistress or a husband waiting for a wife. It was hard to say.
Anne came off the plane looking lovely. She’d had her hair done in New York and it was neat and pretty. She came to me with steady eyes and her skin rosy from the cold air. I kissed cool lips.
“I missed you,” I said.
“You did?”
And somehow I had run out of words. I took her hand and we walked over to the baggage counter to wait for her gray suitcase. We talked aimlessly. She told me New York had been fine, the weather had been good there. I asked her if she had bought many clothes. She said there hadn’t been much she had bought but that she had seen a few good shows and had gone to some nice restaurants. There had been a good cool jazz group at the Blind Spot, and she’d been there once or twice.
Her suitcase came. She traded a baggage check for it and I carried it. It wasn’t heavy. We walked to the door.
“Wait here,” I said. “I’ll bring the car around.”
“I can come with you.”
“The snow’s deep. Wait here.”
I brought the Lincoln over. I put her suitcase in the back. Anne got beside me in front. The conversation on the way to the Stennett was small talk. I asked her if she wanted to stop for a bite. She said she had had dinner on the plane and wasn’t hungry right now. I gave the Lincoln to the doorman and we went into the lobby and rode the elevator upstairs. I opened the door to the apartment and followed her inside. She made drinks while I hung up our coats.
We touched glasses and I sipped my drink. She was still drinking gin and tonic, even with snow on the ground.
“Annie...”
“Don’t call me Annie,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Not anymore,” she said. “That’s over now.”
Her voice was very odd. I was missing something and I wasn’t sure what it was. I offered her a cigarette. She shook her head. I took one for myself and lighted it with my To Nat From Tony lighter.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll bite. What do I call you?”
“Miss Bishop.”
“Isn’t that kind of formal?”
“You call me Miss Bishop,” she said. “And I’ll call you Mr. Barshter.”
18
“It was only a matter of time,” she said. “I knew there was something to look for, some kind of secret. You certainly weren’t Nat Crowley. There were too many things out of line, too many inconsistencies. It was just a question of knowing what to look for and where to look.”
Black hair, all neat, every strand in place. Blue eyes. Now a very icy blue.
“You were never Nat Crowley from Miami. And you weren’t a racket type, not from the start. You were feeling your way. And gradually you grew into yourself, didn’t you? It was something to watch. You got harder and tougher until you turned into Nat Crowley. And by then I didn’t even like you anymore, Nat. I mean Don, don’t I? Is that what they called you? Don?”
“I don’t remember. It’s been a long time.”
She was smiling. “Then I’ll stick to Mr. Barshter. It’s easier, I suppose. It keeps everything on a businesslike plane.”
“How did you find out?”
She ignored the question. “I wasn’t even trying at first. I told you not to tell me too much. Do you remember? I knew there was something to look for and I didn’t want to find it. I thought we could have something nice. I thought you could live your life and I could live my life and the two of us could build a nice scene between us. Something easy. Something that let me be me.”
I put down my drink without finishing it. I put out my cigarette in an ashtray.
“You wouldn’t let it stay that way, Nat. You see what I mean? I can’t help calling you Nat — you grew into yourself that completely. And you had to make me fit the new pattern. You had to get the right hold on me. You never should have made me come to Vegas with you. That was a big mistake. It made me hate you.”
I didn’t say anything. She was talking calmly, levelly. Her eyes had gone an even icier shade of blue, or maybe it was my imagination.
“From there on I was looking. I noticed that drunk bothering you in the casino at the High Rise. I noticed how you sent a guard chasing after him. I was awake when he came back to report like a good little soldier. I heard the drunk’s name and address.”
“And it was my home town.”
“It was your home town,” she said. “We left Vegas the next day and I knew this Albert Durkinsen was something out of the past, something before Nat Crowley. I let it go for a while. I tried to figure out a little more — maybe I waited for you to turn back into a human being again. I don’t know. Then I flew to New York.”
“And went to my home town?”
“Eventually. Not at first — first I went through back issues of the New York Times looking for Durkinsen, which didn’t do anything for me. Then I tried Nathaniel Crowley and drew the same blank. But I didn’t expect to get anything that way. I took a train for your Connecticut town and went through the back issues of the newspaper there. I started two weeks after I met you in Buffalo and worked my way back. It wasn’t hard to find you, Nat. You were all over the front pages. You’re a local celebrity. You murdered your wife and stuffed her in a closet. That’s big news.”
I looked down at my hands. My fingers weren’t even shaking. I was calmer than I thought possible.
“Then I went back to New York. I found a lawyer, a very respectable lawyer. I left a letter with him. Know what it said?”
“I can guess.”
“I’ll save you the trouble. I’m supposed to call him once a day. When I don’t, he mails out a few copies of that letter. One goes to the police, in Buffalo. Another goes to your home town police. A third goes to the FBI. That’s my own personal insurance policy, Nat. But you know all about insurance, don’t you?”
I didn’t answer her.
“That leaves you sitting on a hot seat,” she continued. “You can get nailed even if you don’t kill me. All I have to do is get killed by a car on my way across the street. I can catch pneumonia and die of it and when I don’t call that lawyer — then off go my letters. If anything happens to me, Nat, the roof falls in on you.”
I lighted another cigarette. “What’s the pitch? Blackmail?”
“Extortion.”
“There’s a difference?”
“It’s only blackmail if I send you a threatening letter. It’s a technical difference, that’s all. Extortion carries a lighter sentence.” The smile was back again. “And a much lighter sentence than murder.”