“Wyandotte is the optimum location for our new lab, housing, and an eventual production plant and tank farm. We needed the usual zoning variances, permits, easements across public land, new roads, preferential rates for water and waste. The town is conservative, anti-industry and development, likes to hold public hearings which we preferred to avoid at this time.”
“Especially since you probably didn’t want to mention the future production plant and tank farm at this time,” I said.
“Exactly,” Kincaid said, missing my sarcasm. “Kezar was furnished the funds to get what we needed from the proper officials without public fuss. He contacted Ramapo Construction, all permissions were secured, the work is on schedule.”
“Some bought officials, a little Mafia know-how. All in a day’s work, everyone happy. Except the people of Wyandotte.”
“My company tells me what it wants done, I get it done. How Kezar accomplished it, I don’t want to know. The money we gave Kezar is legally accounted for. What Ramapo did, I don’t know.”
“Pretty,” I said.
“Naturally, I never talked to you. Now, is that all?”
“Would you have had people keeping an eye on Kezar? Men with guns?”
“I never found that necessary.”
He had the humor of an unimaginative commissar, and about the same code. No right or wrong, just necessary and unnecessary. But I was getting a hunch about those men in brown suits hovering around Irving Kezar. Kincaid could be closer to trouble than he or his company guessed.
“Did a Sid Meyer ever contact you?”
“You said no names, Mr. Fortune.”
“Meyer isn’t exactly involved in your business.”
He flicked his intercom. “Check the telephone and correspondence record for a Sid Meyer.” He read a few papers while we waited. The intercom buzzed, he listened, sat back. “A Sid Meyer did call from New York six months ago. He wanted me, wouldn’t say why, so I never spoke to him.”
“Thanks.” I got up, looked out his windows. “I’ll bet this town was as pretty as Wyandotte, New Jersey, once.”
Kincaid didn’t even blink. I don’t suppose he got my meaning at all. Why should he? He had a business to make bigger.
I called a taxi from the Caxton offices, and made the last jet to New York. I got home to my five cold rooms late and tired, and went to bed.
I slept almost beyond noon, and took a cab to Hal Wood’s office. He was having lunch at his drawing board, had his ruddy color back, and was happy to see me. He got me a cup of coffee.
“It’s good to see you okay again,” he said. “I really thought I’d jinxed you, too, when we heard that shooting from the street.”
“The troops arrived in the nick of time,” I said. “They keeping you good and busy? You coming out of it?”
“We’ve expanded, and I guess I’m beginning to forget. Trying to, anyway. I guess you have to, Dan, like you said.” But he stared into his coffee as if my coming there hadn’t helped him much. “I wouldn’t like your work, you have to forget too much.”
“Not as close, you shut it out,” I said. “No girl yet?”
“My fatal charm? No, the fatal part is too literal just now,” he said, his free hand jerking. “Is there something new?”
“Maybe. When you were tailing Diana and Pappas, did you ever see Dunlap with Charley Albano? Or spot some men hanging around and watching? Strangers? Maybe in brown suits?”
He pondered. “No, I only saw Dunlap that once, and alone. I’m not sure if Albano or Pappas could have been up in that apartment with Diana at the time, or not. But,” he looked up, “maybe I saw those strangers once or so. Just sort of standing outside.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks for the coffee.”
“You’re not sure that Bagnio killed them, Dan?”
“Maybe not alone. Some things still bother me.”
The strain was back in his face. “How can I forget if it goes on and on?” He looked at me, the intensity in his eyes again. “I’ve been painting, Dan. Real good work, I think. A whole new style. Powerful, really. Sometimes-” he trailed off, then smiled, eager, “sometimes I don’t understand it myself, my work, but it’s good. Very good. All of
… this in it maybe. Diana. Me… I know it’s good. Some good out of… this.”
“Keep at it,” I said.
A lame exit line, but what else was there? Some good out of it all for Hal. I hoped so. I’d shaken him once more, couldn’t let him alone. The bulldog detective. Damn!
I rented a car from my friend who winked at a one-arm driver, and drove out to Wyandotte, New Jersey. Lawrence Dunlap wasn’t at his office once again-busy with his official duties on the Wyandotte Council, no doubt.
Dunlap’s big brick mansion was as ugly in the spring sun as it had been in the February rain. The blue Cadillac was in the garage, with the red Mercedes. I parked under the porte-cochere, the same elderly housekeeper let me in. The Dunlaps were at lunch this time, on the broad brick terrace with the sweeping view of river and hills. Green and lush and natural, the view. For how long after the laboratories and tank farms came?
“Mr. Fortune,” Dunlap came forward, hand out. “I’m glad to see you recovered.”
“We both are,” Harriet Dunlap said, smiled.
“Maybe you won’t be,” I said.
Dunlap stopped moving toward me. The wife looked confused, as much from my bad manners in not taking Dunlap’s proffered hand as from my antagonism. Dunlap let his hand drop. It twitched. The strain around his handsome eyes deepened in alarm.
“Mrs. Dunlap,” I said, “when we first met, I asked your husband about a man-Sid Meyer. He denied knowing the name, but I got the feeling it meant something to you. Sid Meyer?”
“No!” Dunlap snapped, but his voice was high, panicky.
Harriet Dunlap was mainline, sheltered, but she was no fool. Those shrewd ancestors were in her, and she knew panic when she heard it, trouble when she saw it. She also knew when something was going on she didn’t know about. Or she knew how to act as if she didn’t know about it.
“Meyer I don’t know,” she said. “What is this about?”
“Fortune, you-” Dunlap began.
I said, “It’s about Ultra-Violet Controls and Ramapo Construction; about a big laboratory, a housing tract, and soon a production plant and tank farm in a town that doesn’t want any of it. About Irving Kezar, Charley Albano, and your husband. A big company, the Mafia, wily operators, and a small city. Zoning laws that got changed, permits given, arrangements made under the table, public hearings never held, because your husband got paid.”
“Get out of here, Fortune!” Dunlap said, white-faced.
“I’ll make it simpler,” I said. “Caxton Industries wanted to move into Wyandotte. Irving Kezar was given money to find a way without public trouble. Kezar found your husband, Council Chairman Lawrence Dunlap of the Yale Club. Together, they fixed everything for Caxton to move in, legally but very quietly, no public hearings. I expect they ran into some opposition, so Kezar brought Ramapo and Charley Albano in to add muscle. What Kezar couldn’t buy, and your husband couldn’t persuade or influence, Charley Albano could terrorize. A smooth team, job done, and everyone got paid.”
By now, Lawrence Dunlap wasn’t listening to me any more. He knew it all anyway. He was watching his wife.
“Harriet,” he began.
“Here?” she said. “How? What have you gotten into, Lawrence? People like that? Corruption? Us? Why, Lawrence?”
“Why?” he said, reddened. “You just said it, Harriet. Us! The family, the big house. Money, that’s why.”
“Money?” She said the word as if she didn’t quite know what it meant. I guessed that there was a lot of the reason. “But, we have money. All we need. My family-”
“Your family has money, I don’t! Not the kind we need to live. You need,” Dunlap said. He sat down suddenly. “We needed more, Harriet. I had a tip on a stock, a bonanza. I invested all I had, a lot I didn’t have, and the stock went down. I had to do something. I knew Irving Kezar from the office, the business parties. I went to him. He helped some, for a time, but not enough. Then he came to me about Ultra-Violet.”