Costa eyed me. “What’s on your mind, baby?”
“How come you just happened by the apartment tonight?”
Costa smiled. “I ever need a shamus, I’ll call you. Okay, we come in every Friday. I got old buddies, a club like. Traffic is light because of the snow starting, and Strega makes good time. We’re early, so why not talk business? I got the idea today, and when I get an idea, I move. Time’s all we got in this world.”
It could be true, or it could be a fast story to cover what he would have talked about if I hadn’t been there.
“You said you didn’t know Paul Baron?”
“Only his name and rep.” “You’re covered for Wednesday night, of course.”
“At my place past five A.M. Solid citizens saw me.”
“That’s not much alibi, with back doors and all.”
“Do I need an alibi, baby?”
“That depends on what else is dug up on Baron’s killing.”
Costa smiled. “You let me know when I need more.”
“I will,” I said. “How well did you know Carla Devine?” “Never heard of her. But I heard of Leo Zar.”
Strega spoke from the front seat, “Leo’s bad, real bad.”
It was the first time I had heard the silent blond man speak without being asked. Costa agreed with his bodyguard:
“You know anything Leo wants to know, baby, you be real careful. I wouldn’t tangle with Leo myself. I’d shoot him in the belly before he got five feet from me.”
“I’ll be careful,” I said. We were passing the main library with its silent lions on guard. Even they looked cold in the driving snow. “I get out here.”
“Okay, baby, let me know how you make out.”
I stood in the snow and watched the Bentley drive off. The people pushed all around me. They were aliens in a different world from Costa, Strega, the Radfords and Leo Zar.
I walked to the subway and rode back up to get my car.
19
The wind had died, the snow was falling straight and thick now, and the Fifth Street Club had just opened. It was as deserted as a losing team’s locker room. The same bartender was shining glasses. He ignored me.
“I want to see Misty again,” I said.
He polished. “Christ, you got nerve. Get lost.”
“She was mad?”
“You should of said you was a snooper.”
“Does Misty live in that apartment upstairs?”
The bartender polished glasses.
“Did she make all her shows late Wednesday?”
The bartender sighed. “Cops. What’s with them? They think all barkeeps got nothin’ to do ’ceptin snoop around?”
He had a point. “The real police asked the same questions?”
“What else? I told them, ‘n’ I’m telling you: I don’t know nothing about Misty. And she ain’t in yet tonight.”
“Which cops talked to you?”
He arranged glasses. “You won’t believe this, but some bartenders are hired to tend bar. I live in Bay Ridge. I got a wife and four kids. I don’t know every cop in New York.”
I left him talking to himself. It had to be Gazzo who was still asking questions. The Captain was a good cop.
I drove into the twisting streets of the old Village. Grove Street was dark and quiet with falling snow. Grove Mews was an alley through an archway. There was a six-story side wall of a building on one side, and a bank of buildings with recessed doors on the other. Number 2 was the second recessed doorway. I used my lighter in the dark entrance. Ben Marno’s name was scrawled on the broken mailbox for 5-B.
I went up the narrow stairs and found 5-B at the end of a dirty stone hallway at the top. There was no sound inside. I knocked. No one came. No one came from anywhere. It was so quiet in the corridor I could hear my heart. I tried the door; it was locked. The window at the end of the corridor was almost beside me. I looked out.
The fire escape reached to a window inside 5-B. I climbed out into the snow and got my knees wet. The window of 5-B was closed but not locked. The apartment inside was dark. I pushed the window up and dropped inside.
I stood in a room with four studio beds covered with wild-colored throws and piled with psychedelic cushions. There were painted orange crates for chairs and tables. A spider web made of thick rope hung from the ceiling, with a giant yellow fake spider in it. The sweet, heavy odor of marijuana hung in the air-not recent, just there.
There were two other rooms.
The second was like the main room with the addition of a bookcase and an expensive Scott stereo system. I had seen that before-Village pads where $27.50 had gone into all the furniture, but $1500 had been spent for music, photographic equipment, books or painting supplies. Maybe that was the right way.
The third room was wall-to-wall mattresses. A room for wanderers to spend the nights out of the wind.
There was no one around, and no bodies.
I let myself out the front door and went back down to my car. It was still too early for Misty Dawn to be onstage. I stopped for a couple of hamburgers, and drove to my office. The snow was beginning to pile up again. Another ten hours of it, and the city would be in for a bad few days.
My office was warmer than usual. Snow had piled on the window ledge and partly sealed the gaps. I sat down and looked at the telephone. I wanted to call Marty, but that was still no good for either of us. I wanted to call Captain Gazzo, but if Gazzo had anything to tell, he would call me. So I called Agnes Moore. After all, she had paid me to work. I got no answer. The day was running down like a tired hour glass.
I was on my third cigarette, waiting until I was sure Misty Dawn would be at the club, when I heard the woman in the corridor outside. The hurrying click of a woman’s heels.
My fellow tenants on the floor were two old gentlemen who sold special books; an agency for cooks and waiters; and an astrologist. The woman could be going to any of them, but at this hour I doubted it. I was right again.
Morgana Radford opened my door and stopped. I think her trouble was that she had never seen an office without a reception room. It was a shock to her to walk in on me. She wore a heavy brown cape that made her look like Florence Nightingale.
“Come in, Miss Radford,” I said.
She recovered. She was used to working with the poor. When she sat down facing me, her face was as precise as it had been in her cell in North Chester, but her eyes were animated.
“Deirdre Fallon murdered my uncle, and Mother and Walter know it,” she announced. She said it with finality, as if she had told me before and I had doubted it.
“What makes you think so?”
“Ever since you came up, I’ve been watching and listening. My own investigation, you might say.”
“That was you on the extension up there when I called?”
“Yes, but listen to me. I’ve watched them talking a lot, Mother and Walter. Always in secret when they didn’t know I could see them. Yesterday afternoon I saw them arguing violently just before Deirdre left the house to come to New York. Walter went and got his Jaguar and followed her. He’s watching her!”
“Yesterday? Thursday?”
“Yes, a few hours after the funeral. She drove off in that red Fiat, and Walter followed her. I think he lost her, because he came back in less than an hour.”
I thought about Walter Radford’s mood today. “What makes you think that means Miss Fallon killed your uncle? Why do they have to be arguing about her at all?”
“What else would they argue about now? Mother is probably defending Deirdre! Do you know about her?”
“Do I know what?”
Her righteous eyes gleamed nastily. “Mother told me all about it today. To keep me from learning about Deirdre in the wrong way, Mother said. I knew Deirdre was corrupt!”
She was a woman with a mission, and she used words like “corrupt” and “evil” too much. There is a sickness about people who love those words. Somewhere inside they love corruption and evil, love to think about corruption and evil.