The other calls were to the number Marty had given me, and I got to hear the recorded voice of Marisol Maris, inviting me to leave a message. She had a nice voice, and if there was any trace of San Juan or Riga in it, I couldn't hear it. She sounded like any sweet young thing from Oakmont, PA.
I didn't leave a message, not even a fake one to see if she was screening her calls. She was an actress, she wouldn't screen her calls, she'd grab the phone the minute it rang, as sure as hope springs eternal. If the machine was picking up, that meant she was out-and not with Mapes, who was home in his big old house on Devonshire Close, trying not to think of a limerick with his name in it.
I walked uptown and west, passing through Times Square, and stopping whenever I found a working pay phone to try her number again. I had my finger poised to break the connection the instant I knew it was the machine answering. If you're quick about it, you get your coins back. I got it right all but one time, which struck me as pretty good, since you only get your coins back somewhere around sixty percent of the time from a New York pay phone even if there's no answer at all.
I got so good at it that, when I called from a phone mounted on the exterior wall of a bodega at Ninth Avenue and 46th Street, I rang off and scooped up my quarters only to realize belatedly that it wasn't a machine that had just answered. It was the same voice as the one on the machine, but it was live and in person, and I'd hung up on it all the same.
I tried the number again-I was in no danger of forgetting it-and this time her "Hello?" had an edge to it. "Sorry," I said. "That was me a moment ago, and I'm afraid we got disconnected."
"I wondered what happened."
"It's good you're home," I said. "Stay right where you are. I'll be there in a few minutes."
I got over there in a hurry. The building was your basic Hell's Kitchen tenement, with four apartments to a floor, and the bell for 3-C was markedMARIS. I rang, and her voice over the intercom was inaudible over all the static. "It's me," I said, accurately if not helpfully, and she found that sufficiently reassuring to buzz me in.
I took the stairs two at a time, and the door marked 3-C opened just as I was reaching to knock on it. The young woman who opened it was tall and slender, with the sort of awkward grace that gets called coltish. She had Baltic blue eyes and honey blonde hair and high cheekbones and rich tawny brown skin and a generous, full-lipped mouth that made you grateful the Supreme Court knocked out all those dumb laws against the very thing that mouth put you in mind of.
She looked frightened, but not necessarily of me. "Who are you?" she demanded. "Why are you here? What do you want?"
"My name is Bernie Rhodenbarr," I said. "And I want to talk to you about Valentine Kukarov."
She took a step backward, put her hand to her remarkable mouth, and burst into tears.
Thirty-Three
It was after ten when I left Marisol's apartment. I walked back to Ninth Avenue and hailed a cab, something I seemed to have been doing a lot that day. Sometimes I'll go weeks without taking a taxi, and all of a sudden I was flagging them left and right.
This one let me off in front of Parsifal's, where an owlish young fellow looked as though he couldn't believe his luck, either at having a cab drop right into his lap that way or at the young woman who was draped on his arm and ready to share it with him. I wished them well and went on inside.
Sigrid's shift hadn't started yet when I'd come in earlier, but she was behind the bar now, serving drinks to the Thank God Monday's Over crowd. I eyeballed the room, then went and found a spot at the bar. She came over and said, "It's either Laphroaig or Pellegrino. What kind of a mood are we in tonight?"
I felt more like a glass of brandy-it had been a long day-but it would have been gauche to suggest it. I went with the Laphroaig, and when she brought it I crooked a forefinger and motioned her in close. "Late Friday night," I said, "I was talking with a woman named Barbara. Dark hair, had it up in a bun-"
"I remember."
"You were starting to tell us about a guy who came on strong earlier in the evening," I said, "and then you did a quick one-eighty and changed the subject."
"Oh?"
"It was pretty smooth," I said. "She didn't notice it, but I did, and that might be because I was looking for it. My guess is you were behind the stick two nights earlier, and he was the same guy she went home with that night, and as soon as you made the connection you dropped the subject."
"That's your guess, is it?"
"It's an educated guess."
"Well, you seem like an educated guy. Maybe you're even smart enough to tell me why you and I are having this conversation."
"I'm hoping you'll help me find him."
"Why would I want to do that?"
"I know his name," I said. "Mine is Bernie Rhodenbarr, and that's all you'd have to know in order to track me down. But his is William Johnson, and he's not the only one in Manhattan."
"You know more about him than I do," she said. "I didn't even know his name until just now. And you still haven't said why I should help you find him."
"He took Barbara home and fed her a couple of Roofies, and when she passed out he raped her."
"Christ in the foothills."
"Then he helped himself to a few souvenirs and went home."
"What a son of a bitch," she said. "I wondered what his game was. I knew there was something creepy about him, but that goes beyond creepy."
"I don't think it's the first time he's used that kind of pharmaceutical assistance," I said, "and I don't think it'll be the last. I'd like to do something about it."
"Jesus, I'll say. Something that involves surgery, I would hope. Hang on a second."
She went down the bar to attend to someone who'd run dry, and I worked on my Laphroaig. "I don't know how you can drink that," she said on her return. "It tastes like medicine to me."
"Strong medicine," I agreed.
"The thing about alcohol," she said, "is it doesn't wear out its welcome. You work in a pizza place, within a couple of months you lose your taste for pizza. You tend bar, you drink as much as ever."
"Have something."
"Not till my shift ends, but thanks. You said you wanted me to help you find God's gift to women. I'm game, but I can't think how. You're not a cop, are you?"
"No."
"I didn't think so. You could be a private eye. I've known six of them, and I swear the only thing they've got in common is the state gave all six of them a license."
"That lets me out," I told her. "They'd never give me one."
"Bad moral fiber?"
"Worse than that. A felony conviction."
"No kidding. It wasn't rape, was it, or something nasty like that? Then I won't ask what for. I still don't know how I can help."
"You could describe the guy. I don't have a clue what he looks like."
"Barbara won't tell you?"
"Barbara doesn't remember a thing."
"Then how in hell do you know his name? And how doI know it's the same guy as the one who hit on me?"
"You saw the two of them leave the bar together, remember?"
"Oh, right. But maybe she ditched him and went somewhere else and picked up some other boy wonder, and he was the one who fed her the Roofies. I just wish you could mention one thing about him so I was sure we were talking about the same person."
"He has a very deep voice."
"Yeah, that's him, the son of a bitch. Now how on earth do you happen to know that?"
"That's confidential."
"Confidential, huh? Hang on." She went away and came back just as I was having another sip of my medicine. "I could describe him," she said. "He's about six-three, very big in the chest and shoulders, with the kind of muscular development you get in the gym, and probably not without anabolic steroids. Biceps like Popeye when he's full of spinach."