“Yes,” Kling said. “May I keep this?”
Claire nodded. “If you like.” She paused. “I guess I have no further use for Jeannie’s phone number.”
“No,” Kling said. He put the card into his wallet. “You said she asked you questions. What kind of questions?”
“Well, for one, she asked me how to kiss.”
“What?”
“Yes. She asked me what to do with her lips, whether she should open her mouth, use her tongue. And all this delivered with that wide-eyed, baby-blue stare. It sounds incredible, I know. But, remember, she was a young bird, and she didn’t know how strong her wings were.”
“She found out,” Kling said.
“Huh?”
“Jeannie Paige was pregnant when she died.”
“No!” Claire said. She put down the brandy glass. “No, you’re joking!”
“I’m serious.”
Claire was silent for several moments. Then she said, “First time at bat and she gets beaned. Dammit! Goddammit!”
“But you don’t know who her boyfriend was?”
“No.”
“Had she continued seeing him? You said this was a year ago. I mean—”
“I know what you mean. Yes, the same one. She’d been seeing him regularly. In fact, she used the club for that.”
“He came to the club!” Kling said, sitting erect.
“No, no.” Claire was shaking her head impatiently. “I think her sister and brother-in-law objected to her seeing this fellow. So she told them she was going down to Tempo. She’d stay there a little while, just in case anyone was checking, and then she’d leave.”
“Let me understand this,” Kling said. “She came to the club and then left to meet him. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“This was standard procedure? This happened each time she came down?”
“Almost each time. Once in a while she’d stay at the club until things broke up.”
“Did she meet him in the neighborhood?”
“No, I don’t think so. I walked her down to the El once.”
“What time did she generally leave the club?”
“Between ten and ten-thirty.”
“And she walked to the El, is that right? And you assume she took a train there and went to meet him.”
“I know she went to meet him. The night I walked her, she told me she was going downtown to meet him.”
“Downtown where?”
“She didn’t say.”
“What did he look like, this fellow?”
“She didn’t say.”
“She never described him?”
“Only to say he was the handsomest man in the world. Look, who ever describes his love? Shakespeare, maybe. That’s all.”
“Shakespeare and seventeen-year-olds,” Kling said. “Seventeen-year-olds shout their love to the rooftops.”
“Yes,” Claire said gently. “Yes.”
“But not Jeannie Paige. Dammit, why not her?”
“I don’t know.” Claire thought for a moment. “This mugger who killed her—”
“Um?”
“The police don’t think he was the fellow she was seeing, do they?”
“This is the first anyone connected with the police is hearing about her love life,” Kling said.
“Oh. Well, he… he didn’t sound that way. He sounded gentle. I mean, when Jeannie did talk about him, he sounded gentle.”
“But she never mentioned his name?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
Kling rose. “I’d better be going. That is dinner I smell, isn’t it?”
“My father’ll be home soon,” Claire said. “Mom is dead. I whip something up when I get home from school.”
“Every night?” Kling asked.
“What? I’m sorry…”
He didn’t know whether to press it or not. She hadn’t heard him, and he could easily have shrugged his comment aside. But he chose not to.
“I said, ‘Every night?’”
“Every night what?”
She certainly was not making it easy for him. “Do you prepare supper every night? Or do you occasionally get a night off?”
“Oh, I get nights off,” Claire said.
“Maybe you’d enjoy dinner out some night?”
“With you, do you mean?”
“Well, yes. Yes, that’s what I had in mind.”
Claire Townsend looked at him long and hard. At last, she said, “No, I don’t think so. I’m sorry. Thanks. I couldn’t.”
“Well… uh…” Quite suddenly, Kling felt like a fool. “I… uh… guess I’ll be going, then. Thanks for the cognac. It was very nice.”
“Yes,” she said, and he remembered her discussing people who were there and yet not there, and he knew exactly what she meant because she was not there at all. She was somewhere far away, and he wished he knew where. With sudden, desperate longing, he wished he knew where she was because, curiously, he wanted to be there with her.
“Good-bye,” he said.
She smiled in answer and closed the door behind him.
The dime in the slot brought him Peter Bell.
Bell’s voice was sleepy. “I didn’t wake you, did I?” Kling asked.
“Yes, you did,” Bell said, “but that’s all right. What is it, Bert?”
“Well, is Molly there?”
“Molly? No. She went down to pick up a few things. What is it?”
“I’ve been… Well, she asked me to check around a little.”
“Oh? Did she?”
“Yeah. I went to Club Tempo this afternoon, and I also talked with a girl named Claire Townsend. Nice girl.”
“What did you find out, Bert?”
“That Jeannie was seeing some guy regularly.”
“Who?”
“Well, that’s just it. Miss Townsend didn’t know. She ever mention anybody’s name to you or Molly?”
“No, not that I can remember.”
“That’s too bad. Might give me something to go on, you know, if we had even a first name. Something to work with.”
“No,” Bell said, “I’m sorry, but…” He stopped dead. There was a painful silence on the line, and then he said, “Oh my God!”
“What’s the matter?”
“She did, Bert. She did mention someone. Oh my God!”
“Who? When was this?”
“We were talking once. She was in a good mood, and she told me… Bert, she told me the name of the fellow she was seeing.”
“What was the name?”
“Clifford! My God, Bert! His name is Clifford!”
11
It was Roger Havilland who brought in the first real suspect in the alleged mugger murder.
The suspect was a kid named Sixto Fangez, a Puerto Rican boy who had been in the city for a little more than two years. Sixto was twenty years old and had, until recently, been a member of a street gang known as “The Tornadoes.” He was no longer active, having retired in favor of marriage to a girl named Angelita. Angelita was pregnant.
Sixto had allegedly beat up a hooker and stolen $32 from her purse. The girl was one of the better-known prostitutes in the precinct territory and had, in fact, rolled in the hay on a good many occasions with members of the legion in blue. Some of these policemen had paid her for the privilege of her company.
In ordinary circumstances, in spite of the fact that the girl had made a positive identification of Sixto Fangez, Havilland might have been willing to forget the whole matter in consideration of a little legal tender. Assault charges had been known to slip the minds of many policemen when the right word, together with the right amount of currency, was exchanged.
It happened, however, that the newspapers were giving a big play to the funeral of Jeannie Paige — a funeral which had been delayed by the extensive autopsy examination performed on the body — on the morning that Sixto was brought upstairs to the squadroom. The newspapers were also pressuring the cops to do something about the rampant mugger, and so perhaps Havilland’s extreme enthusiasm could have been forgiven.