Detective Prokowski came along the hall and stopped at the sight of Pat.
Pat asked, “What did you find out at Dreamland last night, Steve?”
Prokowski licked his lower lip, frowning.
“Orders, Steve?” Pat asked quietly. “From the lieutenant?”
Prokowski didn’t answer that. “Did your transfer go through?”
“No. I’ve left the force. Don’t you want to talk about Dreamland? I won’t remind you how long we’ve known each other.”
“Keep your voice down,” Prokowski said. “I’ll see you at Irv’s, at one-thirty.”
“Sure. Thanks, Steve.”
Irv’s wasn’t a cops’ hangout. Prokowski was a Middle Westerner, originally, and a perfectionist regarding the proper temperature of draught beer. Irv had it at the proper temperature.
It was a hot day, for fall, and the beer was cool enough to sweat the glass without being cold enough to chill the stomach. Pat drank a couple of glasses, waiting for Steve.
Steve came in at a quarter to two and Irv had a glass waiting for him by the time he reached the bar.
He was a big man, Steve Prokowski, and sweating like a college crew man right now. “Nothing,” he said wearily. “Lots of guys danced with her. Nothing there. Shoe clerks and CPA’s and punk kids. There was a guy they called Helgy. That name mean anything to you, Pat?”
Pat lied with a shake of the head. “This Helgy something special?”
“Danced with her a lot. Took her home. Brought her a couple of times. The way it is, I guess, if you really like to dance there’s only one place to do it where you’ve got the room and the right music. That’s a place like Dreamland.”
“I mean you can’t catalogue a guy because he goes to a public dancehall any more than you can catalogue people because you saw them in Grand Central Station. All kinds of people like to dance. This Helgy drove a smooth car, a convertible. That’s nightclub stuff, right? But he liked to dance, and the story is, he really could.”
Steve finished his beer and Irv brought another. Steve said casually, “Now, what do you know, Pat?”
“I’m out of a job. I don’t know anything beyond that. The Chief acted on Callender’s recommendation, I suppose?”
“I don’t know. The lieutenant doesn’t always confide in me. What can you do alone, Pat?”
“It wasn’t my idea to work alone.” Pat climbed off his stool and put a dollar on the bar. “Out of that, Irv, all of them.” He put a hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Thanks for coming in.”
“You’re welcome. Thanks for the beer. I still work for the department, remember, Pat.”
“I didn’t forget it for a minute.”
He could feel Steve’s eyes on him in the minor as he walked out.
Once at breakfast, Delia had been reading the paper and she’d said, “Well, imagine that!”
“I’ll try,” he’d said. “Imagine what?”
“This boy I used to dance with at Dreamland, this Joe Helgeson. He’s a composer, it says here. He likes to dance, and always has, and he knows very little about music, but he’s composed. And he must be rich. Helgy, we always called him.”
“You should have married him,” Pat told her, “so you could have your breakfast in bed.”
“There’s always time,” she told him. “But right now I’m happy with you.”
After that, Pat had been conscious of the name. He saw it on sheet music, and it disturbed him. He heard Delia talk to friends about the composer she knew, Helgy, as though that was her world.
He swung his coupe away from the curb and headed toward the Drive. He knew the building, Delia had pointed it out to him once.
It was about eleven stories high with terrace apartments overlooking the bay. Helgy had one of the terrace apartments.
There was a clerk in the quiet lobby, too, and his glance said Pat should have used the service entrance.
Pat said, “Would you phone Mr. Helgeson and tell him Delia Kelley’s husband would like very much to talk to him?”
The clerk studied him for a moment before picking up the phone.
He looked surprised when he said, “Mr. Helgeson will see you, sir.”
The elevator went up quickly and quietly, and Pat stepped out onto the lush, sculptured carpeting of the top floor. There was a man waiting for him there, a thin man with blond hair in a crew cut, and alert blue eyes.
“Sergeant Kelley?”
Pat nodded.
“I’ve — been reading the papers. It’s — I really don’t know what to say. Sergeant.”
“I don’t either,” Pat said, “except to ask you what you might know about it.”
They were walking along the hall, now. They came to the entry hall of the apartment, and Helgeson closed the door behind them. There he faced Pat honestly.
“I’ve seen her a few times. Sergeant, since she... she left you. There was nothing, well, nothing wrong about it.”
“That part doesn’t matter,” Pat said. “I’m not looking for the men who flirted with her. I’m looking for the man who killed her.”
They went into a low, long living room with a beamed ceiling, with floor-length windows facing on the terrace. Helgeson sat in a chair near the huge, bleached mahogany piano.
“I can’t help you with that,” he said. “I danced with her, at Dreamland. I don’t know what attraction the place had for me, except it was the only magic I knew as a kid. I never probed myself for any reasons. She was — a wonderful dancer. I didn’t think of her beyond that. That sounds phony, I know, but—” His voice died.
“I’m surprised the Homicide section hasn’t sent a man to see you, or have they? You said you’d been reading about it.”
“Homicide? No. Why should they?”
“You’re pretty well known, and they have your nickname.”
“I’m not known down there, not generally. Not as the composer. I’m just another punk, just Helgy, down there. A rather aging punk.” He stared at Pat. “But if you know, they know.”
Pat shook his head. “I’ve left the force. I asked to be assigned to this case and was refused.”
“Oh,” Helgeson rubbed his forehead frowningly. “She told me, when she phoned to break a date yesterday, that she was going back to you. I thought—”
“Yesterday?” Pat interrupted. “She told you that, yesterday?”
Helgeson nodded, studying Pat quietly.
Pat could see the pulse in his wrist and he had a passing moment of giddiness. “Where was she living?”
“The Empire Court, over on Hudson.”
“Working, was she?”
“I don’t think so. She never mentioned it, if she was. She was kind of reticent about all that.”
Pat looked at Helgeson levelly. “Was she — living alone?”
Helgeson took a deep breath. “I don’t know. I never went in, over there. She was always ready when I called for her.” He seemed pale and his voice was unsteady.
Pat felt resentment moving through him, but he couldn’t hate them all. Everybody had loved Delia.
He said quietly, “There’s nothing you know? She must have mentioned some names, or what she was doing. What the hell did you talk about?”
“We didn’t talk much. We danced, that’s all. Sergeant, believe me, if I could help I would.” His voice was ragged. “If you knew how much I — wanted to help.” He shook his head. “There isn’t anything I know, not a damned thing.”
“All right. I can believe that. If there’s anything you hear or happen to remember, anything at all, phone me.” He gave him the number.
He went from there to the Empire Court, on Hudson. It was a fairly modern, U-shaped building of gray stone, set back on a deep lot. There was a department car among the cars at the curb.