A Bullet for Cinderella (11 page)

She held the plate in precisely the right spot. I took one and thanked her. She put the plate back on the table and sat facing me. She found her teacup and lifted it to her lips.

“Now what student was it?”

“Do you remember Timmy Warden?”

“Of course I remember him! He was a charmer. I was told how he died. I was dreadfully sorry to hear it. A man came to see me six or seven months ago. He said he’d been in that prison camp with Timmy. I never could quite understand why he came to see me. His name was Fitzmartin and he asked all sorts of odd questions. I couldn’t feel at ease with him. He didn’t seem—quite right if you know what I mean. When you lose one sense you seem to become more aware of nuances.”

“I was in that camp too, Miss Major.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. Probably Mr. Fitzmartin is a friend of yours.”

“No, he’s not.”

“That’s a relief. Now don’t tell me you came here to ask odd questions too, Mr. Howard.”

“Fairly odd, I guess. In camp Timmy spoke about a girl named Cindy. I’ve been trying to track her down
for—personal reasons. One of your other students, Cindy Kirschner, told me that you wrote a skit based on Cinderella for the eighth grade when you had Timmy in the class. Timmy wasn’t—very well when he mentioned this Cindy. I’m wondering if he could have meant the girl who played the part in the play.”

“Whatever has happened to Cindy Kirschner, Mr. Howard? Such a shy, sweet child. And those dreadful teeth.”

“The teeth have been fixed. She’s married to a man named Pat Rorick and she has a couple of kids.”

“That’s good to hear. The other children used to be horrible to her. They can be little animals at times.”

“Do you remember who played the part of Cindy in the skit?”

“Of course I remember. I remember because it was sort of an experiment. Her name was Antoinette Rasi. Wait a moment. I’ll show you something.” She went into the other room. She was gone nearly five minutes. She came back with a glossy photograph.

“I had a friend help me sort these out after I learned Braille. I’ve marked them all so I know this is the right one. It’s a graduation picture. I’ve kept the graduation pictures of all my classes, though what use I have for pictures, I’ll never know.”

She handed it to me and said, “I believe Antoinette is in the back row toward the left. Look for a girl with a great mass of black hair and a pretty, rather sullen face. I don’t imagine she was smiling.”

“I think I’ve found her.”

“Antoinette was a problem. She was a little older than the others. Half French and half Italian. She resented discipline. She was a rowdy, a troublemaker. But I liked the child and I thought I understood her. Her people were very poor and I don’t think she got much attention at home. She had an older brother who had been in trouble with the police and I believe an older sister. She came to school inadequately dressed when the weather was cold. She had a lot of spirit. She was a very alive person. I think she was sensitive, but she hid it very
carefully. I can’t help but wonder sometimes what has happened to the child. The Rasis lived north of the city where the river widens out. I believe that Mr. Rasi had a boat and bait business in the summer and did odd jobs in the wintertime. Their house was a shack. I went out there once after Antoinette had missed a whole week of school. I found she hadn’t come because she had a black eye. Her brother gave it to her. I gave her the part of Cinderella in an attempt to get her to take more interest in class activities. I’m afraid it was a mistake. I believe she thought it was a reflection on the way she lived.”

“Was Timmy friendly with her?”

“Quite friendly. I sometimes wondered if that was a good thing. She seemed quite—precocious in some departments. And Timmy was a very sweet boy.”

“He could have called her Cindy because of the skit?”

“I imagine so. Children dote on nicknames. I remember one poor little boy with a sinus condition. The other children made him unhappy by calling him Rumblehead.”

“I want to thank you for your help, Miss Major.”

“I hope the information is of some use to you. When you find Antoinette, tell her I asked about her.”

“I’ll do that.”

She went with me to the door. She said, “They’re bringing me a new Braille student at four. He seems to be a little late. Mr. Howard, are you in some kind of trouble?”

The abrupt
non sequitur
startled me. “Trouble? Yes, I’m in trouble. Bad trouble.”

“I won’t give you any chin-up lecture, Mr. Howard. I’ve been given too much of that myself. I was just checking my own reactions. I sensed trouble. An aura of worry. As with that Mr. Fitzmartin I detected an aura of directed evil.”

When I got out in front, a woman was helping a young boy out of a car. The boy wore dark glasses. His mouth had an ill-tempered look, and I heard the whine in his voice as he complained about something to her.

I felt that I had discovered Cindy. There had been a hint as to what she was like in the very tone of Timmy’s
voice. Weak as he was, there had been a note of fond appreciation—the echo of lust. Cindy would know. The phrasing was odd. Not
Cindy knows. Cindy would know
. It would be a place known to her.

I sat in my car for a few moments. I did not know how long my period of grace would last. I did not know whether I should continue in search of the elusive Cindy or try to make sense of the relationship between Fitz and Grassman. It came to me that I had been a fool not to search the body. There might have been notes, papers, letters, reports—something to indicate why he had been slain. Yet I knew I could not risk going back there, and it was doubtful that the murderer would have been so clumsy as to leave anything indirectly incriminating on the body itself.

I did not know where to start. I didn’t think anything could be gained by going to Fitzmartin, facing him. He certainly would answer no questions. Why had it been necessary to kill Grassman? Either it was related to Grassman’s job, or it was something apart from it. Grassman’s job had apparently been due to Rose Fulton’s conviction that her husband had come to some harm here in Hillston.

Prine’s investigation had evidently been thorough. He was satisfied that Fulton and Eloise Warden had run off together. He had a witness to the actual departure. Yet Grassman had been poking around the cabin the Wardens used to own. I could not imagine what he hoped to gain.

I could not help but believe that Grassman’s death was in some way related to the sixty thousand dollars. I wondered if Grassman had somehow acquired the information that a sizable sum had disappeared from the Warden business ventures over a period of time, and had added two and two together. Or if, in looking for Fulton’s body, he had stumbled across the money. Maybe at the same time Fitz was looking for it. Many murders have been committed for one tenth that amount. There was only one starting place with Grassman. That was Rose Fulton. Maybe Grassman had sent her reports. She was probably a resident of Illinois.

I wondered who would know her address. It would have to be someone whose suspicions would not be aroused. I wondered if there was any way of finding out without asking anyone. If the police investigation had been reported in the local paper, Fulton’s home town would probably have been given, but not his street address.

I realized that I did not dare make any effort to get hold of Mrs. Fulton. It would link me too closely to Grassman.

Antoinette Rasi then. I would look for her.

The shack was on the riverbank. It had a sagging porch, auto parts stamped into the mud of the yard, dingy Monday washing flapping on a knotted line, a disconsolate tire hanging from a tree limb, and a shiny new television aerial. A thin, dark boy of about twelve was carefully painting an overturned boat, doing a good job of it. A little dark-headed girl was trying to harness a fat, humble dog to a broken cart. A toddler in diapers watched her. Some chickens were scratching the loose dirt under the porch.

The children looked at me as I got out of the car. A heavy woman came to the door. She bulged with pregnancy. Her eyes and expression were unfriendly. The small girl began to cry. I heard her brother hiss at her to shut up. The woman in the doorway could have once been quite pretty. She wasn’t any more. It was hard to guess how old she might be.

“Is your name Rasi?” I asked.

“It was once. Now it’s Doyle. What do you want?”

“I’m trying to locate Antoinette Rasi.”

“For God’s sake, shut up sniveling, Jeanie. This man isn’t come to take the teevee.” She smiled apologetically at me. “They took it away once, and to Jeanie any stranger comes after the same thing. Every night the kids watch it. No homework, no nothing. Just sit and look. It drives me nuts. What do you want Antoinette for?”

“I’ve got a message for her. From a friend.”

The woman sniffed. “She makes a lot of friends, I
guess. She doesn’t hang around here any more. She’s up in Redding. I don’t hear from her any more. She never gets down. God knows I never get up there. The old man is dead and Jack is in the federal can in Atlanta, and Doyle can’t stand the sight of her, so why should she bother coming down here. Hell, I’m only her only sister. She sends money for the kids, but no messages. No nothing.”

“What does she do?”

She gave me a wise, wet smile. “She goes around making friends, I guess.”

“How do I get in touch with her?”

“Cruise around. Try the Aztec, and the Cub Room. And try the Doubloon, too. I heard her mention that. You can probably find her.”

It was sixty miles to Redding, and dark when I got there. It was twice the size of Hillston. It was a town with a lot of neon. Lime and pink. Dark, inviting blue. Lots of uniforms on the night streets. Lots of girls on the dark streets. Lots of cars going nowhere too fast, horns blowing, Bermuda bells ringing, tires wailing. I asked where the Aztec and the Cub Room and the Doubloon were. I was directed to a wide highway on the west edge of town, called, inevitably, the Strip. There the neon really blossomed. There wasn’t as much sidewalk traffic. But for a Monday night there were enough cars in the lots. Enough rough music in the air. Enough places to lose your money. Or spend it. Or have it taken away from you.

I went to the Aztec and I went to the Cub Room and I went to the Doubloon. In each place I asked a bartender about Antoinette Rasi. On each occasion I received a blank stare and a shrug and a, “Never heard of her.”

“Dark-haired girl?”

“That’s unusual? Sorry, buster.”

The cadence of the evening was beginning to quicken. All three places were glamorous. They were like the lounges of the hotels along Collins Avenue on Miami Beach. And like the bistros of Beverly Hills. The lighting was carefully contrived. There was a Las Vegas tension
in those three places, a smell of money. Here the games were hidden. But not hard to find.

The way Mrs. Doyle had spoken of her sister gave me reason to believe I could get assistance from the police. They were in a brand new building. The sergeant looked uncomfortable behind a long curve of stainless steel.

I told him what Mrs. Doyle had said about how to find her.

“There ought to be something on her. Let me check it out. Wait a couple minutes.”

He got on the phone. He had to wait quite a while. Then he thanked the man on the other end and hung up. “He knows her. She’s been booked a couple times as Antoinette Rasi. But the name she uses is Toni Raselle. She calls herself an entertainer. He says he thinks she did sing for a while at one place. She’s a fancy whore. The last address he’s got is the Glendon Arms. That’s a high-class apartment hotel on the west side, not too far from the Strip. Both times she was booked last it was on a cute variation of the old badger game. So cute they couldn’t make it stick. So watch yourself. She plays with rough people. We got rough ones here by the dozen.”

I thanked him and left. It was nearly ten when I got back to the Strip. I went into the Aztec first. I went to the same bartender. “Find that girl yet?” he asked.

“I found she calls herself Toni Raselle.”

“Hell, I know her. She comes in every once in a while. She may show here yet tonight. You an old friend or something?”

“Not exactly.”

I tried the other two places. They knew the name there also, but she hadn’t been in. I had a steak sandwich in the Doubloon. A girl alone at the bar made a determined effort to pick me up. She dug through her purse looking for matches, unlit cigarette in her mouth. She started a conversation a shade too loudly with the bartender and tried to drag me into it. She was a lean brunette with shiny eyes and trembling hands. I ordered a refill for her and moved onto the bar stool next to her.

We exchanged inanities until she pointed up at the
ceiling with her thumb and said, “Going to try your luck tonight? I’m always lucky. You know there’s some fellas I know they wouldn’t dare try the crap table without they give me some chips to get in the game.”

“I don’t want to gamble.”

“Yeah, sometimes I get tired of it, too. I mean when you just can’t seem to get any action out of your money.”

“Do you know a girl around town named Toni Raselle?”

She stopped smiling. “What about her? You looking for her?”

“Somebody mentioned her. I remembered the name. Is she nice?”

“She’s damn good looking. But she’s crazy. Crazy as hell. She doesn’t grab me a bit.”

“How come you think she’s crazy, Donna?”

“Well, dig this. There’s some important guys around here. Like Eddie Larch that owns this place. Guys like Eddie. They really got a yen for her. A deal like that you can fall into. Everything laid on. Apartment, car, clothes. They’d set you up. You know? Then all you got to do is be nice and take it easy. Not Toni. She strictly wants something going on all the time. She wants to lone wolf it. And she keeps getting in jams that way. My Christ, you’d think she liked people or something. If I looked like her, I’d parlay that right into stocks and bonds, believe you me. But that Toni. She does as she damn pleases. She don’t like you, you’re dead. So you can have hundred-dollar bills out to here, you’re still dead. She wouldn’t spit if your hair was on fire. That’s how she’s crazy, man.”