An Eye for an Eye (6 page)

Lanterman ran east and west, and it was a street in transition. Small plants had crept in along it, a lumber company, two or three trucking firms, an auto-wrecking yard. There were still houses on it, mostly two-and three-story frame buildings with too many porches and cupolas on the outside and too much room inside for these servantless days, even if the neighborhood had not run down. Some had businesses in their lower floors. Some had been converted into flats. Most of them were rooming houses. All of them needed paint and their yards cleaned up.

Number 4909 was a light gray house with green shutters, sooty and faded. A long block beyond it on the corner was a tavern with a neon sign that said THE LANTERNMAN and showed an old man holding a lantern. The tavern was brick, the newest building on the street. Ben parked behind a red pickup truck and went into the rooming house.

A big hard-looking gray-haired man came out of the first door on the right.

“Mr. Muller?”

“Yeah.”

Ben got out one of his business cards and gave it to him. “I just spoke to you over the phone.”

“Yeah,” said Muller. “Well, like I told you, I don’t know anything about Guthrie or where he went.”

“I understand that,” Ben said, “but I thought he might have said something to you, or perhaps to someone else here, that might give an idea.”

“He never said nothing to me,” Muller said.

A short, hard-looking, gray-haired woman with a cigarette in her fingers came and peered through the door.

“Is this the man?” she asked.

Muller said, “Yeah.”

He handed her the card. She read it and then thrust her head forward toward Ben. “What did you want with Mr. Guthrie?”

“It’s in connection with his divorce. Just a formality.”

“He didn’t get in any trouble while he was living here? Like with the police?”

“No, Mrs. Muller. This has nothing to do with the police.”

“I don’t see what difference it makes,” Muller said. “I still can’t tell him where Guthrie went.”

“No,” said Mrs. Muller, “but Schaney might.” She explained to Ben. “It was Schaney brought him here. They used to work for the same truck company. They went around together a good bit even after Guthrie quit. I kind of think Schaney even loaned him some money. He’s a real goodhearted fellow. You ask him.”

Muller looked at his watch. “Schaney’s got a haul tonight. I’m not supposed to wake him for another couple of hours.”

“I’m sorry to inconvenience him,” Ben said, “but there’s a time limit on this thing. You understand? I can’t wait.”

“Well,” said Muller grudgingly, “okay. Come on.”

Ben followed him up the stairs and down a narrow hall to the back of the house. The place was shabby but decent. The floors were swept and the wallpaper had been cleaned that summer. Muller knocked on a tall old-fashioned door with a black china knob.

“Schaney,” he called. “Hey, Joe. You got a visitor.”

Sounds of grunting and heaving came from inside. Muller continued to knock. In a minute Ben heard Schaney’s feet hit the floor, and then the door was wrenched open and a stocky red-faced man said, “God damn it, Fritz, what the hell you waking me up at this time of day for?”

He had been sleeping comfortably in his long underwear. He had a bald freckled head with a fringe of corn-colored hair around it. His face was round with thick blunt features, and his eyes were as heavy and dazed as a child’s when it is wakened too suddenly. Ben felt sorry for him, but in a relative way. Schaney had all the time in the world to catch up on his sleep.

“I’m afraid it’s my fault,” he said, and explained. “I’m a lawyer. I’m looking for Al Guthrie, and they said you might know where he is.”

“Al,” said Schaney. “What’s he done?”

“I’m not a criminal lawyer and this isn’t a police matter.”

“Oh,” said Schaney. His feet were bare and he rubbed the sole of the right one up and down on the calf of his left leg and then reversed the action, as though they were cold.

“Were you expecting him to do something?” Ben asked.

“That guy’s nuts,” said Schaney. “It wouldn’t surprise me whatever he did. Listen, come in while I put my pants on, will you? I’m freezing.”

Ben thanked Muller and went into Schaney’s room. It was a back corner bedroom, papered in faded roses, with an iron bedstead, a chest of drawers, an easy chair, a straight chair, and a small table. It was neat, as the rooms of old bachelors often are. Schaney motioned him to sit down, fumbled for a cigarette, took three long drags on it, sighed, and began to put his clothes on.

“I can tell you straight off,” he said, “Al didn’t tell me where he was moving to. And I can tell you why.”

“Can you?”

“He owes me fifty bucks,” said Schaney, and Ben, who had started violently in the chair, settled back again and hoped that Schaney had not noticed.

“Tell you what,” Schaney said, “if you catch up with that slob, can I hire you to get my dough back from him?”

“I’ll see what I can do. When did he leave here?”

“Couple of weeks ago.”

“Exactly?”

Schaney frowned. “Make it ten days.”

“And he didn’t even mention what part of town he was moving to, or whether he was leaving town?”

“Not to me, he didn’t.” Schaney sat on the bed and laced his shoes. “He’d been acting kind of crazy for a long time. I was sorry I’d got tied up with him at all.”

“How do you mean,” said Ben carefully, “crazy?”

“Oh, you know. Broody. Asking for trouble. Got in a row and lost his job and then spent all his time days running around—I don’t know what the hell he was doing. He said he was looking for work but he never could tell you where he’d been. Finally he got so nasty I quit asking him. Then nights he’d drink. Boy, and I mean drink.”

Schaney stood up and pulled the blankets straight on the bed. “I know he was having woman trouble, but I never saw it eat on a guy like that before.”

“Did he talk much about it?”

“Only when he had a few drinks in him. Then he’d get going on divorce. Jesus. You’d think the whole thing was invented on purpose just to torment him. I guess he never thought his little woman would go through with it, but she did, and he was plenty wild.”

“I know,” said Ben. “I got his wife the divorce. Listen, Mr. Schaney, did you ever hear him make any threats against her?”

Dangerous ground. But you had to ask.

Schaney brushed his hair down carefully all around the curve of his skull. “I don’t particularly remember any. You know how it is, I had a few drinks myself, and a guy does a lot of blabbering and cursing around but it doesn’t mean anything. But I wouldn’t put it past him. He sure beat the hell out of Selma.”

Ben said, “Selma?”

“One of the local hustlers. You didn’t figure Al was living like a monk, did you? His heart wasn’t that broken.” Schaney picked up a greasy leather jacket and put it on over his plaid shirt, and then he looked at Ben with a peculiar expression and said, “On the other hand, maybe it was at that.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, that’s why he beat her. Because all of a sudden he thought of his wife and Selma made him sick. That’s what Selma told me, anyway. Boy. There’s a real slob.”

“Could I talk to this Selma?”

“Mister, anybody with five bucks can talk to Selma.”

“I’m not joking. Where can I get in touch with her?”

“Well,” said Schaney, “when she isn’t working or sleeping, she’s usually in the Lanternman getting a little of what makes life easier to live. She has a place right around the corner from it, three doors down.”

Ben got up. “Can I buy you a drink, Mr. Schaney? I owe you something for disturbing your rest.”

“Well,” said Schaney, “some coffee would be more like it. I got to pick up a load of steel at four-thirty.”

Schaney put a red leather cap on his head and they went out. Schaney continued to elaborate on the dangers of driving steel and what could happen to a man when a 45,000-pound load came in on him through the back of the cab.

“A guy explained it to me once, scientifically. It’s something called inertia, see? The cab stops, like when you ram something, but the steel keeps right on traveling.”

They got into Ben’s car and Ben drove to the corner and into the parking lot behind the Lanternman. There were five or six other cars there.

“Slack hour,” Schaney said. He pointed down the street. “That’s where Selma lives, the brown house. Her and three other dames. If she isn’t here.”

They went into the Lanternman. It was a typical prosperous working-stiff joint, clean and modern without any attempt to be fancy. It smelled of beer and hamburgers. Schaney peered around and then pointed to a booth near the bar.

“There she is.”

They walked to the booth. Selma looked up and nodded to Schaney. She looked at Ben and then back to Schaney and said:

“You know the rules, Joe. You trying to get me thrown out of here?”

Her hair was brilliant with new henna, lacquered into an improbable heap on top of her head. Her face reminded Ben of an Easter egg with features painted on it too boldly and in too bright colors. She wore a grubby pink sweater buttoned over her ample breasts, toreador pants printed in lozenges of black and white, and pumps with run-over high heels. She was nursing a beer.

Schaney shook his head. “He just wants to talk to you about Al Guthrie.”

“Him,” she said, and a hot light came into her eyes. “That bastard. I should of had him arrested.” Then she looked at Ben. “What’s your angle?”

Ben explained. By now he and Schaney had sat down and the bartender had come up. Ben said it was on him. Selma ordered a double bourbon and Schaney decided he would have a steak along with his coffee. Ben ordered the first thing that came into his head, not caring, thinking that this woman was just about his last chance and wondering bleakly what he would do next.

She asked him, “What did you want to know about Al Guthrie?”

“Did he tell you anything about his plans, where he was going?”

“Not in so many words, no.”

“Well, did he hint at it? Anything at all, even a chance word.”

She shook her head. “He talked so crazy that night. I don’t know.”

“What did he say?”

“Well, he was pretty drunk, and all of a sudden it seemed like he just flipped. We were sitting there talking and he gave me this funny look and says, ‘You got red hair but it ain’t like Lorene’s.’ I asked him who Lorene was and he said his wife. I told him let’s leave her out of this, and he says that’s fine, now he isn’t even allowed to talk about her. He says I’m like all the rest, trying to keep him away from her. I tell you, mister, he was real gone.”

She paused to shake her head again angrily.

“I told him he better go home. But he wouldn’t. It seemed like he had all this boiled up inside him and had to take it out on somebody. He said nobody was going to keep him away from her. He said he had it all figured out and he’d got the house already. He said he was going to get her back.”

“House,” said Ben. “House. Didn’t he tell you where it was?”

She gave him the same kind of an odd glance that Mary Catherine Brewer had given him.

“No,” she said, “he did not. He only said it was in a part of town where nobody knew him and nobody would ever find him. Then he said I made him sick and he started to hit me. I yelled and the other girls came, and he left. I never saw him again. I guess he moved the next day. Does that help?”

“Oh, God,” said Ben, “why couldn’t he have told you where?”

He got up and left the tavern. Schaney and the woman looked after him curiously.

“What’s with him?” she asked. “Damned if he doesn’t act as crazy as Al.”

“You got me,” said Schaney.

He ate his steak, chewing sturdily.

The feeling that Ernie MacGrath had had on Friday night was still with him on Saturday morning.

He did not like it any better then than he had before. He left the house before Ivy could get too accurate in her attempts to guess what was bothering him. He checked in early and sat waiting glumly for Bill Drumm in Detective Division’s shabby and overcrowded quarters, alternately staring out the window at the backside of the Sears and Roebuck warehouse and then across the room at the door that said Martin Packer, Chief of Detectives.

All right, thought Ernie savagely, let’s hear how it sounds. Quote. “Chief Packer, I think maybe a good friend of mine murdered his wife and hid her body somewhere and reported disappearance. I think maybe his motive was a redheaded dame.”

“And what reason do you have to think this, Detective MacGrath?”

“Because this good friend went to see this redhead last night in her apartment, and wouldn’t tell me where he was going.”

“Do you know anything about this woman? Can you prove a connection? Can you produce any evidence that a murder actually has been committed?”

“No, sir. It is only a hunch I got because my friend acted in a suspicious manner.”

“And what the hell kind of a detective are you, Detective MacGrath?”

And what the hell kind of a friend.

Ernie did not go into Packer’s office.

Instead he went down to Missing Persons. They had nothing new. He returned and checked the bulletins received overnight from sheriff’s offices and other police departments in and out of the state. There was the usual amount of stuff but nothing he could use, no unidentified woman living or dead. He was glad when Bill Drumm came and took his mind at least partly off it.

The morning developed into a repetition of the day before. They interviewed four or five people who should have been witnesses to a grocery-store holdup but were not. The grocery store was a known numbers drop and Ernie was pretty sure that more than petty cash was involved, but everybody was determined to keep his or her nose scrupulously clean. Finally at ten minutes to one Bill said:

“Have we earned a lunch, or do we have to starve right on our feet?”

Ernie said he thought they could take time for a hamburger. The neighborhood they were in was for people with stronger stomachs than he had, and he suggested going up Norland Avenue, which was not far away, to a good drive-in.

Bill said okay, and relaxed in the front seat. He was a tall thin young man with knobby joints and pale yellow hair and fair skin that did not seem ever to have needed shaving. He ate like an anaconda and never gained a pound. Ernie was beginning to quarrel about the way the dry cleaner kept shrinking his pants around the waistband. He kept warning Bill, who only smiled and ate.

Ernie drove. He glanced once or twice at Bill, who appeared to be catching a short nap. He took a roundabout way to Norland. It went past the apartment house where Ben Forbes had gone the night before to see Mary Catherine Brewer or Lorene Guthrie, whichever one had red hair. He didn’t know what he expected the outside of the building to tell him. He just wanted to look at it again by daylight.

Ben Forbes’ car was parked in front of the building.

“S’matter?” said Bill, sitting up, startled.

“Nothing,” said Ernie. “Not one damn thing.”

He drove fast to the restaurant and brooded the whole time they were eating, trying to remember exactly where Ben had parked before. It was hard to do because the total arrangement of cars along the curb was now entirely different. He could not be sure. But he thought it was possible that the car had been there all night.

He wondered if that was what he had been hoping to find when he drove by the building. If so, he wondered why he wasn’t happier about it.

The afternoon was a blank, too. They ran out of prospects around three o’clock and trailed wearily back to the station, where they made a detailed report consisting of nothing to Packer and Lieutenant Feracchi of the Vice Squad, who was interested. Packer told them they might as well go home.

Ernie said so long to Bill and checked out.

It was now around four-thirty, and a dull dark afternoon. The No Turn signs were out at the corner of Market, so Ernie had to continue north on the east side of Courthouse Square. There was a light on in Ben Forbes’ office. This surprised Ernie and made him curious. He found a place to park up the block and walked back to the building.

When he came into the office Grace Vitelli was putting on her coat and taking a last look around. She smiled at him and said,

“Hello, Mr. MacGrath. Mr. Forbes isn’t here.”

Ernie said, “How come you’re working so late on a Saturday afternoon?”

She told him. “It’s taken me the whole day to arrange things. I wanted to be sure everything was right so that he could come back to a clean desk, you know, with nothing hanging on.” Tears came suddenly into her eyes. “Poor Mr. Forbes. I got the strangest feeling this morning that he didn’t really think he ever would come back.”

“Oh,” said Ernie, “he’s just upset. Things will work out.” He wished Grace were not so fond of Ben, or else that she herself were a less likeable person. “Could I give you a lift home?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to take you out of your way,” she said, and he said that it would be no trouble at all. He waited while she made sure the files were locked and turned off all the lights. He tried to figure what Ben’s move in closing his office meant. Probably it meant quite simply that he was unable to do his job right now, which was understandable enough. But it would also give him freedom from the exactions of office hours and Grace Vitelli’s unprying but omnipresent eye.

“What could have happened to her, Mr. MacGrath? I just don’t understand how a grown woman could simply disappear like that, into thin air.”

Or as if the ground had swallowed her. Pick your own cliché.

“I don’t know,” said Ernie. “But I expect she’ll turn up before long, somewhere.”

Grace locked the door and put the key in her pocketbook. “I hope so. I certainly do. Carolyn Forbes was one of the nicest people I ever knew. I can’t bear to think of anything bad happening to her.”

They walked together along the hall.

“By the way,” said Ernie, “do you know a Mary Catherine Brewer?”

“No,” said Grace. “Now wait. Yes I do. That is, I don’t know her but I know who she is. She’s the girl Mrs. Guthrie lives with.”

“Mrs. Guthrie?”

“Lorene Guthrie. A client of Mr. Forbes’.” There was a faint note, Ernie thought, of disapproval in Grace Vitelli’s voice. “He got her divorce for her.”

“Pretty redheaded girl?”

“That’s Lorene. Why?”

“Oh, a friend of mine knows them and mentioned that they knew Ben.”

They went down the stairs.

“That’s funny,” Grace said. “I don’t think Mr. Forbes ever met the Brewer girl at all. I talked to her once on the phone.”

“Well,” said Ernie, opening the door for her, “my friend must have been mistaken. I got the idea from him that they knew each other pretty well.”

Grace shook her head. “I can’t imagine what would give him that idea. Of course Mr. Forbes might have had occasion to see Mrs. Guthrie on business, but otherwise, no.”

On business. Yes. And if Ben had been in the office that morning, of course his car had been moved since last night.

But it could have been moved as late as fifteen minutes before Ben got to the office. And he had certainly taken it back again in a hurry.

They walked along the street to Ernie’s car.

“Does Mrs. Guthrie work?”

“Are you asking me in an official capacity, Mr. MacGrath?”

That startled Ernie. He hesitated for a second, thinking of the best answer, and she beat him to it.

“I don’t know what Lorene Guthrie has been saying or what impression she’s trying to give. But I can give you the exact facts, and in this case I don’t care whether I violate office ethics or not.”

She was standing beside Ernie’s car, refusing to get in even though he had opened the door and was holding it for her. Her big dark eyes were flashing.

“Lorene Guthrie was a poor little girl married to a big brute who treated her dreadfully. Mr. Forbes got her divorce and let her take as long as she wanted to pay for it, because he knew she was having a hard time. Yes, Lorene is working, she has a good job now at Blackstone’s, and she hasn’t paid a nickel on her bill in six months. You can tell her I said so. You can tell her if it wasn’t for Mr. Forbes’ generosity she’d have the collection agency after her right now. And you can tell whoever is interested that if she has implied that Mr. Forbes is anything more to her than her attorney she is lying. There. Does that answer your questions, Mr. MacGrath? All of them?”

“Yes,” said Ernie. “Yes, it does.”

“I’m glad. And I’ll tell you something else, Mr. MacGrath, You’d be better off spending your time looking for Carolyn than listening to cheap gossip about one of the finest men that ever stepped. And thank you very much but I’ll take the bus home.”

She pushed past him and went off down the street. Ernie looked after her. Jesus, he thought. Like a tigress defending her cub. He had never seen Grace Vitelli blow her top before. It was an impressive sight.

And she had answered his questions, all of them.

But only from her point of view.