Area of Suspicion (20 page)

On this same evening, at dusk, the tarpon were in the big hole near the channel off Boca Grande, and the charter boats would be drift-fishing the hole. They would hit and the reels would sing. It was simple savagery more easy to comprehend and combat than the civilized variety which hides the teeth behind a smile.

I fell asleep wondering how Perry would react to a hundred and forty pounds of tarpon glinting high in the moonlight and falling back.

Chapter 12

Friday morning was rainy, blustery. Soggy papers whipped around River Street in tight spirals trying to paste themselves against your ankles. I stopped at a corner store and bought a plastic raincoat.

The night’s sleep hadn’t done me much good. Too much tension makes too many dreams. Niki, Perry, Hildy, Lita, Alma—all of them had twisted through my dreams in perfumed confusion, saying things I couldn’t understand. At one point Mottling had been carefully explaining to me that a D4D was alive, and if you looked closely enough, you could see it breathe. He forced my head down against it, and under the metal skin I could hear the thud of a great slow heart. It felt oddly warm against my ear, and when I straightened up I saw it was a gigantic breast, and I had been listening to the womanheart. There was a second breast in the shadows off to the right, and beyond them a foreshortened sleeping face. My midget feet sank into the rubbery skin and Mottling was gone and I ran in terror and fell from the sleeping body into darkness.…

So when I awoke I felt tired and drained and odd, with sour mouth and aching joints.

River Street paralleled the river, but the warehouses blocked the view of it. Freighters off-loaded at the river
docks into the warehouses for trans-shipment by rail and truck. Huge trucks were parked on the west side of the street, tailgates against the loading docks, cabs swiveled at right angles to the trailers to let traffic edge by. Men wheeled hand trucks into the trailers, and forklift trucks were hurrying with insect intentness. Wildcatters dickered for loads with warehouse agents, and assorted hangover victims huddled in doorways, watching the wan morning world, flinching at too much noise. The early bars were open, smelling of stale beer.

I found number 56 on the east side of the street, a narrow doorway with a flight of stairs leading up. The doorway was between a bar and a marine supply store. Just inside the door, fastened to the wall, was a series of small wooden signs. There was a studio of the dance, a Russian bath, a twine company, a watch repairman, a skin specialist, a Spanish teacher, and Acme Supply. The Acme Supply sign was newest. It indicated the fourth floor of the narrow building.

The wooden steps of the three flights were dished by fifty years of wear. Dun plaster had crumbled off the wall exposing small areas of naked lath. It was a strange location for a company that could be grossing as much as a quarter of a million a year. On the second floor landing I heard voices chanting,
“Yo tengo un lapiz.”

On the third floor a tired samba beat came through the door that announced the studio of the dance. A sailor stood in the hall talking in low tones to a miss in black velveteen slacks and a cerise blouse. Neither of them looked at me as I went by. She was shaking her head dully. His lips were an inch from her ear.

Acme shared the fourth floor with the skin specialist. On the opaque glass of the upper half of the aged oak door was painted, without caps:
acme—industrial supplies—c. armand lefay, president
.

There was a mail slot in the door. I knocked. No answer. I looked closely at the knob and saw dust on it. I tried the knob and found the door was locked.

The skin specialist’s door was not locked. A sign said
COME IN
. I went in. A girl in white behind the desk looked up at me with visible annoyance. She was blonde and sallow and her eyes were set too close together. There was a book propped up in front of her, an historical novel with a mammary cover, and she had been filing her nails as she read.

“Do you have an appointment?” she asked. Her voice was colorless and nasal.

“I don’t want to see the doctor. I was wondering how I could get in touch with your neighbor across the hall, Mr. LeFay. How often does he come in?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Do you see him often?”

“I don’t pay no attention.”

“Have you ever seen him?”

“A couple times, sure.”

“Could you tell me what he looks like?”

“What goes on? You a cop or a bill collector or what? Or you want to sell him something?”

“None of those. I just want to get in touch with him. I thought you might help me out. I’d appreciate it.”

She smiled reluctantly. “You don’t look like any of those things except maybe a salesman. He’s a mousy little guy. I mean you wouldn’t ever look at him close. He could be five-foot-four or five-foot-seven, and thirty-five or fifty-five. Just one of those people you don’t look at.”

“Does he have a secretary?”

“If he has, I’ve never seen her or heard her. I’m too busy to keep my nose in what goes on across the hall. Honest, I’m sorry I can’t help you, but honest to God, I couldn’t even tell you what it says on the door—and I couldn’t care less.”

I smiled, “I was going to ask you where he lives, but I guess that’s no good.”

She smiled, and again it looked as if it hurt her mouth. “I could maybe help a little bit. I got a hunch he lived right in that office for a while. It’s against the rules, but who’s going
to check? I figured that because I’d smell something cooking when I’d come in in the morning. But I haven’t smelled anything lately.”

“Have you ever seen an army officer in uniform on the stairs? Man in his fifties? Florid complexion?”

“I don’t have time to keep going up and down the stairs and anyway, I keep my door shut all the time. That junky music from downstairs drives me nuts. The same records, over and over and over, and if all that’s down there is a dance studio, I’ll eat every record they got in the place. We’ve been here nine years and it gets worse and worse. The doctor talks about moving, but will he ever do anything? Not him. We’ll be right here the day the goddamn place falls down.”

I backed to the door. “Thanks a lot.”

“For what?”

I went down the stairs. The sailor was gone. The girl in black slacks and cerise shirt was still there, cupping her elbow in her palm, shoulders against the wall, staring at the floor, smoking. She gave me an opaque look as I went by her, tramped on her cigarette, and went into the dance studio. Another record started to play.

I walked three blocks to my car. The rain had stopped. I tossed the raincoat onto the back seat. I put the car in a lot near the hotel and went to my room and called Mottling from there. I got him on the line and told him in as casual a voice as I could manage that I had decided to back Granby.

“I’m sorry, of course,” he said smoothly, “but thanks for letting me know.”

“That was the arrangement. Glad to do it.”

“I guess you know I hate like the devil to give up this job. Thanks again for letting me know, fella. ’By now.”

I hung up and frowned at the wall. The reaction had been too perfect, too casual. There was no doubt that he had known. Dolson had known, Lester had known, and Mottling had known. The phone rang, startling me. I picked it up.

“Gevan? Stanley Mottling again. Wondered if I have your permission to tell Mrs. Dean? She’s anxious to know.”

“I thought I’d go out there and tell her myself later on today.”

“I think that’s a good idea. See you at the meeting on Monday.”

The moment I hung up, the phone rang again and the switchboard girl downstairs said, “I’m holding a call for you, Mr. Dean. Go ahead, miss.”

“Gevan?” I recognized Perry’s voice. She was upset.

“Yes, Perry.”

“I’m across the street from the offices. This is the second time I tried to get you this morning, Gevan. I’m scared. Somebody got into my files last night, or before I got in this morning. The Acme folders are gone. I could still get totals from the books but they won’t mean as much because they don’t show the items.”

“Was the file locked?”

“Yes. It’s a combination safe file. But when Captain Corning came here, he got authority to change all the combinations on the safe files. He’d have a list in his office, of course. Colonel Dolson could have gotten hold of that list, wouldn’t you think?”

After a few moments she asked in a small voice, “Are you still there, Gevan?”

“Sorry, I was thinking. There should be duplicates in the Army office files. Do you think Alma Brady could grab those, if they haven’t already disappeared?”

“I thought of that when I couldn’t get you on the phone. I made an excuse to go over there. She didn’t come in this morning.”

“Maybe she was too upset after last night. Do you have her address? I could go see her. You said a rooming house, didn’t you?”

“Go by my house headed east and take the next right. It’s in the middle of the block. A green and white house on the left. I think the number is 881. I’ve got to get back, Gevan.
I haven’t told Mr. Granby about files being missing. Should I? He’ll be wild.”

“Keep it to yourself for a while. If there isn’t a big furor, somebody is going to start wondering why. It may make them nervous.”

It was just eleven o’clock when I parked in front of the only green and white house in the middle of the block. She had missed the number, but not by much. I went up onto the porch. The wind rocked a green wicker rocking chair. I pushed the bell and above the wind’s sound I could hear it ring in the back of the house. I felt uneasy. Through the glass of the door, between lace curtains; I saw a vast woman waddling down the hallway toward the door, emerging from the gloom like something prehistoric.

She opened the door. She couldn’t have been more than twenty pounds too light for a fat-lady job in any circus. Her eyes were pretty, and the rest of the huge face sagged in larded folds. She was a prisoner inside that flesh. Somewhere inside the half-barrel haunches, the ponderous, doughy breasts and belly, stood a woman who was not old and who had once been pretty. Her tiny pink mouth crouched warily back in the crevice between the slablike cheeks.

Her voice was thin and musical. “Good morning.”

“I wonder if I could see Miss Alma Brady.”

“You can find her over to Dean Products. She works civil service over there, for Colonel Dolson.”

“She didn’t report for work this morning.”

“That’s funny! If somebody’s sick, the other girls, they tell me. I can’t get upstairs and the girls, they all take care of their own rooms, so I wouldn’t see her if she was sick in bed. Come to think of it, I didn’t see her go out this morning.” She moved to the foot of the stairs. The hall floor creaked under her weight.

“Alma! Alma, honey!” Her voice was thin, clear, and young. She was a yard across the hips.

We listened and she called again and there was no
answer. I said, “She might be asleep. If you could tell me which room I could go and check.”

“Well—I don’t like to break the rules and that’s one of the rules, about no men on the second floor.”

I had to try my Arland magic again. “My name is Dean. Gevan Dean. Dean Products. I can show you identification.”

“I was wondering where I’d seen you and now I know it was in the papers, so I guess it’s all right if you go on up, Mr. Dean. Golly, I didn’t know Alma knew you. You go right on up and straight down the hall toward the back of the house to the last door on the left. You know, funny thing, that girl’s been on my mind lately. She used to be so sunny, and lately she’s been awful sour.”

I went up two stairs at a time. The hall had a girl smell—perfume and lotions and astringents and wave set. And the echoes of night gigglings, and whispered confidences and man hunger and pillows salted with tears.

I knocked at Alma’s door. There was no answer. I opened the door cautiously and saw that the room was empty. I went in. The bed had not been slept in. It looked as if our Alma had had a night on the tiles. I couldn’t blame her. Not in her frame of mind. I remembered she had been carrying a red coat in my hotel room. I looked in her closet. No red coat. So the odds were she hadn’t come back to her room last night. There was a picture on her maple dressing table. A tinted photograph of a young man in swim trunks. He looked stiffly into the camera, unsmiling, his arms held awkwardly so the muscles would bulge.

I went downstairs and gave the fat woman a reassuring smile. “I guess she just didn’t come in at all last night.”

“Oh, she came in, all right.”

“You saw her?”

“No, but my room is off the kitchen, right under hers, and I heard her moving around, quiet like. It woke me up. I sleep light, and my clock has hands you can see in the dark. It was after three.”

“I guess she came in and went out again, because the bed isn’t slept in.”

“You know, I remember thinking in the night it was good for her to be going out with a gentleman friend again. She used to keep real late hours, and come dragging in at dawn and sleep a little and go off to work bright as a dollar. I guess you can do that when you’re young as she is. She was cheerful then, like I said, but since she’s been spending the evenings in her room, she’s been broody. No pleasant word for anybody, and she was one of my nicest girls. They don’t go much for the late dates except on week ends, because some of them are studying a lot on their graduate work over to the college.”

“Would it be too much trouble to check with your other girls and see if any of them saw her last night or this morning, Mrs.—”

“Colsinger. Martha Colsinger, Mr. Dean. Where should I phone you if I find out anything, or will you come back?”

“You can phone me at the Gardland. If I’m not in, please leave your name and I’ll phone you back. I hope it isn’t too much trouble.”

“No, because I’d check anyway. I got a kind of uneasy feeling about all this. You don’t think anything could have happened to her, do you?”

“I don’t think so. I certainly hope not.”

I thanked her and left. I told myself I was primarily interested in seeing Niki because I wanted to see what her reaction would be to my decision to back Walter Granby. Of course, it wasn’t a final decision. It was a bluff. I had until the Monday meeting to make my actual decision.