Dead Letter (4 page)

I grinned at him.

"Harry," he said. "You’re the most
suspicious white an I ever met. Why don’t you just be still and let
me finish my story?

"It’s getting to be the end of the third
quarter and I’m till sitting on the bench, with a coat over my
shoulders and my head bowed down like I’m praying. Every once and
awhile one of the other players comes over and laughs kind of softly
as he passes by. Finally coach walks up and says, ‘All right,
Bullet, what’s it going to take?’ I just look up, miserable and
helpless. ‘Well, fuck her then,’ he tells me. ‘But, for
chrissake, get it over with. We’re seven points down!’ ‘I
would- coach,’ I tell him. ‘Only I can’t stand up.’

"Harry, you’re not going to believe this, but
with the game close like that and with me out of the line-up, we just
couldn’t complete any of the long stuff. So coach calls time out
and they bring a stretcher onto the field.

‘
Lie down,’ he says to me. ‘What?’ I say.
‘Just lie down.' So I do like coach says and they cover me with a
blanket. I see one of those hand-held cameras poking around, so I
turn on my side and, by God, they carry me off the field like I’m
hurt. As I’m being carried off, I see out of the corner of my eye
one of the assistants talking to that blonde tease along the
sideline. And, sure enough, as soon as I get to the runway, she
sidles off after me.

"Harry, I played the best fourth quarter of
football you ever seen. I caught ’em with my hands, with my feet. I
caught ’em with my goddamn teeth. And we won that game, Harry.
Afterward, coach comes to me and says, 'If she can do that between
quarters, think what she could do before the game.' I didn’t have
to think about that. Only mistake I made was marrying the bitch
instead of just using her to warm up with."

"Bullet," I said to him. "You’re
full of shit, you know that?"

"I got brown eyes, ain’t I?" He laughed
so loud the glasses stacked along the bar rang. "Let me see your
hand," he said, swiping at my arm. "Oh, man, I can see from
here what your trouble is."

"That’s not it, smart ass," I said.

"It’s always that, Harry. That’s about the
only thing life’s taught me." Bullet smacked his lips.
"Pussy’s behind everything. Pussy or money. Now, don’t you
want to tell me what life’s taught you‘?"

 
"You’re a strange nigger, Bullet."

He laughed again. "Well, at least you’re
smiling. And that’s something."

It was indeed. Between Bullet and the liquor I kept
smiling right up until nine o’clock, when Professor Lovingwell,
looking like Sherlock Holmes in an ulster coat and deer-stalker cap,
walked into the bar.

"This isn’t your idea of a disguise, is it?"
I asked him when he sat down across from me.

He looked miffed and replied: "I wear this
outfit every evening when I go out walking. Do I look that
ridiculous?"

"Eccentric," I said.

Lovingwell sighed. "That word, again. It’s
been following me around most of my life."

"And all you ever wanted was to be one of the
guys?"

"Hardly." He glanced about the room as if
the Busy Bee were not his idea of a good time and said, "I’m
afraid we’re going to have to make this fairly quick. Sarah thinks
I’ve gone out for a walk—damn deception, again. If I don’t
return in an hour or so, she’ll get worried or suspicious or both."

"All right," I said. "I’ll come
straight to the point. I told you this afternoon that someone might
be setting your daughter up. Since I’ve examined the prints that
analysis has changed."

"Now you think someone’s trying to 'set me
up,' do you?" he asked.

"Very good. You’re starting to think like a
detective."

He shrugged. "It’s fairly obvious. My
fingerprints on the safe. The empty envelope in my house. I’ve
thought it through all evening and I’m a little afraid of my
conclusion."

"Why would she do it?" I said.

Lovingwell threw up his hands in dismay. "I
simply don’t know. Our relationship isn’t perfect. I don’t know
of a father’s and daughter’s that is. We’ve fought a bit
lately. As I told you, she hates the work I’m doing on reactors.
And I can appreciate her point of view. The hell of it is when you
start arguing with someone, you say things you don’t mean. It’s
hard to take them back later," he said with a grimace. "Let
me be honest with you. I’ve been very critical of my daughter’s
lifestyle. Some of the criticisms were prompted by jealousy, some of
them needed to be said. Sarah’s the kind of person who can never do
things halfway. She flings herself into every enterprise, whether
it’s politics, romance, or drugs. I didn’t object to the
boys—well, I did but I didn’t say so. The politics I sympathize
with. But the drugs. The night before the document was stolen we had
a 'discussion,' as it’s known around our household. I’d found
some pills in her room while I was cleaning up. She accused me of
snooping behind her back. I accused her of . . . well, of doing a
stupid and illegal thing. Saturday morning she walked out and didn’t
return until Sunday afternoon."

Lovingwell stared darkly at the tabletop. "It
doesn’t look very good for me, does it? I mean if someone should,
shall we say, 'blow the whistle'?"

"No," I said. "Not so good."

"I can’t believe it," he said. "I
just can’t believe that Sarah would do this to me."

"It doesn’t have to be Sarah," I said
without much conviction. "After all, she hasn’t reported you
to the FBI, yet. Or turned the papers over to Mother Jones. We could
still be reeling in a red herring. Think back—was there any time
this morning or this afternoon that you put your hand to the safe
without opening it?"

Lovingwell nodded. "It slipped my mind but this
morning before I went to work I stopped to look at the safe. Just to
look at it, the way a patron might look at a wallspot from which a
painting had been stolen. I think I ’d put my hand to the tumbler
when Sarah called to me
from the study door."

"What did she want?"

"Nothing, really. Just to know if she could
borrow a few dollars."

It didn’t have to mean anything and I told him so.

"I hope you’re right," the Professor
said. "Because this thing is beginning to frighten me. If it
isn’t resolved soon, I’m afraid I’ll lose my nerve."

"You’1l be all right," I told him. "I’ll
start tailing Sarah in the morning. If she doesn’t lead me to the
document or to her accomplice in a few days, we’ll turn the case
over to the FBI."

"Only if she’s in the clear," Lovingwell
said. "And remember—she’s not to know that I’m having her
. . . instigated."
 

4

Calhoun Street in Clifton is a crowded, urban road,
lined on the south side with storefronts, fast food joints, and swart
brownstone apartments and, on the north, with those university
dormitories that look a little like sets of giant building blocks
made of glass and steel. It was not, all told, a likely spot for a
nest of conspirators or of spies. And yet, in spite of her demure
good looks, Sarah Lovingwell seemed to be one or the other. Seems,
not is, I told myself. Only it was such a strong case of seeming that
I had trouble drumming up a healthy skepticism.

At ten o’clock that Tuesday morning I’d followed
my seeming suspect up Middleton to Clifton Avenue, through the
slippery side streets filled with dirty snow and drooping elder
branches, to the door of the Friends of Nature Club on the south side
of Calhoun. Judging from the flaky decal on the top of the front
window, the clubhouse had once housed a shoe repair shop. There was
an open lot to its west and on its east a used-clothing store, with
one forlorn mannequin in the window, dressed like a befuddled flapper
in a cloche hat and a silk chemise with a string of big white pearls
on her breast. The poor mannequin looked so cheerless and out of
place in the weather that I began to grow rather fond of her. But
then she was the only thing I had to look at, save for the half-dozen
collegiate-types bundled in fat, shiny parkas who passed her by
without a second glance.

Sarah had pulled her tan V.W. into an alley beside
the clubhouse and gone into the building through a side door. In and
maybe out—I couldn’t see the rear of the clubhouse from where I
was parked. But then I didn’t really care where Sarah went that
morning. It was the Friends  of Nature who interested me. For
almost two hours, right up until noon, I sat in the Pinto with a
candy bar in one hand and a Minox in the other. And every time
someone went in or came out of the club, I stopped gnawing the candy
and snapped a picture. It was a little like insurance work, which I
don’t like to do but which also happens to be the most common kind
of job that this detective (and every other detective in the world)
gets thrown at him since the courts have liberalized the divorce
laws.

So, you snap the picture, Harry. And scrunch up in
the car seat like a bitter fetus. And maybe you come up with face
that the good Professor will be interested in. Not an insurance
swindler—not this time. But somebody from the lab or the University
who could have served as Sarah’s accomplice. At least, that was the
general theory was going on. And, after all, it was only a matter of
a couple of hours.

About twelve, I got tired of insurance work and
general theories and decided to take a quick look inside the club.
The wind was howling down the street, making the telephone wires snap
like jump ropes on concrete and freezing me through my top coat as
soon as I got out of the car. I ran across Calhoun Street—well,
high-stepped through the mire—slid up to the club door and ducked
inside. At first glance, I thought the place looked vaguely like a
political headquarters, which was an interesting point if my seeming
suspect were indeed a spy. There were long folding tables scattered
about the iioor; papers, pamphlets and handouts stacked on the
tables; Sierra Club posters on the walls; and hints of marijuana
smoke drifting into the room from the rear office. All in all, it
could have been a chapter of the Young Republicans. A few of the
friends were warming their hands in front of an old Franklin stove by
the front door; most were busy stuffing envelopes. So busy that they
didn’t seem to notice me. Which was just fine. I wandered toward
the rear of the club, where a bulletin board was posted with the
day’s activities. For Tuesday the sixteenth it read: "Joint
Protest with Friends of the Arts to save the Fountain. 2:30 P.M. at
the Art Museum." The Fountain was Our Lady of the Waters on
Fountain Square—once the cynosure of downtown Cincinnati. But since
they’ve torn the Albee down and thrown up those huge steel towers
about the square, the statue doesn’t seem much more than another
misplaced piece of memorabilia—the sort of monument that town
councils love to bury away, because half of them aren’t sure that
anything more than a decade old isn’t slightly un-American. I liked
the fact that the Friends wanted to preserve the Lady from further
attacks and I was also mildly amused by their enemies list, which was
posted next to the bulletin board. Several ominous-looking,
hand-drawn posters, made up to look like the wanted sheets in post
offices, had been strung across the wall. The Mayor was number one,
followed by the chairmen of the boards of Cincinnati Bell, the Metro
bus system, C.G.&E., Proctor & Gamble. Most of the faces were
predictable. The one that wasn’t belonged to Daryl Lovingwell. Even
in the drawing he looked alarmed, as if he were shocked to find
himself in such company. The portrait was signed at the bottom—Sarah
L.

I didn’t see the artist
around. But that was all right. I didn’t want to see her or her to
see me. I checked my watch, which was showing twelve-ten, and decided
that if I left the club immediately I could drop off the film in time
to get it back that evening, check in at my apartment, grab some
lunch, and still make it up to Mt. Adams in time for the rally. So I
picked up a few pamphlets from one of the folding tables, nodded to a
blonde girl stuffing envelopes, and walked out the door.

***

I’d deposited the film at a Shutter Bug on Vine and
was heading up McMillan to my apartment when I realized that the car
behind me looked too familiar. It was a tan V.W., Sarah’s car. Only
Sarah wasn’t driving it. I took a good look in the mirror when I
got to the stop light at Highland. The man behind the wheel had a
checked tam pulled down over his forehead and a big, bushy black
beard. Sean O’Hara, I said to myself, Sarah’s boyfriend. I’d
never seen the guy sitting next to him before. He was high yellow,
about twenty-five, sparsely bearded, wearing a Big Apple cap, with a
face that was thin, acne-scarred and mean.

I realized as I watched him watching me that I had
been taking the Lovingwell case much too casually, treating it
strictly as a piece of domestic theft, as "family troubles."
From the look on that black kid’s face, I decided damned quickly
that he and O’Hara were just trouble—plain and simple.

I didn’t try to give them the slip. Hell, I don’t
drive well enough to lose anybody. But I did take the precaution of
pulling into the lot at the rear of the Delores when got back home at
twelve forty-five, and the extra precaution of parking between two
burly old Cadillacs. I took a good look around before walking to the
front of building, but O’Hara and the black kid had driven past me,
down Reading toward town. Which didn’t really make me feel any
better. Something was wrong or I wouldn’t have been followed in the
first place.