Spider’s Cage (12 page)

“I thought you carried a card,” Windrow said.

Opium Jade shook her head. “Just the one for the clinic, honey. One day Marx couldn't get it up anymore. A girl just don't know what to believe.” She stopped and eyed a dress in a store window. Windrow stood beside her. Muzac drifted out of a speaker hidden above their heads. Opium Jade watched the dress quietly for a while, then focused on his eyes in the reflection in the window.

“I repeat. What makes you think somebody like her would have any need of a bum like you?” she said. “You don't think there's somebody hanging around the top of the heap can give her what she likes, how she likes, and shave every day in the bargain?”

Windrow looked through his reflection at the plastic legs of the coy mannikin. The feet had high heel shoes on them. A thin gold chain with tiny links twinkled on one ankle.

You're a cool drink in August, he said to himself, remembering Jodie Ryan's voice as she said it, her eyes two
inches from his. But he didn't speak. His eyes snapped into focus with the image of Opium Jade's eyes in the window. She looked at them for a minute.

“Oh boy,” she said. “The dumb eyes of the helpless victim. You look like a deer caught in the highbeams on 101.” She put her arm through his and pulled. “Come on, I'll buy you a glass of betadyne.”

They entered the first licensed premises they came to. It was a big one. The bar went from Market Street entrance all the way to the back door, which opened onto Stevenson, the alley fifty yards south. It was an old place, with a backbar proscenium of carved mahogany pillars supporting a dignified architrave that framed three shelves of bottles nearly as long as the bar. It all looked and smelled just like 2
A.M.
in 1923, in the little bit of smoky, ochre light allowed to penetrate. They had principles, too, to go along with the atmosphere. A beer with a shot went for eighty cents. Opium Jade bought two each. She laid a two-dollar bill on the counter and told the huge red-faced Irishman on the other side, complete with starched collar, pinstriped shirt, vest, sleeve garters and a wrap-around apron hysted to his armpits, to keep the change. He rapped his knuckles twice on the bar and went away with the bill.

Opium Jade clicked her shot against Windrow's.

“Here's to love, goddamnit.”

They drank.

A while later she went away and funded the jukebox and came back. The antique Wurlitzer dated to Babbage. A lot of electromechanical ruminations transpired before it got down to playing a tune. The music itself filtered through scratches and static after a loud thump and four introductory notes presaged the melody's imminent arrival.

Windrow looked sideways at Opium Jade. She sipped her shot and stared straight ahead.

Windrow cleared his throat and tried to suppress a smile. The bass thummed and buzzed in the old box, lugubriously, yet with undeniable finesse.

Windrow's smile had turned into a grin. He put his hand on Opium Jade's shoulder and was about to speak when she shrugged it off.

Windrow frowned. He put his hand up to her chin and gently turned her face towards his.

He was startled to see a tear fill the corner of her eye and glisten down her left cheek.

She moved her chin away from his fingers and stared over her shot at her own reflection, just visible in the mirror between the top and bottom of two rows of bottles.

“Fuck you, shamus,” she said softly. He looked away from her face to her reflection. Her eyes shone there, in the gloom among the bottles.

A
S WINDROW NEGOTIATED THE STAIRCASE THAT LED TO
his office, gibbering voices held a conference in the shadows within and around him.

He couldn't make a lot of sense out of the chatter. He heard Opium Jade rendering bits of Verlaine, though she was now across the street, working, and he understood no French. He could hear Bdeniowitz berating somebody for a lousy job, no—wait—it was Bdeniowitz berating Windrow for doing a lousy job of being alive, snatches of a lecture delivered and received in the early seventies, when Windrow had still been a cop. He chuckled. He could still taste the humiliation of that night. The strains of a tune passed through his mind. He hummed to himself inaccurately. C'est la vie, c'est la vie. Aha. That laugh. Sal had laughed like that as she had removed her fist full of quarters from his stomach, in preparation for the blow that had rendered him unconscious. Had some quirk of her conscience chided her for decking this total stranger, and she'd laughed it off? Just as Windrow had guiltily laughed off Bdeniowitz' derision, years before?

Naw, he thought to himself. The laugh had been a byproduct, a genuine expression let slip by mistake in the moment of enjoyment. Like a cry of love. Sure, that's it. Then had come the blow of redoubled ferocity that sent
him over the desk. The laugh was extra, a filagree, an emotional tip.

He leaned on the bannister and breathed deeply. Nine dollars, sixty cents, plus tip. That's twelve of them. Six for Opium Jade, six for Windrow. Plus the round she bought. That made seven. Whew. He frowned. Beer and a shot, eighty cents? Crime. That's real crime, like taking brain cells from babies… He tried to remember whether or not he'd dipped into the two hundred dollars given him by Woodruff. Probably. Likely. Nine dollars, sixty cents. That's a lot of money. Plus tip. Have to fondle the resources, weigh carefully… Get that cash in the bank, cover that check to Bruce… .

His head drifted with the smoky fumes of cheap Irish whiskey and draft beer.

He'd intended to extort information rather than money from Woodruff. But the fabrication about another will, that had meant something to the man.

“Here's a little something on retainer,” he'd said, and winked. “You'll let me know the moment you find anything, of course.” He'd damn near patted Windrow on the back. Golden retriever.

Windrow pulled one of the crisp hundred dollar bills out of his watch pocket. He couldn't read it but he stared at where its dim shape crackled between his fingers in the dark.

Not a lot of money. Just enough, maybe, to insure the loyalty of a shifty detective. That is to say, if you do find such a will, Mr. Windrow, be sure to let us be the first to see it. OK?

Windrow turned and sat on the edge of the second floor landing and stared down the dark stairwell, softly popping the C-note between his two hands like a shoeshine rag.

It seemed likely that somebody, somewhere would have
to know about any last will and testament for the document to be of any good to anyone. If old man O'Ryan had composed such a statement, there must be a lawyer holding it somewhere, or it must be someplace where it would be found. Anybody with a stake in it would apprise himself of its contents, which, if not already a matter of public record, would certainly come to light immediately upon the decease of the testator.

Maybe Woodruff had simply swallowed Windrow's story; could it be that simple?

Windrow made the hundred dollar bill snap, once, twice, and then it snapped neatly, accidently, in two.

He reconstructed in the darkness beneath him the living room of Pamela Neil's house. He remembered the panelling, the maid, the piano, the red gemstone, the deafmute—and the paintings, each a portrait or an abstraction, with the single exception of the yacht over the mantle, and the oil well, on its way out. He saw the polished table covered with bottles of liquor, the sofas, the high windows in the western wall, the intricate rugs, the light on them.

He could see Pamela Neil, pretty but tired and thin, nervous and childish. Her button nose wrinkled when she sniffled. She sat with her knees drawn up and her legs to one side, held her drink beside her face in a hand whose elbow rested on her hip, the fingers straight up on the glass. She had told him nothing.

Nothing.

Here was a woman who had managed to marry herself an oil tycoon somewhere between two and three times her age, then divorce him. She liked cocaine, brandy, sailboats, had an aesthete for a boyfriend, a big house to keep him in, servants to wait on them. All she had to do was stay unmarried, so the alimony might keep rolling in.

Then the benefactor dies, she remarries, immediately her stepdaughter disappears, and a blackmailing detective shows up. What does she want? An explanation? An investigation? Paperwork? Security? A payoff?

No. She wanted a little fun.

So she hated herself. That was up to her. But why fool around with Windrow? Could she have been trying to spark Woodruff? No, probably not. She more than had her match in him. She'd stopped the unilateral eroticism when Woodruff returned from his telephone call with Jodie… .

Now the phone call; that had been an interesting item. The smart tote would lay at least even money on the lies about that telephone call. Had it been Jodie? If so, did she say what Woodruff said she said? Windrow had been attacked minutes after he left their house. That meant two things: a) either he'd been followed there by the stolen limousine or, b) he'd been set up while he was there, in the house.

In either case, the telephone call could have been the tipoff.

That might mean that Woodruff had arranged to have himself called out of the room, which would mean the maid was in on it.

So. A talk with Concepción, the maid, might throw a little light on Woodruff's operation. She could say only one of two things: yes or no. If she says there was no phone call, the boss told me to interrupt you guys after you'd all settled in the living room? That would mean that Mrs. Neil had informed Woodruff of her telephone conversation with Windrow that morning, during which Windrow made the upsetting though vague suggestion about the future of their financial situation.

Mr. and Mrs. Woodruff. They'd gone and married after
the death of old man O'Ryan on the basis of the legitimate will. With the old man dead, the alimony or inheritance or whatever solidified, fixed forever, nothing stood between them and greenly padded marital bliss.

Or, if we have no incoming calls, what the hell was Woodruff doing out in the vestibule? If there were the slightest chance there might be a will superseding the probated one, the one that precipitated the marriage in Vegas, it would definitely be to Woodruff's advantage to get hold of it before anyone else. If that were so, why try to bump off Martin Windrow, the only person in the entire world claiming to know anything about it? Some way, some how, the will would turn up, if it existed. Bumping people off wouldn't solve anything, it was stupid, it only called attention to the anomaly. Whereas, hiring Windrow to ferret the document, that made sense. They would be stupid to suppress it, but if they got to it before anyone else, they could lay some plans accordingly. On the assumption that this Windrow is a cheap detective with only one thing in mind, the long green, you hire him to bird dog the document and bring it to his employer. Employer, naturally, will read the thing, out of curiosity, then forward it to the proper authorities. Of course. Genuine or not. Hard to believe the guy would go for it.

None of it added up to murder.

A long, low frequency blast from a ship's foghorn slowly filled the stairwell. Windrow suddenly noticed the chill in the air. A rat scratched at the baseboard along the hall corridor above, and something smelled dead. They never cleaned this place. Windrow moved his shoe against a stair tread. The scratching stopped. He folded his arms so that each hand was tucked into an armpit, a half of the C-note curled around each thumb.

How about a yes, phone call? Yes, Señor Windrow, there was a telephone call, and it was for Señor ‘jefe' Woodruff, and pues, I think it might have been the Señorita Ryan. How many assumptions was that?

OK, he counted on his fingers. Woodruff was called to the telephone, because, yes, there was a call for him. Woodruff said it was the Ryan girl…

Windrow raised an eyebrow, and a corner of his mouth turned up ever so slightly. Someone who knew him well, observing carefully, might have said that he was smiling. But what he was thinking was the he'd referred to Jodie Ryan as the Ryan girl. Gone was the set of widening concentric circles on an otherwise undisturbed surface in a balmy climate, complete with kingfisher, a blue heron, a few egrets, crocodiles, jumping fish and spanish moss—commonly conjured at the mention of the word Jodie. He was still a sap for her, to be sure, and he'd be a sap the next time he saw her, if it were out of the context of this case. So his mind, finally, had discarded its preoccupation with its own wildlife—feathered and otherwise—wandering scientific in the fumes of nameless ethanol from County Cork. Ninety-sixty, plus tip. Eight rounds apiece. A cheap slap in the face.

The rat began scratching at the baseboard again.

If it had been the Ryan girl, that meant she would be the fourth person to be aware of Windrow's presence at the Neil house. And if she knew, Sal knew.

There was a resistance in him, somewhere, to that one connection, some kind of struggle. A duck disappeared off the quiet pond, pulled through the surface by a nimble tentacle. But he stared down the cold, dark stairwell, and listened to the rat gnawing above him. Right? he said to
himself. Right mind? Think about it. If the Ryan girl knew Windrow was at the Neil house then Sal knew, and everybody, whoever they were, would say,
let Sal drive the car
, and Sal would let the steel creep molten into her eyes, and freeze there, her brain and cool hands drawing off the temperature, she would smile, and steal the car and run over Windrow with it. Wearing a white wig?