Angel Eyes (13 page)

I remembered reading about it. The crash had knocked it out of the headlines in a hurry.

“We?”

“My son Jack and I. Jack Billings. The only good thing to come out of a brief first marriage when I was still in high school. He’s the reason I haven’t had the place redecorated. He’s as devoted to western Americana as Arthur was. Personally I prefer Danish modern, but we’re all slaves to our children.”

“There’s a rough spot,” I said. “If the estate was in danger of being attached, why was Janet Whiting so hot to prove there was another will leaving most of it to her?”

“I explained that to her at the time of the Probate Court incident, in an attempt to calm her down. She said it wasn’t the money, it was the fact that Arthur had meant her to have it, and that a man’s last wish counted for something even if there was nothing to back it up.”

“Did you believe her?”

“Would you? Don’t forget the trust fund and this house. To a hoofer who had spent most of her life in cheap motel rooms it might be worth the effort.”

I nodded again, emptily. It seemed a year since my last cigarette. “She hasn’t tried to reach you since Probate Court?”

“She said that, Walker.” Acid had begun to burn through the lawyer’s officiousness.

“Not exactly, counselor.” My fingers itched for a gavel. “She said that she had last seen Miss Whiting a year ago. That’s not the same thing.”

“Objection overruled.” She was smiling again, with all the warmth of an Eskimo’s elbow. “As far as I know, Mr. Walker, she ceased to exist after that confrontation.”

“One more question,” I said.

“I should hope so,” snapped Clague.

I ignored him. “Lee Collins, the pilot who was killed with your husband and his aide. Can you tell me anything about him?”

A puzzled crease marred her smooth forehead. “Lee Collins. I’m sorry, the name means nothing to me. I’m afraid I was one of those typical society matrons who never interfere in their husbands’ business. It caused me some real problems once he was no longer here to conduct them. I have Daniel to thank for bringing order out of chaos.”

“I’ll bet.”

“What’s that?” the lawyer flared.

“Nothing.” I got up. “Well, I can’t think of anything else. Unless you can shed some light on Bingo Jefferson’s murder. Or on Krim’s. I imagine you’ve heard about that one by now.”

“I understand the police are denying that there’s any connection,” said Clague.

“There’s no law compelling a policeman to tell the truth, Mr. Clague. Or am I trespassing on your territory?”

His rheumy eyes narrowed behind the heavy spectacles. “You’re a very easy young man not to like, Mr. Walker.”

“I lie awake nights worrying about it.” I looked down at Mrs. DeLancey. “If you still have the information Reliance gathered on Janet Whiting, I’d like to borrow it.”

“I burned it after Arthur was killed. I didn’t think there’d be any more use for it. I’m sorry.”

“No need. You’ve been a great help. And thanks for the hospitality. I don’t see much of it in my business.”

“Nor I in mine.” She raised a hand. “Good-bye. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

“I wish you the same.”

C
ARMEN, THE MAID,
met me in the entranceway. I looked for my hat and coat. She didn’t have them.

“Mr. Billings would like to speak with you.”

“Mr. Billings?”

“Mrs. DeLancey’s son.” She hurried out through the arch on her left without having met my gaze once. I was beginning to think her blush was real.

The room beyond the arch was a smaller version of the one on the opposite end of the house, only there was a suspended ceiling and the western artifacts were crowded closer together. A bronze casting made from Remington’s “The Scalp” stood atop a pedestal table that had been fashioned entirely of elk antlers by the hand of some rude frontier artisan long since gone to bones and dust. I knew the casting was a copy because the original was in the Smithsonian. At the moment it was being fondled by a burly party in his mid-thirties wearing a canary yellow jacket over a lavender shirt open at the neck, and white bellbottoms. As I entered he looked up, took his hands away from the statue, and smiled, displaying a natural gap between his front teeth under a reddish handlebar moustache.

“Very pleased to meet you, Mr. Walker,” he said cheerfully, bounding forward to seize my hand in both of his. They were broad hands and strong despite their lack of calluses. “I’m Jack Billings. You were just talking to my mother.”

His face was wide without being fat, topped by waves of brown hair as thick and soft as butter. His eyes were gray, like his mother’s but not as hard. He had an unremarkable nose, and his smile was as genuine as a congressman’s expense voucher. Outfit and all, he looked like something you’d expect to find on a used car lot.

“What did you want to see me about, Mr. Billings?” I had to unscrew my hand from between his palms. He was one of those who like to hold on.

“Let’s go up to my study.”

The damn place was lousy with arches. We passed through another one and mounted another set of three steps. Since the house was constructed on different levels, this put us a floor above the room in which I had met Mrs. DeLancey and her lawyer. This section was paneled entirely in redwood. We stopped before a heavy, worm-eaten door that looked as if it might have been borrowed from a fashionable hotel built before the turn of the century. Billings got out a leather key case, but before unlocking the door he pushed aside a hinged section of molding, inserted a key in a hidden slot, and turned it until something clicked.

“Burglar alarm,” he explained, replacing the molding. Then he manipulated the lock and opened the door, ushering me inside with a flamboyant gesture.

When I entered I saw why. Glass cases like the ones above Mike Pilaster’s junk shop lined the walls from floor to ceiling, inside of which stood rows of rifles and shotguns linked together with chains like a Georgia road gang and pistols and revolvers of every make and caliber were mounted on pegs. A squat wooden desk crouched on legs carved in the shape of lion’s paws between horizontal display cases sheltering more small arms on red plush with a yellowed paper tab bearing typewritten identification beside each. None of the pieces was less than ninety years old, and some sported sinister-looking notches on their grips. A portrait of Judge DeLancey, wearing riding clothes and holding buckskin gloves and a quirt, hung on the only clear section of wall behind the desk. An electric humidifier hummed in one corner.

“This was my stepfather’s study.” Billings waved me into a quilted black leather chair. “I’ve left everything just as it was. Not out of any devotion to the old man’s memory, but because I always admired his collection. Let me show you the prize.” He unlocked one of the glass cases beside the desk, lifted out one of the revolvers, and brought it to me, cradling it in both hands like a bottle of rare old wine. It was a Navy Colt with an ivory grip and a seven-and-a-half-inch barrel.

I said it was nice.

“Wait,” he said, and turned the butt toward me. The name “Wild Bill” was neatly engraved on the end of the brass frame.

“Not Wild Bill Elliott, the great cowboy star?”

“Hardly. It was among the items auctioned off in Deadwood to pay for Wild Bill Hickok’s funeral after Jack McCall killed him in 1876. Later it came into the possession of Sheriff Pat Garrett of New Mexico, who used it to kill Billy the Kid. There’s a guy out there now who thinks he’s got the genuine article in his collection, but it’s a fake. This is the McCoy. I’ve got the pedigree, a letter signed by Garrett himself.”

“Impressive. Is that why you asked me up here?”

The eager light faded from his eyes. “No.” Reverently he replaced the gun in the case and locked it. Then he sat on the edge of the desk. “I wanted to set you straight on some things my mother told you.”

“What’d you do, bug the room?”

He flushed. “No, and I resent the implication. Carmen told me.”

“I see. May I smoke?”

“Please do. I don’t myself, but I’ve missed the smell of tobacco around the place since Arthur died. He was partial to pipes.”

“I’m not,” I fired up a weed. “You’d better watch that stuff with the maid. Her husband has a bad temper.”

He glared. “Do you want to hear this or not?”

“I’m all ears, Mr. Billings.”

He nodded once, stiffly. He’d put me in my place. “First of all, Mother lied when she said she didn’t know why Phil Montana broke up with Arthur.” He smiled sheepishly. “Carmen didn’t stop overhearing things when she left the room.”

I watched him through the smoke. He continued.

“In a way, Montana lied too. While it’s true that the rift opened over some poor advice he got from my stepfather, that advice had nothing to do with his duties as Montana’s legal counsel.

“I was passing the study one day when I overheard Arthur on the telephone. The door was open. He was speaking in that tone people use when they’re trying to calm someone down—slow, soothing, as if they’re speaking to a child. He addressed the caller as Phil. He knew only one person by that name.

“I gathered that Montana was angry about a stock tip he had gotten from Arthur. It seemed that on my stepfather’s advice, Montana had directed United Steelhaulers’ accountant to invest union funds in a company called Griffin Carbide. I did some reading about it later. Griffin was a small firm, barely making ends meet, but the rumor was that it was going to merge with an eastern conglomerate. When that happened the stock would go through the ceiling. Anyway, the rumor turned out to be false, Griffin went under, and Montana had to face the union rank and file with the news that their retirement fund no longer existed. It says something for his popularity that he was reelected by a landslide after he finished his sentence for assault and was finally allowed to participate in union politics again. But it hurt the union, and because of that he dismissed Arthur as his attorney and never spoke to him again.”

“Would that be the major investment loss your mother mentioned?” He nodded. “Are you sure she knew?”

“She knew. Don’t be taken in by her uninterested wife pose; that’s just something she developed as a shield against the IRS. Which is probably why she played dumb, in the interests of consistency.”

I smoked and thought. “You said there were ‘some things’ you wanted to set me straight on. Plural. What else?”

“Second.” He got up, walked around the desk, and unlocked a drawer. He had a key fetish. After rummaging around a little he drew out a sheaf of dog-eared pages bound in manila covers and came over and dropped it into my lap. I opened it to the first page. The title was typewritten, centered in caps.

CONFIDENTIAL: JANET WHITING

RELIANCE INVESTIGATIONS

I looked up. He had perched himself on the edge of the desk again. “Mrs. DeLancey said she burned the report.”

“She asked me to do it. I didn’t. I thought it might come in handy.”

“Fond of the women, aren’t you, Mr. Billings?”

I thought that might offend him, but he merely shrugged. “I’ve made my share of conquests. I’d seen Miss Whiting a number of times without actually having met her. She was a beautiful woman. It was her eyes that set her apart. Maybe you noticed them.”

“I noticed them.” I looked around for a place to tap my cigarette ash. He plucked a heavy brass ashtray off the desk and reached it over. I balanced it on the arm of my chair and used it. The silhouette of a bison was embossed in the bottom, what else? “I guess I’m hopelessly cynical,” I said. “Whenever someone does something generous for me I can’t help wondering what he wants in return.”

“I’m concerned about Miss Whiting,” he said sadly. “I always have been. The press made her out as some kind of tramp because of her past and because she was going around with a rich man old enough to be her father. After I read that I knew different.” He indicated the report. “Read it, Mr. Walker. You’ll find a warm, caring person inside. She deserved better than she got, and I want to do everything I can to help her get it.”

I flipped through the report absently. Then I closed it. “What do you stand to gain from the will?”

He looked suspicious. “That sounds mighty like an accusation, pardner. I was vacationing in Hawaii the week my stepfather disappeared. I still have the hotel stubs if you want to see them.”

“Not necessary.”

“Besides, my share of the trust fund is nothing compared to what I got from him when he was alive. He was guilty about his situation, which made him a soft touch where Mother and I were concerned. His death cost me plenty. You think I’m callous, don’t you?”

“What I think wouldn’t pay the toll at the Windsor Tunnel, Mr. Billings.” I took a last drag on the cigarette and mashed it out on the bison’s head.

“We weren’t very close, Arthur and I,” he said. “I was an adult by the time Mother married him, so he missed being a father figure. I made an effort to interest myself in his investment business, but he seemed to prefer casting me in the role of the no-account playboy stepson. So I took the part. I’m not a strong person, Mr. Walker. I tempt easily. I was sorry when he died, but if I shed any tears, it was for the end of the easy life.”

“You said you’d like to help Miss Whiting get what she deserves. Did you mean the so-called later will?”

His expression was smug behind the handlebar. “I don’t believe there is a will. But if there is, she’s entitled to benefit from it, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yeah, maybe you two could split the trust fund and cut out the old lady.”

He got up and stood looking down at me, with his fists clenched at his sides. “Stand up.” His voice was choked.

“I was out of line, Mr. Billings. I apologize.”

“I said stand up!”

I met his gaze. “I said I was sorry. You don’t want to take it any further.”

“Damn you, no one insults me in my own house! Stand up or I’ll give it to you where you sit!”

I started to rise. He hurled a respectable haymaker at my jaw that might have been trouble had it connected. I caught it in one hand and stepped to one side, and twisted his arm back and braced my other forearm against the stiffened elbow. He cursed through the gap in his teeth. I said, “I don’t want to break your arm, Mr. Billings. I opened my big mouth and you probably have a right to bust me one, but I’m too well trained to let you do it. Please accept my apology.”