Area of Suspicion (25 page)

“Did they see Alma Brady?”

“I was coming to that. No, they didn’t. They didn’t see anybody come in, but around three they heard the front door close and a man went off the porch real quiet and walked away. I’ve told the city people we got to have more lights on this street. If I’ve told them once, I’ve told them a hundred times. It can give you a creepy feeling thinking about a man prowling around in here last night. I feel responsible for my girls, and with a lot of low-class people in town, and with those sailors all over the place from the Naval Training Station, you never know what—”

“Could the girls describe the man?”

“Like I was saying, the lights aren’t strong enough on this street, so they couldn’t see him good. They said he was a smallish man dressed dark, walking quick and soft. Now I’ve been thinking maybe it was him I heard walking around up there in Alma’s room. It makes me terrible nervous and I can’t understand her never coming home since Thursday morning when she went to work. Do you think I ought to phone the police and report her missing?”

“That might be the wise thing to do.”

“The girls didn’t say anything to me until I started asking, because they thought it was somebody sneaked a boy friend in after I got to bed and he was sneaking out again. But I told them about Alma and now they’re nervous like I am. The man is here changing the lock. It’s a big expense whenever a girl loses her front-door key because I don’t feel right if there’s a key around that just about anybody could have. There’s one key for each girl, and one for me, and if that man got in with a key, he had to use Alma’s key. I’ll phone the police right now.”

“Mrs. Colsinger, I’d consider it a favor if you didn’t mention my visit.”

“Well,” she said dubiously, “if they ask me if somebody was around asking about her, I don’t feel awful much like telling lies about it.”

“If they ask you directly, tell them. Just don’t volunteer the information. I’d like to tell you the reason, but I can’t right now. I assure you it’s a good reason.”

She seemed to accept that. “Maybe, Mr. Dean, I ought to go ahead and wire her people, too. They live in Junction City, Kansas.”

“I wouldn’t do that yet, Mrs. Colsinger. It might only worry them when there’s nothing they can do. Maybe she’ll come in later tonight.”

“I certainly hope so. I certainly hope nothing happened to Alma.”

She sighed and hung up. I put my jacket on and took the letter for Portugal to the hotel desk and asked the clerk to put it in the safe. He glanced curiously at the addressee.

“If I should—check out of the hotel, I’d like to have you send that over to Sergeant Portugal by messenger. Could you do that?”

“Yes, sir. Of course.”

As I turned away from the desk Lester Fitch came toward me, his polished lenses reflecting the lobby lights.

“Gevan! So nice to run into you.”

“Hello, Lester.”

He was beaming, cordial. “How about a cocktail, old boy? Heard you’ve been on the move.”

“I’m busy, Lester.”

“I’ll be frank. Niki phoned me. She asked me to talk to you. It won’t take long.”

I permitted myself to be steered to the Copper Lounge. We took stools at the bar. The place was beginning to fill up with the five o’clockers.

We ordered and he said, “This climate must be repulsive after Florida, Gevan. Aren’t you anxious to get back?”

“Are you anxious to have me go back, Lester?”

He pursed his lips. “You
are
on the defensive, aren’t you? Would you mind if I do a little diagnosing?”

The mask was easy to identify. Fitch, the family lawyer. Just like a family doctor. This medicine may taste bad, old boy, but in the long run it will help you. Drink it down. His expression was just right. Serious, concerned, noble.

I sipped my drink. “Go on, Doctor. Diagnose.”

“Gevan, your pride is hurt. Your viewpoint of this whole Dean Products situation is irrational, just because of hurt pride. Certainly, deep down, you must realize that Stanley Mottling is more qualified than you are to run a firm like Dean Products has become. Once you admit that, old boy, you can give up this dog-in-the-manger attitude that has us all so worried.”

“Don’t forget poor, decrepit, old, broken-down Granby.”

“That’s not far off the mark. Six months of the job would kill him. By then Stanley would be settled in some other job and where would we be?”

“Up the creek, all on account of my stupid pride.”

“Gevan, I know you’re being sarcastic. Actually, I’m trying to help. I’ve always liked you. I don’t like to see—so many things thrown away.”

The inference did not please me. I did not like what he was hinting at.

“Many things, Lester.”

He leaned closer, twisting his empty glass on the bar top, making wet smears. “You’d be hurting more than the company, Gevan. You’d be hurting Niki too. Hurting her terribly. You must see that. She’s in love with you. And this attitude of yours—it’s sabotaging her.”

Just a good old friend of the family. Sabotage. A lovely word. It gives you quite a mental picture: greasy little men scuttling through warehouses and tossing incendiary pencils into dark corners and molding gelignite to bridge trusses. But there are other kinds. Who can do the best job of sabotaging a school system? One grimy little boy—or the superintendent of schools?

“
Are
you listening to me, Gevan?”

“Sure. What were you saying?”

But I kept thinking while he rambled on. Suppose our grimy little boy wanted to do a thorough job of sabotage. If he was bright enough, he would lead such an exemplary life that he could become superintendent of schools without anyone every suspecting that his sole motivation was to eventually kick down all the school buildings.

“… Niki has her pride too, Gevan. She wants Ken’s plans to be carried out. And Ken’s plans included Stanley Mottling. Ken was able to forget his pride and hand the reins over to Stanley. You can prove that you’re just as big a man as Ken was.”

“That’s what’s spoiling our lives, Lester. All my foolish, stubborn pride.”

He edged closer. “I know you’re trying to make fun of me, Gevan. But remember, it was Niki who asked me to try to talk sense into you.” He lowered his voice and there was a thin coating of slime on his words. “But I’ll bet you if you do things her way at the Monday meeting, it shouldn’t be too hard to arrange to join her on a trip she’s taking. It could be handled in a discreet way. Join up in some other city, you know. I’m almost positive it could be worked.” He underlined the thought by giving me a little nudge with his elbow. A sly and lascivious little nudge.

I was suddenly very, very tired of Lester. I wondered what I was doing, sitting at the bar listening to him. I didn’t want him offering me the delights of Niki in return for being an obedient boy. There is a limit to the number of handsprings you can turn for the bonus of a fair white body.

I closed my fingers around his wrist. My hand and wrist are toughened by a lot of big tarpon, by makos and tuna in season off Bimini, by water skis behind fast boats. It was childish, schoolyard competition. I clenched my hand on his wrist, on the soft office-flesh, until my knuckles popped and I felt the strain in my shoulder—until his mouth twisted and loosened and I had turned him back to that Lester Fitch of Arland High School, fair game for kids half his size, loping along, blubbering with fear. I took all his masks from
him and for a moment enjoyed just that, then felt self-disgust and released him quickly.

I made my voice flat, calm. “Now I’ll diagnose, Lester. Now I’ll tell you something. You’ve gotten into something that’s way over your head. You’re scared witless. Your nerves are shot. You’re in a mess you’d like to get out of and know damn well you can’t.”

He made a weak effort to put on a standard mask. Indignation. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“I’m talking about you. I know you, Lester. The world hasn’t appreciated you. You haven’t been able to move fast enough. You’ll use any method. You’ll be crooked if you have to be, to get that power and appreciation faster. You’re mixed up with Dolson. Both of you are thieves. Neither of you are worth a damn. I don’t know how you were angled into it, but it’s too late for you to get out, Lester. You know it and I know it and Dolson knows it.”

He could not look at me. Perhaps any human being has a right to personal dignity. I had stripped Lester naked, yet it was not done in idle cruelty. It was an application of sudden, unexpected pressure—the kind that opens up a hidden fracture-line.

He sat for what seemed like a long time, with his pale hands motionless on the edge of the bar. He turned toward me. I’ve never seen so much hate.

His voice was barely audible. “You’ve always had every damn thing, haven’t you? All the things I’ve wanted. All right. Keep prying. Keep shoving people around. Keep acting smarter and bigger than everybody, because that’s what I want you to do. I want you to keep your goddamn nose in business that doesn’t concern you, because if you get too annoying, they’ll smash you the way they’d smash a bug on a wall. Without even thinking about it. And I want that to happen to you, Mr. Gevan Dean.”

“The way they smashed Ken?” I asked softly.

Hate and pressure had opened the fracture-line. He realized he had said too much. The fracture closed slowly. His eyes became remote again behind optical lenses. He got up from the stool, moving carefully, like a man ill or drunk.
He walked away and he did not look like the brisk young man on his way up, the young man to watch. He looked like a toy with a spring that had almost run down.

I had another drink. Perry was right. There was something big and formless in the darkness. I could almost make out the shape of it. Almost.

I paid and left. I went to the lobby and picked up a newspaper. The headlines reflected a world in a tension of conflicting ideologies so familiar to us, we accept it with a glance, yet do not dare think deeply about it. I scanned the front page and saw a box near the bottom of the page. I stopped so quickly on my way to the elevators that the man behind me ran into me, grunted, showed his teeth, and hurried on.

The body of a young girl, recovered from the river eleven miles south of the city at noon had been identified at press time as Alma Brady, civil-service employee at Dean Products. Death was caused by drowning, and the penciled suicide note in the pocket of her red coat confirmed the police theory that she had jumped from one of the Arland bridges some time Thursday night. The note indicated she had been depressed over a love affair.

Poor little chippy, tumbling down the river in her red coat. I could not see her as a suicide type. She was too much on the make, too hungry for life, too tough-minded. With Dolson out of the picture she had started thinking about the next man, not about the river.

There had been a vulnerability about her, but not of the sort that causes suicides. I was making a snap judgment, based on being with her for a half-hour, yet I felt certain she had not killed herself.

Ken had taken his gamble and lost. I mourned him, yet, since I had learned his death had perhaps not been as pointless as I had first thought, I had lost that feeling of resentment a needless death creates. Alma’s death was different. I was positive the fluffy blonde had been murdered. And my anger was strong—stronger than the anger I felt at Ken’s death, because it was more impersonal. There was a callousness about her death. Smashed, Lester had
said, like a bug on a wall. Smashed in a professional way which I knew Fitch and Dolson were incapable of.

I turned away from the elevators and hurried to a phone booth in the lobby, found Perry’s home phone number, and dialed. Her mother told me Joan had called earlier to say she was working late and would get her dinner across the street from the offices. I thanked her hurriedly and phoned the plant. The switchboard was closed. The night plug on the number I dialed was into a line to the engineering offices. A man with a weary voice gave me the night number for Granby’s office.

I did not completely realize the extent of my own tension until the sound of Perry’s voice came over the line. I sighed from my heels.

“This is Gevan. Perry. Did you hear about it?”

“I’m sick over it. I wish I’d known it hit her so hard. I thought she was mad at him but not hurt that bad. If I’d known, I could have—stayed with her or something.”

“
Did
it hit her that hard?”

“What do you mean?”

“Perry, I don’t want to go into it, not over the phone, but I don’t believe it was suicide.”

She made a thin attempt at laughter. “But, good Lord, Colonel Dolson couldn’t possible have—”

“It’s more than Dolson. Have you eaten?”

“I just got back five minutes ago.”

“What time will you be through?”

“Eight-thirty, Gevan.”

“I’ll be parked as close to the main entrance as I can get. I’ll feel better if you lock your office door.”

“You’re frightening me, Gevan.”

“I think it’s time to be frightened.”

It was seven by the clock in the lobby. The storm-lull was over. All the phony words had been said, all the untimed gestures made. Lester had talked his hate, and he would report that no persuasion would work on me. Now the storm could ride down the line of the wind, while the sky changed from brass to ink.

Chapter 15

The hotel made me restless. I wished I had asked her to quit. My raincoat was in my room. I went to the elevators. One came up from the basement level, the Copper Lounge level. The starter motioned me toward it. The door opened and I got in. Colonel Dolson was in there. A husky bellhop and a waiter were supporting him, one holding each arm. His cropped gray hair still had an authoritative bristle, but the face was sagging and lost, the eyes dull. The front of his beautifully tailored uniform jacket was smeared, and his smell was nauseous.

“You shouldn’t have stopped for anybody,” the waiter said to the operator.

“You shoulda took him up in the freight cage,” the operator said.

“Just run your elevator, sonny,” the waiter said.

Dolson stared at the elevator floor. He mumbled and breathed wetly through his mouth. He didn’t recognize me, and I couldn’t understand what he was saying.