Cold Night (Jack Paine Mysteries) (2 page)

"I'll think about it," she said from her faraway place. She took the five hundred-dollar bills from the bar and slid them back into the envelope, handing it back to him. "I assume this money was to be your payment. Keep it. Give me your contract if you want."

Paine gave her the folded contract from his inside jacket pocket. He saw that her glass was empty. She rose from the barstool, steadily, and began to walk to the doorway.

"Find out whatever you want," she said.

"You told me he killed himself."

"I said that's what I wanted to think," she said. "We all want a lot of things, Mr. Paine."

"I'll need—"

"I'll think about it. I'm tired. I'm going to bathe."

She left the room. She turned out the amber light, and Paine was left in semidarkness. Though it was dark and cool in the room he could sense the heat outside; the thin slats of light that fell into the room were bright against the leather chairs they settled on. He put the envelope back into his pocket and made his way to the door.

As he stepped out, there were voices in the hallway. Approaching him was a fuller, healthier, slightly older version of Dolores Grumbach. She wore tennis shorts, and her hair was cut boyishly short. Paine saw a man, shorthaired, healthy-looking, dressed also in tennis whites, mounting the marble steps at the end of the hallway.

"You must be Mr. Paine?" the woman said. She held out a long slim hand. "I'm Dolores's sister, Rebecca Meyer."

Paine took her hand; she curled her fingers around his, holding them an instant too long.

"I hope you didn't find my sister too full of ennui," she said, smiling slightly. "Part of it's an act."

"Part?" Paine said.

She kept her eyes on him, and then they suddenly wrinkled up at the corners and she asked, smiling, "Would you like a drink?"

"I was already offered one, thanks," he said. He took out the envelope again, removing the three photographs. "Would you mind telling me if you know any of these people?"

She took the photographs from him and concentrated on each one. She shook her head. "I'm sorry, no." She handed them back. "Won't you please have that drink?"

She put a hand on his arm and Paine felt a tingle where her fingers rested.

Paine put the photos away.

"I really have to go."

"Maybe next time, then."

"Maybe next time."

He went to the front door and the maid was there, holding it open. Then suddenly he was outside, in the bright sun, feeling the gardener's eyes keeping him on the flagstone walk until he got to his car.

J
immy Carnaseca was building something on his desk. "What the hell is that?" Paine asked.

Jimmy kept his eyes on the thing on his desk, but his mouth turned up into a delighted grin. "Something I picked up on the way in." He was fitting tiny sticks together, little bigger than toothpicks, perfectly slotted on each end so that they fit together without falling apart. It crowded out half the desktop; the telephone had been moved and there were papers restacked on one side, in a rough pile away from the construction.

"Looks like a bridge," Paine said, sitting down in the desk chair and swiveling it away from Jimmy.

"Something like that. You'll see when it's done."

"Barker in?"

Jimmy frowned. "Not yet."

"Good."

"You'd better watch out," Jimmy said. "He'll chew your ass off, spit it out the window."

"He wouldn't know where to chew."

Jimmy continued with his tinkering, until Paine asked, "Coffee boy been by yet?"

"That's good, too."

"What's eating you?" Jimmy said, stopping his work. He stood as straight as his small, bent frame would let him. He stared unblinking at Paine, a tiny wooden girder held delicately in his fingers.

"You should have been a surgeon, Jimmy," Paine said.

Jimmy said, "I asked you what's eating you."

"Nothing much. Coffee boy been by yet?"

Jimmy stared at him.

"Sorry, Jimmy," Paine said.

Carnaseca regarded him dispassionately for a moment. "What is it, Jack?"

Paine said nothing. Then he said, "Lots of things, Jimmy."

"Love trouble?"

Paine looked at him. "I suppose that's part of it."

"You should do like I do," Carnaseca said. He began to work again, humming to himself.

"And what do you do?" Paine found himself smiling. Jimmy kept humming. He shook his head, a grin splitting his face.

"I ought to knock this thing down . . ." Paine threatened, holding his fist playfully over Carnaseca's model.

"Bastard," Jimmy said.

There was a banging out in the hallway. Paine cursed. "Speaking of bastards," he said.

He wheeled the chair away from the doorway as someone large walked past. There came a loud noise at the other end
of the hall, a door opening and then slamming shut. They heard papers being scattered about, and then another figure, a thin, pretty woman, hurried by with a stack of papers in her hands. She moved with an odd limp. A moment later they heard the door at the end of the hall squeaking open and then shutting again.

A voice roared, words not discernible.

"Shitbag," Paine said.

"I think I heard the coffee boy," Jimmy said, laying the sticks of wood in his hand down and putting all the strays into a box which he carefully closed, hiding the cover under a stack of papers. He pointed to the wooden construction. "Don't mess that up, you louse. Want anything?"

"No," Paine said.

Paine got up and went to his own office. He didn't want to open the door; he wanted to go back to Jimmy's chair and sit where there was light and books on the walls and a little sun coming through. Jimmy even had a personal file; it was in the middle drawer of his file cabinet in a blue hanging folder. "Anything ever happens to me," Jimmy had told him once, grinning, "it's all there. You can read it if you want." Paine had no personal file in his office. It was all in his head, and he didn't want anyone to read it. He didn't want to read it himself. He felt a cold draft through the darkened glass pane of the door that didn't have his name stenciled on it.

He turned the knob and went in.

The light went on, but it was as dark in the room as it had been in Morris Grumbach's study.
A tomb,
Paine thought. He almost felt a touch on his hand as he released the light switch but it was only a movement of cold air over his knuckles, from the ventilator duct overhead.

The telephone was a black glossy shape on a gray-topped, empty desk that didn't even have a blotter on it. The chair was tilted back at an unnatural angle, the padding torn through, part of it pulled out. Jimmy had told him that Barker had deliberately taken that chair out of storage and put it in his room so that he would have to sit on it.

He sat on the edge of the desk, taking in the stacks of files on top of overstuffed cabinets; the venetian blinds jammed in a closed position, a quarter inch of dust settled like dirty snow across the strips of white aluminum; the fan overhead that didn't work; the cracks in the ceiling, some of which led down the walls to hit the floor in a spread of tributaries.

Nice life you've got here,
Paine thought.

A tomb.

His hand dangled over the phone, fell on it, turned the receiver aside and started to dial a number. His hand stopped, put the receiver down and then picked it up again, with more determination.

"Jack?" someone asked quietly from the door, knocking politely and then opening it.

The phone fell back into the cradle.

"What is it, Margie?" Paine asked.

"He wants to see you."

She wore her perpetual hurt look. Paine had noticed her limp before, but now he saw that she wore a baggy kind of dress that fell nearly to the floor. Jimmy had told him what her legs looked like under that dress, how smooth and white one of them was, how twisted and mangled the other was.

"What does he want, Margie?"

Her pinched look stayed.

"All right," Paine said.

He pulled himself off the desk. As he stepped into the hallway Jimmy Carnaseca was there, pressing the Velcro tab down on his camera bag. He had a Styrofoam cup of coffee in his other hand, a spurt of steam rising from a corner where the plastic lid was pried up. "Got to catch somebody cheating on somebody," he grinned, moving past. "Don't let anybody mess with that thing on my desk."

"Sure, Jimmy."

Paine was alone in the hallway. He looked at the wall and suddenly it was moving at him, looking to squeeze him back until he was caught. Then it would come at him, pushing, pushing, until all the air was gone—

A tomb.

He closed his eyes tight and gently moved the panic away from his mind. In a moment, he was breathing easily. His hands unclenched. They were cold, covered with sweat. His forehead was covered with sweat, too. He took a deep breath and looked at the far wall. It was only a wall again, made white-yellow by the lights overhead.

Okay, Jack,
he thought.
Okay.

He walked into Barker's office.

There was stenciled lettering a half-foot high on the door. It said "Robert Barker," in script. Inside, Barker was yelling, but the yelling abruptly stopped. The door opened and Margie hurried out, dipping under Paine's arm.

"Go on," she said.

Barker was in his chair with his back to him, facing the window. Jimmy had explained that the room was set up strategically. Barker faced away from you; you walked around the desk and the audience began when you were standing with your back to the window. You sat down in a low chair and Barker looked down at you. He was not as big as he looked. His suits were cut a little large, the shoulders padded; he had had his head shaved to look older and tougher. His shoes had heels laid a little higher than normal. He wore thick glasses though there was nothing wrong with his eyes. He was manicured and tailored to perfection, the knot in his tie so sharp you could cut
yourself on it. He favored a large ring on his right pinky, a round sapphire surrounded by brilliant diamond chips. He kept the nails on his fingers longer than they should be. He was an illusion, but the illusion worked.

"You wanted me," Paine said from the doorway, to Barker's back.

"I don't want you," Barker said from behind his chair. "I sent for you."

A thin plume of ochre smoke rose from Barker's Dunhill cigarette, and finally Paine went all the way in.

He walked past the dark green plants, perfectly kept by Margie; the bookcases with leather volumes that had never been touched, the cases jutting out far into the room to make it seem claustrophobic on the visitor's side though in fact the place was huge. Music played softly through hidden speakers —Rachmaninoff, a piano sparring with a full orchestra, strangely muted by the lowness of the volume. A chair was left in the pathway, deliberately, so that the visitor had to step around it, coming close to Barker's high-backed lounge chair and desk but not touching it.

Paine negotiated these obstacles and stood finally on the other side of the desk, in the light from the window. "What do you want?" Paine said, standing.

"Sit," Barker said.

Paine sat down in the low chair, and Barker loomed judiciously in front of him.

"How many cases do you have at the moment?" Barker said.

"Just this Grumbach business."

"Just what is it you do around here?" Barker inquired mildly. His hand was cocked at an angle, holding his thin cigarette so that the smoke went up at just the right angle away from his face, as if he was posing.

"What is it you wanted?" Paine answered.

"Didn't you hear my question?" Barker said. "I asked: Just what is it you do around here?"

"I work for you," Paine replied evenly. "I work in your freak show."

Barker leaned back into the softness of the chair and put his cigarette into his mouth. He drew on it slowly, said nothing.

"How old are you?" he asked finally.

Paine sighed. "Thirty-six."

"How long would you have been on the police force if you weren't here now?"

Despite rising anger, Paine began to count years in his head.

Barker answered for him: "Fourteen years. Six more and you would have been up for retirement. Here's another question. What would you be doing if you were not working for me?"

Paine was silent.

"Come on now," Barker said, waving his cigarette in front of him. "Give me an answer."

"I'd be cleaning your toilets."

A moment went by, and then Barker began to laugh. The cultivated titter he usually affected was overcome by great bursts of throaty noise. It was the kind of laughter a rude man in an audience makes when a juggler drops one of his tenpins. Barker leaned forward, his hand on his chest; he was wheezing with laughter. He put his delicate hands on the desk before him to steady himself. Eventually, his face relaxed.