Day of Wrath (18 page)

"
One last question?" I said.

He leaned against the door. "All right."

"
Have you heard of a group called The Furies?"

He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and
forefinger. "Yeah, I think I might have heard of them," he said. "Local
rock group? Good lead guitarist?"

"
That's the one," I said. "Do you know where I could find
them?"

"They play Mt. Adams a lot, I think. Try Corky's Bar on
Hill Street." He ducked out the door, then stuck his head back into the
room. "But don't try the food," he said.
 

IT WAS FOUR-THIRTY BY THE TIME I GOT TO THE HIGHLAND House
on Celestial Street. The late aftemoon sun had already dropped down in
the western sky, casting a golden wash of light on the Ohio and burnishing
the great, forested ridges of the Kentucky shore. Everything on top of
Mt. Adams was bathed in a warm, yellow glow. Sunlight hung in the frosted
porcelain globes of the street lamps, burned like candles in each window
of the tall, reddish high-rises, and winked from every porch railing and
fixture. It was even netted in the green, crooked mulberries and maple
trees, turning their trunks to pillars of gold. The day seemed to have
caught fire. I stood by the Pinto in the Celestial lot, watching it burn.
And for a moment, I felt the time of year as strongly as I had when I was
a kid—when it had filled me with a  leering, mysterious joy. I had
to make myself shake the feeling off before I crossed the deserted street
to the red-canopied entryway of the apartment house. And being forced to
slough it off made me aware of the absurdity of my profession—of a job;
that was forever out of season, buried always, like some rusted spade,
beneath deep, December snow.

By the time I'd gotten to the lobby—past the doorman
with his smiling, rubber face and into the ornate, candlelit stillness
of the restaurant anteroom, where the only sounds were the barks of chairs
being set up for the evening and the plate noises of table—setting being
arranged—I'd sobered up. It may not have been a season for detectives,
but it wasn't the hour for childishness, either. I forced myself back into
the job, like a man donning a uniform. Walked over to the house phone and
dialed 2201.

I let it ring several times, rehearsing in my mind what
I would say if she answered. What I wanted from Irene Croft was a detailed
description of how Clinger and his family lived. What I wanted was a map
that would lead me straight to Robbie Segal. Because Dino Taylor had only
given me the rough outline of Clinger's setup, and even that had been colored
by his affectionate regard for the Lost Prince and his brave new world.
Under different circumstances, I would have found something to admire there,
too, since I was as much a child of the sixties as Dino or Clinger was.
I wanted to believe that Clinger's Eden was, indeed, a realm of peace and
love. I wanted to believe that Robbie Segal was sitting there at that moment,
having a good time. Only I couldn't con myself into thinking that an entrepreneur
like Theo Clinger was a saintly Mr. Natural. Or that kinky Irene Croft
fit into anybody's version of Eden.

The phone kept buzzing, and I kept spinning out scenarios.
On the tenth ring, somebody picked up the line.

"Who is it?" Irene Croft said in her mellow, familiar
voice.

"It's Harry Stoner, Ms. Croft. I want to talk to you for
a minute."

"What about?" she said.

"About Theo Clinger and Robbie Segal."

"But I already told you what I knew about them. Or do
you want to hear it, again? Theo knows nothing about the girl. Got that?
He is a good and kind man—a lot better than the world realizes." She
said the last part with a curious bitterness.

I had the feeling that she was carrying on an argument
that she'd been having with someone else. There was a ripe note of fury
in her voice. "That may be," I said. "But I want to know where to find
him."

"I told you—The Pentangle Club."

"I mean the place where he lives, Irene. With that family
of his."

She didn't say anything for a moment. "I already told
you that Robbie wasn't there," she said coolly. "Or do you think I was
lying?"

"I think I'd like to see for myself."

"Well, I don't think I'm going to tell you, Mr. Stoner.
I don't think I care to see Theo tormented by you."

"Don't make me go to the police and the newspapers, Irene,"
I said.

She laughed bitterly, as if she was tickled to discover
that I was just as rotten as the rest of the world—all those philistines
who didn't have the taste to appreciate Theo's genius. "You'd do that?"

"I wouldn't like to. But I want to talk to Clinger."

"You're playing with fire, Stoner," she said with that
same bitter amusement. "And you're going to discover that I'm a hard lady
to blackmail."

I thought of what Marcie had told me and said, "That's
probably true. But Theo doesn't have your connections, Irene. What do you
think the cops would say about his stable of underaged playmates?"

"
I take your point," she said after a moment. "But unfortunately
you've caught me at a bad time. I simply can't talk right now."

"Make time," I said.

She put her hand over the receiver, then came back on
the line. "I'll be down in a couple of rninutes," she said and hung up.

I sat down on the same plush chair I'd sat on the night
before. I didn't really think I'd shaken the woman up. She was too dry
and too cold a character to be shaken by much of anything. Besides, with
all the Croft money and power behind her she had little to fear, personally,
from newspaper reporters or cops. I didn't really understand why she'd
decided to talk to me, unless she wanted to find out exactly what kind
of monster I was or unless she was genuinely worried about Clinger, who
didn't have her money or power to protect him. She didn't seem the type
to show loyalty, even to one of her protégés. But if she was trying to
protect her boy, the trick would be to keep her worried—to convince her
that I was a dangerous article, without revealing that I had next to nothing
in the way of hard evidence that would connect Clinger to Robbie. And if
I knew Irene, that wasn't going to be an easy trick. She had an ear for
lies and for self-deceptions—it was her brand of perfect pitch. But telling
her I was going to go to the police wouldn't actually be a lie—I'd already
been to them and intended to check in with Bannock before the day was out.
And there was no question in my mind that Clinger couldn't stand up to
a full-scale police investigation. His very way of life was against the
law, The fact that I didn't agree with some of those laws made what I was
planning to do seem uglier than mere lying, but I didn't see where I had
a choice.

A few minutes went by, and then a bell went off like the
timer on a range and the elevator doors opened. A chunky, bald man, dressed
in a brown leisure suit and white dress shirt, stepped out and gazed around
the lobby until he spotted me on the other side of the plate-glass door.
His shirt was open at the neck and a pelt of gray hair curled out of the
collar, with a gold pendant hanging in the matted hair, like a jewel packed
in creosote. He was about forty years old and had a pleasant, tanned face,
creased with laugh lines around the blue eyes and the small fleshy mouth.
His forehead rose in wrinkles up to his shiny bald pate. He would have
looked like a good-natured insurance salesman, if it hadn't been for the
pendant and the other gold jewelry he was wearing on his hands and wrists.
They gave him a bit of the tawdry flash of a lounge lizard. Only he wasn't
good looking enough to be a gigolo. I didn't quite know what to make of
him, except that he seemed to be interested in me. He smiled through the
glass door, then unlocked it and walked over to where I was sitting. I
could smell his aftershave the moment he stepped out of the elevator room—a
smell like rotting bananas.

"Hi!" he said in a sharp, merry voice. Even his breath
smelled sweet, but that was because he was chewing gum—a little hunk
of it that he passed from cheek to cheek with the tip of his tongue. The
gum made me think of Sylvia Rostow.

"Jerry Lavelle," the man said and held out his hand.

"
Harry Stoner," I said, shaking with him.

"Let's go have a drink, Harry," he said, nodding toward
the restaurant door. "We'll put it on Irene's tab."

I got up and followed him into the Celestial's bar—a
dark, leathery cavern, lit, by candles in tall, red glass holders. It was
virtually empty at that time of the day. We sat at the rail, on leather-capped
wooden stools, studded with brass nail heads. The bartender—a big, ruddy
man with sleek black hair—seemed to know Lavelle. He smiled at him pleasantly.

"
What'll it be, Jerry?" he said in a hushed voice.

"Bourbon for me, Hal."

Lavelle glanced my way and I said, "Johnny Walker Red
Label. Straight up."

The bartender pointed a finger at us and winked. "You
got it."

While Hal was pouring the drinks into heavy, beveled shot
glasses, Lavelle turned on the stool and gave me a grin. "Nice bar. Quiet,"
he said and cracked his gum. Hearing the cool note of appraisal in his
voice, I suddenly realizedwho he was. You see men like him in Vegas all
the time. Sweet-smelling, tanned, dandified muscle. Not bouncers, exactly.
But the guys who are in charge of the beefy boys. Jerry Lavelle was a middle-level
hood. A pro. And I couldn't figure out what he'd been doing in Irene Croft's
apartment.

"
I thought Irene was coming down," I said.

"
She can't make it," he said with that merry grin.

"
Maybe I ought to come back some other time."

He shook his head. "I don't think so, Harry. I think she's
going to be tied up for awhile."

"
We had some business to talk over."

"
Yeah, I know," he said, adjusting himself on the stool.

He was packing iron—I was sure of it from the way he
moved his shoulders. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

"
I'm listening," I said.

The bartender laid the drinks down in front of us. Lavelle
picked his up and took a tiny sip. "You got to leave Irene alone, Harry,"
he said, as he put the drink back down. "Stay out of her life. I'm telling
you as a friend."

I stared at my "friend" and said, "What's bourbon taste
like through bubble gum?"

He smiled lazily. "Chewy," he said. He took another sip
of booze. "You're a tough guy, aren't you, Harry? Yeah, I can see it. You're
a big, tough guy." He cracked his gum again and swirled his swizzle stick
through the bourbon. "Look, let's not waste each other's time. You want
to talk to Irene and she doesn't want to talk to you. It's that simple."

"I'll go to the cops, Lavelle," I said.

He shook his head, no. "You won't do that, Harry. First
of all, I wouldn't let you. And second, the Croft family wouldn't like
it. And third, it's just not in your best interest. Irene doesn't know
a thing about this girl you're looking for. Trust me on this. I'm not saying
the lady in the penthouse is innocent. We both know better than that. Irene's
got her problems. And right now, she doesn't need any more of them. It'd
be too expensive."

"
That's tough," I said.

"Hey, let's be honest with each other," he said cheerfully.
"This is a crazy lady we're talking about. A meshuginah. She's an embarrassment
to her family. And they don't want to see her name in the papers."

"
Just who are you working for, Lavelle?" I said.

"Let's say I'm a friend of the family's."

I got off the stool, dug a couple of dollars out of my
pocket, and tossed them on the bar.

"I don't want any trouble, Harry," Lavelle said. "All
I'm asking you to do is leave Irene out of it. What you do otherwise is
your business. Just think about it. Promise me you'll think about it."

I brushed past him to the door. As I was walking out of
the roorn, I heard him say to Hal, the bartender, "Look at that. He didn't
even touch his drink."
 

I WALKED TO THIS CAR AND SAT BEHIND THE WHEEL for a moment,
staring at the apartment building. The sun was setting above the river
in a thin orange band, and lamplights were beginning to shine through the
curtained windows of Highland House. Street lights had begun to pop on,
too, up and down the hill, showering the sidewalks with pale green light.
I looked up at the top floor of the high-rise, at Irene Croft's penthouse,
and knew that I wasn't going to get back up there without a warrant—not
with jerry Lavelle on guard.

I simply hadn't counted on a man like Jerry Lavelle, in
spite of what Marcie had told me about the Crofts and their clout. I suppose
I'd thought that they were above that kind of play—too gentlemanly, too
law-and-order decent. After all, they were the Olympians, as Marcie had
said. They were the social and political elite, who legislated the rules
that the rest of us followed. I knew they were powerful people. Bedrock,
anti-Roosevelt Republicans, who had solid ties with the police department
and with City Hall. In any given year, a Croft might have been mayor or
municipal judge or congressman from the first district. They'd been getting
a lot of publicity since the Reagan election—Sunday pictorials showing
Crofts in riding breeches, sipping tall, cool drinks. I simply hadn't pictured
those strict, featureless men turning to hired muscle. It seemed too B-movie
for the bluebloods, although when I thought about it I realized they were
a B-movie crowd—old-fashioned moralists, without shading or subtlety,
except when it came to protecting one of their own. Maybe they'd thought
that Lavelle was appropriate protection for their black sheep, Irene—making
the guard fit the crime. Or maybe he had been some lawyer's idea, about
which the Crofts knew nothing. He could even have been a friend of the
woman's, although I had trouble seeing her in a Vegas casino. Whoever was
responsible for him, he was trouble I couldn't get around without bloodshed.
Possibly my own blood.