Found in the Street (26 page)

“No, we—We're asking around everywhere, you know. We just talked to the people where the girl used to work—down here. They gave us your name.”

Ralph barely nodded. He knew they meant the coffee shop. The people there, that female manager, had no doubt put in a bad word for him.

“How long've you known Elsie Tyler, sir?”

Again Ralph thought. “Maybe a year, a little more.”

“She ever come up here to visit you?”

“Oh, no, sir! No. We just said hello to each other on the street sometimes—passing.”

The cop wrote something on his tablet which had a big clip at the top. “The people at the place where she worked said you used to talk to her a lot when you came in there. Coffee shop.”

“I talked with her. Not a lot.”

“They said the girl tried to avoid you.”

Ralph felt annoyance, a bitter amusement. “I warned her against associating with the wrong people. Yes.”

“Such as who, for instance?”

Ralph smiled, thinking that he had seen a lot of wrong people with Elsie, but didn't know any by name. “The young toughs in the neighborhood. I don't know their names.—Such people as might have killed her—and did!” Ralph was aware that he trembled, and pushed his hands into his pockets.

The cop looked at him. “No names to give us?”

“Excuse me!” Ralph got up because his coffee had perked over and put the gas out. He turned the gas off. “I don't know the names of these young hoodlums I used to see her with,” he said as he came back. “But I told the police at the Tenth Street station last night John Sutherland should be considered.” Ralph spoke calmly, and nodded for emphasis.

“We've talked with John Sutherland.”

“And he mentioned me, I suppose. He gave my name?”

“N-no, I don't think he did.” The policeman looked at his colleague, who was still strolling about and looking as if he weren't listening to the conversation. “You and Sutherland know each other? How is it you know him?”

Ralph suspected that this was a trick question. Just what had Sutherland said about him that the police didn't want to tell him? “I returned his wallet. He lost his wallet on Grove Street and I returned it to him.”

“Really? When was this?”

“Last August. Ask Sutherland. His name and address was in it, so I called him up and returned it with the money in it.”

“Did you?—And then?”

“Then?—Then I noticed that Elsie was visiting him. He got acquainted with her at that coffee shop. He was having an affair with her. He didn't tell you that? No, of course he would deny it!”

“No-o,” said the cop with another look at his fellow cop, who had picked this up too. “You're sure of that, Mr—um—Linderman? An affair?”

“Yes. I'm a guard. A nightwatchman. I saw Elsie coming and going from his house. At odd hours.”

The cop wrote on his pad. “When, for instance?”

Ralph was suddenly impatient. “The main thing is, they were
having
an affair! Or Sutherland was using her as a prostitute!” The policeman in front of Ralph seemed not human, but a robot that didn't care, taking down facts maybe, but not caring or thinking at all about what the facts meant. “Don't you see what I mean? The
wife
knew. Mrs. Sutherland. They were both having affairs—with other people.”

“Who?—When you say both—?”

Now the other cop was listening too.

“Mrs. Sutherland with her men friends or man friend. I saw him once. Tall nearly bald man.”

The cop looked up from his tablet with a slight smile, shaking his head in a way that Ralph felt was patronizing. “Mr. Lin—”

“John Sutherland was here,” Ralph interrupted, “
here.
”
He pointed to his floor. “Just minutes after he murdered Elsie. He'd run here, and he was pouring with sweat. He asked me where
I'd
been—yesterday at four in the afternoon. He was trying—”

“You're saying Sutherland was
here
yesterday?”

“Yessir. He didn't tell you that? No, he wouldn't! He's trying to put the blame on
me,
but he can't because he—”

“Sit down, Mr. Linderman. Let's all sit down.'' The seated cop motioned.

The other cop and Ralph took chairs.

Ralph wiped perspiration from his forehead. “Yes. John Sutherland came here yesterday afternoon around five-thirty. I was in the middle of shaving. I'd been trying to sleep all afternoon. Just ask any of the people in this house, if you don't believe me!” Ralph gestured toward his apartment door. “They'll tell you I was complaining about the noise they make. It's a noisy house here, kids screaming, people yelling. I have to sleep in the daytime because I work at night. I had to go on duty at eight last night.” This seemed to make an impression, Ralph saw. The cop or detective with the clipboard was writing. He had removed his cap. He had very neat brown hair cut with a military shortness. He murmured to his colleague:

“Sutherland didn't say anything last night about coming here, did he? Didn't mention Linderman's name. I'd have had it.”

“No, sir.”

“And Sutherland's a runner, don't forget that,” Ralph put in.

“What d'y' mean, a runner?” asked the other cop.

“He jogs. He could've covered that distance between Greene Street and here—oh, six minutes, seven. And he was covered with sweat yesterday. I thought he was going to pass out.”

The short-haired cop sat back, smiling tiredly. “Around five-thirty he was here?”

“Between five-thirty and six, yes.”

“How long was he here?”

“Maybe ten minutes. He didn't sit down. I asked him why he was so upset, asked him if something had happened to his little daughter, or to
Elsie,
and he said, ‘No, no.' I can hear him now! And he looked mad—angry, when he found out I'd been here all afternoon.''

The short-haired cop shook his head with an air of sadness or tiredness. “Mr. Linderman, we have it from Marion Gill—Elsie Tyler's friend—”

“Yes, I've heard her name, Marion Gill,” said Ralph attentively.

“Well, she called up Sutherland right after the attack, Sutherland was home, and he went running to Greene Street. You can forget about Sutherland as the killer, Mr. Linderman.”

Ralph was still not convinced. “Then he can forget about me, too! I'd appreciate that!”

The other cop smiled a little.

Ralph hated the smile, hated the atmosphere suddenly. So Sutherland had really been home? “Is this Marion telling the truth?”

The short-haired cop wiped his brow. “Yes, sir. She was upstairs in the apartment when it happened. We—”

“How do you know?” Ralph had suddenly thought of another scenario: Marion jealous of Elsie, because Sutherland liked Elsie more than he liked Marion. Had
Marion
killed her?

“Let me finish, sir. Marion's account of this was corroborated by a couple of people in the Greene Street house. They heard the yells below, they saw Marion running down the stairs. Two people saw her.”

Ralph bit his underlip, then said, “Sutherland was having an affair with both of them, you know.”

The other cop leaned forward, grinning at the note-taking cop, started to say something, but the short-haired cop silenced him with a wave of his hand. The other cop gave a big, silent laugh, however.

What was funny, Ralph wondered.

“We check out the house here?” asked the second cop.

“Yep.”

They moved, said thanks to Ralph, asked him where he would be today and the next days.

“Here. I live here,” Ralph replied.

They departed, and Ralph closed his apartment door, and on second thought slid the chain bolt. Coffee. He lit the gas again. Then he went back to his door, and listened with an ear against it.

Ralph heard a mumble of voices on the floor below, the shrill but still unintelligible yipping of the dumpy young woman—the new one—who detested him. She might hate him, but she'd be the first to swear he was home all yesterday afternoon, yelling at her kids and threatening to boot them down the stairs.

God looked up at him and wagged his tail, as if happy to see his master's smile. Ralph patted the dog's black-spotted head.

“We'll have the last laugh, God,” Ralph said.

Ralph stood straighter as he went to watch his coffee.
Justice!
Not “blood revenge” as the Jews were always screaming, just plain old justice with proven facts, no revenge or tit for tat, because people got jail sentences now, not death. Ralph was convinced that Sutherland had something to do with it. Had he possibly hired a killer? Should he suggest this to the police while they were still here? No, best not, Ralph thought. It was a classic, guilty people trying too hard to pin the blame on someone else. He mustn't look guilty or anxious in the eyes of the police, not for a minute.

As he poured his coffee, Ralph remembered a vivid dream he'd had last night: a couple of small boys in this house had attacked God, grabbed him by the legs, stuck a knife into his belly, and Ralph had retaliated by kicking a boy in the abdomen, hitting the other boy on the front of his neck with a judo whack, and in his dream, he had killed them both. His reply to the judge or to someone in the dream who was questioning him was: “God is more important than these vermin!” Or had he said “My dog”? Anyway, he had meant his dog, not a god, but in the dream, the judge had looked puzzled.

33

Jack jumped at the sound of the doorbell, sure that it was Natalia. Hadn't she her keys? He smiled a little as he pressed the release button, and felt that his face cracked with the smile. It had not been a smiling morning. The telephone had rung at least four times, their friends asking in astounded voices what he knew about Elsie, if he knew who might have done it. And Natalia had phoned around 9 to say that she was meeting Elsie's parents that morning and would invite them to lunch, and that she would try to be home “in the early afternoon.” Anyway, she had arrived.

“Hi, darling!” Jack said, and embraced her, held her tight. She smelt of her particular perfume, of clean but warm hair. She smelt delicious.

“I'm filthy—and plooped!”

“How was it? What's been happening?”

“I've got her parents into the only hotel I could find in a hurry that—”

“Have you been on a trip, Mommie?” Amelia stood at the hall entrance, staring.

“I haven't been away long!—A trip!” Natalia said with scorn.

By tacit agreement, Jack and Natalia spoke of Elsie as “she” and “her.”

“Her parents're darling people,” Natalia said. “Not at all what I'd expected. They're civilized—and not hicky.” Natalia had washed her face and hands in the bathroom, and was now leaning back on the sofa, drinking a beer out of the cold can. “At first they seemed sort of against
Marion.
I had to convince them about
that.
And they're—they're—” She glanced at Amelia who was listening. “They're really bowled over, just knocked out by this.”

“Christ,” Jack said, imagining it. “How long're they here for?”

“I suppose—two days more, not sure.”

“They have friends here?”

“The mother mentioned somebody, a woman here.”

“Was the brother with them?”

“What brother?”

“She has a brother, older, I think.”

“Oh, yes! No, he's working in Atlanta now, they said. Not sure if he'll come. But the mother—” Natalia gave a laugh as she lit a Marlboro. “She's just like—her. Same kind of hair, eyes, same—Well, what was it?”

“Really?” Jack sat on the edge of the armchair seat, with his second tentative smile of the day. “I don't believe it.”

“Whose mother?” Amelia asked.

“Sweetie—” Natalia took a deep breath. “Your daddy and I have to talk for a few minutes. It's very boring like—income tax.”

Sometimes the boring ploy worked with Amelia, sometimes not. Amelia seemed torn, and went to look out a window.

“Talk any more with the fuzz?” Jack asked, barely audibly.

“Yes, this morning. They're not sure about this Fran. They're asking Marion for more names.”

“Oh?—Has she got any?”

“No.” Natalia crossed her extended legs and looked up at the ceiling. She wore black cotton trousers and sandals with nearly flat heels. “She could reel off half a dozen names, probably. Mostly with no fixed address.”

Jack frowned and whispered, “All girls? Surely not.—What's behind all this?”

“You mean—”

“The reason for it.” Jack spoke softly and intently.

Natalia got up, and poured a smallish Glenfiddich into a glass from the bamboo bar. “Envy,” she said after her first sip. “Jealousy. Maybe drugs. Some drugged kook, I mean, did it.”

“But who?”

“Who is who?” asked Amelia, turning suddenly from the front window.

“Somebody at your mother's gallery, honey,” Jack said. “Not someone you know.” Jack suddenly recalled that they had told Amelia that Louis was away on a long trip to Japan. That was so far working. Amelia had asked a couple of times about him. Japan wouldn't work forever, of course.

Jack's statement seemed to have created the uninterestedness that they both wanted. Amelia drifted off to her room.

“About who,” Natalia said, relaxing again on the sofa. “Marion can't come up with anybody except Fran who would've had the—brutality—”

“And the cops spoke to Fran.” Jack still whispered, as if Amelia were present. “Marion said she had a half-assed alibi.”

“Oh, yes! And she was high on something and the police finally let her go.”

“Let her go?—You mean, after just talking to her a few minutes?”

“I dunno how long. Something about Fran being with friends in a bar that afternoon, and they could prove it. That's what Fran's present girlfriend said when she called up Marion this morning. The girlfriend sounded fuzzy, and she mainly wanted to scream at Marion for mentioning Fran's name to the police.”

“But—could you tell what the police
think
?”

Natalia shook her head. “I couldn't, Marion couldn't, because the police aren't saying yet.—The police're probably watching Fran to see if she'll spill something on herself.—Oh! Something else new since this afternoon!” Natalia's face lit up. “Fran's disappeared—from where she's supposed to be living. Marion told me this. I phoned Marion from the restaurant just now. The police called up Marion to ask if she'd heard from Fran or if Fran had even turned up at Greene Street!”

“Not so loud, darling,” Jack said with a glance toward Amelia's room. “They must suspect Fran or they wouldn't be so interested.”

Natalia shrugged. “It's really only Marion's hunch.” She pushed her hair back, and sipped from her glass. “I didn't mention Fran to the Tylers, by the way.”

“Was Fran hanging around Greene Street—around Elsie and Marion?”

“She was never in the Greene Street apartment, I know that.—But Fran's got that old grudge, Elsie took Genevieve away from her.” Natalia's face crinkled with suppressed mirth. ‘That Genevieve! Ha!”

Natalia needed a laugh, Jack realized. He could smile, too, recalling poor drippy Genevieve who sold cosmetics somewhere. “And what was the half-assed alibi of Fran?”

“One version is that she was in the East Village. Of course some barman can say he remembers her being there around four, but he's not quite sure. Then there's her own girlfriend or apartment mate—who's supposed to be a sculptress, by the way, but both of them keep themselves going by selling coke and such—she says they were shopping together on Eighth Street and she's got some junk they bought to prove it.—But there's nothing concrete, Jack.” Natalia got up restlessly and moved toward the radio, but didn't turn it on.

“What about the Tylers? You're going to see them again?—Are they—” Jack had been about to ask if the parents were going to see Marion. And their daughter's body. Jack felt suddenly weak, or shocked, and he stood up to get rid of the feeling.

Natalia said that the Tylers were going to some kind of funeral service tomorrow, which they had arranged with the help of the woman friend who lived in New York. The burial was tomorrow in Long Island, and no, she, Natalia, did not want to go to the burial, and had told the Tylers that. Natalia looked at him with something stern and brooding in her face as she said this, and Jack remembered that she had seen Elsie in the morgue, what was left of Elsie. Natalia said the Tylers had been friendly, they had heard all about her and Jack from Elsie's letters, and the father said he was grateful to them for introducing Elsie to people who could help her. “Nice older people, the mother said.” Natalia smiled.

Jack was touched when he heard this. Maybe the Tylers had been thinking about Elsie's success as a fashion model for photographers. The people he and Natalia had introduced Elsie to had at least been harmless. Her killer had come from among the people Elsie had met on her own.

“They're a bit baffled by her,” Natalia went on. “They said they'd had no control over her. The mother sort of understands.” Frowning, Natalia took a cigarette from the coffee table, and poured another small drink. “You can see the mother must've been just like Elsie when she was younger. And really she's not old now! The mother's from Sweden. I remember Elsie said Copenhagen—­deliberately, probably. The mother started out as a ballet dancer, and gave it up when she married, she said. The father's good-looking, but sort of a failed type, I think. I think he had greater ambitions. He owns a furniture store in their town.—Mind if I play some music, Jack?” she asked in a tone that sounded as if she were sure Jack wouldn't mind.

“I'd adore some music. Whatever you want.”

Natalia put a Beach Boys cassette in the machine, listened as she drew on her cigarette, turned it off. She looked for something else on the shelf of cassettes under a front window.

“And what about the trip? The twenty-ninth?”

Natalia dropped a cassette in. “Yugoslavia,” she said. “I want to go just because I don't want to.”

Jack understood, perfectly.

Natalia had chosen the “Country Dances” of Respighi. She stood near the window. “The police were good last night. Kept the journalists away from the front door.—And they were still questioning people all up and down the street, Marion said—about what they'd seen, you know?”

Jack listened, and waited.

“We took the phone off the hook for a while to get some sleep.”

“While I think of it, Bob called up this morning. And Elaine last night.—And Isabel this morning too.”

Natalia acknowledged this with a slight nod. “Did you buy a paper this morning?”

“No. Sorry. I frankly didn't want to face it.”

“I did. Didn't bring them with me, of course,” she added with a glance toward Amelia's room.

Jack moved closer to her. “How well did Amelia know Elsie? Did you take her around—”

“Couple of times, yes. I remember one afternoon, we walked around Washington Square—went and had ice cream somewhere.” Still frowning, Natalia smiled a little, as if she remembered it pleasantly. “She'd know Elsie's name—recognize the pictures.”

Jack thought of the morgue, and decided not to ask about that.

“You loved her too, didn't you, Jack?”

“Well, in a different way, maybe. When you say love—”

“Different way?” Natalia finished her drink. She turned toward the window.

Had he seen tears in her eyes? Then the telephone rang, and Natalia, being nearer it, picked it up. Jack could tell from the tone that the caller was a man, and from Natalia's words that he was Bob Campbell.

Jack went into the bedroom, not wanting to go to his workroom, because he was restless, and because Elsie's photographs plus his drawing of her were still in view there . . .
incredible that it happened in broad daylight . . .
Which of them had said that?
Elsie had been pretty good about writing and phoning her parents. She only told people she didn't want to keep in touch . . .
Jack went out of the bedroom, and saw that Natalia had finished her telephone conversation. She was lying on the sofa on her back, hands behind her head.

“I think I'll go for a walk,” Jack said. “Do we need anything? Milk?”

“Milk?” Natalia said vaguely. “I dunno. Look.”

Natalia at least sounded like herself. Jack looked into the fridge, and found himself not caring if there was milk enough or not. He went out with his keys. Natalia must be shattered, he thought. And what about himself? Jack felt that he had to keep his emotions to himself. He felt that he was still suffering shock, as if he were a windowpane cracked into little pieces, still within a frame, but difficult to see through.

On the street, he looked far enough ahead not to bump into people, but in a way he saw nothing around him. He walked uptown, turned back before Twenty-third Street, and picked up some milk and the usual big bottle of Coca-Cola for Amelia when he was near home.

Natalia had news. The police detective McCullen had telephoned, because Marion's telephone wasn't answering, and he thought Marion might be at the Sutherlands'. McCullen said that a teenaged girl on Greene Street had said she heard some screams and then saw a woman run out of the building.

“She said it was a dumpy woman with short hair and light colored trousers, running in the uptown direction.”

“Does he think it's Fran?” Jack remembered Fran's short hair, and her figure could certainly be called dumpy.

“He didn't say. But it fits Fran, doesn't it? A woman!” Natalia's face shone, as if the scent were getting stronger. “Nice of McCullen to tell me all that!—He wanted to know if we had a photo of this Fran, and I told him no. Imagine having one!” Natalia said with a laugh. “McCullen said they've both disappeared now, Fran and the girlfriend. The police broke into their apartment and saw signs of hasty packing.”

“Really!—Where do they live?”

“East Village. Good for the drug business.—And they left the cat.”

“Lovely pair.” And how dumb of Fran, Jack thought, to try to disappear now, since the police had seen her drugged, and would surely want to see her in a more normal state at some point. “How about the girl on Minetta Street? She might have a picture.”

“Genevieve. The police've been there. She hasn't any.—I can imagine Genevieve wants to keep out of it.”

“I've got a little cartoon of her, matter of fact.”

“Of Fran?”

“I did one that night at the Gay Nighties.”

Natalia wanted to see it. Jack found the little blank tablet with its spiral top amidst the stuff on his worktable. There was the lantern-jawed fellow leaning against the wall, the over-sized-evening-jacket girl, then the slit-lipped Fran with the piggish eyes, and the jagged line of bangs on her forehead.

“Oh, Jack—that's great! Those eyes!”

And the awful jaw, Jack thought. He felt revolted now by the likeness done with his own hand.

“I'd recognize her in a flash—I bet the police could use this.”

“You think so? They can have it.” Jack's drawing showed an ample bosom under the round-necked T-shirt. Jack didn't want to see the cartoon ever again.