Murder Among Children (8 page)

Vicki leaped on that, saying, “No more than you did with Jack.”

Not wanting them to disintegrate into bickering, I broke in and said, “Tell me about Bodkin.”

Hulmer said, “When Terry first came to the city he roomed with this guy Bodkin. They knew each other in college or something. And Bodkin was a mooch, you know? Borrow your clothes, your booze, your bread, everything. Hang around when you’re with a bird, all like that. Terry had a short once, some old Morris Minor, Bodkin took it out and racked it up on Seventh Avenue in the rain. Near that Esso station below Sheridan Square, you know? Left it there, stuck in the trunk of some parked Lincoln, some doctor’s Lincoln, made Terry all kinds of grief.”

Vicki said, defensively, “Terry had every right to do what he did.”

“Sure he did,” Hulmer said agreeably. “That isn’t the point, honey.”

I said, “What did he do?”

Hulmer told me, “Beat on Bodkin a little. Took Bodkin’s tape recorder and some other stuff to pay for the Morris, kicked him out on the street. Bodkin tried to get the fuzz on him, so Terry stopped covering for him about the Morris, and Bodkin didn’t have any license. He wound up with thirty days in the Tombs.”

“What happened after that?”

Hulmer shrugged. “Nothing. Bodkin never came around any more.”

Selkin said, “This all happened a year and a half ago. If Bodkin was going to make trouble he’d have done it long ago.”

I said, “What’s Bodkin’s first name?”

“Something weird,” Hulmer said. “Vicki, what was it?”

“I’m trying to think,” she said, frowning mightily, and abruptly snapped her fingers and cried, “Claude!”

“Right! Claude Bodkin!” Hulmer turned to me, grinning, and said, “How’s that for a name?”

“Good,” I said, writing it down.

“You’re one to talk,” Vicki said to Hulmer.

“Hulmer Fass? What’s wrong with Hulmer Fass?”

“Cut it out,” Selkin told them. “This is serious.”

They both sobered at once, and Hulmer almost managed to look contrite. Into their silence I said, “What about friends? Any close friends outside this group?”

“Willy Fedders,” Selkin said, “but he’s off in summer stock.”

Vicki said, “Whatever happened to that girl Chris? Remember her?”

Hulmer said, “She married some guy in the Navy, moved out to California or some place.”

Ralph Padbury, somewhat diffident, leaned forward to say, “What about Ed Regan?”

Selkin said, “Right.” To me he said, “Ed’s a guy lives in the building where Terry lived before he moved in over Thing East.”

“What’s the address?”

“On Eleventh Street, East Eleventh Street. What is it? Three-eighteen A. It’s a building in back, you go through three-eighteen and it’s behind there.”

“Fine. Anybody else?”

They thought it over, tossed names back and forth a little, and then decided there weren’t any more close friends of Wilford’s in town right now. Casual acquaintances, but no one who could do me any good. So I moved on, saying, “About Thing East. Whose idea was it to begin with?”

Vicki said, “Terry. He talked to Abe about it first, didn’t he, Abe?”

“He talked to George first,” Selkin said. “He and George came to me, and then the three of us talked to Ralph. Well, the four of us, Robin was there, too.”

Ralph Padbury leaned forward again, saying carefully, “Of course, I was never actually a partner in the enterprise. They came to me for advice about some of the legal aspects.”

“I understand that. Did Terry know about the available building when he got the idea?”

Vicki said, “That’s what made him think of it. Ed told him about these religious nuts, and the building, and all.”

“Ed. You mean Ed Regan?”

Selkin said, “Ed’s mother is in this religious group.”

“All right. So Terry got the idea, and went first to George Padbury. Why him first?”

Ralph Padbury answered for his brother, saying, “George worked in a couple of coffee houses, he knew about running them.”

“He was a manager?”

“No. He was a cook.”

“All right. Then the two of them came to you,” I said to Selkin. “Why you next?”

Selkin rubbed thumb and first finger of his right hand together. “Money,” he said. “They knew I had some money, and I’m the business type. I’m the manager.”

“And Robin was there because she was Terry’s girl friend, is that it?”

Vicki said, “And she’s a waitress. I mean, she was. She and me, we’re the waitresses.”

“Who brought you in?” I asked her.

“Robin. We’ve been friends since way back in high school.”

I turned to Hulmer. “What about you?”

“Same as Abe,” he said, smiling. “I had some money. Besides, these days you’ve got to have a spade whatever you start up. It’s token integration.”

Selkin said, “Hulmer’s a mechanic and a hi-fi repairman and everything else like that. He picked up all the kitchen equipment and the tables and everything, fixed everything up.”

Nodding, Hulmer grinned at Selkin and said, “That, too, Abe. I’m just putting the man on. He’s hip.” He turned to me, saying, “Aren’t you, Mr. Tobin?”

“Nobody you call mister is hip,” I told him.

He laughed and said, “There you go, Abe. You see what I mean?”

I said, “Who approached you about the coffee house, Hulmer?”

“Terry,” he said. “Him and George, they came to see me where I was working.”

“Where was that?”

“Stereo Fixit, on Eighth Street.”

“Did you people all quit your jobs for this?”

“Had to,” said Selkin. “It’s full-time work, opening a place like that.”

“I guess it would be. All right, let’s move on. Keys to the front door. I suppose each of you has a key.”

“Not me,” said Padbury.

“That’s right, you wouldn’t have. But the rest of you do.”

They all nodded agreement.

I said, “Anybody else? Besides the six partners, you three and Robin and Terry and George, did anybody else have a key?”

They shook their heads, and Selkin said, “There wasn’t any reason for anybody else to have a key.”

I said, “What about this religious organization you rented the place from? Don’t they have a key?”

“That’s right!” Selkin shook his head, irritated with himself. “I’m sorry, I never even thought about that.”

“Anybody else?”

This time they thought more carefully, but they finally decided no, there weren’t any more keys around but the ones already mentioned, so I said, “Who do you deal with from the religious organization?”

“We go straight to the top,” Hulmer told me, straight-faced. “The bishop his own self.”

Selkin told me, more usefully, “Walter Johnson. Bishop Johnson, he calls himself.”

“What’s the religion’s name?”

“New World Samaritans,” Selkin said. “They’re over on Avenue A now, got a store front facing the park.”

“Tompkins Square Park?”

“Right.”

“All right.” I looked over my notes, and it seemed as though I’d covered everything I could. I said to Selkin, “Would you call Bishop Johnson and tell him I’ll be coming to see him? Explain I’m on your side.”

“Will do.”

“And Ed Regan, too. Also, would you all give me your addresses and phone numbers before you leave? I might want to talk to one of you again later on.” I looked at Hulmer, saw he was preparing a remark, and said, “For a variety of possible reasons, Hulmer.”

He grinned at me. “I didn’t say a word, mister.”

Kate said, “Is that all now, Mitch?”

“All I can think of. Unless one of you has something I missed.”

None of them did, so Kate said, “Then maybe everyone would like some refreshments. Iced tea?”

They took iced tea, and cookies, all but Ralph Padbury, who was still ill at ease to be in such nonconformist company, and who made jumbled excuses before backing hurriedly into the night. The other three stayed on, chatted with Kate much more companionably than they could possibly talk with me, and a strangely party-like aura settled over the house.

They left around eleven, all three making blanket offers of assistance, which I had no intention of taking up, and once they were gone Kate gave her opinion that all three were excellent youngsters, adding, “You don’t think any of them had anything to do with it, do you?”

“I don’t think anything yet,” I said.

“What are you going to do now?”

“Make a couple of phone calls and go to bed. I can’t start on any of this tonight.”

“Mitch,” she said, “I’m glad you’re doing this.”

“I know you are,” I said, and went off to make my phone calls, two of them, to old friends on the force, men I could still think of as friends even with things as they are. I wanted to know if the investigating detectives had any reason other than theory to believe that Terry Wilford and Irene Boles had some connection prior to the murders. I asked my two friends to see if they could find out for me, both promised to try but gave no guarantee they could learn anything, and then I went to bed.

I couldn’t get to sleep. I was thinking about the murders now, despite myself, and my head was full of short thin straight black lines, all disconnected. Sooner or later they would come together, like magnets, and form an arrow, and the arrow would point at a face, but for now they were only lines, each separate, some no doubt extraneous, each a stray name or stray fact. I lay looking at the ceiling, watching the lines float in my head.

The phone sounded a little before midnight. It was Hulmer. “I’m at Vicki’s,” he said. “Donlon followed us. He’s outside somewhere.”

“Did he do anything besides follow you?”

“No.”

“He’s trying to scare you, keep you from making trouble.”

“I’m staying here tonight,” he said. “I don’t want that weird cat bugging Vicki.”

“Let me know if anything else happens,” I said.

I
HADN’T HEARD FROM
Hulmer again, nor from either of my acquaintances on the force, by ten the next morning when I left the house and took the subway to Manhattan.

It was going to be another miserable day, hot and humid, the air heavy with sunlight and rancid moisture. When I stepped outside at ten o’clock the world already had the characteristic feel of hot wet wool, and one had the feeling of walking doggedly through some substance thicker than air. I wore a short-sleeved white shirt open at the throat, no tie, and by the time I’d walked to the subway stop the shirt was drenched and sticking to my skin.

The train I rode was nearly empty. The fans helped a little, but at the other end of the ride was Manhattan, which was even closer and muggier than Queens. Because there’s no sensible subway method for getting to the Lower East Side, and because I’ve never been able to understand the Manhattan bus lines, I splurged and took a cab downtown. It turned out to be air-conditioned, the only time I’d ever been lucky enough to get one of those, though at first the luck didn’t seem entirely good; my sopping shirt turned ice-cold, and I sat there shivering, thoughts of pneumonia circling in my head while people on the other side of the window glass were fanning themselves with magazines.

Just as I had gotten used to the cool dry air inside the cab we arrived at the new headquarters of the New World Samaritans. Another store front, the windows here were painted a flat white, plus a great deal of gold lettering. The window to the left of the entrance said, near the top,
New World Samaritans,
and below that,
American Cathedral.
Filling out the rest of the window were groups and clusters of words, among them
Have You Been Saved?, Bishop Walter Johnson Resident Custodian, All Welcome, Open Twenty-four hrs, Jesus Will Succor You, Enter and Make Your Peace with God,
and so on. The window on the other side, without repeating any of the phrasing, continued the same sentiments, while the white-painted glass of the door merely read
Entrance to Salvation.

Leaving the cab was like walking into a closet full of overcoats. Almost nauseated, I hurried across the sidewalk and into the—store? church? cathedral? mission?

The inside was astonishing. I’d expected the usual grubby Lower East Side store front, plus some chairs or benches. Instead I’d walked into a cool dim pale room that made me think of California monasteries. The walls had been done over in rough plaster and painted white; there were dark wood beams across the otherwise white ceiling, the floor was good old wood dark with oil, and about a dozen rows of pews—dark wood, well polished—faced a muted dim altar at the far end of the room, the altar done in white with gold and purple trim. Some kind of ivy stretched across the wall behind the altar, looking cool and serene.

The air in here was cool, rather dry, very pleasant, much more natural than that inside the cab. As I walked down the central aisle toward the altar I felt my body relaxing, as though in some strange and unexpected way I’d turned a corner and there in front of me was home. I very nearly smiled, just to be there, and the feeling was in no way religious or mystical; it was, in fact, mostly architectural, the delight of these pale dim surroundings contrasting with the muckiness of the world outside.

There was no one in this room, but I found I was in no hurry to seek anyone out. I stood in front of the altar, looking at the few objects on its white-draped surface: candlesticks, a large open book, a brass goblet, a black square cloth edged in gold, and so on. Even seeing that the climbing ivy on the rear wall was artificial—it would, I suppose, have to be—didn’t affect the grip the place had on me.

I don’t know how long I stood there, but I didn’t move until an unobtrusive door to the right of the altar opened and a man in a floor-length white robe with a white rope braid belt came through and said, “Good morning, brother.” He shut the door behind himself and walked over to me, saying, “It was good of you to come to see us.”

Everything was right about him but the face, which belonged not to a monk but to a bank clerk or post-office employee. It was round, pale, weak-featured, with pale blue eyes behind glasses with light plastic frames. But he was balding, with a very tonsure-like effect, and his voice was deep and confident and sympathetic.

I said, “I’d like to speak to Bishop Johnson.”