Murder is a Girl's Best Friend (31 page)

“Did you find anything?” I whispered to Abby, closing the closet door and turning to see how she was making out.

“I found a few holsters,” she said, dangling a handful of jockstraps in the air, “but nothing that even remotely resembles a gun.”

“Then check out the kitchen shelves and drawers,” I said. “I’ll do the bookshelf and look under the bed. Besides the gun, keep your eyes peeled for a black lunchbox.”

“Aye, aye, captain!” she whispered, turning toward the area near the bathroom door, where the small kitchen appliances and cabinets were lined against the wall like cartons in a stockroom.

I zipped over to the side of the bed and dropped down to my hands and knees. Lifting up the edge of another brown blanket, I put my face down next to the floor and peered into the darkness underneath. Nothing but dust, a well-chewed steak bone, and a bunch of dead cockroaches. Otto darted under the bed and crouched down over the bone, staring out at me, snarling, protecting his treasure with unabashed zeal. I backed away from the bed, lowered the blanket, and crawled a few feet over to examine the small, low, dusty bookshelf—which also revealed nothing, except that Jimmy liked to read dime store novels with titles like
Hot Rod
and
Pickup Alley.
He also had a copy of
The Catcher in the Rye
—but then, so did everybody.

“Any luck?” Abby asked, moving back into the middle of the room. “There’s hardly anything in the kitchen. He doesn’t even have any food.”

I stood up and walked over to her. “I couldn’t find anything either. And there’s no place left to search but the bathroom. I’ll look around in there after Jimmy comes out.”

No sooner had these words left my mouth than Jimmy exited the bathroom and joined us in the studio. He looked very handsome in his black turtleneck, black pants, and sexy, cocksure smile. His thick, dark, Tony Curtis hair was still wet from the shower.

“Hi, girls,” he said, raising both eyebrows and stroking his sleek Vandyke. “Did you miss me?” He was talking to both of us, but he only had eyes for Abby. At the sound of Jimmy’s voice, Otto scurried out from under the bed, scampered to his master’s side, and dropped his dust-covered steak bone at his feet.

“May I use the bathroom?” I asked immediately, anxious to complete my search of the premises. I also had to pee.

“Sure, doll,” Jimmy said, still looking only at Abby. “Knock yourself out.”

Tearing myself away from the happy trio (nobody—not even Abby!—was sorry to see me go), I slipped into the bathroom and locked the door. Turning on the sink faucet full blast (I hoped the sound of running water would mask any other sounds I might happen to make), I opened the medicine cabinet and peeked inside. Just the usual stuff: a bottle of aspirin, a razor, a shaving mug with a brush (which had seen very little use), and one of those weird-looking nosehair clippers. No small handgun or box of .22 caliber bullets. No lunchbox either, but I didn’t expect there to be, since it could never have fit on one of those shallow glass shelves.

Except for the bathtub, which was wet and empty, there was only one hiding place in the room big enough to conceal a lunchpail—the dirty clothes basket. Yanking the lid off the small white hamper, I plunged both arms into the stash of soiled underwear, feeling around the sides of the hamper, and all the way down to the bottom, for something hard. Nothing doing. No gun, no lunchbox—no cigar. Jimmy had either hidden the murder weapon and the lunchbox in another location entirely, or disposed of them altogether, or he was no murderer at all.

Wondering which of these three possibilities was true, I peed, flushed, washed my hands, and left the bathroom. To my utter surprise, Otto ran over to meet me, wagging his little tail in ecstasy, gazing up at me with the sweetest expression I’d ever seen on any creature’s face. I picked the little dog up in my arms, gave him my cheek to lick, and then looked over at Abby and Jimmy, trying to determine the cause of this welcome canine windfall.

It wasn’t too hard to figure out. Jimmy was so entranced with Abby—and Abby was working so hard to
keep
Jimmy entranced—that Otto had no one left to turn to but me. I gave the pup a soft little squeeze, fondled his warm, floppy ears, walked over and sat down on the side of the bed, settling the little dog snuggly on my lap. It felt so good to have a new friend. One who wouldn’t stalk me, or push me onto the subway tracks, or break into my apartment, or be looking for new ways to kill me.

“Hey!” I said, loud enough to bust up the near-coital experience taking place between Abby and Jimmy, “I’m back now, and I’m in need of brilliant poetry! My soul is starving! Bring on the Christmas opus!” Though I was dying to ask Jimmy a few leading questions about Judy Catcher, I felt I could use a little diversion first.

And Jimmy was eager to provide. “Okay!” he cried, placing his hands on Abby’s shoulders and guiding her—backwards—to a seated position next to me on the bed. “Prepare to be transported to the truth!” he said, puffing out his cheeks and chest in pride. Abby and I gave each other a stealthy little smile, then focused all our fawning attention on Jimmy.

Jimmy walked back across the width of the room, picked a notebook up from the small table against the wall, spun around to face us, and struck a dramatic pose—feet planted firmly apart, one arm behind his back, the other dangling down his side with the notebook in his hand. The wall behind him was decorated with three (yes,
three!
) bullfighting posters. (I’ll never understand why everybody—but everybody! —in the Village has huge bullfighting posters hanging in their apartments. Is it a craving for violent public spectacle, a mythical fear of mighty animals, a passionate lust for blood, or just a faddish devotion to the bullfight erly novels and stories of Ernest Hemingway?)

Looking straight at Abby, Jimmy gave her a slow, suggestive wink, then raised the notebook to reading level, and—in a deep, pompous, pontifical tone—began transporting us to the truth:

Something horrible had happened to me. I was starting to kind of
like
Jimmy Birmingham’s goofy poetry. It still made me want to laugh, though, so—in an effort to stop any giggle fits before they began—I clenched my teeth and didn’t say a word.

Which worked out just fine, since Abby was being more than effusive enough for both of us. “Ohhhh, Jimmy!” she panted, jumping to her feet and darting over to give him a wild embrace. “That was the living end! So cool and honest and true! I never heard such wonderful words in my life! You’re the new Robert Lowell! You’re better than Dylan Thomas! I’m swooning with the way out passion of your soaring vision!”

Oh, brother!
I groaned to myself.
If she lays it on any thicker, he’ll be buried alive.
Deciding to cut in on the spinning dancers before they swirled right out of control, I rose to my feet and—cradling Otto like a baby in my arms—walked up close to the tangled twosome. “Loved your Christmas opus, Jimmy,” I said. “Really did. But aren’t we forgetting something here? Like the real reason we came to see you today?” I gave Abby a secret poke in the ribs with my elbow. “Muffy is so upset about her cousin Judy’s death that she just
has
to talk to you about it. She’s hoping you can shed some light on the murder, help her learn to live with the pain.”

“That’s right,” Abby said, finally remembering that she had come to look for a cold-blooded killer, not a new model—or a new lover. She backed away from Jimmy’s grasping arms and flipped her smile into a frown. “I’m so devastated over what happened to Judy,” she said, whimpering in much the same way Otto had earlier, “I can’t ever get to sleep at night. I just lie in bed thinking about the horrible way she died, wondering why anybody would want to shoot my sweet, beautiful cousin, and praying with all my heart that the killer will soon be found.” She stopped talking for a moment and gave Jimmy a pleading gaze. “Do you miss her as much as I do, baby?”

“Sure I do,” he said. “I miss her a lot. She was my one and only girlfriend for three whole months.”

Hip, hip, hooray! Let’s hear it for the Ham! Greater love hath no man than to stay faithful for three, count ’em, three
whole
months!

“So what happened, Jimmy?” I asked. “Why did you break up with her?”

“
I
wasn’t the one who cut loose,” he insisted. “
She
broke up with
me.
I was really torn up about it for a while.” His eyes were getting teary. (From true pain, deep guilt, or pure “poetic” sensitivity? I couldn’t tell.) I hoped he wouldn’t start bawling like he had at the Vanguard.

“But my cousin was so in
love
with you!” Abby broke in. “Every letter she sent me was all about you! Why would
she
call it quits?”

“Well,” he said, looking down at the dusty floor and shuffling his feet, “I guess I didn’t treat her too good. I didn’t mean to hurt her. I really didn’t. But I just couldn’t walk the line. I’m a wild and crazy poet, dig it? I’m a natural-born, hot-blooded man. One chick’s just not enough for me.”

“So why were you so torn up when she broke it off?” I asked.

“Because I loved her. She moved me. I wrote good poems when she was with me. Otto loved her, too.” Looking around for his little dog, and finding him nestled in my arms, Jimmy stepped over to me and scooped Otto up in his own arms. “I really hated it when Judy moved in with that old rich guy,” he muttered, hugging Otto tight to his chest, beginning to pace the room in circles like a caged panther.

“You mean Gregory Smythe?” I asked.

“I don’t know. She never told me the cube’s name. She knew I didn’t want to hear about him. It made me too mad.”

Mad enough to kill her?
I wondered. “Did you keep seeing Judy after she moved to Chelsea? Did you visit her at her new apartment?”

“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t go inside that pad for all the bread in the bank. I wouldn’t set foot in the whole fucking neighborhood. It made me sick to think about her living there with that perverted old fart. I saw Judy sometimes—at the Vanguard, or the Kettle of Fish, or some other Village hangout—but I never went anywhere near that lousy damn apartment.”

That’s not what Elsie Londergan says,
I thought, remembering that she’d seen Jimmy in the neighborhood a couple of times. “You mean you never went to Chelsea while Judy was living there? Not even once?”

“Not on your life!” he declared. “I never even . . . no, wait a second . . . I just remembered something . . .” He stopped his angry pacing and turned to face us. “I
did
go there one time. But I didn’t go up to Judy’s apartment. I just went to the Chelsea Realty office to tell Judy’s fucking landlord to leave her the hell alone.”

“What?!” Abby and I cried in unison.

“You went to see Roscoe Swift?” I sputtered.

“Yeah, Swift. That was the creep’s name.”

“Why did you tell him to leave Judy alone?” Abby urged. “Was he bothering her somehow?”

“Sure was. All the time. He kept showing up at her apartment, late at night, without even calling first, claiming there was some problem with the heat, or that her sink was leaking into the apartment underneath, or that somebody had complained she was playing the radio too loud. And once he was inside the apartment, he’d make a pass at her. He’d tell her she was really sexy, and then he’d try to cop a feel or give her a kiss. Once he even pinched her on the ass. He always came late so he could catch her in her nightgown.”

“But he knew a man was paying her rent,” I said, “so he knew she had a lover. How could he be so sure she’d be alone?”

“I can answer that one,” Abby said. “Swift knew that Smythe was
married,
right? I mean, that’s the way these arrangements usually work. So it was a pretty safe bet that if he went to Judy’s place real late, her dear old daddy-o would have already gone home to his dear old wife.”

Suddenly feeling exhausted, I sat down on the side of the bed again. So many complicated questions—so many confounding answers. I looked up at Jimmy and said, “So Judy told you that Swift was making advances and asked you to take care of it?”

Jimmy started pacing in circles again. “She told me Swift was bugging her, but she didn’t ask me to do anything about it. Going to see the little creep was my own idea. I marched into his office and told him if he ever touched Judy again I’d break his legs and cut his filthy rod off. Scared him pretty good. He didn’t bother her so much after that.”

“Did Judy tell Smythe that Swift was annoying her?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Jimmy grunted. “Like I said, she never mentioned Smythe—or whatever the hell the old fart’s name was—to me.”

My brain was spinning with the new information. And the new details were getting all tangled up with the old ones. And I didn’t know what to believe, or what not to believe, or what to believe just a little bit. Finally realizing I couldn’t possibly come up with any sound conjectures on the spot—that I needed some time to think things over, try to fit the pieces of the puzzle together—I decided to just fire off a few more questions while Jimmy was in a talkative mood.

“Do you have any idea who killed Judy?” I asked, training my eyes on Jimmy’s face, watching for telltale expressions. “Do you think it could have been Swift?”

“I don’t know who did it,” he said, frowning. “The newspapers said it was a random burglar, but it could have been Swift, I guess. He’s a nasty little fucker. But does that make him a murderer? I don’t know, doll. I really don’t know.” Looking as sad and tired and frustrated as I felt, Jimmy came and sat down next to me on the bed. Otto stretched his skinny body over Jimmy’s bent arm, nuzzled his nose into the cup of my hand, and licked my palm and fingers.