Never Street (16 page)

She looked at me. There sitting behind the wheel of her own car she was no longer pale. “Ted never told me anything. I didn’t lie about that. I never heard of Robinette before last month, when he broke in on me in my apartment and started slapping me around, asking me where the money was.

“I’ve been hurt before,” she said. “I can stand pain. I can’t afford to have my face messed up permanently. I know I’m not the world’s greatest actress; I need these looks.”

“You told him about Ted’s meeting with Ernie Fishman. Their fence.”

“I heard Ted call him Ernie. I didn’t hear any other name and Ted didn’t tell me who he was. Do you believe me?”

“Robinette believed you. He had a lot more to gain by not believing you.”

“I guess some people still say crime doesn’t pay. I don’t know about that, but I sure know being married to a criminal doesn’t pay. The only thing Ted ever gave me was this car, and he bought that secondhand, on time, with money he earned stacking cartons at Kroger’s. He was afraid to spend the money he got from stealing because it might draw too much attention. So what was the point?”

“He had to have done something with the money. He didn’t burn it.”

She took a deep drag, spat out smoke, and snapped her butt out the window on her side. She got the least amount of good out of a cigarette of anyone I’d seen in a long time. “So that’s what this is about,” she said. “The money. I needed another Fat Phil Musuraca on my case. That’s the only thing I was missing.”

“I like money as much as the next guy, if the next guy isn’t Orvis Robinette. That’s the difference between him and me, apart from our colorists. I’m all practiced up on poverty. It’d be a shame to get rich all of a piece and see that go to waste. I’m looking for Neil Catalin. When I find him I collect my five hundred per diem plus the cost of cigarettes and whiskey and gasoline and get my start on my first million. Where’s Neil?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea since two years ago the first of this month.”

“That isn’t what you told Robinette.”

That bothered her a lot. She reached up, tilted the rearview mirror, and smoothed her lipstick with a fingertip. “I was wondering when you’d get to that.”

“It seems to have slipped your mind Friday night when I asked you for the second time when was the last time you saw Neil. I mean about his coming to see you Tuesday night.”

“That’s because he didn’t.” She flicked something away from her left eyebrow.

“Orvis robs people at gunpoint and beats up women. If you tell me he’s a liar to boot I’m going to give up all my faith in human nature.”

“I wouldn’t want to be responsible for that. When Robinette forced his way in on me a second time I thought I was in for another beating. I had an audition Thursday. Even if I hadn’t I wasn’t looking forward to swallowing teeth. When he seemed to think I’d just had a visit from Neil I saw a way out. If he thought Neil knew where the money was he might leave me alone.”

“So you sicced him on Catalin’s wife.”

“Why not? The bitch cost me a good gig at Gilda.”

“I can’t think why. All you did was steal her husband.”

She turned my way. Her eyes glittered in the depths of the shade. “No woman ever stole a man. He had to meet her at least halfway, and to do that he had to have a reason. She should have looked closer to home before she yanked my living out from under me. The only difference between me and her is she saw Neil first. If once she’d landed him she thought she could relax, I shouldn’t be the only one to pay for that mistake.”

When I said nothing she sat back, directing her gaze to the blank brick wall in front of the windshield. “If I thought she was in any real danger from Robinette I might have come up with something else. When you read in the paper that a woman was raped or beaten in her own home and it turns out that home was a house in West Bloomfield, you’re reading the front page. When it’s an apartment in Iroquois Heights, you’re reading the police column in the third section. That’s because that kind of thing doesn’t happen in West Bloomfield. There, even the thugs mind their manners. The worst she’d get was followed. I know what that’s like, and it beats a broken jaw.”

“Robinette saw Catalin coming out of your place late. Catalin’s car was parked out front with his registration in the glove compartment.”

“I don’t know about the car, but it wasn’t Neil he saw coming out of my apartment. He saw Leo Webb. Neil’s partner.” She shook a cigarette out of her pack. “It was after two A.M. You’re the detective. You figure it out.”

W
HILE WE WERE SITTING
there a waitress came out the side door, fishing cigarettes and a lighter out of her apron pocket, spotted us, and moved farther down the line of parked cars to lean against the building and light up. The smokeless society has convened a new counterculture in America’s alleys.

I let Vesta fire hers up from the dashboard lighter. Gallantry was getting old. “You and Webb?”

“My mother made Judy Garland’s mother look like June Cleaver,” she said. “On my third birthday she signed me up for tap dancing lessons at Arthur Murray. At six I played Little Nell in
The Old Curiosity Shop
in a children’s theater group production in Garden City. I did a Crest commercial and sang the Oscar Mayer song when I was eleven. Dramatic scholarship at Wayne State. I got my SAG card when other girls my age went shopping for training bras. If there were any other choices I never saw them. I don’t want to schlep menus when I’m forty.”

“So it’s business.”

“What else would it be? Half of Gilda Productions belongs to that cueball, and he doesn’t have a wife to foul the nest. When it comes to recreational sex I like a full head of hair to get a grip on. I like your hair,” she added.

“Don’t flirt. How long have you and Webb been keeping company?”

“What’s this, Monday? Tomorrow will be a week.”

“Tuesday night was the start?”

“He called me that day at Ziggy’s. I told him where I lived. He brought flowers and a script. The shooting’s next week. I play Christina Ford in a docudrama about Henry the Deuce.”

“All this slipped your mind when we spoke Friday.”

“You asked if I’d seen Neil. You didn’t ask about Leo.”

“If I had, would you have come clean?”

She gestured with her cigarette. “If I didn’t think it was your business I’d have refused to answer. I only act when I’m paid.”

“Why was Webb driving Catalin’s car?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know he was until you told me just now. Robinette didn’t say why he thought Leo was Neil. Maybe he borrowed it.”

“If Catalin loaned it to him, it means they saw each other after Catalin went missing. I asked Webb about his partner’s car specifically. He said it wasn’t in the company lot. He didn’t say he’s the one who drove it away from there.”

“I hope he’s got a good explanation when you ask him about it. I need the work.” When I said nothing, she looked at me. “What are you staring at? In your line you must meet a lot of determined survivors.”

“So that’s what you call it.”

“I don’t have to justify myself to anyone,” she snarled. “Talent’s the smallest part of the equation in my business. The rest is luck. I can’t make luck, but if it’s out there groping around in the dark I can damn well turn on a light.”

I snapped my filter end at the handicapped symbol stenciled on the wall of the building, scoring a bull’s-eye in the center of the wheel of the wheelchair. “I wonder if you’re as hardboiled as you like to make out. And if you are, I wonder why Catalin didn’t run to you first thing after he hopped the fence this time. You’re made to order for the scenario he’s looking for: the femme fatale, cold as a polar cap and tougher than old deviled eggs.”

“What can I say? If he did I wouldn’t need to keep time with Leo. At least Neil has a heart. Whatever his partner’s using for one is due back at the prop department at Gilda.”

“You’re sure it’s you he wants?”

“Thanks for the compliment.”

“Beautiful women need compliments like Scrooge McDuck needs a bank loan. Two years after you left Gilda, Webb comes to you with a script in one hand and his hormones in the other. Why now, just after his partner disappeared? He didn’t by any chance, say, in a moment of passion, ask you about the ninety-two thousand?”

She opened her door. “Break’s over. I’m sick of hearing about that damn money. If I knew where it was I’d turn it over to the cops just to get everyone off my back.”

I stayed where I was. “Don’t go back and take it out on the customers. The question had to be asked.”

“Well, he didn’t say anything about the money, or anything else I didn’t already tell you. Not counting what I
won’t
tell you. I may bed anything that moves for a leg up, but I don’t discuss the details.”

“You’ll never get anywhere with that attitude. What will you tell your ghost writer at memoir time?”

After a pause she decided to smile. I grinned back. She let go of the door handle and slid closer.

“So you think I’m beautiful?”

“It was a statement. Not a pickup line.”

“I’ve got a bump on my nose.” She touched it. “I hit a curb and took a flyer over the handlebars when I was ten. My mother was furious. She thought I’d ruined any chance I ever had at a career. I made an appointment once to have it fixed, but I chickened out.”

“Anyone can order a nose from the catalogue. Garbo had big feet.”

She touched the more obvious bump on my nose. “What happened to yours?”

“I asked a detective a personal question.”

She drew back in a hurry. “Excuse, please. I didn’t realize I was trying to seduce an apostle.”

“Is that what you were trying to do?”

She stabbed out her cigarette in the dashboard tray. “Well, I didn’t put my weight behind it.”

“I don’t have a script to offer.”

“I don’t work on the career all the time.” She got out. “Lock it up when you leave, okay? This car’s third on the thieves’ list this year.”

“You ought to get the Club.”

“What I ought to do is trade it in on something more quiet. But I agreed to hang on to it so Ted wouldn’t contest the divorce. He wants to buy it from me when he gets out.”

I said, “I ran into a left jab.”

She had turned to slam the door. Now she turned back and leaned down to look in at me. “What?”

“It was my fifteenth fight in college. He feinted with a right cross, then nailed me with his left. When I came out of the anesthetic I decided not to go into boxing.”

She smiled again and pushed the door shut.

I smoked another Winston. Then I got out and walked down the line of cars to where Phil Musuraca was sitting behind the wheel of his big Buick Invicta. The motor was running. The loose compressor belt on the air conditioner squealed like rats in an Osterizer. When he looked at me over his
USA Today
I made a rotating motion with my right hand. He folded the paper and cranked down the window on his side. The cloud of Old Spice that puffed out on the rush of cold air nearly knocked me over.

“What.” His big face all but filled the opening. His nose was all over the place, but there hadn’t been much swelling.

“I’m curious,” I said. “What do you do when your bladder’s full?”

“I got me a wide-mouth jar. What do you?”

“Coffee can. How much do you know about a fence in Flatrock named Ernie Fishman?”

“I know he’s dead.”

“I could get that from the obits. What else?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“Right. Like you’re any closer to that ninety-two grand than you were three days ago.”

His eyes slid right and left under the shelf of his single brow like the bubble in a carpenter’s level. “You talking partners?”

“This case is breaking. If it breaks off in two directions I’m going to need a leg man. I’m guessing you’ve seen enough of parking lots and brick walls for a while.”

“Fifty-fifty?”

“Sure.”

His eyes fixed in the center. “You agreed to that mighty quick.”

I leaned against his doorpost. I could feel the heat of the metal through my suitcoat. “You don’t trust anyone, do you, Phil?”

“The last person I trusted was my mother. She left me with an IRS debt. It took me ten years to pay it off.”

“Meanwhile, not trusting anybody has got you your own detective agency, a company car, and state-of-the-art sanitary facilities.”

“What’ve
you
got, Rockefeller?”

“Oh, but I’m honest. That’s a whole different set of delusions. What have you got to lose? If I get to the money first you can always swipe it.”

I could hear his brain running as easily as the big engine under the hood. After a moment he turned off the key. “I sold Fishman some stuff from time to time,” he said. “Clients got a way of being broke when you hand them your bill. Sometimes you have to take it out in merchandise.”

“What did he deal in?”

“What didn’t he? Radios, coins, toaster ovens, luggage, rocks—”

“Diamonds?”

“Sure, diamonds. What other kind of rocks is there?”

I got out a cigarette, then thought better of it and put it back. The smoke from the last was still scraping the walls of my empty stomach. “Phil, do you ever read anything besides that cheesy newspaper?”

“You mean like
Sports Illustrated
?”

“No. Books.”

He shook his head. “They ain’t big enough to duck behind when your tail turns around.”

“You might give one a hard look sometime when you’re not working. Edgar Allan Poe has a lot to say to guys in our profession.”

“How many people is that?”

“Just one.” I straightened up and slapped the roof of the car. “I’ll be in touch.”

“Bring that guy Poe. He sounds like he’s smarter than you.”

Judy Yin clittered her coral nails on the glazed top of her reception desk, which was as much agitation as she would ever show within the confines of Gilda Productions. Today she wore a cranberry silk blazer over a green jumpsuit, but the ivory mask was the same as on my first visit. Her page boy gleamed like polished anthracite.

“As I told you over the telephone, Mr. Webb left for Los Angeles this morning,” she said. “I don’t expect him back before Thursday.”