The Girl From Nowhere (9 page)

I walked the half block to Central Park, entered through the pedestrian gate at 69th Street, and sat on a bench near Tavern on the Green in the hope of clearing my lungs of the stench of death. I suppose the trees were beginning to take on those kitschy fall colors, but I was preoccupied with thoughts of the dangling man. I didn’t want to drop Sandy in the shit, but it seemed indecent to let him just hang there with the flies buzzing around his balls, and common sense told me that someone was going to report the stiff sooner or later. I was glad I didn’t know for sure where Sandy was, but I was concerned that if I made an anonymous call to the cops they would be all over Aladdin’s Alibi like Thousand Island dressing on a Reuben sandwich.

I hoped that by now Sandy would have seen the light about not showing up for work, but with her it was impossible to be certain about anything. In any case, why was I in such a hurry to report the schmuck’s suicide? What was it to me? He’d already messed up my day. And suppose someone had seen me leaving the building? Thank God I’d been careful about fingerprints, because the cops had mine on file—which reminded me that I still had the cotton gloves balled up in my pocket. I tossed them into a garbage can and headed for 5th Avenue.

TEN

I hiked down
to the Donnell Library on 53rd Street. That’s where the New York Public Library used to keep the original Winnie-the-Pooh dolls, safe behind bulletproof glass in case drug-crazed Yippies attempted to liberate them by armed force or some sex-starved and homesick tourist from Nebraska attempted to sodomize Eeyore. I wasn’t there to lose myself in the Hundred Acre Wood, but because the Donnell had a decent selection of art books and catalogues, as befitted its location across the street from the Museum of Modern Art.

I found several devoted to Stewart Langham and spent some time skimming through the biographical sections. This provided me with a few snippets. He had been born and raised in Seymour, Connecticut, the youngest of the five children of a wealthy mill owner known locally as the Copper Wire King of the Naugatuck Valley. Stew graduated from Yale, then, at the tail end of World War I, served in the Ambulance Corps. While on leave in Paris, he did the chestnuts-in-blossom bit, saw the work of Picasso, Modigliani, Soutine, and the rest of the gang, and set his mind on becoming a painter. Luckily for him, he had some chops. After a year at the Académie Julian, he returned to the Land of the Free and renewed his studies at the Art Students League on 57th Street, just as he had told me. Then he launched his career, quickly attracting attention with his incident-filled street scenes and depictions of voluptuous nudes in demotic settings.

There had been an early and brief marriage to a fellow student named Beatrice Armand, with whom he had had a son, Ambrose, who died in childhood. Cynthia the ball breaker didn’t enter the picture until 1936 when Stew was in his forties. Somewhere along the way they produced a daughter. They were divorced in Reno in 1944, but remarried in 1951 and seemingly lived together until her death ten years later. Photographs showed her to have been, in her prime, a statuesque blonde who, had it not been for the accidents of birth, might have made the grade as a showgirl.

Inside one book was a newspaper clipping with a photograph of Langham wearing a tux, his arm around the waist of a buxom bimbo named Lotte. Behind them, grinning, was a man identified as attorney Louis Mendelssohn. The clipping was attached to a page containing a paragraph that read, in part, “In 1963 Langham was called to testify before a grand jury investigating the gangland-style slaying of his friend Louis Mendelssohn, a well-to-do attorney and a prominent collector of the artist’s work.”

That was worth knowing, but I didn’t find much else that added anything useful to the Langham profile.

I had intended to go to my office, but as the train rattled into the 14th Street station, exhaustion hit. I gave into it and headed home to get some shut-eye. Once inside the apartment, my mind started racing again. Too much stimulus. Sandy’s pink overnight case was still there, the gingham dress from our “date” was draped over the back of a chair, and her stuff was still in the bathroom. I picked the cotton panties she had worn the previous evening off the floor, remembering the way she had placed my hand on her crotch. Then I recalled the semen-stained panties I had found near the cadaver in the sublet and almost threw up. My head was spinning, but I poured myself a large Scotch and downed it, with another one for a chaser. Finally I kicked off my shoes and pants and climbed into bed. The sheets and the pillow smelled of girl—no other word for it—and the scent aroused me instantly, but before I had a chance to do anything about it I was swamped with sleep.

I was woken by the phone. It was Sandy. I wanted to yell at her, but couldn’t.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“What the fuck happened to you?” I demanded, rather politely.

“Never mind that,” she said. “Are you okay?”

“Of course I’m okay. I was scared shitless something had happened to you. Why did you run out on me?”

“I had to get out of there. I saw you disappear into that place and I just bolted.”

I glanced at my watch and realized that I’d slept for more than two hours.

“Where are you now?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Are you at Langham’s?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“You’re not at the Alibi, are you?”

“I’m not going to the Alibi. I’ve talked to them. I need some time to think.”

Her tone told me that she did not know about the man hanging in her apartment.

“We need to talk,” I said, trying to come up with the best way to break the news.

“Later,” she said. “I just wanted to check in on you.”

Then she hung up on me.

I was still groggy, and I had a headache. It was not helped by the noise from the street. People were shouting and laughing and singing. I looked out of the window and saw grown men not of the West Village persuasion hugging each other. It took a few seconds for me to twig what was going on. I turned on the TV to be sure.

The Miracle Mets had won the World Series.

Wearing my Yankees cap, I was about to leave the house when an unmarked police car pulled up outside. I knew it was a police car because it had that carefully cultivated anonymous look, and anyway I could see Detective Campbell in the front passenger seat. I watched through the blinds as Campbell and his partner, Detective Cole, made their way up the stoop. When I opened the door, Campbell looked at my cap and shook his head sadly.

“Mind if we come in?” he said, redundantly showing me his badge.

Today he had on an old gabardine suit the color of split-pea soup, a midnight-blue shirt, and a peach-colored tie. I wondered if color-blindness was an impediment to police work.

“I was hoping you’d be able to stop by,” I said. “Won’t you gentlemen make yourselves comfortable?”

“We’d rather stand,” Campbell said. “It’s the only exercise we get. But you don’t mind if I light up, do you, Novalis? Prairie Flower is my brand these days. It’s herbal. You’ll find the aroma quite agreeable. It’s not dissimilar to some of the exotic blends I’m told you and your friends enjoy.”

I reminded him that I’d already had the pleasure.

“Detective Cole and I dropped by,” said Campbell, “to ask a few questions about the young lady who was here last night—Miss Smollett.”

My first thought was that someone had reported the dead man.

“Why would the Special Affairs Bureau be interested in Miss Smollett?”

“That’s privileged information,” said Campbell.

“I’ve had a lot of that thrown at me lately,” I said. “It doesn’t stick.”

“My question is,” Campbell continued, “how long have you known Miss Smollett, Novalis?”

“Since Tuesday afternoon.”

“And how did you come to know her?”

“I met her on the street.”

“You picked her up?”

“The other way around, if anything.”

“Wonders, as they say, will never cease. And where exactly was this?”

That was one I didn’t want to answer too precisely.

“In Little Italy. I don’t remember exactly where.”

“Little Italy? One of my favorite neighborhoods. Are we talking about Mulberry Street, perchance? Where there was an altercation in a delicatessen Tuesday afternoon? A deli which, as it happens, I often patronize. I’m especially fond of their mortadella.”

“I wouldn’t know about that. As I recall, I saw Miss Smollett somewhere just north of Canal and she asked the way to the Staten Island Ferry. I gave her very precise directions, but then we got sidetracked into a conversation about hemlines—how many inches above the knee is considered appropriate this season. You probably didn’t realize I’m an aficionado of women’s fashion. We found ourselves in a bar—the name escapes me. The World Series was on the television and we placed a friendly wager on the likelihood of Boog Powell striking out the next time he was at the plate. It seems Miss Smollett is a Baltimore fan, whereas of course I favored the Mets.”

“Which explains why you are now wearing a Yankees cap?”

“A gift from my ex-wife.”

“I used to root for the Giants,” said Campbell, gloomily.

I offered condolences.

“And how much time,” he continued, pulling himself together, “have you spent with Miss Smollett since this illegal wager?”

“As I think you know, she slept over Tuesday night. Last night too.”

“Does that mean she lost the bet?”

I passed on that one.

“And when did you last see her?” Campbell asked.

“This morning. She left fairly early—I don’t know quite when, and I don’t know where she was going, or if or when she’ll be back.”

“She was still headed for Staten Island, perhaps?”

“Possibly.”

“And am I to presume that this colorful suitcase is yours? And the fetching dress draped over the chair? Not to mention the dainty lingerie . . .”

“I guess she’ll be back for that stuff.”

“But you don’t know when?”

“I’m not a mind reader. I imagine she’s at work.”

“It seems she’s not going to the Alibi today.”

“Then you know more than I do. I have no idea where she is.”

“At her apartment, maybe?”

“I’ve never been to her apartment. She slept here, remember? She told me she had a place—a sublet, I think—somewhere on the Upper West Side.”

“Near Lincoln Center?”

“I really don’t know.”

“And where did you spend your day?” Campbell asked.

“Here and there. I passed quite a bit of time in the Donnell Library—doing research. A lot of people saw me there.”

“Research for a client?”

“For a job I’m hoping to land.”

Campbell paused to suck on his pipe, which as usual was not pulling to his satisfaction.

“Well,” he said, “I’m sorry to have wasted your time, Novalis. And mine.”

“Always a pleasure to chat with a buddy,” I told him.

“If I see Miss Smollett,” he said, “I’ll give her your regards.”

I watched through the window as he walked to the car, his gait suggesting that he was wearing an imaginary kilt and sporran.