Don't Dare a Dame (34 page)

   
“Why were you at Alf’s house the night he was killed?”

   
“He called me. Right after I got home from work. I’d never heard him so worked up. That’s when I found out he’d listened to whatever you and Corrie and Isobel talked about. So see, you know more about—”

   
“Finish your story, Neal.”

   
He might have attempted a glare, but maybe he was just squinting. His face was the blue-white of skimmed milk.

   
“He said he had to see me that night — that it couldn’t wait — and not to tell George. He said come around eleven, that he had to go see somebody else first.”

   
“Any idea who?”

   
“No.”

   
“Then what?”

   
“I went over around eleven, like he’d said. I rang the bell, but nobody answered, so I waited ten minutes and left. I came back around midnight and tried again, but there was still no answer. Then I noticed there was a light in the kitchen.”

   
“Was it there before?”

   
“I don’t know. But I thought maybe Alf was back there or was in the crapper or something and hadn’t heard me ring. Anyway, I went around the side of the house, thinking I’d try the back door. Knock and then go in and yell it was me, you know?”

   
It was how I’d done at Kate and Billy’s when I was a kid, and at Wee Willie’s, too. I nodded.

   
“There’s a window there on the side. The shade hangs up about an inch from the bottom unless you notice and fiddle with it. One time George and I peeked under and saw Alf and his girlfriend—”

   
He broke off at my expression.

   
“Yeah. So. It was starting to feel funny, Alf making such a big deal over needing to see me and then not being there. I looked through that gap and saw Alf at the kitchen table, passed out with a bottle beside him.”

   
“Was he already dead?”

   
“I - I don’t know.” He looked so miserable I almost felt sorry for him. “I didn’t go in. I thought, well, maybe he was just a little bit drunk, or maybe sleepy. I went on to the back door, still meaning to knock. But just as I was starting to...” He swallowed with effort. “I heard somebody moving inside. And I ... oh, God ... I don’t know what I thought .... Just that something wasn’t right, and I’d better clear out, and that’s what I did. I figured the people in the other side of the duplex would be asleep and wouldn’t see me, so I went that way.”

   
“But somebody did see you.”

   
“Yeah.”

   
“Somebody who knows Alf was murdered and thinks you saw the killer.”

   
“All I saw was what I’ve told you!”

   
“And cars.”

   
“Cars?”

   
“Maybe they think you recognized cars.”

   
Neal looked blank. Maybe he made connections better when he was sober. I doubted it. I switched directions.

   
“Who’s got you scared, Neal? Who came to see you that day at work? Was it one of Cy Warren’s men?”

   
“Cy Warren?” he repeated stupidly.

   
“He and Cy were thick when they were young.”

   
“I know who he is. You think I’m dumb?” Irritation pushed color into his face. “He’s running for something. Statehouse, maybe. Of course it wasn’t anybody he sent!”

   
“How can you be so certain?”

   
“Because ... because it was somebody from the other bunch.”

   
“The other party, you mean?”

   
He wet his lips. His eyes darted nervously from the door to the window.

   
“No. His own. The ones who paid me to dig up dirt on him.”

***

   
I leaned against the wall of the shabby hotel room and let the import of what he’d just told me sink in. That was why so much in this case hadn’t made sense. Why someone already was snatching Corrine at the very moment my presence first alerted Cy Warren to the fact I’d made a connection between him and Alf. Why a car tailing me bore a license plate that didn’t appear on the list Heebs compiled. Why there’d always seemed to be an extra element that didn’t fit.

   
There
was
an extra element. It had nothing to do with Percy Street or the Vanhorns. It had to do with politics. Not money — at least not as far as I could see — but power. Or maybe prestige.

   
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” I muttered to myself. “They’re as bad as gangsters.”

   
Neal was holding his head in his hands, as miserable at what he’d done as from the bender now hammering him with its effects. I went into the bathroom and got him half a glass of water. This time I added a miserly splash of whiskey from the bottle on the dresser before I gave it to him.

   
“Who are these men? What did they want you to find out?”

   
It was late, and my patience was strained. Apparently Neal could tell.

   
“I-I don’t know any names. The one who hired me, he’s some bigwig. In the party, I mean. Not anybody who’s been elected. But he’s there sometimes, at headquarters.”

   
“Cy’s headquarters?”

   
“No — the party’s. Alf’s kind of — was kind of — keen on politics. I’d tag along sometimes. Pretend I was too, because....”

   
“Because you wanted to butter him up.”

   
“I guess. George said all their blather was boring. I thought so too, but I went now and then. That’s how I knew about Alf and Cy being pals. Alf always made it a point to go over and talk to Cy, though to tell you the truth, they didn’t really talk. More like Cy pasted on a smile and said ‘Good to see you, Alf.’ Like I say, this other guy, the bigwig, was around. I never paid him much attention. I think he runs people’s campaigns or something like that.”

   
“What’s he look like?”

   
“Fair. Real fair. Kind of blocky.” He shrugged. “I only talked to him once.”

   
“When he hired you to spy on Alf?”

   
He looked down guiltily and swallowed some water.

   
“Yeah. I guess. But I never spied. I was ... I’d just get him to talk about Cy, about what they did in the old days. Then I’d tell a guy who worked for the bigwig.”

   
“What were they trying to find out?”

   
“They never said. The important guy came up to me at a meeting. He slipped me five bucks and said if I wanted to make five more, be down at the corner in ten minutes. I wasn’t to tell Alf or anyone else.

   
“So I went and a guy of his met me. He said they’d pay me a fin a week to pump Alf about anything stupid Cy had done. I couldn’t see it would hurt Alf any, so I said sure. Every week I’d meet the same guy somewhere and tell him anything I’d learned, but it never was anything important. Just pranks they’d played, stuff like that. Then Alf died and the guy I’d been reporting to turned up—”

   
“Outside where you worked.”

   
“Yeah. He called me names. Said they knew I’d been sneaking around at Alf’s the night he died. He said unless I told what I’d seen — who I’d seen — they’d pin it on me!”

   
He sank back, hands shaking as he used both to raise the glass to his lips.

   
To pressure him, they’d terrorized Corrine. What they didn’t know then was that Neal already was in the process of running. Even now, he probably had no inkling what had befallen his sister. Meanwhile, unaware of a second faction, I’d erroneously assumed her abduction was intended to scare me — or the sisters — into dropping the case.

   
Thinking of how much trouble was stirred up by people who ‘never meant to’ do any harm disgusted me as much as the smell of the room. I’d had all I could take for one day.

   
“You’ve got two minutes to get out of those clothes and into the shower to clean yourself up,” I said. “Get moving or I’ll do it for you.”

Forty-two

   
The doc who’d embroidered my lip had said the stitches should stay in at least a week. One week and thirteen hours later I tried to hold him to taking them out. He argued waiting two more days would be better, so we finally compromised. He’d take them out if I promised not to use lipstick for another week.

   
As soon as I got to my car I got out my lipstick. Then I had second thoughts. Tiny holes remained where the silk or catgut or whatever it was had been pulled out, and there was a line where skin was still growing together. Feeling uncommonly virtuous, I put the lipstick away, had breakfast, and bought some fresh Vaseline, which at least gave me some shine. Then I headed over to check on Neal.

   
“Franklin’s already been by. Brought some groceries and a paper and that. Big bottle of aspirin.” He grimaced. Avoiding my eyes, he rubbed his hands together awkwardly. “I don’t know why he’s being so nice, the way I used to sniff at him.”

   
The night before, once Neal got out of the shower and into the more-or-less-clean clothes I’d found for him, I’d offered a choice: I could take him back to where he lived with George, or to Franklin’s currently empty apartment. I wasn’t going to risk his sisters’ safety sending him there. He was smart enough, and sober enough by then, to realize he’d be safest at Franklin’s. I’d used the phone in the St. George lobby to call Franklin and make arrangements.

   
Finding him up and around in fresh clothes that clearly belonged to his stepbrother was a nice surprise. He didn’t add anything new when I asked him the same questions I’d asked the previous night, but at least he wasn’t surly this time around.

   
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to take off, and I’m not going to pull anything stupid,” he said fervently.

   
With one less thing to worry about, I went to my office — where things began to go downhill.

   
Amid my mail was an envelope with no stamp. It probably had been dropped through the slot of the building’s phone booth- sized mail room. It bore my name and office address in impeccable penmanship. The writing looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t think where I’d seen it. Tearing open the envelope, I unfolded a sheet of typing paper.

   
Miss Maggie
, it began. My eyes jumped to the signature for confirmation. Yes, it was from the two Negro girls who cleaned in the building.

Miss Maggie,

Sophia and me thought you should know someone was snooping around in your office last night. We’d just come in and it was our night to do third floor first, and right as we started down the hall, Sophia saw a little bitty light go off in your place.

Her brother Zekiel was with us so he could visit while we worked, cause he doesn’t get up to see her much. He’s a mighty big man, and when we whispered it wasn’t right, somebody being in there, but that no account night watchman wouldn’t get up from his card game even if we told him, Zekiel slipped into the mop closet and grabbed a handle that had broke off. He marched into your office, and told those hoodlums to get, that he’d already called the police. Guess they thought he was the watchman, cause they took off running. There was two.

   
    
Gilead

P. S.

We thought it would be safer to poke a letter through the slot downstairs than leave it on your desk in case those men came back, so we used one of those extra envelopes you keep in your basket.

   
Despite the bad news, it tickled me picturing the incident. When I worked late enough that Sophia and Gilead were around, I yakked at them and they kidded me. At Christmas I gave them each a couple of bucks, and sometimes during the year a peck of apples or beans that looked especially good at the market. They were hard working women trying to hold their own in the world, just like me. As I sat considering the ramifications of someone searching my office the telephone rang.