Mortal Stakes (9 page)

She smiled. “It is getting awfully hard to decide, isn’t it? They were erotic films. But of good quality, sold by subscription.”

“Black socks, garter belts, two girls and a guy? That kind of stuff?”

“No, as I said, tasteful, high quality, good color and sound. No sadism, no homosexuality, no group sex.”

“And Donna was in some?”

“She was in one, shortly before she left me. The pay was good, and while it was a lot of work, it was a bit of a change for her. Her film was called Suburban Fancy. She was quite believable in it.”

“What did you tell the man who came asking?”

“I told him that he was under some kind of false impression. That I knew nothing about the films or the young lady involved. He became somewhat abusive, and I had to call for Steven to show him out.”

“I heard this guy was pretty tough,” I said.

“Steven was armed,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. “How come you didn’t have Steven show me out?”

“You did not become abusive.”

The entree came. Duck in a fig and brandy sauce for me, striped bass in cucumber and crabmeat sauce for her. The duck was wonderful.

I said, “You sell these films by subscription.” She nodded. “How’s chances on a look at the subscription list?”

“None,” she said.

“No chance?”

“No chance at all. Obviously you can see my situation.

Such material must remain confidential to protect our clients.”

“People do sell mailing lists,” I said.

“I do not,” she said. “I have no need for money, Mr.

Spenser.”

“No, I guess you don’t. Okay, how about I name a couple of people and you tell me if they’re on your list? That doesn’t compromise any but those I suspect anyway.”

There were carrots in brown sauce with fresh dill and zucchini in butter with the entree, and Patricia Utley ate some of each before she answered. “Perhaps we can go back to my home for brandy after dinner and I’ll have someone check.”

For dessert we had clafoutis, which still tastes like blueberry pancakes to me, and coffee. The coffee was weak.

The bill was $119 including tip.

IT WAS SUNSET when the plane swung in over the water and landed at La Guardia Airport. I took the bus into the East Side terminal at Thirty-eighth Street and a cab from there to the Holiday Inn at West Fifty-seventh Street. The Wiener schnitzel had been so good in Redford, I thought I might as well stay with a winner.

The West Side hadn’t gotten any more fashionable since I had been there last and the hotel looked as if it belonged where it was. The lobby was so discouraging that I didn’t bother to check the dining room for Wiener schnitzel.

Instead, I walked over to a Scandinavian restaurant on Fiftyeighth Street and ravaged its smorgasbord.

The next morning I made some phone calls to the New York Department of Social Services while I drank coffee in my room. When I finished I walked along Fifty-seventh Street to Fifth Avenue and headed downtown. I always walk in New York. In the window of F.A.O. Schwarz was an enormous stuffed giraffe, and Brentano’s had a display of ethnic cookbooks in the window. I thought about going in and asking them if they were a branch of the Boston store but decided not to. They probably lacked my zesty sense of humor.

It was about nine forty-five when I reached Thirtyfourth Street and turned left. Four blocks east, between Third and Second avenues, was a three-story beige brick building that looked like a modified fire station. The brown metal entrance doors, up four stairs, were flanked with flagpoles at right angles to the building. A plaque under the right-hand flagpole said CITY OF NEW YORK, DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SERVICES, YORKVILLE INCOME MAINTENANCE CENTER. I went in.

It was a big open room, the color a predictable green; molded plastic chairs in red, green, and blue stood three rows deep to the right of the entrance. To the left a low counter.

Behind the counter a big black woman with blue-framed glasses on a chain around her neck was telling an old woman in an ankle-length dress that her check would come next week and would not come sooner. The woman protested in broken English, and the woman behind the desk said it again, louder. At the end of the counter, sitting in a folding chair, was a New York City cop, a slim black woman with badge, gun, short hair, and enormous high platform shoes. Beyond the counter the room L’d to the left, and I could see office space partitioned off. There was no one else on the floor.

Behind me, to the right of the entry, a stair led up. A handprinted sign said FACE TO FACE UPSTAIRS with an arrow. I went up. The second floor had been warrened off into cubicles where face to face could go on in privacy. The first cubicle was busy; the second was not. I knocked on the frame of the open door and went in. It was little bigger than a confessional, just a desk, a file cabinet, and a chair for the face to face. The woman at the desk was lean and young, not long out of Vassar or Bennington. She had a tanned outdoor face, with small lines around the eyes that she wasn’t supposed to get yet. She had on a white sleeveless blouse open at the neck. Her brown hair was cut short and she wore no makeup. Her face presented an expression of no-nonsense compassion that I suspected she was still working on. The sign on her desk said MS.

Harris.

”Come in,“ she said, her hands resting on the neat desk in front of her. A pencil in the right one. I was dressed for New York in my wheat-colored summer suit, dark blue shirt, and a white tie with blue and gold stripes. Would she invite me to her apartment? Maybe she thought I was another welfare case. If so, I’d have to speak with my tailor. I gave her a card; she frowned down at it for about thirty seconds and then looked up and said, ”Yes?“

”Do you think I ought to have a motto on it?“ I said.

”I beg your pardon?“

”A motto,“ I said. ”On the card. You know, like ‘We never sleep’ or maybe ‘Trouble is my business.’ Something like that.“

”Mr.“—she checked the card—”Spenser, I assume you’re joking and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I have a good deal to do and I wonder if you might tell me what you want directly?“

”Yes, ma’am. May I sit?“

”Please do.“

”Okay, I’m looking for a young woman who might have showed up here and gone on welfare about eight years ago.“

”Why do you want to find her?“

I shook my head. ”It’s a reasonable question, but I can’t tell you.“

She frowned at me the way she had frowned at my card. ”Why do you think we’d have information about something that far back?“

”Because you are a government agency. Government agencies never throw anything away because someone someday might need something to cover himself in case a question of responsibility was raised. You got welfare records for Peter Stuyvesant.“

The frown got more severe, making a groove between her eyebrows. ”Why do you think this young woman was on welfare?“

”You shouldn’t frown like that,“ I said. ”You’ll get little premature wrinkles in the corners of your eyes.“

”I would prefer it, Mr. Spenser, if you did not attempt to personalize this contact. The condition of my eyes is not relevant to this discussion.“

”Ah, but how they sparkle when you’re angry,“ I said.

She almost smiled, caught herself, and got the frown back in place. ”Answer my question, please.“

”She was about eighteen; she ran away from a small midwestern town with the local bad kid, who probably ditched her after they got here. She’s a good bet to have ended up on welfare or prostitution or both. I figured that you’d have better records than Diamond Nell’s Parlor of Delight.“

The pencil in her right hand went tap-tap-tap on the desk. Maybe six taps before she heard it and stopped. ”The fact of someone’s presence on welfare rolls has sometimes been used against them. Cruel as that may seem, it is a fact of life, and I hope you can understand my reticence in this matter.“

”I’m on the girl’s side,“ I said.

”But I have no way to know that.“

”Just my word,“ I said.

”But I don’t know if your word is good.“

”That’s true,“ I said. ”You don’t.“

The pencil went tap-tap-tap again. She looked at the phone. Pass the buck? She looked away. Good for her. ”What is the girl’s name?“

”Donna Burlington.“ I could hear a typewriter in one of the other cubicles and footsteps down another corridor. ”Go ahead,“ I said. ”Do it. It will get done by someone. It’s only a matter of who. Me? Cops? Courts? Your boss? His boss? Why not you? Less fuss.“

She nodded her head. ”Yes. You are probably right.

Very well.“ She got up and left the room. She had very nice legs.

It took a while. I stood in the window of the cubicle and looked down on Thirty-fourth Street and watched the people coming and going from the welfare office. It wasn’t as busy as I’d thought it would be. Nor were the people as shabby. Down the corridor a man swore rapidly in Spanish.

The typewriter had stopped. The rest was silence.

Ms. Harris returned with a file folder. She sat, opened it on the desk, and read the papers in it. ”Donna Burlington was on income maintenance at this office from August to November nineteen sixty-six. At the time her address was One Sixteen East Thirteenth Street. Her relationship with this office ended on November thirteenth, nineteen sixty-six, and I have no further knowledge of her.“ She closed the folder and folded her hands on top of it.

I said, ”Thank you very much.“

She said, ”You’re welcome.“

I looked at my watch: 10:50. ”Would you like to join me for an early lunch?“ I said.

”No, thank you,“ she said. So much for the operator down from Boston.

”Would you like to see me do a one-hand push-up?“ I said.

”Certainly not,“ she said. ”If you have nothing more, Mr. Spenser, I have a good deal of work to do.“

”Oh, sure, okay. Thanks very much for your trouble.“

She stood as I left the room. From the corridor I stuck my head back into the office and said, ”Not everyone can do a onehand push-up, you know?“

She seemed unimpressed and I left.

I TOOK A POLAROID camera with me when I visited Linda Rabb.

“I want to think about graphics, maybe a coffee table book,” I told her. “Maybe a big format.”

She was in blue jeans, barefoot, a ribbon in her hair, her makeup fresh. On a twenty-five-inch color console in the living room, Buck Maynard was calling the play by play. “Ah want to tell ya, Holly West could throw a lamb chop past a wolf pack, Doc. He gunned Amos Otis down by twenty feet.”

“Great arm, Buck,” Wilson said, “a real cannon back there.”

I snapped some pictures of Linda and the living room from different angles.

“Do you get nervous watching Marty pitch, Linda?” I lay on the floor to get an exotic angle, shooting up through the glass top of the coffee table.

“No, not so much anymore. He’s so good, you know-it’s more, I’m surprised when he loses. But I don’t worry.”

“Does he bring it home or leave it at the park?”

“When he loses? He leaves it there. Unless you’ve been watching the game, you don’t know if he won or lost when he comes in the door. He doesn’t talk about it at all. Little Marty barely knows what his father does.”

I placed the five color shots on the coffee table in front of Linda Rabb.

“Which one do you like best?” I said. “They’re only idea shots; if the publishers decide to go to the big picture format, we’ll use a pro.” I sounded like Arthur Author—it pays to listen to the Carson show.

She picked up the last one on the left and held it at an angle to the light.

“This is an interesting shot,” she said. It was the one I’d taken from floor level. It was interesting. Casey Crime Photographer.

“Yeah, that’s good,” I said. “I like that one too.” I took it from her and put it in an envelope. “How about the others?”

She looked at several more. “They’re okay, but the one I gave you first is my favorite.”

“Okay,” I said. “We agree.” I scooped the other four into a second envelope.

Bucky Maynard said, “We got us a real barn burner here, Doc. Both pitchers are hummin‘ it in there pretty good.”

“You’re absolutely right, Bucky. A couple of real fine arms out there tonight.”

I stood up. “Thank you, Linda. I’m sorry to have barged in on you like this.”

“That’s okay. I enjoyed it. The only thing is, I don’t know about pictures of me, or of the baby. Marty doesn’t like to have his family brought into things. I mean, we’re very private people. Marty may not want you to do pictures.”

“I can understand that, Linda. Don’t worry. There are lots of people on the team, and if we decide to go to visuals, we can use some of them if Marty objects.”

She shook my hand at the door. It was a bony hand and cold.

Outside, it was dark now, and the traffic was infrequent. I walked up Mass Ave toward the river, crossing before I got to Boylston Street to look at the Spanish melons in the window of a gourmet food shop. Mingled with the smell of automobiles and commerce were the thin, damp smell of the river and the memory of trees and soil that the city supplanted. At Marlborough I turned right and strolled down toward my apartment. The small trees and the flowering shrubs in front of the brick and brownstone buildings enhanced the river smell.

It was nine fifteen when I got in my apartment. I called the Essex County DA’s office on the chance that someone might be there late. Someone was, probably an assistant DA working up a loan proposal so he could open an office and go into private practice.

“Lieutenant Healy around?” I asked.

“Nope, he’s working out of ten-ten Commonwealth, temporary duty, probably be there a couple of months. Can I do anything for you?”

I said no and hung up.

I called state police headquarters at 1010 Commonwealth Ave in Boston. Healy wasn’t in. Call back in the morning. I hung up and turned on the TV. Boston had a two-run lead over Kansas City. I opened a bottle of Amstel beer, lay down on my couch, and watched the ball game. John Mayberry tied the game with a one-on home run in the top of the ninth, and I went through three more Amstels before Johnny Tabor scored from third on a Holly West sacrifice fly in the eleventh inning. While the news was on, I made a Westphalian ham sandwich on pumpernickel, ate it, and drank another bottle of Amstel. A man needs sustenance before bed. I might have an exciting dream. I didn’t.