Requiem for a Realtor (20 page)

“Maybe you ought to have it done.”

“Cy, it's no joke for a girl.”

“I'm sorry, Joe.”

“I'll invite you to the wedding. I even look forward to paying for the damned wedding.”

“You should invite Jameson, too.”

“Are you kidding? Of course I will. Funny thing, Basil, the night man, says he's been in here.”

“Jameson?”

“Jameson. And that isn't what he ordered, either. Came in one night and sat about where you are, according to Basil. Sat right next to Willie Boiardo, the piano player.”

“How are Willy's teeth?”

Joe shook his head. “If you had a daughter, Cy, you'd understand.”

And then Tuttle came in and took a stool and ordered a Dr Pepper.

This exchange with Joe took precedence over what Tuttle had said. And Cy remembered something else. Jameson had mentioned renting a car on that Wednesday when he took Phyllis Collins to the Frosinone.

In his car, Cy called in and got hold of Agnes and asked her to check out rental car agencies for any record of David Jameson renting a car.

“When?”

“Try last Thursday.”

“I'll get back to you.”

And she did, before he got back to his office. He was just approaching the police garage when Agnes called.

“Bingo. He rented a car from Hertz. What's it mean?”

“Where is Hertz, at the airport?”

“He rented this from their downtown location.”

“Where is it?”

“On Bailey Street.”

“Bailey.”

She gave him an address that was a block or so from the Rendezvous.

“You onto something, Cy?”

“Who knows? Thanks, Agnes.”

He had driven past the garage entrance while they talked. He pulled over and called the Rendezvous and asked for Joe Perzel.

“Joe, the piano player, Boiardo. You know where he lives?”

“Sure. The Frosinone Hotel.”

“Thanks. Tuttle still there?”

“I made him pay for your beer.”

“But I paid you.”

“Tuttle didn't know that.”

*   *   *

“This is getting to be a habit,” Verdi said when Cy came up to the registration desk.

“What room is Willie Boiardo in?”

“Right now, he's in the ballroom. That's him playing.”

Cy crossed the lobby and stood in the entrance of what had once been an elegant ballroom. Far off, at a diagonal, was a grand piano at which Willie was playing. Cy listened for five minutes before slowly crossing the great expanse of the room. It seemed a shame to interrupt. Even without Wanda singing the words, Boiardo's playing brought back a lost world.

Willie looked up when Cy came to a stop beside the piano. He played on for a minute, but the dreamy expression did not leave his face when he stopped.

“Nice.”

“Thanks.”

“Can I buy you a drink?”

“Who are you?”

“Lieutenant Horvath.”

“Lieutenant as in police?”

“There's something you might be able to tell me.”

“About what?” The little man was suddenly fidgety.

“About someone else.”

“Look, if it's about the Frosinone—”

“It's about a dentist.”

Boiardo had a nice laugh. He got up and stuck out his hand. “Willie Boiardo.”

“I know. I've heard you at the Rendezvous.”

“But you were listening to Wanda.”

Cy smiled. “Is there a bar in the hotel?”

“I believe there is.”

As they came out of the ballroom, Verdi came toward them. “Can I offer you gentlemen a drink?”

“That's better than paying.”

They were the only customers in the Frosinone bar. Cy might have objected to Verdi dealing himself in, but his earlier talk with the manager seemed to give Verdi the right. Besides, it seemed to put Willie more at ease. Willie ordered straight bourbon, and Verdi asked for a brandy Alexander.

“You got Dr Pepper?” Cy asked the bartender.

Verdi laughed. “Why don't you ask for a Nehi?”

“Or a grasshopper,” Willie said.

“As in knee-high to?”

“We got Dr Pepper,” the bartender said and went away. He doubled as waiter, apparently.

“Last Thursday night or early Friday a man named Stanley Collins was run down outside the Rendezvous,” Cy said to Willie.

The pianist nodded. “He was a regular.”

“I want to ask you about someone else, someone who sat next to you at the bar during a break.”

“You're kidding.”

“A big fellow, blond…”

“Looks like an altar boy?” Verdi said.

Cy nodded. Their drinks came, and Willie, after a healthy pull on his bourbon, said, “Why would I remember him?”

Verdi pushed back his chair. “Hold on. I've got a picture of him. There was a story about him in the paper by Bob Oliver.”

“Get it,” Cy said.

“Why else am I standing?”

Willie said, “Do you know how many people come into the Rendezvous? Do you know how many I might sit next to when I take a break? I doubt that I am going to be of any help to you.”

“Who knows?”

“What difference does it make if he was there that night?”

“I'm not sure.”

Verdi came back, waving a newspaper. “Here it is.”

He handed it to Willie, pointing to the story. The little man looked at the pictures, read the captions, nodded. “I do remember him.”

“It was the night Stanley Collins was killed.”

“I don't remember the night.”

“You ever see him in there before?”

Willie shook his head, studying the pictures. “Nor since. Just that once. That doesn't mean he wasn't there.”

“What do you think, Horvath?” Verdi asked.

“Think? I'm a cop.”

Willie handed the newspaper back to Verdi, who rolled it up and began to slap his knee with it.

“You figure he went there after he left here?”

“Maybe you should enter the academy, Verdi. If you could pass the test.” To Willie he said, “You're sure?”

“What's he done?”

“Given beautiful smiles to lots of girls.”

Willie had a beautiful smile himself.

30

After the last patient had left, David Jameson retreated to his office where, collapsed behind the desk, he was overwhelmed by the apprehension he had been holding at bay since Lieutenant Horvath's visit that afternoon. He could interpret what was happening to him as divine retribution for the dangerous game he had been playing with Phyllis Collins, or he could lament the injustice of the suspicions that were directed at him. It was the first interpretation that prevailed.

The cold bath of shame he had felt speaking to the detective about that dreadful night at the Frosinone seemed to cleanse him of the sinful desires he had entertained, masking them as some sort of effort to bring Phyllis back to the church. How delusional that now seemed to him. Nor could he prevent himself from realizing that Bridget's estimate of Phyllis was the accurate one. The woman was an immature flirt, no better than the husband she delighted in abusing. He could feel her painted nails trying to undo his belt as he knelt on the floor of the suite in the Frosinone. Dear God, what a jezebel.

Every memory he had of Phyllis was now distasteful to him. Her half-exposed body in his dental chair, her girlish coyness, her ridiculous way of dressing, and that open mouth whenever he tried to kiss her. He felt that he was emerging from a period of insanity and moral blindness. When he had confessed to Father Dowling, he had been in effect congratulating him-self, as if like Thomas Aquinas he had driven from his room with a burning brand the woman sent to tempt him to sins of the flesh. “I am a hypocrite,” he murmured half aloud. “A pharisee.”

Self-accusation had its own odd appeal and he checked himself before he began to exult in his supposed abasement. More hypocrisy. A sob burbled forth. Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.

A tap on the door, and the silhouette of Bridget appeared in the doorway. It seemed a moment before her eyes adjusted to the darkened room.

“David?”

“I'm all right.”

She came in and closed the door behind her. Even in the dim light her snow-white uniform seemed to glow with the promise of innocence. Why, if he had wanted at last to align himself with a woman, had he not seen the attractiveness of the woman who worked at his side all day. She came and stood beside his chair and put her hand on his left shoulder. He brought his right hand up as if he were crossing himself and lay it atop of hers.

“Bridget, I've been a damned fool.”

Her hand patted his shoulder, and his own rose and fell with hers, as if he, in turn, were consoling both her and himself.

“It's all over now.”

Bridget surprised him. She knew him better than he knew himself. She could not have been unaware of the fool he had been making of himself, yet apart from that first comment on Phyllis that he had scolded her for, she had said nothing. Yet her whole manner had spoken to him, condemning him, more in sorrow than in anger. And now she said it was all over, and he realized she was right. His soul was finally purged of the poison of Phyllis Collins. No. He must not blame her. Or not only her. What would Bridget say if she knew the extent of his folly? Dear God, if she should ever learn of that night in the Frosinone with Phyllis …

“I should have listened to you.”

She bent over and brought her lips to his hair, then stood. “Come. I am taking you to dinner.”

He rose willingly. He was in a mood to be told what to do, to be led. It was as if he had forfeited the right to be his own master, having used his freedom to make an ass of himself.

“No. I will take you.”

“But I'm preparing dinner.”

Ah. He had been to her apartment only once or twice and then only for minutes, to drop her off or to pick her up when her car was in the garage. Having crossed the office, she switched on the light as she left.

*   *   *

It was a simple meal eaten in her kitchen—spaghetti, a salad, iced tea—giving the occasion a pleasantly domestic air. Across from him Bridget seemed a beautiful stranger, brisk, competent, in charge. He liked it. Phyllis had clung to him even as she manipulated him. But again he discarded the tendency to blame Phyllis for his descent into folly, to the shame of the Frosinone.

“That was wonderful, Bridget.”

She tipped her head to one side. “Hardly a gourmet meal.”

“Do you know what a bachelor's meals are like?”

“How would I?”

It seemed a mild accusation, and he liked that, too. How swiftly Bridget could carry him out of the malaise into which he had drifted.

“I feel that I have been lost for months.”

“‘Midway in this way of life we're bound upon I woke to find myself in a dark wood, where the right road was wholly lost and gone.'”

“That's beautiful.”

“It's even more beautiful in Italian.”

“What is it?”

“Dante. The beginning of hell.” She smiled. “Really, it's the beginning of his escape from hell.”

How had he failed to see what a person Bridget was? Dante! And such perceptive remarks about his predicament!

“I'm afraid I would have to go to some popular song for words.”

“Like?”

But he couldn't come up with anything on the spur of the moment. So he told her of the Rendevous and the old ballads Wanda Janski sang.

“Most of them were old when I was young but even so…”

“When you were young.”

“You'd have to hear her to understand.”

“All right.”

Her smile was her own and that seemed a bonus. Whenever Phyllis smiled he was reminded of the work he had done on her.

“Would you like to go there?”

“It sounds like wonderful therapy.” Again she smiled. She might have been prescribing a remedy for him. “We could look in now.”

“You mean it?”

“I always mean what I say.”

“I believe you do.”

*   *   *

She had changed when they arrived at her apartment, putting a glass of cream sherry in his hand and settling him in the living room before disappearing.

“Can I go like this?”

“You look wonderful.”

A wistful little smile as she avoided his eyes. What he would have given if he could erase the months during which he had been infatuated with Phyllis Collins, and this night could indeed be his first exploration of the possibility of shedding his bachelor status.

For his mind did run madly on, as if by an emotional acceleration of his relations with Bridget he could negate the past. Why did it help that Bridget knew, at least in part, what a fool he had been? She put her arm through his as they went out to the car.

31

Father Dowling listened as Phil Keegan brought him up to date on the investigation of the death of Stanley Collins. Phil's account of Jameson's registering at the Frosinone with Phyllis Collins struck a note of amused condemnation.

“Do you know what kind of place the Frosinone is?”

A rhetorical question. Phil went on to describe this bastion of Pianone depravity out of which they ran what was euphemistically called an escort service.

“Roger, all you have to do is rename a vice and it becomes a social service. That place was once the U. S. Grant! It's a kind of sacrilege what they've turned it into.”

“So that is her alibi.”

“Not quite.”

Of course, Father Dowling gave no indication that he had heard in this very study David Jameson's account of his failed effort at adultery. Not that Phil knew the details.

“For whatever reason, they skedaddled an hour after signing in.”

“Ah.”

“The manager guesses they left at eleven o'clock. So there went the alibi. Jameson says he took her home and then called her at two in the morning and woke her up. So he's her alibi.”