The Longest Second (14 page)

In such a manner, a piece of blue flashed-glass may be blue in one place, white in another, and gold in a third.

Since I had talked to Bianca, it had become increasingly obvious to me that I needed help to find out more about Wainwright. I had remembered that his name had been one of those listed in the apartment building where Rosemary Martin had lived formerly. An attorney, I decided, might be the best source of help. When Warner’s closed that night, I returned to Union Square and wandered down Broadway in the direction of lower Manhattan. The buildings in this area are all old, run-down, and contain few prosperous tenants. In the lobby of one, near Ninth Street, I discovered the names of a number of attorneys. I jotted down their office numbers and then began calling on them. The first three offices I visited were closed for the night, but the fourth was open, and a short, pudgy lawyer named Bozell was ruffling papers at a battered desk.

He stared at my throat constantly, which made me uncomfortable, and when it was possible for me to speak a word, he seemed startled that I should do so. Finally I stopped trying to talk at all, and relied entirely on my pad.

In this manner, I explained to him that I wanted to get as much information as possible concerning Howard Wainwright, his brokerage business, and any other available personal information. Bozell agreed to do this. When I asked him the cost, he named a price which I considered far in excess to what I could pay. As I had no desire for an argument, and because of my voice could not have debated with him anyway, I shook my head and prepared to leave. Bozell grasped me by the arm, and suggested that he might have overestimated the amount of work I wanted him to do. I made it clear to him that he understood perfectly what I wanted. He then proposed that I name a price, which I did.

I offered him fifty dollars; he countered with one hundred, and we agreed on eighty. It was understood that I would return to his office, the following evening, at the same time.

The newspapers, that night, carried little additional information concerning Rosemary Martin. Buried deeply in the body of the publications, each story was much the same. She had not been working recently as a model; she had been living under a fictitious name; and there was a hint, a vague one, of a possibility of an unhappy love affair which caused her to take her own life. As far as I was concerned, I was content to let the story stand that way; perhaps the police would accept it too.

By now, having become an accepted resident of the Hotel Castillo, I had little difficulty securing any illicit comforts that I might require. There had been developing within me a pressure, a building of desire, a nameless craving for something which I must have known at one time, and which I subconsciously was anxious to acquire again. It was not liquor. Although I drank brandy and, on occasion, whisky I received no particular pleasure from them. I did not enjoy their taste, and the effect of intoxication seemed to me more in the nature of a sickness, a reeling in the head, than enjoyment. I had no desire for women either. This did not indicate a lack of virility, or a slackening of masculinity, within myself, but only that I had no emotional needs. Residing within my body was a vacuum, a total lacking of all desire, and within my brain was the inability to join the world around me. But, in searching my mind, and discarding the needs of liquor and women, I remembered hashish.

I realized that I wanted to smoke it, and that a forgotten memory of my past had been urging me nearly beyond endurance. At the Castillo, I slipped the room clerk a twenty-dollar bill and urged him to get me some. After carefully putting the bill in his pocket, he said, “I can’t get it for you. They don’t peddle it around here.” His black, greasy hair gleamed under the hanging light. I felt a terrible rage begin to rise, and I leaned across the desk to stare at him. He read my anger in my face, and hastened to explain, “I can get you some sticks of marijuana though.” As marijuana is the Western cousin of the Eastern hashish, I agreed and went up to my room to wait for the cigarettes to be delivered.

Eventually there was a knock at the door, and when I opened it a very thin girl smiled at me. “You wanted some sticks?” she asked. I nodded. Stepping into the room, and opening her large, black purse she removed half a dozen tightly rolled cigarettes. I could see the large blue veins on her slender wrists; her face was emaciated which gave her features a sharpness not displeasing, but she had used a powder far too light for the olive tones of her skin. As she handed the cigarettes to me, her eyes covered me without interest, and she smiled mechanically. “Would you like me to stay around awhile?” she asked. I told her no, that I didn’t want her to remain. It was obvious that the desk clerk had sent her along to earn himself an additional commission.

The girl shrugged indifferently. “Okay,” she said, “maybe you’d like to get with it later. If you do, call me yourself. My name is Margarite.” She gave me her number and left.

Stretching out on the bed, I lit one of the cigarettes, dragging the smoke deep into my lungs, holding it there until it had been filtered by my blood. And it came to me that in the past, I had done this many times. As the drug began to take effect, I felt my indifference vanish; I turned on my side and as from a distance watched the insulation of apathy stripped from me layer by layer. I felt a sadness that this was so, as it seemed to me better to feel nothing, to lose nothing, than to feel emotions again intently.

Imperceptibly my mind began to tighten, drawn taut by a garrote of the thin gray smoke. I thought of Amar, and sat up in my bed, swinging my feet to the floor. Clearly, lucidly, with a refreshing cool hatred stinging my senses, I sat through the night.

In the morning I went to Warner’s, but my mind was not on my work, and I attended my job desultorily until I could I return to see Bozell. In his office he motioned me to a chair. “I have a few facts for you,” he told me importantly, while scratching the back of his neck. “They were rather difficult to gather.” He snapped the middle fingernail of his left hand, with the thumb nail of his right. “I had to give the impression that I was representing a creditor with possible action against Wainwright and his company,” he continued.

I didn’t say anything. I sat on the chair and waited.

Bozell said, “As you know, his name is Howard K. Wainwright, and he was head of his own company ... a very small one incidentally. He was not a member of the Board of Exchange, and only occasionally worked through brokers who were. Wainwright claimed to be only an investment consultant. No one seems to know who his clients were or anything about them. And so far no client has come forward to press a claim against him since his disappearance.”

Writing out a question, I requested more details about Wainwright’s office.

“It’s a small one, as I told you, but located on Wall Street. Sometimes he used a typing and answering service although he had a girl, a foreign one, working for him. She was the only staff he had.”

I asked her name.

“Sara ... something or other,” Bozell replied.

I knew the answer to the next question, but I wanted it affirmed.

“Wainwright lived on Sixty-Third Street off Fifth Avenue,” Bozell answered. He gave me the address, and it was the same building where Rosemary Martin had once lived.

“I also discovered that the authorities were looking for Wainwright to question him regarding the death of some woman he had once known.”

Had they located him yet?

“No. Not yet.”

How long had he been gone?

“No one seems to know exactly. Three or four months at least, possibly even longer. His disappearance wasn’t reported; no one seemed to care.”

What about his apartment and his office?

“Both of his leases have been in effect for a number of years, and his rent is paid by an annual check. The landlords would have no complaint.”

I let Bozell know that I’d contact him if there was any additional information I needed. As it was still very early in the evening, I decided to return to my hotel. There I had another smoke and attempted to evaluate the situation. Wainwright had disappeared about the time I had been assaulted; it was probable that he had been killed. He and Rosemary Martin had lived in the same apartment building which was certainly more than a coincidence. It seemed to me a matter of importance that I should look around Wainwright’s apartment, although the danger of such action was evident. Undoubtedly the police had already searched his premises, and it was probable that they might still have it under guard.

However, the more I considered this possibility, the less probable it became. The police force is always undermanned, and with Wainwright absent for a number of months, it did not seem reasonable to assume that the police would make more than an occasional check-up on his apartment. Certainly they would not maintain a twenty-four hour watch as a matter of routine, so I decided that I would wait until very late and then visit Wainwright’s place.

At two o’clock in the morning, Sixty-third Street seemed to be deserted. The lobby of the apartment building, with the brightly polished mailboxes, was lighted by a discreet fixture, and from its glow I discerned that Wainwright’s apartment was number 3-A. Again carefully checking the other names, I could discover nothing which might be connected with Rosemary Martin or O’Hanstrom. It seemed logical to suppose that after Rosemary Martin had moved from the building, her apartment had been rented by someone else.

Located next to the self-service elevator, which stood waiting with doors open, in the lobby was a small stairway. I decided that I would walk up which would give me an opportunity to survey the hall before approaching Wainwright’s apartment. When I reached the third floor, I opened the stair door slightly and could see that the hall was deserted. There were only two apartments on the floor—3-A in the front, and 3-B in the rear.

Using my Lock-Aid, I easily opened Wainwright’s door. Pulling on a pair of gloves, I turned the knob and walked into his apartment, closing the door behind me. There I stood for a moment with my back to the wall, listening; but I could detect no signs of life around me. Across the room, light filtered into the apartment through the windows which faced the street. Closing the Venetian blinds, I drew the heavy drapes across the windows and plunged the room into complete darkness. I struck a match and turned on a table lamp. Placing the lamp on the floor, I piled several pillows on top of it to dim the glow to a feeble light. With these precautions, the light could not be detected from the street.

The apartment consisted of a large living room, a bedroom, with a smaller dressing room, a dining room, kitchen, and directly adjoining the kitchen was a maid’s room with a bath. This room, however, had been furnished and equipped as a small office and contained a desk, typewriter, and other equipment. As soon as I opened a file, I realized that someone had searched the place before me. All correspondence had been removed.

The desk disclosed little more. One drawer contained a stack of unused stationery with the imprint “Howard Wainwright, Investment Counselor.” There was nothing to draw my attention to it, and I nearly passed by it, but before closing the drawer, I lifted the paper and riffled it with my finger. From someplace in the middle of the stack, a memo page dropped out and planed to the floor. I put the stationery back in the desk and picked up the piece of paper. On it had been typed the notation:

Placing the paper in my pocket, I finished searching the desk, but there was nothing more to be found. As for the rest of the room, it too had been thoroughly cleaned out.

The bedroom closet disclosed a number of men’s suits hanging neatly in a row, together with top coats, shoes, and other apparel. The pockets contained a few match folders, paid receipts months old, and that was all. A second large closet was completely empty.

It was in the dresser that I again came across the trail of Rosemary Martin. I had searched through a tall chest of drawers which held Wainwright’s linens and had found nothing unusual. Next, turning to a large period dresser, I opened each of its four drawers and found them empty except for one thing. The scent of sandalwood!

The memory of the night when I had searched Rosemary Martin’s room at Bianca’s house returned; the same odor of sandalwood had clung to her dresser. Habits are difficult to break, and Rosemary Martin had followed her regular custom of scenting her dresser with this particular scent. The meaning of the empty closet and the empty dresser became clear. At one time she had been living here in Wainwright’s apartment.

Although I had no way of exactly determining the time, it seemed probable that she had occupied this apartment when Bianca first knew her, and then had moved down to Greenwich Village. And yet, after all the months, why had the scent of sandalwood remained? Why had it not disappeared, or why had Wainwright not put his possessions in the dresser?

I was reminded of what Bianca had said. When Rosemary Martin had moved to the hotel, she had told Bianca, that she had some clothes in storage. Undoubtedly she had been referring to the clothes she had left here in Wainwright’s apartment. She must have possessed a key, and had returned to pick them up. According to both the police and Bozell, Wainwright had been gone for months. Did Rosemary Martin know where he had gone? That question I could not answer.

But I was still thinking about it when I stepped into the darkened living room. Immediately I felt the snout of a revolver in my back, and a voice said, “Sir, the waiting was not in vain.”

THE phone rang. Burrows looked at the clock. It was twenty past twelve. “That’s probably Gorman,” he said, speaking to Jensen. When he picked up the phone, it was Gorman, the Medical Examiner.

“I just got through with the posting,” Gorman said, “and I can give you my findings now over the phone. I’ll send the official report to you later.”