The Shadow Man (8 page)

The one thing that Leola Raymond feared more than anything else was cancer. Her mother had died from cancer of the uterus after refusing for years to accept medical treatment. Hesitancy born of fear had cost her the price of a painful death at forty-five years of age.

Leola remembered her mother’s face when she had come home from seeing the doctor she’d finally gone to for a firm diagnosis. And Leola could still feel the quiet terror of those long visits in the County Hospital cancer ward.

So regardless of whatever happened in her life, or what her financial position was at the moment, every six months Leola went to Dr. Anthony Tonella for a pap test. Tonella understood and always phoned her as soon as the laboratory report on her smear was in. Leola suffered while waiting for those phone calls.

Dr. Tonella had his office in a run-down building on West-Forty-second Street. The office was small, the waiting room dusty and disarranged. Tonella’s reputation as a physician wasn’t the best, and there were rumors that he supplied certain prescription drugs illegally to his acquaintances. But Leola knew that in the late mornings, after probable hangovers and before a high level of his day’s alcoholic ration, Dr. Tonella was as skilled as a high-priced Park Avenue society doctor. And more compassionate.

Leola glanced at her watch and saw that it was five minutes to eleven. She always arrived early for her appointments. She was alone in the waiting room. Dr. Tonella had no receptionist, and Leola had rung the bell when she’d entered. She had heard Dr. Tonella call something to her from the inner office, and she sat down to wait.

Tonella wasn’t the sort of doctor to lavish money on magazine subscriptions, so the small waiting room was supplied with stacks of old newspapers. Nervously, Leola picked up a six-month-old
Post
and began leafing through it. She read the gossip and advice columns and then put the paper on the bottom of the stack and picked up the top paper, which was only slightly more recent.

As she was searching for Ann Landers’ column, a photograph on page five caught her attention. She sat still, then awkwardly and noisily folded the paper into tight quarters, as if a firm bulkiness behind the grainy black-and-white photo would lend it more dimension and clarity.

The photograph was of three U.S. senators descending the steps of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. The caption beneath the photo described them as possible proponents of something called the water appropriations bill. One of the men in the photograph was Gerald Anderson, only in the paper he was identified as Jerry Andrews—Senator Jerry Andrews.

Leola stared intently at the photograph, her neck craned forward. She felt a stirring of anger at being deceived, then confusion. Anderson, or Andrews, hadn’t acted like a U.S. senator. Then Leola realized -that she had never before met a senator of any sort and had no basis for comparison.

But Andrews was young, with a kind of male attractiveness not usually associated with dry bureaucracy. And if he really was such a big shot, why was he hanging around the Metropole asking questions about L.C. Chambers? Surely the CIA or FBI didn’t send around somebody like that to pry.

Leola’s confusion jelled into resolve. Anderson-Andrews owed her some answers.

The door to the inner office opened with a subdued squeak, and Dr. Tonella took a step into the reception room and smiled at Leola. She saw instantly that he appeared sober, and his fingernails were clean.

“You’re next, Miss Raymond,” he said with professional smoothness, as if the waiting room were crowded.

Leola nodded and smiled back. “Do you mind if I tear something out of your newspaper?” she asked.

Dr. Tonella shrugged bunchy shoulders beneath his not-so-clean white coat. “Go ahead,” he told Leola. “I won’t charge you for it.”

He waited patiently while she carefully folded the paper and tore out the photograph of the three very dignified figures on the Capitol steps.

Andrews experienced an unexpected elation when Leola Raymond phoned him at his hotel. She said she wanted to talk to him about the L. C. Chambers matter, and she suggested that they meet at the Howard Johnson’s Restaurant near Times Square.

Andrews arrived ten minutes early for their appointment, but as he entered the restaurant he saw Leola sitting alone at a table near the booths that lined a long wall. He informed the smiling hostess that he was meeting someone, walked to Leola’s table and sat down. She looked at him gravely over the rim of a glass containing what appeared to be chocolate milkshake. Her pale cheeks collapsed inward as she sucked on the straw.

“Are you always early?” she asked, setting down the glass. A fleck of the thick liquid clung to a corner of her mouth.

“Punctual, anyway,” Andrews said, grinning at her. He got the impression that she was a little rattled and embarrassed over being caught drinking a milkshake. “That stuff will destroy your figure,” he said.

“You talk like my boss.”

“That’s why he is the boss.”

“No, he’s the boss and I’m the dancer because I’ve got no education and he’s got no tits.”

Andrews laughed. “I guess that’s an accurate assessment at that.” A waitress brought him a glass of water and a menu. Just for the hell of it, he ordered a chocolate milkshake.

“You should have ordered an egg in it,” Leola said, after the waitress had left. “You’re on an expense account, aren’t you, Senator?”

Andrews felt the impact of surprise in the pit of his stomach. His face gave no hint of what was going on below. An occupational habit of duplicity, useless at this point. “How did you find out?” he asked.

“I saw your picture in an old newspaper.” Leola took another hard-earned sip of the thick milkshake while she regarded him. “Why did you lie?” she asked.

“Because if my identity were known, it would attract a certain amount of publicity. That would make it difficult for me to make inquiries, and it would create problems for me and for the people I ask about Martin Karpp.”

“But why are you asking questions about Karpp? He’s been declared insane, and he’s in a sanitarium for life.”

Andrews appraised the woman across the table from him, the ridiculous blond hairdo, the supple dancer’s body gracing slacks and a soft gray sweater. There was no guile in her, he decided. Not because she was stupid, but because she simply was honest. It shone through her eyes and was reflected in her attractive, fine-boned features. The politician in him sensed a quid pro quo. He decided to be honest with her; she had been, and would continue to be, honest with him. And he was sure she would keep his identity a secret.

While Leola sat finishing her milkshake, and Andrews’ own sat untouched, he told her everything, beginning with Dana Larsen’s visit in Washington.

When he was finished, he saw Leola shiver. “It’s... weird,” she said, after a futile search for words. “I could never imagine L.C. actually killing anyone or anything. I don’t suppose I ever believed down deep that he and Martin Karpp were really the same man.”

“There isn’t any doubt that they’re not, in a sense. And yet they are. Even Martin Karpp realizes that, in his own way.”

“And now you need for me to keep quiet,” Leola said.

For an instant Andrews thought she might intend to extort money from him in exchange for her silence, and he actually considered paying her. In the next instant, he was ashamed of his suspicion.

“For me to be quiet,” Leola told him, “I need to be able to trust you.”

“And do you trust me?”

“Yes.”

Andrews was somewhat surprised by the abruptness of her answer. “Why?” he asked.

Leola gave a little toss of her complexly coiffed head. “Intuition, I guess. Because of your eyes.”

“The windows to the soul and all that?”

Leola didn’t smile. “Maybe they really are. Anyway, I won’t say anything about who you are, Senator Andrews.”

“It’s Jerry Andrews. Just Jerry to you, Leola.”

“Sure, Mr. Future President.”

They both laughed. Andrews was deeply touched by her ingenuousness. There was nothing devious about their arrangement. She simply liked him, and so she trusted him until he might give her reason to think otherwise. Hers was a painful but logical philosophy she had no doubt paid for dearly but would never change. Andrews admired her. He admired her a lot.

“Have you had dinner?” he asked.

“This milkshake was my dinner. I’ve gotta get to work for the early evening show.” She stood up, and he stood also.

Andrews touched her shoulder with the tips of his fingers, feeling a warm energy radiate to him from beneath the sweater. “I appreciate this, Leola. I won’t forget it.”

Her smile was genuine, not the one instinctively engineered for those who watched her dance. “Okay, Jerry.” She clutched a cheap, beaded purse beneath her arm and walked from the table.

Andrews remained standing and watched her until she’d disappeared out the door.

Some part of him he hadn’t suspected existed wanted more than anything to follow her.

Back in his room at the Hayes, Andrews sat restlessly on the sofa, his stockinged feet propped up on the coffee table. Leola Raymond’s features, her subtleties of speech and movement, remained fixed on the dark screen of his mind. She should not have appealed to a U.S. senator serving on several influential committees, but she appealed to Jerry Andrews. Was this another Jerry Andrews, this man who slept in a cheap hotel and walked in the footsteps of a maniac’s imagined men? Was he now, in somewhat the way of those whose lives he probed, a product of his own imagination? Or was it the other way around? Would the real Jerry Andrews please stand up? Step forward? Admit it?

Andrews laughed aloud at his rambling, inane thoughts. Might the authorities have the figment of Karpp’s imagination imprisoned in the Belmont sanitarium? Once one impossible premise was accepted, other disturbing possibilities rushed in.

Andrews tried to push Karpp and Leola from his mind and think about Pat Colombo. Pat was special, as was Leola, and was in many respects not what one would expect as a senator’s lady. It comforted Andrews to think about Pat, to construct her image lovingly, perfectly, in his memory. Dark brown hair and eyes, slightly overweight in breast and hip, smooth-skinned and lush, a bit too much hair on her arms, the very slightest trace of a mustache above her full, mobile lips, a natural, timeless grace that was more than elegance of movement. If she had a dozen kids she would love them all and be patient with them. If she sang, it would be soprano and with fine clarity and beauty. Pat Colombo. Right now, Andrews loved her, he was sure.

He decided to go downstairs for a quick supper, then he would return to his room and phone her.

Harry Jennings left the Bayon Lounge for his supper break. He was due back on duty behind the bar at nine o’clock, when the place started to fill with regular customers and the flow of tourists sampling Times Square and theater district night life. Jennings always ate at the same place, Farrota’s Pizzeria over on Eighth Avenue. Angelo Farrota would know he was on his way and would have placed the pizza with the extra portion of black olives in the oven for him by now. Jennings had only to cut through the alley between Seventh and Eighth to emerge less than half a block from Farrota’s.

The evening had started off merely cool, but now was becoming much colder. An icy drop of rain spattered against Jennings’ lower lip. He licked it off, feeling it become warm on his tongue. The streetlight down the block illuminated only a very slight drizzle, so Jennings wasn’t worried about getting wet.

As he turned into the dark alley leading to Eighth Avenue, he could almost smell the spicy aroma of pizza crust, sizzling tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese. He grinned. What he more likely smelled were the mingled overripe odors of the row of trash cans along the blank brick wall to his left. But damned if the effect wasn’t the same. His appetite was fooled.

There was a slight scuffing sound ahead of Jennings, a leather sole scraping concrete. He stopped, breathing rapidly as he strained to see into the cool night. He realized with a New Yorker’s ingrained caution that this was a perfect spot for a mugging.

One of the dark shadows on the wall before him moved, disengaged itself from the flat brick surface and walked toward him.

“Harry, it’s me,” the thing said.

“Holy Christ!”

Jennings’ mouth opened again several times, wordlessly.

Something struck him on the side of the head, glanced off his shoulder. The ground beneath him swung away and he dropped into fearsome blackness.

“Where are you calling from?” Pat Colombo asked Andrews.

“I’m at the Hayes Hotel in Manhattan.”

“I know the place,” she said. “It’s not your usual style.”

Andrews settled back into the pillows he’d propped against the headboard, taking care not to get the cord to the receiver tangled. “I want to talk to you,” he said. “Do you have time?”

She picked up the need in his voice, as he’d thought she would. “Don’t be an ass,” she said. “Talk.”

So Andrews did talk, telling her everything about what had led him to Manhattan and the trail of Dana Larsen, and to the trails of the past lives of Martin Karpp. And he told her everything that had happened to him since his arrival here. Of his fear and sense of outrage upon finding that his room had been entered and Larsen’s notes stolen. Of his increasing, haunting uneasiness.

“Go to see this Captain Franks,” she said, when he was finished.

“Franks doesn’t view things the way I do,” Andrews explained. “And he has his job to consider. Priorities.”

“But things have happened since you last talked to him.”

“Nothing that constitutes hard evidence,” Andrews told her.

“What about Dr. Larsen’s notes being stolen?”

“I can’t prove that they were. And remember, I took them from Dana Larsen’s apartment without permission.”

There was a pause while the distance between phones crackled and hissed in Andrews’ ear.

“Do you want me to come there and be with you?” Pat Colombo asked.

“No, I don’t,” Andrews said with slow deliberation. “But I wanted you to offer.”

She laughed softly, almost bringing the receiver to life in Andrews’ hand.

“What I want,” he said, “is for us to be at the cabin, skiing in the daytime, making love at night, then sitting in front of a fire with some brandy-laced coffee.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about that myself, Jerry,” Pat told him. “We’ll get there.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Jerry?”

“Yeah?”

“See Franks.”

“I love you. You’re a touch of reality.”

“Will you see Franks?”

“I will.”

“Promise?”

“Do I have to?”

“Not to me. Not anything. Not ever.”

Amos Franks ushered Andrews into his office, motioned with a sweep of a huge blue-sleeved arm for him to sit in the single chair near the desk, then sat down himself in a wood swivel chair that seemed too small to support his bulk. Franks had put on at least thirty pounds in the past five years. The massive police captain was now carrying far in excess of two hundred and fifty pounds on his six-foot-plus frame.

Franks drew a large, greenish cigar from his shirt pocket. “Senator?”

“No, thanks,” Andrews said. “It looks poisonous.”

“It is,” Franks said seriously. He fired up the cigar with an ancient-looking silver lighter, then exhaled a great deal of smoke, as if he hoped Andrews would be gone when it cleared. Andrews wasn’t.

“I guess this is about the Larsen case,” Franks said in a resigned voice.

“I’m not sure enough that his death was accidental,” Andrews said.

“Why not?”

Andrews told Franks about how there had been nothing concerning Martin Karpp in Larsen’s office files, and about how the notes on Karpp were hidden in the golf bag. And he told him about his conversations with the people Dana Larsen had talked to regarding Karpp. Finally he related how the notes he’d taken from Dana’s apartment had been stolen from his hotel room at the Hayes.

“You think somebody lifted the Karpp file from Larsen’s office?” Franks asked.

“Of course. They didn’t get the notes there because he’d hidden them. They were important.”

“Why?”

“To Dana, because they represented a lot of work. I don’t know why they were important to somebody else.”

“The same somebody who took them from your hotel room?”

“It seems reasonable to assume so,” Andrews said acidly.

“Unless it was a maid or a bellhop with a passkey, or you simply mislaid the notes.”

“God damn it, Amos!”

“I’m telling you the way I have to reason on this, Senator. If you had any idea the kind of people we
know
are walking around out there, you’d see my point. You’ve brought me nothing hard, nothing new that I can act on.”

“Are you telling me you still think Dana Larsen’s death was an accident?”

“It’s not what I think that matters, Senator. That was the finding at the inquest.”

Andrews was stunned. “What... ?”

“There was an inquest. The finding was accidental death.”

“Does that mean it’s over as far as the police are concerned?”

For the first time, Amos Franks wavered. “No... If there’s a reasonable suspicion that a crime has occurred, the case can be reopened.” He puffed on the greenish cigar, then he stared, almost with fascination, into its glowing tip. “You ever read a medical textbook, Senator? You know how pretty soon you can start imagining you’ve got some of the symptoms? It can be that way when a friend dies—everything can appear suspicious if you let it get to you.” He took another puff on the cigar, exhaled slowly and gazed off into the grayish haze that was polluting the office. “It’d be a good idea if you stayed in touch with us while you’re in the city,” he said.

“And it would be a good idea if you told me if and when you learn anything new on Dana Larsen’s death.”

Franks raised his eyebrows and a wary, angry glint appeared in his eyes. “Are you using your clout, Senator?”

“Of course not, Amos. It’s just that I feel there’s more to this than you do. I understand your position.” Andrews was trying hard to placate the man. He didn’t want to lose Amos Franks. as a friend or an ally. “Here, you’ve got the clout,” he added.

“I’m not a U.S. senator,” Franks said.

“You should be glad.”

“I am. Sure you don’t want a cigar?”

Andrews laughed. “Not one of those.” He extended his elbows and pushed up out of his chair.

“Senator,” Franks said, “there’s something else. Won’t hurt for you to know it.” It was amazing how little his broad, polished mahogany features gave away, despite their wide range of expression. “You mentioned Harry Jennings, the bartender at the Bayon Lounge. Jennings is dead, the victim of a hit-and-run.”

Andrews sat back down.

“I didn’t say murder, Senator,” Franks said in a cautioning voice. “The man was struck by a car, that’s all we know.”

“There must be a connection,” Andrews said.

“Maybe not.”

“Only maybe?”

“There’s nothing definite,” Franks said, “except I got a caseload it’ll take me a year to catch up on.”

Andrews felt a cold vacuum of fear deep in his bowels. “What are the particulars of Jennings’ death?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t read the report.”

Andrews sat quietly.

Franks groaned and rose slowly from his chair. “All right, Senator.” He left the office and returned a few minutes later with a pale-yellow file folder. After settling again into his undersized desk chair, he propped a pair of half-moon glasses on the bridge of his nose and read.

After a while, he said, “Nothing unusual for an H and R, Senator. Jennings’ body was found in an alley near where he worked. The M.E. says he had a fractured sternum and died from internal hemorrhaging. There was some broken headlight glass near the body.”

“What was Jennings doing in the alley?” Andrews asked.

“He used it as a shortcut to the restaurant over on Eighth Avenue where he usually ate supper. This time somebody in a car was using the alley as a shortcut at the same time.”

Andrews stood up, shoved his fists into his pockets and began to pace in a tight, regular pattern. “Doesn’t it seem like too much of a coincidence, Amos? I mean, first Dr. Larsen, now Jennings.”

“People say that about the witnesses in the John Kennedy assassination,” Franks said patiently. “As if they expected all those folks to outlive everybody else. People die, is all. Always have and always will.”

“Sooner or later, sure!”

“Well, in a way that’s fifty-fifty, Senator. And two people with some connection to Martin Karpp died sooner rather than later. Think of how many people with Karpp connections are still alive.”

Andrews stopped pacing and sighed. “Put that way, it sounds reasonable,” he admitted.

“Don’t make any difference how it sounds,” Franks told him. “We’ve got to go with what we know. What you’ve told me, well, it borders on the supernatural. And a police board of inquiry’s not superstitious, not even open-minded about such things. But like I said, if we do learn anything more, I’ll let you know. So long as there’s reciprocity.”

Andrews grinned. “There will be, Amos. That’s my profession.”

On his way back to the hotel, Andrews stopped at the Korvettes on Sixth Avenue and bought a “burglarproof” lock from the hardware department. The lock consisted of a telescoping steel bar that could be wedged tightly between the base of the doorknob and the floor. A clerk assured Andrews it would make forcing the door open virtually impossible unless it was first reduced to splinters.

When he’d returned to his room, Andrews saw that the paper match he’d left between door and frame was undisturbed. He entered and tried the metal brace bar on the door. There was no way to test it from the hall side, but he was sure it would protect as advertised. When it was angled into position, the door might as well be another section of wall.

Andrews left the steel bar against the door. With it in place, he felt an almost womblike seclusion and security.

And after learning of Jennings’ death, he felt an increased resolve to follow through with what he’d begun. The familiar subdued rage was in him, the rage he often felt when he saw people being used and abused, suffering unfairly under the imposition of someone else’s will. He’d often mused that the feeling could be equated with social conscience and that it was the thing that had led him into politics. He hoped so. It was comforting to be able to ascribe such noble motivation to oneself.

He crossed the quiet room, sat on the bed and fished in his pocket for the scrap of napkin on which Leola Raymond had scrawled her phone number. He found it, unfolded it carefully and dialed.

“Jerry,” Leola said tentatively, when he’d identified himself, “I was hoping you’d call. I wanted to talk to you.”

“About Martin Karpp?”

“Well, yes, sure.” A note of bewilderment and fear had edged into her voice, making it an octave too high. “I mean, about L.C. I saw him last night.”

A coating of ice seemed to form around Andrews’ heart. “What do you mean, you saw him?” It came out as if he were angry rather than alarmed.

“I mean when I was dancing at the Metropole, I looked out and there he was. He was turning away, starting to walk out, but I know it was him.”

“It’s dim as hell in there,” Andrews said. “How can you recognize anyone for sure from up there with those spotlights blinding you?”

“They don’t blind you. I’d recognize L.C., even from the back. Believe me.”

Andrews did believe her. That was his problem.

“It’s impossible, Leola.” He didn’t sound convincing and he knew it.

“So tell me I was hallucinating.” Fear was making her sarcastic, as it had Andrews.

“Can I see you?” he asked. “I want to talk with you some more about this. And about some other things.”

“Not now,” she said. “Tomorrow morning’s the earliest it’s possible. Real early.”

“Eight o’clock?” Andrews figured that would be real early to Leola.

“Better make it nine,” she said.

Andrews smiled as she gave him her address.

“You be careful, Leola,” he told her.

“Careful of L.C.? That’s not necessary. It’s just sort of creepy seeing him when it shouldn’t be.”

“That’s the point,” Andrews said, “it shouldn’t be.”

He hung up the phone and lay on his back on the bed, his fingers laced behind his head. Another unprovable to add to the sequence of unexplainable events. “Creepy,” Leola had said. That was how Andrews felt. Creepy. He hadn’t felt this way with such intensity since he was a child.

Andrews lay staring at the peeling paint on the old, high ceiling and wondered what a U.S. senator was doing here, sprawled on the bed in a decrepit hotel room and experiencing a child’s fears. Maybe we never outgrow those fears, he thought, just carry them around with us in what we think is a safe place. Maybe, like Martin Karpp, we all contain more selves than we care to recognize.

A distant police siren singsonged outside, signaling someone else’s desperation, making little impact on the collective consciousness of the crowded city.

Andrews felt like phoning Pat Colombo again, but he didn’t.

Andrews continued to talk with the people who had known or had some contact with Karpp in his various identities. Friends, landlords, bartenders and fellow employees, lovers and haters, sympathizers and those who felt betrayed by Karpp’s involuntary duplicity. Some of these people Dana Larsen had talked to. Most of them he hadn’t.