Death of an Angel (15 page)

“It is,” Bill told her, “the duty of a policeman to be constantly observant.”

“You patted her,” Dorian said. “If I were a different kind of wife.”

“You,” Bill said, “would be somebody else's. May I sit down?”

He sat beside Dorian. He patted her shoulder. Jerry North patted the button of a small bell affixed to the table in front of them. A waiter came. Drinks came and they waited.

Phyllis Barnscott, Bill told them, was in a sense an outgrowth of Mrs. Alicia Nelson. He paused while Pam said that that seemed a little—something. He told them of his interview with Mrs. Nelson. He said that she had, he thought, wanted information from him, which was a common desire of people in any degree involved. She had also wanted to give him information about Miss Barnscott. She had not wanted him to meet her husband. At a guess, she had turned her husband loose in a bar, where it seemed entirely probable he would feel at home. He told them that Mr. Nelson wore a stiff straw hat.

“Clean?” Pam asked.

Not, he told her, particularly. And, not a new hat.

“Bleached?” she said.

“Probably,” Bill said.

Pam said, “Uh-
huh
” with emphasis.

“The Barnscott—person,” Dorian said. “She dyes her hair, you know.”

“So she told me,” Bill said.

“Open and aboveboard,” Dorian said. “The worst type. But—she denied knowing anything. And you believed her.”

Bill nodded.

“Otherwise,” Dorian said, “you would have hardly have—made a spectacle of yourself. Even for our benefit.”

“Right,” Bill said. “I hardly would have.”

“I suppose,” Jerry said, “she can prove she didn't kill Fitch?”

That, Bill admitted, was further than he wanted to go. She had made it seem entirely unlikely. She had been, Bill said, very cheerful about the whole affair, in so far as she was herself concerned. She had said the expected things about the sudden ending of Mr. Fitch. She had said he was a nice boy, and that it was too bad—too damned bad.

“Callous, probably,” Dorian said.

Bill smiled at her. She accepted the smile. She patted his hand, in forgiveness, in promise to let it be.

He did not think Phyllis Barnscott was callous. Or, in an accepted sense, hard. He thought she more or less took things as they came.

“Including,” Pam said, “Mr. Fitch?”

She had, Bill said, been frank about that—he thought frank. She and Fitch had had “a lot of good times together.” She had not specified. But she had said, “I haven't been on a pedestal, captain. Not for years I haven't,” leaving him to draw what conclusions he chose and, he thought, not caring greatly what conclusions he did draw. She had said, “He was a nice boy. We went places, and did things. Hurting nobody.”

Long before Fitch and Naomi Shaw had “got that way about each other” she and Fitch had got over being any way. That was her story; anybody could tell him it was true. “There was never any secret about it,” she said. “No reason why there should have been. It was a fun game.” Nay was a friend of hers. If she wanted Fitch—fine. It was, she assumed, an entirely different thing with Nay and Fitch. Not a “fun thing”; a marriage thing. The idea that she was jealous was preposterous. That, moved by jealousy, she would do anything to hurt anybody—

“You get funny ideas in your business, captain,” she said. “It must do things to your mind.”

Bill had not told her the source of the theory. He had asked her if she knew the Nelsons.

“The poor old guy ought to join the AA's,” she had said. “That's all I know. Oh yes—he used to borrow money from Brad. Had a lot himself when he married Brad's cousin but it went phfft. Mrs. Nelson is interested in clubs and things like that. Wanted to get poor Sammy to talk at one of them.”

She had heard of a girl named Peggy Latham; but only, she said, as a girl Brad had once gone around with—oh, yes, and as the kind of girl who rode horses. From what she had heard—although “not from Brad. He wasn't that kind”—she had assumed it was something he was well out of.

“Anyway,” she said, and then she had seemed more serious than at any other time, “the way I see it, the way things are nowadays, it's every girl for herself. Don't hurt anybody if you can help it, don't get hurt if you can help it.”

“She doesn't,” Pam said, “sound like the brooding type.”

“Right,” Bill said. “That's pretty much what I mean. Also—”

Also, Phyllis Barnscott had told him, she had another iron in the fire. A man he might have heard of wanted her to marry him. For all she knew, she might. A man named Tootle—Jasper Tootle.

“You can laugh,” she had said. “He's got a funny name. But he's a nice guy, and we get along fine.”

“I'll be damned,” Jerry said. “Jasper on a toot.”

They listened to that in shocked silence. Jerry North proved himself man enough to apologize.

Bill looked at his watch, then. He said it was early—but. They moved into the Oak Room, and to a table. Over vichyssoise (with just a touch of curry powder) Bill invited an account of their cocktail hour with Samuel Wyatt. They looked at him, and Pam nodded.

“As Mullins says,” Bill told them, “I'm clairient.”

“I like that,” Pam said. “It ought to exist. Also, he's being followed, isn't he?”

He had been, Bill said. He would be again. So far as Bill knew, Wyatt was not being at the moment, having proved elusive, having vanished in Grand Central, which is adapted to disappearances.

“He thinks,” Pam said, “that you put in a thumb and pull out a plum. Him. Just like that. Because he found poor Mr. Fitch, chiefly. And because now his royalties don't stop. And because he had a premature allergy.” She paused. “Added up,” she said, “maybe he's right to be scared.”

They waited for Bill.

“And,” Bill said, “he wanted to know how he stood? Picking your brains.”

“Partly,” Jerry said.

“And,” Dorian said, “spreading the seeds of suspicion where they might take root. Mrs. Nelson. Mr. Carr. Even Mr. Strothers. He plays the field.”

“Right,” Bill said. “I'm glad to hear it.” He lighted a cigarette between courses and his wife regarded him. He was getting keyed up. He always did. “Movement helps,” he said.

“He has got a right to be frightened?” Jerry asked, but was answered only by a shrug. A waiter brought food. At a little after eight they finished, except for coffee. But then, Bill Weigand looked again at his watch, and then at Dorian.

“We don't go home, then?” she said, in a tone of resignation.

She did, if she liked. He went back to work. Or, if she preferred—

“Home,” she said. “You can at least drop me?”

He could. They left the Norths, who sipped coffee and looked at people, of whom there were not many, since it was a Sunday evening in the month of June. Jerry emptied his cup and said, “Well?”

“If you just sit here long enough,” Pam said, “everybody goes by.” She nodded her head slightly, and Jerry looked in the direction of the nod. A tall, slightly stooped man—a dark man with dark eyes deeply recessed under jutting brows—was just subsiding into place behind one of the tables for two which Raul of the Algonquin reserves for appropriate guests. Naomi Shaw was already behind the table. She was hatless and in a dark dress. With Wesley Strothers seated beside her, the table was pushed toward them affectionately. Almost simultaneously, drinks arrived.

“Of course,” Pam said, “life has to go on. One has to eat.”

“Yes,” Jerry said. “And—speaking of that. I've still got Braithwaite. If you're—?”

Pam was. Jerry delayed matters somewhat, multiplying in quest of a percentage. He wrote the figure in, and looked at it doubtfully. Why he always found it so difficult to figure tips he would, he supposed, never know. He shuddered slightly, and pushed the signed check away from him.

“Maybe,” Pam said, “you can call it entertainment.” She stood up and led the way, so that they passed in front of Miss Naomi Shaw, radiant—but not at the moment appreciably radiant—star of
Around the Corner
and of Mr. Wesley Strothers, its producer. Pam smiled at them, and nodded, but did both with detachment. Naomi Shaw smiled in return, equally without certainty, but by then Jerry had overtaken Pam.

“Evening, Mrs. West,” Strothers said. “Hello, West.”

They did not argue, but went on. At the door, however, Pam turned and looked back at the two. It appeared that Strothers was doing most of the talking. Naomi Shaw was, apparently, a girl men talked to when they took her out.

“Mr. Strothers has compass trouble,” Jerry said, and took Pam by the elbow and through the lobby and into Forty-fourth Street. “Yes, if you will,” the last was to the doorman, who offered a cab. But Pam said, “Wait, Jerry.
Look!
” Jerry looked, as Pam was looking, up Forty-fourth toward Fifth. “The man snapping his fingers,” Pam said. “Who else could it be?”

The man, who was narrow, upon whom, seen even from a distance, clothes seemed to hang limply, was passing the Harvard Club. As he walked, he snapped his fingers. As they watched, he stopped, and went to the curb, and looked toward them down Forty-fourth Street, in an unmistakable attitude of a man in search of a cab. He went on again.

“Do you see his tail?” Pam asked.

The doorman looked at her. His mouth opened slowly.

Between them and Samuel Wyatt there was only a couple, but the couple walked toward the Norths. Jerry looked toward Sixth Avenue. Two tall and hatless young men were approaching. Clearly, Jerry thought, en route to the Harvard Club bar.

“No tail,” Jerry said.

The doorman blinked his eyes. He left his mouth open.

“Then come on,” Pam said, and started on. Jerry overtook her. He said, “Now listen, Pam.”

“Slower,” Pam said. “We mustn't gain on him. You know that's not the way.”

“I know nothing about it,” Jerry said, but slowed his pace to Pam's, to the receding Samuel Wyatt's. “I'm not a tail. I have no ambition to be—”

“Only until we can get in touch with Bill,” Pam said. “It's just a—an emergency. We can't just stand here and let him
go
. You know that. Only until he holes up. As substitutes.”

Jerry ran a hand through his hair. But they followed Wyatt. Pinch-hitting for tails, Jerry thought morosely, and hoped that Wyatt soon would hole.

But he showed no inclination to do this. He had, it appeared, abandoned his search for a cab, since he no longer looked back. He reached Fifth, found the lights with him, and crossed. The Norths reached Fifth and found the lights against them. “We can't just stand here,” Pam said, and did not. Jerry caught up with her in midstream.

“You'll get us both killed,” he said, but the protest was formal.

Wyatt, snapping his fingers at intervals, continued on toward Madison. There the lights were against him, and he stood obediently on the curb. Pam drew Jerry to a show window and looked, with apparent fascination, at a display of office supplies. She was, Jerry thought, a little overdoing it. “All right,” he said, “he's crossing Madison.” They went after him. The lights changed when they were in the middle of the avenue and a bus snarled at them. Jerry looked at it haughtily.

“He's going back to Grand Central,” Pam said. “It's very suspicious, Jerry. I'm terribly afraid that—”

But at Vanderbilt Avenue, Wyatt turned north. They went after him, cautious around the corner of the building. Wyatt was receding, moving more briskly.

“It's perfectly ridiculous,” Pam said, “to be doing this in high heels. If I'd only worn sneakers!”

“You'd have looked odd at the Algonquin,” Jerry said. “Anyway, we don't have—”

“He's going toward Park,” Pam said. “Let's hurry, Jerry.”

They hurried. They reached the end of Vanderbilt Avenue and turned east in Forty-seventh Street. Wyatt was at the corner of Park Avenue. Again he turned north. “I'll bet I know,” Pam said.

They followed up Park for several blocks. Wyatt reached a large apartment building. He turned into it. “I knew I knew,” Pam said.

They reached the building on the ninth floor of which Bradley Fitch had died. They stopped in front of it.

“Well,” Jerry said. “Now what, darling?”

“Now,” Pam said, “you find a telephone and tell Bill where he is. I—I'll just lurk.”

Bill Weigand sat at his desk in his temporary office in the station house which was the headquarters of Homicide East. Mullins sat in a wooden chair, which was tilted back against the wall. Bill drummed lightly with his fingers on the desk top and Mullins sipped from a cardboard container partially full of a pale liquid which, before milk had been generously added, had been called coffee. Acting Captain Weigand had read for half an hour; he now sought to digest what he had read.

A man had been in Rye. A man had been at a country club in upper Westchester. A man had conferred with the New York State Police at Hawthorne. A man had found, at the Yale Club, an acquaintance whose habitat was Wall Street. A man had reached, by telephone, the executive vice president of a real estate management corporation. Mullins had been, for several hours, in conversation with several men in Chicago. A man had awakened an editor of
Variety
in a hotel bedroom in West Forty-sixth Street. A man had spent the afternoon reading newspaper clippings in the morgue of
The New York Times
. A police department is a creature of many tentacles.

Detective Matthew Rider had waited, on a partially shaded bench, while a man named Omar Patterson (of Patterson, Framingham & Cohen) had finished a set of tennis with a youth named Bert Collins. Mr. Patterson had won—6–3—and had left the court refreshed and in a tolerant mood. Mr. Patterson was sixty-seven; his destroyed antagonist was twenty-two; the sun shone on Mr. Patterson's world, and brightened even the extraneous—Detective (First Grade) Matthew Rider. Matters were, thereby, expedited.