False Negative (Hard Case Crime) (23 page)

“It’s a free country. You do, though, I’ll deny we ever talked. The A’s’ve got lawyers, too. They’ll sue your ass, yours and the
Press
.”

Jordan screwed the cap off his pen, opened his notebook. “I’m trying to make you look good, Hub, but I need help. Isn’t there something to say about her that would put you in a better light?”

“She was another cunt that got what she deserved.” He swiped Jordan’s hand off the page. “Suzie was born with a swelled head. It got bigger every time she stood in the mirror, and didn’t get no smaller when she started winning beauty contests. She thought being Miss America was a bigger deal than being Mrs. Number Twenty-Four on the New York Yankees. People told her I was dragging her down, and she fell for it.”

“What people?”

Hub removed his hand from Jordan’s. “Put down she left me for assholes that promised they could do things for her. One or two, maybe they had the right connections. One thing all of them could do was fuck her. Fucking those assholes, she didn’t think twice about it if she thought they could make her Miss America.”

“You don’t want to say that,” Jordan said. “It’ll look like you might have had an interest in hurting her.”

“You want the story or not? She was fucking everybody from the beauty contests, and she was fucking their friends, and she was fucking the friends of their friends, whoever said they could give her a jump on the competition. Goes to show what a sucker I was. I married her for it, and she was giving it away for free.”

“Men lie about beautiful women,” Jordan said.

Hub Chase lifted his thigh, and placed the comic book carefully underneath. “In that life she was in, all the lies get told to the girls. A contest organizer, a judge fucks my wife, next thing everybody’s lining up to fuck her, too. The same people that want to fuck a beauty contestant, they like rubbing shoulders with a ballplayer. They’d say Hub, come to the house, and have your pick of the most beautiful women in the world, Miss Delaware Bay, Miss 4-h Clubs, they’re yours for the taking. I’d go to a party, and there’d be twenty knockout girls there. Anybody could have the one that caught his eye, and the one they all
wanted, the one everybody was dragging in the bedroom, was my wife.” He put his hand outside the dugout, and felt for rain. “Shitty day,” he said. “Start writing. I want the fans to know what Suzie was.”

Jordan didn’t need notes. The story would stay in his head without being allowed to cloud his judgment. In playing the sympathy card Hub might be keeping to the facts. But
Real Detective
was filled with sympathetic figures who’d murdered out of righteous indignation.

“Let’s get away from that,” Jordan said. “Tell me about yourself.”

“Didn’t I already?”

“I’m looking for a local angle. You grew up near Atlantic City, right?”

“It wasn’t near nothing. It was on an egg farm out in the boondocks. My family—I shouldn’t say it, it’ll turn the fans against me—they were commies from the old country. There were fifteen families on the farm, reds like my folks, didn’t have nothin’, but smarter’n Rockefeller. They knew the U.S. was heading to hell. My parents, they were gonna lead the revolution to save it.”

“Where are they today?”

“Retired to Sarasota. They opened a restaurant to get rid of some of the birds that didn’t lay. The Red Hen. It was the first time they had two nickels to rub together. Never went back to the farm.”

“Where was it?”

“A place you never heard of, it don’t exist no more.”

“Try me.”

“Poultrina.” The name came with a smile, the handsome smile from Hub’s baseball card. “Mean anything to you?”

Jordan shook his head. “I thought I’d been everywhere in Jersey.”

“You probably were,” Hub said. “Poultrina’s nowheresville.
The only time I got asked about it before, it was Suzie asking. I mentioned I was raised in the Barrens, and she drug me out to the car, had to see where. I couldn’t find it in the dark, it was that long since I was there. After going around in circles, we came to a bunch of old falling-down shacks, nobody around. We didn’t stay two minutes before she said, ‘Take me home.’ When I asked why we had to drive thirty miles for nothing, she said, ‘ ’Cause I want to know everything about the man I’m married to.’ ”

“Did she?”

“She knew a thing or two, I’ll give her that,” Hub said. “Not so much outside of bed.”

“What did she really want there?”

“It ain’t for the sports.”

“You told the cops?”

“Had to.”

“You don’t want it coming from them.”

Hub shook his head, but then he said, “When I was throwing out her stuff after she got killed, I found some pictures, nude shots where she was tied up with ropes, and a gag over her mouth, and a blindfold, and handcuffs. They looked like they were shot at the farm. I figure she needed an outdoors place where she could take off her clothes without drawing a crowd. She should’ve gone to the Boardwalk. Everybody and his brother already knew what she had.”

“The cops took them?”

“Like a look? I bet you would. I burned them for her. There’s no hard feelings between me and Suzie.”

“Been back to the farm?” Jordan said.

“What for?”

“Know a colored girl name of Etta Lee Wyatt?”

“She an Annie?”

“A what?”

“Baseball Annie. You know, with hot pants for the players.”

“She was on the black beauty circuit,” Jordan said, “and entertained at private parties around Atlantic City. Never ran into her?”

“I was plenty entertained without her, whoever she is. What’s she got to do with me?”

“She was murdered last month. Her body was found in Poultrina.”

“Some coincidence, huh? Hey, look, the fucking sun’s coming out.” He scraped mud from his spikes with a beer can opener. “I gotta get loose.”

Sparks sizzled at his heels as he clattered to the field. Jordan got up to go, poked his head out into cold rain.

Using cuticle scissors Jordan cut away a cluster of gray hairs over his ear. The last time he shaved they weren’t there. He didn’t mind having them, but would reserve judgment until they grew in again. Tonight was not the time to experiment with a new look.

He buttoned up his twenty-dollar shirt, tried on a striped tie, a solid, polka dots, then opened the collar button. He wasn’t crazy about the shirt, but had to go with it. After the stink he’d made about getting it back, Mollie would expect to see it.

Inside the pocket were two $7.50 tickets, third row center orchestra, for
Kismet
at the Ziegfield Theater. He wouldn’t stuff himself at the restaurant, or else he’d be snoring by the second act. A Monk jam session at the Village Vanguard was where he’d rather be, but he’d be on firmer ice with Mollie on Broadway. Tonight wasn’t for experiments of any kind.

The bell rang while he hunted for more gray. He couldn’t think who it was unless a killer had picked the worst time to settle a score. Tiptoeing to the door, he put his eye to the peep.

“Open up, Adam Jordan, I know you in!”

Too bad it wasn’t a killer. With a killer he might stand a chance. He threw the bolt, unhooked the chain. Cherise scuffed her feet on the mat, and came in clutching a cardboard valise.

“My, my, my, don’t we look pretty,” she said. “Stepping out?”

“I didn’t know you were coming. You should have called.”

“
You
should’ve,” she said, “but no mind, here I am. Owe me for the train.”

“How long are you staying?”

“Long as you want me.” She put down her bag, and kissed him. “After that, we’ll see.”

A frightening thought: Because he’d saved her life she was his responsibility forever.

“I’ll find you a hotel.”

“Ain’t here to sleep anyplace but with you.”

“I have a date tonight with another woman.”

“Glad to hear it ain’t with a man,” Cherise said. “I didn’t expect you wouldn’t find somebody. I ain’t been sitting alone by the radio since you left either. But you invited me, and now you treating me like I brung bed bugs. Want to be with your new sweetie, that’s okay long as you don’t forget who’s waiting up for you.”

“It isn’t okay.”

“Wouldn’t have it no other way,” she said. “Where you taking her?”

“To a Broadway show.”

“Fancy restaurant, too?” She picked a loose thread from his collar. “Hot damn, I’m gonna have a swell time in New York.”

Coming out of the subway he spotted Mollie across from the
Times
Tower looking up at the big clock above the news zipper.

“Sorry,” he said, “a friend came by.”

“I didn’t know you had friends here.”

“Neither did I. Toffenetti’s is up the block. Let’s hurry.”

“We don’t have time,” she said. “The play starts in forty minutes.”

His appetite was shot anyway. It began to come back when the theater lights dimmed, and the orchestra struck up the overture. The square music left him cold, but Mollie tapped her foot to every tune, and didn’t let a single cornball joke get by without a laugh. They were last up the aisle when the curtain came down.

“Hungry?” he said.

“Starved. Aren’t you?”

There was a half-hour wait for a table at Toffenetti’s. They went to Sardi’s, and were seated immediately. Scanning the menu, Jordan calculated that he would break the bank tonight without much chance of a payoff.

Mollie gushed about the show while he nodded agreeably and tried to figure a way to land her in bed. Assuming a killer hadn’t broken in and taken care of Cherise, he didn’t stand a chance. Mollie was moved by his stricken expression. On top of a steady intake of Manhattans it was causing her to look searchingly into his eyes.

“How do you like Brooklyn?” he said.

“I sleep there. I try not to strangle my roommate, and spend every waking minute in Manhattan. What about your place?”

“What about it?”

“It’s convenient?”

“Oh yeah, right by the office,” he said. “Five minutes from everywhere.”

She arched one eye. Jordan was undecided if it was involuntary.

“Do you share it?” she said.

“For the time being.”

There was a hotel on every block in Times Square. But most were pricey, and even the fleabags would turn away a couple without luggage. Jordan lit a Lucky. “How’s the work coming?”

“The girl-about-town look is in big demand,” Mollie said, “but all I have to show the clients is the session I did for you. They think I’m a fugitive from the vice squad. I may just go back to New Jersey.”

“Pixley will be glad to help.”

“I can’t take advantage of a casual remark he probably doesn’t remember.”

“You’ll be doing him a kindness. He’s crazy to be around beautiful women. When he isn’t taking pictures I don’t think he leaves the darkroom.”

“I’m not too proud to accept a favor from a friend of a friend,” she said. “That’s principled compared to what most of the girls do to get ahead.”

He let it go by. Sometimes it was smart, being thick. He had to get home. On second thought it would be tragic if a killer beat him to Cherise.

A gritty wind blowing out of the park propelled them toward the subway arm in arm.

“Come back and see my place,” she said. “My roommate will find you fascinating.”

“Another time.”

“I know,” she said. “It’s an hour on the subway for nothing.”

Somebody had to say it. He kissed her goodnight pressing a nickel in her hand for the fare.

The apartment was dead quiet. Cherise must have nodded off with the lights on. Coming inside on his toes, he found her sitting up in bed with
Real Detective
s scattered around.

“This is the magazine you work for?”

“What do you think of it?”

“Don’t want no part of your nightmares.”

He kicked off his shoes, unbuckled his pants.

“Gonna lay your body next to mine,” she said, “need a shower.”

“It’s close to midnight,” he said. “I’m tired.”

“Then it’s the couch for you. Can’t sleep in bed with me.”

“What makes you think I want to?”

“Wouldn’t be home before morning less you did.”

He got out of his clothes. When she wouldn’t make room, he took away her magazine. She looked up and said, “You the yummiest thing. Any gal’d want to have you tonight.”

“Who’s standing in your way?”

“I don’t take sloppy hand-me-downs.”

“Nothing hap—”

“Don’t want to hear about it.” She pointed into the bathroom. “Shower’s that way.”

A knot in his stomach that he hadn’t known was there unraveled as hot water played against his skin. Cherise was reading when he came back, and made him wait before she slid over.

“Can’t trust a soul,” she said. “Everybody has it in ’em to be a murderer. I’m damn scared. Hold me good.” She reached over him for the light. “Lucky fellow. How many men sleep with two gals the same night, one white, the other black? Something to tell your grandkids.”

“I don’t think that’s what grandparents talk to their grandchildren about,” Jordan said.

“Yours didn’t?” she said.

And cracked up because he thought she meant it.

“What makes you think my other girl’s white?”

She stopped laughing. “Aw, shut up, you.”

Footsteps on the landing brought him awake in the middle of the night. Churchill said that outside the Soviet Union when you heard someone at your door at four in the morning you could rest easy because it was only the milkman. It was reassuring to know he wasn’t going to be hauled off to Siberia. That didn’t mean he was happy to be up.

He flipped onto his side, his back, the other side as the knot in his stomach tightened. No mystery what caused it. Cherise’s legs were tangled in his, and she was purring.

Sex was the biggest part of what they had. Before, it was everything, and he slept like a baby. He didn’t know when things had changed. Cherise was still the same, crabby and demanding, seeing the world from the other side of the telescope. If he didn’t get her out of his life, she’d wreck his chance with Mollie, who might be dull, but was right for him. Christ, he sounded like his mother. Maybe he’d get off a note to the advice-to-the-lovelorn columnist at the
Mirror
, let her know he had to choose between Miss America and a colored whore at the edge of a double murder case, and find out what a reasonable man in Adam Jordan’s shoes would do.