Nate Rosen Investigates

by Ron Levitsky

  Rosen put his hand over hers. “Again, congratulations. There’s no greater happiness than a child. I know.”

  “That’s right—you have a daughter. Well, one day right soon you’ll have to tell me all about her. Kind of give me an idea of what I have to look forward to.” Her gaze drifted from him to the telephone. When she looked back, her smile was gone. “I really got to be going. I’ll call you this afternoon at Mr. Compton’s.”

  Five minutes later Rosen was in Jesse’s car, a half block from the alley leading to Claire’s garage. From the moment she had canceled their visit to the factory, Rosen had planned to follow her. Another man might be the real father of Claire’s child. He remembered her rumpled bed, the smell of sex, and the black hair. The evening of his death, Ben Hobbes had threatened Gideon McCrae, but Claire’s lover could’ve been Danny. Either way, with the birth of her child a lot of money was at stake. Enough for murder.

  In another few minutes Claire’s white Corvette emerged from the alley and turned left on Jackson. Rosen followed, a few car lengths behind, past the college to the highway. Instead of crossing into Gideon McCrae’s subdivision, Claire turned onto the highway leading toward Nashville.

  Rosen had expected as much. Earlyville was a small place and Claire was well known, especially after being charged with her husband’s murder. An assignation would be easier in the big city.

  It wasn’t quite eleven. Highway traffic was light; traffic here was always light compared to Washington’s Beltway. A painter’s beat-up station wagon, with its ladder and clanging paint cans, stayed between him and the Corvette. Claire drove in the right lane, which moved as quickly as the other two. If people here only knew what big-city life was really like, they’d . . . They’d realize how lucky they were.

  Jesse hadn’t chosen a bad life, living in the town of his ancestors where everyone knew everyone else. Where people still cared for one another, as McCrae’s church had cared for Lemuel Banks when he’d been bitten or, at his funeral, when they’d sung and trembled beneath the Hand of God. McCrae, Bathsheba, Claire, even Jesse. Funny—in law school his friend was always searching for the answers, the ones that came so easily to Rosen because they lay in books. Now Jesse had the Great Answer and Rosen—still the wandering Jew.

  He passed the airport. Only a few more minutes to the Nashville exit. Rosen turned on the radio but heard only country music, cowboys singing about the trucks they’d loved and the women they’d driven away. He flicked to one more station, and suddenly a miracle. Billie Holiday was singing “God Bless the Child,” while Lester Young’s saxophone cried softly, sending chills up his spine. She was always “The Voice” to Rosen, just as Thelonious Monk was “The Piano.”

  Lady Day’s song was followed by Art Tatum’s magic on the keyboard with “Body and Soul.” Tatum was a genius, a blind man whose fingers swaggered over the keys like John Wayne walking into a saloon. Rosen could use some of that sureness now. Concerning the case, he was as blind as Tatum and had no idea where his next step would lead, other than Nashville.

  Claire took the first exit into the city. Rosen followed two cars behind, while Joe Williams sang “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.” Humming along, he adjusted to the slower downtown traffic and enjoyed the sights. Centennial Park was filling with the lunch crowd; businessmen and -women sat on benches or upon blankets spread on the verdant grass. A busload of schoolchildren scampered toward the Parthenon, their teachers hurrying after. To his right, Vanderbilt students, dressed much better than those on Jesse’s campus, strolled between the buildings.

  Rosen had driven the same route while following Aadams last Thursday. Maybe the detective was Claire’s destination. She turned left on Third Street, as Aadams had, but this time no traffic light interfered. Rosen followed her around a corner and quickly pulled into an open space while she parked at the end of the block, behind Aadams’s beat-up Granada.

  As she stepped from her car, Rosen rubbed his eyes. Had they passed in the street, he wouldn’t have recognized her. Wearing sunglasses, Claire had changed into a green turtleneck sweater, designer jeans, and sneakers. A Louis Vuitton purse with a long strap hung from her shoulder. She walked back up the block while checking addresses. Rosen was about to duck below the windshield when she hesitated in front of a building, then stepped inside.

  The once fashionable neighborhood had become run-down and was now one of those magical streets where a Porsche left overnight would vanish by morning. Locking the car doors, Rosen walked up the block. On either side, buildings of mouse-colored brick rose three or four stories. The tallest was a hotel that rented by the day or hour—“Cash Only, In Advance.” Another, the Friendly Finance Company, protected its windows with heavy iron bars. A few buildings were nailed shut, the boards rotting and splintered.

  Rosen stood before the door that Claire had entered. Near a broken metal rod, from which an awning must’ve once hung, a sign read: the lavergne building. Inside, a stairway corkscrewed to the upper floors, and a row of mailboxes listed the tenants. “Albert Aadams, P.I.—302.”, The elevator, perpendicular to the mailboxes, looked rickety enough to scare a coal miner. Rosen trudged up the stairs.

  The hallway was narrow, smelling like a wet book, with four offices on either side. Aadams’s was to his right, between Cupid Escort Service and Madame Tallulah, Psychic. A slight woman of about sixty, with orange-colored hair and wearing a purple pantsuit, opened the psychic’s office. Two well-dressed ladies, probably mother and daughter, stepped from the room.

  “You’ll see,” the orange-haired woman said in the same Yiddish accent as Rosen’s grandmother’s, “he’s not going to divorce his wife. He’s just using you.”

  The mother nodded. “I knew he was no good. Thank you so much, Madame Tallulah. You saved Carol from a terrible mistake.”

  “Don’t thank me. Thank the stars.”

  The two women took the elevator downstairs.

  Seeing Rosen, the psychic clasped her hands. “Come in, young man. I can feel you are in need of great help.”

  “No, thank you, I’m here—”

  Grabbing his arm, she pulled him toward the door. “I know. You’re here to see me but are a little nervous. That’s all right, everybody’s like that the first time. It’s not a little thing—pouring out your heart to a stranger.”

  “No, really. I came to see—”

  “You’re troubled. Troubled by . . . a terrible financial decision.”

  “No.”

  “An illness.”

  Rosen shook his head.

  “A woman.” When he didn’t answer, Madame Tallulah clapped her hands. “Aha, of course! Didn’t I tell you I know all?”

  He stayed her hand as she reached for the doorknob. Glancing at Aadams’s office, he asked, “What do you know about your next-door neighbor, the detective? Is he a zhlub?” Rosen used the Yiddish word for “ill-mannered person.”

  She crinkled her nose. “A real momzer—you know what I mean?”

  Rosen nodded; she was calling Aadams a bastard.

  “You’re not mixed up with him? It is over a woman. Your wife—he’s following your wife. . . .”

  “No.”

  “Then you’re mixed up with someone else’s wife, so the big jerk’s following you.” Rosen was about to shake his head when she added, “Of course not, a nice boy like you. Want me to read your palm?”

  He pressed a twenty-dollar bill in her hand. “Why don’t you look into your own palm and tell me more about Mr. Aadams.”

  Rubbing the bill, as if her fingers could tell the denomination, she smiled. “So all right, that’s worth one session. You want I should tell you about the momzer. He thinks he’s some hot-shot detective, a regular James Bond, but, if you ask me, he don’t know his . . . excuse the expression . . . ass from a hole in the ground. I passed by his door once when it was open. He was feeling up some mousy little man who wanted to hire him. Not feeling up, exactly, he was checking if the man had a gun.”

  “Yo
u mean frisking?”

  “That’s right—frisking. ’Cause I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea about him, bad as he is. He goes for the women, that one. Notice I don’t say ‘ladies.’” She nodded down the hall to the escort service. “Pays a regular visit to that place. Only kind a’ person he lets get close to him gotta be wearing a size-D cup—if you know what I mean.”

  “I understand. Is he the kind of man who might resort to blackmail?”

  Madame Tallulah glanced at Aadams’s door, then rolled her eyes toward the sky. “That man would do anything for a dollar. Kineahora,” she added as a protection against the evil eye. “He once came to see me, wanting to know if I had any information on my customers he could use to get money. Said we’d split it. I turned him down, of course. I’m a professional. I got my ethics.”

  Rosen watched Aadams’s door. Coming upstairs, he wasn’t certain what he’d do. There was the possibility of confronting Claire with the detective, but that could do more harm than good, especially if the big man was prone to violence. At the very least, Rosen wanted to “case the joint”—to infer something about Aadams’s character from his surroundings. Madame Tallulah had helped Rosen do that and more. If Claire caught him there before he knew why she’d come, he’d look stupid, the one character defect a lawyer couldn’t afford.

  “Thanks, Madame Tallulah. You’ve been a great help. May your business prosper.”

  “From your lips to God’s ear. My little mensch.” She squeezed his cheeks. “And the name’s Ida.”

  Rosen walked downstairs and out of the building. Passing Claire’s Corvette, he slid into the Porsche and leaned back in the seat, hoping the wait wouldn’t be long.

  Five minutes later a taxi pulled up in front of the LaVergne Building. A tall brunette showing a lot of leg left the building and got into the cab, which drove away. She was probably an employee of the escort service. Then Claire stepped out, fumbling to slip on her sunglasses. Rosen ducked down. Checking her purse, she lifted something halfway out. Hard to tell at such a distance, but it appeared to be a folded manila envelope. She also fumbled with her keys but, once inside the car, squealed from the curb, leaving a pair of tire tracks in her wake.

  Rosen drove to the end of the block, Second Street, and looked in the direction she had turned. Her Corvette was long gone. He let the Porsche purr contentedly while deciding what to do. Claire had taken the turn leading to Broadway; from there the highway returned to Earlyville. He could follow her and perhaps even beat her home. But maybe Claire wasn’t going home—not just yet. She was close enough to make one stop, and Rosen thought she would.

  Turning right, he drove down Second, across Broadway and past Patty’s Place. The restaurant was filling with the lunch crowd, and the smell of fried chicken lay heavy in the air as if spread with a trowel. It made Rosen hungry; he’d eaten nothing since his morning tea. He was tempted to stop but wouldn’t give in to his appetite. Instead, he thought about what the envelope in Claire’s purse might contain. Whatever it was, the odor of blackmail hung in the air stronger than even Patty’s fried chicken.

  The only paper possibly that important to Claire was Ben Hobbes’s second will, if such a document existed. If it did and, as Simon Hobbes contended, if it eliminated Claire from a share of the factory, that piece of paper would be worth a great deal, even Ben Hobbes’s life. Rosen didn’t want to believe Claire was involved in her husband’s murder. Not just because the woman was his client, or because she was pretty and petite, or because she appeared to be vulnerable. He’d had plenty of clients lie to him, both in words and appearance, and more than one had been guilty as charged.

  No, that wasn’t it, and he’d been fighting the real reason all along. Even now, alone in the car, he was afraid to admit the truth. He imagined himself on the witness stand, staring at the prosecutor and seeing his own face. If Claire was involved, probably her church was, too, and Rosen didn’t want that.

  “No, I don’t want that.”

  There, he’d said it. If he couldn’t make his peace with God, at least there were those who could. The world was filled with Bible-thumping phonies who spoke of heaven as a fur-lined Cadillac, but Gideon McCrae wasn’t one of them. His faith was real. Rosen had seen faith shining in Jesse’s eyes and had been happy for his friend, happy and jealous. It wasn’t Rosen’s fault—would never be. Yet, if others could find their way back, there might be a chance for him.

  A few blocks from the restaurant, just as he suspected, Rosen saw Claire’s car parked in front of Here’s How. She was stopping to see her old boy friend, Hec Perry. Rosen pulled in a few spaces behind her Corvette.

  Even though it was almost noon, it was twilight inside. Flickering beer signs behind the bar floated their spider-light through the smoky darkness. At first the room seemed deserted. However, at the far corner, in the warm glow of the silent jukebox, the old bartender slumped in a chair. Head thrown back and mouth wide as a bass’s, he snored contentedly, shifting occasionally in the straight-back chair.

  The stairway leading to the second floor yawned before Rosen like an abyss. In the distance whispered the rustling that wind might make through an empty canyon. He shivered momentarily, then was no longer cold, for a dulcimer, playing the soft, sad music of lost souls like himself, murmured to him.

  The music drew him upward, the pull irresistible, when suddenly something grabbed him. He was jerked back like a dog on a choker and stumbled down the stairs. Again he stood at the bottom of the steps and, looking up, discerned a big man outlined in the bar’s twilight. Aadams patted Rosen down, checking for a weapon, then lifted him by the lapels nearly off the floor.

  The detective smelled of liquor. “Ain’t this getting to be a regular habit, you and me meeting in this bar?”

  Rosen wouldn’t answer, not yet. Not while Aadams had him twisting in the wind like a hanged man. He struggled against the big man, pushing with all his strength, until his jacket ripped. At least he was free. Now he was ready to talk.

  “You followed me here.”

  “Yeah. I saw you in that beautiful Porsche watching Claire Hobbes leave my office.”

  “What was she doing with . . .?”

  “I figured you’d tail her and maybe, if you was smart enough, guess she’d come to see her old boy friend. Well, looks like you was smart enough. Maybe you’re also smart enough not to get in my way. I told you once before, Claire Hobbes is my client. We got this business between us, real private business. Understand?”

  “Blackmail always is private. That is, until the police become involved.”

  Aadams stood very close, his face hanging in a lopsided grin. The smell of cheap whiskey almost overpowered Rosen. “The cops? Before you think about calling them, you’d better consult my client. She ain’t gonna like that. No, sir . . . not one bit.”

  “Why’re you following me, if you’re so sure Claire won’t turn you in?” When he saw the detective’s eyes widen, he knew why. “You’re not through with her, are you? What you got today was only the first installment. You want to keep me from changing her mind.”

  “Real smart, ain’tcha. We’re pretty much alike, I figure. You coming outta nowhere, some kind of ambulance chaser who knows a good thing when you see it. Me, too. I’m sick of working outta a shithole for an office, following deadbeats and cheating husbands. That pretty little blonde is gonna help me get outta all that. Now, if you mind your own business, there might be a little something for you, too. How does that sound?”

  “What’s it all about? Did you get hold of her husband’s second will? Is that why she’s paying you off?”

  Aadams threw his head back; his laugh came cold and brittle.

  Rosen took a step up the stairs, when Aadams struck the back of his head. He turned, arms over his face, a reflex from his days as a civil rights protester. His arms hurt from the blows but, hearing Aadams wheezing, he waited until the other man leaned forward out of breath. Balling his right hand into a fist, Rosen struck Aadams in
the face and felt the big man’s crooked nose collapse like slush.

  “Nice shot,” the detective said, not bothering to mop the rivulets of blood running down his chin.

  Suddenly Rosen felt his right cheek explode as his body slammed against the wall. Aadams’s other fist struck his skull, sending him sprawling across the stairs. He shook his head, but everything was blurry. He heard music, beautiful music, and thought that must be Lemuel Banks playing, perched on Jacob’s ladder between heaven and earth, waiting to give him a hand up.

  Trying to focus directly ahead, Rosen saw something long and thick swaying in front of him. Was it Aadams’s upraised arm or a snake taunting him? A snake, its head poised to strike, yet Rosen was unable to save himself, as if he were a mouse caught under the serpent’s spell. Caught, he watched the creature quickly dip to strike him hard, sending him over the edge, falling . . . falling far from Brother Lemuel’s heavenly music. Where his own cries for help would never be heard or echo back from deep within the endless black abyss.

  Chapter Seventeen

  monday afternoon

  A roller coaster rattled along the rails, its descent a free-fall sickening his stomach, while his head swayed from side to side. The seat belt was broken, and he hurtled over the front car, bouncing along the track, as the wheels sparked and spun inches from his body. The car rolled over him, crushing his face—hot blood and splintered bones . . .

  “Mister, hey, mister!”

  The rattling grew louder as Rosen opened his eyes.

  “Mister, you all right?”

  “Sure.” Was that his own voice? It sounded so far away.

  He was sitting on the ground, squinting at the sun. Shifting back against something that rattled. Blinking, he looked around. An alley. He leaned against a garbage can in an alley. The old man standing over him—Rosen was sure he’d seen him before.

  The old man’s face was screwed tight, as if he’d smelled something rotten. “Jesus Christ, you look like shit. Are you all right?”