Beware the Solitary Drinker

by Cornelius Lehane

  “He may have killed your daughter. What kind of fucking principles are you running on?”

  I held the door with my hand while she tried half-heartedly to wrestle it closed. “I’ll call the police,” she stammered.

  “You missed your chance.”

  She began shaking.

  “Answer one question, Mrs. Carter. For all the misery of your daughter’s life.”

  The door went slack against my hand. “It wasn’t my fault. It had already happened. It couldn’t be undone.” The challenge gone from her voice, her mask disintegrating, her eyes searching mine for pity.

  “So you hated yourself, and you hated her.”

  Mrs. Carter let go of the door and stepped back from it. “I loved my daughter. It’s just that everything I ever did was wrong.” She looked hollow and lost like she didn’t belong in her own hallway.

  “Nigel Barthelme?” I asked with a lot more confidence this time.

  She crumbled. “Yes. He was the boy.”

  She was still standing in the doorway when Ntango’s cab tore out of her street, flattening me against the fake leather back seat. I lifted my hand in an awkward salute, but she didn’t see. I wondered how long she’d stand there and what she’d do when she could no longer stand in the doorway.

  We headed south on I-91 toward I-95 and Stamford. It would take us a little less than two hours to get there, so I needed to get my coked-up brain on-line. This would be my final visit to Edwin Barthelme.

  Only one awful truth was missing, and that one came home to roost when I arrived in Stamford and called Albert. No laughter this time, pain in his voice. “A girl’s body they found last night, it was Sharon Collins.”

  I guess I expected it, but I felt like crying all the same. “All my pretty ones,” I thought. “Poor MacDuff.”

  “Where?”

  “In some woods off Den Road.” He anticipated me once again. “Not far from Palmer Hill.”

  I told Albert I wanted to try to see Barthelme again. I thought he might help me get in.

  “He wouldn’t let me in, either,” said Albert. “You can’t even get onto the estate, unless someone lets you in.” He paused for a long time. “There’s one chance. The superintendent, Tim O’Leary. He’s also the chauffeur, a tough, ornery old Fenian, and a strong union man. Mention my name. His son is one of us, if you know what I mean. If you ring the gate bell and he’s the one who answers, you might be able to persuade him.”

  A small Ramada Inn sat next to the golf course at the bottom of the hill below the Barthelme estate. On an off-chance, we stopped there. The scattering of leftover golfers didn’t much like Ntango and let it show in the chilliness that dropped over the place like dew when we came in the door, but the bartender gave us both shots of tequila anyway.

  I left the change from a ten. “We’re looking for a guy who might have been in yesterday. A little guy with thick glasses and a mustache. He drinks ginger ale with lemon.”

  The bartender, tall and thin, dark-haired and handsome, with the nervous mannerisms of a gambler, looked blank. “Maybe he changed to vodka and orange juice,” I said.

  The bartender stopped wiping the bar and walked back toward me. He picked up the tip. “A really ugly drunk. But not yesterday. More like a couple of weeks ago.” The bartender looked us over. “You can have him.”

  The facts didn’t connect. My brain kept short-circuiting right at the main connection. “A couple of weeks ago, what night?”

  The bartender shrugged. “During the week, that’s when I work: Wednesday or Thursday.”

  “Alone or with someone?”

  “Alone one night.”

  “With someone another night? What did the someone look like? What did he drink?” I leaned across the bar, I’m sure, with fire in my eyes.

  “Drink?” The bartender looked at me blankly. “Jack Daniels.”

  “Did the guy who drank Jack Daniels stand up when he drank?”

  “The guy who drank Jack Daniels was his old man,” the bartender said.

  None of this made sense, but I was on to something: I had to keep at it, despite the faint tinkle of the little bell, far back in the hallway, telling me to slow down.

  ***

  I decided not to ring the gate bell. It was too much of a crap shoot. Someone else might answer. I figured if I got over the wall, I could get to Barthelme’s door before anyone caught up with me. Ntango drove the cab up alongside the stone wall that surrounded the estate, and we followed the wall back down the hill until we were abreast of a grove of trees, stately and barren silhouettes against the pale sky. Ntango pulled in right next to the wall, so that from the roof of the cab I could jump to the top of the wall.

  I saw some barns and two cottages not far below me with lights on in one of them. Everything else was quiet. So down I jumped—but I forgot about the damn dogs. Before I hit the ground they came flying. All I saw was shapes—big shapes like elephants—with teeth as long as daggers. One nipped me on the leg and then on the ass as I ran. The wall was too high from the inside to get back up, so I busted through the door of the cottage with the lights on, hoping I’d find the Fenian gardener. God those bites hurt. I’d been beaten up and I’d been cut, but none of it hurt like those dog bites. Yet, in one respect, luck was with me. I rolled on the floor in pain, while Tim, the gardener, shooed the dogs off.

  He looked down at me, fear in his eyes.

  “I’m a friend of Albert Hawkins,” I said desperately. The pain and the coke had completely scrambled my brain. I moaned, while the gardener and the wife discussed my situation.

  “He needs something for those bites,” said the wife.

  “A shot of whiskey,” said Tim.

  “Some iodine,” she said decisively.

  “Whiskey,” I agreed.

  When we were seated at the kitchen table, after the missus tended to my bites and the whiskey my nerves, I told Tim about Nigel and the rapes and the deaths. I also asked if Ntango could drive around and come in.

  “Poor Nigel,” Tim said sadly, after Ntango arrived and I finished the story. Tim’s wind-roughened and callused hands rested on the tabletop; his eyes were wrinkled around the edges, and he squinted permanently against the sun, even now in the evening in the dim light of his own kitchen. His peaceful expression and lack of cunning reminded me of Ntango.

  “When did you see him last?”

  He looked behind me at a calendar on the wall. “Two weeks ago today, I saw him for the first time in ten years.”

  “You saw Nigel here two weeks ago? Two weeks ago on a Wednesday? Are you sure?”

  “I picked him up myself,” Tim spoke emphatically, though his eyes were still kind.

  “Where?”

  “In front of a brownstone on 39th Street, right off Madison Avenue, right around midnight.”

  “You’re sure?” I asked again. Nigel’s alibi held. My suspicions crumbled. Maybe Tim the gardener and Patricia the hooker had concocted a story together for Nigel. But I seriously doubted it.

  The facts stood in direct opposition to my theory, yet something was not right. And like Miss Clavel, afraid of a disaster, I would run fast and even faster. There had to be an explanation.

  “Was Nigel here yesterday?”

  Tim wrinkled his brow thoughtfully. “I think I would have seen him had he been here. Mr. Edwin came back and used the car yesterday. I saw no sign of Nigel.” The question startled him, though. I could see worry in his face and sensed that he thought about something beyond the answer he gave.

  “Did you pick up Mr. Barthelme in the city yesterday?”

  “I did. Mr. Barthelme was alone.”

  “Did you see him go out after you got back here?”

  “He went out in the car.” His tone was crisp, almost resentful; his face had tightened and the twinkle was gone from his eyes.

  “Did you see him come back?”

  Tim looked puzzled.

  “Is all this unusual?”

  “You might say
so,” said Tim quietly.

  “Where’s the car now?”

  “By rights, it would be in the garage.” He looked uneasily at his wife. I wondered if he thought about his job of forty years and his pension. This afternoon he probably raked leaves. Tonight, he’s talking about murder. Somewhere between tea and supper, the world as he knew it had ended.

  I waited.

  “He worked in the fields with me. Before he went off to school, he was as good to us as another man. He’d come out in the morning and kneel down where I was pulling weeds, silent as a mouse. Or pick up a rake. Or putter around straightening up the shed. We’d let him drive the tractor when we picked up brush, and he was as happy as the day is long.” Tim turned to face me, his expression full of sadness and perplexity. “You wouldn’t think with all his money he’d need the likes of us to make him happy.” He looked to me for an explanation.

  I didn’t have one, only another question. “Nigel broke with his family some time back. He told me he hadn’t seen his father in ten years, until recently. Do you know why?”

  The gardener glanced at his wife, who averted her eyes as if she were embarrassed. Not getting her attention, he looked back at me, pursed his lips and shook his head, his face contorted with this memory, whatever it was. “Ah, it went back years. Nigel was just a bit of a lad,” he said. “It was the Italian chauffeur.”

  I tried not to look as bewildered as I felt. Tim was having a tough time getting the story out, and, as impatient as I was, I didn’t want to push him.

  “Something had been going on with the boy.…He was out and gone in a day, the chauffeur, a young man, too, healthy and good looking…” Tim looked to his wife again. This time she watched him, but still said nothing. “…Mr. Barthelme called the staff together. He said the boy had been mistreated but would be all right.” Tim shook his head sadly. “I don’t think he ever was.…The housekeeper, Mrs. Hutchings, she said that was why Nigel left home and never came back. He blamed his father for not taking care of him.”

  The kitchen with its checkered linoleum and its rough wooden cabinets and Formica table took on an ominous silence. We sat in the silence, listening to a clock ticking from somewhere back in the house. Tim’s face held the shocked expression of an accident victim.

  “The car,” I asked. “What did you say about Mr. Barthelme and the car?”

  “The car never came back,” said Tim. “Mr. Barthelme came back but the car’s gone and he never said a word about it.”

  ***

  I knew for sure that Edwin Barthelme had something to tell me, although I didn’t know yet what it was. Ntango drove me to the big house, pulling up to the side of the front door. I hoped that Barthelme senior would think it was junior, home now that the shit had hit the fan. When the butler opened the door, I said, “Mr. Barthelme is expecting me.”

  “I think you’re mistaken, sir,” the stiff answered.

  “Maybe he’s not expecting me so soon,” I said. “If you’ll just tell him the bartender is here….”

  That got me an eyebrow; Ntango coming up behind me raised the other one. We pushed our way in. “Never mind,” I said, remembering the Fred Astaire movies. “We’ll announce ourselves.” Which might have worked if I’d had any idea which way to go. We were in an entryway inside the front door, a foyer of sorts, larger than most Manhattan studios; a small, polished oak stairway and another door separated us from the main part of the house. I gave up. “Look, pal,” I told the butler. “We need to see Mr. Barthelme. Tell him I want a word before I go to the police. My name is McNulty. He knows me.”

  “No need,” said Mr. Barthelme from the landing of the small staircase. Standing on that balcony, he once more looked vastly superior to the rest of us mortals, perhaps more so this time because he held a small revolver that matched the gray of his eyes. “You’ve broken into my house. You and a Negro, who’s probably carrying drugs. I could kill you as trespassers.”

  He was right about the Negro, wrong about who was holding, right about getting away with shooting us—he probably had a fix with the judges.

  “Now you want bodies on your doorstep?” I asked. “When’s it going to stop?”

  For a second, his eyes lost their glitter of superiority. Edwin Barthelme, newspaper magnate, Wall Street tycoon, philanthropist, political power broker, a mansion on the hill, a butler in the foyer, a gun in his hand, all that against a bartender and a cab driver with their cocaine highs wearing off.

  “Your story isn’t going to hold,” I said politely. I wondered if my deferential tone came from my respect for his gun or from some primordial acceptance of his station in life, like my kid, unduly impressed by wealth. Whatever the reason, I spoke politely.

  He looked interested.

  “Your son called the police, Mr. Barthelme. The cops record all their calls. A technocrat like him should have known about voice prints.”

  It was a good bluff. But Barthelme senior had the nerves of a good poker player. “My son and I were here. I’ve checked my records and recall handling a rather complex financial matter on the phone that evening. A half-dozen unimpeachable witnesses can establish that Nigel was here and not in New York that evening.”

  “You must know about the girl’s body on Den Road.” I watched his eyes. “Maybe you don’t. Sharon Collins. You bought her for Nigel, too.” I could see some pain in his eyes. He wasn’t going to get any weaker, so I went for him. “Let’s reel your son in, Mr. Barthelme, before he does any more harm.”

  “Look to your own son, Mr. McNulty,” he said, and froze my heart.

  Then it hit me. “Shit!” I said. “It wasn’t Nigel. It was you.” The logjam cleared, the facts tumbled into place. The older man Carl saw with Angelina on West End Avenue wasn’t Ozzie. Edwin walked Angelina to the park that night. And it wasn’t Nigel who shot Ozzie. Nigel just left Ozzie’s door open for his old man, who did the dirty work. Then I came along and fingered Sharon Collins for him. What kind of jerk was I?

  At this moment a long, gray-blue, steel barrel poked through the door from behind Ntango. “Mr. Barthelme,” said Tim the gardener.

  Mr. Barthelme lowered his gun and then let it thud to the floor. He knew his gardener well enough.

  “Where’s my son?” I asked, reaching for the gun on the floor. Ntango got to it first. Barthelme went once more to his well of contempt. “Where’s my son?” I asked again. “What about my son?”

  “The young lady was nice enough to call,” Barthelme said.

  I knew the questions but not how to connect them. If Edwin was the murderer, who had my son?

  It had to be Nigel. But why would Nigel bring Kevin into this?

  “Where is he?” I asked Barthelme again, knowing he wouldn’t tell me—and understanding at that moment why interrogators tortured their prisoners.

  Nothing. Then, “The Barthelmes’ yacht in the city…it was opened up yesterday,” said Tim. “The yacht club called to ask if it was okay. When I asked Mr. Barthelme, he said not to worry…Nigel would be using the boat now and then.”

  I didn’t understand what that had to do with anything.

  “The boat basin,” Ntango said.

  I still didn’t get it.

  “79th Street,” said Ntango, and Tim nodded.

  “What?”

  “79th Street,” Ntango said. “The boat basin.”

  I bolted for the cab, Ntango right beside me, except one of the dogs got his leg. I kicked in a fury and felt the animal sag against my foot. Ntango screamed from the bite, but jumped behind the wheel anyway. The fucking gate was closed. Ntango skidded to a stop, leaned the thick taxi bumper against it, dropped the Impala into low, and pushed like a bulldozer. The city cab took out the country fence, and off we went down a dark country lane toward the Thruway to the city.

  I couldn’t stop the dread that poured through me. How could I have gotten Kevin mixed up in this? How could I have left him alone? I thought of all the safe places he might be. All the reasons this couldn�
�t be happening. But, every few seconds, I pictured Nigel, with an arm around Kevin’s shoulder, walking him down a dock toward a rich man’s yacht moored in the murky Hudson.

  It was so easy now putting it all together. Angelina had come to the West Side to visit Carl, stumbled across Nigel, remembered the big payoff to her mother. She put the bite on Nigel for her share. He couldn’t pay enough, so she went for the old man. Edwin had been around enough to know it was senseless to pay a blackmailer and was ruthless enough to do something about it. Now that we’d caught him, it should all be over. Instead, my stumbling around might have created another murderer—and this one might have my son.

  Ntango pulled up to a phone booth in a shopping center across from the Thruway entrance. I called my ex-wife’s number. No answer. I tried Janet at her hotel. No answer. I finally reached my father.

  “Don’t panic,” he said, but his voice shook. “Kevin isn’t here. I thought he was at your house.” I told my father to call Sheehan and tell him about Nigel and the boat basin.

  “Why would he take my son?” I asked my father in a choked off, sobbing voice.

  “Mistakes,” my father said. “We’ve all made mistakes. I got off the phone with Janet five minutes ago. She was on her way to meet Nigel Barthelme, and Kevin is with her.”

  “And Nigel’s after her to dump her in the river. What should I do?”

  “Find them.”

  I called Oscar, who babbled into the phone about firing me because I hadn’t shown up for work.

  “Is Janet there?”

  “No,” he said. But I knew she might be sitting right next to him. “My son, Oscar, has my son been there?” He had to be able to hear the terror in my voice.

  “Last night,” Oscar said. “He was here last night looking for you.”

  I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. “Nigel,” I said. “Has Nigel been in?”

  “Come in or you’re fired,” said Oscar.

  “Let me talk to Eric.” Giving up on Oscar, who continually created his own reality, I now tried Eric, who understood about fifty words in English that didn’t have to do with food, drink, or getting laid.