“Thank you,” I said. “You are very gracious.”
We went out to the vestibule, where Donner and Kerrigan were waiting for us. Donner began at once to stare at his wife as though looking for some sign of abuse, but she smiled reassuringly at him and made a production of shaking my hand and thanking me for coming and apologizing for not having given me anything to eat or drink. Donner relaxed a little after that, and even seemed to want to end the interview on a rising note of friendship, which I resisted. His wife had captured me—against incredible odds, it seemed to me—but Donner was still to me no more than a hood I had met in the course of an unpleasant job. I took his outstretched hand reluctantly, and left as rapidly as possible.
Outside, as we waited for the elevator, Kerrigan said to me, grinning, “Well, did you find out?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing bad, I hope.”
“Nothing bad.” I felt I owed Mrs. Donner at least my silence.
The elevator came then, and we got aboard. Riding down, I said, “Is Donner just a brother-in-law of Rembek’s, or a business associate?”
Kerrigan said, “Business associate.”
“Doing what?”
“He handles distribution on machines. Gambling.”
“Is there still much of that in New York? I never ran into it.”
“Every American Legion post has its slot machines,” he said, “and over in Brooklyn there’s more pinball machines than people. And there’s still a couple large rooms in Manhattan.” He shook his head at me, grinning. “A cop wouldn’t hear about them,” he said. “Not down at your level.”
I said, “Is he the same Frank Donner used to be a strong-arm boy for the Lako brothers?”
“That was years ago.”
“He hasn’t changed much.”
Kerrigan raised an eyebrow, disagreeing gently. He said, “You crossing him off the list?”
Why was my mind listing dissimilarities between Rita Castle and Linda Campbell? Why did I want to go on thinking that Frank Donner might be the man who had run away with Rita Castle?
“No,” I said. “We’ll leave him on awhile.”
thirteen
IN THE NEXT CAB, Kerrigan filled me in on Louis Hogan, number two on my list. Hogan was a national delegate in the Amalgamated Refrigeration Workers Union, but had at one time been directly a member of what Kerrigan insisted on calling the “corporation,” by which he meant the mob. The ARWU was not associated with the corporation in any primary way, but some legitimate sideline businesses that corporation members—like Ernie Rembek—were involved in did involve an association with the ARWU and other unions, and Louis Hogan was in the position of being able from time to time to do his former associates favors. These favors were always suitably rewarded.
Judging by where he lived, the rewards were lavish. In the upper Bronx there is a residential section of great beauty and exclusivity, with large private homes widely separated along curving tree-shaded streets, an area of low hills and many fir trees, where most of the houses are hidden from their neighbors and many boast—though they wouldn’t actually boast—swimming pools. It was in a stone-and-siding house in this area that Louis Hogan lived.
The cab let us out at the foot of the blacktop driveway, which led uphill on an easy curve past a rock garden to the house, which could be just barely seen from the road. Kerrigan and I walked up the curving blacktop and then off it onto a slate path across the lawn to the shrubbery-flanked front door. Kerrigan rang, and after a minute we were admitted by a Negro maid in black dress, white apron, and little white cap. Kerrigan gave our names, she ushered us in to the living room, and there we waited while she went to tell Hogan we were here.
The living room was long, with a fireplace at the far end and a picture window facing the lawn. Several sofas were the room’s main furniture, one facing the picture window, one facing the fireplace, and one at this end facing a television-phonograph console. I went close to the only painting on the wall, opposite the window, and saw that it was an original rather than a print, an abstraction which ran heavily to blues. I couldn’t make out the name of the artist, in the lower right corner.
There was a string quartet playing somewhere in the house, just at the threshold of audibility. A large and beautiful boxer dog came padding into the room and studied us calmly and with no particular interest. As Louis Hogan entered, the dog padded out again.
Louis Hogan was about forty, possibly a few years older, but kept himself in shape, probably with a gym in the basement. His hair, black turning gray in the combination called pepper-and-salt, was in a brushlike crewcut above a square, bony, strong-looking face. He exuded a sort of after-shave manliness and probably drove an American sports car. He shook my hand in a forthright way, offered us drinks, which we both refused, and urged us to sit down and make ourselves comfortable.
When we were all seated, I began my questioning with, “I understand your association with Ernie Rembek these days is more or less just social. That is, you yourself aren’t in the rackets any more.”
“Right,” he said briskly. “Not that I was ever exactly what you might call in the rackets. You take a look for a record on me, my friend, and you’ll find nothing there.”
I said, “In that case, I suppose you met Rita Castle first at some sort of social function.”
“Right. One of Frank Donner’s parties.” He looked at Kerrigan. “You were there.”
I said to Kerrigan, “Same party?”
“Yes,” he said. “That was the first time Ernie took Rita anywhere.” He explained to Hogan, “We just came from Frank’s place.”
Hogan seemed amused and surprised, saying, “He’s a suspect?”
I said, “You don’t think he should be?”
“God, no!”
“Do you think you make a more sensible suspect?”
“Much,” he said, with the same briskness.
The answer surprised me, and I was conscious of Kerrigan grinning at me. I said to Hogan, “Why do you think that?”
He said, “Because I’m capable of the kind of relationship with a woman that the killer apparently had with Rita Castle. I’ve kept myself in shape. I’m still interested in women, and women are still interested in me.”
“In other words, you’re a real man.”
“That’s comic-book phrasing, but the idea’s about right.”
Kerrigan said to me, “The wording of the note hasn’t been spread around.”
“Good,” I said.
Hogan looked from one of us to the other. “Something?”
“Nothing important,” I said. “Did you have a relationship with Rita Castle?”
“Yes,” he said.
“You did? What was it?”
“The third or fourth time I met her was here in this house. We had a party and Ernie brought her. It was in the summer. Out by the pool she started one of those come-get-me routines with me, the kind you can spot it’s a phony a mile away. I ignored her and she kept it up. We’ve got a freezer out in the garage, and when I went out to get more ice cubes she came after me, so I put her down on the floor and…rubbed her a little. You might say I gave her an inspection. Then I told her what I was to Ernie and what she was to Ernie and I said she shouldn’t play any more games in my house, not with me or anybody else, and I let her go.”
“What did she do?”
He shrugged. “She came in here and sat down. On the sofa there. And stayed there till Ernie took her home.”
“Nothing happened after that?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. I guess she never said anything to Ernie. She never tried anything with me again, and never tried anything with anybody else when I was around, but I heard she did act up sometimes same as before.”
“What was her attitude toward you?”
“Distant,” he said, and shrugged again. “We wouldn’t have had much to say anyway.”
“Did you tell your wife about what happened in the garage?”
&n
bsp; “No. There wasn’t any point.”
“If you had judged Rita Castle’s invitation to be real, would you have taken her up on it?”
He considered, and said, “I’m not sure. Possibly. Ernie and I have been friends for years, but this would be a special case. It would depend on other things, I guess.”
“What other things?”
“Like what my personal life was like at the time.”
“You mean, whether or not you already had someone?”
“That’s part of it.”
“Do you have someone now?”
He glanced over his shoulder at the doorway, which remained empty, and said, “Yes.”
“Could I have her name and address?”
“She lives in Washington,” he said.
“That’s all right,”
“She’s married.”
“Then I’ll use discretion.”
Reluctantly he gave me the name and address. When I asked him who might verify this relationship, he even more reluctantly gave me the name of a motel owner in Chevy Chase, a man who was a personal friend of the woman involved and more recently a personal friend of Hogan’s.
After writing it all down, I said, “I take it this is where you left from Wednesday night.”
“Right.”
“And these two people will verify the time of your leaving.”
“If it’s necessary,” he said coldly.
“It may not be,” I said. “Is Mrs. Hogan at home?”
“No, she’s at a meeting.” He cocked his head toward the sound of chamber music and said, “My daughter. Fifteen years old. They talk about the kind of music kids listen to, but they forget there’s all kinds of kids.” He showed his first smile since coming in here, a display of parental pride, and said, “Isn’t that something? Picked it up by herself. I’ve got a tin ear.”
I got to my feet. “Thank you,” I said. “I guess that’s all I need for now.”
“Glad to help,” he said, rising. “If you’ll just try to be a little cautious how you ask questions in Washington…”
I promised I would be extremely cautious, and we left.
fourteen
WE CROSSED THE TRIBOROUGH Bridge into Queens and headed east, sitting in the back of yet another cab. Our next interview was to be with a man named Joseph Lydon, occupation realtor, who lived in a high-rise apartment building in the Corona section of Queens, not far from the 108th Street exit of the Long Island Expressway.
On the way, Kerrigan told me something about Lydon, the son of a now-dead former associate of Ernie Rembek’s. The father, Ralph Lydon, had turned his profits from the corporation into real estate, eventually building up a large realty concern, with properties of various kinds in Queens and Brooklyn, ranging from luxury apartment buildings like the one in which Joseph Lydon now lived to slum tenements in areas like Bushwick. Like Louis Hogan, Joseph Lydon’s association with Ernie Rembek was now mostly social, although for a realtor, too, there were those occasions when one could use the help of the corporation or offer help of one’s own. A number of corporation businesses leased properties from Joseph Lydon’s firm, and there were other links between them.
The apartment building, when we got to it, proved to be one of the mammoth new city-within-a-city affairs, three different buildings rising up like brick Ritz Cracker boxes on the same broad landscaped plot of land, with playgrounds and a first-floor nursery school, underground garages, a supermarket on the premises, and a synagogue and chapel in the basements.
Lydon lived in the top-floor penthouse of the main building. We rang the bell downstairs and closed-circuit television showed our faces to the man who answered in the Lydon apartment. His metallic voice came from the grid to our left, asking us who we were. We identified ourselves, the voice told us someone would be right down to get us and bring us up, and the front door buzzed to let us in.
I soon found out why we had to be escorted from the lobby; the elevator had no button to push for the penthouse floor. Instead, there was a keyhole above the line of buttons, discreetly marked PH. Putting the right key in it and making a half-turn sent the elevator up to the top.
The man who came down to get us was short, graying, stooped, and diffident, acting toward us as though our recommendations would either keep him his job or cost it, and as though he’d been warned that our grading was usually severe. He bowed and scraped us into the elevator, turned the key, pocketed it, and faced front in nervous silence all the way up, seeming to wish he could somehow become invisible, thereby being even more inoffensive.
At the top, the elevator opened onto a red-carpeted foyer, discreetly furnished, across which our guide discreetly led us and through an archway into a large long living room dominated by its windows.
I suppose the best thing to say for the view was that it was comprehensive. From here one could see a long way out across Queens, with the raw ground of new apartment building construction close to hand, the gray scar of the Long Island Expressway in the middle distance, and the squat seedy houses of Queens—one and two-family, packed in nearly wall to wall—stretching away toward the horizon like a cruel parody of Faust’s dream. Knowing that I too lived out there somewhere, even though too far away to be seen from here, made me suddenly embarrassed and uneasy in a way I had never known before. I turned away quickly from the view and concentrated my attention on the man who owned it.
Joseph Lydon was about thirty, short and a bit stocky, expensively dressed, holding a drink in one hand and affecting an air of easy negligence that I found particularly irritating. He had the pudgy cheeks and petulant mouth of a man who began life as a spoiled brat and had never been given any reason to change. His eyes had the snotty quality one sees in those undergraduate collegians who instigate trouble that others will eventually be caught for.
He said to me, “Ernie Rembek told me about you. You’re the first ex-cop I ever saw. Is it like being a defrocked priest?” He hadn’t greeted Kerrigan at all, and didn’t offer either of us a drink.
I sat down, unasked, crossed my legs, and said, “When was the first time you met Rita Castle?”
“Well, well,” he said, “no wasted motion with you, eh? Right to the point.”
“I don’t have a great deal of time to spare with you,” I said.
“Then we must hurry right along,” he said, and sat down facing me. “What was the question again?”
“When was the first time you met Rita Castle?”
“Let me see—” He appeared to think. “About three weeks ago,” he said.
I looked at Kerrigan, and back at Lydon. “Three weeks ago? That was the first time you ever met Rita Castle?”
“Oh, first time! I thought you said last time!” He seemed to think his mistake was funny.
“If you’ll listen to me carefully, Lydon,” I said, “we’ll be able to do this faster.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” he said, and allowed the mask of general snottiness to slip long enough to show me I’d gotten to him. He didn’t like me at all, and that was very good. He said, “The first time I met Rita was, I suppose, a year and a half ago.”
“Where?”
“Here. Ernie brought her to a little party here.”
I glanced at Kerrigan. “He wasn’t at the famous Donner party?”
It was Lydon himself who answered, saying with a laugh, “Frank Donner? Go to one of those wakes at his place? Thank you, but no thank you.”
“You weren’t invited or you just didn’t go?”
“Frank Donner and I seldom see one another. We don’t have much in common.”
“What about this last time you saw Rita Castle? Three weeks ago, you said? Where was that?”
“At her place. There was a show that some of us had money in, we went to the opening night, Ernie gave a little private party afterwards at her apartment.”
“Who else was there?”
He shrugged. “A few of the regulars. Lou Hogan and Fritz Kenn and Jack Harper and Eustace
Canfield, maybe a couple more.”
Kenn and Harper were names with alibis from the original list, and so was Canfield, the attorney. I said, “Were you mostly with women?”
He laughed sardonically. “Are you kidding? I said it was the theater, an opening night. It was wifey time. Even Lou brought his beast along.”
“You’re married, aren’t you?”
His smile got more bitter. “You mean it shows?”
“On the report,” I told him, “it said you spent Wednesday night with your mistress. Single men don’t usually speak of their women friends as mistresses.”
“Elementary, my dear Watson!” he said mockingly, and turned to Kerrigan, saying, “You see? Ernie’s hired a regular Sherlock Holmes!”
I said, “Is your wife here?”
“No,” he said bluntly. “I don’t know where she is. I never do. If you want to talk to her, I’ll leave her a note. She may get in touch with you or she may not.”
“That won’t be necessary,” I said. “At least, not right now. What was your opinion of Rita Castle?”
“Rita?” He shrugged elaborately. “Just another pony,” he said. “Neat in her habits, minded her own business. I doubt we ever exchanged more than half a dozen words.”
“She never…flirted with you? Just in fun.”
“Not a bit,” he said. “Maybe with other men, I wouldn’t know about that, but never with me.”
“How frequently would you say you saw her?”
“I suppose…once a month, maybe a little less. At parties, that’s all. I never ran into her in town or anything.”
“I see.” I got to my feet. “Thank you for your time.” I started for the elevator, and Kerrigan fell into step beside me.
Lydon trailed after us, saying in some confusion, “Is that it? Nothing else you want to know?”
“Maybe later on,” I said casually, over my shoulder. We went out to the red-carpeted foyer and I pushed the button for the elevator.
“It’s all so abrupt,” said Lydon, standing nervously beside us, fidgeting from one foot to the other. His earlier sardonic manner had suddenly washed away without a trace. “You come in, you go out, I didn’t even get to offer you a drink.”
Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death Page 8
