“Sunday. I had to go to Baltimore over Sunday night to a meeting, so when I left she went up to—she left the same time I did. Let’s get off this, it doesn’t have any connection.”
“Your wife didn’t know Rita Castle?”
“Of course not.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. I told you before how I feel about my wife. I wouldn’t hurt her with a thing like that.”
“Her brother wouldn’t tell her?”
“Frank Donner? Definitely not. He knows how things are.”
“All right. The other thing is George Lewis, your friend on the Coast.”
“What about him?”
“He knew Rita. Let’s make sure he was actually out on the Coast on Wednesday night.”
“Can do. Anything else?”
“Not now.”
We finished our drinks and Rembek rang for the football player to show us out, he himself staying behind in his club-room.
At the entrance foyer, I stopped to say to the football player, “What time did Mister Rembek get back Wednesday night?”
He looked surprised, then turned silently to Kerrigan, obviously wanting clearance from him before answering me. Kerrigan frowned at me, hesitating, and then nodded briefly. The football player said, “About four o’clock, sir.”
“Thanks.”
Kerrigan said to him, “There’s no point worrying Ernie about having told us that. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
We left the apartment and rang for the elevator. Kerrigan didn’t speak again until we were in the elevator and on our way down. Then he said, “What made you ask him that?”
“I had the feeling Rembek was lying.”
“Why?”
“He was too cheerful about not having verification. If the story was straight he would have said he didn’t have any verification but his bodyguard.”
Kerrigan said, carefully, “Let me get this straight. You think he did do it? Like your cop friend said?”
“No. I think he had another reason for lying. You can come with me and help me try to prove it.”
“Sure.”
We walked the two blocks to Rita Castle’s apartment building. When we’d first gone there I’d seen that the doorman recognized Kerrigan and seemed to understand the essence of his relationship with Rembek, so now I told Kerrigan to explain to the doorman it was okay to answer my questions. He said, “I don’t get it, but all right.”
We talked briefly with the doorman, Kerrigan first giving him a capsule explanation, sufficient to get him to talk without actually telling him anything. Then I said, “The early part of the week, Mister Rembek spent a lot of time here by himself, didn’t he?”
“Yes, sir,” he said. He kept blinking the whole time we talked, more than half convinced he was going to get into trouble in this situation no matter which way he went.
I said, “Did he come here Wednesday night?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What time did he get here?”
“About eleven o’clock.”
“And what time did he leave?”
“I guess around four.”
“You guess?”
“Around four. Maybe five of.”
“Thanks,” I said.
We went back out on the sidewalk, and Kerrigan said, “I don’t get it.”
“Ernie Rembek is a more emotional man than he wants anybody to know. After Rita left him, he kept going back to her apartment, just sitting there, thinking about her.”
“You mean, waiting for her to come back?”
“Not really. Just thinking about her, remembering her. Walking around the apartment, being very emotional all by himself. Now he’s embarrassed about it and ashamed of it and he doesn’t want anybody to know about it.”
“I never would have thought it of Ernie,” Kerrigan said.
“That’s why,” I said, and a limousine stopped at the curb and Ernie Rembek hopped out
He came angrily over the sidewalk to me, saying, “I thought I’d catch up with you here. What’s the idea pumping my man?”
“You were obscuring the issue with a useless lie,” I said. “I had to clear it out of the way before I could go any further.”
“You’re wasting time,” he started; and I interrupted him, saying, “No, you’re wasting time. My time. If you want me to do my best, tell me the truth when I ask you a question.”
He started to say something, then changed his mind. He turned to Kerrigan and said, “Goodnight, Roger.”
Kerrigan seemed surprised, but he recovered well. “Right. See you, Ernie.” He said to me, “What time do we start tomorrow?”
“I don’t know yet. Call me at the office around ten.”
“Will do.”
He went away down the street. When he was out of earshot, Rembek said to me, “All right, you’re right. I didn’t think it made any difference where I was, I knew I didn’t do anything to Rita.”
“But I have to know it.”
“Okay. Are you satisfied now?”
“Yes.” I saw the doorman looking out the glass doors at us, a worried expression on his face. I said, “Why not go tell him everything’s okay? He’s pretty upset.”
“Right. Then can I give you a lift?”
“To the subway.”
“Will do.”
We did no more talking about his whereabouts Wednesday night.
seventeen
THE SOUND OF RAIN woke me before seven on Saturday morning. I hurried into my clothes and went out back to cover the hole with tarpaulins. From now on I would have to put the first layer or two of concrete block down as I went along, so rain wouldn’t have a chance to cause cave-ins or alter the dimensions of the hole. Maybe, if the rain let up later on, I could put the blocks down in the first part this afternoon.
I didn’t think of the job until later on, when I was sitting in the kitchen drinking my first cup of coffee and watching Kate, in her robe, moving back and forth as she readied breakfast. Then it occurred to me that Kate wouldn’t be going to work today because I had become the breadwinner around here again.
The thought didn’t cheer me. In the course of moving around Ernie Rembek’s world yesterday I had gradually built up a professional enthusiasm for the task at hand, but the enthusiasm hadn’t survived until this morning. I wanted to fill my attention with the wall, with the problems caused by rain, and instead I was being dragged away into this other thing, this mean and petty shuffling through degraded lives in a pointless quest for the slayer of a whore. What did I care about Rita Castle? What did I care about anything?
I even toyed with the notion of sending Ernie Rembek back his five thousand dollars—I could telegraph it to him, I wouldn’t even have to go to Manhattan—but the presence of Kate, here in the kitchen with me, made it impossible. Both because my quitting would mean she would have to go to work herself today after all, and because she was putting so much hope into the beneficial results she was hoping this Rembek job would bring.
So I tried to turn my attention to the job, and with some difficulty I did manage to do some thinking about it, to recall to mind the five suspects I had seen last night. Were any of them at all likely?
Einhorn first. He had run away, but I took that to be more a sign of character than of guilt. He was a young man who would run away from anything, which would most likely include overtures from Rita Castle. He was unlikely.
Hogan, the one who admitted to having “inspected” Rita when she annoyed him. His character too seemed wrong for the man I was after, too self-contained, too machined, too brisk and neat. I visualized the killer as a sloppier man, a man whose emotional and/or financial sloppiness had finally resolved themselves in the ultimate sloppiness of murder.
Lydon, the real-estate man with the view. He seemed sloppy enough, but was unlikely from the other direction. I could imagine Rita Castle going off with either Einhorn or Hogan—the first because she could dominate him and the second because he
could dominate her—but I couldn’t see at all where she would have gone off with Lydon. Besides, if money were the killer’s object—and it did seem to have been so—Lydon’s position was surely such that he could get all the money he might need in less violent and dangerous ways.
Donner, family man, Rembek’s brother-in-law. I had trouble thinking about him. His marriage seemed too good to be true, but wasn’t that merely special pleading, my own personal requirements coloring my perspective? Until I found definite evidence about Frank Donner one way or the other, I would merely keep his name on the list, active but not very.
Kerrigan. So far, I thought him the likeliest. He had the youth and style to attract a Rita Castle, he gave indications of having the ruthlessness necessary to work out this sort of plot for money, and he apparently had no current liaison with a woman, a point I would have to check on. Phase two, then, should probably concentrate on Kerrigan.
By quarter after nine I’d thought myself back into the case again, however lukewarmly, and I went to the phone to call the office and tell Mickey Hansel I’d be in shortly after ten, and to give him a message to pass on to Kerrigan: Please come into the office at eleven.
But the phone rang three times without an answer, and then was abruptly replaced by the voice of an operator, asking me what number I was calling. I told her, and she said that number was temporarily disconnected, out of order, she couldn’t say exactly how long it would be until service was resumed. I thanked her and hung up and the phone immediately rang.
It was Ernie Rembek. “Trouble,” he said.
“What kind of trouble?”
“Your office just blew up.”
“What?”
“I just got a call from the building. It happened ten minutes ago. Hansel was in there. Did you have some kind of dynamite around or something?”
“Of course not. How is Hansel?”
“How would he be? He’s dead.”
I said, “Our man thinks I’m closer to him than I am.”
“You aren’t holding out on me?”
“No.”
“Can you come in here right away?”
“Not until I get my family moved somewhere safe.”
“All right. Naturally.”
“Can you outfit me with a gun?”
“No problem.”
“Hip holster, that’s what I’m used to.”
“You’ll get regular police issue,” he promised.
“Good.”
“We might have trouble getting you a permit, that’s the only thing.”
“I’ll carry it without, if I have to.”
“That’s the way,” he said. “How long before you get here?”
“I don’t know. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Fortunately it was Saturday and Bill wasn’t in school. I went upstairs to where Kate was making the beds and told her what had happened and that it would be best if she and Bill moved out of the house for a while. She said, “Mitch, should you get out of the whole thing?”
“It’s too late, he’s already after me. Start packing, I’ll call Bill in.”
“Where should we go?”
“How about Grace?” I said, meaning her sister out on Long Island, in Patchogue.
“I’ll call her,” she said.
Bill was in a garage across the street, working with a neighbor boy on a broken bicycle chain. I called him in and told him he and his mother would be going to visit Uncle Alfred and Aunt Grace for a while. He made the sour face appropriate to the occasion and said, “How come?”
I said, “Because the job I’m on is getting dangerous. I want you to keep an eye out and protect your mother.”
A little more pep talk along the same line got him into the proper mood, and he went upstairs to pack just as the phone started ringing again.
This time it was Marty Kengelberg, my old friend from Homicide. He said, “Good, I got you at home. Stick around there, will you, Mitch?”
“What for?”
“Fred and I want to have a talk with you.”
“Could you make it soon? I’m having kind of a busy day.”
“So are we, Mitch. We’ll get there as soon as we can.”
I hung up and helped Kate and Bill carry their luggage out to the car. Kate stood with me in the front hallway a minute. We’d never been very much on expressing our feelings to one another, and in the rare moments like this one it was a handicap. But Kate said it all by simply reaching up and touching her fingertips to the side of my face.
“Nothing will happen,” I promised her. I kissed her and she went out to the car in the rain and drove away.
I called Rembek back and told him two detectives from Homicide were coming to see me, so I’d be later than I thought. Then I said, “Could they be coming because of this explosion?”
“How do I know?”
“Under what name was that office set up?”
“Not yours.”
“All right. I’ll get into town as soon as I can.”
Then there was nothing to do but wait. When at last the doorbell rang, I looked at my watch and it was ten minutes past eleven.
Marty had the same partner with him this time, the disbeliever named Fred James. They shrugged out of their raincoats, I invited them into the living room, and Marty said, “Have you heard about the explosion?”
So that was that. I said, “Yes. How do you know about the connection?”
“What difference does it make?”
“One, you were following me. Two, you were tipped.”
Marty shrugged. “We were following you.”
“So you have a lot to talk to me about.”
“Beginning with the explosion.”
“Right.” I recrossed my legs the other way and said, “Ernie Rembek just called and told me. He said the explosion happened, he said a guy named Mickey Hansel was killed in it. That’s all he said.”
“Do you know this Mickey Hansel?”
“Yes. Rembek gave him to me yesterday to be my file clerk. He had a key and was supposed to get to the office at nine this morning, do some filing I left for him, and take messages.”
Fred James said, “He was five minutes late.”
“Then he had an five extra minutes to live, didn’t he?”
Marty said, “What kind of explosive did you have in there?”
“Come on, Marty.”
“You mean you didn’t have any?”
“No. I didn’t have any.”
“So what do you think it was, a booby trap?”
“I suppose so.”
“Aimed at you.”
“Seems that way.”
Marty abruptly looked around and said, “Where’s Kate?”
“Gone to visit her sister a few days.”
They looked at each other, and Fred James said to me, “Looks as though you found something out.”
“It looks that way,” I agreed. “But if I did, I don’t know what it is.”
Marty frowned at me. “You don’t have a lead?”
“Not a one. I’ve got a long list of suspects, that’s all.”
“You went to see four people last night,” he said, “not counting Rembek. We want their names and what they told you.”
I shook my head. “No, Marty. That isn’t the deal.”
“It is now. There’s been a second murder, and this one’s in our jurisdiction.”
“The answer is no.”
Fred James said, using my first name without the right to do so, “Come on, Mitch, be sensible. You’ve been a cop, you know what we can do if you give us a bad time. You want to spend the next three weeks in the Tombs as a material witness?”
“Three hours, you mean,” I said. “People with access to Ernie Rembek’s lawyers never spend three weeks in the Tombs.”
Marty said, “We aren’t trying to threaten you, Mitch.”
“Maybe you aren’t. Your partner was.”
Fred James said, “It looks like I just rub you the w
rong way, Mitch. I’m sorry about that.”
“So am I,” I said.
Marty said, “Why do you want to hold out on us, Mitch?”
“I don’t want to spoil my effectiveness. If you keep showing up where I’ve just been, knowing everything that was said to me, Rembek is going to tell his people to stop answering me.”
Marty knew that was true, and his knowledge showed in his face. Nevertheless he said, “It just doesn’t feel right, Mitch, you holding out. You know we’d be careful how we used what you told us.”
“I don’t know that at all. I still know how the cop’s mind works, Marty, and I know a promise to somebody on the other side of the fence is just tactics.”
“Are you on the other side of the fence?”
“I’m working for Ernie Rembek right now.”
“Frankly, Mitch,” Fred James said, “that’s what sticks in my craw. You know? It sticks in my craw.”
“Maybe you’ll choke on it, Fred,” I said.
Marty said, hurriedly, “Okay, Mitch, don’t get your back up. Fred doesn’t know you as good as I do, that’s all.”
“You think you know me, Marty? Come along and listen.”
They followed me out to the hall, where I picked up the phone and called Ernie Rembek again. When he came on the line I said, “Those two detectives I told you about are here. They tell me they had me followed all day yesterday. They know the addresses I went to last night, but they don’t know for sure yet who I visited in each place.”
Rembek said, “They’re asking you?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“I’m not telling.”
“Good,” he said.
“The only problem is,” I said, “if they’re following me around I can’t do the job right. They won’t have that much trouble finding the right tenant in each of those buildings, and then they’ll go in asking questions and making trouble. You don’t want that happening everywhere I go.”
Rembek said, “You’re goddamn right I don’t.”
“So I’ve got to quit,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I’m hamstrung. If you want me to send the money back, I’ll—”
I was interrupted simultaneously by Rembek and Marty, Rembek shouting, “What the hell—” and Marty saying urgently, “Wait a minute! Mitch, listen! Wait a minute!”
Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death Page 10
