“Huh. Sure, any second now.”
“I’m in the coffee house,” I said. “Downstairs from your apartment. Could you come over? I’ll buy you a cup of coffee, we’ll talk for a few minutes.”
“I’m not sure.”
“There’s no trouble for you in this, Ted, I guarantee it.”
“You’re in the coffee house?” he asked, and I knew what he was thinking. That I was already here, that all I had to do was hang around until he came home.
“I’m right here,” I said.
“All right,” he said. “Twenty minutes.”
“Thanks, Ted.”
I hung up and thanked the woman and ordered a cup of coffee. I sat at the table way at the back and drank my coffee and waited.
It took him only fifteen minutes, and he brought the girl with him. She looked older than she’d sounded on the phone, but my guess was that the voice was more accurate than the face.
I introduced myself by name—Mitch Tobin, the informal way—and Quigley introduced the girl as Robin. I said, “Ted, for just a few minutes I want to talk to you by yourself. Would Robin mind waiting for us, having a cup of coffee at another table?”
She answered for herself, saying, “Fine by me, pal,” in an impudent manner, and swivel-hipped away to a table far down the long room. Both she and Quigley were dressed in loafers and dungarees and bulky sweaters. His hair was long and hers was much longer. He had a scraggly beard with blotches of skin showing through, as though he’d just recently gotten over a lingering sickness. Beards have a strange reverse effect these days; at first glance they make their wearer look older than he is, but at second glance the wearer looks like someone much younger than he is who is trying to look much older. As a result Ted Quigley, who was probably twenty-five or -six, looked like an eighteen-year-old wearing a beard in order to look thirty.
We three were the only customers in the long narrow room at the moment, and I could see the woman in charge being unhappy that what was obviously one group of people had split into two camps at opposite ends of the room. She came over reluctantly at my signal, and was not cheered by my order of three cups of coffee.
Quigley said, “Robin likes tea. Ceylon Breakfast. I’ll take espresso.”
The woman nodded and said to me, “Another cup of American?”
“Yes, thank you.”
She went away, and Quigley said to me, “I’ve been thinking about this on the way over, and I think you’re up to something. You’ve got some kind of racket, that’s what I think. And the only reason I’m here is, I’m curious what your racket is.”
I said, “Ernie Rembek is upset at what happened to Rita. I’m an ex-cop, he hired me to help find out who killed her.”
“What are you, some kind of Sam Spade?”
“You mean, a private detective? No. I have no license, no official position at all. I’m working for Rembek as a private citizen.”
“But you’re out to get the killer,” he said, being sardonic. “You’re doing the Humphrey Bogart bit.”
“If you say so.”
He shook his head “You’re wrong for it,” he said. “You’re overweight. The face is all wrong. You look more like a football coach.”
I smiled, in spite of myself. “Not that bad, I hope.”
“You’re more the Barton MacLane type,” he said.
I said, “It’s too bad those movies weren’t that good the first time around. My friends and I didn’t memorize any of them. You used to go with Rita Castle, didn’t you?”
Stung, he said, “What do you mean, go with her?”
I nodded toward Robin, at the front table. “You’re going with her now, aren’t you?”
“I’m sleeping with her, if that’s what you mean.”
I looked at him in real amazement. “Are you trying to shock me? Really?”
He shrugged, beginning to be uncomfortable. “It’s up to you,” he said.
“If you think premarital sex is shocking,” I said, “why don’t you stop it? It’s bad enough to be a prude, you don’t have to be a hypocrite, too.”
“All right,” he said, “all right, that’s enough of that. Never mind my sex life.”
“You used to sleep with Rita Castle, didn’t you? That’s the way you want me to say it, right?”
He spread his hands. “All right,” he said. “You can lay off.”
“You’re done? No more movies, no more shockers?”
“I’m done,” he said. He managed an uncertain smile. “I just got up,” he said, “I’m not with it yet. Yeah, I used to sleep with Rita.”
“That was two years ago?”
“More like two weeks ago,” he said.
“What was that?”
“She used to come down to see me every once in a while,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder, then leaned close across the table and said, “Robin doesn’t know about it.”
“It looks like nobody knew about it.”
“You mean Rembek? You bet he didn’t know about it.” Quigley gave a smug grin and said, “He thought he was gonna marry her.”
“Marry? Are you sure?”
“That’s what she told me. She said after she and Rembek got married we’d be able to spend more time together because men don’t watch their wives as close as they watch their mistresses.”
“Rembek already has a wife.”
He waved a hand negligently. “I suppose he was gonna divorce her. Rita never said.”
“And Rita was going to go through with the marriage?”
“She said so.”
“What does that mean?”
He thought about his answer for a while, drumming his fingernails on the table top. Finally he said, “It was the gilded-cage bit. Rembek was rich and important, he could do a lot for her. It was great when he was just paying the rent, and she could still come down sometimes and see her old friends, and she had lots of cash and good clothes and the whole bit. But then Rembek decided he was in love with her and he wanted to marry her, and she didn’t want to give up all the good stuff, so she said yes. But I don’t know that she would have gone through with it.”
“You think she might have run out?”
“Isn’t that what she did?”
“How much do you know about what happened to her?”
“What I read in the paper.”
“Yes, but what was that?”
He shrugged, indicating that he didn’t see the point of the question but was willing to answer it. “It said she was killed in a motel in Pennsylvania. I don’t remember where.”
“Is that all?”
“What else? It didn’t say who did it, but it didn’t have to.”
“You mean you know?”
“It looks to me like she took off, and Rembek went after her and killed her. Isn’t that how it looks to you?”
“I’m not sure. Why are you telling me this?”
“Why not?”
“I told you I’m working for Rembek.”
“So what? I’m no threat to Mister Ernest Rembek, so it doesn’t matter what I think. What am I going to do, go to the cops?”
“Maybe.”
“With what? What proof? Besides, I’m me and he’s him. What’s my chances of getting the cops to pick him up on my say-so?”
“None,” I said. “But up to now he doesn’t know about Rita’s continuing to see you. At least, I don’t think he does.”
“He’s already killed her. It’s a dead issue, excuse the pun. He wouldn’t waste his time on me now. The only thing I can’t figure out is why he’d hire anybody to find the killer. Is that really what you’re supposed to do?”
“That’s what he hired me for.”
He said, “To find the killer, or to find a killer?”
“I’m not supposed to frame anybody, if that’s what you’re driving at.”
“That’s where I’m driving,” he said. “But I’ll tell you someplace I didn’t drive, and that’s Pennsylvania on Wednesday night. I’m one hundred percent co
vered. So if what you’re down here for is to fit me for the box, forget it.”
“How do you know you’re covered?”
“I was at a kind of party, it lasted all night.”
“What do you mean, a kind of party?”
“Like I said.”
“You mean a pot party?”
He grinned. “Boy, you are old. How were things at Valley Forge?”
“Cold,” I said. “But why are you telling me all these things?”
“I already explained that.”
“No you didn’t. You told me why it didn’t matter whether you talked or not, but you didn’t say why you chose to talk.”
He took his time with his answer to this one, too, drumming the table top some more and watching his fingers move. When at last he did speak he kept on watching his fingers. He said, “Rita and I had a thing. You know? Sex was a lot of it, what the hell, we both had it better with each other than with anybody else. Anybody else. But that wasn’t the whole thing. We were…involved, you know? Hung up on each other.”
I said, “If it’s that tough to say you loved her, just move on. I’ve got the idea.”
He snuck a quick look at my face, then studied his fingers again. “Whatever you want to call it,” he said. “It wasn’t over, for either one of us. But she needed…more. Down here, this was no way for her, she didn’t dig this kind of life at all. Cockroaches and all this garbage, poor all the goddamn time, she figured later for that. And I couldn’t do it, you know? I couldn’t give her all that other stuff.”
He looked directly at me now, pleading in a way to be understood. “I’m still me,” he said. “You know what I mean? No matter how much I was hung on Rita, I’m still who I am, I’ve still got to work things out my own way. Right?”
“You mean, you couldn’t turn yourself around into somebody who made a lot of money.”
“Boy, I thought about it, I really thought about it. I worked out schemes, I went for job interviews, I did this, I did that, but I just couldn’t cut it. I got okayed on some of those jobs, ten, twelve grand a year, and I just couldn’t do the bit. I never showed up for the first day, not once.” He smiled painfully. “Man, I’m blackballed in every employment agency in town. They won’t send me anywhere.” Then he shrugged and said, “Besides, ten grand a year wouldn’t do it. Not the way Rita wanted to live. In the rack Rembek couldn’t compete at all, but how much time can you spend in the rack?”
“All right,” I said. “I’ve got the picture. But you were going to tell me why you’re giving it to me.”
“Because maybe you’re straight,” he said. “Maybe you are out to find out who killed her.”
“And you want him found.”
“You bet your life.”
“Well,” I said, “I am straight. But that doesn’t help much. Because Ernie Rembek didn’t kill Rita.”
He looked at me with mistrust and scorn. “Is that right?”
“He’s covered just as much as you are. I’ve already checked him out.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Why should either of us believe the other? You’re the first one to say to me anything about Rembek planning to marry Rita. Why didn’t he tell me himself?”
“Ask him.”
“I’m asking you. Is this marriage something you stuck in for effect, because you hate Rembek?”
He was about to give me an angry answer, and reconsidered. “No,” he said. “I see what you mean, but no. It’s what Rita told me, and that’s straight.”
“Then maybe she was lying. Did she often?”
“That kind of lie? No. What’s the point of it?”
“If not that kind of lie, what kind did she tell?”
“She had Rembek convinced she always had a six-day period.” He grinned at the thought and said, “Man, that would have been a marriage. That marriage would have gone down in history, man.”
“In other words, she told lies when they had some use.”
“Strictly.”
“Maybe she wanted you to get on the stick and take one of those ten-grand jobs.”
“Who, me? No, man, that isn’t the way Rita and I had it. She knew who I was and I knew who she was. You know who paid my rent the last two years?”
“Rita?”
“That’s one way to look at it. I figure Mister Ernest Rembek paid it.”
“How often did she come down to see you?”
“I don’t know, maybe once a month, sometimes more. She couldn’t get away very much.”
“How did she travel?”
“By cab, what else?”
“Was there anybody else she visited?”
“Well, we had friends down—Oh. You mean, like sex?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head. “That isn’t what she was. Don’t get Rita wrong, mister, she wasn’t a whore.”
“I already know that. So there were two men in her life, you and Rembek, and that was it.”
“Definitely.”
“Who did she go with—do you mind the phrase?”
“Okay,” he said, grinning. “Okay, you win.”
“Fine. Who did she go with before you?”
“Some guy named, uh, Bob something. Like Kearny, Kellogg, some name like that.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“Out on the Coast someplace. He went out to LA years ago, he’s an actor, he was in a TV series out there.”
“In other words, he’s long since out of Rita’s life.”
“Oh, sure. He was out of her life when I came in.”
“All right.” I offered him a cigarette, which he refused, then lit one for myself. There was no ashtray around, so I had to drop the match on the floor. Then I said, “How dedicated was Rita to her career as an actress?”
“She was big on it,” he said. “Really hipped on it. I mean, once Rembek came along she didn’t have to do the bit any more, but she still did.”
I said, “So far as you’ve told me, you were important to her, Rembek was important to her because of the money and influence he could give her, and now you say acting was important to her.”
He nodded. “Right. That’s got her down, those were the three.”
“Which was most important?”
“No telling,” he said. “Sometimes, me. Sometimes she’d call me up, she couldn’t get away and she wanted me bad, and she’d talk me halfway up the wall. Sometimes there wasn’t anything in the world but Mister Ernest Rembek and all the good things he could do for her. And if she had a part in something, some play or something on television, the whole world could go to hell, she wasn’t interested. I can remember trying to get her into bed sometimes when she’d want to study lines or like that, she’d cut me to pieces.”
I said, “She wouldn’t have been able to treat Rembek that way.”
“She could get around him,” he said. “She had him pretty well under control.”
I said, “If she was really running away from Rembek, she was also running away from any kind of acting career, because Rembek would have been looking for her.”
He shrugged. “If that’s what she did, that’s what she did.”
I said, “Almost nothing you’ve told me fits in with what I’ve already got.”
“I told you nothing but the truth,” he said.
“I believe you, that’s the funny part of it. But it could still be that you didn’t know Rita as well as you think. Knowing a woman’s body doesn’t necessarily mean you know her mind.”
“I knew Rita,” he said. “I’m sure of that much.”
“Why would she run away from an acting career?”
“I don’t know. Something else came along, maybe.”
“Another man?”
He didn’t like the thought, but he was feeling some sort of compulsion to be honest with me. He said, “Maybe. In the first flush, maybe. A lot of things seem possible when you’re just starting.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
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“About three weeks ago. Rembek took her to some kind of play opening and a party afterwards. He got stinko and passed out at her place and she quick came down to spend a couple hours with me.”
“What about Robin?”
“I keep my own place. Anyway, I did.”
“You mean you don’t any more?”
“Not after the first of the month, man. Nobody’s around to pay the rent any more. Besides, there’s no reason to have my own place now. I’m moving in with Robin.”
I said, “Did she say anything to you about a new man she’d met, anybody she was having an affair with or thinking about having an affair with?”
“No, sir, not a one.”
“Would she have?”
“I think so. We didn’t have sexual secrets from each other.”
“Did you ever go up to see her at her place?”
“Not me. The doorman up there would have passed the word on to Rembek.”
I said, “Some of the people I’ve talked to described her as a dumb bunny. What do you say about that?”
He smiled in reminiscent pleasure, saying, “Yeah, I know about that. That was a put-on, you know? Strictly a put-on for the squares.”
“Did she put Rembek on that way?”
“Sure. That was the whole basis she had going with him. She could run circles around him and he never knew it.” He chuckled and shook his head, “What a marriage that would have been!”
“Can you think of any reason she might have lied to you about marrying Rembek?”
“No. Why should she lie?”
“That’s what I want to know. All right, thank you, I guess that’s it.”
As I was saying that, along came the woman proprietor with our coffee and tea, explaining it had taken so long because she’d had to boil the water, whatever that meant. I offered to pay her, for my earlier coffee and this new round, and the bill was two dollars. I paid it, and left a quarter tip.
Ted Quigley had seen me react to the bill—two dollars for three coffees and a tea was a little high—and grinned, saying, “You pay for the atmosphere in here, man.”
“I didn’t realize I’d ordered atmosphere. All right, thanks again.”
I got to my feet, leaving the new coffee undrunk, and Quigley looked up at me, saying, “I wonder if you could do me a favor.”
“If I can.”
Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death Page 12
