Stained Glass

by Ralph McInerny

  He wakened to a darkened room, immediately shut his eyes against the dark, and remembered where he was. A party seemed to be raging outside his room. He sat up and spent minutes trying to turn on the bedside lamp, hunting around the bulb for the switch. The switch was in the base of the lamp. A very low wattage bulb that created shadows in the room. He twisted his watch into view. He had been asleep three hours. He could fall asleep again, but he was hungry. He swung his feet off the bed, listening to the hoots and shouts outside. In order to get something to eat, he would have to run the gamut of those yokels. He couldn’t do it.

  The small refrigerator held little bottles of wine, liquor, soft drinks, junk food, chips, peanuts, candy bars. His stomach rumbled. He snatched a bottle of wine and a bag of chips.

  With a struggle he freed a plastic cup from its plastic container. Wine gurgled into the cup. He tore open a bag of chips and began to thrust them into his mouth to quiet his stomach. Washing them down with wine, he remembered Angelo Menotti serving him a glass of bourbon. He thought of the artist’s house, secluded, safe. Who would look for him there? If those barbarians ever got off the porch, he would get out of this place and head for Peoria.

  Cheered by the thought, he sat on the bed and took up the television controls. The set leapt into life. News. An earnest couple trading inane remarks, shuffling papers as they read from the teleprompters. Then, incredibly, his own face appeared on the screen. He turned up the sound and learned that Carl Borloff, art historian, was being sought by the police. The worst was yet to be. There was no mention of the money. He was being sought for the murder of Roberta Newman. Who? They were babbling about Argyle House and the murder of J. J. Rudolph. Horrified, Carl turned off the set, then immediately turned it on again. The babbling couple had given way to a weatherman. Once more he switched off the set.

  He had to get out of here.

  Out of there he got, passing unnoticed through the celebrating underclass. Did he dare drop by his place and get his computer? He decided to chance it.

  Part Four

  1

  After talking to Charles Ruskin for a few minutes in the pressroom, Rebecca got him out of there. The Jury Box, she decided, was definitely not the place to talk. When they came out of the courthouse, Rebecca was still thinking. It occurred to her that the obvious place was the Tribune building, where Tetzel was unlikely to show up.

  “You haven’t spoken to anyone else?” she asked Ruskin.

  “No other journalist.”

  “Come along.”

  What an impossibly good-looking man he was. So deferential, too. He insisted on calling her Miss Farmer, and she checked her impulse to correct him. How do you pronounce Ms., anyway? All the way to the Tribune, Rebecca was fearful that they would run into someone who might carry the word to Tetzel. She had been at work on the final installment of “Rebecca’s Travels,” episodes in her recent trip to Europe. She still hadn’t figured out a way to write up the red light district of Amsterdam that would get by Menteur. All those hookers, sitting in windows as men shuffled by staring sheepishly at them! What had happened to the Netherlands? As a girl, Rebecca had read a little book about Dutch twins, and everything had seemed sweet and neat with lots of cheese down there below sea level.

  “Have you ever been to Amsterdam?”

  “What’s in Amsterdam?”

  “You wouldn’t believe it.”

  She pushed through the doors of the Tribune building and led Ruskin to the elevator. The car was crowded, and as they rose Rebecca noticed all the women noticing Ruskin. She sought and found his hand so she could get him safely out of the car. When they entered the city room, she led him right back to Menteur’s office, past desks where envious women stared and males glared. Rebecca had her arm through Ruskin’s now and smiled up at him as if she were smitten. As if she weren’t. Maybe he liked older women.

  “Lyle,” she cried, bursting in on the editor, “this is Charles Ruskin, and I am about to write the most important story of my career.”

  Menteur, whose massive cynicism was both a professional hazard and an asset, looked at the hand Ruskin thrust at him. He took it, shook it, and looked at Rebecca. “This part of the Amsterdam piece?”

  “This is the solution to two recent and brutal murders.”

  “Have a seat.”

  “Charles was asked by Margaret Devere Ward to check out the background of a man who has been the recipient of a massive grant from the Devere Foundation.”

  “Carl Borloff,” Charles said. “I have indisputable evidence that he murdered Roberta Newman and a woman named Rudolph in Kenosha.”

  After listening for two minutes, Menteur held up a hand. “Don’t talk it, write it.”

  “I just wanted to give you a heads-up.”

  “Have you spoken with the police?” Menteur seemed to find it painful to look at Ruskin.

  “Not yet.”

  “That can wait. Get it written pronto, Rebecca. I’ll run it by legal, and we’ll go with it.”

  Rebecca commandeered a computer, sat Ruskin down, and said, “Let’s start with Roberta Newman.”

  Ruskin had a flair for narrative, there was no doubt of that. Rebecca could almost see the studio from which the artist must have been forcibly taken to her grisly death in the garage of Amy Gorman. “Why Amy Gorman?”

  “She’s a friend of Susan Devere.”

  “Why did Borloff create the impression that the body was Madeline Schutz’s?”

  Ruskin sat back and passed a hand over his gorgeous face. It was all Rebecca could do not to reach out and caress it herself. “We’re dealing with a pretty quirky guy here.”

  It was all speculation, of course, trying to figure out motive. He would rather stick to facts. “Bobby told me about him.”

  “Bobby?”

  “Newman. Roberta.”

  “You knew her?”

  “She asked me to sit for her.”

  “No wonder you know the studio so well.”

  “Bobby was doing some illustrating for Argyle House. Borloff was making arrangements with Argyle House to bring out an art book. The Menotti stained glass windows. The link is Devere money.”

  “We have to have some motive.”

  Ruskin studied her for a moment. “I said he was a quirky guy. Hookers ply their trade in the same building as the studio. According to Bobby, one day she came back to her studio, walked in, and …” Again he studied Rebecca. Her breath caught. This could be as lurid as Amsterdam.

  “They were going at it?” she prompted.

  He nodded. “Borloff had hung the girl up by her wrists and …”

  Rebecca gasped. Her sense of what she could make of this was expanding. “I want to see that studio. I want to go to Kenosha. I am going to write this thing in the first person as I am guided around the scenes of the crime by Charles Ruskin.”

  “There’s no need to mention my name.”

  “Not mention your name!”

  “Can’t I just be ‘sources’?”

  “Let’s not decide that now. Come on.”

  She stopped at Menteur’s office and told him how she wanted to do it. He thought about it. “He’ll go around with you?”

  “How else could I do it?”

  Rebecca hardly noticed the effect Ruskin was having as they hurried to the elevators. She was wrestling herself back into professional mode. This hunk was a source, not just the most gorgeous man she had ever been seen in public with.

  It was a part of the city Rebecca had never visited, though of course she had heard of it. It was called the Pits. In Amsterdam, she had fearlessly walked along the street where rows of windowed prostitutes refused to look at potential customers, instead preening themselves, looking alluring, sometimes with paraphernalia that suggested tastes like those Borloff apparently had. She was glad to have Charles as her escort here.

  “Of course, I came to know this district well.”

  “As a model?”

  He made a face. “I thought o
f it as having my portrait painted.”

  Rebecca hesitated when they got to the building. How much hands-on experience did she need to write the story?

  A skinny girl came out just as they were about to enter. “Charlie!” The girl glanced at Rebecca, widening her eyes in disbelief. “You new?”

  “Louellen,” Ruskin said.

  “Long time no see.”

  “I have been busy about my father’s business.”

  Rebecca’s Presbyterian girlhood surged up, and she thought it almost sacrilegious for him to use that phrase.

  “Is he a monkey? Well, gotta go,” the girl said.

  “Good luck.”

  “Call it that if you like.” Off she strutted, swinging her purse.

  “Another model,” Charles said.

  The climb to the top floor was punishing. Rebecca found herself panting, and she got a stitch in her side. Twice she called a halt in order to rest. Finally they were at the door of the studio. Yellow tape was drawn across it. Of course, this was a crime scene. She was filled with disappointment. To her surprise, Charles detached the tape, got out a key, unlocked the door, stood aside, and bowed. She opened the door, and then they were inside. With his knuckle, he flipped a switch inside the door, and fluorescent lights blinked themselves into a steady state. She advanced slowly into the studio, already describing it in her mind’s eye. Charles went to a huge bed and sat. It swayed under him. He grinned. “A waterbed.”

  A lesser woman would have felt uneasy, alone in such a place with a man who seemed to enjoy making waves as he shifted back and forth on the sloshing bed.

  “This is where she came upon Borloff and Louellen.”

  “The girl downstairs?”

  He nodded.

  “Is your portrait here?”

  He hesitated, then rose. “Let’s look.”

  He tipped back canvases tilted against the wall, one after another, then shook his head. “It’s gone.”

  “Perhaps the police took it.”

  He looked at her. “I suppose so.”

  “That one looks like the girl downstairs.”

  “I believe it is.”

  A skinny little nude who seemed at once sad and perky.

  Rebecca spent twenty minutes absorbing the atmosphere, thinking of the artist who had worked here and then met her death by violence, strung up in a garage and made to seem someone else.

  When they were going down the stairs, Rebecca thought she had enough. A trip to Kenosha no longer seemed desirable. After all, Tetzel had written of that.

  2

  Maxwell liked working for Amos Cadbury. With any other lawyer, the chance of it being a divorce case was high, and Maxwell, a family man, had come to find tailing adulterers boring. Cadbury wouldn’t touch a divorce with a ten-foot pole. A missing person was a welcome change.

  His first stop was at police headquarters. He always liked to let the police know what he was doing, in case their paths crossed in the course of an investigation. Cy Horvath brought him up to speed on what he and Agnes Lamb were working on. Maxwell asked for a photocopy of the sketch of the mysterious Charles, and while he waited for it had a cup of coffee with Cy.

  “You ever regret getting off the force, Max?”

  “Every other day.”

  “Business good?”

  “It is when I get a call from Amos Cadbury.”

  When the photocopy came, Maxwell folded it and put it in his pocket. “You got one of Borloff?”

  “I don’t draw.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  Cy’s description was better than Cadbury’s.

  “What’s Cadbury’s interest?”

  “He thinks he ran off with a pile of Devere money.”

  When he was going down in the elevator, the car stopped, and a man and a woman got in. Maxwell made way, managing not to show surprise. If that wasn’t the man in the sketch Horvath had just given him, Maxwell would eat his hat, an out-of-fashion homburg. He kept to the back of the car, ears cocked, but the couple did not speak. On the street floor, Maxwell followed them through the lobby and outside. The woman looked across the street, shook her head, and kept going. Maxwell followed. He watched them enter the Tribune building, then went back for his car. Five minutes later he was parked at the curb in front of the building, a handicapped card in his windshield. He told himself that they might have come out while he was away. Sitting here like this could be a big waste of time, but wasting time was what he mainly did for a living. He would gamble that they were still inside.

  Cy had told him a bit about the man in the sketch, someone named Charles Ruskin, but Maxwell had not hung on his every word. It had seemed just a conversation to pass the time while he waited for the sketch. There was overlap between Cy’s job and his own. He thought of alerting Cy to the man’s presence in the Tribune building but decided against it. He didn’t know for sure that he was still in there.

  There was a talk show on the radio when he turned it on. He turned it off. Then he turned it on again and searched in vain for western music. He gave up and lapsed into silence. He thought of having a cigar. He decided to have a cigar. When he had unwrapped it, he left it unlit in his mouth. They lasted longer that way.

  Half an hour had gone by since he had seen the subject who was not his subject go into the Tribune building. He would give him forty-five minutes, maybe even an hour. Then they came out, the woman going to the curb and waving for a cab. She was lucky. One slid up, they entered, and they were off, Maxwell following.

  The cab went down Dirksen and eventually turned off. The Pits? Well, well. This was beginning to be like a usual job. If they wanted a room, though, why not a decent hotel? A decent hotel. What an oxymoron. Once hotels had their own detectives on duty to prevent hanky-panky on the premises. Now everyone was routinely asked how many keys they wanted. Nowadays the Pits were everywhere. Ginny, his wife, used to ask about his day, but that was long ago. She thought he was making it up.

  The couple got out of the cab in front of a scroungy-looking building. Maxwell parked and put up his handicapped sign. This time he would light the damned cigar. At the door, the couple was stopped by a skinny hustler. She seemed to know Charles. Unless Maxwell couldn’t read lips, she had addressed him by name. After a minute, the couple went inside, and the skinny girl pranced up the street. Maxwell got out and called to her.

  She stopped and looked him over as he approached. “What can I do for you?” she asked in lilting tones.

  Maxwell got out the sketch and unfolded it. The girl followed this with interest, maybe expecting a new approach.

  “You know this guy?”

  She backed away, swinging her purse. “You, too?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I drew that picture.”

  Maxwell looked at it. “You forgot to sign it.”

  “Got a pen?” She scrawled a signature and handed it back to him folded.

  “Was that Charles you just talked to?”

  “Are you a cop?”

  “The next best thing.”

  “I’ve told the cops all I know, which is nothing.”

  “What do you know of Carl Borloff?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Hey, I’m a married man.”

  “At least you admit it.”

  He watched her go off rhythmically down the walk. The poor kid. Suddenly, she wheeled, coming back in a rush, and disappeared into the building from which she had earlier emerged.

  Back in his car, Maxwell thought that he had had enough diversion. He called Cy and told him where he could find Charles Ruskin.

  There was silence on the line. Then, “Thanks, Max.” “Sleazy-looking place.”

  “You know artists.”

  “I just met one.”

  “Be careful.”

  “She said she drew your sketch.”

  “Louellen.”

  “We didn’t
get on a first-name basis. If you’re coming, I’ll wait for you.”

  “Would you keep on him, Max? If he leaves.”

  They were just then emerging from the building, Ruskin and the woman. He told Cy.

  “Don’t lose him.”

  It seemed he already had. Ruskin was gone, and the woman was headed toward Dirksen. There was no sign of her former companion. If that was a quickie, it could make it into the Guinness World Records.

  “Cy, he’s vamoosed.”

  “We’ll find him.”

  Maxwell put the handicapped sign on the seat beside him and started the car. He had Borloff’s address taped to the dashboard. Fortunately he knew the city as well as a cabdriver.

  There wasn’t much hope of catching Borloff home, but Maxwell liked to acquaint himself with his points of reference. Twenty minutes later, he was parked in front of Borloff’s building, had the sign in place, and decided to enjoy the rest of his cigar before he went in.

  A car came slowly along the street as if the driver were lost. He went by, and Maxwell sat up, watching the car in his side mirror. It got into an empty space, and a minute passed. Suddenly the driver’s door opened, and a man got out. He practically ran to the door of the building in front of which Maxwell was parked. Borloff? Maybe. Whoever it was darted into the building.

  Maxwell thought about going in and seeing if that had been Borloff. Then, what the hell, along the sidewalk came Charles Ruskin, carrying a plastic sack. Maxwell had never liked men as good-looking as that. Into the building he went. If that had been Borloff, he and Cy Horvath would have a parlay. He punched Cy’s number and told him the story.

  “You’re having a busy day.”

  “Maybe it’ll get busier.”

  “Don’t go away.”

  It was nearly half an hour before Cy got there. Maxwell got out of his car.