by Ed Gorman
He came in late and took his special place. He wouldn’t dare have let anybody else have it.
The smells were good here. Bacon and coffee and pancake batter on the scorching griddle. Al had ventilated the place well. You didn’t get much scent of sour grease. The odors were lulling me into grogginess—two nights without much sleep had dulled me considerably; I’m always amazed at how Mike Hammer and those guys do it, go sleepless for days on end, and are keen on lots of sex and violence to boot—and then I looked over at him.
Being the Brahmin of Brahmins, Robert Frazier had his own reserved booth in the back. Every day, the lesser Brahmins trooped back there to pay homage. Occasionally, they’d be asked to sit down and talk. This happened about as often as the Pope said, “Hey, how about a game of craps?”
This morning he was dressed in a homburg and an expensive dark topcoat. I didn’t get a chance to look at his shoes until he was about halfway back to his private booth. The shoes were the big cleated mothers he’d worn yesterday at the judge’s office, the same shoes he’d worn while paying me a visit yesterday.
I let the lesser Brahmins have at him. They were brief today. They’d walk back there, making sure their sorrow masks were in place, and then let the lies filling their mouths spill forth. How much they’d liked Susan and what a great father he’d been to her and how sorry they were for him. Frazier was reviled but he was also feared. He wasn’t actually ruthless, I suppose; he was simply without empathy. If you made a mistake to his advantage—in a business or a personal matter—he’d simply act as business textbooks said he should act. He’d destroyed any number of so-called friends and had done so without any apparent regret. I’d always had the sense that it was all one big poker game to him and there were no personal hard feelings. Not on his part anyway.
They spent twenty minutes with their various genuflections and mea culpas. His grief and rage were there to see and they fed on them: it must have been tasty stuff to many of the lesser Brahmins, Frazier’s grief and rage. Maybe he’d know now how they felt when he decided to up the ante and cause a few players to drop out, devastating family bank accounts in the process. Tasty stuff, indeed.
Juanita served him; she was his favorite. He usually looked at her with the great avaricious eyes of the richest man in the valley. You could see him hope he would someday add her pelt to his belt. She’d only started here a couple of months ago. He’d probably dry-runned various approaches already. There would be outright bribery, but that would probably offend her; there would be offering her a job in one of his businesses, but that could mean trouble after he’d sucked her youth dry and she was still there; and there would be the emotional approach, the I’m lonely approach, though the indignity of such a posture would be impossible for such a proud man to endure. He was, I assumed, still contemplating his line of attack.
But not today.
Today, he paid hardly any attention to her. She took his order and walked away. He didn’t even watch her voodoo hips sway magically.
I let him eat his breakfast. For a big man, and especially one so surly, he ate with surprising delicacy. It was like watching a heavyweight fighter with a broken nose and a flattened ear knit doilies.
When I walked over and he raised his head to see who dared to interrupt his after-breakfast cigar, he said, “I don’t have any time to talk, McCain.”
“You made me do a lot of extra work, Mr. Frazier.”
“Work? What the hell’re you talking about?” He looked like a cartoon war profiter, the big Roman senator head with the deep scowl on the wide mean lips, the fat cigar stuck with great disdain in the corner of the mouth.
“My floor. Those shoes of yours left tracks all over the floor. I had to scrub them up.”
“I still don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do, Mr. Frazier. Sure you do.”
We stared at each other a long moment and then he said, “Sit down.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m going to tell the judge about this, of course. You harassing me like this.”
“She’ll probably ground me and won’t let me have any caramel corn for a week.”
“Did I ever tell you how much I dislike you, McCain?”
“No. But I kind of got that message a long time ago.”
I sat down. I lit up a Pall Mall. I sat back in the booth and looked at him. And said nothing. It was good cop technique, which I learned at the police academy. Silence frequently makes people more nervous than pointed questions.
“I loved her.”
“I’m sure you did, Mr. Frazier.”
“And I could see this coming, the way he got when he drank and everything.”
“He got pretty bad, no doubt about it.”
“So why the hell are you bothering me, McCain?”
I said, calmly, “I wasn’t kidding about wiping up those footprints. Do you know how much I hate doing housework?”
Juanita started over toward us, raising her pad for action. Frazier waved her angrily away.
“What is it you want from me?”
“I want to know what you were looking for in my apartment.”
“I wasn’t in your apartment.”
“Sure you were.”
He put his cigar in the ashtray and then put his head back against the booth and closed his eyes. He stayed that way for at least a minute. I became aware of all the sounds around me. Cafes are noisy places when you actually sit down and listen to them. Waitresses should wear earplugs, like flight crews.
He raised his head and opened his eyes. He looked at me and said, “I wanted to see if you were the one blackmailing him.”
“Blackmailing Kenny?”
“The son of a bitch, whoever it is, has already cost me a lot of money.”
“Anybody else know about this?”
“If you mean the judge or that clown Sykes, no. As for anybody else, Susan knew about it. And the blackmailer.”
“I take it you know why he was being blackmailed.”
“You may not believe this, McCain, but I don’t.”
“He asked you for money?”
“Yes.”
“And you gave it to him?”
“Yes.”
“But he didn’t tell you anything more?”
He looked at me some more. “He didn’t ask for money. Susan did.”
“And she didn’t say why?”
“All she said was that it was something that would devastate our family.”
“Did you ask her if she had any idea who was blackmailing them?”
“I did. But she said she didn’t have any idea at all.”
“Do you know how the blackmailer got the money, by mail, or was it dropped off somewhere?” The private investigator’s license I kept up to date was finally getting some real use. It had cost $45 and I was using the hell out of it this morning.
“I don’t know any of the details. Not any more than I told you.”
“When was the last time she asked you for money?”
“Three days ago.”
“And you gave it to her?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
He hesitated. “Do you really need to know that?”
“I may not need to know it but Cliffie will want to know it after I tell him how you broke into my apartment.”
He sighed. “You don’t have much respect for people’s feelings, do you?”
That line, coming from the last remaining robber baron in the valley, seemed more than a little unctuous. But I let it pass.
“How much?”
“Three thousand dollars.”
“Making a grand total of what?”
“Eighteen thousand.”
“In how long?”
“Fourteen months.”
I whistled. “That’s serious business,” I said.
“I’m wondering if that’s what drove Kenny to it. To killing Susan and himself.”
“If he did it.�
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“You don’t really think otherwise, do you? Esme is just trying to save her family’s name. But, hell yes, Kenny killed her. Who else would have killed her?”
“Maybe the blackmailer,” I said. “Or somebody else.”
“Like who, for instance?”
I knew I was about to jump into waters far more dangerous than the ones I’d slipped into last night. “A lover.”
“You bastard. We’re talking about my daughter.”
“I realize that, Mr. Frazier. But we’re all vulnerable and susceptible to all sorts of things. Especially when we’re in the kind of position Susan was in.”
“She loved him. Don’t ask me why.”
“She loved him, true. But she was also miserable.” I paused. “If anybody would have been justified in looking for solace somewhere else—”
“I raised her better than that.”
No point in continuing on with my questions about Susan. In his mind, she was the eternal virgin.
He looked at his watch. “I have to get over to the funeral home.”
“I appreciate the time, Mr. Frazier.”
He signed his breakfast tab with a flourish and then glanced at me. “I still don’t like you, McCain.”
“Well, I’m not thinking of asking you to go dancing either.”
“And if I catch you trying to sully my daughter’s name in any way, you’ll be finished in this town. I absolutely guarantee it.”
He moved very well for a big man, getting up fast and angry from the booth without even nudging the table, sweeping his coat and homburg along with him. And then he was gone.
I sat there and listened to some more restaurant noises and smoked my Pall Mall.
Juanita came over. “He looked mad.”
“Yeah.”
“What’d you say to him, McCain?”
“Just asked him a couple of questions was all.”
“Gee, his daughter just died, McCain. You got to learn to go easier on people. Like that time you accused Bobby of siphoning gas from Tom Potter’s tractor. You were really mean to him.”
“He was guilty, Juanita.”
“I know he was. But he’s my boyfriend, McCain, and I love him. And he wasn’t necessarily responsible for goin’ to prison those two times, either.”
“He wasn’t?”
“No, it was them punks he was hangin’ out with. Now he just hangs out with Merle Wylie.”
“Merle Wylie? He served five years for attempted murder.”
“It was the same with Merle, McCain. He just got in with the wrong crowd, too.”
“Yeah,” I said, “that must’ve been it.”
She watched me carefully. “I can’t always tell when you’re bein’ sarcastic, but I think you are now. About Merle, I mean. He’s a lot nicer’n you think, McCain. When my cousin Dodi got—well, you know—knocked up, Merle knew just what to do. And it was the same when my brother got his motorcycle stolen. Bobby was up in prison then so Merle took over and he found it that night and he gave the guy who stole it two broken ribs.” She was about to do some more extolling when one of the customers called her. “You should be nicer to people, McCain.” And then walked away.
There was: the phone bill, the light bill, the water bill, the car repair bill, the grocery bill, and a letter from a guy I’d represented last year on a stolen merchandise charge. He was writing from prison. He said that he couldn’t wait to see me when he got out. I wasn’t sure how to take that. As I recalled, he’d blamed me for pleading him down to accepting stolen goods. He could’ve gotten six-to-eight. He’d been caught with more than $12,000 worth of hot appliances in his basement, along with an assortment of firearms that were definitely a no-no for a felon like himself. I got him two-to-four, but he hadn’t been happy with me. He said a really good lawyer would have been able to convince the jury that the stolen merchandise in his basement had belonged to somebody else. About three weeks after he hit prison, his sporadic letters started coming in. Superficially, they seemed to be very happy, chatty letters from grateful felon to happy lawyer. But the way he kept repeating how he was going to look me up when he got out made me extremely nervous, even though he had entrusted the fate of all three of his teenage daughters to me. They had been charged, variously, with armed robbery, armed mayhem, destruction of government property, auto theft and reckless driving. This had been their response to Daddy’s parole application being turned down. ABC-TV was going to do a sitcom with them to run right after Ozzie and Harriet.
My office was one room with carpeting, a tribute to my failed attempt to make a living as a lawyer in a small Iowa town that already had far more lawyers than it needed. I never stayed any longer than I had to. After reading my mail, all of which went into the waste can, I promptly left.
16
“MAMBO,” THE LOVELY PAMELA Forrest said when I walked into the office outside Judge Whitney’s chambers.
“Mambo?”
“She’s going to New York on vacation and wants to brush up on her dancing. She’s got that dance step thing you see on TV all over the floor.”
Along with powder for jock itch, gum for your bad breath and salve for your pig’s hemorrhoids (you have to live in Iowa to get commercials like that), Mother TV had lately been offering us these big plastic things you put on the floor with dance steps all over them. Just follow the steps and you’re the next Fred Astaire.
“She’s not in a very good mood, McCain,” Pamela said.
“Boy, there’s a shock.”
“I mean worse than usual.”
“Impossible.”
“I’m not kidding, McCain. She’s really on the warpath.”
“Any particular reason?”
“Didn’t you see the paper this morning?”
“Uh-uh.”
She held it up: MILLIONAIRE KILLS WIFE, SELF. The deck below read: Prominent Whitney Family Stunned.
Next to a photo of Kenny was a photo not of Susan but of Judge Whitney. The paper is pretty much Democratic and the judge is the polar opposite. She has written them scathing letters for some of their editorial stands. They love to publish them because, despite her obvious intelligence and genuine erudition, she does sound slightly crazed, especially when she defends the John Birch Society.
“Well, they finally got their crack at her.”
“They sure did, McCain. I feel sorry for her.”
“I guess I might as well get it over with.”
“I’ll buzz her.”
While Pamela buzzed the judge and asked her if she needed anything, I looked at all the galoshes lined up against the wall across the hall. Iowa winter. It was like being back in second grade, in the cloakroom.
The judge was doing her dance steps, following the long sheet of cheap white plastic laid on the floor. The footsteps she followed were black. Up and back, up and back. She was doing the mambo in her judicial robes. I wondered if Oliver Wendell would have approved. The rumor was he’d preferred the cha-cha.
“What’re you using for music?” I asked.
“In my head.”
“Ah.”
“I listened to three mambo songs over and over last night. I’ve memorized them. It’s like having a portable radio. Except I don’t need the radio.”
“Clever.”
“So what do you think, McCain? Do I look all right?”
As a number of her suitors pointed out, picture Kate Hepburn and you’ve got Judge Whitney. Physically, that is. Emotionally, Judge Whitney makes Kate seem like a softy. That’s why I grinned watching her mambo. In her way, she not only possesses true patrician good looks, she’s also cute as hell.
“Cute.”
“I look cute?”
“You look cute.”
She didn’t say anything, but she smiled to herself. Beautiful, she’d heard plenty of times. Cute, not so often. If ever.
“I’m going to do all the nightclubs,” her honor said, slightly out of breath. “One of my ex-husbands even got me a front-row t
able to see Sinatra.”
“Just be sure he doesn’t beat you up.”
“Who? My ex-husband or Sinatra?”
“I was thinking about Sinatra but if you’re referring to ex-husband number three, Renaldo, that boy had a pretty bad temper, too.”
“It’s the Latin in him.”
“Not to mention the Scotch.”
I went over and sat down and sipped at the coffee I’d swiped from the outer office.
Five minutes later, we got down to work.
She went over and sat behind her desk. She said, “You saw the paper?”
“I saw the paper.”
“I’m taking you at your word that he didn’t kill her.”
“He didn’t kill her.”
She leaned forward on her elbows and glared at me. “Then when the hell are you going to prove it? I pay you a lot of money.”
“Not a lot.”
“Well, a lot more than most private investigators get.”
“Most private investigators aren’t lawyers.”
She made a face and slumped back in her leather chair. She reached down and pulled the middle drawer of her desk out. Moments later, she strung a rubber band between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. Our little game.
She shot the rubber band. I tilted my head to the right. The rubber band missed me by an inch.
“Your instincts are getting better, McCain.”
“Thank you. I was worried about that.”
“I used to be able to hit you every time.”
She picked up another rubber band. This time, she got me square in the forehead. “My second husband wasn’t worth a damn at this, either. I could always hit him.”
“That’s probably what sank the marriage. You lost all respect for him.”
“What sank the marriage, my sarcastic friend, was the fact that he was spending my inheritance in very, very foolish ways.”
“Ah.”
Another rubber band. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
She aimed and fired. I leaned to the left on this one but the rubber band glanced off my ear. She smiled. “Nice to see I haven’t lost my touch.” Then she sat forward again, picked up her package of Gauloises and had herself a cigarette.
