Wojac nodded to her. “That’s Astrid. Ignore her. She’s so hung up on her own problems that she won’t hear a word we say.” He didn’t bother explaining who Astrid was or what she was doing there. He settled in a chair behind her and asked, “What about Iris?”
Forbes sat on a sofa. Wojac’s gaze was disconcerting. For that matter, so was Astrid’s. She raised the cigarette and smiled at him in a vacuous way, and Forbes began to wonder what she was smoking. “She’s disappeared. I’m trying to find her.”
“Who for?”
“Someone worried about her. Who wants to be sure she’s all right.”
“Crud.”
“It’s true. If I wanted to lie, I’d invent a better story.” Folding his arms, Forbes studied the artist. “What is it with you people? One way or another everyone fights me. I’m getting more than a little worried about Iris myself. It’s as though someone got to all of you first, scared you into saying no more than you had to. Ladislaw, her last employer. Then Powell. He showed me a worthless personnel file but won’t let me talk to his employees. All the while he was nervous as a mother hen. It’s why I came here. You met Iris when you painted her. You met all of Powell’s girls, you must know what they’re talking about. Looking at your work, I got the impression you were the sort of man who’d never knuckle down to Powell or anyone else.”
“Hell, I’d tell you about Iris if I could. But I paint those girls assembly-line fashion. Strictly a commercial job. Iris was just a face in the crowd. Even though I hung around Powell’s a lot then, I never got to know her well.”
“You don’t hang out there much now?”
“No. I’ve had trouble with Len lately. He’s still haggling over the bill for those murals, trying to stiff me for a thousand less than agreed on.”
“All right then. What can you tell me about Saralee?”
“What’s she got to do with this?”
“I don’t know. But I want to talk to her too. Powell was so evasive about Iris though that I was afraid he wouldn’t tell me about Saralee either, so I didn’t ask him.”
“No,” Wojac agreed, “he wouldn’t have.” The artist pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket. Instantly, slave-like, Astrid reached up and lit it for him. He didn’t even glance at her.
“Her full name,” Wojac went on, “is Saralee O’Bradovitch. And she’s a very special person at Powell’s. Comes and goes as she pleases. Works a few days one week, maybe none the next. Fills in at all the jobs. Everyone thinks she’s Powell’s mistress, but she isn’t. She’s the mistress of the man who really controls the restaurant. She goes there just to watch the business for him.”
“Who’s he?”
“Morris Maxwell. Powell’s just a front. There’s a group of investors behind him. I don’t know who the others are—big lawyers, politicians, and so on, supposedly—but Maxwell’s the head man.”
“The discount chain Maxwell? Giveaway Stores?”
“Yes. Except for Powell, nobody else at the restaurant knows it. Maxwell hardly ever comes around. But I know, because Maxwell commissioned me for those murals, after seeing my work at a show. As part of the deal I wasn’t to mention his connection with Powell’s to anyone, but the deal’s off. I’ve been trying to reach him for weeks to complain about payment for the job, but I can’t get through.”
Forbes had never met Maxwell, but he’d heard of him. The scion of an old-line Chicago family, he’d lived almost as a recluse until recently, when he’d suddenly plunged into the merchandising world, bought a chain of discount stores, pumped his personal funds into them and expanded rapidly, building new stores in giant suburban shopping centers.
“Saralee—when she’s not at Powell’s, where would I find her?”
“Hard to say. She could be anywhere Maxwell is, and he’s not easy to track down. Days, he’s at Giveaway’s headquarters, guarded by an army of secretaries. He even has an apartment on top of the building. He has a house in Lake Forest too, but he moves around a lot, sometimes staying incognito in motels he owns, sometimes God knows where.”
Wojac rose, thrust his hands into his pockets and walked to Forbes. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll see what I can find out, I’m still on good terms with most of Wojac’s girls. If Saralee’s scheduled to work again soon, they’ll know it. They might also know something about Iris Dean.”
“Thanks.” Forbes gave him a card. “Call day or night, I check my answering service frequently. But if you don’t mind—why are you doing this?”
“Len Powell,” Wojac said. “He came here Thursday. I take color shots of all my paintings. He asked for the shot of Iris’s picture. I guess the gallery sold the original long ago. And after I gave it to him, he asked me if I knew anything about Iris. I asked what was up and he said never mind, if I knew what was good for me I’d never discuss Iris or his restaurant with anyone. And that kind of talk from a louse like Powell I won’t buy.”
* * * *
The Dijon’s night clerk handed Forbes his key. “By the way,” the boy said. “Anyone come around to your room claiming to be a policeman from Missing Persons, asking about a girl who used to live here?”
“No.”
“Well, if he does, he’s an impostor. One of her old boyfriends. We’d appreciate your calling the desk immediately.”
“Glad to. There’s nothing lower than a guy who’d pretend to be a cop.” Forbes went upstairs. In a few minutes he was sleeping soundly.
The jangle of the telephone roused him.
“Honey?” The sun was shining, and the voice was Rose Huff’s. “Bill just called. He’s run into an old friend of yours. And he thinks it’d be nice if we could all get together.”
CHAPTER 7
Curley took a last drag on his cigarette, flipped the butt to the sidewalk and glanced at the entrance to a small, gray apartment hotel on Kenmore Avenue. They were in the Uptown district, a refuge for transients and the dispossessed of all races about four miles south of where St. Clair had taken Forbes’s Monday night call.
“He’s in there,” Curley told Forbes. “Registered as William Blake, of St. Joseph, Missouri. And he’s alibied for Helen’s murder. He was in that Morse Avenue bar from late Monday afternoon until after ten Monday night. He ran out during the ten o’clock newscast, the one with the first bulletin about you finding Helen’s body.”
“How’d you trace him?”
“He was seen going into the Morse Avenue El station. I checked stations down the line. A newsdealer at the Wilson Avenue station remembered seeing him get off, after which he headed in this direction.”
Forbes looked at Rose. For his next talk with St. Clair he wanted at least two witnesses plus a transcript. “The tape recorder in your purse ready?”
“It is.”
“Fine. Take notes too. If it makes him nervous, I’ll tell you to close your notebook, but, of course, we won’t tell him about the recorder. Bill, I’ll handle the questioning. Morris Maxwell’s mixed up in this. So are his girlfriend and Len Powell. I’ll tell you about that later. Let’s go.”
Inside they ignored a sleepy woman behind the desk and walked up to the second floor. Forbes rapped on St. Clair’s door.
There was a shuffling inside. Cautiously the old man looked out.
“Forbes? I—how’d you know I was here?”
“Never mind that. Open up.” Forbes pushed past him, and Curley and Rose followed. “My associates,” Forbes said. “Mr. Curley and Miss Huff.”
Curley closed the door and leaned against it. Rose walked to a chair, sat down, opened a notebook and set it on her lap.
An airline bag lay open on an unmade bed, a few toilet articles ranged around it. Forbes motioned to the bag and asked, “Going somewhere?”
“I thought I’d check out, yes. I’m terribly shocked incidentally. Your secretary. Under the circumstances I couldn’t ask you
to spend any more time looking for Iris. I’ll pay you a reasonable sum and—”
“On the contrary.” Forbes sat on another chair. “I’m more anxious to find her than ever. I haven’t told the police yet, but I think Helen was killed because of Iris. And you lied to me, Walter. About what you are. Going to Florida. You didn’t even tell me you’d been away from your apartment since Friday. So I think you’ve lied about other things too.”
“Yes, I lied,” St. Clair admitted. Heavily he settled on the bed. “But I was in an awkward position. I had no choice.”
“Let’s try the truth. And if I’m not convinced, I’ll turn you over to Homicide. We’ll see what they can get out of you.”
“The police?” The notion seemed to horrify the old man. “No, I can’t afford to get involved with the police. That kind of publicity—it’s why I hired you, to avoid that. It would ruin my last chance to win my patent suit.”
He hauled a half-empty pint of bourbon from the bag, drank from it, and set the bottle on the floor.
“Damn,” he said. “Hair of the dog. Look, I’ll tell you, but only on the condition you tell the police nothing and you let me go.”
Forbes didn’t reply. Let St. Clair draw his own conclusions as to whether they had an understanding or not.
His composure returning, St. Clair unpeeled a cigar and lit it. For what purpose, Forbes wondered. A delay of a few seconds, perhaps, in which to invent a new fabric of lies.
“The fact is,” St. Clair announced, “Iris swindled me.”
“Swindled you?” Forbes began to smile. “I can’t believe—”
“Oh, it was beautifully done. She took full advantage of my blind spot—sex. But as for your secretary’s murder, I’ve been thinking about that too. And I’ve concluded she may have been killed by the other people looking for Iris.”
Forbes leaned forward. “What other people?”
“I don’t know who they are. But Friday night they almost caught me at my apartment. It’s why I came here.”
There was a brief hassle as St. Clair objected to Rose’s taking notes. With seeming reluctance Forbes ordered her to close her notebook. Then St. Clair added that since his narrative would encompass some matters of a certain delicacy, he could speak more freely if Rose left the room. To this Rose retorted that over the years three generations of girls had cried on her shoulders, there was nothing an old goat like St. Clair could say that she didn’t know already.
St. Clair studied Rose with distaste. Then he shrugged and went on with it.
He’d met Iris in the park, he said, just as he’d told Forbes earlier, but the remark he’d uttered when he’d seen her sunning herself hadn’t been so innocent. He’d guessed rightly the kind of girl she was, and in a while he was regaling her with stories of his days on the con. He let her know quite frankly that he was a three-time loser who’d decided to spend his golden years in Chicago, one of the few big cities in the United States where he’d never been arrested. And after a few more meetings he discreetly outlined his physical needs, which she finally agreed to meet for twenty-five dollars a session, the liaisons to be held in his apartment.
“At my age,” St. Clair went on, “it isn’t easy finding a girl like Iris. She seemed so kind, so understanding. It’s why she could deceive me so readily. Over the last few months I loaned her nearly nine thousand dollars, a thousand or so at a time.”
Loaned for what? To buy stock. Supposedly, Iris was getting hot tips from a big LaSalle Street type she was sleeping with. For each loan she signed a note. It was agreed that if the stocks went up, St. Clair would get 25 percent of the winnings, but that if they went down, she’d absorb all the losses herself, repaying the full amount of the loan with interest.
“And you,” Curley asked, “fell for a crude dodge like that?”
“It wasn’t crude,” St. Clair insisted. “She had all the props. Fake account records, buy-and-sell slips. On paper we’d almost doubled the money. She even snuck me into her broker’s boardroom once to meet her customer’s man. We stayed only a minute, not long enough for me to ask any questions of consequence. He was an innocent dupe, I’m sure, and that was a subtle touch. In my prime I’d met marks in brokers’ boardrooms. My picture’s been circulated to every brokerage house in the country. If I was recognized in one, I’d be arrested on sight.”
The roof fell in, St. Clair continued, when the first loan came due. Iris was to meet him in the park last Wednesday with the payment—principal plus a healthy bonus in profits. When she didn’t show, he phoned the Dijon and learned she had checked out the day before.
“I didn’t dare go to the police,” he added glumly. “They’d tell the reporters, I’d be a laughingstock. I didn’t even dare tell Axburn. I was afraid he’d get disgusted and drop me as a client. With most of my savings gone, winning that patent suit means much more to me now, so I asked Axburn for a detective’s name and he gave me yours. If you found Iris, I meant to tell you. To ask you to help me approach her, to try to get my money back.”
“Uh-huh.” Forbes folded his arms. “Now, what about the people looking for Iris?”
“They came at about nine Friday night. Fortunately I happened to be watching from my apartment window. A car double-parked. Four well-dressed men got out. Three walked to the vestibule, the other went around back. It was like a police raid. Through the open window I heard one say, ‘The second floor.’ That’s my floor. There are only two apartments on it. The other’s occupied by a seventy-four-year-old woman. I didn’t think those men planned to call on her.”
Once more St. Clair tipped the bottle and drank from it. “I decided,” he went on, “not to talk to them. Didn’t like the look of it at all. A night phone operator lives above me. She always keeps an extra key under the hall rug, so I hurried up to her place. A good thing I did. Those men tripped the vestibule lock and then broke into my apartment. They were professionals.” The old man shook his head. “They knew I’d just left. I’d forgotten a cigar burning in an ash tray. They turned the volume on my television set up and then ransacked the place. My ear was to the floor and now and then I heard them talking. Once, one of them said, ‘Hell, we just missed him. But we’ll get him, just like we’ll get Iris Dean.’ I also caught the name of the man in charge, the one who gave orders. It was Claude.”
Curley and Forbes exchanged glances. Claude? The coincidence was too remarkable. Claude had been the boss hunter in Iowa, the man in an adjacent motel unit where Forbes had placed his last call to Helen.
Forbes asked, “You see Claude?”
“I couldn’t describe any of ’em. Big fellas, that’s all I remember. After a while three of them left. Through a window I saw them get back in their car and drive away. Two were carrying shopping bags full of stuff they’d taken from my apartment. I’d heard Claude tell the others to gather up my personal papers, they’d study them later. The fourth man remained in my place. I heard him moving around. The telephone operator’d return soon, so a little after midnight I chanced it down the back stairs. I had my wallet and checkbook, thank heavens. Walked to a subway station, got off at Wilson Avenue and came here.”
“Why didn’t you tell me or Helen about those people? My God, man, you—”
“I should have, I know. But I was confused, frightened. I just hoped you’d find Iris. We’d get my money back and then ask her who those men were. And I honestly didn’t think they’d dare try to harm you or your secretary.”
“We don’t know,” Curley pointed out coolly, “that they did. And there’s a big hole in your story. You claim to be a swindle victim yourself. But if that’s true, why would Claude’s guys be as interested in finding you as in finding Iris Dean?”
St. Clair looked up. “I’ve thought about that. I told you I hid nothing from her. Time and again she’d press for details of old swindles. The subject fascinated her. You know much about confidence games, Mr. Curley
?”
“A little.”
“Then you know that to make money it takes money. Iris had to spend some to swindle me. In all maybe five hundred or more, for bribes and fake account slips. But I think she used my money to finance an even bigger swindle, one of major proportions. And whoever she swindled, that person’s learned she knew me, learned who I am. He’s concluded I’m as guilty as she is. And I think it quite possible that men working for this person went to your secretary. They wanted to know why you were looking for Iris and what you’d found out. And when she wouldn’t tell them, matters got out of hand and they killed her.”
“An interesting theory,” Forbes admitted. “But so far there’s nothing to support anything you’ve told us except your word. And that—”
“Ask the old lady,” St. Clair said, “who lives across from me. She’ll tell you what happened Friday night. And here…” He rummaged in the bag, brought out a checkbook and a savings passbook and carried them to Forbes. “There’s the record. Every cent I had in the world. The savings account was closed out a month ago. The balance in checking’s down to one thousand and four dollars. But you can see the big withdrawals I made. That’s the money I gave Iris.”
Forbes opened the passbook. Yes, there had been big withdrawals recently, depleting the savings balance from about nine thousand to zero.
“All this shows is that you withdrew funds. Where are the notes Iris signed, the fake account slips, and so on?”
“Iris kept the slips. I left the notes in my apartment, and I told you those men carried some of my personal papers away. I don’t know if the notes are still there or not.”
“The name Morris Maxwell mean anything to you?”
“I’ve heard of him.” Seemingly puzzled, St. Clair sat back down on the bed. “Seen the name on the financial pages. But I’ve never met the man.”
“How about Saralee?”
The James Michael Ullman Crime Novel Page 64
