by Rex Burns
“Was the key there the next morning?”
“Yeah.” Mauro stopped talking.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Is that it? Is that what you’ve been crapping your pants about?”
“It’s my job, Wager! If Sumner finds out that girl had something to do with the gardens, he’s going to want to know what. I’ll lose my goddamned job because of that!”
“No, you’ll lose it for a hundred bucks. What time did you pick up the key that morning?”
Mauro pulled himself back from wherever he’d been watching his pension fly away. “A little after I got to work. Around eleven.”
“How were you supposed to let this guy know what night to come?”
“He gave me a number to call.”
“Do you still have it?”
“No. But some secretary answered the phone. I think she said it was High Country something.”
CHAPTER 17
“YEAH,” WAGER SAID more to himself than to Mauro, and without surprise, “it would be.”
“You think that photographer killed her?”
“I think I’ll find out.”
“I never even thought about him until you started in on that key.” Mauro looked up. “But he returned mine!”
“He had plenty of time to get a duplicate made.”
“But the key’s got a stamp on it. It says ‘State of Colorado—Do Not Duplicate.’”
“Maybe he paid somebody another hundred bucks, Mauro.”
“Oh.” Mauro picked at his nose with his thumbnail. “Yeah.”
Wager started the car. “I’ll give you a ride to work.”
“Listen, Wager—can you keep me out of it? Please? It’s my job! Eight years and I got a pension I can live on. I’m buying a little land down in New Mexico. It’s almost clear now—only three more years of payments. If I lose my job, I can’t keep up the payments—who’s going to hire somebody my age? It’s got a fishing stream and lots of trees. You ever been up behind Taos?”
“No.”
“God, it’s pretty up there. It’s two acres on the edge of the national forest, with water and everything. I’m getting a trailer house for it when I retire. A little one’s all I need, and I’ll be able to afford that. I got it all figured out—eight more years. I can do it—I already done twenty, Wager. Eight years and the pension. You got to keep me out of it! Please!”
He liked the man better when he was fighting than when he was whining. “I’ll do what I can.”
They arrived at the north side of the conservatory in silence. Mauro opened the door and leaned back into the car. “We got a deal, ain’t we? You do what you can to keep me out of it, right?”
“Sure,” said Wager.
But his mind was already on Phil Bennett.
In the late-morning sunlight and to his stinging, sleepless eyes, the isolated building containing High Country Profiles and the Electronic Repairs Corporation looked even more stark than at twilight. The parking apron held five or six cars; Wager pulled up at the far end of the row and walked once around the building before entering. The south wall had neither doors nor windows; it was solid brick and caught splinters of bottles and scraps of windblown paper in the high weeds at its base. The west wall bordering the alley had two metal doors, one for each office complex, and a line of four trash drums. There were no windows here, either. He stepped from the alley over a short, leafless hedge to the narrow sidewalk that connected the parking lot with the entry to High Country. Inside the small reception room, with its large photographs covering the walls, a young secretary sat behind her desk. She looked up through thick round glasses and smiled. “What can we do for you?”
“Is Mr. Bennett in?”
“He’s at work in the studio. Maybe I can help you.”
“I’d just as soon talk to him.”
“It’ll be about an hour. What’d you want to talk to him about?”
The girl looked about eighteen—a couple of months at a business school, and then to her first job. “I had a few more questions.”
She was puzzled. “Questions?”
“Here—I forgot.” He pulled out the small leather folder that held his badge and I.D. “I’m Detective Wager.” Who wasn’t only tired, but now absent-minded. “I talked with Mr. Bennett about Rebecca Crowell … Tommie Lee.”
“Oh! Wasn’t that a terrible thing?” Behind the lenses, her gray eyes widened. She, too, was a pretty girl, and he wondered.
“Have you worked here long?”
“About three months.”
“It must be exciting. All the fashion models and such.”
“Well, it was at first. But my job’s mostly paperwork. That’s not very exciting any time.”
“Do you do any modeling?”
“Gosh, no!” She laughed. “But I guess that was a compliment. Thanks.”
“Is Bennett a good person to work for?”
She suddenly remembered that Wager was a cop. “Yes.”
“Are you going to stay with this job?”
“Yes.” The eyes behind the lenses said that was an odd question.
Wager sat wearily on the one imitation-leather chair; it was barely deep enough to hold him, but his legs told him it was better than standing. “Do you keep a record of Mr. Bennett’s appointments?”
Her hand started for a square brown ledger in a file holder near the telephone. “Yes,” she said cautiously.
“Could you look up October 19th and see if Miss Crowell—Tommie Lee—was supposed to be here?”
“I … I guess that would be all right.”
“Did Bennett tell you not to?”
“No! It’s just—well …”
“That I’m a cop.”
A flush rose up the girl’s neck and settled in her cheeks and ears; her hand went to the ledger. “Here.” She paused. “Her name’s not listed, but there were a lot of cancellations that day. It doesn’t say if anyone came in instead. Just a minute.” She opened a file drawer bristling with manila folders.
Wager heaved himself to his feet to read the appointment book.
The girl pulled a folder and studied the entries and charges for studio time and proofs. “There’s nothing here, either. If she did come in, it was never charged to her account.”
On the ledger page titled “Oct. 19” and ruled into hourly blocks beginning at 9 A.M. and ending at 6 P.M., the names were lined out. Most had new dates beside them. Apparently Bennett saw his 10 A.M. customer, and then from eleven on canceled for the rest of the day. “Do these changes happen a lot?”
“Not a lot; it upsets the clients. But sometimes Phil gets behind. If he’s got a good session going, he doesn’t like to break off just because the time’s up.”
“Were you here on the nineteenth?”
“Oh, my—what day was that?” She turned back through the loose-leaf calendar on her desk. “That was a Tuesday … yes! Now I remember. That was the day the electricity went out. That’s why we had all those cancellations!” She flipped back through the ledger, “Just a minute—I remember something about Miss Lee… .” She stopped on Monday, October 25th, and ran a finger down the entries. “Here—I found it. See?” She pointed proudly to Tommie Lee’s name lined out, with “Stewart, Elaine” printed neatly above it. “I remember she said she was leaving town and wanted to get the work done in time to take it with her. So I called Elaine and she was willing to trade days.”
And that explained why the Crowell appointment book had no entry for the day she was killed. “So Miss Lee came in for the ten-o’clock session?”
“I guess so. I usually go out for the doughnuts around then, so I didn’t see her.” She turned the pages back to the nineteenth. “Maybe she didn’t. Maybe that’s why her name’s not here. But someone was in the studio with Phil when I got back—he had the radio going. He does that when he’s working.”
“What happened when the electricity went off?”
“It was just before eleven,
just about this time. Suddenly all the lights went out and the typewriter stopped.” She pointed to the electric machine. “I started to go back to the studio when Phil came out. He was really upset; he hates it when things interrupt his work. And he … I guess you could say he yelled at me to cancel everything for the rest of the day. So I did.”
“What did you do then?”
“Well, a few minutes later, while I was still on the phone calling the appointments, he came out and apologized.” She smiled at Wager. “He was almost crying—he’s real emotional; he’s a real artist. Phil’s like that: he blows up, but he can’t stay mad for long. Anyway, he told me I could go to lunch early.”
“Do you eat near here?”
“Down at the corner. The Stage Stop Inn. They have a great salad bar.”
“Did you come back after lunch?”
“Sure. The electricity was back on, and Phil was in the darkroom. I asked him if he wanted me to call the appointments and tell them to come in, but he said no. He said he could use the time for darkroom work.”
“You went into the darkroom to ask him?”
“Yes. Well, not all the way in—no one better go in when the red light’s on. I went into the light chamber—that’s the little place closed off by the curtains. Phil’s been talking about having an intercom put in so I won’t have to run back there, but he hasn’t gotten around to it yet.”
“What did you do for the rest of the day?”
“What I always do—total accounts, mail statements, pay bills, type letters, answer the phone, make appointments. I always have plenty to do. Oh, and Phil let me off early because of the cancellations.”
“What time was that?”
“I don’t know. A couple hours early.”
Plenty of time to move a car, plenty of time to find a junkyard. “Do you get paid enough for all that work?”
She stifled a giggle. “I don’t think so. But I’m learning a lot. There’s an awful lot that they don’t tell you at school.”
“Does Bennett give you any extras? Take you out to dinner sometimes?”
Another blush, this one deeper than before. “He has. But that’s all.”
“What do you mean, ‘that’s all’?”
“I got a good idea what you’re thinking, mister—I’ve heard the models talking, so I know what you’re thinking. And nothing like that’s ever happened.” Her round chin lifted, and for the life of him, Wager couldn’t tell if it was insult at being suspect or insult at being left out. “Anyway, I’m old enough to take care of myself. I pay my own way, and I can do whatever I want to!”
For all her thick glasses, the girl didn’t see much. But legally she was right; legally, she was smart enough to run her own life. He sat again and let the silence of the office cool things off. From somewhere beyond one of the partitions at the back of the building came the faint sound of garbled music. The telephone rang and she spoke into it briefly. He thumbed through the pages of his notebook until she hung up. “Does Bennett have clothes for the models to wear?”
“No.” She was still sulky. “The models bring their own. There’s a dressing room in the studio.”
Another five minutes and two telephone calls passed; the girl spun a sheet of paper into the IBM and typed rapidly. Wager shifted once more on the creaking sling of narrow plastic. Finally a latch clicked and two voices splashed out of a back room. A long-legged girl wearing stretch denims said “Bye, Alice,” to the secretary, and Bennett stopped still as he saw Wager stand up.
“This man’s waiting to see you, Phil.”
The photographer nodded; the cap of black hair was clamped over his forehead in a little wave. “It’s about Tommie Lee—right, man?”
“Yes. I’m still trying to find out what she did on that last day.”
Bennett glanced at Alice, who stared at them. “Come on back. We can rap while I set up for the next session. Alice, shoot the next appointment in as soon as she shows up, honey.”
Wager followed him down a short hallway past the darkroom. From the rear, he seemed narrow in the shoulders and walked with a choppy bounce; and Wager noticed that he wore expensive new leather tennis shoes.
The studio was a windowless box whose walls were cluttered with electrical wires, rolls of cardboard, worktables, ladders, fans, and open cabinets filled with filters and bolts of cloth. “Have you glommed onto anything new?” Bennett spoke to a lamp stand he moved toward the large empty platform that filled the center of the area.
“I know a little more than I did. Where she came from, where she worked. But there’s no evidence to bring into court.”
“Court?” Bennett squinted through the glare of the lamp at Wager. “You mean you got an idea who the dude is?”
“I’ve got a few leads. But no hard evidence.”
Bennett turned off that set of lamps and moved the next forward. Eight stands of horn-shaped bulbs formed a wide circle around the platform. Stiff white paper like some Wager had seen at Tanaka’s studio covered the boards. In the ceiling hung a rectangle of two-by-fours slung on a pulley; more lights aimed down from there. “If you got ideas, man, you should be able to get the dude, right?”
“I don’t have enough for a probable-cause warrant,” said Wager.
“I’m not into what you’re saying.”
“It means I need more evidence before I’ve got grounds for a search warrant.” That wasn’t quite true; officers other than Wager—Ross or Devereaux—could get a warrant because they’d been in homicide long enough to have the court’s trust. And Doyle’s. But Wager didn’t want Ross or Devereaux to get the warrant.
Bennett loosened a clamp and slid a bar of lights halfway down its stand, turned them on, and tightened a flickering bulb. “That sounds weird, man. I mean, if you got a line on the dude, you should be able to bust him.”
“Yeah,” said Wager. “It should be that way.”
The door clattered open and a lithe brunette panted in lugging a small suitcase and a plastic clothes bag. “Phil! I’m sorry I’m late! That damned car wouldn’t start again.”
“Right, honey; but time’s money. You know where to change—I been waiting for you. Let’s swing it.”
The girl wailed “Oooh” and half ran toward a whitewashed plywood box that shut off one corner of the room.
“They’re always late,” said Bennett. “And they lay all sorts of hype on me—everything from a stuck zipper to a dying cousin.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how many cousins have died two or three times. But if you let them get away with it, man, they just get worse and worse.”
“Was Tommie Lee late a lot?”
“No, not her. She was one of the few you could set your watch by. She was serious about the program, you know?” He rested a moment on a light stand. “She had everything to be great.”
“Some people think different.”
“Name one, man!”
“Les Tanaka.”
“Aw, he’s so full of shit his eyes are brown! That slopehead couldn’t tell a real model from … from a goddam cemetery angel.” Bennett jammed a new bulb into its clamp. “Tanaka can’t tell if anybody has talent because he props them up like goddam sandbags and then pisses and moans because they come across like goddam sandbags. Tanaka!”
“O.K., Phil, I’m ready.” The brunette came out of the tiny dressing room wearing a silky white evening dress that caught the gleam of lights up and down her long thighs as she walked. Wager watched the cloth stretch tight as she stepped onto the platform, then watched as she slowly turned in the light, winding the cloth down her body like the strokes of long fingers. She saw him and winked.
“Jesus, honey,” said Bennett. “Is that what you told me you were going to wear?”
“Yes—what’s wrong with it?”
“Shadows, baby. That kind of cloth is a bitch to get all the shadows out.” He shifted two or three stands of lights and switched on the ceiling bank. “But we’ll just have to do what we can—right, baby?” Turning
to Wager, he smiled. “Sorry to cut you out, man, but business is business. You dig?”
Wager smiled back. “I want to stay. I never saw this kind of work before.”
Bennett started to say something, then shrugged. “O.K. with you if this dude stays, honey?” he asked the girl.
“Sure.” A wide smile of perfect white teeth shone down on Wager. “I like an audience.”
“Yeah, fine—but, baby, keep your attention on me, right? If you’re going to stay, man, move back out of the light and we’ll try to make like you’re not here.” He muttered something about tourists and adjusted a few more lights, then moved in with the camera. “O.K., honey, just stand still a minute and let me get some readings.”
“My, we’re all business today.”
“Always, baby, you know that.” He held something in his hands and peered at it, then turned off all the lights except those around the platform and the dim workbench near the wall. Then he took more readings. Wager dragged a chair away from the wall.
“Hey, man, keep the fucking noise down!” The photographer sighted half a dozen angles through the camera’s viewfinder and went back to the light stands one more time. “O.K., let’s get with the program, baby. Let yourself go a little bit; you’re about as loose as a goddam telephone pole. Take a deep breath, baby, that’s it—now unlax.” He fussed and muttered and sighted. “O.K.—now a little live jive and we’ll be on our way.” He stepped out of the circle of lights and flipped on a radio. The loud blast of a rhythm-and-blues station bounced around the concrete walls while the photographer began swinging his camera around the model like a hovering mosquito.
“Come on, baby—get loose!” He ran around the platform and clicked the trigger. “Give it to me—that’s it—gimme, gimme, gimme!” He ran back, the girl bending and pulling against the dress. “Hit me, baby, come on! Lay it on me hard!”
It went through four thumping songs, the last a wailing Negroid voice that Wager heard everywhere and tried to ignore: “When your body thinks it’s had enough and it’s flopped out flat on the floor, I’m gonna show you what true love is and slip you a little bit more.”
Wager watched the shifting, bobbing shape of the photographer gyrate against the twirling, swaying model. Bennett must have been this way with Crowell, too. What was it Ginger Eaton said? That he made a model unfold? He watched the lithe brunette spin and halt, step, stretch—in its way it was a kind of dance. In this woman’s mind, maybe even in Bennett’s, it was a kind of creation. But, Wager figured, detectives must lack artistic souls, because to him it just looked like a pile of crap.
