“You learned fast.”
“That’s the place ahead, on the left.”
I waited for oncoming traffic, then cut across and parked diagonally in front of the place. It was small, with soft lighting, hushed piano, well-dressed customers, help that moved with professional competence. I left my hat at the tiny checkroom and followed her down between the tables to a table for two. I saw how she walked, saw how tangle-footed awkwardness had been transmuted into leggy grace. The waiter took her gin and tonic order and mine for Scotch on the rocks. She glanced around the room as she took off her gloves. I held a light for her cigarette and looked directly into her eyes, realizing that it was perhaps the first time I had ever really looked at her. Her eyes shifted away and I thought I saw a slight trembling of her cigarette as she lifted it again to her lips.
“You’re so tan, Gevan. You make all these people look bleached. As if they’ve been left out in the rain.”
“I remember a vacation when you came back with a good tan.”
“I’m lucky. Most redheads just burn and burn and peel and peel. I remember that vacation. I didn’t even want to take it. I was afraid the plant would fall down or something if I went away.”
“Officious?”
“Well—earnest.” She lifted her glass. I looked at her ring finger and saw it was unadorned, and my mild pleasure surprised me.
“Should I start earning my drink?” She asked me.
“Go ahead, Perry.”
She frowned and stubbed out her cigarette. “It isn’t terribly complicated. Mr. Mottling came in and from the first day, he started getting hold of the reins. He pushed your brother out of the way, and your brother didn’t seem to mind. He seemed relieved, almost. Mr. Mottling fired everybody in sight who disagreed with his policies. He couldn’t fire Mr. Granby, because Granby is an officer of the corporation. But the conflict between them was very obvious months ago. Your brother’s death brought it out into the open. The battle lines were already set. By Saturday, the day after your brother’s death, both sides started to move. Mrs. Kendall Dean is backing Mr. Mottling. The Chairman of the Board, Mr. Karch, with your uncle on his side, is backing Walter Granby. The meeting is set for next Monday morning. And you actually hold the balance of power, Gevan. Both sides are going to try to get you to vote with them. I don’t know if there’s been any pressure yet. I mean aside from Mr. Fitch going down there with that proxy form. I knew that wouldn’t work.”
“How did you know that?”
“When I worked for you, I knew what you thought of Mr. Fitch. And I knew—why you left, of course. And I know how you like to know all the facts before you make a decision. So I knew it wouldn’t work.”
“That’s more than they knew. There was some pressure today, Perry. Niki asked me out. She arranged for Mottling to arrive while I was there.”
“What do you think of him, Gevan?”
“Very impressive. What do you think of him?”
“A secretary’s opinion?”
“The opinion of an orderly mind, Perry.”
She turned her glass slowly, her lips pursed. “I think he’s a good executive. If he has a weakness, it’s with people. He gets results, but gets them through fear instead of loyalty.”
“I’d think that would make him less effective.”
“It doesn’t seem to. But there’s one thing—” She smiled over at me. “It’s too vague to talk about.”
“Hunches are pretty valid sometimes.”
“Gevan, I read all about him in the paper when he came here. The things he’d done. The jobs he’s had. He’s had bigger jobs than this one, Gevan. He’s got a good reputation. I just don’t see why he should be so—well, so tensed up about Dean Products. It doesn’t seem as if there could be enough at stake for him. But I shouldn’t be sitting her talking about things on the management level. I’m out of my depth and you know it.”
“I’m not too sure. If you were me, would you support Granby?”
“No.”
“Mottling then, in spite of this feeling you have about him?”
“No, Gevan. Neither of them. Mr. Granby is financial. The plant needs a production man at the top. He knows that, so I’m not being disloyal.”
“Then who?”
She tapped a cigarette on the back of her hand. Her voice was utterly calm. “You, of course.”
“Now wait a minute—”
“The whole Granby vote could be switched to you in a minute, Gevan.”
“I haven’t got a tenth of Mottling’s experience. I’ve spent four years getting out of practice.”
“I haven’t been swimming in two years. I don’t think I’d drown if I went tomorrow. I think you owe it to yourself, Gevan, but more than that you owe it to the firm.”
“Maybe you’ve forgotten why I left,” I said angrily.
“Oh, everybody remembers why you left, Gevan. Your brother stole your girl and you went marching off in a big dramatic huff.”
“My God, that makes it sound juvenile!”
“Wasn’t it—just a little?” she asked mildly.
“My personal life isn’t up for discussion,” I said.
I saw the quick hurt in her eyes and felt ashamed of myself.
“You asked me for my opinion, Gevan.”
“I know, but—”
“And I couldn’t give my opinion without saying something personal. I’m sorry if it bothered you. Not way down deep sorry. Just surface sorry, because I still think your relationship to Niki is pertinent. It effects what will happen at the plant.”
I know I glared at her. Her eyes didn’t waver. I managed a weak smile. “Okay, Perry. I asked your opinion and got it. Thanks.”
Her answering smile was good. “I don’t want to push my luck, Gevan, but do you still feel the same way about—her?”
“I don’t know. I came back with the idea of—hating her, I guess, but that word is a little too strong. I saw her. Whatever it was in the beginning—in the very beginning—attraction, desire, what have you—that’s still there.”
I ordered another round. Her smile was a twisted thing, a look close to pain. “I used to hate her, Gevan. And that word is too weak.”
“You! Why?”
She looked away. “I guess it’s a common thing. Getting a massive crush on the first boss you have all to yourself. A kid crush. An office infatuation. My God, I was young, Gevan. If you’d asked me to jump out the window, I wouldn’t have waited to raise the sash. When you started going out with her, everybody knew it. Everybody knew you’d gotten her the job. It hurt when you started taking her out. But I told myself it was just one of those things. You’d get tired of her. Nothing to worry about. Did it show, Gevan? What I was feeling?”
“I thought you used to blush a lot and knock things over, but I didn’t think of that reason.”
“I used to think it showed. And I used to think you were laughing at me. Maybe telling your friends about the kid stenographer with the crush on her boss.”
“It didn’t. And I wouldn’t have told anyway.”
She balanced her chin on her fist. “Oh, I had it all worked out. A real script. One day you were suddenly going to look at me. I mean really look at me. And you would be astounded such incredible charm and beauty had been underfoot all this time and you’d been too blind to see it. You would make a speech, and I would simper, and then we would clinch and walk into the sunset together.”
“Perry, I never—”
“I was an awful little fool, Gevan. Every night I prayed that tomorrow would be the day. But it never was, of course. I thought I was going to die when I heard about the engagement. That was a dreadful winter and spring. You know, you used to ask me clumsy questions—about girl things. Colors and so on. And I knew you were buying things for her. I couldn’t stop hoping you two would bust up. Then you did. It was like the sun coming out. I lay on my bed and laughed out loud, I was so happy. But you went away.”
“And you got over it.”
“Good Lord!” I said.
She laughed. “Oh, don’t look so alarmed. I’m not the same person I was.”
It wasn’t easy to adjust to this new Joan Perrit. I had seen her as a shy, awkward, nervous girl. I had never seen or suspected the spirit underneath. While she had told me about herself, she had become completely alive, her face mobile, gestures quick, voice vibrant.
“I wish I’d known it at the time.”
“No you don’t, Gevan. I was a very silly girl.”
“Then maybe I wish it was still going on.”
She tilted her head. “Isn’t that a rather odd thing to say?”
“I’m sorry. I spoke before I thought. I guess you have all that—affection focused on somebody else by now.”
“Actually, no.”
“But I’d think you’d want to have—” I stopped just short of working myself into an impossible corner and realized she was laughing at me, and I blushed.
“The place for the working girl is home,” she said, looking at her watch. I signaled the waiter. She told me her address and how to find it. It was a narrow, quiet street in an old residential section. We had a last cigarette in the car. She said, “Do think seriously about coming back to work, Gevan. I think of you down there in Florida, and I think of what a waste it is.”
“I’ve been out too long. I just want to stay around long enough to swing my vote in the right direction, and then I’ll go back. I—I’d like to see you again before I go back, Perry.”
“Why?”
The blunt question irritated me. “Because maybe I had a good time tonight.”
“Much to your surprise? Good night, Gevan. Don’t bother to walk me to the door.”
She shut the car door and was gone. The hall light in the house was on. I saw her silhouetted against it, saw the door open. She turned and waved and went into the house. I drove slowly away, thinking about her. It was both amusing and flattering to know how she had once felt. She had changed into a handsome, poised young woman. It was odd to learn you had lost something you never knew you had.
I found the street I wanted and turned south, toward the South Valley Road.
Chapter 7
It was midnight when I got to The Pig and It. It was a small white building, garishly lighted, set in the middle of a huge, floodlighted parking area. A juke, amplified beyond all reason, blared from speakers set on posts. There were a few dozen cars in the lot. A damp night wind was blowing and the car hops looked chilly, full of false bravado, in their crisp little mid-thigh skirts, white boots, Russian blouses, and perky hats.
A blonde one came up to my car window with order pad and I said, “Is Lita on tonight?”
“Yeah. You wanner?”
“Please.”
“Sure thing,” she said and walked toward the other girls, rolling heavy hips. A dark girl came toward the car. She was small-bodied, and her legs were thin. She came to the car window and looked in at me. Her dark eyes were large in her white face and her expression was one of surly indifference.
“You want something with me?”
“If you’re Lita Genelli, I do.”
“That’s me, mister. What’s on your mind?”
“My name is Dean, Lita. Gevan Dean.”
She looked blank for a moment and then her eyes went wider, and she bit her lip. “Dean! Jesus! It was your brother who—say, what do you want with me?”
“I talked to Walter Shennary. Sergeant Portugal told me you tried to give Shennary an alibi. I wondered if you were telling Portugal the truth or lying to him. I want to be certain they’ve got the man who murdered my brother.”
“Hold it a sec,” she said. She hurried toward the building to see the clock inside. She hurried back. “I want to talk to you, but I can’t talk here.” She dug into the pocket of her short red skirt, pulled out a handful of change, found a key in with the change, and handed it to me. Our hands touched. Her fingers were cold. “You go a hundred yards down the road, down that way. It’s the Birdland Motel. This is my key. It’s number nine. The next to the last one on the far end, the right end as you’re facing the place. Park right in front. Nobody will bother you. Go right on in and wait for me. I’m supposed to be on till one, but it’s a slow night and maybe I can get off quicker. Make yourself at home, Mr. Dean. There’s liquor and soda and ice in the kitchen. Turn on the radio if you want, and read the magazines. Please, will you wait for me?”
“Okay, Lita.”
“Remember, it’s number nine and nobody will bother you.”
She stepped back, hugging herself against a raw wind as I drove out. I parked where she told me to. Red neon told the world there was no vacancy. My headlights illuminated liverish-yellow stucco, small sagging wooden stoops, windows with discouraged curtains, a window box full of dead stalks.
I let myself into a dark room that smelled of dust and perfume, of laundry and stale liquor, of bedclothes and girl. I used a match to find the light switch beside the door. It turned on a ceiling light with a single bulb and the bodies of bugs in the reflector. Her bed was a studio couch and she had left before making it. On the table near it was a coffee cup with coffee dried in the bottom of it. There were the charred black lines of forgotten cigarettes on the edges of the furniture. The room had an unkempt, cluttered look, a look of stale loves and brutal hangovers.
On a chair was a stack of newspapers, and the top one was the paper containing the account of my brother’s murder. AILAND EXECUTIVE SLAIN. Prowler Shoots Kendall Dean, with a picture of Ken, taken long ago, with half-smile and quiet eyes.
I read the accounts, then looked at the room. In the glow of the overhead bulb it was a grubby place. A man like Portugal could understand this place. A man could go out from a place like this with a gun in his hand and his belly full of rye. The room made me feel quixotic. I could tell myself that I could understand these people, but I knew I didn’t. And I wanted to leave, and be content with Portugal’s shrewdness, but I had gone so far that, even assuming Shennary’s guilt, it would be a needless act of cruelty toward the girl. She wanted her man free. I still wondered what sort of person she was. I made certain the blinds were closed. I began a bungling, amateurish search of the room.
I found letters in the top drawer of a maple-finish dressing table. I hesitated for a moment, and then took them over to where the light was better. I read a few of them. They were nearly all penciled on cheap stationery, and addressed to her at the Birdland Motel or The Pig and It. They all had a pattern:
Lita, baby—The rig busted at Norfolk and I missed the Buffalo load, so I won’t see you as soon as I figured. I got a load to K. C. now and maybe there I can get one to Philly which will bring me by there and you know I will be stopping so be on the lookout for me honey. We had us a time and I’m looking forward to seeing you soon again.
They were signed Joe and Al and Shorty and Red and Pete and Whitey, and they bore dirty thumbprints and they were mailed from all over the East. And they were all over two months old.
She owned cheap bright clothes, and a large collection of cosmetics in elaborate jars and bottles. I could learn nothing else about her. I turned on a table lamp with a red shade and turned off the overhead light. It made the room look better. I turned the small radio on low to a disc jockey program.
It was twenty to one when she opened the door and came in and shut it against the force of the night wind. She looked cold, and her car-
hop uniform looked forlornly theatrical.
“Gee, I’m sorry I couldn’t get off sooner. I was worried you’d be gone. I was glad when I saw the car. Jesus, it’s getting cold. I’m all goose bumps. Didn’t you make yourself a drink? I’ll fix you one, hey? I got to get these goddamn boots off. My feet are killing me. I need a drink bad.” She talked with hectic vivacity, being the gay hostess.
I agreed to a drink and she slumped into the kitchenette. Over the rattling of the ice tray, she called out to me, “I’ve been going nuts trying to get somebody to listen to me. I’m glad you came by, believe me. I know Wally didn’t shoot anybody. He wouldn’t kill anybody. If I thought he had it in him to kill anybody, I wouldn’t have nothing to do with him, Mister Dean. He was right here with me when he was supposed to be killing your brother. But can I prove it? Can he prove it?”
She came out with the drinks and handed me mine and plopped down on the unmade studio couch. The drinks were stiff. They looked like iced, black coffee. She pulled off her boots and sat on the bed, Buddha-fashion, adjusting the skimpy red skirt as a casual concession to modesty. The light came through the red lamp shade and made bloody highlights along her lean cheek, on her small arm and knee.
“I suppose,” I said cautiously, “they think you’d try to give him an alibi anyway.”
“That clown Portugal laughed in my face. It would be okay, maybe, if he didn’t have a record.”
“And they hadn’t found the gun in his possession.”
“In his room. Not on him,” she said firmly. “There’s a big difference. Anybody could put it there. I’ll tell you how it was. I was off. We drove out here and we stayed here. We got here about ten. We had some laughs and some drinks. He was going to stay all night. Then, you know, drinking and all, we got yelling at each other about something. So he took off. And I know that was right around two o’clock, and he was drunk and I worried about him driving. We got fighting about him not reporting to the parole officer the way he was supposed to. The thing is, nobody saw him here but me.”
Area of Suspicion Page 8
