But Sal (good cop?) changed the subject: "What do you know about Billie Burke's father?"
"Just that he's in the film business."
"You know that because she told you? You never met the man?"
"No, never."
"We don't find any Burkes with daughters at the major studios. We'll keep trying."
I said I was sorry, but I didn't know any more, and that was true.
"What about the name?" Loccatuchi continued. "Billie Burke was an old-time actress. It seems odd she should have the same name. Maybe that was a career name."
I said that it was the name I knew her by, and that, too, was true.
"Yeah, well, I still think you're bullshittin' us, Deemer, but I don't know why. Someone drills out the lock and ransacks her studio on the same night she's murdered. Blows to hell the theory of a random victim of an asshole who likes to watch women drown, wouldn't you say?"
"Yes." Palomino? What about Freddy?
"And why would someone ransack the studio of a photographer of bums? Because they were looking for something? Why kill that photographer? Because she had something the murderer wanted? You with me, Deemer?"
"Of course."
"Look how she died. Tied up and drowned. To force her to give up this thing the murderer wanted? Fits, right? Makes me think she was into something besides bums. And so we come to ask you, her ex-lover."
"I don't know, Detective. Honest."
"Honest, huh? You didn't seem all that surprised to hear about the ransacking. What do you think about that, Sal?"
"He didn't seem very surprised."
"I was surprised. Look, I'm sort of in shock, I think."
"Yeah? Tell me again why you went to the studio on the same night it was ransacked and she was murdered."
"I don't know exactly. It was whim. I wanted something to remember her by, something that showed the two of us together." Every lie I told sucked me deeper into the mire. I knew that.
He gazed hard into my eyes for a long time, then began scratching his neck. "On the other hand, maybe you're just a sentimental weirdo eccentric. No furniture, smoke dope all day, live off your dog. Maybe. My neck tells me different. My guess is we'll be back here, wouldn't you say, Sal?"
Sal nodded slowly, solemnly.
And then they headed for my front door. Was that it? No Palomino?
Cobb snapped his card down on the half-round table in my foyer. "You think it over, Deemer. Look at it like this. Maybe the killer still doesn't have what he killed for. Maybe he thinks you do. If the super saw you at her building, who else did? Follow?"
I followed. After the door closed behind them, I smoked the other half a gasper to quell the twitching hands. I put Eric Dolphy on the box, playing exquisite pain. I focused on the notes, finding refuge. I sat in my Morris chair, put my feet on the sill, and watched the river. All I needed to do was to give myself over to the music and there would be harmony between reality and imagination. Jazz could turn the world into a tranquil place. Jellyroll sensed the potential. He stretched his spine with a long sigh, circled, and flopped on the Spruce Bough.
But I got up even though the music was working. I drew the envelope out from under the stove with a mop handle and studied the "new" photographs.
EIGHT
I DON'T OWN a suit. I had one, but i donated it to a thrift shop when bell-bottoms passed from style. So next morning I helped myself to one of Jerry's. He's a master-blaster mergers and acquisitions lawyer who lives next door to Mrs. Fishbein. His was the key I showed Cobb. Jerry's always flying off to the Sunbelt with a litigation bag-full of gibberish to undermine the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, As Amended, and he hits me up to feed his cat.
After Cobb and his sidekick left, I'd spent two hours over Billie's photographs, staring at them, trying to make some sense of them separately and as a group. I also brooded over those I might have lost in the sooty mud under that tree. I was in an ugly mood when I changed into one of Jerry's four blue pinstriped suits and headed downtown. I stopped at the Strand Book Store to acquire some antiques jargon.
Renaissance Antiques seemed larger in the daylight. I stood under my umbrella on the opposite side of Broadway and watched the building as if close scrutiny might reveal its secrets. It occupied the corner of Broadway and Eleventh and nearly half the block in either direction. It was a lovely Depression-era building with a lot of masonry detail. The ground floor served as a showroom, with large plate-glass windows in which were displayed chests of drawers. There must have been twenty of them. I walked around to the entrance on Eleventh and peered in through the glass door. Antiques of every time and kind were stacked helter-skelter, one atop the other. It looked like the last Xanadu scene in Citizen Kane. I rang the bell beneath which an elegant brass plaque said "Dealers to the Trade."
I waited a long time before I saw a man approaching the door, winding his way through a tunnel of furniture. He opened the door a crack no wider than his face, which was narrow and hawky with an Ichabod Crane nose, and he said, "I'm sorry, we only deal to the trade."
I recognized the face—I had been staring at it in two of Billie's photographs—but I covered my surprise with a big grin. "Hi," I said, "I'm Seth Klimple. Klimple's of Sausalito. Perhaps you didn't receive my wire?"
"Mr. Klimple? No, I don't believe I did."
"I'm not surprised. It's been that kind of trip thus far. May I come in nonetheless?"
He held the door for me and said with a warmthless smile, "I'm Mr. Jones. Manager." You wouldn't buy a subway token from this guy. The air inside was musty and damp, like a grandmother's cedar chest. Jones watched me with little black eyes as I surveyed the stock.
"I specialize, Mr. Jones, in art nouveau. Fin de siècle is very big on the Coast."
..."I believe we have a rosewood settee."
"Is it a Selmershein or a Plumet?"
"I'll have to check."
"May I browse? I'm eclectic."
"Certainly. Excuse me, I'll check on the settee."
"Take your time."
What was Jones to Billie that he should show up in her photographs? Her killer? There was no reason to think so, except that he had the eyes for it. I struck off through the maze in search of Sybel, and suddenly I had a vision. Heart pounding, I stood apart and watched myself kill Jones, a total stranger. Perhaps it had something to do with all that old furniture looming over me like the walls of a dreadful canyon. I killed Jones with an ax. Night before last I was lounging in my Morris chair relatively free of stress, and today I struck Billie's killer, chosen on appearance alone, a terrible two-handed blow that split his head from crown to chin like an overripe honeydew. Both halves rolled sideways over his shoulders and bounced on the floor at his feet. Only when the two halves came to rest on their ears did his body crumple in a pile. Jesus.
"Get out of here!" hissed a female voice, and every muscle in my neck contracted about two inches. For a mad moment I was terrified that she'd witnessed my lethal clout to Jones. I couldn't see all of her, only her face. She had hissed at me through a hole in a stack of matching chairs. Her dark, curly hair was drawn dramatically away from her face and tied behind her head. Sybel wore a simple gold chain wrapped tightly around her throat.
"You gave me a phony phone number," I squeaked. "Why did you do that?"
"Because I didn't want to talk to you. I thought you'd get the message."
"Not good enough." I was beginning to collect myself. "Some things have happened. You talk to me or I go straight to Cobb and sic him on you."
"Cobb? Who the hell's Cobb?"
"Cobb's a hard-ass cop. You'll like him."
"Are you crazy? I can't talk now!"
"When do you get off?"
"Five."
"Meet me somewhere."
"Nowhere private."
"How about the public library?" I wanted to go there anyway.
"Which one?"
"The one with the lions. Do you know where the Map Room is?"
"No."
"Ask. I'll see you there at five-thirty. If you're not there by six, I go to the cops."
"All right. I'll be there, but you cut this Klimple bullshit and get out of here." Sybel vanished.
"Mr. Klimple?" It was Jones calling me. I made two left turns around a fifteen-foot-high stack of dining tables, and there he was. "I found the settee, Mr. Klimple. Right this way." He indicated a forking tunnel and led the way.
It was a monstrosity. "Oh, it's marvelous!" It had gaudy carved lion's paws for legs, and up near the seat the lion's head appeared growling from a jungle of vines that coiled up the arms and over the back. You wouldn't want to sit in the lumpy thing without one of those suits they wear when training attack dogs. "My partner adores jungles. How much are you asking?"
"Seven hundred."
"I'll bring her in to see it. May I have your card, Mr. Jones?" He didn't seem to care a bit about my Klimple act. I was relieved at that and sorry I had killed him on such short evidence. His card said, "Walter Jones. Manager, Renaissance Antiques."
"May I have your card, Mr. Klimple?"
"Sorry, I can't oblige. My hotel room was burglarized last night. Took everything."
"I'm sorry."
"However, I don't blame it on NYC. Could happen in Sausalito. Could happen in Anytown, USA. Let's face it, the traditional values are on the skids today. Sad but true." I was getting a little overconfident. "I'll be back first thing in the a.m. with my partner."
Jones nodded. He didn't give a shit whether I lived or died.
I didn't see Sybel on the way out. It was raining steadily as I walked up Broadway to Union Square Park, where I began to root around in the mud at the base of the tree. I clawed and sifted earth like a crazed archeologist, and once I thought I'd found a negative, but it turned out to be one of those glassine packets street dealers call nickel bags. I was being watched, I realized, by a downtrodden throng of loiterers. They seemed nervous, skittish and wary, like a flock of shore birds. When I rose up on my knees, they cringed and shrank back in silence at the sight of this obsessed antiquer from Sausalito groveling in the mud in a pinstriped suit. I stood, trembling, and they faded back a few more steps. "Did anybody find any negatives under this tree?" I asked. "You know, like photographs." But they disappeared. It was time to get out of this business.
There was a single piece of mail for me at home. "Bright Bay Nursing Home," said the return address. I give away a lot of Jellyroll's money because we don't need it all, so I'm on everybody's list. But this wasn't a request for money. It was a bill:
Dear Mr. Deemer:
Pursuant to our agreement with Ms. Burke, we are sending you the statement for May. Fees for resident patient care are payable in advance on a monthly basis.
We at Bright Bay are distressed and saddened to learn of Ms. Burke's death. However, given Mrs. Burke's tenuous condition I have elected not to inform her of the tragic news.
I would be happy to discuss this and any other matter relating to Mrs. Burke's care at your earliest.
Sincerely,
Elwood Dibbs
Total Amount Due: $2,158.68
NINE
I GOT TO the library well before five and made out a call slip for Life magazine, July 18, 1944. I stood anxiously at the periodicals desk as an indifferent young clerk went to look for it. I was still feeling crazy and frustrated, and sure enough, she returned empty-handed and lazily muttered something at me.
"What!"
She jumped. "It's on microfilm," she said. "Microfilm. On the third floor."
I spun the old machine to the table of contents, and there it was, the caption to the cover photograph:
Maj. Danny Beemon, Fifth Fighter Group, Eighth AF, after his return from an escort mission over the German heartland.
I spun to the article. It was general rah-rah typical of wartime press, about what a terrific job the Eighth Air Force was doing in Europe, how D-Day couldn't have come off without them, and what a fine leader Jimmy Doolittle was. This Danny Beemon was mentioned as being among the top pilots in the European Theater. Though I'd never heard of Beemon, I'd heard of the others, of Gentile, Blakeslee, Zemke, Johnson. If dreaming of doing a thing were the same as doing it, then when I was twelve I flew with them, searching out FW-190s on the frigid upper edge of the atmosphere where vision is endless.
I returned the reel of microfilm and hauled down the Official History of the Eighth Air Force. Beemon, it told me, had destroyed nineteen German fighters in air-to-air combat by the end of the war. In the bibliography, I found a newsletter called "The Big Eighth." It had a New York address and was listed in the phone book. I called from a booth in the marble hallway.
"Hello. I wonder if you can tell me anything about Major Danny Beemon, about what happened to him after the war, his present whereabouts. I'm writing a book."
"A book?"
"Yes, sort of a Boys of Summer approach."
"Good for you. Danny Beemon, ey? He was a hot one, all right. Hang on. I'll ask Buzz." Buzz? There was a guy actually called Buzz? "Buzz is remembering. Gotta give him a second." We waited while Buzz remembered. "Buzz says Beemon survived the war, all right. Buzz says they sent him out to the Pacific. Saipan, but he didn't see no action. Buzz says he don't know what happened to him after the war. Wait, he just remembered: Beemon got killed testing jets in California."
"He's dead?"
"That's what Buzz says."
"Does Buzz remember about what year that was?"
"Fifty-one, fifty-two, thereabouts. If you wanna come in and talk about that book, we'd be happy to see you."
"Should I call for an appointment?"
"Naw, just come on in. Most of us are dead, you know."
"Pardon?"
"I'm just saying you better hurry it up with that book."
The Map Room is beautiful, richly wooden, with an elaborate projection of the world painted on the vaulted ceiling. In fact, the entire library is an architectural treasure, but the Map Room is my favorite, and I used to use it as my personal retreat. I wished as I entered to see grizzled, bearded explorers planning expeditions to Borneo or Ellesmere Island, but there were only a bored clerk sitting at the front desk listening to her Walkman, and Sybel. She was sitting at a table in the far corner eyeing me with mistrust and resentment as I approached. "Look, don't come around the store anymore."
"Why?"
As an answer, she stood, gathered up her bag and umbrella, and banged her chair in.
"Okay," I said, "I won't."
She looked into my eyes to see if I was lying, which I was, then sat back down. "So?" she snapped.
"There were photographs in that ice tray. Negatives. I had them enlarged." I tapped the manila envelope as portentously as possible and sat down across the table from her. Her eyes were beautiful, deep and dark, but hostile. It's tough, even under the best of circumstances, to deal with the person, man or woman, who shared your lover.
I removed the photographs from their envelope and showed her the one on top. It was a shot of Renaissance Antiques taken from across the street at a downward angle, which I had decided was the window in Billie's studio. En route to the library I had suddenly remembered that a couple of months before she left me, Billie had moved her studio from Chelsea to Eleventh Street, across the street from Renaissance Antiques.
Sybel looked expressionlessly at it's image, then looked back at me.
I tried the next one in the stack—I had arranged them in the order I thought most effective—but this one elicited no more response than its predecessor. It was a picture of Jones standing in front of Renaissance Antiques. His stance seemed to suggest that he was waiting for something or somebody.
"Maybe you don't understand," I said. "These are the pictures Billie left for us in the ice tray. Important. Get it?"
"What do you mean us?"
"Yeah, us. Why didn't Billie just messenger the note directly to me? No, she sent word through you. Why? Because she wanted us to meet. You know what
else I think? I think she was killed over these photographs. So could you cut this hostile attitude and say something about them?"
"I don't know you. Why should I trust you?"
"Because Billie wanted us to meet. Never mind, just look at the pictures." I passed her the next one: Renaissance Antiques from the same angle; they were all from the same angle. Jones stood at the curb in front, only now there was a big panel truck in the frame. Two burly men were muscling a chest of drawers down a ramp from the rear of the truck, the arrival of which Jones might have been awaiting in the previous photograph. "Who are those guys?"
"The Palominos," she said.
"Which is which?"
"The big one is Leon."
He was considerably bigger than Freddy. Leon would never have fit in that refrigerator.
I passed her another photo quite similar to the previous ones. Jones still stood near the stern of the panel truck, and the Palominos were still on the ramp with the chest of drawers, only now a long black car was parked behind the truck.
"Just show them to me. I'm sick of you dealing them out one by one and watching my reaction."
I passed her the stack. "Who is the cheery fellow behind the wheel?" He wore mirrored sunglasses and a dark scowl.
"Ricardo. He's Jones's assistant."
"Is Ricardo his first or last name?"
"I don't know."
"Is that the whole staff? Jones, Ricardo, the Palominos?"
"And me." Her tone defied me to make something of it. She looked at the next photo. It was of Stretch at the phone booth.
"Who's he?"
"I don't know."
"I ran into him last night in the hall outside Billie's studio. He asked me if I was part of 'the photography crowd.' Then he asked me if I knew a guy named Barnett Osley. Then he ran from me. Does that seem strange to you? It seems strange to me."
But Sybel said nothing. She looked at the next photograph. It returned us to curbside, Renaissance Antiques. The van was gone, but Ricardo, Jones, and the black car remained. A stocky man in his sixties was addressing Jones forcefully, index finger pressed into Jones's chest. "Who's that guy?" I asked.
Lover Man: An Artie Deemer Mystery Page 6
