Jade in Aries

by Donald E. Westlake

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “I don’t follow you. You took a bath from—”

  “No no, not in the bath, at the bath. The Borough Hall Baths, it’s a public bath, maintained by the City of New York or the Borough of Brooklyn or some other excellent body. Swimming pool, steam rooms, massage, bathing, and lots of little cubicles with cots in which to”—he did smirk this time—“rest awhile. I love to go there.” He turned and smirked at Cornell. “Ronnie used to go there, long long ago, didn’t you, Ronnie?”

  “Before Jamie.” It was a whisper, but full of misery. Cornell had suddenly been given a vision of his future. Even without Detective Manzoni, it would be bleak.

  I said, “Did anybody see you there, anybody who knew you?”

  “Well, they got to know me, I do assure you of that. But honestly, you know, it’s not exactly the sort of crowd that would like to get on a witness stand and say, ‘Oh, yes, I was there and so was he.’ It gets a little scary to talk about one’s fun under oath like that.”

  “I’m not talking about oaths and courts,” I said. “I’m talking about me.”

  “I know that. But would my witnesses? Tobin, I would love to clear myself off your list, but I can’t think of a single person I could send you to who would admit to being at the bath himself, much less identify me as one of the other revelers there.”

  “All right. Let that go for a minute.”

  “Yes, let’s.”

  “You said before that Cornell told you he was investigating Dearborn’s murder. When did he tell you?”

  “After the attempt on him, I’m happy to say. Right in this very room here. However, honesty compels me to admit I already knew it.” Turning, grinning, to Cornell, he said, “You didn’t exactly maintain tight security, Ronnie, you know. I imagine half a dozen people knew what you were up to. Jerry’s the one who told me, and you know what a big-mouth Jerry is. What he knows, the whole world knows.”

  I said, “Who’s Jerry?”

  Remington looked back at me with a big happy beaming smile on his face. “My current darling,” he said. “Just the sweetest little pudgy angel you’ve ever seen. All curves, no harsh angles.”

  Cornell, now embarrassed about me, said, “Stew, please!”

  “You’re right,” Remington said, briskly but without remorse. “Jerry,” he announced, as though it were the title of a speech he was about to make. “Jerry Weissman. Army brat. Nineteen years of age, currently sharing my bed and board. Also a blabbermouth. Jerry Weissman.”

  I said to Cornell, “I don’t remember that name from the list.”

  “He isn’t on it,” Cornell said.

  “Why not?”

  “He was with me the night Jamie was killed.”

  “With you?”

  I thought I’d asked the question in a neutral way, but Cornell blushed and said, “Not like that. I wasn’t—I never—”

  “Ronnie and Jamie were lovers,” Remington said, the sarcasm in his voice unsuccessfully hiding envy. “True to one another, with great exclusivity. A terrible waste, in my opinion.”

  I said to Cornell, “Where were you two?”

  “In Atlanta,” he said. “I come from there originally.” My surprise must have shown, because he smiled faintly and said, “I know I don’t sound like it. I worked very hard at that. And going to northern universities helped.”

  “But you were back in Atlanta the night Dearborn was killed? With—I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten the last name. Jerry …”

  “Weissman,” Remington said, rolling the name mock-lovingly off his tongue. “Just think of him as being beautifully white. Alabaster.”

  Cornell said, “Jerry’s a designer, a men’s fashion designer. He’s just starting out, and we had him do some designs for us. There’s a little place in Atlanta that makes up some of our things for us—”

  “Cheap labor,” Remington commented. “Non-union.”

  “That’s exactly right,” Cornell said, with something defensive in his tone. There were undercurrents between Cornell and Remington on this point, but I couldn’t tell what they were. Cornell went on, “We flew down Saturday morning, Jerry and I, talked to the people there in the afternoon, and stayed over Saturday night. We flew back Sunday. That’s when I found …” Instead of finishing the sentence, Cornell shook his head and moved his hands vaguely in the air.

  “All right,” I said. “Do you have anything written down from your investigations? Lists of names, alibis, anything like that?”

  “It’s all in my desk at the shop,” he said. “At least, it was. I don’t know, maybe he did something with it all after he hit me.”

  “Nobody’s checked?”

  “I didn’t ask anybody to. Jerry might know, he’s been keeping the shop running this week. We can’t afford to stay closed any longer.”

  “Then he’s the one I should see for the keys.” To Remington, I said, “At your place?”

  “Sadly, no,” he said, and Cornell explained, “Jerry’s staying at my apartment. There has to be someone there for the cats, and so the place doesn’t get robbed.”

  “Does he know about me? Can I go to see him directly?”

  “I told him about you,” Cornell said. “He doesn’t know yet that you’re going to help, but he knows who you are.”

  “Then I’ll go see him,” I said, and got to my feet. “I’ll probably come back and talk to you again tomorrow.”

  Remington didn’t stand. He said, “I’m in the book, Tobin, if you need me for anything except alibis. The Brooklyn book. And you?”

  “Queens,” I said. “Under my wife’s name. Katherine Tobin.”

  Cornell said, “I appreciate this, Mr. Tobin.”

  I was about to point out that I hadn’t yet done anything for him to appreciate, but of course I had. His spirits were improved, at least temporarily. I said, “I’ll see you later.”

  From the door, I looked back and saw them both watching me, Cornell’s eyes full of hope and pleading, Remington’s expression sardonic. Remington had one glittering hand resting on the bed, near Cornell’s elbow. Cornell’s leg jutted up at an angle in its cast.

  I knew that Remington would not talk against me behind my back, and yet I felt that he would. I closed the door, nodded to the bored cop in the chair in the hall, and left.

  5

  THERE ARE A FEW picturesque corners of New York City, contrasting with the city’s general drabness, and of these one of the prettiest is Brooklyn Heights. A little section of narrow streets, trees and brownstones, it has a quiet and dignified appearance, and from parts of it can be seen a beautiful view of the skyscrapers of lower Manhattan, across the waters of the mouth of the East River. The actual waterfront is given over to piers and warehouses, as usual in New York, but on the heights above the waterfront there is a highway, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, which for this part of its length is roofed over, the roof forming the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, a narrow parklike walk with trees and benches and a wide-ranging view of New York Harbor, from Brooklyn Bridge on the right to Governor’s Island and Buttermilk Channel on the left. The Promenade has become a habitual locale for cruising homosexuals out to meet new friends, and every once in a while is the scene of a late-night mugging. But neither apes nor perverts detract much from the charm and beauty of the area.

  It was in the middle of the best part of Brooklyn Heights that Ronald Cornell lived, not two blocks from the Promenade. I had trouble finding a parking space, which is standard for that section, and had to walk back three blocks. There had been more snow in the last week, and only a narrow meandering path had been cleared along most of the sidewalks.

  Cornell’s house was a brownstone, fairly wide, four stories tall, with its high front stoop intact. And carefully cleared of snow, as was the full width of sidewalk across the building front. I went up the steps, stamping snow off my shoes, and pushed open the tall narrow glass-paneled door into the tiny foyer.

  The building was divided into two apartments, one taking
the floor at this level and the floor below, the other on the top two floors. Since I understood that Cornell owned this building, I was surprised to see the card “Dearborn-Cornell” next to the upper bell button. I pushed, and a moment later there was a buzzing, and I went through the front doorway into a hall dominated by red flocked wallpaper and rich Persian carpeting. The carpeting continued up the staircase, which filled most of the hall space; just out of sight at the head of the stairs a door opened, causing light-spill to accentuate even more the dramatic wallpaper.

  The bordello effect would have been Dearborn’s idea; it wasn’t Cornell’s style.

  A blond head appeared up there: “Here we are! Come on up!”

  I went on up, and as I approached I got a better look at the blond head. Was this Jerry Weissman? From what Cornell—and Remington—had said, I’d expected something other than this.

  He was tall and willowy, with the seamless smiling face of the innocently depraved. The blond hair was not quite the right blond to be real, and considering the season, his deep tan looked equally artificial. He made me think of surfers and teen-age beach movies. He was the younger brother—and practically the younger sister—of the simulated human beings Cornell had been watching on television. He was dressed in white slacks and a pale blue pullover shirt, and was barefoot.

  Could this be Jerry Weissman? I asked the name, half-expecting him to say no, and then had all my preconceptions twisted out of my reach when he did say no. “I’m Cary Lane,” he said, smiling at me, showing me teeth that didn’t look in any way real. “And if you aren’t Mitch Tobin, I don’t know why I let you in.”

  “I am Mitch Tobin.”

  “I just knew it! You have a look of quiet strength.” And I had the uncomfortable feeling he was about to stroke my cheek. But he didn’t; instead, he stepped back and made a welcoming gesture, saying, “Come on in, Mitch, Jerry’s inside. Oh! Watch the cat!”

  An all-white cat had abruptly snaked through his white-clad legs, grimly intent on reaching the stairs. I bent with a quick scooping motion, was lucky enough to grab the cat in time, and walked into the apartment holding the animal in my arms. It had gone limp at once, and when Cary Lane shut the door I let the cat drop again, and it walked off as though it had never wanted to leave at all.

  “Very nicely done,” Lane said admiringly. He made a willowy little hand motion, as though drying nail polish, to gesture me to go to the right. “Jerry’s in there,” he said.

  I was remembering that Cary Lane was one of the names on Cornell’s list. “Thank you,” I said, and turned right.

  New York City apartments frequently are laid out very awkwardly, the result of being adaptations from the original intent of the building. This building, for instance, would have been at the time of its construction around the turn of the century a private home, with kitchen and servant’s quarters on the ground floor, living and dining rooms on the second, and bedrooms and baths on the third and fourth. The alteration to a pair of independent apartments had left some anomalies, among them the entrance to the upper apartment.

  The entrance was to a blank wall, the top of the stairs having emerged midway along a corridor running from front to back. To the left along that corridor was what looked like an unusually large kitchen for New York, and to the right—the direction Lane had steered me—was the living room.

  The Dearborn aura continued dominant. The corridor had been lined on both sides with posters, both old ones of movies and circuses and new ones of art shows and rock groups, and now the living room was full of inflatable plastic furniture, lucite tables, strange light fixtures and oddly placed fur throws. There were two windows facing the street, curtainless; the white shades were pulled all the way down, and large stylized eyes had been drawn on them, one each. The one on the left was open, the one on the right was shut.

  I automatically looked to my left, at the wall those windows faced, to see what they were staring (winking? glaring?) at, and saw the entire wall spread with a huge color photograph of a Boeing 747 in flight, coming directly this way.

  Behind me, Cary Lane giggled and said, “Everybody does that! Everybody looks!”

  “I suppose they do,” I said, but I was looking now at the other two young men in the room and realizing that the smell in the air was marijuana.

  Which of these would be Jerry Weissman? But it was easy to tell, really. The very young one, no more than twenty, in sneakers and blue jeans and T-shirt; he would be Jerry Weissman. He had an ordinary youthful face, set in an expression of slightly anxious eagerness to please. He was of average height but a bit chunky, with a soft layer of baby-fat that made him look somewhat clumsy, though when he got up from the clear plastic inflated armchair—which I later found it difficult to get out of—he moved with the automatic grace of an athlete.

  His voice too was young and soft, like his face and body: “Mr. Tobin. Ronnie said you might come over. I’m Jerry Weissman.” And he extended his hand toward me.

  I was surprised at the strength of his handshake. It went more with the eagerness of his expression than with his general appearance. “Cornell told me you might be able to help,” I said.

  “If I can,” he said earnestly. “I guess you met Cary already. This is David Poumon.”

  “How do you do?”

  David Poumon had been standing already when I’d come into the room, leaning against the white wall-space between the windows, frowning thoughtfully at the 747. He seemed older than both Weissman and Lane, but in a strange way. It wasn’t as though many years separated him from them, he was probably no older than Lane, but as though a full generation had somehow elapsed in his life that had not as yet elapsed in theirs.

  He had thinning black hair, brushed straight back across a neat small round skull. He wore large glasses with round metal frames, behind which his face seemed slightly shriveled and very pale. A brooding kind of intelligence flickered like St. Elmo’s fire over that face, and I noticed that he seemed to blink much less often than most people. He was wearing ordinary slacks, very like casual slacks back home in my own closet, and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up above the elbows. Black loafers and black socks were on his feet. When we shook hands, it was like holding a rubber bag full of bones; not strong, but not soft either.

  “Sit down, Mr. Tobin,” Jerry Weissman said. “Do you want coffee? Something to drink?”

  None of them were smoking now, and I wondered if they’d stubbed out the marijuana cigarette in honor of my appearance here. I didn’t see it in any of the ashtrays, so I couldn’t tell how short the butt was.

  I said, “Nothing, thank you. I just want to talk.”

  “There’s coffee already made,” Weissman assured me. “Sit down here, I’ll go get some. I want some anyway, it won’t take a minute. Here, sit down.”

  He was obviously the kind of person who can’t think about anything else until they’ve had the chance to fulfill some sort of self-imposed requirement as host. It was easier to give in, so I agreed to coffee and settled myself in the bulgy inflated plastic armchair he’d just gotten out of. It was surprisingly comfortable, but a little too lively.

  Weissman hurried from the room, continuing to cast assurances over his shoulder that this wouldn’t take but a minute, and I was left with Cary Lane and David Poumon. I looked at them with interest, because both names had been on Cornell’s list.

  Poumon had backed into the wall again and returned to his original stance, from which he was now broodingly surveying me instead of the 747. Lane had arranged himself like Jean Harlow on a couple of fur throws on the floor, and was smiling at me with open-hearted happiness.

  I said, “Did you believe Cornell about what had happened to Jamie Dearborn? Before Monday, I mean.”

  “Oh, I did,” Lane said promptly. “I can’t think of anything that man Manzoni could possibly say that wouldn’t be wrong.”

  Poumon, more soberly, said, “It seemed to me the police theory didn’t take Jamie’s personality into
account.”

  “Imagine Jamie picking up rough trade!” Lane announced. “Oh, my dear, it isn’t within the realm.”

  “Did you know Cornell was trying to find the murderer?”

  “Wasn’t that exciting?” Lane clasped his hands under his chin and made his shoulders shiver. “He told us all about it. We were on his suspect list and everything!”

  “When did he tell you?”

  “Oh, ages ago.”

  Poumon, smiling thinly to show he’d understood the purpose of the question, said, “Before the attempt on his life.”

  “Oh, long before that,” Lane said, still oblivious. “Days and days and days.” Suddenly he sat straighter and pointed a dramatic finger at me. “And now,” he declaimed, “it’s your turn. The investigation goes on!” He beamed with pleasure.

  Poumon said, “I suppose you’d like to know where Cary and I were Monday night.”

  Lane looked baffled. “Good heavens, why?”

  Poumon gave him a surprisingly tender smile. “Because, bubblehead, we’re still on the suspect list.”

  “Oh, mercy, of course!” He laughed, delighted to be on the list. “Mitch,” he said, leaning toward me, “can’t you just see me? Sneaking up behind poor unsuspecting Ronnie, bashing him a good one with something terribly suggestive and phallic, then lugging him up all those stairs. Would I kiss him goodbye, do you suppose? Before the old heave-ho?”

  “Would you?” I asked him.

  Lane laughed again, and then began to look a little uncertain. “You aren’t having fun, Mitch,” he said.

  Poumon told him, “He isn’t playing the game, Cary. He’s very serious.”

  “Seriousness makes me nervous,” Lane said. Sitting up straight, he bent his knees, wrapped his arms around his legs, rested his chin on his knees, and looked reproachfully at me. “I never know how to act when people are serious,” he said, pouting a bit. “Like Stew.” And then, precisely like Stewart Remington, “Cary, you must shape up.” Because his chin remained stationary on his knees when he talked, his head bobbed with every word; it was strange to hear Remington’s baritone coming out of that bobbing blond head.