Jade in Aries

by Donald E. Westlake

  Poumon noticed me, said hello, and I said hello back. I thought he was going to let the conversation lapse right there, but when he picked up his drink—something and ginger ale—he said, “Are you learning things?”

  “I’m still in the first stage,” I said. “I’m learning what questions to ask.”

  That was an obvious lead-in; the long hesitation he made before making the inevitable response told me he believed he had things to hide. But so have we all, to one extent or another. Did his concern murder, or was he simply another one like Henry Koberberg, afraid primarily of being forced to be self-aware?

  In any event, he finally did make the response I’d been angling for: “What kind of questions?”

  “For instance,” I said casually, “why your friend Cary thinks you’re the one who killed Dearborn.”

  He frowned at me, but didn’t show much surprise. Some people came over, wanting to make drinks, and we separated slightly as we moved to the opposite corner of the room, near the kitchen doorway but out of the general flow of traffic. Then he said, “If that’s supposed to be a clever trick, I think it’s kind of dumb.”

  “No trick,” I said. “It’s a question that’s come up, that’s all, and I’d like to find an answer to it if I could.”

  “The thing that’s wrong with that,” he said, “is that Cary wouldn’t ever say such a silly thing. Not even if he thought it.”

  “I didn’t say he said it. I said he thought it.”

  “You read minds?” He wasn’t angry with me so much as he was contemptuous and disappointed; he’d thought more of me than this.

  I said, “Have you ever found it really very hard to read Cary Lane’s mind?”

  “I’ve known Cary a long time.”

  “Look,” I said, “I have no more reason to think you’re a murderer than I did when we met last night. You say you were at home working on your music when Cornell was attacked, and I have no reason so far to believe otherwise. I’m not saying that I believe Lane, I’m merely saying that Lane is afraid you killed Dearborn, and he’s afraid I’ll find out about it.”

  “I didn’t kill him,” Poumon said. “I’ve never killed anybody.”

  “I’ll accept that, for the moment. But why does Lane think you did?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s afraid I’ll be arrested and he’ll lose me. How can I say what’s inside his head?”

  “Did you and Dearborn ever have a fight? An argument? Any kind of disagreement?”

  He shook his head at all three.

  I said, “What about Lane? They were both models, did he have trouble with Dearborn? Is he afraid you did it to revenge him, or something like that?”

  He went on shaking his head, and when I was done, he said, “Neither Cary nor I had any reason to kill Jamie Dearborn.”

  “And yet he’s afraid you did it.”

  “I’m sorry if he is, I don’t like to see him upset. Particularly when there’s no reason for it. Will you excuse me now?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said.

  13

  THERE WERE OTHER CONVERSATIONS. I talked briefly with Stewart Remington, and he told me that I was the only one present who was not in some sort of financial arrangement with him, mostly through his law office. These were his clients, and he was prouder of them as clients than as friends. He pointed out those whose income tax he handled, those whose contracts and mortgages and wills he had taken care of, those who had him on an annual retainer.

  I asked him about Jammer, and it emerged that he handled all the legal and financial arrangements for the store, from the lease for the building through the payment of local and state and federal taxes to the keeping of the books. Cornell kept the non-financial records for the store, but Remington served as the place’s accountant. He had also sold them their fire and theft insurance.

  And what about Jammer’s financial health? Cornell had told him about the arrangement where I was to have a fifteen percent interest in the store if I produced the murderer, so Remington misunderstood my question to be mercenary in intent. He assured me that Jammer was doing fine, that my fifteen percent could only increase in value, and that the store had never had a financial worry of any kind. They had managed to get favorable mentions in two of the right men’s magazines shortly after they’d opened, four years ago, and had never lost momentum.

  When I asked him if either Dearborn or Cornell was extravagant, he laughed and waved an arm to include all his guests, saying, “Extravagance tends to be a way of life when you expect to have no heirs. We all love our plumage, even me.”

  “Could Dearborn have been in some sort of financial jam?”

  “Definitely not. Between Jammer and his modeling fees, Jamie was making a minimum of forty thousand a year. Plus the real estate he and Ronnie own.”

  “Real estate?”

  “Three houses here in the Heights.”

  “They’ll be worth a lot of money.”

  “Close to four hundred thousand. Of course, most of that is tied up in mortgages. But the rentals cover expenses and leave a little profit.”

  “Cornell inherits?”

  “In a way. It’s not precisely like a marriage, of course. We drew up legal partnership papers on everything they did together. Jamie had a savings account in his own name; I believe that money will go back to his family in Omaha.”

  “How much?”

  “About twelve thousand.”

  “Parents? Back in Omaha?”

  “Two sisters, I believe.”

  “Do you know if he was in any kind of contact with them?”

  “Ronnie could tell you for sure. I tend to doubt it. Jamie wasn’t interested in the life he’d had before he came to New York.”

  I next began to ask him about my other suspects, but he refused to make any comments at all. “Whoever you wind up putting the finger on,” he said, “will undoubtedly hire me to represent him. I feel I shouldn’t discuss my future client with you.”

  “What if it turns out to be you?”

  He looked surprised, then laughed his booming laugh and said, “Who will I get for my attorney? Excuse me, please.” And he went off to laugh and talk and clap the backs of his clients. His guests.

  I walked around, watching and listening, carrying my glass of vermouth. Twice, guests engaged me in conversation, both times patently trying to ease a certain curiosity about me. One of them said, “I never saw anybody in Warner Brothers drag before. It’s fascinating.” I didn’t volunteer any facts about myself, nor did I cut the conversations short. I was as interested in their milieu as they were in mine. I would also have liked a casual word dropped about one or more of my suspects, but that didn’t happen.

  I saw most of my suspects as I walked around. Not Koberberg, of course, he would still be upstairs in the library, the remote-control chaperon of Leo Ross. But I did see Ross, a charming smile under his bushy mustache, in apparently seductive conversation with a slender young man with gray eye make-up and incredibly hollow cheeks. David Poumon and I crossed paths a few times, both of us nodding, neither speaking. Cary Lane fluttered by once or twice, always pausing to say something sprightly and cheerful. I considered asking him why he was so afraid about Poumon, but decided I would get no coherent answer, and let it go.

  I didn’t see Maundy anywhere. At first I wasn’t actually looking for him, but eventually he became noticeable because of his absence, and then I did do an actual search, culminating in the kitchen, where Jerry Weissman was now in the process of preparing coffee in two large electric coffeemakers. Two cardboard boxes from a bakery stood on the table in the middle of the room, waiting to be opened.

  I said, “Have you seen Bruce Maundy? Did he go upstairs?”

  “Bruce?” He was like a very dedicated young student nurse, ready at all times to rush off on an errand. “He hasn’t been through here. Sometimes he gets turned off and goes home early.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Coffee and cookies pretty soon,” he announ
ced, and I nodded and waved from the doorway, and went on back to the party.

  A while later I saw Leo Ross emerging from the room with the bar in it. He was alone, and I intercepted him before he could return to his friend with the sunken cheeks. “Hello,” I said, stepping in front of him, and he looked irritable for one brief second before tacking a carefree smile on his face. He said, “How did you and Henry get along?”

  “Fine. He tells me you cruise when you’re supposed to be at novenas.”

  The smile flicked out, and the irritability showed itself undisguised. “He did? What did he do that for?”

  “Because it makes him sad, I suppose. The point is, for my purposes it would be better if you were cruising. If you were successful, I mean. That way, you’d have an alibi.”

  The smile returned, but this time intermixed with the irritation. “Sorry, my friend,” he said. “Monday I was truly a good boy. I was really at the novena.”

  “It wouldn’t have to be a public alibi,” I said. “Koberberg wouldn’t have to know about it. That’s the advantage in my not really being a policeman.”

  “Another advantage,” he said, his smile getting tighter all the time, “is that I don’t have to talk to you.” He stepped around me, and moved on.

  14

  I LEFT THE PARTY A little after one. Except for Bruce Maundy, none of my suspects had yet departed; in fact, I was almost the first to leave. Jerry Weissman had attempted to distribute his coffee and cookies about an hour before, with very limited success, and the party I left was almost exactly the same as the party I’d arrived at three hours before. The same volume level, the same arrangements of standing conversational groups, the same chipper superficial chatter. I had expected, as the drinks were consumed, that some sort of change would take place, toward more happiness or toward some kind of trouble, but it hadn’t happened and it looked now as though it wouldn’t. If these people were most of them wearing masks, the masks seemed to be very securely in place; drink alone wouldn’t dislodge them.

  It was still snowing, as lazily and steadily as before. Walking the four blocks to where I’d parked my car, I tried to visualize Jamie Dearborn at that party. How would he have behaved? How would he have talked with the differing groups, with each of my differing suspects? That he would have disappeared in there like a minnow in a school of minnow I had no doubts, but what specific kind of minnow would he have been?

  Jamie Dearborn had been clubbed to death, in a time-honored tradition, by a brass candlestick, a part of the décor of the top-floor bedroom in which the body had been found. I tried to visualize each of my suspects wielding that candlestick, and at first I could see none of them doing it. But then, as I thought about them further, I could see every one of them swinging that shaped piece of brass at Jamie Dearborn’s head.

  Stewart Remington judiciously.

  Bruce Maundy enragedly.

  Cary Lane hysterically.

  David Poumon coldly.

  Henry Koberberg agonizedly.

  Leo Ross irritably.

  There is no type of human being which is a killer type; all men can kill, given the proper impetus.

  If only I had met Jamie Dearborn in life, I would know better what kind of impetus he would be likely to give, which of the six he would be most likely to rub the wrong way.

  The only one of them who had said anything against Dearborn was Koberberg, who had claimed Dearborn was generally disliked for being unpleasant in some way about his successes in life. Did that make Koberberg my prime suspect? Or, since he had talked about his feelings so plainly, did it make him my least likely suspect?

  I had to know more, and I wasn’t even sure where to do my looking.

  Tomorrow I would visit Cornell again.

  I suddenly wondered who would get Jammer and the three houses if Cornell, too, were to die. I would have to remember to ask him about that tomorrow.

  And where would I find out Stewart Remington’s current financial condition? I didn’t know, but it was probably worth looking into.

  I reached the car, my head full of notes and questions. I cleared accumulated snow from the windshield, unlocked the door, and slid in behind the wheel. I keep a notebook and pencil in the glove compartment, and now I wrote down in this all the questions I could think of that I wanted to try to find answers to tomorrow.

  My best route home was over to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and out the Long Island Expressway. There was quite a bit of traffic out on the highways, as usual for a Saturday night, but it was fast-moving and made for easy driving. The roadway itself was clear of snow, for the most part.

  It was as I took the exit ramp off the Long Island Expressway that I saw the flashing red light behind me. I knew I hadn’t been exceeding the speed limit, and so I was certain the light wasn’t for me. A few cars had passed me at fairly high speed; it would be one of them the patrol car was after.

  Except that it followed me down the ramp. And it wasn’t precisely a patrol car. It was a detective’s car, which is to say it was an ordinary-appearing car with no police colorings or markings on it, and the red signal light was mounted on the dashboard just inside the windshield rather than on the roof.

  And it was me he wanted. As I left the ramp and rolled out onto the street, this one fairly dark and completely deserted except for the two of us, he pulled up beside me and I saw him waving at me to pull over and stop. He was alone in the front seat, but there was another person in the back.

  I stopped the car, and he angled to a stop in front of me. I didn’t bother reaching for my wallet to get out my license, because I already believed this was something other than a normal traffic problem.

  He was a burly man, made burlier by the heavy overcoat he wore. The falling snow made him somewhat indistinct as he walked heavily back toward me, but my impression was of a large, heavy-set man of about forty, in black overcoat and black hat.

  I rolled my window down as he reached me. “Yes, Officer?”

  His face was heavy, too, with the shadowed jaw of a man whose beard is too heavy for any razor. “License and registration,” he said, mumbling the words from long practice.

  Was it a normal traffic check after all? But it just didn’t have the right feel to it, and in any case, uniformed patrolmen handle that sort of thing. I had the feeling I was meeting Detective Aldo Manzoni.

  But I followed his lead, merely getting my license out of my wallet and my registration out of the glove compartment, and handing them to him. He stood in the snow, studying them, for an interminable time, and then stepped back a pace and said, “Would you get out of the car, please?”

  I opened the door and stepped out.

  “Shut the door, please.” He had put my license and registration in his overcoat pocket.

  I shut the door. “What’s the problem, Officer?”

  “We’ll get to that, Mr. Tobin,” he said. His voice was heavy but uninflected; a monotone, as though he were reading prepared statements. He said, “Turn around and put your hands on the roof of the car.”

  He was going to frisk me? But it wouldn’t be a good idea to argue, so I did as he said. And now I was beginning to comprehend Ronald Cornell’s helplessness. When a policeman is your enemy, he has more power than you can deal with. He can do many things to you that skirt the fringes of legality without ever quite falling over the edge, and there is nothing you can do to him at all, nothing at all, that doesn’t give him an opening to do even more in return. You cannot beat a policeman, not directly, it’s an uneven contest. You can only obey his orders and try to minimize the damage and hope for the best.

  I put my hands on the top of my car, and leaned forward on the balls of my feet when he ordered me to do so. He frisked me, quickly and efficiently, and kept nothing but the sheet of paper from my notebook on which I had written down, in brief abbreviations, the questions I wanted to ask Cornell.

  “All right, Mr. Tobin, turn around.”

  I turned around. He was holding the slip of
paper, unfolded. He glanced at it, and then looked at me. Snowflakes fell on the paper, and I knew he would not be giving it back to me.

  He said, “What is your employment, Mr. Tobin?”

  “I don’t have any,” I said.

  “Unemployed? What was your last employment?”

  “New York Police Department.”

  “Yes,” he said. He already knew about that. “When did that employment end, Mr. Tobin?”

  “Two years ago, a little more.”

  “Why did it end, Mr. Tobin?” From the way he asked it, he didn’t yet know the answer.

  “I was dismissed.”

  “Why?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it,” I said. “It’s a matter of record.”

  “I’ll look it up,” he said.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Mr. Tobin,” he said, “since leaving the force, have you applied for or received a license to practice in the State of New York as a private investigator?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever been licensed as a private investigator?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Have you ever worked as a private investigator?”

  “No.”

  He smiled thinly at me, and slowly crumpled the piece of paper between his two hands. “Then you have no need for this,” he said.

  I said nothing.

  “And you have no need to talk to any faggots in Brooklyn Heights,” he said.

  I said nothing.

  He said, “Faggots are not in your normal circle of acquaintances, are they, Mr. Tobin?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You’re not doing them any favor,” he said. “Or yourself. You follow me?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He studied me for a minute, brooding, and then said, “Are there any questions you’d like to ask me, Mr. Tobin?”