by Ron Goulart
"That's another side effect of his lousy economic situation."
"How so, Helen?"
"Rick did a lot of amateur and semi-professional photography, but he never had a darkroom of his own. He usually shared the set up of a photographer friend of his over in Norwalk," she explained. "But when it got to the point where he was into this friend for around $2500 worth of supplies and equipment, the guy locked him out. That happened about two weeks ago and I imagine Rick didn't have access to another darkroom, not one he could trust with pictures like these. But since he'd been on the scene, he knew what he had seen and he obviously made his blackmail pitch without bothering to develop the stuff."
Sankowitz said, "You realize the consequences of all this? Kathkart and Beaujack, as well as Trinity Winters and old man Moon, are implicated in this murder and the death of Rick Dell."
"Of course," she said, nodding her head. "Initially I didn't think poor Rick was onto something this big, but, damn, this is really terrific. The whole My Man Chumley account is in jeopardy, the—"
"Whoa now." Ben put his hand on her wrist. "I don't like that glow that's starting up in your eyes."
She smiled at him. "No need to worry, Ben. I can get excited about being involved in something like this, but I'm not dippy enough to think I can carry on where Rick left off." She stood up, brushing a wrinkle out of her skirt. "No sir, first thing in the morning you can escort me to your friends on the force. I'll tell all and we'll turn these pictures and the negatives over to them."
Ben said, "Great, that's the smart thing to do."
"Seconded," added Sankowitz.
Chapter 15
"Do you always wear that?"
"Only on special occasions."
H.J. was seated on a raw-wood stool in Ben's big kitchen, watching him as he concentrated on a skillet on the front burner of the stove. "You never wore a candy-striped apron while we were married."
"You never let me cook." He sprinkled a few more flakes of oregano into the sauce he was concocting.
"And now you actually do this sort of thing regularly—cook entire meals for yourself?"
"For myself and select guests."
"I never would have predicted you developing a domestic side, Ben." She rubbed at her knee with her forefinger.
He checked the pot of water next to the skillet. After tossing a few flakes of oregano into the boiling water, he took a handful of spaghetti out of one of the jars on the stove-side counter and introduced that into the pot. "For the first five or six months after we parted I relied on frozen food, restaurants and diners, and soft-hearted friends. Then I decided to try cooking from scratch. It started right after I did the voice for the Chef Pronzini Cooking School commercial spot. 'Anybody she can cook.' as the chef put it."
"Was that you on that commercial?"
"It was cute."
"I often am."
H.J. said, "That's not an especially large account is it?"
"Bills about $2,000,000 a year."
"Nothing, though, like the My Man Chumley account."
"Nope."
"What did you say they spend with the agency each year?"
He gave his bubbling spaghetti a quick stir, then bent to sniff at his sauce. "$75,000,000," he replied. "Which means LM&L's share is something like $15,000,000."
"Imagine making that off just one account every year."
"They won't be making that any longer," he reminded her "They're going to lose the Chumley account fairly soon after we turn those photographs of Rick Dell's over to the police."
"The My Man Chumley restaurants are going to lose money, too. Sales will fall off."
"Initially, yeah. The fact that Chumley is apparently a murderer won't build up much positive publicity." He lowered the heat on the pasta.
She said, "I can see—not that it's right—but I can understand Rick's being tempted. With so many millions of dollars involved, millions that Lenzer, Moon & Lombard could go on making if they just got hold of the pictures. And Barry Kathkart must be pulling down a goodly sum, too."
"I've heard his take for playing Chumley is $1,250,000 a year."
"Rick probably asked them for what? A million bucks, would you guess?"
"At least. But keep in mind, Helen Joanne, that he didn't get even one buck. He just got killed."
"He made some mistakes obviously." She left the stool, went to a window and stared out into the night. "Either he set up some kind of preliminary meeting that went wrong—or he tipped his hand when he contacted that bunch to tell them he had something on them. Somehow they were able to identify him and find him, then they tortured him to get him to talk some."
"He must have told them about Buggsy, yeah."
She said, "But somehow Rick broke away from the goons that had him. This is rather a romantic notion in a way, especially for a schmuck like Rick—but he must have had it in his mind that he was supposed to meet me at the mall. Even in his dazed condition, dying and all, he clung to that idea and. . ." Her voice trailed off. "Poor guy."
"There's an obvious way they could have figured out who he was."
"Which is?"
"Suppose he telephoned Kathkart to make his initial pitch. Seems likely Kathkart would've taped the conversation."
"Suppose he did, what. . . Oh, certainly. If Trinity heard the tape, she'd recognize Rick's voice. Even if he tried to disguise it, he wasn't very good at voices."
"Did he do voices for you?"
"Sometimes."
"Where?"
"What do you mean?"
"At dinner, in the car, in bed?"
"Well, actually, Ben, in bed mostly," she answered. "Not that I especially enjoyed it, mind you, but Rick liked to do cartoon characters."
"Which ones?"
"Oh, I don't know. Well, mostly Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and Tweety."
"Great, most of the Warner Brothers stable while in the sheets." He stirred the spaghetti and then the sauce. "Go seat yourself, dinner is about ready."
"Can't I help?"
"Not at all."
"You're miffed, aren't you? If you'd indicated, while we were living together, that you wanted to say, 'What's up, doc?' while we were having sex, I'd have been perfectly willing to go along with—"
"I'd rather you didn't do those awful voices around the house all the time, Ben."
She smiled. "You don't do a very good me." She went into the dining room, lit the two candles at the table and sat down. "I didn't, keep in mind, do any of this with Rick while we were married. So there's actually no need to be jealous." She slipped her napkin out of the wooden ring, snapped it to unfurl it and dropped it across her lap. "Rick was sort of cute, though, when he went, 'That's all, folks,' after we'd—"
"Never mind." He came into the room, set a plate of pasta in front of her. He put the other plate at his place and, after shedding the apron, sat opposite her. "Wine?"
"Yes, please."
He picked up the previously uncorked bottle of Chianti and filled her glass and his. "After all, as you pointed out, I have no reason to be concerned about all the affairs you had after we split," he said. "The ones you carried on before we separated, I could fret over, but these newer ones are none of my business."
"Ben, there was only one during all the time we were together," she said, looking directly at him. "And, truly, I'm sorry I ever slept with Guapo Garcia."
"What voices did he do in the sack?"
She took a slow sip of her wine. After setting the glass aside, she rested both elbows on the table. "I'm sorry about Guapo mostly because it eventually wrecked our marriage. I didn't intend for it to do that."
"Oh, really?"
"In fact, during these past few days. . . Well, hell, there's no need to bring that up."
"Bring what up?"
She said, "I've been realizing that I've missed you considerably, Ben. Most of the people I've met since we separated, most of the men anyway. . . they aren't much like you."
"Is that good or bad?
"
"Listen, if you'll quit being so damned sulky, we might just try, for one night anyway, to recapture what we used to have."
"I thought we were recapturing that—bickering and arguing."
She rose up, came around to stand beside his chair. "Would you like to go to bed? Right now?"
He stood and instead of saying anything, put his arms around her and kissed her.
She said, "Would you. . . Do you remember, when we were first married and living in that converted bar in Redding, that you used to carry me up to bed?" She slipped an arm tentatively around his neck.
He considered for a few seconds. "I can still do that."
He did, lifting her gently off the floor and starting for the stairway. They were on the third step when she said, "Oops, we forgot something."
"Such as?"
"The pictures. We better not leave them sitting out on the coffee table all night."
He carried her into the living room. Leaning, she gathered up the contact prints and the manila envelope.
Then he carried her up to the master bedroom.
The morning was splendid, judging by the portion of it that showed through the bedroom window. Clear and bright, with an assortment of cheerful birds singing in the trees.
Ben sat up, stretched, yawned, smiled. "Howsa bout some breakfast?" he inquired in his Chef Pronzini voice.
When the tangle of blankets next to him didn't respond, he narrowed his eyes and prodded it with his left hand. There was nobody under the mound.
"H.J.?" He left the bed and scanned the room.
Her clothes were no longer where she'd flung them last night on the far side of the bed.
Then he noticed light showing under the shut door of the bathroom. Barefooted, Ben went over and knocked, "H.J., you in there?"
No answer.
Opening the door, he stepped in. The large yellow and white room was empty. There was an open tube of toothpaste next to one of the twin sinks, squeezed near the top end the way H.J. persisted in doing. One of his hairbrushes had been moved, and he found a few auburn hairs clinging to the bristles. Traces of the quiet floral scent she wore still hung in the moist air.
She's probably down in the kitchen, he told himself. Or maybe out walking in the. . . Hey! The pictures.
He rushed back into the bedroom, going straight to his bureau. They'd deposited the contact prints and the negatives in the top left-hand drawer.
He yanked the drawer out so vigorously that it came completely free, twisting in his grasp and spilling most of its contents onto the carpet.
He squatted to examine what had fallen, even though he could already see that the pictures and the manila envelope were gone. He left the drawer and his scattered socks and underwear lying on the floor.
"That nitwit. Jesus, she's going to try to blackmail those bastards on her own."
Locating the clothes he'd shed the night before, he hurried back into them. He tied his shoes as he hopped out into the upstairs hall.
"I've got to catch her before she does anything fatal." He went down the steps two and three at a time.
While they were married H.J. had developed the habit of leaving messages on the dining room table. Maybe there'd be a note on his table this morning.
The plates from the uneaten dinner were there, the spaghetti cold and stiff, but there was no message. Ben grabbed his glass of wine, and gulped it down then double-timed into the kitchen and the door leading down to the garage.
"Try her house first. Maybe she went there from here."
He pulled the door open, plunged through, stopped on the cement floor. "Oh, come on now. Shit."
His car wasn't there. H.J. must have taken that, too.
Chapter 16
The cab driver was a bearded man in his sixties, wearing a red mackinaw and a yachting cap. "What would you guess my real profession to be?" he inquired as he sent the vehicle rattling across town by way of back roads and winding rural lanes.
"Hum?" Ben was slightly hunched in the backseat, alternately gazing out into the bright morning and consulting his wristwatch. It was nearly 10:00 AM. He had no way of knowing how many hours ago H.J. had slipped away.
"Driving a hack is not my true calling."
"Ah," said Ben.
"So I was asking if you would care to hazard a guess as to my actual line of work. This present occupation you find me in being but a temporary lull in my career."
Ben said, "Sea captain?"
"That's interesting you should guess that. Several of my passengers have."
"Possibly it's your hat."
"Hell, I picked the lid up at a thrift shop in Westport. You can find most anything in Westport thrift shops. I bought a Chinese gong there once," said the white-bearded driver. "Take another guess, why don't you?"
If H.J. had been loose for several hours, there was probably not much chance of his catching up with her. Ben scowled at his watch again. "Give me a hint," he remembered to say.
"Well sir, I hate to do that. Because it would, see, mean that I don't look like a natural born example of what it is I am."
Rubbing his fingers across his palm Ben said, "Wait now, I'm starting to get something. Let me see. Yeah, that's it. I am getting a strong image of a horse. . . yes, a great white stallion. You're in the saddle, galloping across the plains of the Old West. What else am I getting a hint of? Yep, there's a faithful companion to you for many a long year. I am also getting. . . Yeah, you're wearing a mask and a white Stetson. And I think maybe silver bullets play a part in your profession. Am I at all warm?"
"Say, what the hell is wrong with you?"
"Listen, I was just trying to pass the time pleasantly. There's no reason for you to razz me." Ben said, "You mean you didn't used to be the Lone Ranger?"
"You know, I haul a lot of people around Fairfield County, rich and poor alike. Most of them respect me and few razz me." Making a grieved noise, he fell silent.
Ben looked at his watch.
This time there was a note. Ben found it on the front seat of his car, weighted down with his keys. The car itself he'd found parked halfway up H.J.'s short weedy drive. The message, printed in his ex-wife's personal mix of upper and lower case letters, read—
Thanks for the loan of the car. All is well, trust me. Will contact you soon.
Love, H.J.
He stood there in the sunshine, reunited with his car yet far from happy, holding the note in his hand. H.J. had printed it on the back of a gas station credit card receipt she'd borrowed from his glove compartment.
"I bet she's going to try it," he said to himself, shivering once. "That lunatic is going to attempt to get money out of Kathkart and Beaujack and the rest of them."
Unless he found her, cut her off before she made contact with anybody. Otherwise, she was almost certain to end up like Rick Dell.
Folding the note and sliding it into his hip pocket, he shut the car door and started along the doorway toward the garage. Maybe H.J.'s auto was still in there, which would mean she hadn't gone anywhere yet. He looked over at her small house, spotting no sign of life inside.
Now might be a dandy time to look up your contacts in the Brimstone police, he suggested to himself. Either Sergeant Kendig or Detective Ryerson. Probably Kendig would be the better bet, since he's a shade more liberal.
He looked in through the dusty window in the garage door, and let out a disappointed sigh. Her car was gone.
How liberal would a cop have to be, though, to condone what he and H.J. had been up to? Maybe if they'd been able to go to them this morning with the pictures in hand. Sure, with pictures to back up their story, their activities over on Long Island could have been downplayed.
"A little grave robbing, sarge, sure, and a touch of burglary. And there was some shooting in the streets. But, hey, it was all in a good cause and we have this evidence of a murder."
Absently he rubbed some of the dust away from the window with the heel of his hand. One of H.J.'s old suitcases, the on
e she'd taken that time they'd gone up to Cape Cod, was sprawled against the back wall.
Without the photographs, be couldn't prove a damn thing. Except maybe that he and H.J. had broken into a funeral parlor and that H.J. had fled the Eastport Mall just after Rick Dell expired.
And now, with the photos and the negatives in her possession, she was probably contemplating blackmail.
"How would the police react to my telling them I think my wife is about to start blackmailing somebody? Even cops I did fifteen minutes of comedy impressions for at a benefit show."
Not too favorably probably.
"Officers, my wife—make that my former wife—is planning to blackmail some very influential people. Could you guys, please, toss a net over her and keep her out of trouble? Don't arrest her or anything rough like that, because she means well and is just overly mercenary at times. She's a terrific person down deep and good looking, too, not to mention trustworthy and loyal."
Hell, if he went to the police now, all that would happen would be that they'd arrest H.J. Even if she showed them the photos Rick Dell had taken, they'd probably still lock her up and charge her with something. Plus which, he still wasn't absolutely certain she was dumb enough to go up against these people. It could be she was simply going to stay off by herself for a day or two and wrestle with her conscience. Away from him, so he wouldn't be able to argue with her.
"By tonight, though, if you haven't heard from her and haven't been able to find her then, damn it, you have to see the police. Even if that means her getting arrested."
He walked up the path to the house. It was unlikely she was in there, but he wanted to make sure. He was on the porch, taking hold of the doorknob, when a calm voice behind him said, "Just stay right there, if you would. Don't make any sudden moves."
Chapter 17
Very slowly and carefully Ben turned around. A pale blond man in a wrinkled tan suit was standing at the bottom of the steps watching him. He was just under six feet and just a few months from forty.
