Murder Among Children

by Donald E. Westlake

  17

  I EXPERIENCED A STRONG sensation of déjà vu upon entering Thing East, and for just a second I felt as though I’d been given another chance; George Padbury would be up front, Robin and Terry would be upstairs, and all I had to do was turn around at once, leave, take the subway back to Queens, and none of this would have happened.

  The appearance of the place helped compound this irrational feeling. The same bright heat outside, the same dim coolness inside, the same first impression of emptiness, and the same sudden movement from the far right corner of the room.

  Except that this time it was Hulmer, coming out of the kitchen. He saw me and called, “Mr. Tobin! Come on back.”

  I walked down amid the tables to him. “Hello, Hulmer. I came to see the upstairs.”

  “Abe called, said you’d be coming by.”

  We stepped through into the kitchen and Vicki was there, stacking clean plates. We exchanged hellos, and Hulmer said, “You want me to come up with you? Show you where everything was.”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  Vicki said, “Want some iced tea? Just made fresh.”

  “Thank you, yes. With lemon, if you have it.”

  “Sure thing.” Handing me the glass, she said, “The heat’s terrible today, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not so bad in here.”

  Hulmer said, “Wait till you get upstairs.”

  I could feel what he meant the minute he opened the door; a wave of hot dry attic-like heat poured out, enveloping us.

  Hulmer led the way, saying over his shoulder, “Better watch your step, there isn’t much light.”

  No, there wasn’t. I followed him up the stairs—narrow, with gray walls on both sides—into dark gloomy heat. The perspiration that Claude Bodkin had warned me about poured from me.

  At the head of the stairs the darkness was almost complete. Hulmer bent and lit a small shadeless table lamp sitting on the floor against the right-hand wall. “There isn’t any electricity on up here,” he explained. “Terry ran extension cords up from downstairs.”

  We were in a corridor running the length of the building, with boarded-up windows at both ends. Thin slivers of sunlight could be seen between the boards. With the lamp on, I could see the extension cords coming up the edge of the stairs and trailing away along the corridor.

  For some reason I’d expected to find rubble up here, peeling plaster and scruffy stacks of old newspaper, but it wasn’t like that at all. It was merely an empty building, under a layer of gray dust. The corridor was lined with wooden doors, all shut.

  “Terry used the rooms along the right side,” Hulmer told me. “Over this way.”

  He pushed open the first door on the right, and clear sunlight gleamed ahead of us. The room we entered was a long rectangle, with two windows at the end to our right. These had been boarded up, but the boards had been knocked loose, some entirely gone now and the others canted to the side, so that the early afternoon sun, still high in the sky, angled its light in to bounce off the wood floor and flood the room with a golden radiance. There was less dust in here, but the room didn’t so much give an impression of having been lived in as of having been camped in.

  The first thing I noticed was the walls, or that is to say the objects hung on the walls. Directly opposite the doorway was a large square abstract painting of the Jackson Pollock dribble school, done in various shades of dark blue-gray, with a streak of orange in the lower left corner. To the right of this was a Times Magazine cover showing student rioters at a sit-in at a western university. Beyond that was a large board covered with a montage of newspaper headlines, followed by a literal painting of a stop sign. In the opposite direction from the central blue-gray painting were a pair of crossed swords, a charcoal sketch of a girl who might have been Robin, and a huge photo of W. C. Fields.

  The other walls were covered in much the same varied way, so that the total effect was of being in some avant-garde movie-house lobby after a bombing. I say after a bombing because of the furniture, or lack of furniture, which completed the place. There were two kitchen chairs to the right, a small bookcase containing phonograph components and a few magazines to the left, and a small round table draped with sweaters and slacks across the way.

  Hulmer pointed to a conspicuously empty area in the far right corner and said, “That’s where the bed was.”

  “Where the bodies were found?”

  “Right. It wasn’t really a bed, Terry didn’t have nothing but a double-bed mattress. The cops took it away. You can see the bloodstains on the walls over there, though. And on the floor.”

  Now that he pointed them out I could see them, small brown dots spattered on the two walls at that corner, other dots on the floor, obscured by dust and sunlight. There had been chalk marks on the floor, too, but they were almost completely rubbed away, worn away, so that you could no longer see for sure where the bodies had lain.

  I said, “Both killings took place in this room, is that the theory?”

  “That’s what it said in the papers.”

  There was a door to the left. Nodding to it, I said, “Where does that go?”

  “Just another room. And then the bathroom beyond that. Come on.”

  He pushed open the door, into what had been a completely lightless room. The blackness in there was only emphasized by the long slender rectangle of pale light stretching across the floor now from the doorway. All I could see was that bit of blank empty floor.

  Hulmer said, “Just a second.” Going inside, stooping, feeling around at floor-level to the left of the doorway, he finally switched on another shadeless table lamp and the room leaped into existence. Windowless, with doors in three walls, it was empty in the middle and on the left, piled high with junk on the right. Cartons, spindly chairs, rolled-up rugs, all the detritus of life that has moved on.

  Hulmer’s shoes echoed on the floor as he crossed the room toward the door on the opposite side, saying, “The bathroom’s over here. That’s the one thing Terry had up here was water. No gas, no electricity, but anyway water.”

  “Hold on a second,” I said, and knelt to study the floor at the threshold. But there were no brown dots, no streaks, nothing to interrupt the thin gray topsoil of dust.

  I got to my feet, brushing off my knees, and followed Hulmer across the room. Either it was cooler in here, in the windowless center of the house, or I was just getting more used to the heat up here.

  The bathroom was a surprise, modern and spacious and complete. The illumination again came from an old table lamp without a shade, but at least this time it wasn’t throwing its stark light upward from floor-level. The lamp was on the formica counter beside the sink. Its light shone on beige tile walls, white tile floor, beige bathtub with frosted-glass shower doors, beige toilet and sink, a large double medicine chest with mirrors and chrome framing, and a white formica counter top with silver specks in it.

  Hulmer said, “Not bad, huh? Kind of motel modern, but what the hell. Better than what I got.”

  “Very good,” I said. I went over and slid open one of the bathtub doors. The tub gleamed in the light. Nonskid strips had been glued to the bottom in wavy lines. The faucet was dripping, very slowly.

  Hulmer said, “What’s that?”

  “Faucet’s dripping.”

  “It is? Never did before.”

  I reached in and tried the faucets and the cold water was slightly on. I shut it and the dripping stopped.

  “All this modern stuff goes,” Hulmer was saying. “But it was great to come up here and take a shower. You take a look in the closet there, you’ll see stuff of mine, Abe’s, George’s, everybody’s.”

  “Robin’s?”

  “Well, sure. They were shacked up, Mr. Tobin. I mean, that isn’t exactly a secret any more.”

  “I know.”

  I opened the linen closet door to the right and saw towels, underwear, soap, socks, various tubes and jars and bottles scattered over the shelves.

  Hulmer,
irritated, said, “That’s a hell of a thing.”

  “What is?”

  “My Holiday Inn towel,” he said. “My brother swiped me a towel from a Holiday Inn he helped integrate, and now somebody swiped it from me. One of those damn cops.”

  “No. Why would a cop steal one of your towels?”

  Hulmer shrugged. “Why would a cop do anything? They were up here wandering around, a couple of them washed up in here, look how dirty they left the towel on the rack there.”

  “But why steal a towel?” I said. “It doesn’t make any sense. You’re sure it was here?”

  “Positive. This is my shelf, my razor’s here, soap, slippers, all my gear, everything but the towel. It was white, with a wide green stripe down the middle, and inside the green stripe in white letters it said Holiday Inn. And it isn’t here.”

  “You’re sure it isn’t at a laundry or anything like that.”

  He shook his head. “I do my own laundry at the laundromat. Bring it down, put the money in, sit around and read a magazine, bring it home an hour later. That towel hasn’t been away from me since my brother give it to me.”

  “Then let’s look for it,” I said.

  He looked at me oddly. “Why? Why you so hot about the towel?”

  I said, “The murderer got blood on himself, Hulmer. Maybe he used your towel to get rid of some of it.”

  “You think so?” He looked around. “What did he do, take a shower?”

  “Maybe. And he was in too much of a hurry to turn the cold water all the way off. Unless one of you has used this room since then.”

  “Nobody’s come up here except cops and now you and me,” he said.

  “So he probably took a shower, yes. And maybe used your towel to dry himself, and then to wipe up bloody footprints on the floor out there or bloodstains in here or bloodstains off his shoes. Anyway, your towel got blood on it, so he couldn’t leave it around, because it would show there’d been someone up here other than the two dead bodies and Robin. Maybe he took it away with him, maybe he just hid it somewhere.”

  “The cops did a lot of searching up here. If they’d found a bloodstained towel, we’d of heard about it.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “So if I’m right and he did use it, he took it with him. Wrapped around his chest inside his shirt, maybe. But first we have to know for sure the towel’s gone. You’re positive there’s nowhere else it could be?”

  “One hundred percent,” he said. “But what about the guy’s clothes?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He can take a shower,” Hulmer said, “to get the blood off himself, but what about the blood on his clothes? He can’t take them into the shower with him, they’ll take forever to dry.”

  I said, “He wasn’t wearing clothes.”

  “What?”

  “If he’d been dressed,” I said, “he wouldn’t be that stained with blood. On his face, maybe, and his hands, maybe his arms, that’s all. No point in taking a shower. But if he took a shower it’s because he had blood all over himself. So he didn’t have any clothes on. Let’s go back to the bedroom.”

  “You want this light on or off?”

  “Leave it on.”

  We went back to the bedroom, where I said, “I can begin to see the way it went now. The Boles woman was found naked, wasn’t she?”

  “Right. The hooker naked, Terry dressed.”

  “All right.” I went over to the hall door. “The Boles woman and the killer come up here. They get undressed, they probably make love on the mattress over there. Then there’s an argument, or a sudden passion, or maybe just the next step in a careful plan. Whatever it is, the killer stabs the Boles woman, kills her. Then he hears Terry and Robin coming up the stairs. No, he doesn’t hear them, they just burst in on him. And there he is, naked, covered with blood, the knife in his hand. Terry makes a move, toward him or toward the door, and the killer goes after him. See, there’s some chalk marks left over near the door here. That’s where Terry’s body was.”

  “Chalk marks?”

  “They outline where the body was in chalk for the photos.” I looked around. “All right. The Boles woman dead, Terry dead, the killer standing here with the knife. Where’s Robin?”

  Hulmer said, “Still in the doorway, wigged out.”

  “Right. In shock. She’s watched a bloodstained naked man murder her lover with a knife. She’s shut down, she’s just standing here like a statue. The killer comes over to her, he plans to get rid of this witness too, but then he sees the state she’s in and he sees a way to be sure the police won’t be looking for him. He smears blood on her, he closes her hand around the knife, he leaves her there.”

  Hulmer said, “But what if she comes out of it? He’s taking a hell of a chance.”

  “No. He can count on her staying that way for a while, at least long enough for him to take a shower, get dressed, clear out of here. Then if afterwards she claims some man did it, where’s her credibility?”

  “Some man?” he asked me. “Not somebody she knew?”

  “I don’t know. The Boles woman is what throws me off. Will you do me a favor, Hulmer?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “Look in the phone book for people named Boles in Harlem, call them, find somebody related to Irene. I’ve got to talk to somebody who knew her.”

  “Will do. You going to stay up here?”

  “For a minute.”

  He went away, and I stood in the living room, looking around, watching it all happen, seeing everything but the killer’s face. He was simply a pale force in the room, streaked with red, the knife glinting in his hand.

  I could see the action, but I couldn’t yet understand it. Why had he been here with Irene Boles? Why had he killed her? Why had he killed Terry Wilford? Why had he failed to kill Robin?

  Did I have the sequence right? What if it had gone the other way around? He could have been here with Boles, Terry and Robin came in, he killed Terry, then had to kill Boles.

  No. I’d had the death scene described to me, and Irene Boles had been murdered on the bed, Terry in the middle of the room. It had to be the first way, Boles and then Terry. Boles already dead when Terry and Robin came up the stairs.

  Then was the murder of Terry simply an afterthought? Was it the murder of Irene Boles that was the impetus of all this, and Terry’s death nothing more than part of the cover-up?

  Two people I had to talk to: someone who had known Irene well, and Robin. I had to know if Robin remembered anything, even in distortion.

  I went back downstairs. Hulmer was on the phone, so I asked Vicki if she had a flashlight.

  “Sure. I’ll think where it is in just a minute.”

  It took rooting through drawers, but at last she found the flashlight and I went back upstairs. It took me ten minutes to convince myself there was no other way out of the building. The door to the roof was nailed shut, the upper-story windows were all boarded up except for the one in Terry’s bedroom, which led only to the cul-de-sac at the rear of the building, and there were no exits into the buildings on either side.

  Nor was there any sign of the missing towel.

  Aside from all the other questions, there was still this extra question: how had he gotten away? The only way out was past George Padbury, and I was prepared to believe George Padbury had been telling the truth when he said no one had come out. He hadn’t been the sort of young man to cover for murder, not the murder of a friend with another friend framed for the job. What he had eventually tried to call me for, and what he had probably been murdered for, was surely something much smaller, much subtler, which had only occurred to him much later.

  So how had the killer left the scene of his crimes? He was up here, fresh from his shower and back into his clothes, the bloody towel in his hand or wrapped around his leg or around his chest, the two bodies there and there, Robin standing like a broken doll streaked with red, here by the door, the stage set, everything ready, nothing left to do but lea
ve.

  How?

  Down the stairs and into Thing East, that was the only way. And he hadn’t done it.

  I finally gave up, for now. I switched off the lights on the second floor and went back downstairs, where Hulmer, elation evident in his face, told me, “I got you better than a relative, Mr. Tobin. I got you her man.”

  “Her pimp?”

  “That’s the one. He’ll know everything about her, every last thing.”

  “Where do I find him?”

  He said, “Mr. Tobin, I think I ought to come with you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this cat isn’t going to talk to a white man and he isn’t going to talk to a cop. And you are white, Mr. Tobin, and you sure as hell do look like a cop.”

  “All right,” I said. “Come along.”

  “We’ll go up in my car,” Hulmer said. “I’ll phone you from uptown, Vicki.”

  “I’ll be okay,” she said.

  “Just keep the door locked till Abe gets here,” he told her.

  She promised she would, and walked to the entrance with us, and locked it after us. Hulmer told me, “I don’t want Vicki to be next, you know?”

  “I don’t want anyone to be next,” I said.

  18

  HIS NAME WAS JIM Caldwell and we had a hell of a time finding him. Every bartender Hulmer talked to sent us on to another bar, until I began to believe we were being sent on a snipe hunt, but all at once we walked into one black and crimson joint, the jukebox pounding away with the bass turned so far up and the treble turned so far down that nothing could be distinguished but the beat, and when Hulmer asked the bartender the same old question, this bartender leaned across the bar and pointed toward a booth way at the back, in almost total darkness.

  We walked back there, Hulmer in the lead, the customers studying us with blank faces, and at the last table we found a tall, rangy, strong-looking man with straightened hair, slightly buck teeth, and a pearl-gray suit that seemed to glow in the dark. Sitting beside him was a dull-eyed young woman, plain of face, a trifle overweight, wearing a rumpled white blouse with long sleeves. It was cool back in here, but up front the sunlight was still an open-eyed glare on the plate-glass windows, and these two weren’t dressed right for the day. In the man’s case, the clothing could be put down to narcissism, the occupational mental disease of pimps. In the woman’s case, the long sleeves more than likely hid the marks of addiction.