I called Lynn London again. This time when her machine picked up I waited for the beep and left my name and number. Then I checked the phone book.
No Janice Keanes in Manhattan. Half a dozen Keanes with the initial J. Plenty of other variations of the name- Keene, Keen, Kean. I thought of that old radio show, Mr. Keene, Tracer of Lost Persons. I couldn't remember how he spelled it.
I tried all the J. Keanes. I got two that failed to answer, one persistent busy signal, and three people who denied knowing a Janice Keane. The busy signal lived on East Seventy-third Street and I decided that was no address for a lesbian sculptor from Boerum Hill. I dialed Directory Assistance, all set to go through my routine again for the other four boroughs, but something stopped me.
She was in Manhattan. Damn it, I knew she was in Manhattan.
I asked for a Janice Keane in Manhattan, spelled the last name, waited a minute, and was told the only listing in Manhattan under that name and with that spelling was unpublished. I hung up, called back again to get a different operator, and went through the little ritual that a cop uses to obtain an unlisted number. I identified myself as Detective Francis Fitzroy, of the Eighteenth Precinct. I called it the One-Eight Precinct because, although cops don't invariably talk that way, civilians invariably think they do.
I got the address while I was at it. She was on Lispenard Street, and that was a perfectly logical place for a sculptor to be living, and not too long a walk from where I was.
I had another dime in my hand. I put it back in my pocket and went back to the bar. The stock cars had given way to the feature of the program, a couple of black junior-middleweights topping a fight card in some unlikely place. Phoenix, I think it was. I don't know what a junior-middleweight is. They've added all these intermediate weight classes so that they can have more championship fights. Some of the patrons who'd passed up the log- rollers and the stock cars were watching these two boys hit each other, which was something they weren't doing very often. I sat through a few rounds and drank some coffee with bourbon in it.
Because I thought it would help if I had some idea how I was going to approach this woman. I'd been tracking her spoor through books and files and phone wires, as if she held the secret to the Ettinger murder, and for all I knew Barbara Ettinger was nothing to her beyond a faceless lump who put the alphabet blocks away when the kids were done playing with them.
Or she was Barbara's best friend. Or her lover-I remembered Mrs.
Pomerance's questions: 'She was a friend of the Corwins? Were they that way?'
Maybe she had killed Barbara. Could they have both left the day-care center early? Was that even possible, let alone likely?
I was spinning my wheels and I knew it but I let them spin for a while anyway. On the television screen, the kid with the white stripe on his trunks was finally beginning to use his jab to set up right hands to the body. It didn't look as though he was going to take his man out in the handful of rounds remaining, not like that, but he seemed a safe shot for the decision. He was wearing his opponent down, grinding away at him.
Jabbing with the left, hooking the right hand to the rib section. The other boy couldn't seem to find a defense that worked.
I knew how both of them felt.
I thought about Douglas Ettinger. I decided he didn't kill his wife, and I tried to figure out how I knew that, and I decided I knew it the same way I'd known Janice Keane was in Manhattan. Chalk it up to divine inspiration.
Ettinger was right, I decided. Louis Pinell killed Barbara Ettinger, just as he'd killed the other seven women. Barbara had thought some nut was stalking her and she was right.
Then why'd she let the nut into her apartment?
In the tenth round, the kid who'd been getting his ribs barbecued summoned up some reserve of strength and put a couple of combinations together. He had the kid with the stripe on his trunks reeling, but the flurry wasn't enough to end it and the kid with the stripe hung on and got the decision. The crowd booed. I don't know what fight they thought they were watching. The crowd in Phoenix, that is.
My companions in the Blarney Stone weren't that involved emotionally.
The hell with it. I went and made my phone call.
IT rang four or five times before she answered it. I said, 'Janice Keane, please,' and she said she was Janice Keane.
I said, 'My name's Matthew Scudder, Ms. Keane. I'd like to ask you some questions.'
'Oh?'
'About a woman named Barbara Ettinger.'
'Jesus.' A pause. 'What about her?'
'I'm investigating her death. I'd like to come over and talk with you.'
'You're investigating her death? That was ages ago. It must have been ten years.'
'Nine years.'
'I thought it was the Mounties who never gave up. I never heard that about New York's Finest. You're a policeman?'
I was about to say yes, but heard myself say, 'I used to be.'
'What are you now?'
'A private citizen. I'm working for Charles London. Mrs. Ettinger's father.'
'That's right, her maiden name was London.' She had a good telephone voice, low-pitched and throaty.
'I can't make out why you're starting an investigation now. And what could I possibly contribute to it?'
