live in New York City. Of course Mary Pearson thought this foolish: she had her teacher's job in Bay Corners, their families lived there, and ”... I hear some Syracuse people plan to build motels out by the lake. Means plenty of picture work for you. I figure you should make fifty dollars a week at least.”
She talked Martin into staying in Bay Corners and he remained there—for three months. The day they were to buy a house, he took a bus to New York City. Mary Pearson never knew what happened to him till seven years later when reporters swooped down on her with Martin's picture on the front page.
Pearson spent a restless year in New York, working in a photography studio. New York wasn't what he was looking for. He decided to study color photography under the G.I. Bill and while looking into the various schools, he overheard some ex-G.I.'s talking about Paris schools.
In June, 1947, he got passage on a clean little freighter and sweated out a hot summer in Paris, living frugally and taking it easy as he brushed up on his French, hunted for an apartment. In September he enrolled in a photography school, but there wasn't much they could teach him. When he said he was interested in motion-picture work, his teacher introduced him to Theresa Veyron, a film editor.
No man had ever called Therese pretty. She was tall and slim, flat-chested, and had heavy ankles. Her long, lean face contained sad eyes, an overlarge mouth, and was set off by carefully brushed brown hair that hung to thin shoulders. The only child of a middle-class family, when she was twenty-two —and with the help of a dowry—Theresa married a fifty-two-year-old man who managed a movie theater on l'avenue des Ternes. He openly spent her dowry on his mistress, made a point of remarking about every large-breasted woman they saw on the streets. They politely hated each other and for lack of something to do, Theresa took a job as a secretary with a concern that made short advertising movies. At the start of the war Theresa was a film cutter.
Therese never considered leaving her husband but the war broke the pattern of most lives: for her it killed her husband, wiped out her family and home during an air raid, and left her mildly active working on underground movies that were never made, and lonely. With the war over she returned to the film business. There were plenty of jobs but no money, and although she worked hard she was always hungry and seedy looking.
Therese resigned herself to the fact that she was unattractive, that romance was out. Americans annoyed her and she only agreed to go out with Martin because it meant a good supper. He took her to a modest restaurant and she stuffed herself as he talked about photography. Over coffee and hot rums he carefully listened to her ideas about movies. And when he walked Therese to her three-room flat, he politely asked if he could sleep with her. She wasn't certain whether she was angry, amused, flattered, or astonished.
They turned out to be ideal lovers; each not only aroused a sincere passion in the other, but each of them was fanatically interested in the same subject—motion pictures. As soon as Therese could evict a girl roomer, Martin moved in. He made no secret of his money and they decided he would continue with school—to get the subsistence money—and in time they would open a small studio, produce the clever two- minute commercial used in French theaters between the showings of the regular feature.
Pearson had about seven thousand dollars left and they carefully hoarded this, living with moderate ease on his G.I. school money. They moved on the fringe of the movie crowd at Joinville, spent their spare time hunting for a studio, looking at equipment—and buying nothing but a cheap 16mm movie camera Martin used for practice.
Life was leisurely; they were sure of each other and their future: they were very happy. Pearson was one of the few Fortunate Americans who wasn't searching for the Left Bank of the 1920's in post-World War II Paris. Martin loved the Paris he found. It made no difference to him if he ate in a swank tourist restaurant or had supper in one of the student places for eighty francs. He wanted nothing more out of life than to sip coffee and eat croissants in a cafe each morning, racing through the Paris Herald in a few seconds, then slowly stumbling through a French morning paper over his second cup. He would play the pinball machine and finally go to school. In the afternoons he roamed the city, taking pictures of the people, the wonderful old dirty buildings. He was amused by the tourists and never lonely for the States. In fact during the five years he spent in Paris he claims he only went to the American Express once. At five in the afternoon he would sit at a sidewalk cafe and exchange small talk with the waiters as he waited for Therese to have an aperitif with him. He enjoyed watching her in the crowds, the eager impatient way she walked, as if there was absolutely nothing in the world as important as rushing to meet and kiss Martin Pearson.
One October evening in 1951, as they were having a late snack of mussels and snails in a cheap restaurant on rue Clichy, Therese asked/'You remember Gabby, the little one who thinks she is an actress because she has a bosom like a cow?”
Martin nodded.
“She is now living with one of your compatriots, a smug, stupid man who claims he was an actor in Hollywood and on Broadway. He is as bald as an egg, and I think you should see him.”
“Why? I can't grow hair!”
“My darling, always you must joke! He has just come from your army in Germany. He has a car and spends his money like a fool. But Gabby swears she has seen three reels of Nazi newsreels he has managed to steal, films never seen before. She says there are pictures of Hitler, Eva Braun, and others, including a parade of nude girls on floats, and horror shots of the beasts looting a Polish village. This... actor has ideas of making a full-length picture around these reels. It can be done, so I have arranged for Gabby to introduce you to this Monsieur Sam Lund.”
CHAPTER 3
AT SEVEN-THIRTY Ruthie got me half awake by the usual method of tickling my toes, then banging me on the head, which always brought me completely around. At first I'd thought this was cute, now I couldn't break her of the habit. I went to the bathroom, wearing only a pair of shorts. There was a short scream— I'd forgotten about the baby sitter. May was a skinny fifteen and wearing an old robe of her mother's that went around her several times. Her pimply face was a furious blushing red. I said, “What you screaming about? Haven't you ever been to the beach, seen men in trunks? Want the bathroom first?”
“I have already completed my toilet,” she announced, so I went in and left her to her blushing.
After breakfast I drove Ruthie to the nursery school. I only had a few hours' sleep and maybe some private eyes can bat along on no shut-eye, but not me. I needed sleep to sharpen my alleged mind, so I went home and crawled back between the sheets, after setting the alarm for noon. Exactly twenty-three minutes later the phone rang, jarring me awake.
Jake Winston said, “Hello, cousin.”
“Hello, Jake,” I said, trying not to sound angry.
“Waited till you were awake to call you,” he said pleasantly. “I saw Ruthie yesterday.”
“She told me.”
“Why didn't you call me last night? You know Grace, always fussing with her cooking. Wants to know if you're coming out Sunday?”
“Well... eh ...”
“Been months since we've seen you. The boys want to see Ruthie and Grace will make some fancy dishes I can't even pronounce.”
Grace was Syrian and could cook Oriental dishes that made you stuff yourself like a pig. “Don't have to sell me, Jake. Thing is I'm on a case and not sure I'll be free Sunday.”
“Let's settle it that you're coming out. If you get stuck, I'll drive in and pick up Ruthie. A deal, chum?”
“I'm buying. How's the mail?”
“Heavy, lot of damn magazines today. See you, Barney.”
I drove over to the office to pick up my mail—a waste of time, stopped at the coffeepot for a second breakfast and a couple of Alma's old dirty jokes, then headed down to the Andersun home. All the time I felt in a daze, my brain still working on Betsy Turner. There was something sad about her. All that stuff about her late husband getting his kicks out of beating men—I didn't believe it, but I guess anything is possible when a joker goes in for thrills.
I only expected to find Mrs. Andersun home, but the father was there too. Their apartment was much like mine, a four-room walk-up in a house that was on the verge of becoming a tenement. The Andersuns were ordinary-looking people, both in their fifties—Mrs. Andersun a very pale and delicate-looking woman. Her husband wore a torn undershirt, old pants, slippers, and a hearing aid. He was stooped and thin, a plump face held up by a scrawny neck, his skin an unhealthy pale-white.
When I told them what I wanted, he told me in a tired voice, “We have been through this so many times, so many questions.”
I gave him the old reliable, “Only doing my job, Mr. Andersun. And you want us to find your son's killer, don't you?”
He shrugged bony shoulders. “Yes, I suppose I do want the killer captured. But that won't bring Franklin back to us. When he came out of the war alive, I was so happy, and now...”
“The war did it,” Mrs. Andersun said as I parked my king-size backside in a worn chair. “Took a quiet boy like my Franklin, had him ride the sky at three hundred miles an hour. He'd be in Topeka one morning, maybe here in New York the next, or in California for breakfast and going to a show in New Orleans that evening. Then they expect him to return to a normal, slow life.”
“Frank wasn't... eh... nervous or anything, was he?”
“No, sir, he was a bright boy, a student,” the mother said. “Took three years of college under the G.I. Bill. Studied business. Always said how with the right methods and a little cash, a person could make a fortune these days. Had so many schemes—all legitimate, of course.”
“What sort of schemes?”
“No sense going into that,” Mr.
