me to feel somewhat safe walking the city streets, but now Linda had given them a fresh and exciting story, however little relationship it may have borne to reality, and I was back in print once more. My disappearance from Larchmont had not yet been explained officially. If the police had guessed that I had stolen the Plymouth convertible, or if it had been discovered where I parked it, the New York
I had dinner, then took the paper back to my room and read all of it. I threw it away and tried to decide where to go next, and what to do. I had spent a few days with an abundance of things to do, and now I was fresh out, and it unsettled me.
It was a combination of a number of things, I think, that ultimately got to me. The newspaper article, and the reality of the near capture in Larchmont left me very shaky. I was afraid to leave the room and at the same time found myself developing an unaccustomed sense of claustrophobia, as though the room were a cul-de-sac in which I could be easily captured at any moment I had nothing specific to do, and wanted more than ever to do something. Around eleven o’clock I left the hotel and wandered over to Times Square.
The girls were out already on Seventh Avenue, though not in full force. They mostly walked, although a few lurked in doorways or pretended to study movie posters. A collection of immaculately dressed Negro pimps grouped in front of the Forty-seventh Street Whelan’s and defined the word
I was afraid to work into the scene. The girls who were here now had very probably been on the street Saturday night. They probably knew Robin, and some of them may have seen me pick her up. They could recognize me. The cops-and there were usually plainclothes bulls on that stretch, along with the ones in uniform-would be more tuned to my picture and description than the average cop in another part of the city. It was a dangerous place for me, and yet it exerted a special fascination.
I was halfway back to my hotel before I figured out why.
I was coming at things from the wrong direction. I was getting nowhere because I was looking for motive, and as a result was flying blind. There was more to it than motive. There was fact, there was empirical observation, there was the gradual compilation of important data. I had passed up all of that by concentrating on theory. I had spent all my time trying to reason out who might have wanted to frame me for murder, when I might better have worked with clean facts to find out who actually did the job on me.
Those whores and those pimps knew Robin. Those whores and those pimps could have seen me pick her up.
And they could have seen him, too. They could have seen him following me, and following Robin and me to the Maxfield. They could know what he looked like, how he was dressed.
That was the sort of knowledge I had to tap. The police could have gotten it themselves if they hadn’t closed the books on the case almost before it opened. But, convinced beyond doubt that I was the killer, they had no reason to look any further. And whores and pimps and junkies do not seek out police with their information. If they did know about the other man, that knowledge would remain hidden. I could be arrested and tried and convicted and executed, and no one would rush forward to tell the court that I was innocent, that another man had trailed us both and used the knife on Robin’s throat.
They wouldn’t tell the police, because the police would never think to ask them.
But they might tell me-
I thought of moths and flames. If there was one part of New York that was dramatically unsafe for me, it was those few blocks. The idea of approaching a girl, of starting to ask questions, was absolutely terrifying. She would run, or shriek, and the police would move in, and the game would be over. PLAYGIRL SLAYER CAUGHT ON THIRD TRY, the tabloids would jubilantly announce, and crime reporters would murmur darkly about killers returning to the scenes of past crimes, while somewhere a two-time murderer would relax and grin while the noose tightened around my neck.
If only I had a ticket to that world. If only I knew someone, so that I could come on like something other than a John.
I found a phone, and a phone book. There was no listing for Williams, Turk. His straight name was Eugene, and there were around fifteen Eugene Williamses listed, the greater portion of them with Harlem addresses. There were also E Williamses, any one of which might have been the Turkey.
I changed a couple of singles into dimes and went right through the list of Eugenes. I asked everyone who answered if I could speak to Turk, and eight times running I was told I had the wrong number. Did they happen to know a Eugene Williams nicknamed Turk or Turkey? No, they didn’t.
The ninth time, he answered. I wasn’t sure the voice was his. I asked for Turk, and he said, “Right here, man.”
I said, “This is-” and stopped, because it occurred to me that heroin wholesalers might have their phones tapped. “This is the Fountain,” I said. That had been his name for me, coined when I helped him with his appeal. He had told me how brilliant I was, and I agreed I was a regular fount of knowledge, and he said yeah, a Fountain Penn.
“Mr. Ball Point.”
“Right.”
“Give me a number, this phone’s dirty.”
I did, and he rang off. I held the hook down with one hand and kept the receiver to my ear, milming a conversation to justify my continuing presence in the booth. Five or ten minutes later the phone rang.
He said, “I’m in a booth now, but let’s leave out the names, dig? My man, I thought you was in Brazil by now.”
“I’m here in New York.”
“Well, we better do something about that. Why you called, huh? My pleasure. You got me out of a tighter place than New York, New York, and if I can return the favor-”
“Turk, I-”
“You need money and you need transportation, am I right? Money is no problem, and there’s a car I can let you have. You want me to meet you some place, say where and when. I would say Mexico would be the best place for you. At least for a start I can tell you where to hit the border, and once you’re across-
“Turk, I didn’t kill her.”
He stopped in mid-sentence. He was silent for a moment, then, “Tell me more, baby.”
I went through it as quickly as I could. “The cat who killed her,” he said finally. “You recognize him if you saw him again?”
“All I remember was an arm. An arm and a hand.”
“Recollect what it looked like?”
“Like an arm, that’s all. You see one arm-”
“No, hang on. Like was it a fat arm or a thin arm, or what kind of shirt on it or was it white or colored. Dig?”
I tried. “No,” I said, finally. “All I really know is that it wasn’t mine. I can’t do any better than that.”
“You can’t come any closer? It could even be a woman?”
“For all I know. I hadn’t thought of that, but-”
“Yeah, I’m hip. Maybe it’ll come clearer for you, maybe-”
It won’t I’ve been over it too many times. I can’t get any more out of it and I’m afraid I never will.”
“That does make it rugged, man.”
“I know.”
“So where do you go from here?”
I told him my idea of tackling it from a new angle, trying to make contact with a girl who might have known Robin. He wasn’t very encouraging. “They don’t talk,” he said. “And you know, junkies, they never notice anything anyway. And when they do they forget it or they won’t talk about it.”
“I thought you might know some of them.”
“Not that crowd. I’m uptown, you know-”
“I know.”
“-And down there is another scene entirely. I’ll lay it out straight baby. You’re innocent and it’s good for you to
