the client?”
I’d promised to let John Andera know before I named him, but if we could keep all our promises this would be a different world. I had no way of knowing if Andera had an alibi this time. I’d gone as far as I could go in protecting him.
“His name’s John Andera, a sales representative for Marvel Office Equipment in New York. All I have is his office number.”
I gave them Andera’s number, and Sergeant Jonas got on the telephone to New York. I told Oster what Andera had told me as his reason for hiring me-just a man who’d liked a girl. Oster thought about it.
“Tabor’s sticking to his story,” he said. “You have any ideas about that woman he says he saw?”
My stump had that gnawing pain. Maybe it was only the effects of the drug, or maybe it was that uneasy feeling I have when I’m thinking what I don’t want to think.
“Felicia Crawford,” I said, and told Oster about her coming to me in New York. “Maybe she’s back in Dresden on her own.”
“She had a gun? No one reported her missing,” he said. “Why would she kill Abram Zaremba?”
“Maybe she thought, or knew, that he killed Francesca.”
Jonas came back and leaned against his wall again. My client was being checked on now in New York.
“Or,” I said, “there’s Celia Bazer. She and Francesca were mixed with the same man. Women have killed each other for that before. Or men have had to eliminate one of the two women. Maybe Zaremba just knew who had killed Francesca, and was putting on some pressure.”
“What man were they both mixed with?” Oster asked.
“Frank Keefer.”
“We’ll check,” Oster said. “Anyone else, Fortune?”
“Mrs. Katje Crawford. Her daughter was killed.”
“We’re back to maybe Zaremba killed Francesca Crawford?”
“He was knifed for some reason, Lieutenant,” I said.
“Okay, I’ll work on all three women,” Oster said.
“Make it four,” I said, glanced at Sergeant Jonas. “There’s a Mrs. Grace Dunstan in New York. I can’t tie her to Zaremba, but she was tied to Francesca Crawford.”
Jonas went back to the telephone. Oster closed his eyes.
“George Tabor isn’t anxious to get turned loose, either,” Oster said. “He seems happy in jail. Safe.”
“Zaremba wasn’t nobody,” I said. “If I even might have killed Zaremba, I’d be scared. Mark Leland was his partner, and Leland was trying to wreck a big deal of Zaremba’s.”
“That project is all legal,” Oster said. “In three months we’ve found no tie between Leland and Commissioner Zaremba.”
“Zaremba fixed that,” I said. “But you know.”
“I work here, Fortune,” Oster said. “The Mayor pays my salary. I investigate crimes, not public business.”
“You like your job?”
“I have for fifteen years.”
“What’s your verdict on Mark Leland?”
“A man looking for a political edge. Digging for dirt. There’s two sides to any business, Leland may have had his side, but I don’t know why he was killed. A man like that makes a lot of enemies. We’re investigating his private life.”
“Muggers too? Investigating transients?”
“That’s right, standard procedure. Leland was stabbed on a public street in his car, his wallet was missing. We may never solve it, or maybe some hobo shows up with the wallet.”
“There was a witness.”
Oster shook his head. “Francesca Crawford’s description could fit ten thousand men. She picked no one from any mug book. She had no information on Leland except rumor. We followed every lead she gave us. Tabor knew nothing, Zaremba had an alibi, and the project is all okay.”
“So Francesca was no danger to anyone?”
“Not that we can see. She knew nothing important, and it’s been over three months. Who would be afraid of her?”
It was what had been said before-and it was solid. If Francesca had been a danger, the killer wouldn’t have waited three months to silence her. Whatever she might have known, she would have told everyone by then. Unless she had kept something back, and the killer had just learned that. It was a slim possibility. Why would she keep anything back?
“Zaremba was eager to know who hired me,” I said. “It’s possible he just knew who killed Francesca. No connection to Leland and the project.”
Jonas returned from the telephone. “You mean maybe he was protecting someone? Or blackmailing? What about that Anthony Sasser? He spends a lot of time around the Crawfords, he knew the girl, and he works with Zaremba. Not on the Black Mountain Lake project, but Sasser worked with Zaremba on other business.”
“Sasser killed Francesca?” Oster said. “Christ, Jonas, Tony Sasser is like an uncle to those girls. What reason?”
I said, “Francesca’s grandfather talked to her before she left town. How did the grandfather happen to die, Oster?”
“In bed, natural causes,” Oster snapped. “Emil Van Hoek was eighty-two, had a bad heart and emphysema. He was about to die for years. Don’t come here and beat bushes for straws!”
“We’ve got three stabbings, and a natural death,” I said. “They have to be connected. If not by business, then somewhere in their private lives. That includes the grandfather.”
Sergeant Jonas said, “Trouble in Zaremba’s organization?”
“A business organization, not a gang,” Oster said.
“Business that was always legal?” I said.
“As far as I know. Legal here,” Oster said. “Okay, a man like Zaremba is killed, you have to think of a power play, a business battle, but this hasn’t got the feel. Simple murder with Fortune left alive. It’s crude, messy, too open. No plan to it, and if it had been business there would have been a neat, careful plan.”
He was a better cop than he had seemed. As good as his job allowed in a small city where pressure and influence were the way men lived. And he was right.
“Hate,” I said, “not greed. A witness didn’t matter.”
“It looks private,” Sergeant Jonas agreed.
“Everyone has a private life,” I said.
We were all thinking about that when Oster’s telephone rang. It was New York for Sergeant Jonas. He didn’t talk for long. When he returned this time, he sat down.
“The Dunstan woman is out of New York,” Jonas told us. “Her husband says she’s visiting relatives in New Haven. He just got home himself maybe half an hour ago. We haven’t found your client, Dan, he’s not at his home. His office says he’s in Philadelphia on business. We had to roust the office manager out of bed to talk, and he says Andera isn’t due to call and report until tomorrow morning. His place is staked out.”
There was nothing more I could do now, and I was close to passing out again. I left Lieutenant Oster and Jonas sitting in silence, and went down to my car. I drove to my motel, and fell onto the bed.
13
In drugged sleep I dreamed of running down a long tunnel after my missing arm that floated always ahead of me, mocking me to be a whole man again.
I woke to a gray morning heavy with a feel of rain coming, and the scent of pine needles outside. I reached for a cigarette. Abram Zaremba had given me the dream. I had let him slap me without hitting back because his men might have been around. I had meekly drunk the brandy trusting to my brain that told me it wasn’t poisoned,
