6
I left the hospital at two o’clock that Monday, too early for the Emerald Room. It was a momentary reprieve, and I took the Long Island Railroad out to Hempstead.
It’s a suburban town a lot like thousands of small, busy, middle-class cities all across the country. It could be in Colorado, except for a total lack of natural beauty. There was only one Harmon Dunstan in the telephone book. I got a cab, and it took me to a large, pleasant brick house on a quiet street not far from Hofstra University. A flawless lawn surrounded the house under trees that were all but leafless now. An empty swimming pool was at the side next to a large patio under a green awning. There was a busy feel to the house, as if it was worked on a lot.
As I walked up the brick path, I was aware of eyes at the front window, and a slender blonde of about thirty- five opened the door. Her face had the residue of the too-perfect beauty you see in magazines, and her body was still good. She wore loose slacks and a dirty shirt as if she had been cleaning.
I said, “I’m looking for Mr. Harmon Dunstan.”
“About what?”
“It’s private. I’m a detective. You’re Mrs. Dunstan?”
She nodded. “Come in then.”
So Harmon Dunstan was married. To a wife who wasn’t surprised that a detective would call. I followed her into a big living room that was arranged and polished like a jewel. She headed for a home bar in a corner.
“A drink, Mr.-?”
“Dan Fortune. Too early for me, thanks.”
I saw that she was a little drunk. Her blue-gray eyes had a film on them like thin plastic as she mixed herself a Bloody Mary. I heard the man behind me.
“Too early for anyone,” the man said, but there was no anger in his voice, only a kind of concern. He held his hand out to me. “Harmon Dunstan, Mr. Fortune.”
We shook hands. It was a hollow gesture, like the polite handshakes of enemy diplomats. He was about five-seven-or-eight, thin and dark-complexioned. Dressed all in gray, in a strangely old-fashioned way-gray fitted topcoat, gray business suit, gray gloves, gray tie, gray homburg, and black shoes, as if he had been about to go somewhere. The elegance of thirty years ago, as if he dressed in a style he had seen and wanted when he was a poor boy, and had never forgotten. Changes in fashion had not affected his dream.
“Can we talk in private?” I said.
The wife said, “He’s a detective, Harmon,” and she said to me, “I know about Francesca Crawford. Harmon told me.”
Dunstan said, “I recognized her picture in the Thursday paper. I knew her as Fran Martin, of course. I told Grace.”
“You went to the police?”
“No, I didn’t. They came anyway,” he said. “I had hoped it wouldn’t come out, Fran and me. I’m a financial counselor, a delicate business. I can’t have scandal, you see?”
But he had told his wife. Why?
“I have to ask some questions,” I said.
He sat down, still in his topcoat, as if he’d forgotten he had it on. There was something peculiar about the way he moved. It was his eyes. They seemed to react to what he was doing only some seconds after he had moved. I sensed that he could sit unmoving for hours, and that his eyes never revealed what he was going to do until he had done it.
“I met Fran two months ago,” he said unasked. “I took her out, bought her some clothes. It lasted five weeks, then she seemed to have no more time for me.”
“When did you see her last?”
“After she moved, I went to Eighty-fourth Street a few times. She was always busy. The last time was a week ago.”
“Why did she lose interest?”
“No explanation. I’d thought that if I tried harder-”
He didn’t trail off, he just stopped, and I felt I was in some surrealist landscape. The shape of things was wrong. As if some trick had transported the Dunstans, the house, and me to an alien world where the familiar became weird. It was the way Harmon Dunstan was talking about himself and a young girl in front of his wife, a stranger, and the shiny furniture of an ordinary middle-class house. It was the way Grace Dunstan listened without anger, without any reaction at all.
I said, “You chased her after she lost interest?”
“I went to see her, yes. Perhaps, if she hadn’t been-”
“Were you sleeping with her?”
He didn’t answer. I guessed that he never would, and who could say now if he had or not? If there was any outside evidence of sex, I’d have to find it.
“Did you know she had other men?”
“I saw Carl Gans once. No one else.”
“Not a John Andera?” I described Andera.
“No, but I wasn’t spying on her, Fortune.”
“Weren’t you?” I said.
Something happened to his face. It went soft, loose, like a desperate boy in some hotel with an older woman. His face was coarser, almost fleshy, and he breathed faster. He blinked up at me, but he said nothing.
“How did you meet her, Dunstan?” I said.
“She applied for a job in my office. I didn’t have a job for her, but we somehow started talking. She had just come to New York, knew no one. I asked her to have dinner. That’s how it began. She seemed to like me at first, a lot.”
Grace Dunstan said, “That’s not an invitation Harmon would have missed or refused.”
“Shut up, Grace!” Dunstan said.
The wife stared at him, but said no more. Somehow, I didn’t think she was concerned with Dunstan’s philandering at all. It was as if she wondered about Francesca’s quick interest in Dunstan.
“You both have alibis for Tuesday night?” I said.
“We were both here at home all night, yes,” Dunstan said.
It was no alibi, and yet as good as most. Normal for two innocent people to have only each other for an alibi. It would be true of most couples any given day or night. But it left them with no witnesses but themselves, and they sat there solid and together when I left.
I walked back to the station. I wanted to think-especially about the way Francesca Crawford had seemed to meet certain men. Casually, but not really so casual.
I carried my duffel coat on my arm when I walked into the Emerald Room this time, and went straight into the bar. I ordered a whisky, aware that I was being watched all the way.
The middleweight bouncer stood just inside the door. His suit hung loosely from his shoulders. He was all shoulders, narrow hips, no belly, and heavy thighs. His nose had been broken more than once. His blue eyes moved in slow sweeps around the restaurant. Despite his face, his manner was mild and inconspicuous, but nothing was going to happen that he didn’t see almost before it happened.
He walked in small circles near the door, and each time he passed the telephone booths he paused to feel inside the coin returns. It was the habit of a simple, poor kid who had missed no chance for a lucky nickel to make life better. I saw a waiter walk up to the bouncer. Gans nodded, and came to me.
“You working on a case, Fortune?”
I knew what the waiter had said to him. They had run a check on me as I sat there-fast and sure. It made me feel like a worm in a garden with the boots of giants all around wherever I crawled.
“I came to talk to you,” I said. “About Francesca Crawford.”
“She said her name was Martin here,” Gans said.
He looked over my shoulder, doing his job of watching the place. His voice was light and hoarse, but mild.
