A Stab in the Dark

Page 21

"For me?"
He nodded. "Young, not bad-looking. Nice clothes, nice hair. Gave me a couple of bucks to point you out when you came in. I don't even know if you're comin' back, so I figured I'd take a chance, look here and there and see if I could find you. I got Eddie coverin' the desk for me. You comin' back to the hotel?"
"I hadn't planned to."
"What you could do, see, you could look her over and gimme a sign to point you out or not point you out. I'd just as soon earn the couple of bucks, but I'm not gonna go and retire on it, you know what I mean? If you want to duck this dame-"
"You can point me out," I said. "Whoever she is."
He went back to the desk. I finished my coffee and the paper and took my time returning to the hotel. When I walked in Vinnie nodded significantly toward the wing chair over by the cigarette machine, but he needn't have bothered. I'd have spotted her without help. She looked utterly out of place, a well-groomed, well-coiffed, color-coordinated suburban princess who'd found her way to the wrong part of Fifty-seventh Street. A few blocks east she might have been having an adventure, making the rounds of the art galleries, looking for a print that would go well with the mushroom-toned drapes in the family room.
I let Vinnie earn his money, strolled past her, stood waiting for the elevator. Its doors were just opening when she spoke my name.
I said, "Hello, Mrs. Ettinger."
"How-"
"Saw your picture on your husband's desk. And I probably would have recognized your voice, although I've only heard it over the phone." The blonde hair was a little longer than in the picture in Douglas Ettinger's photo cube, and the voice in person was less nasal, but there was no mistaking her. "I heard your voice a couple of times. Once when I called you, once when you called me, and again when I called you back."
"I thought that was you," she said. "It frightened me when the phone rang and you didn't say anything."
"I just wanted to make sure I'd recognized the voice."
"I called you since then. I called twice yesterday."
"I didn't get any messages."
"I didn't leave any. I don't know what I'd have said if I reached you. Is there someplace more private where we can talk?"
I took her out for coffee, not to the Red Flame but to another similar place down the block. On the way out Vinnie tipped me a wink and a sly smile. I wonder how much money she'd given him.
Less, I'm sure, than she was prepared to give me. We were no sooner settled with our coffee than she put her purse on the table and gave it a significant tap.
"I have an envelope in here," she announced. "There's five thousand dollars in it."
"That's a lot of cash to be carrying in this town."
"Maybe you'd like to carry it for me." She studied my face, and when I failed to react she leaned forward, dropping her voice conspiratorially. "The money's for you, Mr. Scudder. Just do what Mr. London already asked you to do. Drop the case."
"What are you afraid of, Mrs. Ettinger?"
"I just don't want you poking around in our lives."
"What is it you think I might find there?" Her hand clutched her purse, seeking security in the presumptive power of five thousand dollars. Her nail polish was the color of iron rust. Gently I said, "Do you think your husband killed his first wife?"
"No!"
"Then what have you got to be afraid of?"
"I don't know."
"When did you meet your husband, Mrs. Ettinger?"
She met my eyes, didn't answer.
"Before his wife was killed?" Her fingers kneaded her handbag. "He went to college on Long Island. You're younger than he is, but you could have known him then."
"That was before he even knew her," she said. "Long before they were married. Then we happened to run into each other again after her death."
"And you were afraid I'd find that out?"
"I-"
"You were seeing him before she died, weren't you?"
"You can't prove that."
"Why would I have to prove it? Why would I even want to prove it?"
She opened the purse. Her fingers clumsy with the clasp but she got the bag open and took out a manila bank envelope. "Five thousand dollars," she said.
"Put it away."
"Isn't it enough? It's a lot of money. Isn't five thousand dollars a lot of money for doing nothing?"
"It's too much. You didn't kill her, did you, Mrs. Ettinger?"
"Me?" She had trouble getting a grip on the question. "Me? Of course not."
"But you were glad when she died."
"That's horrible," she said. "Don't say that."
"You were having an affair with him. You wanted to marry him, and then she was killed. How could you help being glad?"
Her eyes were pitched over my shoulder, gazing off into the distance. Her voice was as remote as her gaze. She said, "I didn't know she was pregnant. He said… he said he hadn't known that either. He told me they weren't sleeping together. Having sex, I mean. Of course they slept together, they shared a bed, but he said they weren't having sex. I believed him."
The waitress was approaching to refill our coffee cups. I held up a hand to ward off the interruption. Karen Ettinger said, "He said she was carrying another man's child. Because it couldn't have been his baby."
"Is that what you told Charles London?"
"I never spoke to Mr. London."
"Your husband did, though, didn't he? Is that what he told him? Is that what London was afraid would come out if I stayed on the case?"
Her voice was detached, remote. "He said she was pregnant by another man. A black man. He said the baby would have been black."
"That's what he told London."
"Yes."
"Had he ever told you that?"
"No. I think it was just something he made up to influence Mr. London." She looked at me, and her eyes showed me a little of the person hidden beneath the careful suburban exterior. "Just like the rest of it was something he made up for my sake. It was probably his baby."
"You don't think she was having an affair?"
"Maybe. Maybe she was. But she must have been sleeping with him, too. Or else she would have been careful not to get pregnant. Women aren't stupid." She blinked her eyes several times. "Except about some things. Men always tell their girlfriends that they've stopped sleeping with their wives. And it's always a lie."
"Do you think that-"
She rolled right over my question. "He's probably telling her that he's not sleeping with me anymore," she said, her tone very matter-of-fact. "And it's a lie."
"Telling whom?"
"Whoever he's having an affair with."
"Your husband is currently having an affair with someone?"
"Yes," she said, and frowned. "I didn't know that until just now. I knew it, but I didn't know that I knew it. I wish you had never taken this case. I wish Mr. London had never heard of you in the first place."
"Mrs. Ettinger-"
She was standing now, her purse gripped in both hands, her face showing her pain. "I had a good marriage," she insisted. "And what have I got now? Will you tell me that? What have I got now?"
Chapter 15
I don't suppose she wanted an answer. I certainly didn't have one for her, and she didn't hang around to find out what else I might have to say. She walked stiffly out of the coffee shop. I stayed long enough to finish my own coffee, then left a tip and paid the check. Not only hadn't I taken her five thousand dollars, but I'd wound up buying her coffee.
It was a nice day out and I thought I'd kill a little time by walking part of the way to my appointment with Lynn London. As it turned out I walked all the way downtown and east, stopping once to sit on a park bench and another time for coffee and a roll. When I crossed Fourteenth Street I ducked into Dan Lynch's and had the first drink of the day. I'd thought earlier that I might switch to Scotch, which had once again spared me a hangover, but I'd ordered a shot of bourbon with a short beer for a chaser before I remembered my decision. I drank it down and enjoyed the warmth of it. The saloon had a rich beery smell and I enjoyed that, too, and would have liked to linger a while. But I'd already stood up the schoolteacher once.
I found the school, walked in. No one questioned my entering it or stopped me in the corridors. I located Room 41 and stood in the doorway for a moment, studying the woman seated at the blond oak desk. She was reading a book and unaware of my presence. I knocked on the open door and she looked up at me.
"I'm Matthew Scudder," I said.
"And I'm Lynn London. Come in. Close the door."
She stood up and we shook hands. There was no place for me to sit, just child-sized desks. The children's artwork and test papers, some marked with gold or silver stars, were tacked on bulletin boards. There was a problem in long division worked out in yellow chalk on the blackboard. I found myself checking the arithmetic.
"You wanted a picture," Lynn London was saying. "I'm afraid I'm not much on family memorabilia. This was the best I could do. This was Barbara in college."
I studied the photo, glanced from it to the woman standing beside me. She caught the eye movement. "If you're looking for a resemblance," she said, "don't waste your time. She looked like our mother."
Lynn favored her father. She had the same chilly blue eyes. Like him she wore glasses, but hers had heavy rims and rectangular lenses. Her brown hair was pulled back and coiled in a tight bun on the back of her head. There was a severity in her face, a sharpness to her features, and although I knew she was only thirty-three she looked several years older. There were lines at the corners of her eyes, deeper ones at the corners of her mouth.
I couldn't get much from Barbara's picture. I'd seen police photos of her after death, high-contrast black and whites shot in the kitchen on Wyckoff Street, but I wanted something that would give me a sense of the person and Lynn's photograph didn't supply that, either. I may have been looking for more than a photograph could furnish.
She said, "My father's afraid you'll drag Barbara's name through the mud. Will you?"
"I hadn't planned on it."
"Douglas Ettinger told him something and he's afraid you'll tell it to the world. I wish I knew what it was."
"He told your father that your sister was carrying a black man's child."
"Holy Jesus. Is that true?"
"What do you think?"
"I think Doug's a worm. I've always thought that. Now I know why my father hates you."
"Hates me?"
"Uh-huh. I wondered why. In fact I wanted to meet you mostly to find out what kind of man would inspire such a strong reaction in my father. You see, if it weren't for you he wouldn't have been given that piece of information about his sainted daughter. If he hadn't hired you, and if you hadn't talked to Doug-you did talk to Doug, I assume?"
"I met him. At the store in Hicksville."
"If you hadn't, he wouldn't have told my father something my father emphatically did not want to be told. I think he'd prefer to believe that both of his daughters are virgins. Well, he may not care so much about me. I had the temerity to get divorced so that makes me beyond redemption. He'd be sick if I got into an interracial romance, because after all there's a limit, but I don't think he cares if I have affairs. I'm already damaged goods." Her voice was flat, less bitter than the words she was speaking. "But Barbara was a saint. If I got killed he wouldn't hire you in the first place, but if he did he wouldn't care what you found. With Barbara it's a different story altogether."