Where There's Smoke полностью

“Why not?” Horowitz said.

“It’s one thing us talking to him, it’s another he goes around questioning witnesses. We ever get this thing to court, I don’t want the case thrown out because he was sticking his nose where it dint belong.”

Horowitz shrugged again. “Maybe he’s right, Ben.”

“Okay,” I said. “However you want it. It’s your ball­park.”

A black unmarked sedan pulled to the curb. I knew be­fore anyone got out of it that the boys from Lower Homi­cide were on the scene. Homicide boys seem to prefer black; it immediately announces their preoccupation. Both of them came into the alley, saw the shields pinned to the breasts of the topcoats O’Neil and Horowitz were wearing, and looked for identification on my coat. One of them asked who I was; I took out my shield and showed it to him. He was eagle-eyed enough to spot the minus­cule blue-enameled “Retired” in parentheses under the “Detective-Lieutenant.”

“That ain’t worth shit,” he said. “With that and thirty-five cents they’ll let you in the subway.”

“What are you doing here?” the other one said.

“He’s a friend of mine,” Horowitz said.

“Yeah?” the first one said. “Well, run along, friend. There’s been a murder.”

“Goodnight, gentlemen,” I said, and walked out to the lighted sidewalk, and began looking for an open bar, or drugstore, or any place with a telephone directory.

I wasn’t out to get a beat on Horowitz and O’Neil, but I knew they’d be occupied at the scene for at least another hour, and by that time the Natalie Fletcher whose name had been engraved on the back of the pendant might have disappeared to Nome, Alaska. I knew, of course, that the pendant might have been dropped by anyone, and not necessarily by the man who’d stolen another corpse and killed a mortuary employee in the bargain. In fact, it seemed unlikely that the killer—described as a man by the old lady who’d struggled with him—would have been wearing a distinctively female piece of jewelry around his neck. But the chain had been broken, and the possi­bility existed that it had been torn from his neck while he and the old lady did their waltz and the dog nipped at his heels.

There was almost a full column of Fletchers in the phone book, but only one Natalie Fletcher. Her address was listed as 420 Oberlin Crescent, about two miles further uptown. I drove Maria’s Pinto up Claridge Avenue, almost deserted at this hour of the morning, and reached Natalie Fletcher’s building at one a.m., which is a very good time to question people, especially if they’re mur­der suspects. I climbed three flights of stairs to the apart­ment indicated on the lobby mailbox. Outside her door, I put my ear to the wood and listened. Cops, retired or oth­erwise, always listen before knocking on a door. It’s often difficult to understand conversations heard through lay­ers of wood, but different voices are discernible and (pro­vided everyone in the room is speaking) the listening cop can get a pretty good idea of what’s waiting for him be­hind a closed door. The only thing waiting behind Natalie Fletcher’s door was silence.

There was no doorbell. I knocked. There was still no sound from within. I knocked again. It was a little after one in the morning, and if Natalie Fletcher was asleep, it might take a bit of banging to rustle her out of bed. I knocked again, louder this time. The door across the hall opened suddenly. I turned and found myself face to face with a tall, wide-shouldered man in his forties, his scalp shaved glistening clean like a stock company Yul Brynner’s. His eyes were brown, overhung with shaggy blond brows. There was a Band-Aid taped to his right cheek, just below the eye. He was wearing a robe over his paja­mas, his feet tucked into carpet slippers. Behind him in the apartment, I could hear the muted voices of actors in a late-night television movie.

“Are you looking for Natalie?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“She isn’t here.”

“Would you happen to know where she is?”

“No,” he said. “Who are you?”

“Police officer,” I said, and showed him my shield.

“Is she in trouble?” he asked.

“Are you a friend of hers?”

“I know her casually.”

“What’s your name?”

“Amos Wakefield.”

“When did you see her last, Mr. Wakefield?”

“I don’t keep track of her comings and goings,” Wake­field said.

“Then how do you know she isn’t here?”

“Well... I didn’t hear any noise in the apartment when I got home tonight.” He paused. “She’s usually playing records.”

“What time was that, Mr. Wakefield? When you got home tonight?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Eleven-thirty, I would guess.”

“Does she live here alone?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of car does she drive?”

“What?” Wakefield said.

“Does she have a car?”

“I guess so. Why?”

“What kind of car?”

“I don’t know.”

“Would it be a VW bus?”

“No.”

“You’ve seen the car?”

“Yes.”

“But you don’t know what year or make it is.”

“It’s some kind of station wagon.”

“Mr. Wakefield, did you ever see Natalie Fletcher wearing a jade pendant with an Egyptian-looking face carved onto it?”

“No. What’s this all about, anyway?”