Where There's Smoke полностью

“Just a routine investigation,” I said.

“At one o’clock in the morning?”

“Well, we like to clear things up,” I said. “Mr. Wake­field, would you happen to know whether Miss Fletcher’s parents live in this city?”

“I know very little about her. We say hello to each other in the hallway, that’s all.”

“Then you wouldn’t know any of her friends, either.”

“No.”

“Because, you see, if she isn’t here at one in the morn­ing, maybe she’s spending the night someplace else.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Or does she normally keep late hours?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, thank you very much,” I said. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”

“I was watching television,” Wakefield said.

“Cut yourself?” I said.

“What?”

“Your cheek,” I said, and indicated the Band-Aid.

“Oh, that. Yes.”

“Well, goodnight,” I said.

“Goodnight,” he said, and closed and locked the door. I went downstairs to the lobby and checked the mailboxes again. The superintendent’s mailbox was the first in the row, marked simply Super. The apartment number en­graved on the box was 1A, which I found on the ground floor, adjacent to the stairwell. The doorbell was similarly marked with a hand-lettered Super. I rang it and waited.

“Who is it?” a man asked from behind the door.

“Police,” I answered.

“Police?” The door opened a crack, held by a night chain. I could see part of a grizzled chin through the crack, one suspicious blue eye, a comer of a mouth. “Let me see your badge,” he said.

I held up my shield.

“Just a minute,” he said, and closed the door again. I waited. Somewhere in the building, a toilet flushed. A baby cried briefly, and then was silent. On the street out­side, I heard the raucous shriek of an ambulance. At last the door opened.

The super was a man in his sixties, a gray beard stub­ble on his face, his blue eyes heavy with sleep. He had thrown on a faded-green bathrobe over his underwear. His naked legs showed below the bottom of the robe.

“What is it?” he asked. “A burglary?”

“No,” I said. “May I come in?”

“My wife’s sleeping,” he said.

“We’ll be quiet.”

“Well, okay,” he said, “but we better be very quiet.”

He stepped back to let me in, locked the door behind me, and then led me through the small foyer and into the kitchen. We sat at the kitchen table. From somewhere in the apartment, I heard someone snoring lightly.

“What’s the trouble?” he said. His voice was hushed, there was the sense in that kitchen of two men who had risen early for a fishing trip.

“I’m looking for Natalie Fletcher,” I said.

“Gone,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Moved out.”

“When?”

“Packed her stuff in the car Sunday night, drove off with it this morning.”

“Did she leave a forwarding address?”

“Nope. Said she’d contact me about the furniture. Would you like a beer?”

“No, thanks.”

“I think I’ll have a beer,” he said, and rose and padded to the refrigerator, and opened the door. “Shit,” he said, “we’re out of beer,” and came back to the table.

“What about the furniture?” I said.

“Told me to try and sell it to whoever rented the apart­ment. Packed only her personal belongings in the station wagon.”

“What kind of station wagon?”

“‘71 Buick.”

“The color?”

“Blue.”

“Do you know the license number?”

“Nope.”

“What kind of personal belongings did she pack?”

“Just clothes and like that. Three suitcases and a trunk. I helped her carry them down. She gave me five bucks.”

“And this was Sunday night?”

“Yep.”

“She packed the wagon Sunday night, but didn’t actu­ally get out of the apartment till this morning.”

“That’s right.”

“You saw her when she left this morning?”

“Yep. Brought me the key.”

“What time was that?”

“Nine o’clock.”

“Did she leave the car on the street that night?”

“I wouldn’t guess so, not packed with all that stuff in it. There’s two garages right nearby. She must’ve left it at one or the other of them.”

“How long had she been living here?”

“Moved in three months ago. In June, it was, the mid­dle of June. What’s she done? What’s your name, any­way? Did you tell me your name?”

“Lieutenant Smoke. What’s yours?”

“Stan Durski. What’s she done?”

“What makes you think she’s done anything?”

“Police lieutenant comes here in the middle of the night, I got to think she done something, don’t I? Any­way, she’s a crackpot. I wouldn’t put nothing past her.”

“How is she a crackpot?”

“She’s crazy,” Durski said.

“In what way?”

“She thinks she’s Cleopatra. Do you believe in recarnation?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Me, neither. She does. You know what she thinks?”

“What does she think?”

“She thinks she’s a recarnation of Cleopatra, how do you like that? She thinks she was born in the year 69 B.C. She used to tell me her father wasn’t James Fletcher, he was Ptolemy the Eleventh—is that how you pronounce it? Ptolemy? And her brother Harry? The one died of a heart attack six months ago?”

“What about him?”

“He wasn’t her brother. That is, he wasn’t Harry Fletcher. You know who he was?”

“Who?”

“Ptolemy the Twelfth—is that how you pronounce it? Cleopatra married him when she was seventeen. He didn’t die of a heart attack, Natalie said.”

“How did he die?”