Where There's Smoke полностью

(1)  He had “disappeared” to Oberlin Crescent in July, when—using the name Amos Wakefield—he’d rented the apartment across the hall from Natalie’s.

(2) He had since shaved his scalp and his upper lip clean. No more bushy head of hair, no more walrus mustache. Only the shaggy blond eyebrows were there as reminders of “the blondest stud” Carruthers had ever seen in his life.

It always got down to love, money, or lunacy—Jesus, what a bore! How many times in the past had I investigated cases in which a man had left his wife, taken up with another woman, and then attempted a disappearing act? The fleeing husband always changed his name—did Arthur Wylie have to call upon the tired cliché of using his own initials, AW, when becoming Amos Wakefield? The runaway spouse also invariably disguised his ap­pearance by bleaching his hair or dyeing it, growing a mustache or shaving one off, putting on glasses or tinted contact lenses, and taking a job totally unrelated to any job he’d previously held. In Wylie’s case, the job would be no problem—he was a jack-of-all-trades and could presumably find work anywhere. And whereas an errant husband disappeared for a variety of self-styled reasons, the common denominators remained love or money; ba­sically, he was weary of (a) any further emotional in­volvements with his former mate, or (b) continuing his financial obligations to her.

Classic. I was dealing with a classic husband on the run. As depressing as this realization was, it was followed within the next thirty seconds by an overwhelming sense of despair. It was then that I suddenly understood the entire scheme. And although I admitted it had taken at least a modicum of ingenuity to concoct, the stupidity of its execution disappointed me nonetheless. I now knew what would happen next. I didn’t know when it would happen, or where it would happen, or even how Natalie and Arthur hoped to make it convincing after such sloppy foreplay, so to speak. But it would undoubtedly happen soon, unless I got to them first and stopped the urgent timetable that had been set in motion on Sunday night. The saddest part of it all was that it didn’t even matter any more. Stop them or not, the damage had already been done; an innocent bystander named Peter Greer had al­ready lost his life.

Despondently, I started the long drive downtown to Oberlin Crescent.

I didn’t expect to find Wylie in his apartment, and he didn’t disappoint me. Or, depending upon how you looked at it, his absence was grievously offending in that he was performing absolutely according to expectations. It was now close to six-thirty. Dusk was already upon the city, nighttime fast approaching; if Wylie planned to do with John Hiller’s corpse what I anticipated he’d do, his scheme would best be implemented in the dark. Stan Durski looked puzzled. He had let me into the apartment with a passkey, and he followed me around now as I opened empty drawers and peered into empty closets.

“Looks like he flew the coop,” he said.

“Looks that way. Did you see him go?”

“Nope,” Durski said.

“Did he tell you he was moving out?”

“Nope. Makes no never-mind to me, though. Had the rent paid till October first. Only thing bothers me is all this furniture he left behind. Another load of crap to get rid of,” he said, and shook his head.

“Mr. Durski,” I said, “were you awake at eleven-thirty, twelve o’clock last night?”

“I was,” he said.

“You didn’t see Mr. Wakefield when he got home, did you?”

“Nope, I didn’t.”

I looked around the apartment again. I could find ab­solutely nothing that told me where he had gone. I thanked Durski, and then went downstairs and walked to the garage where Natalie Fletcher had habitually parked her station wagon. A different attendant was in the small office, but he was listening to the same rock-and-roll sta­tion. I identified myself, and told him I was looking for a 1969 Volkswagen bus.

“Red-and-white?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s Mr. Wakefield’s,” he said. “He was in here just a little while ago. I almost didn’t recognize the poor guy.”

“What do you mean?”

“He had to shave off all his hair. His mustache, too. He’s got some kind of skin disease, he told me. The doc­tor made him shave all his hair off. Something, huh? He looked like that guy on television. What’s that guy’s name, the one who plays the baldy-bean cop?”

“What time was he in here?”

The attendant looked at his watch. “About a half-hour ago,” he said. “Put some valises in the bus, and drove off.”

“Anything else in the bus?”

“Like what?”

“Like anything five feet eleven inches long?”

“Huh?”

“Anything wrapped up or covered?”

“No, I didn’t notice anything like that,” the attendant said.

“Were you here when he came in last night?”

“No, I go off at eleven. He must’ve come in after that. Manuel must’ve been here. He’s got the eleven-to-eight shift.”

“Have you got Manuel’s phone number?”

“Huh?”

“I want to call him.”

“Oh. Sure, it’s on the wall there. You see that card there? That’s all the guys who work here.”