Donald Westlake - The New Black Mask ( No 3 )

Jimmy counted out Dr. Larsen’s fee. “I guess Mephistopheles has become kind of our obsession.”

“Then, my bet’s on him.”

“Why?”

“Obsessed people can’t think straight. Try some relaxation when you get to your desk in the morning.”

Jimmy hesitated as he laid a five-dollar bill on the pile. “I noticed you became thoughtful when I told you what she said, like something’d occurred to you.”

“You’ll never give up trying to turn me into a consultant.”

“Did something occur to you?”

“Okay. If I tell you, will you remember it was your idea?”

“Sure.”

“And this is the last time you ask me for advice?”

“Agreed.”

“Then here it is…”

Jimmy went looking for a certain book of photographs, which he found after two difficult days.

That night, he took the book to a certain bar. Helen Dunn s boss scanned the page in which Jimmy was interested and, without prompting, singled out the right man. “This guy. I know I seen him hangin’ around here, botherin’ Helen, not long before it happened.” He scanned the rest of the page. “I recognize some of these other people too; but if you’re lookin’ for someone who was botherin’ her — this guy.”

The rest were dead ends.

The Hugginses slammed the door at the mention of his name.

The owner of the singles bar stared at him. “Seven years ago! I can’t even remember who the hell was here last night.”

Julie McKinnon’s acquaintances were far away by now.

He was wasting time.

Time enough for Patti Bukowski to leave her East Detroit home and her husband of three years, Gil, because things were getting too crazy. Time enough for her to move to a downtown Detroit apartment building to experience being answerable to no one.

She spent the first evening in Hart Plaza on the great, terraced stone structure that overlooked the darkness of the Detroit River.

She was too absorbed in the solitude and the glow of the Windsor skyline at sunset to notice him until he sat beside her.

Patti gave up two and a half weeks later, only partly because she missed Gil.

She was afraid of a man who had seemed so nice at Hart Plaza.

Gil had suggested she wait until tomorrow; but what could be the harm of going home tonight?

“Patti.”

She turned, feeling as if she had just stepped off a thousand-foot cliff. “Oh. Hi.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“You’re going back to him, aren’t you?”

She looked for her car key. If she ignored him, he would most likely get the hint.

She did not see him reach into his pocket, take out a small chain, welded to a sinker and two slugs, and raise it over his head.

“Patti,” he cooed.

“What!”

“Hold it right there.” A figure emerged from the shadows, waving a gun at the man. “Up against the car and spread the feet.”

Jimmy Peyton showed her his credentials, read the suspect his rights, and patted him down. He found a switchblade knife, on which flecks of blood were later discovered, and an envelope addressed to Lieutenant Peyton. (It contained a hand-printed note: “Gil Bukowski’s waiting for his wife to come home. He’ll have a long wait. Mephistopheles.”)

“I know this guy,” said Patti.

“So do we. George Welch.”

“I decided,” said Jimmy at his next session with Dr. Larsen, “I’d gotten as far as I could with Welch’s yearbook; and if he was really killing them ’cause they rejected him, like you said, I’d better just shadow him till he made his next move.” He shook his head. “Dad must’ve asked seven years ago about guys they were having trouble with.”

“Pretty girls don’t comment on every guy who gets too persistent; there’s just too many of them. And I doubt Welch’s victims realized how sick he was.”

“But how did you know it was him?”

Dr. Larsen’s face soured. “I didn’t know diddly. I just made some good guesses.

“Like he lied about what he was doing at the scene of the crime, which I hear you cops have a way of considering suspicious. I mean, we’re supposed to believe she was dressed the way you say she was because she expected the kind of guy you say Welch was? Come now.

“And it would answer your father’s question — you know, why would Lucy Welch let Mephistopheles walk right up to her in her own bedroom? — if until recently it’d been his bedroom too.

“But the closest I came to a brilliant deduction like William Powell and Warner Oland and Basil Rathbone in all those old movies was: seven years ago in June, the Mephistopheles murders mysteriously stopped. One month later, Welch turns up at a Fourth of July party, engaged to Lucy. And no sooner does Lucy dump Welch than Mephistopheles comes out of retirement and makes her his next victim. I mean, I wouldn’t hang anybody on that; but it does bear checking out.

“Now that I’ve answered your question, I’ve got one.”

“Okay.”

“Why were you so hung up on this guy?” Jimmy was still trying to formulate an answer when the doctor added, “In other words, how much of you do you see in him?”

He had a way of returning abruptly to the point.

The story thus far: Debt-ridden Britt Rainstar has been given a remunerative writing job by Manuela Aloe, who becomes his lover. After he tells her that he is married and cannot obtain a divorce, dangerous and unaccountable things begin to happen, for which Manuela seems to be responsible. Having been hospitalized after a terrifying attack, Britt is to be sent home under the care of nurse Kay Nolton. But on the day of his discharge his wheelchair is shoved down the hospital steps.

I was back in my hospital room.

Except for being dead, I felt quite well. Oh, I was riddled with aches and twinges and bruises, but it is scientific fact that the dead cannot become so without having some pain. All things are relative, you know. And I knew I was dead, since no man could live — or want to live — with a nose the size of an eggplant.

I could barely see around it, but I got a glimpse of Kay sitting at the side of the door. Her attention was focused on the doctor and Claggett, who stood in the doorway talking quietly. So I focused on them also, relatively speaking, that is.

“… a hell of a kickback on the sedatives, Sergeant A kind of cumulative kickback, I’d say, reoccurring over the last several days. You may have noticed a rambling, seriocomic speech pattern, a tendency to express alarm and worry through preposterous philosophizing?”

“Hmmm. He normally does a lot of that, Doctor.”

“Yes. An inability to cope, I suspect. But the sedatives seem to have carried the thing full circle. Defense became offense, possibly in response to this morning’s crisis. It could have kept him from being killed by the accident.”

My head suddenly cleared. The gauzy fogginess which had hung over everyone and everything was ripped away. And despite the enormous burden of my nose, I sat up.

Kay, Claggett, and the doctor immediately converged upon my bed.

I held up my hand and said, “Please, gentlemen and lady. Please do not ask me how I feel.”

“You might tell us?” the doctor chuckled. “And you don’t want to see us cry.”

“Second please,” I said, and I again held up my band. “Please don’t joke with me. It might destroy the little sense of humor I have left. Also, and believe you me, I m in no damned mood for jokes or kidding. I’ve had my moments of that, but that’s passed. And I contemplate no more of it for the foreseeable future.”

“I imagine you’re in quite a bit of pain,” the doctor said quietly. “Nurse, will you—”