Lawrence Block - Sins of the Fathers

I had left the apartment without finding the helpful things one hopes to find. No address books, no checkbooks, no bank statements. No revealing stacks of canceled checks. Whatever their financial arrangements, they had evidently conducted them on a cash basis.

Now, a day later, I thought of my impressions of that apartment and tried to match them up with Martin Vanderpoel’s portrait of Wendy as evil incarnate. If she had trapped him with sex, why did he sleep on a folding bed in the living room? And why did the whole apartment have such an air of placid domesticity to it, a comfortable domesticity that all the blood in the bedroom could not entirely drown?

When I got back to my hotel there was a phone message at the desk. Cale Hanniford had called at a quarter after eleven. I was to call him. He had left a number, and it was one he had already given me. His office number.

I called him from my room. He was at lunch. His secretary said he would call me back. I said no, I’d try him again in an hour or so.

The call reminded me of J.J. Cottrell, Inc., Wendy’s employment reference on her lease application. I found the number in my notebook and tried it again on the chance I’d misdialed it first time around. I got the same recording. I checked the telephone directory for J.J. Cottrell and didn’t come up with anything. I tried Information, and they didn’t have anything, either.

I thought for a few minutes, then dialed a special number. When a woman picked up, I said, “Patrolman Lewis Pankow, Sixth Precinct. I have a listing that’s temporarily out of service, and I have to know in what name it’s listed.”

She asked the number. I gave it to her. She asked me to please hold the line. I sat there with the phone against my ear for almost ten minutes before she came back on the line.

“That’s not a temporary disconnect,” she said. “That’s a permanent disconnect.”

“Can you tell me who the number was assigned to last?”

“I’m afraid I can’t, officer.”

“Don’t you keep that information on file?”

“We must have it somewhere, but I don’t have access to it. I have recent disconnects, but that was disconnected over a year ago, so I wouldn’t have it. I’m surprised it hasn’t been reassigned by now.”

“So all you know is that it’s been out of service for more than a year.”

That was all she knew. I thanked her and rang off. I poured myself a drink, and by the time it was gone I decided that Hanniford ought to be back in his office. I was right.

He told me he had managed to find the postcards. The first one, postmarked New York, had been mailed on June 4. The second had been mailed in Miami on September 16.

“Does that tell you anything, Scudder?”

It told me she had been in New York in early June if not before then. It told me she had taken the Miami trip prior to signing the lease on her apartment. Beyond that, it didn’t tell me a tremendous amount.

“Another piece of the puzzle,” I said. “Do you have the cards with you now?”

“Yes, they’re right in front of me.”

“Could you read me the messages?”

“They don’t say very much.” I waited, and he said, “Well, there’s no reason not to read them. This is the first card. ‘Dear Mom and Dad. Hope you haven’t been worrying about me. Everything is fine. Am in New York and like the big city very much. School got to be too much of a hassle. Will explain everything when I see you.’ ” His voice cracked a little on that line, but he coughed and went on. “ ‘Please don’t worry. Love, Wendy.’ ”

“And the other card?”

“Hardly anything on it. ‘Dear Mom and Dad. Not bad, huh? I always thought Florida was strictly for wintertime, but it’s great this time of year. See you soon. Love, Wendy.’ ”

He asked me how things were going. I didn’t really know how to answer the question. I said I had been very busy and was putting a lot of bits and pieces together but that I didn’t know when I would have something to show him. “Wendy was sharing her apartment with another girl for several months before Vanderpoel came on the scene.”

“Was the other girl a prostitute?”

“I don’t know. I rather doubt it, but I’m not sure. I’m seeing her tomorrow. Evidently she was someone Wendy knew at college. Did she ever mention a friend named Marcia Maisel?”

“Maisel? I don’t think so.”

“Do you know the names of any of her friends from college?”

“I don’t believe I do. Let me think. I seem to recall that she would refer to them by first names, and they didn’t stick in my mind.”

“It’s probably unimportant. Does the name Cottrell mean anything to you?”

“Cottrell?” I spelled it, and he said it aloud again. “No, it doesn’t mean anything to me. Should it?”

“Wendy used a firm by that name as a job reference when she signed her apartment lease. The firm doesn’t seem to exist.”

“Why did you think I would have heard of it?”

“Just a shot in the dark. I’ve been taking a lot of them lately, Mr. Hanniford. Was Wendy a good cook?”

“Wendy? Not as far as I know. Of course she may have developed an interest in cooking at college. I wouldn’t know about that. When she was living at home, I don’t think she ever made anything more ambitious than a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. Why?”

“No reason.”

His other phone rang, and he asked if there was anything else. I started to say that there wasn’t and then thought of what I should have thought of at the beginning. “The postcards,” I said.

“What about them?”

“What’s on the other side?”

“The other side?”

“They’re picture postcards, aren’t they? Turn them over. I want to know what’s on the other side.”

“I’ll see. Grant’s Tomb. Is that an important piece of the puzzle, Scudder?”

I ignored the sarcasm. “That’s New York,” I said. “I’m more interested in the Miami one.”

“It’s a hotel.”

“What hotel?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. I didn’t even think of it that way. It could mean something, couldn’t it?”

“What hotel, Mr. Hanniford?”

“The Eden Roc. Does that give you an important lead?”

It didn’t.

I got the manager at the Eden Roc and told him I was a New York City police officer investigating a fraud case. I had him dig out his registration cards for the month of September 1970. I was on the phone for half an hour while he located the cards and went through them, looking for a registration in the name of either Hanniford or Cottrell. He came up empty.

I wasn’t too surprised. Cottrell didn’t have to be the man who took her to Miami. Even if he was, that didn’t mean he would necessarily sign his real name on a registration card. It would have made life simpler if he had, but nothing about Wendy Hanniford’s life and death had been simple so far, and I couldn’t expect a sudden rush of simplicity now.

I poured another drink and decided to let the rest of the day spin itself out. I was trying to do too much, trying to sift all the sand in the desert. Pointless, because I was looking for answers to questions my client hadn’t even asked. It didn’t much matter who Richie Vanderpoel was, or why he had drawn red lines on Wendy. All Hanniford wanted was a hint of the life that late she led. Mrs. Gerald Thal, the former Miss Marcia Maisel, would provide as much tomorrow.

So until then I could take it easy. Look at the paper, drink my drink, wander over to Armstrong’s when the walls of my room moved too close to one another.

Except that I couldn’t. I made the drink last almost half an hour, then rinsed out the glass and put my coat on and caught the A train downtown.