Lawrence Block - In the Midst of Death

"Maybe he didn't kill the girl."

"Oh, shoot," he said. "Who cares a damn if he killed her? He went and turned on his own kind, didn't he? He's a traitor to his badge, ain't he? I don't care a damn about some filthy prostitute and who killed her or didn't kill her. That bastard in there deserves whatever he gets."

I went there first because of the location. The Tombs is on White at Centre, and Abner Prejanian and his eager beavers had a suite of offices four blocks away on Worth between Church and Broadway. The building was a narrow yellow brickfront which Prejanian shared with a couple of accountants, a photocopying service, some import-export people, and, on the ground floor, a shop that repaired shoes and reblocked hats. I climbed steep stairs that squeaked, and too many of them; if he'd been a flight higher I might have given up and turned around. But I got to his floor and a door was open and I walked in.

On Tuesday, after my first meeting with Jerry Broadfield, I had spent almost two dollars' worth of dimes trying to reach Portia Carr. Not all at once, of course, but a dime at a time. She had had an answering machine, and when you reach an answering machine from a public phone you usually lose your dime. If you hang up fast enough, and if you're lucky and your reflexes are good, you get your dime back. As the day wears on, this happens less and less frequently.

When I wasn't wasting dimes that day I tried a few other approaches, and one of them involved a girl named Elaine Mardell. She was in the same line of work as Portia Carr and lived in the same neighborhood. I went over to see Elaine, and she managed to tell me a few things about Portia. Nothing firsthand — she hadn't known her personally — but some gossip she had heard at one time or other. That Portia had specialized in SM fantasy fulfillment, that she was supposedly turning down dates lately, and that she had a "special friend" who was prominent or notorious or influential or something.

The girl in Prejanian's office looked enough like Elaine to be her sister. She frowned at me and I realized that I was staring at her. A second glance showed me that she didn't really resemble Elaine that closely. The similarity was mostly in the eyes. She had the same dark deep-set Jewish eyes and they dominated her entire face in much the same way.

She asked if she could help me. I said I wanted to see Mr. Prejanian and she asked if I had an appointment. I admitted I didn't, and she said he was out to lunch, as was most of his staff. I decided not to assume she was a secretary just because she was a woman, and started to tell her what I wanted.

"I'm just a secretary," she said. "Do you want to wait until Mr. Prejanian gets back? Or there's Mr. Lorbeer. I believe he's in his office."

"Who's Mr. Lorbeer?"

"Staff assistant to Mr. Prejanian."

That still didn't tell me a great deal, but I asked to see him. She invited me to have a seat, pointing to a wooden folding chair that looked about as inviting as the bed in Broadfield's cell. I stayed on my feet.

A few minutes later I was sitting across an old oak veneer desk from Claude Lorbeer. When I was a kid, every schoolroom I was ever in had a desk just like that for the teacher. I'd had only female teachers except for gym and shop, but if I'd had a male classroom teacher he might have looked something like Lorbeer, who certainly looked at home behind that desk. He had short, dark brown hair and a narrow mouth with deeply etched lines like paired parentheses on either side of it. His hands were plump with short, stubby fingers. They were pale and looked soft. He wore a white shirt and a solid maroon tie and he had his shirt-sleeves rolled up. Something about him made me feel as though I must have done something wrong, and that my not knowing what it might be was no excuse at all.

"Mr. Scudder," he said. "I suppose you're the officer I spoke to over the telephone this morning. I can only repeat what I said earlier. Mr. Prejanian has no information to make available to the police. Any criminous action which Mr. Broadfield may have performed is beyond the scope of this investigation and surely not in any way known to this office. We have not yet spoken to members of the press but will of course take the same tack with them. We will decline to comment and will stress that Mr. Broadfield had volunteered to make certain information available to us but that we had taken no action in respect to information furnished by him nor do we anticipate so doing while Mr. Broadfield's legal status is undefined as it is at present."

He said all of this as though he was reading it from a prepared text. Most people have trouble speaking in sentences. Lorbeer spoke in paragraphs, structurally complicated paragraphs, and he delivered his little speech with his pale eyes fixed on the tip of my left shoulder.

I said, "I think you've jumped to a conclusion. I'm not a cop."

"You're from the press? I thought—"

"I used to be a cop. I left the force a couple of years ago."

His face took on an interesting cast at this news. There was some calculation in it. I got a rush of déjà vu looking at him, and it took me a minute to put it in place. He reminded me of Broadfield at our first meeting, head cocked to the side and face screwed up in concentration. Like Broadfield, Lorbeer wanted to know what my angle was. He might be a reformer, he might be working for Mr. Clean himself, but in his own way he was as much on the make as a cop looking for a handout.

"I've just been to see Broadfield," I said. "I'm working for him. He says he didn't kill the Carr woman."

"Naturally he'd say that, wouldn't he? I understand her body was found in his apartment."

I nodded. "He figures he was deliberately framed for her murder. He wants me to try and find out who framed him."

"I see." He was somewhat less interested in me now since I was just trying to solve a murder. He'd been hoping I was going to help him louse up an entire police department. "Well. I'm not certain how our office would be involved."

"Maybe you're not. I just want a fuller picture. I don't know Broadfield well, I just met him the first time Tuesday. He's a tricky customer. I can't always tell when he's lying to me."

A trace of a smile appeared on Claude Lorbeer's lips. It looked out of place there. "I like the way you put it," he said. "He is a subtle liar, isn't he?"

"That's what's hard to tell. How subtle is he, and how much does he lie? He says he just came over and volunteered his services to you people. That you didn't have to force him into it."

"That's quite true."

"It's hard to believe."

Lorbeer made a tent of his fingertips. "No harder for you than for us," he said. "Broadfield just walked in off the street. He didn't even call first to tell us he was coming. We'd never heard of him before he barged in offering us the earth and asking nothing in return."

"That doesn't make sense."

"I know it." He leaned forward, his expression one of great concentration. I suppose he was about twenty-eight. His manner put extra years on him, but when he grew intense those years dropped away and you realized how young he was underneath it all. "That's what makes it so difficult to place credence in anything the man says, Mr. Scudder. One can see no possible motivation for him. Oh, he asked for immunity from prosecution for anything he might disclose that implicated himself, but we grant that automatically. But he didn't want anything beyond that."

"Then why did he come here?"

"I have no idea. I'll tell you something. I distrusted him immediately. Not because he's crooked. We deal with crooks all the time. We have to deal with crooks, but at least they are rational crooks, and his behavior was irrational. I told Mr. Prejanian that I didn't trust Broadfield. I said I felt he was a kook, an oddball. I didn't want to get involved with him at all."