Samuel Holt - The Fourth Dimension is Death

I found out an hour later when Julie Kaplan phoned, sounding frightened and subdued, almost whispering. She’d been reluctant to give Robinson her name, and when I got on the line she sounded as though she might hang up at any second. “You did call me, didn’t you?” asked the small voice.

“Yes. I wanted to know what happened to your friend.”

“The police...” Her voice faded away, then came back, but fainter than before. “They think it was supposed to be me.”

“Supposed to be you? What was?”

“The— The victim. What did you call about?” she demanded, sounding rattled and rebellious and on the verge of hanging up.

I said, “Wait a minute. The police think the killer was after you? Why?”

“She borrowed my coat,” she said, sounding merely harried and weary now. “And she was in my place, and— You didn’t do it, did you? I mean, no, never mind, forget that, of course you didn’t.”

“The police showed you the picture, with the letters?”

“Yes.”

I considered explaining the normal method of writing a letter H to this girl and realized she was beyond that kind of comprehension. So I merely said, “They showed me the picture, too. I don’t know how much they believe in it.”

“Neither do I. I said it was crazy. I told them, the same ones as before.”

“Did they ask you if you’d met me?”

The long silence gave me the answer before she finally half-whispered, “Yes. I had to tell them the truth.”

“Of course,” I agreed, wondering if that had been any part of the reason for Feeney and LaMarca’s aggressive attitude toward me.

Almost plaintive now, she said, “I don’t see why you want to call me.”

“I want to know what’s going on. Does this, this thing , make any kind of sense to you?”

“None!” she said, suddenly at full volume. “I never did anything to anybody in my life! And here I’m, I’m hiding! ” As though reminded of that fact, she lowered her voice again, saying, “I can’t go back to Kim’s place, not now, and I’ll never go to that, that other.”

The apartment she’d shared with Dale Wormley, she meant, where her friend Kim had died, possibly in mistake for her. Which would make the killer an amazing blunderer, if all the guesses were right. According to those theories, first he killed Dale Wormley in front of my house, having mistaken him for me, and now he’d killed Kim Peyser in mistake for Julie Kaplan. Somehow, I didn’t believe any of that. I believed the killer’s moves were deliberate and careful, and that he’d done what he meant to do. Which didn’t necessarily mean Julie Kaplan wasn’t in danger. I said, “Where are you now?”

I could sense her hesitation, her reluctance to tell me where she was, and I felt a sudden shiver along my spine. By God, she thinks it’s possible that I am a killer! But then, in a small voice, she said, “I’m at Kay Henry’s, my agent. In the waiting room. I can hang out here.”

So she was an actress, too, with the same agent as Dale Wormley. Possibly they’d met while hanging out in Kay Henry’s waiting room; it wouldn’t be the first time that had happened. But it was no solution now to Julie Kaplan’s problem. I said, “You can’t stay there forever, you know.”

“I know. I can’t figure out where to go or what to do. The police want me in the city, but if I go to anybody’s place, anybody I know, he could— Somebody could find me there. Wherever.”

I said, “I have a suggestion.”

The wariness in her voice gave me that cold feeling in the spine again, as she said, “What suggestion?”

I tried to speak calmly, normally, as though I had heard nothing wrong. “There’s a woman I know,” I said, “a friend of mine, she runs a restaurant in the Village. Her apartment is upstairs over the restaurant. She’d be happy to put you up for a couple of days, and since you don’t know her, nobody else can know you’re there.”

“A restaurant?” She sounded bewildered. “What restaurant?”

“It’s called Vitto Impero, in the West Village. You could—”

“Oh, I know that place!”

“You do? That’s good.”

“We ate there once after a show at the Cherry Lane. Dale and me. It was very good, we—” She stopped, and I heard a kind of shuddering sigh. Much more subdued, she said, “If you think it would be all right...”

“Her name is Anita Imperato,” I said. “I’ll call her now and tell her you’ll be showing up some time this evening.”

“You’re sure it’s all right.”

“It’s better than sleeping on a waiting room sofa,” I pointed out.

That at least got a small laugh out of her. “It sure is,” she said. “Thanks.”

“I’ll call her now. The name’s Anita Imperato.”

“Will you be there?”

The question had been neutrally phrased, and I wasn’t exactly sure how to answer. “I could come over if you’d like,” I said carefully. “If you’re up to a restaurant meal. It’s up to you.”

“Maybe,” she said slowly, “maybe we should talk. About all this.”

“Fine. I’ll come over late, around ten, so Anita can eat with us.”

She agreed that that sounded good, so then I phoned Anita and told her what I’d just volunteered her for. “Sure,” she said. “Is somebody really out to get her?”

“Beats me.”

“Should be interesting,” she decided.

I did it to Julie Kaplan again.

Maybe I should have remembered, and guarded against the situation somehow, but I’m not sure how. And in any event, I didn’t remember. So I just walked into Vitto Impero a few minutes after ten that evening, saw most of the tables still full with people dawdling over their meals, saw Julie Kaplan and Anita at a table against the rear wall, both of them in profile to me, and simply moved toward them, threading my way through the diners. Anita glanced over, aware of every movement in her restaurant, smiled when she saw me, and Julie Kaplan’s eyes followed. Abrupt shock turned her face into a black-and-white cartoon, all circles and ovals. The piece of roll she’d been holding fell from her hand, bouncing to table to floor, and she turned her head away, that heavy mantle of hair moving like a reproachful shroud as she leaned toward the wall.

Anita gaped at us both in astonishment as I reached the table. “I do look like him,” I told her, feeling stupid, and said to the back of Julie’s head, “I’m sorry. I forgot.”

She took a long quavering breath, then turned to look almost fearfully at me, as though my hair might be made of snakes. “I’ll get used to it,” she said, in a low voice, and grimaced in self-irritation and embarrassment. “I’ll have to, I guess.”

I took the other chair, with my back to the room, and we got past the awkward moment with the help of menus and Smalltalk about food. Angela the waitress took our orders and brought us bottles of Pinot Grigio and San Pellegrino water, and then Julie said, “I was just telling Anita, I’m only going to be a pest for two days. Nights, I mean.”

“Oh? How come?”

“Kay got me a job,” she said. “You know, Kay Henry, my agent?”

“You were hiding out in his waiting room.”

“Well, not hiding . Taking sanctuary, I guess.”

I laughed. “I never thought of an agent quite like that before.”

“Well, he sure came through for me,” she said. “He knew what had happened, of course, and I told him I couldn’t go stay in either of those places, so he got on the phone, and just before I left there he came out and said I’ve got a job in Orlando starting the day after tomorrow.”