Brett Halliday - At the Point of a. 38

“Sixty-four.”

“But no longer a teenager, right? My Helen. I’m just-absolutely-flabbergasted. What this calls for is another drink.”

She poured for herself, and brought the cognac bottle for Shayne. “I’ve been taking this disappearing act a little too la-di-da, I see that. But Gold’s over in Israel, isn’t he? Isn’t he? That’s what it said in the paper.”

“Nobody’s sure. Helen sent him a letter, apparently.”

“The poor old guy,” she said, surprisingly. “All that money, why would he have to run to seventeen-year-old kids?” She waved her glass. “Seventeen, sixteen, which is she? I can never keep track.”

“Mrs. Robustelli-”

“I guess it’s revolting. I don’t know. We haven’t been such wonderful parents. Angelo believes in the strap, and I go too far the other way, to compensate. She’s never learned how to study. She never had dates, like the other girls. Let’s face it, she’s a bit of a slob.”

“If you have any ideas about where I can reach her-”

But she was going to make him work for it. She glanced at him almost flirtatiously over her raised glass. “I’m not one of those uptight parents, as you can probably guess by looking at me. I gave her the full lecture the first time she menstruated. Personal example is so very important! I think I can honestly say that I tried to give her a healthy attitude toward the sexual relationship. I have few hangups on that score. I like it upstairs, downstairs, and in my lady’s chamber. I don’t actually get all that much, and that’s no reflection on Angelo because the dear man does what he can. The reason I mentioned Artie Constable.” She considered. “Should I tell you? I think so, because you may not be right about Gold, you and your sources. They never made a mistake? Artie lives over here on the next block. He used to deliver papers on this street. Now don’t get any dirty ideas! Nothing happened. Really a great-looking kid, Mike. He would have gone out for football, but you know these chicken-shit high school coaches. I thought I’d encourage him, find out if he’s college material, kind of help him develop his potential. I invited him in one day last week when I had the house to myself.”

Her eyes glazed; she was beginning to daydream.

“Mrs. Robustelli, will you get back to your daughter?”

“She’s part of the story, and I wish she wasn’t. Call me Angela. I’m Angela, my husband’s Angelo. Cute?”

“Very.”

“I know, I know, you’ve got lots to do, places to go, and I have to hang around here doing the vacuuming. Did you ever think about marriage from a woman’s point of view?”

“All right, tell me about Artie.”

“Blond, you know? Very good pectorals and triceps. But wild, wild as they come. Ask anybody about Artie Constable at that high school. He threw his Social Studies teacher through a plate-glass door once. And I had him right there in the palm of my hand.” She swallowed part of a giggle. “And was it enormous, too. And wouldn’t you know? Helen walked in. Artie was extremely embarrassed, because he and Helen, I was astonished to learn, had been making it themselves. I felt like a pretty fool. So that put me on my guard. Mothers aren’t exactly helpless, you know. I sneaked into her room that night and did a little private investigating of my own. She was zonked out on reds. She was into that scene at school, never mind, I knew all about it.”

“But not as far as heroin.”

“Good Lord, no. Speed, LSD, mesk and the like. Angelo’s completely irrational on the whole thing, but to me it’s like booze with our generation. I went through her purse, I’m ashamed to say. There was too much money in it, for one thing. Ah-ha, I said to myself. Pushing? And a receipt for a hundred dollar deposit on a certain apartment in a certain beach community, and right now I want to get your solemn promise that my daughter’s name is not going to figure in any of the publicity.”

“I can’t promise that, Mrs. Robustelli. I’ll do what I can. How soon after that did she leave?”

“Call me Angela. Next day. I knew she was gone because when I went in to make her bed, Raggedy Ann was missing. She didn’t take her toothbrush, but she wouldn’t leave Raggedy. So I got to work and I did a little intriguing, and sure enough, Artie Constable didn’t go to school and he didn’t come home that night either. So there may be some holes in your Murray Gold story! I sat down at this very table and poured myself a strong bourbon and pondered. Tell Angelo? No. He’s about as much of an expert on female psychology as that fly on the lampshade. Send Angelo to bring her back, and she’d end up emotionally scarred for life. If they wanted to play grownup, she and Artie, why not let them alone for a few days? And I have a right to consider myself a teensy bit too, don’t I? They’ve had it with Helen at school. This time it wouldn’t be another ten-day suspension, it would be out on her ass. And then I’d have her around underfoot all day, and goodbye privacy. I’ve been trying to figure out something to tell Angelo when he notices she’s gone. He loves her madly, supposedly.”

“Is Constable still missing?”

“I haven’t checked up, I couldn’t be bothered.” She shook the ice cubes thoughtfully. “The night before the night I was telling you about. I didn’t think about it until this minute. The phone rang. When I picked it up nothing happened. A little later it rang again. Helen answered, and she got so excited. She hung up and took the rest of the call upstairs. I had my curiosity up by this time, but she was practically whispering. Could that have been Gold? Maybe so!”

When she didn’t go on, Shayne finished his cognac and stood up. “If you want to tell me that address now it may help, but I can’t spend any more time here.”

“Rush, rush. Homestead Beach, 37 Azalea Drive. Try not to make her feel guilty. We all make mistakes. Don’t worry, I won’t let her off scot-free, I’ll think of a good way to punish her.”

She came to the door with him, snapping her fingers as she walked, not to any music that Shayne could hear. After opening the door for him, she pulled him closer by his sling and whispered against his face, “Why don’t you come back later and fuck me?”

She pulled back and put her fingers to her lips. “Forget I said that.”

Murray Gold had always been a compulsive planner, overdoing it at times. He thought everything out in advance, and went back over it again and again, imagining the worst and working out countermoves. Today he called all the funeral directors listed in heavy type in the classified pages, and found three with no funerals scheduled. Gold gave a Gentile name and told them he was from New York. He was here in Miami with his sister. She had been stricken suddenly with chest-pains, and had died in the night. Each telephone voice was sorry to hear it, and hoped he could be of service.

Gold started in Miami Beach, with Everett and Wilkins, on Alton Road. There was ample parking space for the funeral vehicles. He saw a hearse and two limousines and no drivers. Gold himself was using a stolen Dodge, with New York plates. Helen’s loony friend, Artie Constable, was at the wheel. Gold had him drive past without stopping, and then come back slowly. If he had seen anything to put him off, they would have continued on and tried the next place on his list.

“Seems O.K.?”

Constable pulled into the driveway. He was wearing jeans and a smelly T-shirt, and he had been barefoot when they started out from Homestead Beach. Gold took him to a clothing store and bought him a dark lightweight raincoat and a pair of shoes, on the grounds that it would be considered funny to be calling on funeral directors barefooted. Artie was a tall boy, two inches or so over six feet, and his neck was a tremendous column, nearly as wide as his head. He looked as though he could tuck in that chin and bulldoze a hole in a brick wall. Gold had been testing him for intelligence, but if he had any, he didn’t see any point in displaying it. He looked angry most of the time, particularly so this morning because he and Helen had stayed up late drinking muscatel. He had a. 38 in each raincoat pocket, which was a joke in a way because he had never fired a gun of any kind in his life.