Michael Collins - Walk a Black Wind

I said, “I know about you, and Frank, and Francesca. Where is Frank?”

“I don’t know. He never came back last night. After he did this,” she touched her battered eye, “he went out with Joel.”

Her voice was a monotone, as vacant as her eyes. “A year I was away, and he whistled, and here I am. He’s a bastard, and a fake, but he turns me on. It’s that simple, I guess, even with blackeyes. Some women have no brains. I don’t know, I feel… safe with Frank, you know? Without Joel maybe…”

She trailed off, her voice almost wistful, like some beaten-down wife who dreamed of her man being better some day, sure that underneath he was a good man or why would she want him?

“You know where they were all night?”

“No. Part of their new scheme, I guess.” She nodded toward all the piles of literature. “Joel talked a couple of local shopping centers into a throwaway newsletter, said he could get it into the northwest suburbs, the rich people. He told them he could get a special deal because he’s with the city, everything cut-rate. All the merchants in the centers take ads, and Frank runs the things off on the mimeo. I hope they make the price of the ink.”

“You don’t distribute leaflets at night,” I said.

“Maybe they got into a poker game, or another deal.”

“Do either of them know Abram Zaremba?”

“Commissioner Zaremba? You mean personally? Maybe if they shined his shoes once.”

“They know anything about the Black Mountain Lake project?”

She nodded. “Joel got the Mayor to appoint him an inspector of the drainage district out there, and he got Frank in to sell lots. Only it was hard to sell them so early, Frank didn’t like the job.” She stopped, surprised. “What’s that got to do with Francesca?”

“Maybe a lot, Celia,” I said. “Frank lied about not knowing Francesca was with you in New York.”

“Lied?” Some life came into her voice as she realized the only way I could have known Frank Keefer had denied knowing that Francesca was in New York with her. “You were at that hotel. You followed me there. What makes you say Frank lied?”

I told her what Muriel Roark had told me. “Frank admits he was in New York when Francesca was killed.”

“But he never saw her.”

“Didn’t he? He was asking about her since she left. He’s not a man who gives up, is he? He went there to see her, Celia. After she was dead he turned to you, maybe to cover up.”

“No, he loves me. All right, he lives big dreams, so if he could marry Francesca, swell, but she dropped him.” Her monotone was flat again. “Anyway, he wouldn’t kill her.”

“Unless maybe he made a mistake, Celia?” I said. “You said that in the hotel. A bad mistake, you said.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

“Yes you do,” I said. “Francesca died in your bed. She had slept in your bed that night. A mistake, maybe, made by someone who wanted to kill you not her?”

She had thought about it. “My bed was better, that’s all.”

“Frank Keefer wouldn’t have known that. What could you have told Francesca that would have finished Frank with her for good if it wasn’t over already?”

She shook her head.

“I’ll find out somehow, Celia. I have the police on my side, they’ll check out his life with a microscope. If he tried to kill you, got the wrong girl, you’ve got to know one way or the other, don’t you?”

She shook her head again. Wildly, like a rag doll, but it had no meaning now. Her monotone cracked.

“He was in prison once for wife-beating,” she said, her voice so low I could barely hear it. “In Pennsylvania. He’s still got a wife there. A boy, too. He sends money sometimes. I don’t care. I didn’t like New York, I didn’t like the men there. I just want Frank.”

“He’s married, but he’d have married Francesca?”

“Why not? Who would know? His name was Pender then, like Joel’s. He lives lies, even believes them himself. It isn’t what a man is, it’s what he thinks he is-Joel says that. It isn’t who you are, it’s who people think you are. Joel’s got a million sayings.”

“If Keefer tried to get Francesca back, went down there to make a play, would that have made you tell Francesca what you knew? Would he have tried to stop you telling if he thought he had a chance with Francesca?”

She was silent. Then, “I always wanted Frank, even when he threw me over and I went to New York. He knew that. I might have told. But Frank’s no killer, it’s not in him.”

“A man who lives by lies, believes his own lies?”

She didn’t answer. I wanted her to think about it.

I said, “Who’s Joel Pender, Celia?”

“Frank’s uncle. From out west somewhere, always talking about cowboys. He’s been all over, I guess, a drifter. Frank always looked up to Joel, the exciting uncle when Frank was a kid in Pennsylvania. To me Joel’s a bum, but he’s mean and tough for his size. Half Frank’s size, and Frank’s afraid of him. When he’s drunk he boasts about being some kind of bodyguard once, running gambling games. I’ve seen him carry a gun sometimes even now.”

“Why does the Mayor give him jobs? Patronage?”

“Who knows? The Mayor likes him, I guess. He worked for the Mayor once a long time ago. Worked for that old man Emil Van Hoek, too. The Mayor’s wife’s father, you know?”

“Celia,” I said, “if Frank killed Francesca, and someone knew that, Frank would kill again, wouldn’t he?”

“Frank wouldn’t kill any-”

They were there in the living room. Two of them. One was Frank Keefer. The other was a scrawny little man with a dark, weather-beaten face, his small eyes sunk in deep sockets. He wore a cheap suit, looked sixty but I knew was younger, and stood tall for his five-feet-six or so. He moved more like his real age-maybe forty-five despite the aged face. To my left, low and fast toward my armless side, while Frank Keefer charged straight at me.

I tried to duck, and took a roundhouse right lead on my head that knocked me over a chair. The chair got in Keefer’s way, and I got up and jumped to the right away from the small man. I dug into my pocket for my pistol.

“Keefer, hold it!” I cried. “I just want-”

Keefer wasn’t listening. He charged like a bull, and I evaded again, staying away from the little man. Celia Bazer was screaming at Keefer. The small man grabbed her, slapped her face, and Keefer came on again, his big fists ready. I had no choice. I slipped aside again, he was an awkward amateur, and hit him across the face with my pistol.

He howled, a long line of red blood on his cheek, but tried once more. I hit him on the mouth with the gun. Blood spurted at me. He grabbed for his broken mouth, sat down on the floor, and stared up at me in disbelief.

I waved the gun at the scrawny one. “Get over near him.”

The small man went. In the corner Celia Bazer nursed her slapped face. The two men glared at me, Keefer moaning.

“You’re a rough pair, you are,” I said. “Why?”

“You always go around accusing people of murder?” the scrawny one said.

Now I saw that his cheap suit had been retailored to look handmade, his shirt was dazzlingly white, and something glittered in his tie. A stickpin, with a chip diamond set to look twice its size.

“You said I killed Fran!” Frank Keefer mumbled through blood and broken teeth. He stared at a tooth in his hand, incredulous and afraid of any injury.

“Did you?” I said.

“Why would he, mister?” the small one said. “That kid was our trip to heaven. If you’re here, you know that.”

He had drifter and con man written all over him. His cheap clothes made to look flashy with fake touches a drifter learns in a hundred vagrant tanks. I guessed that there had been times when he’d had newspaper for a shirt and burlap for shoes. The kind of sharp, clever face that always lost out no matter how much he schemed, because he was never quite smart enough to carry a scheme through. But there was violence, too. Violence of the kind that is dangerous when it has a bigger power behind it-bodyguard, vigilante, deputy sheriff.