Michael Collins - Walk a Black Wind

“At restaurants. She didn’t want me to come to her place, I never knew where she lived.”

“No mention of a Harmon Dunstan or Carl Gans?”

“Do your women talk about other men on early dates?” Andera said. “Will you need more money, Fortune?”

“I’m covered for the hospital, mostly. I’ll give you a bill. I’ll probably go to Dresden. That means expenses.”

“When you need them, tell me. I’ll come back.”

He left. I lay in the hospital bed feeling all my bruises, and the deep groove in my head hidden under a mound of gauze. Francesca Crawford hadn’t died in a random killing, no.

I rested and slept all day Sunday. My concussion was gone, and my appetite was fine, and they would let me out on Monday. I was in no hurry. In the hospital I was safe. But I wouldn’t fight to stay in after Monday. I was getting mad, and three days is a long time for a trail to grow cold.

Captain Gazzo came again after lunch on Monday. I was up in a chair, ready to dress when they told me. Gazzo took another chair, straddled it. I told him about what Celia Bazer had said, but not about Frank Keefer. I didn’t want Keefer chased or picked up yet.

“We talked to Dunstan, Gans and the Emerald Room,” Gazzo said. “No help I can see. What about who shot you?”

“Nothing I can tell. I’d just tried to ambush a tail on me, got clobbered. I went down to the street, and wham,” I said. “All I saw of the man tailing me was a camel coat, brown hat, green Cadillac, and fast fists. He may have been an ex-pro fighter the way he handled himself.”

Gazzo shook his head. “Not enough to help. We’ve combed her neighborhood for anyone who might have seen anything, or for signs of anyone hanging around her place. Nothing we don’t already know, no one saw the killer enter or leave.”

“Celia Bazer says Francesca was in New York before she moved into the Eighty-fourth Street place.”

“Sure,” Gazzo said. “She came to town two months ago, took an apartment on Carmine Street. None of the tenants there seem connected to her. She went to that Harmon Dunstan for a job, but got Dunstan himself for a while instead. For two weeks she didn’t work, just dated Dunstan. Then she took the job at the Emerald Room, began to see Carl Gans, and moved to the Bazer girl’s place.”

The Captain rubbed his tender jaw. “Her job was below what she could have gotten, I can’t see why she took it. She wasn’t running in any kid crowd, she wasn’t after a career, she was solitary but busy, and she told no one anything.”

“No young men, no female friends except Bazer,” I said. “Unusual. Not the standard young girl in the city for fame, fortune, or husband.”

“Two men in two months, both old for her, and what do they have in common?” Gazzo said. “Dunstan is a businessman, Carl Gans is the bouncer at the Emerald Room. You tell me?”

“They’re men,” I said.

“And both have alibis, more or less.”

So did my client, and he was a third man-also over forty. That was some pattern. Only I was sure that my client’s alibi would hold up. That didn’t make it a true alibi, but it did mean that Andera was sure no one could break it. And it looked like Gazzo hadn’t turned up Andera yet.

“Without witnesses, or some solid evidence,” Gazzo said, “nothing down here points to anyone, Dan. I’ve got Sergeant Jonas up in Dresden, but if he doesn’t find anything we can use, we’re stumped. The killer’s a ghost.”

“Maybe it was only bad luck in the big city.”

“And the man who shot you is protecting the city,” Gazzo said, leaned over his chair. “There’s a missing month, you know? Between leaving Dresden, and coming here. I can’t send a man without a lead, Dan, but you can tackle that. Do that for me, Dan. Find me that missing month.”

I nodded. It wouldn’t be easy to trace a hidden month in the life of a dead girl. The way she had stayed to herself, used a false name, we might never find where she’d been at all. While I thought about it, I realized that Gazzo was thinking, too. He was rubbing his face again, thoughtfully.

He said, “You know who owns the Emerald Room, Dan?”

“No.”

“Abram Zaremba,” Gazzo said. “Commissioner Zaremba to you and me. He had some state job once-Fish and Game Commission, I think. He likes to be called Commissioner.”

I knew the man. Upstate, Abram Zaremba was a man to know. Whatever business you did, Zaremba could help. Power, money, and a lot of influence. No one said he was illegal, exactly, but he had a lot of “friends” who would do anything he wanted done. And Martin Crawford was a reformer, a crusader.

“I didn’t know he operated in the city here.”

“He has businesses here. He lives near Dresden, Dan.”

“You’ve talked to Zaremba?”

“About a bar waitress with a phony name? I’d just warn him away, and a judge would talk to the Chief. I know three judges who drink his booze every week. I’d need a reason.”

“He wouldn’t go to a judge about me,” I said. “I can try a talk with Carl Gans, and look around.”

Gazzo was silent for a time. He knew what chasing Abram Zaremba could mean, and it was no TV game. He sighed.

“You’ve got to be some use to me,” he said.

A joke, but it really wasn’t funny. I might smoke something out when a cop never could-because me Zaremba would be sure to try to stop fast if there was anything to smoke out. A cop might scare him to cover, but I wouldn’t scare him. He’d know what to do with me. I’d been shot once already.

A detective captain has a hard job. Maybe I could help him, and it was his job to use me even if I ended up dead. It was my job, if I was going to do my work, to take the chance.

I left the hospital at two o’clock that Monday, too early for the Emerald Room. It was a momentary reprieve, and I took the Long Island Railroad out to Hempstead.

It’s a suburban town a lot like thousands of small, busy, middle-class cities all across the country. It could be in Colorado, except for a total lack of natural beauty. There was only one Harmon Dunstan in the telephone book. I got a cab, and it took me to a large, pleasant brick house on a quiet street not far from Hofstra University. A flawless lawn surrounded the house under trees that were all but leafless now. An empty swimming pool was at the side next to a large patio under a green awning. There was a busy feel to the house, as if it was worked on a lot.

As I walked up the brick path, I was aware of eyes at the front window, and a slender blonde of about thirty-five opened the door. Her face had the residue of the too-perfect beauty you see in magazines, and her body was still good. She wore loose slacks and a dirty shirt as if she had been cleaning.

I said, “I’m looking for Mr. Harmon Dunstan.”

“About what?”

“It’s private. I’m a detective. You’re Mrs. Dunstan?”

She nodded. “Come in then.”

So Harmon Dunstan was married. To a wife who wasn’t surprised that a detective would call. I followed her into a big living room that was arranged and polished like a jewel. She headed for a home bar in a corner.

“A drink, Mr.-?”

“Dan Fortune. Too early for me, thanks.”

I saw that she was a little drunk. Her blue-gray eyes had a film on them like thin plastic as she mixed herself a Bloody Mary. I heard the man behind me.

“Too early for anyone,” the man said, but there was no anger in his voice, only a kind of concern. He held his hand out to me. “Harmon Dunstan, Mr. Fortune.”

We shook hands. It was a hollow gesture, like the polite handshakes of enemy diplomats. He was about five-seven-or-eight, thin and dark-complexioned. Dressed all in gray, in a strangely old-fashioned way-gray fitted topcoat, gray business suit, gray gloves, gray tie, gray homburg, and black shoes, as if he had been about to go somewhere. The elegance of thirty years ago, as if he dressed in a style he had seen and wanted when he was a poor boy, and had never forgotten. Changes in fashion had not affected his dream.