Michael Collins - Walk a Black Wind

“Can we talk in private?” I said.

The wife said, “He’s a detective, Harmon,” and she said to me, “I know about Francesca Crawford. Harmon told me.”

Dunstan said, “I recognized her picture in the Thursday paper. I knew her as Fran Martin, of course. I told Grace.”

“You went to the police?”

“No, I didn’t. They came anyway,” he said. “I had hoped it wouldn’t come out, Fran and me. I’m a financial counselor, a delicate business. I can’t have scandal, you see?”

But he had told his wife. Why?

“I have to ask some questions,” I said.

He sat down, still in his topcoat, as if he’d forgotten he had it on. There was something peculiar about the way he moved. It was his eyes. They seemed to react to what he was doing only some seconds after he had moved. I sensed that he could sit unmoving for hours, and that his eyes never revealed what he was going to do until he had done it.

“I met Fran two months ago,” he said unasked. “I took her out, bought her some clothes. It lasted five weeks, then she seemed to have no more time for me.”

“When did you see her last?”

“After she moved, I went to Eighty-fourth Street a few times. She was always busy. The last time was a week ago.”

“Why did she lose interest?”

“No explanation. I’d thought that if I tried harder-”

He didn’t trail off, he just stopped, and I felt I was in some surrealist landscape. The shape of things was wrong. As if some trick had transported the Dunstans, the house, and me to an alien world where the familiar became weird. It was the way Harmon Dunstan was talking about himself and a young girl in front of his wife, a stranger, and the shiny furniture of an ordinary middle-class house. It was the way Grace Dunstan listened without anger, without any reaction at all.

I said, “You chased her after she lost interest?”

“I went to see her, yes. Perhaps, if she hadn’t been-”

“Were you sleeping with her?”

He didn’t answer. I guessed that he never would, and who could say now if he had or not? If there was any outside evidence of sex, I’d have to find it.

“Did you know she had other men?”

“I saw Carl Gans once. No one else.”

“Not a John Andera?” I described Andera.

“No, but I wasn’t spying on her, Fortune.”

“Weren’t you?” I said.

Something happened to his face. It went soft, loose, like a desperate boy in some hotel with an older woman. His face was coarser, almost fleshy, and he breathed faster. He blinked up at me, but he said nothing.

“How did you meet her, Dunstan?” I said.

“She applied for a job in my office. I didn’t have a job for her, but we somehow started talking. She had just come to New York, knew no one. I asked her to have dinner. That’s how it began. She seemed to like me at first, a lot.”

Grace Dunstan said, “That’s not an invitation Harmon would have missed or refused.”

“Shut up, Grace!” Dunstan said.

The wife stared at him, but said no more. Somehow, I didn’t think she was concerned with Dunstan’s philandering at all. It was as if she wondered about Francesca’s quick interest in Dunstan.

“You both have alibis for Tuesday night?” I said.

“We were both here at home all night, yes,” Dunstan said.

It was no alibi, and yet as good as most. Normal for two innocent people to have only each other for an alibi. It would be true of most couples any given day or night. But it left them with no witnesses but themselves, and they sat there solid and together when I left.

I walked back to the station. I wanted to think-especially about the way Francesca Crawford had seemed to meet certain men. Casually, but not really so casual.

I carried my duffel coat on my arm when I walked into the Emerald Room this time, and went straight into the bar. I ordered a whisky, aware that I was being watched all the way.

The middleweight bouncer stood just inside the door. His suit hung loosely from his shoulders. He was all shoulders, narrow hips, no belly, and heavy thighs. His nose had been broken more than once. His blue eyes moved in slow sweeps around the restaurant. Despite his face, his manner was mild and inconspicuous, but nothing was going to happen that he didn’t see almost before it happened.

He walked in small circles near the door, and each time he passed the telephone booths he paused to feel inside the coin returns. It was the habit of a simple, poor kid who had missed no chance for a lucky nickel to make life better. I saw a waiter walk up to the bouncer. Gans nodded, and came to me.

“You working on a case, Fortune?”

I knew what the waiter had said to him. They had run a check on me as I sat there-fast and sure. It made me feel like a worm in a garden with the boots of giants all around wherever I crawled.

“I came to talk to you,” I said. “About Francesca Crawford.”

“She said her name was Martin here,” Gans said.

He looked over my shoulder, doing his job of watching the place. His voice was light and hoarse, but mild.

“A teaser? She made a play, but no action later?”

“She liked to talk a lot,” he said dryly. “You working for the family? That mayor and all?”

“In a way.”

“Funny, her being a mayor’s daughter. I figured she was no waitress, but she did her job. Knew all about how to wait table in a bar. Like she knew how inside, you know?”

“Some girls know that in their bones,” I said.

“Yeh, like that,” he said. “She knew how to handle herself, and no play, so I dropped her.”

“She talked too much,” I said. “About what?”

“Nothin’ much. Shows, books, about how I used to fight for the Commissioner only I didn’t have it to go higher than six-rounders so he put me here when we opened. I mean, I talked about that.”

“You were a fighter? For Zaremba?”

“Commissioner,” Gans said. “When I got my growth, had to move up to middleweight, I didn’t have the punch. Good enough for a bouncer, but not for a real fighter.”

He said it simply. I had the feeling that he was a simple man who had muscles to earn his living, and not much else, and that he knew if, and was grateful he had work at all.

“What else did she talk about?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Gans said. “Just talk, you know? She-”

A small, balding man in a very expensive dinner jacket stood there. He was over sixty, he face round and owlish, and his eyes were small. A silent man stood behind him and watched only me.

“What does he want here, Carl?” the older man said.

“Asking about the Martin kid, Commissioner,” Gans said. “I mean, Crawford. You know, the kid worked here a while and got killed last week?”

“Why would I remember a waitress?” Abram Zaremba said. “Why does this man come here about her?”

His voice was firm, but he’d just made a mistake. No one had mentioned that Francesca had been a waitress. Zaremba remembered her, knew about her.

“I took her out a couple of times,” Carl Gans explained.

“So? You have an alibi, Carl?”

“I was here till two A.M.,” Gans said. “I played cards with some of the guys past four A.M.”

Abram Zaremba made it sound as if he’d never asked Gans about the alibi before, but that could have been an act for my benefit. The alibi could have been arranged by Zaremba, too.

“Then you’re clear,” Zaremba said, and turned to me. “What’s your name?”

“Dan Fortune.”

He looked me over. “Get out of here.”

He walked away. I was left with Carl Gans.

“The Commissioner said get out,” Gans said.

I got out.

I had done worse than get nowhere. Abram Zaremba knew who I was now, and I knew no more than when I had gone in the club.