Эд Горман - Murder Straight Up

I was sitting in this grubby little room, listening to this sad little guy, wondering what the hell last night had to do with a halfway house for teenagers, when he just handed me the whole thing.

I knew the answer to the next question before I asked it, but I wanted to hear him say it. “Who was the reporter who handled the suicide story?”

“Oh, it was a very big story. Ran five nights. David Curtis was the reporter. You didn’t see it?”

“No. I usually work nights.”

“Ran about two months ago. Very popular. There were editorials in the paper, even, praising the show, pointing out how Stephen’s suicide, coming as it did in the middle of the series, proved how serious the subject really was.”

“Poor bastard,” I said.

“Yes, yes, he was,” Eler said. “Though I guess I wouldn’t express it quite that way.”

Which was when I pegged him for what he was — a kind of perennial grad student and perennial seminarian rolled into one. His wife’s exit was making more and more sense.

“You know, back in the sixties,” he said, “we really were trying to change things, make it better for the next generation. I’d say it’s worse, what with all the drugs and all the sexual diseases. AIDS is crossing over to us straights now. And it may be only the first of several diseases like that.”

Now I knew where I’d go anytime I needed to get cheered up. I’d just pop in on old Karl Eler (Karl with a K to his friends) and have him lay some good vibes on me.

“Is Diane here?” I asked.

“No. She’s out.”

“When will she be back?”

“Diane?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Sometime this evening. She has a job after school.”

“I’ll be here.” I paused. Watched his eyes. “You figured out who the boy might have been?”

“Mitch.”

His candor surprised me.

“Mitch?”

“Mitch Tomlin. He was Stephen’s best friend.”

“I see.”

“Took it very hard. Lots of bitterness.”

I nodded. “Will he be here tonight?”

“Should be.”

I stood up. Put out my hand. “Thanks for your help.”

“There’s just one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I guess I don’t understand your part in all this.”

I smiled. “Neither do I. Not exactly, anyway. It’s probably as simple as me trying to save my job.”

He glanced around. “Believe me, I’ve had days when I’d just as soon lose mine.” The prissy lips again. “If I had, my wife would be with me today.”

He walked me out to the front porch. The same kids sat there, waiting to glare at me as I went down the steps. I felt sorry for them — they had been shit on probably since birth — and then foolish for being so sentimental. Or was I being foolish?

In a phone booth two blocks and ten minutes away, I said hello to Kelly Ford, and then, “I’ve made a connection between the kid in Channel Three last night and Curtis’s murder.”

“You have?”

“Yes. A show the station did on suicide.”

“My God, that’s right,” she said. “The police asked us so many questions last night, and that subject didn’t come up even once. At least I didn’t mention it.”

“Well, it sure sounds worth pursuing.”

“Yes, it does. Are you going to call your friend Detective Edelman?”

“Later on. I thought we might have lunch first.”

“You and me?”

“You and me.”

“That sounds very nice.”

“Good. How about The Pirate’s Perch in an hour?”

“Fine.”

The Perch was one of the places where all the media folks lunched.

“See you then.”

“Yes,” she said in her nice suburban way. “And aren’t you the lucky one, too?”

My weakness. Wise-ass women.

Three blocks later I swung my car over to another drive-up phone. I turned down the Neil Young song (“Old Man,” one of his best), picked up the phone and dialed the number of Edelman’s precinct. The guy had a right to know what I knew. Didn’t he?

I kept asking myself this question while the desk sergeant put me on hold and then put me through to Edelman’s office, where his secretary put me on hold. Which was when I hung up. Apparently I didn’t think he did have a right to know. At least not yet.

“Yes?”

The landlady looked very tired, and I suspected I knew why. Tenants of hers would seldom get themselves killed, especially prominent ones. I showed her my Federated ID. “I’d just like to talk to you a little bit.”

“About David Curtis?”

“Yes.”

She sighed. She was very good at it, managing to convey the impression that she was being put upon and was used to being put upon. It nicely put me on the defensive, as if my dime-store cop ID hadn’t done that already.

She was maybe in her early fifties, wearing a tan pants outfit with a frilly white blouse. Her hair, makeup and nails had been done with reverence. She had undoubtedly been a beauty once, but those days were almost gone. She preserved what was left with expensive clothes and an angry dignity.

She pointed me to a chair, then handed me a discreet white business card with her name, Bernice Weldon, printed discreetly in black. She was a protector, Bernice was, of her tenants and of an era as dead as a ballroom where Tommy Dorsey once played. I liked her without quite admiring her.

We sat in a sun-bright room filled with tasteful but bland continental furniture. On the other side of a large window I could see dozens of cars, the least expensive being a new red BMW. David Curtis had not exactly suffered for his art.

“May I ask,” she said, “why you’re interested in his death?”

I was better at lying than I liked to think I was. I said, “One of his relatives contacted me.”

“His parents?”

Now it was my turn to sigh. “I’m sure you’re trustworthy, Mrs. Weldon, but we have to keep these things confidential.”

“Yes, I suppose you do.”

“All I’d like to know, really, is if anything strange or out of the ordinary happened in the last few weeks or so. To David Curtis, I mean.”

“Two things, really.” I got my reporter’s pad out and poised my pencil. “And last night, after I saw what happened on the news, I started thinking about them.”

I nodded. She was going to give me a prelude before she gave me the facts. A hearty man in a suede sport coat walked past the big window and waved inside. Bernice Weldon waved back. “We have some very nice tenants here.”

“Yes,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound too impatient. “You were saying, about two things?”

She sighed. “The car thing, I suppose, was the most disturbing.”

“Car thing?”

“A man in a black car was waiting for David one night. I happened to be carrying some trash out to the dumpster in back. And I saw it. The man got out of his car and then went over to David, and they talked briefly and then David tried to hit him. A punch, I mean.”

“Had you ever seen this man before?”

“No.”

“Could you describe the car?”

“Black.”

“I know. But I mean—”

“You mean the make?”

“Yes.”

“Foreign. Expensive. One of our tenants had one once. An XKE I think.”

“A black XKE.”

“Yes.”

“How about the man? Did you get any kind of look at him?”

“Very big, bald.” She thought a moment. “Sinister would be a good word.”

“Could you approximate his age?”

“Perhaps forty?” She made it a question.

Another tenant walked by the window and there was another exchange of waves.

“How did their confrontation end, Mrs. Weldon?”

“They were swearing at each other — I’m glad none of the other tenants were outside to hear — and then the bald man got in his car and drove off.”