Death trick

9

Back at the office I phoned Margarita Mayes at Here 'N' There 'n' Everywhere Travel and told her that the Cheyenne, Wyoming, police were looking for Chris Porterfield. She thanked me and said she would relay this useful information.

Next I called a New York Telephone Company employee I'd met a few years earlier at the Terminal bar who'd helped me out from time to time. He called back half an hour later with a list of long-distance calls made over the past month from Chris Porterfield and Margarita Mayes's home phone and from Here 'n' There 'n' Everywhere Travel. The lists were long, but nowhere was there included a call to Cheyenne, Wyoming. The closest was a call from the travel agency to a number in St. Louis, which didn't look useful, though I'd check it out. My friend at the phone company mentioned in passing that a Sergeant Bowman of the Albany Police Department had requested the same information a week earlier.

At noon I walked up Central and had a leisurely lunch at Elmo's. I paid cash, and Elmo said,

"Have a nice day."

Under a hard, bright autumn sky, I headed over toward the park and arrived at the Blounts' on State Street just after one. The maid let me in, and I waited on the much-talked-about sofa while the Blounts went over their lines offstage.

At one-ten they rolled down the foyer stairway and into the salon like a couple of presenters on the Academy Awards show, Stuart Blount with his elegant long arm, Jane Blount with her ashtray.

"We didn't expect to see you so soon," Blount said, "but we're absolutely delighted."

"Absolutely," Jane Blount said. "Would you care for some tea? Something stronger?"

I said no thank you, and we all sat down, the Blounts looking almost cheerfully expectant.

"I haven't found Billy," I told them, "but I've got some ideas. For now I've got more questions than answers."

Their disappointment showed, and Jane Blount lit a Silva Thin. "How much longer do you think it will be?" she asked. "We're all really terribly anxious to have this business taken care of.

Believe me, it's taken its toll on both of us."

"Jane, I'm sure Mr. Strachey is moving ahead on this as rapidly as anyone possibly can," Blount said, giving me a man-to-man, don't-mind-her, women-will-be-women look. "What more can we tell you, Mr. Strachey? What else would you like to know about our son that might assist you?"

I said, "Did Billy once spend some time in a mental institution?"

They froze. They looked at each other. They looked at me. "Why do you ask?" Blount said. "That was nearly ten years ago. What bearing does that have on the present situation?"

"That is a private family matter," Jane Blount said. "It is, I'm afraid, strictly between Stuart and me." She blew smoke up to the ceiling vent. "I'm sure you can appreciate how difficult such an unpleasant state of affairs can be for a family like ours."

I did not tell them what I suspected. I said, "Any past mental illness of Billy's might not be entirely irrelevant to the, ah, present, ah, problematical situation." After this was over I'd need deprogramming. "The thing is, if Billy has a history of sudden, unexpected, violent behavior-"

They picked up the bait. "No, no, that wasn't it," Blount rushed to assure me. "Not at all. You mustn't get the wrong idea."

"As we explained on Friday," Jane Blount said in a voice I supposed she had honed over the years on the maid, "Billy was not a violent boy. He was contentious and impossible at times, of course. But invariably he kept his temper. Billy got that from Stuart's side of the family, I suppose. We Hardemans are more-passionate by nature. Though of course not excessively demonstrative."

Stuart Blount winked at me.

I said, "What was the nature of Billy's illness? Once I know I can relax about it and drop the subject."

"Mr. Strachey," Jane Blount said, her passionate nature asserting itself, "I be-lieve we hired you simply to-"

"No, no-Jane, Jane. Let me put Mr. Strachey's mind at ease. There'll be no harm in that that I can see." She sighed heavily and stubbed out her cigarette. "Billy's problem," Blount said, "was a problem of-social adjustment. He was in no way a menace to society. Only to himself. Just himself."

He looked at me evenly, waiting. He knew that I knew. Jane Blount glowered at the chandelier.

"And was the social-adjustment problem ironed out?" I asked.

Blount said icily, "I think you know the answer to that, Mr. Strachey. Now then. What can we tell you that will help you locate our son and bring him back to us? That's what we're here for, isn't it?"

I said, "Who is Chris Porterfield?"

They both looked at the walls and thought about this. "The name sounds familiar," Blount said.

"But-I can't place it."

"Is he a friend of Billy's?" Jane Blount asked.

I said yes, that was what I'd heard. "An old friend," I said.

"Perhaps from Billy's Elwell School days," Blount said.

"No, Stuart. I would very much doubt that. Billy has never kept in touch with his schoolmates.

Understandable as that may be in Billy's case, it is a pity, in a way. Those ties can be so important in later life."

"Or from Albany State-SUNY," Blount said.

"For what that would be worth." She lit another cigarette.

Blount said, "Is this Chris someone Billy might have gone to for help?"

I told them yes, and that I was making progress in locating Chris Porterfield. Then I said: "I spoke with Sergeant Bowman, the police detective. He tells me you two identified Billy's voice on the tape of the phone call notifying the police of the killing."

She squirmed inwardly, but he let it show. "What would have been the point of lying?" Blount said. "Someone else who knew Billy would have identified him at some point in time in the course of events. And, in point of fact, the only significance of the tape is that it demonstrates that Billy reported a crime."

Father Recommends Son For Citizenship Award. "You're sure it's Billy's voice?"

"We are certain," Jane Blount snapped. "We know the voice of our son. Now what else do you want from us?"

"Another five hundred dollars," I said. "I expect to have to do some traveling."

They gave me the check and all but shoved me out the door.

I walked across State Street and into the park. The weather was warming up again-fickle October-and I lay down on the grass under the high white sky. The ground was damp and cold.

I got up and sat on a bench. I wanted a cigarette. I'd quit soon after I met Timmy, when it had suddenly occurred to me that I wanted to live for a long, long time. I just chucked them out one night, and Timmy had put up with my cruelty for the week it took to get unhooked. Now I wanted one, for the calming narcotic-effect they'd always had on me. I guessed what I was feeling was the Blount Effect. I thought, half a joint would be nice. And I knew who'd have one

— the man I was planning to call on next.

I walked back to Central and down to my bank and bought five hundred dollars' worth of traveler's checks with the money the Blounts had just used to purchase my speedy departure. I made my way back up to Lexington then and rattled Frank Zimka's front door. After a time it opened.

He looked at me and blinked himself awake. "Oh. Hi. C'mon in." He was shirtless and barefooted in stained red bikini briefs. His old man's face was unshaven and looked unfocused from the inside out In his state of relative undress, the contrast between Zimka's ravaged face and his slim, smooth swimmer's body was even more striking. And the clinging briefs made clear how he'd been able to stay in business as a prostitute. I'd seen them cruising the park in their Buicks and Chryslers, the men who must have been Zimka's Johns-middle-aged, closeted, probably married with grown children; sad, desperate men locked into choices they'd made back in the days when, for some men, there didn't seem to be any. And less interested in a pretty face than in what Frank Zimka had to offer-Zimka, the meat man. Though why Billy Blount? What did Zimka have that could interest him? That I couldn't figure out.

Down in the depths of his apartment, Zimka said, "Smoke?" He dragged on a half-gone joint.

"Maybe I'll just take some along. A bag?"

He got a bag from the refrigerator, and I dropped it into my jacket pocket and on into the lining. I supposed he accepted traveler's checks, if not Master Charge, but I had ten dollars cash and gave him that.

I said, "No whites today? For you, I mean. Not that you're not better off without them."

"It's early," he said. "Sit down. I've got something."

While Zimka went into his bedroom, I sat on the couch and read two panels of the sci-fi comic book open on the end table. Zimka came back and handed me a dirty envelope sealed with Scotch tape. "Billy" was written across the front. The "i" was dotted with a little heart.

"You won't lose this, will you?"

"I won't." I shoved the envelope down with the grass.

"Did you find Billy yet?"

"No. But I'm close. I think."

He sat on the plastic chair and brought his knee up for a hug. The head of his cock peeked out one leg of his briefs and he absently tucked it back in.

"Where do you think Billy is?" he said. "God, I miss him."

"He's out West."

"In Hollywood?"

"Not that far west. I'm not sure. I'll know soon. Frank, I want you to clear something up for me."

"You do? What?"

"Describe the car you used to drive Billy to La Guardia."

"Describe it?"

"The make, the color."

He squeezed his eyes shut as if to rummage around inside his head for some usable brain cells.

Finally he opened his eyes and said, "It's a green car. An Impala, I think. Impala-isn't that a car?"

"It is."

"Why do you want to know that? Did somebody see us? I mean, I don't want to get somebody in trouble-the guy I borrowed the car from."

"I don't think that'll be a problem. Do you know anyone who owns a new gold-colored Olds Toronado?"

He shut his eyes again. After a moment they opened, blinking. "I'm sorry, but I really don't think so. I might have been in one once. It's hard to say. I've been in a lot of cars."

It seemed possible he simply did not remember that the Olds was an Olds, or even that it was a motorized vehicle. Sorting out the particulars of his nights couldn't have been easy for him.

I said, "The night of the killing. Where did you spend it?"

He fidgeted. "Here," he said. "In there." He gestured toward the bedroom. "I told you that before, didn't I? I thought I did. Who's been asking about me?"

"Were you alone?"

"No. Who is it who wants to know about that?"

"For now, I do. Were you here around one?"

"I said I was here all that night. A guy-somebody had called around eleven-thirty, and came over at twelve-I think. Yeah, that's what happened. I remember because somebody else had just left when this guy called. He was a priest, the first guy, and he always left before twelve. In for a quick pop, then back to the rectory. I was kind of wiped out after him, but the second guy was somebody who's always been pretty nice to me, so when he called I said, sure, what the fuck, c'mon over. I smoked some while I waited, and then he came, this friendly old fucked-up guy, and he stayed till-about two, I guess. Then I fell asleep till Billy showed up at six. It was one of those nights."

I said, "You were seen sitting in a gold-colored Olds in the parking lot at Trucky's around one.

How did that happen?"

His head jerked back and he gave me a mean look. "Hey, what is this? Is somebody trying to fuck me over or what? Who said that? Somebody has me mixed up with somebody else. end user

Donald Strachey Mystery 01

Whoever said that about me-that's wrong." He muttered something else under his breath and reached for a Kent.

I said, "What's the friendly old fucked-up guy's name? Maybe he can help put my mind at ease.

This will stay between the three of us. Or maybe you could get us together."

He lit the cigarette and ingested its nutrients. "No-o-o-o way." He exhaled. "Forget that."

"Look," I said, "you know me a little by now. Am I discreet, or am I discreet?"

He shook his head. "Nnn-nnn. That's a no-no. Why don't you tell me something? Who was it who says he saw me at Trucky's? A cop?" He gave me a look of deep, wounded bitterness which, since Billy Blount's departure, seemed to be Zimka's one remaining nondrug-induced emotion.

I said, "No. Someone who knows you. Someone whose car was parked next to the Olds. He looked right at you and spoke, and you looked back. Remember, now? A friend of Billy's?"

He frowned at his cigarette and slowly shook his head. Then, as if he were about to remember something, he squeezed his eyes shut and said, "Well, maybe I-no. It must have been another night I was out there. Or maybe I was stoned. I don't think so, though. It's hard to remember. My mind does weird things sometimes."

"Do you know Mike Truckman?"

"Sure. Why? Who wants to know? Everybody knows Mike."

"Is Mike one of your Johns?"

"Look, I said certain things are confidential."

"Did you meet Mike that night?"

"Goddamnit-to-shit, I told you I was with these two other guys! Now, who is it that's telling these lies about me? Did Mike say that?"

"No. Give me the names of the priest and the fucked-up old guy, and then maybe we can clear this up, and I'll drop it."

"No. Oh, no. I can't do that. Hey-shit-am I going to get in trouble?"

"I don't know."

"Oh, God. That's all I need. Cops. I'm so fucked up. So fucking fucked up."

He selected a pill from the eight whites lying openly on the end table and placed it on his tongue.