The Anonymous Client

41

It was a second floor walk-up on Astoria Boulevard. The foyer door was open. Steve stopped Mark Taylor on the stairs.

“Now look. We don’t say we’re cops. We just walk in and start talking.”

“You don’t look like a cop,” Taylor said.

“How would she know? I’m an undercover detective, for Christ’s sake. If we can make her think we’re cops, that’s fine. Otherwise, we just play it the best we can.”

“Right.”

“Keep the subpoena in your pocket. Don’t show it. Don’t serve it until I give the signal.”

“Right.”

“You go first. You’re big and beefy, you look more like a cop.”

“Thanks a lot. What should I say?”

“I don’t know. We’re here to talk to her about the trial. Just wing it.”

“Great.”

They went up the stairs, found the door, and knocked. There was the sound of footsteps and then a woman opened the door. She had dark, teased hair. She was about forty, but had sought to disguise the fact by the use of too much makeup. The end result, Steve thought, was to make her look closer to fifty.

“Yes?” she said.

“Miss Keeling,” Taylor said. “We’re sorry to disturb you, but it’s about the trial.”

Pauline Keeling frowned. “What about it?”

Steve pushed forward. “That’s just it. We want to keep you out of it if that’s at all possible. It may not be possible.”

The woman’s face fell. “But … but the District Attorney said-”

“Yeah, I know what he said. Look, we shouldn’t be discussing this in the hall.”

“Oh. Yes. I’m sorry. Won’t you come in?”

Mark Taylor and Steve Winslow stepped into a small, poorly furnished room, which appeared to have no kitchen facilities. All in all, Steve figured, it must be a depressing place to live.

Pauline Keeling looked around helplessly, feeling impelled to ask her visitors to sit down, but not knowing where to suggest.

“Well, what’s this all about?” she said.

Mark looked at Steve to take the initiative.

He did. “I’m sorry, Miss Keeling, but we have to go over your story one more time. I know Mr. Dirkson doesn’t want you to appear in court, but it may be unavoidable. What it boils down to is, can you answer our questions well enough here, or do we have to put you on the stand?”

“No, no,” she said, quickly. “I don’t want to go on the stand.”

“I know,” Steve said. “And I realize this is going to be a hardship for you, but we have to take it from the beginning.”

“The beginning?”

“Yeah,” Taylor said. “You come to town and looked up Bradshaw?”

She looked at him. “Blake,” she said. “Donald Blake.”

“Sorry,” Taylor said. “Yes. Donald Blake.”

She smiled sadly. “Yeah. That was the whole problem. Bradshaw. I looked for Donald Blake, and he was David C. Bradshaw. The man never learned, you know. Some men are like that. They just never learn.”

“Go on,” Steve said.

She fixed him with a hard eye. “Look, I know what you’re thinking. I didn’t come with him. He came out here, I came and found him. But that doesn’t make any difference. I lived with him for eight years as his wife. Whether he left me or not, that still makes me his common-law wife, and I’m entitled to what he had.”

“No one’s trying to prove you’re not,” Taylor said.

She fixed him with that look again. “That’s not the way Dirkson was talking.”

“Of course not,” Steve said. “You can’t expect him to hand over the money to the first person who comes and asks for it. You have a claim, and it would appear to be a legitimate claim. But it has to be checked out, and the final determination isn’t up to us. You just have to be patient.”

She exhaled heavily. “Yeah. Patient.”

“So let’s get on with it. You came out here and you looked up Donald Blake. How long ago was that?”

“About two weeks ago.”

“And what happened?”

“The usual. He was glad to see me, but he wasn’t glad to see me. At least, he wasn’t glad to see me right then. The timing was bad, that’s the way he put it.” She shook her head. “The big jerk. I was all set to move in with him, but he wouldn’t have it. Said he was on to something. My being around would mess it up.”

“Did he tell you what it was?”

“No, he never did. Secretive, that was him, you know? Always concocting the wild schemes, never letting me in on them.

“Unless they paid off, of course. If they paid off, he’d strut around like a rooster, crowing about how smart he was. But not this time. I mean, I come all the way out from Chicago, and it’s ‘Hi, hello, good to see you, now get out of here.’ He fixed me up with this room.” She looked around. Shrugged. “Great, huh?”

“This conversation you’re talking about,” Taylor said. “When you looked him up-that was in his apartment, right?”

She looked at him. “Of course it was in his apartment. Where else would it be? Not that we were there long. He got me out of there fast. Stashed me here.”

“He come to see you?” Steve asked.

“Oh, sure. Whenever he had the time. Big, busy man. Once or twice a week, if I was lucky.”

“But you never went back there?”

“No. Not with this big, heavy scheme he was setting up.”

“You didn’t know it was blackmail?” Steve said.

Now she gave him the cold stare. “Blackmail? Who said anything about blackmail? That D.A. can have any damn theories he wants, but nobody’s proven any blackmail. No charge has even been brought. As far as I’m concerned, that money was Donald Blake’s, and now that money is rightfully mine.”

“I understand your contention,” Steve said. “Personally, I’m not challenging it. I’m just trying to discuss what happened. Now, as I understand it, after that first time, when you looked Donald Blake up, you’ve never been back to his apartment?”

“That’s right. But I tell you, that’s got nothing to do with whether or not I was his common-law wife, and-”

“I’m sure it doesn’t,” Steve said. “And I’m not trying to contest your claim. Now, those times Donald Blake called on you-did he ever say anything about what he was doing?”

She shook her head. “No. I told you. Not a word.”

“Never mentioned Marilyn Harding?”

“No.”

“Or Douglas Kemper?”

“No.”

“Or the Harding family at all?”

“No.”

Steve frowned. “O.K. Let’s get to the day of the murder. If the defense should put you on the stand and try to make a case for the fact that you killed Donald Blake, what would happen then?”

“They’d have a hard time,” she said. “At five o’clock that afternoon, I had an appointment with my hairdresser.”

“Where?”

She jerked her thumb. “Here. Right down the street.” She frowned. “You guys checked this all out already.”

“I know,” Steve said. “But I told you. We have to go over it one more time.”

“Why?” she said. “I’m telling the truth. You think I can’t tell the same story straight twice?”

“Not at all,” Steve said. “And I think that will do it.”

Mark Taylor looked at Steve inquiringly. Steve shook his head.

“Sorry we bothered you, Miss Keeling. But that’s our job.”

She ushered them to the door. “But you’ll keep in touch,’ she said.

“Don’t worry.”

“And no one else touches that money?”

“You can bank on it.”

They came out the front door onto the street.

Taylor stopped, said, “Thanks, Steve.”

Steve sighed. “Don’t thank me. She’s got an unimpeachable alibi. If she was in Queens getting her hair done at five o’clock, there’s no way she gets to Bradshaw’s in time.”

“We could have got the name of the place and checked it out.”

“She says the cops have checked it out, and I’ll bet they have, too. There’s no way she could have done it.

“But don’t be too hasty with your thanks. Even so, she’s a beautiful red herring, and if worst comes to worst, I just might have to use her. But for the time being, we let her go.”

“Fine by me,” Taylor said. “So what do we do now?”

Steve rubbed his head. “God, I’m tired,” he said. “I’ll tell you. Now we beat it back to the office, put our heads together and try to figure what the fuck all this means.”