The Last Coincidence

Thirteen

After Herb dropped me at the brownstone and drove away forty-five dollars healthier, I briefed Wolfe on the funeral, then set about tackling the rest of his instructions from the night before, which were that I pay visits to Noreen’s roommate, Polly Mars; her sometime boyfriend, Douglas Rojek; and Todd Halliburton, the stubby garbage-mouth I had the misfortune to have met on the last night of Sparky Linville’s life.

I called Noreen at her mother’s place again, informing her I wanted to see her roommate, and she said I could usually find Polly in their apartment during the day on weekends unless she went home to see her family in Bronxville. On weekdays, I was told the best time to find her in was around six at night. “That’s usually when she gets done with whatever modeling job she has and before she goes out for the evening — and Polly goes out a lot,” Noreen said. She didn’t sound very excited about my wanting to see Rojek, but she gave me his phone number and address over in Brooklyn. And she couldn’t feed me any more about Halliburton than she did before, having met him only twice. She repeated that he lived down in the Village and worked for one of the big insurance companies, or so she thought.

I checked the Manhattan directory and found a Halliburton, T.C., on King Street in the Village, then leaned back and contemplated my course of action, glancing occasionally at Wolfe, who remained motionless and noiseless behind his book. I decided after due reflection that I would call on each of the three at home rather than phoning first, opting for the element of surprise — if indeed there was anything to surprise them with. But because it now was almost two-forty-five, there wasn’t time to do much of anything other than sneak out to the kitchen for a quick snack before Lily’s arrival at three. I might be able to see one of them, no more, in the late afternoon, leaving two of the visits for Sunday.

So much for the Mets and Cardinals. I had originally asked Saul to go with me, but now I called and inquired as to whether he could use both tickets. He said his friend, the same one who helped pick me clean at the poker table the night before, had decided to stay in town an extra day, so this all worked out very well — for everybody but yours truly. Saul offered to reimburse me, but I told him to consider this as one warm, gregarious New Yorker’s gift to an out-of-town visitor. Saul made a choking sound and said he’d be by later to collect the tickets.

Because Wolfe hadn’t expressed any preference as to whom I should see first, I decided I would favor Miss Mars with my presence at the earliest opportunity, probably later in the afternoon. I didn’t bother sharing my plan with him, however, knowing that he didn’t care what order I saw them in.

I’m not sure why Wolfe wanted to see Lily, other than because she is one of the few women he feels comfortable with. This may have something to do with her interest in his orchids, which she has asked to see at least a couple of dozen times through the years, and to my knowledge, she has yet to get a turndown.

Anyway, Wolfe’s conversation with Lily did little other than reinforce what he already had learned from Noreen and from what I had reported to him: namely, that both Noreen and Michael James were upstanding, moral, clean-cut, and essentially decent young specimens, although Michael was prone both to stuffiness and to bursts of temper; and that Sparky Linville was crude, boorish, and generally disagreeable.

Wolfe managed to stretch the conversation for an hour, and I knew why: He fully expected Lily to ask to visit the orchids, which she hadn’t seen for a while, and she didn’t disappoint him. So when he left the office at four to go to the plant rooms, he wasn’t alone.

“You two kids have a great time with the posies,” I told Wolfe and Lily as the elevator door started to close. I got a glower from him and a wink from her, then went to the kitchen to inform Fritz that I likely would be gone until dinnertime.

The Noreen James — Polly Mars apartment in the West Eighties was in a four-story building that had known better times. My watch told me it was four-thirty-three when I got out of a cab, walked up the stone steps into the small vestibule, and rang the bell next to the nameplate that said MARS — JAMES 3-W. I waited fifteen seconds, cursed in a whisper, and rang again. This time I was rewarded with a static-riddled “Yes?”

“Archie Goodwin — I’m a friend of your roommate, Noreen,” I said, leaning close to the speaker and talking both slowly and loudly. A lady passing by on the sidewalk with a white poodle stopped and stared at me.

“I don’t know you,” came the crisp response, to which I suggested she call Noreen at her mother’s apartment, hoping I was understood through the archaic intercom.

I waited two minutes, three, five, and then I heard something that sounded like “Okay” rasp through the speaker, followed by a click that released the door. The walk up two dark, narrow flights that smelled of disinfectant confirmed my initial impression of the building. At 3-W I knocked and identified myself, getting another muffled “Okay” from within. The door opened as far as the chain would allow, and I saw one slice of what looked to be a well-arranged face.

“You’re Archie Goodwin?” the slice asked. “May I see identification?” I pulled out my laminated private investigator’s license, which has my picture on it, and held it close. “All right, you’re you,” Polly Mars said, swinging the door open and revealing that the whole face was well-arranged indeed. Noreen hadn’t exaggerated her roommate’s beauty. “I’m sorry to have taken so long, but, well, you have to be careful, you know. Also, I just finished washing my hair when you rang,” she said, gesturing toward the white towel coiled atop her head that hid all but a few strands of very blond hair. “Please come in. And sit down.”

The living room wasn’t overly large, but it was nicely furnished — a pleasant surprise after the front of the building and the hallway. Music — it sounded like something from an opera — was playing softly. I parked on a comfortable-looking beige sofa while Polly Mars, wearing blue jeans, a loose white blouse, and sneakers, sat in a wing chair at my right. “I just phoned Noreen, like you said,” she told me. “She said you wanted to talk about Sparky and everything, and she also said that it was okay to answer whatever you asked. Isn’t it terrible about her brother being arrested and all?” She talked with her long manicured fingers, moving them with each syllable.

“Yes, it is, Miss Mars. When did you find out about the arrest?”

More hand fluttering. “Oh, just now, from Noreen. She’s really upset. I suppose it’s been in the papers and all, but I never seem to get around to reading them, although I know I should. She told me you and Nero Wolfe are trying to prove Michael didn’t... do it.”

“That’s right. First off, I’d like your thoughts on why Michael James would want to kill Mr. Linville.”

Polly sucked on her lower lip and let her eyes move around the room, as if she were thinking. She had some stagy mannerisms, for sure, but you could probably chalk that up to her modeling. It was easy to imagine her peddling toothpaste on TV. “Well, I... I don’t know.”

“Remember Noreen’s words — that it is okay to answer any question I ask,” I said with a smile.

She tucked one leg under her and frowned, as if responding to a cue. “Well, I guess you know that Noreen went out with Sparky, don’t you?” I nodded. “Something went wrong, it was on their second date. She didn’t talk to me about it, but I could tell,” she said.

“How?”

“She got really withdrawn, you know? She didn’t talk hardly at all for days. I was visiting my parents that weekend — they live up in Bronxville — and when I came back here, she was like a different person. Quieter — a lot quieter. And one thing was for sure — she didn’t want to see Sparky anymore.”

“Did she give you any reason?”

“No.” She shook her head vigorously, nearly dislodging the towel. “I asked her why she wouldn’t talk to him when he called, and she just said she wasn’t interested anymore. Then I asked her if anything went wrong, and she said no. I really felt guilty that things had gone bad, because she met Sparky through me.”

“I’d like to hear how that happened.”

Polly wrinkled her nose and fidgeted some more, then fixed her hazel eyes on me as if to come forth with a revelation. “I don’t know if Noreen told you this, but I had gone out with Sparky a few times myself, and one night when we came back here for a drink after we’d been out, he met Noreen.”

“Interesting. How well would you say you knew Linville?”

“Oh, we had a few dates. He was a lot of fun, knew a lot of people.” Her long fingers were flying again as she talked.

“The newspapers made him sound like he was more than a tad on the wild side.”

“Well, he loved to drive fast, too fast, I suppose, and he liked to hit all the hot spots, but he was really okay.” She mouthed it without conviction.

“Back to Noreen. What’s your opinion as to what happened between her and Linville?”

This time I got both nose-wrinkling and eye-rolling. “I don’t know. Maybe he put some moves on her or something.”

“Was that typical of him?”

Polly blushed and this time didn’t bother with the dramatics. “I really wouldn’t know,” she replied stiffly.

“You can do better than that,” I said, easing forward and leaning on my knees. “One man is dead, another has been charged with his murder, and your roommate is devastated. This is no time for getting coy. I know this is sensitive stuff, but to use a cliché, a life may be on the line. Now, tell me about you and Sparky Linville.”

She did, and it wasn’t at all pretty. She deserves more than a modicum of privacy, however, so I will only report that her own unpleasant experience with Linville — also on their final date — was not unlike Noreen’s. Tears came early on in her narrative, and by the end she was sobbing into the handkerchief I had passed to her.

“Miss Mars, I promise you none of this will ever get beyond Mr. Wolfe and me unless it is absolutely vital to establish an individual’s innocence or guilt. But I must ask one more tough question: Given your own experience with Linville, how could you let Noreen James go out with him?”

She moaned and sniffled into the handkerchief before raising a tearstained face. “Oh, God, that’s the worst part of all. I couldn’t bear to tell anybody what happened to me — not my parents, not Noreen, not even my shrink. And I’m a better actor than Noreen is; I kept it hidden. Also, one thing I didn’t mention: Sparky had gotten interested in Noreen before... before what happened to me. He even asked me — this was before our last date, if you want to call it that — he asked me if I minded his calling her.”

“And?”

“And I told him no, I didn’t mind, which was true. I was never serious about Sparky, I just like to have a good time, and he knew how to have a good time. I mean, you know, not like what—”

“Yes, I know what you mean,” I said solemnly. “So it was after your episode with him that he asked Noreen to go out?”

“Yes!” she spat it angrily, dabbing at her eyes. “After Noreen told me he’d called her, she wanted to know if I had any objections, and I was flabbergasted. I stuttered around and at least said one true thing — that I wasn’t interested in Sparky. I was so damn stupid. I wish I’d said more to her. Anyway, when Noreen wasn’t around, I phoned Sparky and told him to stay the hell away from her. I said if he didn’t, I was going to tell her what happened to me.”

“His reaction?”

“He said nothing happened to me that I didn’t want to have happen. And then he laughed — he laughed. He told me that I’d never say anything about it to anybody because that would make me look bad, and he said that not looking bad was more important to me than anything else. And dammit, maybe he was right. Mr. Goodwin, I hated him for what he did to me, I hated him for what he did to Noreen, and I hated myself most of all for not warning her about him.” Her tears had turned to rage. “God, I’m such a coward.”

“Easy,” I said, putting a hand on her arm. “How close are you and Noreen?”

“We went to college together and we’ve been roommates here for two years. But even with all that, we don’t talk much about, well... the really personal stuff, if you know what I mean.”

That confirmed what Noreen had told me. “I do. What do you think occurred between Noreen and Linville?”

She wrung my damp handkerchief nervously. “Huh. That’s obvious. She never told me, but she didn’t have to. I could tell from the way she acted. And even knowing that, I didn’t try to comfort her. Some friend I am, all the way around!”

“So here you were, two roommates with apparently identical experiences, and nobody said a thing — to each other or to anyone else?”

Polly nodded soberly. I wondered how many others, like her and Noreen, were locked in self-imposed prisons of silence because of similar horrors. Far more than those who spoke out against their attackers, I supposed. “Miss Mars,” I said gently, “I’m sure you know Michael James. What is your opinion about his arrest?”

“How do you mean?”

“Do you think he killed Linville?”

She twitched her shoulders twice, then raised her dewy eyes. I’d buy toothpaste from her any day. “I don’t know Michael terribly well — oh, I’ve met him a few times, although we never talked a lot to each other. But, yeah, I guess it wouldn’t surprise me at all that he did it.”

“Any particular reason for saying that?”

“Mr. Goodwin, I’ve got an older brother too — his name is Chris — and if he ever found out what had happened to me, like Michael must have found out with Noreen, I honestly think he would have gone berserk and killed Sparky, too.”

“Miss Mars,” I said, watching her face carefully, “where were you on Wednesday night?”

“Wednesday night? Let’s see, I was... Wait a minute, why do you want to know?” She recoiled, realizing where I was coming from.

“Why wouldn’t I want to know?”

“So you think I’m the one who...” She let it trail off, looking at me reproachfully.

“I didn’t say that, but in fact, you must admit you had a reason for intensely disliking Linville.”

“And now you know that reason.”

“You still haven’t answered the question,” I said.

She readjusted the towel with a hand, letting it come to rest on her right cheek, then punched up her reproachful look, obviously hoping I would say something to make her feel better or else let her off the hook. I kept my mouth shut and my face expressionless and waited.

“Wednesday night,” she repeated dully. “I was... I had a late photo assignment, in a studio on East Fifty-second.”

“How late?”

“Until... about seven-thirty.”

“Then what?”

“I had dinner at a little Italian place on Sixth Avenue up near the park.”

“Alone?”

“Yes,” she said. “I got out of there about nine and took a cab back here.”

“Again, alone?”

“Yes. Nobody was here. Noreen was staying at her mother’s place, but you probably know that.”

“And the rest of the evening?”

“I stayed home, watched a little TV, did some ironing, went to bed around eleven. I guess I don’t have an alibi, do I, for when Sparky got killed?” she said in what she tried to make a defiant tone.

“I guess not.”

“Except that Michael James already has confessed,” she went on, not sounding the least bit satisfied about it. “Mr. Goodwin, it’s hard to blame him for what he did. I just hope that he doesn’t have to pay for this in any way. Now, that would really be a crime. As far as I’m concerned, Michael James is a real hero. If it were up to me, I’d give him a medal.”