The Murderers

SIXTEEN

Matt left the Police Administration Building and found his car. The interior lights were on. Because, he saw, the door was ajar.

Christ, was I so plastered when I came here that I not only didn’t lock the car, but didn’t even close the damned door? No wonder Milham was worried if I was all right to drive.

Or did somebody use a Car Thief’s Friend and open the door? Did I leave anything inside worth stealing?

He pulled the door fully open and stuck his head inside.

There was no sign of damage; the glove compartment showed no sign that anyone had tried to force it open.

I deduce that no attempt at Vehicular Burglary has occurred. I am forced to conclude that I was shitfaced when I drove in here. Shit!

There was a white tissue on the floor under the steering wheel.

Penny’s Kleenex. With her lipstick on it.

He picked it up and looked at it.

What the hell do I do with it? Throw it away? I don’t want to do that. Keep it, as a Sacred Relic? I don’t want to do that, either.

He patted his pocket and found a book of matches.

He unfolded the Kleenex, struck a match, and set the Kleenex on fire. He held it in his fingers until that became painful, and then let what was left float to the ground. He watched until it was consumed and the embers died.

Then he got in the Porsche and drove out of the Roundhouse parking lot.

His stomach hurt, and he decided that was because he still hadn’t had anything to eat. He drove over to the 1400 block of Race Street where he remembered a restaurant was open all night. He ordered two hamburgers, changed his mind to three hamburgers, a cup of coffee, a large french fries, and two containers of milk, all to go.

Then he got back in the Porsche and drove home.

The red light was blinking on his answering machine. He was tempted to ignore it, but finally pushed the Play Messages button.

Predictably, there was a call from his mother, asking if he was all right. And one from his father, same question. And there were seven No Message blurps; someone had called, and elected not to leave a message.

He opened the paper bag from the St. George Restaurant and started to unwrap a hamburger.

The telephone rang.

He debated answering it, but finally ran and grabbed it just before the fifth ring, which would turn on the answering machine.

“Hello?”

There was no reply, but someone was on the line.

“If you’re going to talk dirty to me, please start now,” Matt said.

There was a click and the line went dead.

“Fuck you, pal,” Matt said, hung the telephone up, and went back to the hamburger.

The telephone rang again.

“Goddamn it!”

He snatched the phone from the wall and remembered at the last moment that the caller, this time, might be his mother, and one did not scream obscenities at one’s mother.

“Hello?”

And again there was no reply.

“Oh, goddamn it!”

“Were you asleep?” It was a female voice.

Jesus Christ! Amanda?

“Amanda?”

“I was worried about you,” Amanda said.

“I’m all right.”

“I knew this was going to be a bad idea. I told myself you would be all right.”

“I’m glad you called,” he said. “What was going to be a bad idea? Jesus, it’s quarter after three. Was that you on the machine? You called and didn’t leave a message?”

There was no reply, which told him it had indeed been Amanda who had called and elected not to leave a message.

“How long have you been trying to reach me?”

“I got here about eleven,” she said, very softly.

“Where’s here? Home?”

“No.”

“Where are you?”

“In the Warwick Hotel.”

“The Warwick? I thought you were staying with Chad?”

“I was. They put me on the train at seven.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What happened is that I kicked myself most of the way to Newark for being afraid what Chad and Daffy would think if I told him I was worried about you and wanted to see you. So I got off in Newark and came back. At the time, it seemed like a reasonable idea.”

“Jesus, that was nice of you,” he said.

“I haven’t had anything to eat,” she said. “Damn you. Where were you?”

“On the job. Working.”

“I should have guessed that,” she said. “I thought maybe you were out getting sloshed.”

“I started to,” he said. “And then I decided I’d better go to work.”

There was a long pause, and then she said:

“This is your town. Is there someplace I can get something to eat this time of the morning?”

“How about a lukewarm hamburger and some limp french fries?”

There was another long pause.

“You mean at your place?”

“I stopped off at a restaurant on my way home,” he said.

“I’m so hungry I’m tempted to accept,” Amanda said. “But knowing you, you’d get the wrong idea.”

“Oh, hell, I wouldn’t-Jesus, Amanda!”

“All I want to be is your friend, Matt, OK? I thought you could use one.”

“Absolutely. I understand. Nothing else ever entered my mind.”

“OK. As long as you understand that.”

“I do. Perfectly. Look, you want me to bring the hamburger there?”

“No,” she said, after a just-perceptible pause. “I know where you live. Give me ten, fifteen minutes. I have to get dressed again. The last call was going to be the last call.”

“I’ll come get you.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Amanda said, and hung up.

“I will be damned,” Matt thought aloud. “That was really very nice of her.”

He went back to the table, took knives and forks and salt and pepper and plates from cabinets, and laid them on the table. Then he got a pot from under the sink and poured the coffee into it.

At least I can offer her hot coffee!

Then he went into the living room and sat down in his chair. While I wait, I’ll take a look at this stuff:

When Detective Wally Milham pushed open the door of the Red Robin Diner at Frankford and Levick it was nearly empty, and for at least fifteen seconds, which seemed like much longer, he couldn’t find Helene Kellog. But then he saw her, in a booth halfway down the counter, staring into a coffee cup on the table.

She had a kerchief around her head, and was wearing a cotton raincoat.

He walked quickly to the booth and slid onto the seat facing her.

“Hi,” he said.

She looked up at him and smiled wanly, but didn’t speak, and when he touched her hand, she pulled it away.

“Tell me exactly what happened,” he said.

“My mother came into my room. I hadn’t heard the phone ring, it’s downstairs in the hall. And she told me I had a call-”

“When was this?”

“Just before I called you.”

“You were in bed?”

“Of course I was in bed. It was…God, I don’t know. Late. Of course I was in bed. Everybody was in bed. My mother had to get out of bed to answer the phone…”

“Take it easy, honey,” Milham said gently.

“I’m frightened, Wally.”

“Tell me exactly what happened.”

“He said, he said, ‘Keep your…’ Wally, he said, ‘Keep your fucking mouth closed, bitch, or you’ll get the same thing your fucking husband did.”

“Sonofabitch,” Milham said. “Did you recognize the voice?”

Helene shook her head.

“Honey, do you know something about-what your husband was doing, something dirty, that you haven’t told me?”

“No. But, Wally, they must know I went to see Sergeant Washington.”

“You did what?”

“Oh, God, I didn’t tell you, did I?”

“Didn’t tell me what?”

“That I went to see Sergeant Washington.”

“No, you didn’t,” Milham said. “What exactly did you tell Washington?”

“I told him that the Narcotics Five Squad is all dirty, that Jerry was dirty, and that they probably are the ones who killed him.”

“Jesus!”

“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to involve you,” Helene said.

“Honey, I’m involved,” Wally said, and added, “You’re probably right. Somebody knows you talked to Washington. What did you do, call him up?”

“I went to see him.”

“Well, somebody from Five Squad was at Special Operations, and recognized you, or somebody at Special Operations told somebody at Five Squad…”

“I went to his house,” Helene said. “I didn’t go to Special Operations. Which means that if Five Squad knows, he told them.”

Milham considered that for two seconds.

“No. Not Washington. He’s a straight arrow. He didn’t tell anybody, except maybe somebody at Internal Affairs.”

“What’s the difference? They know.”

“What are they afraid you’ll tell somebody?”

Helene shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. I don’t know what they’re doing dirty, just that they are.”

“Your husband never told you where the money came from?”

Helene shook her head.

“Wally, I don’t want them to do anything to my mother and father.”

“They won’t. The dumbest thing they could do is try to do something to you. Or them. The whole Police Department would come down on them.”

“Huh!” she snorted. “They don’t want to go to jail; there’s no telling what they’ll do.”

“They’re just trying to scare you, is all. Christ, I wish you had told me about this. I could have got to Washington and nobody would ever have known.”

“I told you, I didn’t want to involve you.”

“And I told you, I’m involved in whatever you do,” Milham said. He reached out for her hand again, and this time she did not move it away.

When he looked at her face, tears were running down her cheeks.

“Honey, don’t do that. I can’t stand to see you cry.”

“Wally, what am I going to do?”

“The question is what are we going to do. You understand?”

“OK. We,” Helene said, and tried to smile.

“OK. So you’re not going back to your mother’s. That’s one thing.”

“What is she going to say? What do I say to her?”

“What did you say when you left the house?”

“I told her I had to go somewhere, and that I would call. She didn’t like it at all.”

“OK. So you call her again, and tell her you have to go away for a couple of days, and that you’ll call her.”

“She won’t like it.”

“Honey, for Christ’s sake! They called you there because they knew you were there.”

She nodded a grudging acceptance of that.

“So where do I go?”

“My place,” he suggested without much conviction in his voice.

“I can’t do that, and you know it,” Helene said.

“OK. We’ll talk about that later. Tonight we’ll go to a motel.”

“Not we, Wally. I’m not up to anything like that.”

“OK. We get you in a motel. You go to bed. Get your rest. I’ll think of something.”

“Something what?”

“I don’t know. Something,” Milham said. “One thing at a time.”

She looked at him and squeezed his hand.

“Helene,” Wally said. “Everything’s going to be all right. You’re not alone.” She squeezed his hand. “I love you,” Wally said.

She squeezed his hand again.

He stood up.

“Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“You think maybe they followed me here?”

“Of course not,” he said.

But when they went to his car, he looked up and down the street to make sure there was nothing suspicious, and as they drove to the Sheraton Hotel, on Roosevelt Boulevard and Grant Avenue, he made three or four turns to be absolutely sure no one was following them.

He didn’t like the idea of leaving her alone, but he understood why she didn’t want him to stay with her, and he knew that he couldn’t press her about that; she would think that all he wanted to do was get in bed with her.

He got the key from the desk clerk, who sort of smirked at him, making it clear he thought that what they were up to was a little quickie.

He stood outside the motel door.

“Get the room number off the phone, and I’ll call you in the morning,” Wally said.

“OK,” she said, “wait here.”

She came back with the number written inside a match-book, and handed it to him.

“I’ll call you in the morning,” he said.

“Yes.”

She looked at him, and leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.

“Thank you, Wally,” she said.

“Aaaah. I’ll call you in the morning. Just lock the door and get some sleep.”

“Right.”

“Good night, Helene. I’ll call you in the morning.”

“Right.”

He had taken a dozen steps toward his car when she called his name.

“Wally?”

“Yeah?”

He walked back to her.

“Wally, I love you, too,” Helene said.

“I know,” he said. “But thank you for saying it.”

“I don’t want you to go,” Helene said.

She took his hand and pulled him into the motel room.

Matt’s door buzzer sounded.

He pushed the button that opened the door and went to the top of the stairs to wait for Amanda.

The doorway was filled with a rent-a-cop, a huge one Matt did not know.

“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Payne, but there’s a young lady here says you expect her.”

“Of course,” Matt said, and ran down the stairs.

“Thanks a lot,” Matt said to the rent-a cop.

“Hello,” Amanda said softly, and walked quickly past him and up the stairs. She was wearing a suit with a white blouse. He could smell soap.

He closed the door in the face of the rent-a-cop and went after Amanda, carefully averting his eyes so that she wouldn’t have any reason at all to suspect he was looking up her skirt as she went up the stairs.

She waited for him at the top of the stairs.

“You know what he thought, don’t you?” Amanda asked.

“No. What did he think?”

“He thought I was a call girl.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I’m not being silly. He as much as accused me in the elevator. And why not? Who else would be going to a bachelor apartment at this hour?”

“A friend,” Matt said.

“God, I’m sorry I ever got started on this!”

“I’m not.”

“I meant it, Matt, when I said I’m here as a friend.”

“Absolutely. I know that.”

She met his eyes, and then quickly averted hers.

“Do you know how to warm up a hamburger?” Matt asked. “I put the coffee in a pot, and we can heat that. But the hamburgers are cold.”

“You put the meat patty in a frying pan,” Amanda said. “You have a frying pan?” He nodded. “And-you said french fries?” Matt nodded again. “You put french fries in the oven.”

“I’ve got one of those, too,” Matt said.

“Good,” she said. “Show me.”

“I’m glad you came,” Matt said. “Thank you.”

“Just as long as you understand why I came,” she said. “OK?”

“Absolutely. I told you that.”

She went in the kitchen. He turned the oven on and handed her a frying pan.

When she bent over to put the french fries in the oven, he looked down her blouse and told himself he was really a sonofabitch.

When she stood up, he could tell by the look in her eyes that she knew he had looked down her blouse.

He backed two steps away from her and smiled uneasily.

“If anybody finds out I came here,” Amanda said, “they wouldn’t understand.”

“Nobody will ever find out,” Matt said. He held up three fingers in the Boy Scout salute. “Scout’s Honor.”

“Oh, God,” Amanda groaned.

“Bad joke,” he said. “Sorry.”

“And they would, of course, be right,” Amanda said. “Oh, hell! ‘In for a penny’- oh, God! — ‘in for a pound.’”

“Excuse me?”

“You know what my reaction was when I heard Penny was dead?”

“What?”

“Thank God. She was going to suck Matt dry and ruin his life.” She looked intently at his face, then moaned. “Oh, God, I shouldn’t have told you!”

“Isn’t that why you came here, to tell me that? Amanda, that’s really-decent-of you. And it really took balls.”

“Balls?” she parroted, gently mocking.

“It took courage,” he corrected himself. “But you’re not the only one who felt that way. Penny…Penny apparently did not enjoy the universal approval of my friends. Half a dozen people told me exactly, or paraphrased, what you just did.”

“That’s not why I came,” Amanda said. “I wanted to be with you.”

“You’re a good friend,” Matt said.

She met his eyes, then looked away, and then met them again.

“Maybe that, too,” Amanda said softly.

“Jesus, Amanda.”

“Does that come as such a surprise? Am I making as much of a fool of myself as I think I am?”

He reached out and touched her cheek with his fingers.

She moved her head away and looked to the side.

“For God’s sake, don’t feel sorry for me,” she said.

“What I’m doing is wondering what would happen if I tried to put my arms around you.”

She turned her face to look at him. She looked into his eyes for a long moment.

“Why don’t you try it and find out?” Amanda asked.