Walk a Black Wind

3

Night was falling fast-the way it does in late autumn-over the East Eighty-fourth Street block where Francesca Crawford had lived briefly as Fran Martin. The wind seemed to have dropped, as if the tree-lined street was walled in from the turmoil of the rest of the city. The East Side can be like that, while the West Side throbs and boils.

The dead girl’s building was a small brownstone, neater than West Side brownstones. There were flower boxes in the windows instead of milk cartons and shirtless men. I got no answer to my ring, and the vestibule door was locked. Sure that I was alone, I used my thin square of stiff plastic to open the spring lock. On the top floor I used my ring of keys to enter the silent apartment.

A thin, dusty light filtered over shiny, tasteless furniture of the kind that comes with good furnished apartments and tells you nothing about the occupants. The living room was large, there was a full kitchen, a dining room, two bedrooms, and two bathrooms-$400 a month, at least.

One bedroom was cluttered, with two closets full of clothes for a young woman who went many places but had little taste beyond showing off what had to be a sensual figure. Make-up was thick as a forest on a dressing table, the bed was covered by a spread, and a small desk looked barely used. Paycheck stubs showed that this was the bedroom of the roommate, Celia Bazer. She worked for Bel-Mod Fashions, Inc., and was paid too much to be anything less than a model.

The second bedroom was bare and spartan. There was no make-up anywhere, not even in the bathroom, and fewer than ten dresses in the two closets. The closets were oddly segregated. One held three sleek cocktail dresses, some high heels, and an evening wrap. The other had only bright, loose, casual dresses, slacks, sandals, mannish shirts, a pair of red-stained jeans. All airy and informal, with a sense of youth and independence. The bed was covered with another spread, and there was the same small desk-but used.

The desk was littered with guides to New York, theater programs, nightclub napkins, and paycheck stubs from the Emerald Room. The checks were small, Francesca Crawford had made little money. Nothing went back farther than three weeks. The bureau drawers told me no more. No slips, no girdles, no brassieres, and only four pairs of bikini underpants-a modern girl. The only jewelry was some silver and turquoise pieces-earrings, a necklace, two bracelets. Good, handmade Indian jewelry, but new and shiny, and with nothing to show where it had come from.

As if Francesca Crawford had been on another planet since leaving home three months ago. Unless there had been some clue in her missing handbag. Had the bag been taken to hide where she had been, what she had been doing? Or was it simple robbery? Or, maybe, to suggest a simple robbery?

I turned to the bed. A killer can often become careless at the instant of killing, leave some clue. I pulled back the spread, and got a surprise. There was no blood on the bed.

I went back to the roommate’s bedroom, stripped off the cover from that bed. The blood was on this mattress-and a deep tear where the long knife had passed through the dead girl. Francesca Crawford had been killed in the wrong bed.

The super of the building was a small man who looked me up and down, stared at my duffel coat and missing arm. He had a belligerent air, as if he would belch in your face to prove that he took no guff from anyone. I asked him if Francesca Crawford had had many callers.

“You a cop? With that arm?”

“Private,” I said. “Her family wants to know how it happened, what she was doing, who her men were.”

His narrow face almost sparkled. The kind of animal thrilled by secondhand pleasures, other people’s pain. He rubbed at his jaw. “Said her name was Martin here. Not bad-looking except for that scar, but a funny one. Alone most of the time, never talked much. I had ideas about her and the roommate, only the Bazer kid had plenty of men.”

“Francesca Crawford didn’t have men?”

“I only seen two in three weeks, then just a couple times. No parties, no gang, no steady like most girl kids.”

“Who were the two you saw?”

“One guy forty or so, Dago-looking, but real dressed up, Gray hair, small. Never saw him with her, but he went up a couple times, asked once if she was home.”

“The other one?”

“Big, blond guy, maybe thirty,” he said, and his eyes were excited. “Saw him the night she got killed, around five P.M. He asked for Bazer first, then the Crawford girl. Wanted to know if I knew where they were. I didn’t. I told the cops.”

“How about a man about forty-three, short but broad?” and I described John Andera in full.

“Never saw one like that.”

“Any women?”

“Nah.” No fun in peeping on women with women.

“You heard nothing the night she died?”

“I told the cops. Not a thing.”

“And you hear everything, don’t you?” I said.

He slammed the door in my face, but I felt better as I went out into the now dark evening, and headed for the subway. I’d let him know what I thought of him. I was imagining him back in his room cursing me when I turned north on Lexington Avenue and saw the man behind me.

It was dark, and there were a lot of people on the sidewalk. I couldn’t get a good look at him, but I was sure he was tailing me. I didn’t recognize his clothes: dark, almost black, with a cheap-looking topcoat, and a hat pulled low. To be sure, I turned off the avenue and walked toward the Park. He came behind me, dropping back on the side street where there were fewer people. I did a few sharp turns. He was still on my trail when I turned back toward Lexington. I reached the avenue, and ducked into a doorway around the corner.

He didn’t appear. I watched the corner, but no one like: him came around after me. I waited five minutes, then took the subway downtown.

Maybe I’d been wrong.

The Emerald Room had just opened when I walked in. Behind its anonymous facade it was a beautiful place of small rooms with deep leather booths, stiff white tables, decent light to see your food by, a real fire against the October chill, and a small, quiet bar. The maitre took one look at my old duffel coat, and came fast.

“Yes, sir?”

“I’d like to talk to the manager.”

“About what?” He was half-curt, and half-relieved. I was a nobody, but at least I wasn’t asking for a table.

“A former employee.”

“I handle the personnel. What former employee?”

“Francesca Crawford,” I said. “Or Fran Martin, I guess.”

He froze solid. “The police have asked all, and been told all we know.”

“Was there any trouble with her? How about men?”

“She was a quiet, efficient girl. We liked her. Now do I have to call the bouncer?”

His eyes flickered to my left where I saw a muscular middleweight in a loose suit watching us both. I left.

I stopped in a diner on Eighth Avenue near my office for my dinner. If you know an area of New York, you can learn the specialty of each diner, and can eat pretty well for little money by picking the right diner on the right day. Here, on Wednesdays, it was kidney stew, and I thought about Francesca Crawford while I ate. Gazzo was right, there wasn’t much to go on. Three weeks is a short time, and that’s all she’d had in New York as far as I knew. The roommate, Celia Bazer, might know more, but meanwhile I wanted to look a little farther back.

I saw no sign of anyone following me to the branch library. The library is a detective tool most people forget. It would tell me more about Mayor Martin J. Crawford. I got Who’s Who in America. The entry wasn’t long, Dresden was only a small industrial city:

Crawford, Martin James: Mayor, Dresden, N.Y. Born Dresden, N.Y., April 14, 1920. Ed. private schools, Cornell Univ., Cornell Law. M. Katje Van Hoek; four children. New York State Bar, 1945. Lawyer, Dresden City Council, 1948-50. Elec. New York State Assembly, 1950-56. New York State Atty Gen’s Office, 1957-62. Estab. law firm Vance, Crawford and Cashin, 1962. Elec. mayor of Dresden, N.Y., 1964. Dresden Plan (strict Welfare control), 1966. Dresden Crime Comm. estab. 1968, under dir. of Carter Vance and Anthony Sasser, with mayor as chmn. Re-elected 1968. Dresden Plan for welfare control opposed in various court actions, abandoned, 1969.

I closed the book, and thought about Mayor Martin Crawford. A local Dresden boy, and the schools indicated from a “good” family, probably some money. There was influence, and more than a little ability, in a plum job like City Council lawyer at twenty-five. Until 1962 he had gone the statewide political route. After 1962 it had been private practice and local politics-the bigger fish in the smaller pond. From the sound of the Dresden Crime Commission, and the “Dresden Plan” to crack down on welfare rolls, Crawford was an anti-crime crusader and a conservative reformer. Men who crusade and reform make enemies.

I looked up the number of the Eighty-fourth Street apartment, and called from the library. I got no answer. Either the police still had Celia Bazer, or she was off somewhere, and there wasn’t much I could do until I talked to her. I had a thousand dollars in my hands, and I thought about my girl, Marty-Martine Adair, who gives me a lot and gets little in return. I hadn’t seen her for a week. She was busy with a new show, a featured role at last, but maybe she was free tonight. I called the theater. Marty wasn’t free.

So I went to the bar where my friend Joe Harris was on duty, and had a few Irish whiskies. I even paid. I talked with Joe for a couple of slow hours, then went home. In bed I lay awake quite a while. I thought about the murder of the daughter of an anti-crime, conservative mayor. A girl wasn’t killed without a reason-or maybe she was. We live in a violent time, and I guessed that, statistically, more people were killed by unknown strangers than were killed for politics.