What Happened to Lisa?

Chapter IV

The street photographer appeared five or ten minutes later, ambling contentedly from the diner across the street. He was a chubby individual with wild sandy hair and thick glasses. I walked toward him. His camera clicked, and he thrust a coupon in my hand.

“See yourself as others see you, pal!”

“Thanks.” I took the coupon. He shot three or four more people in the morning shopping crowd streaming down the sidewalk, and glanced at me with some annoyance.

“You’ve been on this spot long?”

“A few months.”

I held the shot of Lisa toward him. “Do you recall this woman?”

“I shoot ’em by the thousands. How could one face stand out?”

“I think she used to come to this neighborhood frequently. She was an attractive girl. She stood out in a crowd.”

He studied the picture. “Nothing clicks. Hey, Benja!”

The man to whom he’d called was a gray-haired old newsy. He came forward in response to a motion of the photographer’s hand. He was a small old man with a mild smile and blue eyes. He was threadbare, as if he bought his clothes at rummage sales, but he was clean.

“Benja has been a fixture around here for a long time,” the photographer said to me. “He knows a lot of faces. If he doesn’t remember her, you’re out of luck. Your wife?” He added that with a little hesitation.

“Yes.” It was natural for the word to come out, and it gave me a queer, chill feeling. I knew I had spoken truth. Marriage vows could never have made her any more my wife.

Benja studied the picture a moment, handed it back to me. “Sure, I think I’ve seen her before — or a girl a lot like her.”

“When did you see her last?” I was aware of a thickness in my voice.

“Oh, couple weeks ago.” Benja smiled. “I remember her because she would look at me as if I was here. Or maybe you don’t know what I mean. Most people look, buy a paper, and I might as well be a shadow. But to her I was a person, a real human being. She always gave me a dollar for a paper.”

“Did she come here with anyone, or seem to be coming for any particular reason?”

“I dunno. Last time I saw her, she was with the piano player from The Dive.”

“You know his name?”

“Andy Bladen. Nice guy. Kind of washed out. In his latter years. A withdrawn, moody sort. I guess he just never had what it takes to hit the big time, but forever kept hoping.”

I pumped Benja a while longer, but there was nothing he could add. I bought a paper for a dollar and left him staring after me. Maybe he thought I was her husband, and that she’d run out on me for the piano player.

I called the musician’s local union and got Andy Bladen’s address. He was supposed to be living in an apartment house on the west side. But he wasn’t there. He’d moved two weeks ago and left no forwarding address.

The next couple of hours didn’t turn him up, and I went back downtown to a late lunch. I ate in the diner across the street from The Dive and when I crossed over a part of The Dive — the bar — was open for business.

I ordered bourbon and water. There were three other patrons at the bar, two men and a woman in black, all interested in each other. I heard the tinkling of a piano from the rear somewhere, and while the bartender was stirring a martini for the woman in black I eased off the leather stool and ducked through the archway.

I emerged into a rather large, darkened foyer. To my left was the empty hat check booth. Ahead, a short stairs dropped to the cabaret floor from the foyer. The tables and dance floor were separated from the foyer by a velvet rope swung between gleaming black stanchions.

The cabaret was in darkness except for the single light glowing in the roof of the bandshell. A man sat at the piano, talking to a girl who leaned toward the music rack. She was tall and slender and had blonde hair that was like ripples of honey in the pale light.

The man gestured as he talked. The girl nodded, and I moved to the rope, unhooked it, and slipped to the floor level. I stood there looking at the bandstand, and when the girl turned, she saw me and stiffened, with a gasp.

I moved toward the bandstand. The man on the piano bench swung toward me. He was slim, clean-cut, but tired-looking, his features thin. He had lost enough of his black hair to give him a high forehead, and he was gray at the temples.

The girl — the blonde billed as Jeanine — recovered her composure. “You frightened me, standing in that half-light that way.”

Her voice was low, husky. She reminded me so much of Lisa it hurt.

The man’s voice was angry. “No one is allowed in here during rehearsals.”

“You’re Mr. Bladen?”

“Yes.”

I showed him my press card. “I want to ask you a few questions.”

“I’m busy.”

“Then perhaps you’d rather talk to the police.”

“I’m sure I have nothing to say to the police.”

“Not even about Lisa Jones?”

He stiffened, glanced at Jeanine. He must have read an affirmative in her eyes. He got to his feet. He was tall when he stood, and his shoulders slouched.

Without a word he stepped off the bandstand and passed through a door beside it. I followed him to a dressing room in the rear of the club. He sat on the edge of a bulb-ringed dressing table, folded his arms, and said, “There is little really I can tell you about — Lisa.”

I was interested in the way he spoke her name. The hesitation had not been deliberate, the hushed tone was spontaneous. I studied his face. His tiredness was even more noticeable close up, as if it had been years in the accumulation.

“You knew Lisa?”

“You seem to have gathered that much already.”

“How well?”

“Not well enough. Not nearly well enough.”

I stared at him. He was old enough to be her father, yet he had spoken as if she’d been infinitely dear to him.

“You’d better level with me, Bladen.”

Anger came to his eyes. “I told you I have nothing to say. I met her. I enjoyed her presence briefly. Her death was as much a shock to me as it was — well, to her.”

“Did you know she was running from something?”

“I guessed as much.”

“You might have guessed a little further — that somebody was trying to kill her.”

“I did. Though it seemed impossible that any such thing could happen until that body was found in the river.”

“She said nothing to give you any idea who was after her?”

“No.”

“Yet you changed your address about the time she came here the last time.”

He shrugged. “I wanted a cheaper place and moved over to the Ardmore.” He uncrossed his arms, let his hands fall to his sides. “Now, if you’re convinced there is nothing sensational I can give your paper, I’ll go back to my rehearsal.”

I allowed him to motion me out of the dressing room. The blonde girl was still on the bandstand when we passed. I mounted the steps to the foyer, and looked back once. It seemed she had her hand halfway raised to me. But I supposed she was merely getting ready to start her song.

Out on the street, Benja was still peddling his papers. He smiled at me. “Find the piano?”

I nodded. “Where is the Ardmore?”

“A small hotel one block west, turn right a block and a half. The piano tell you anything about the girl?”

I could have told old Benja that the piano was lying in his teeth right down the line. But I didn’t say anything. I started walking west.

The Ardmore was one of those hotels where the edges are just beginning to wear off the furniture, the elevator is beginning to creak, and dust is starting to gather in the corners. Small and select yesterday, tomorrow it would be cheap and undiscriminating. Today it was somewhere between the two stages.

The desk clerk told me that Andy Bladen was in Two-ten and said he would ring, but I told him I would walk up, knock lightly in case Bladen hadn’t got up yet.

Upstairs on the second floor, I wondered just what in hell to do next. I couldn’t reach Two-ten from the fire-escape at the end of the corridor, and the door, of course, was locked.

I went back to the desk. “I didn’t rouse him,” I said. “But don’t ring. I’ll be here a day or two and might as well register. I’ll have my bags sent over later.”

I signed in, paid two days in advance, and a bell-boy showed me to a third floor room. There was a book of matches bearing the Ardmore name on the bedside table. After the bellhop was gone, I waited perhaps fifteen minutes and walked down to the second floor with the matches in my pocket.

A woman was getting on the elevator. I knocked lightly on the door for her benefit and when she had stepped into the elevator and was gone, I took the matches out of my pocket. I struck one, knelt, and scorched the edge of the carpet at the base of Bladen’s, door.

The clerk looked annoyed on my third appearance.

“You’d better get a key and come upstairs,” I said quietly. “I smelled smoke. Could Bladen have dropped off in a doze with a lighted cigarette in his hand?”

The clerk whitened, swarmed through the desk wicket. He decided the elevator was too slow. I followed him up the stairs.

At the door of Two-ten, he sniffed; his alarm grew greater. He knocked, waited a few seconds, and thrust the key in the lock.

I edged into the room behind him and as he called Bladen’s name and then conducted a quick search of the two-room suite, I stood with my back to the door, reached behind me, and threw the tumblers of the lock.

The clerk came back to face me. He sniffed. “I don’t smell it much now.”

“Neither do I. It’s possible the smoky odor blew in from outside.”

He accepted that after looking around a bit more, and then he was annoyed all over again. “Anyway, you’ll have to wait indefinitely to see Mr. Bladen. Or you might check the club where he works. He seems to have left the hotel without my seeing him. I have duties, that call me from the desk now and then. Complaints to answer. That sort of thing.”

I nodded, edged behind him so that he preceded me out of the room. I closed the door, took the key from the lock, handed it to him, and rattled the knob. We walked to the stairs together. I started up and he started down. When I reached the third, I figured he’d had time to get behind his desk again.

I walked back to the second floor. I went into Bladen’s rooms, throwing the door tumblers again. I felt better working behind a locked door.

The rooms were barren, as only a neat bachelor can leave his living quarters. Most of the clothes in the closet were probably for professional use — dinner jackets, a set of tails, linen jackets with shawl collars. Everything was worn, but of good quality.

The sitting room was desolate, its carpet worn, the furniture beginning to grow lumpy.

I felt sure that Andy Bladen had a personal record of his life somewhere — clippings, a scrapbook, a diary. I’d never yet met a professional actor or musician who didn’t allow mementoes of his past, triumphs stick to him.