Where There’s Smoke

14

I wasn’t out to get a beat on Horowitz and O’Neil, but I knew they’d be occupied at the scene for at least another hour, and by that time the Natalie Fletcher whose name had been engraved on the back of the pendant might have disappeared to Nome, Alaska. I knew, of course, that the pendant might have been dropped by anyone, and not necessarily by the man who’d stolen another corpse and killed a mortuary employee in the bargain. In fact, it seemed unlikely that the killer — described as a man by the old lady who’d struggled with him — would have been wearing a distinctively female piece of jewelry around his neck. But the chain had been broken, and the possibility existed that it had been torn from his neck while he and the old lady did their waltz and the dog nipped at his heels.

There was almost a full column of Fletchers in the phone book, but only one Natalie Fletcher. Her address was listed as 420 Oberlin Crescent, about two miles further uptown. I drove Maria’s Pinto up Claridge Avenue, almost deserted at this hour of the morning, and reached Natalie Fletcher’s building at one A.M., which is a very good time to question people, especially if they’re murder suspects. I climbed three flights of stairs to the apartment indicated on the lobby mailbox. Outside her door, I put my ear to the wood and listened. Cops, retired or otherwise, always listen before knocking on a door. It’s often difficult to understand conversations heard through layers of wood, but different voices are discernible and (provided everyone in the room is speaking) the listening cop can get a pretty good idea of what’s waiting for him behind a closed door. The only thing waiting behind Natalie Fletcher’s door was silence.

There was no doorbell. I knocked. There was still no sound from within. I knocked again. It was a little after one in the morning, and if Natalie Fletcher was asleep, it might take a bit of banging to rustle her out of bed. I knocked again, louder this time. The door across the hall opened suddenly. I turned and found myself face to face with a tall, wide-shouldered man in his forties, his scalp shaved glistening clean like a stock company Yul Brynner’s. His eyes were brown, overhung with shaggy blond brows. There was a Band-Aid taped to his right cheek, just below the eye. He was wearing a robe over his pajamas, his feet tucked into carpet slippers. Behind him in the apartment, I could hear the muted voices of actors in a late-night television movie.

“Are you looking for Natalie?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“She isn’t here.”

“Would you happen to know where she is?”

“No,” he said. “Who are you?”

“Police officer,” I said, and showed him my shield.

“Is she in trouble?” he asked.

“Are you a friend of hers?”

“I know her casually.”

“What’s your name?”

“Amos Wakefield.”

“When did you see her last, Mr. Wakefield?”

“I don’t keep track of her comings and goings,” Wakefield said.

“Then how do you know she isn’t here?”

“Well... I didn’t hear any noise in the apartment when I got home tonight.” He paused. “She’s usually playing records.”

“What time was that, Mr. Wakefield? When you got home tonight?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Eleven-thirty, I would guess.”

“Does she live here alone?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of car does she drive?”

“What?” Wakefield said.

“Does she have a car?”

“I guess so. Why?”

“What kind of car?”

“I don’t know.”

“Would it be a VW bus?”

“No.”

“You’ve seen the car?”

“Yes.”

“But you don’t know what year or make it is.”

“It’s some kind of station wagon.”

“Mr. Wakefield, did you ever see Natalie Fletcher wearing a jade pendant with an Egyptian-looking face carved onto it?”

“No. What’s this all about, anyway?”

“Just a routine investigation,” I said.

“At one o’clock in the morning?”

“Well, we like to clear things up,” I said. “Mr. Wakefield, would you happen to know whether Miss Fletcher’s parents live in this city?”

“I know very little about her. We say hello to each other in the hallway, that’s all.”

“Then you wouldn’t know any of her friends, either.”

“No.”

“Because, you see, if she isn’t here at one in the morning, maybe she’s spending the night someplace else.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Or does she normally keep late hours?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, thank you very much,” I said. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”

“I was watching television,” Wakefield said.

“Cut yourself?” I said.

“What?”

“Your cheek,” I said, and indicated the Band-Aid.

“Oh, that. Yes.”

“Well, goodnight,” I said.

“Goodnight,” he said, and closed and locked the door. I went downstairs to the lobby and checked the mailboxes again. The superintendent’s mailbox was the first in the row, marked simply Super. The apartment number engraved on the box was 1A, which I found on the ground floor, adjacent to the stairwell. The doorbell was similarly marked with a hand-lettered Super. I rang it and waited.

“Who is it?” a man asked from behind the door.

“Police,” I answered.

“Police?” The door opened a crack, held by a night chain. I could see part of a grizzled chin through the crack, one suspicious blue eye, a comer of a mouth. “Let me see your badge,” he said.

I held up my shield.

“Just a minute,” he said, and closed the door again. I waited. Somewhere in the building, a toilet flushed. A baby cried briefly, and then was silent. On the street outside, I heard the raucous shriek of an ambulance. At last the door opened.

The super was a man in his sixties, a gray beard stubble on his face, his blue eyes heavy with sleep. He had thrown on a faded-green bathrobe over his underwear. His naked legs showed below the bottom of the robe.

“What is it?” he asked. “A burglary?”

“No,” I said. “May I come in?”

“My wife’s sleeping,” he said.

“We’ll be quiet.”

“Well, okay,” he said, “but we better be very quiet.”

He stepped back to let me in, locked the door behind me, and then led me through the small foyer and into the kitchen. We sat at the kitchen table. From somewhere in the apartment, I heard someone snoring lightly.

“What’s the trouble?” he said. His voice was hushed, there was the sense in that kitchen of two men who had risen early for a fishing trip.

“I’m looking for Natalie Fletcher,” I said.

“Gone,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Moved out.”

“When?”

“Packed her stuff in the car Sunday night, drove off with it this morning.”

“Did she leave a forwarding address?”

“Nope. Said she’d contact me about the furniture. Would you like a beer?”

“No, thanks.”

“I think I’ll have a beer,” he said, and rose and padded to the refrigerator, and opened the door. “Shit,” he said, “we’re out of beer,” and came back to the table.

“What about the furniture?” I said.

“Told me to try and sell it to whoever rented the apartment. Packed only her personal belongings in the station wagon.”

“What kind of station wagon?”

“’71 Buick.”

“The color?”

“Blue.”

“Do you know the license number?”

“Nope.”

“What kind of personal belongings did she pack?”

“Just clothes and like that. Three suitcases and a trunk. I helped her carry them down. She gave me five bucks.”

“And this was Sunday night?”

“Yep.”

“She packed the wagon Sunday night, but didn’t actually get out of the apartment till this morning.”

“That’s right.”

“You saw her when she left this morning?”

“Yep. Brought me the key.”

“What time was that?”

“Nine o’clock.”

“Did she leave the car on the street that night?”

“I wouldn’t guess so, not packed with all that stuff in it. There’s two garages right nearby. She must’ve left it at one or the other of them.”

“How long had she been living here?”

“Moved in three months ago. In June, it was, the middle of June. What’s she done? What’s your name, anyway? Did you tell me your name?”

“Lieutenant Smoke. What’s yours?”

“Stan Durski. What’s she done?”

“What makes you think she’s done anything?”

“Police lieutenant comes here in the middle of the night, I got to think she done something, don’t I? Anyway, she’s a crackpot. I wouldn’t put nothing past her.”

“How is she a crackpot?”

“She’s crazy,” Durski said.

“In what way?”

“She thinks she’s Cleopatra. Do you believe in recarnation?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Me, neither. She does. You know what she thinks?”

“What does she think?”

“She thinks she’s a recarnation of Cleopatra, how do you like that? She thinks she was born in the year 69 B.C. She used to tell me her father wasn’t James Fletcher, he was Ptolemy the Eleventh — is that how you pronounce it? Ptolemy? And her brother Harry? The one died of a heart attack six months ago?”

“What about him?”

“He wasn’t her brother. That is, he wasn’t Harry Fletcher. You know who he was?”

“Who?”

“Ptolemy the Twelfth — is that how you pronounce it? Cleopatra married him when she was seventeen. He didn’t die of a heart attack, Natalie said.”

“How did he die?”

“He drowned in the Nile. You should see the way she dressed. I’ve got to tell you, she’s a prime nut. She used to wear these long gowns, she copied them from pictures of Cleopatra at the museum. Hair was pitch black, had it cut to just about here, just like Cleopatra. And sometimes she used to wear this cheap little crown on her head, and carry around a thing with a fake snake on it, that was supposed to be her scepter — is that how you pronounce it? Scepter? She had Cleopatra’s make-up down pat, too, the eyes, you know, and the mouth. I got to tell you, she almost had me convinced sometimes. Do you know what she used to call my wife? My wife whose name is Rose Ann?”

“What did she call her?”

“Charmian — is that how you pronounce it? That was supposed to be Cleopatra’s lady-in-waiting. I’m glad she’s out of here, I’ve got to tell you. Now, if I can just sell all that crap she left behind... I told her, you know. I told her if I can’t sell it to the new tenant, I’m just gonna throw it in the garbage. She used to call her living room ‘the royal chamber,’ you should see it. You never saw so much thrift-shop crap in your life. I was up there a couple of times, fixing something or other, there’s always something going wrong in these old buildings. She used to keep the lights off all the time, she’d burn these candles, you know, I could hardly see what I was doing. And incense. Jesus, she used to stink up the whole building! And she’d play records with this eerie string music on them, and sometimes she’d talk to herself in what sounded like a foreign language — Egyptian, I guess it was. I don’t know how to talk Egyptian, do you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Oh, she’s a crackpot, all right. It’s a shame, too. She comes from a nice family.”

“Are her parents still alive?”

“Both of them. I never met the father, though Natalie was always talking about him... Ptolemy the Eleventh, you know.” Durski said, and rolled his eyes heavenward, and sighed. “Him and the mother are divorced. She’s a nice lady, the mother. Stopped to talk to me whenever she came to visit and I was outside. We got along good, Violet and me. Violet, that’s her name. Violet Fletcher.”

“Where does she live?”

“Uptown someplace. On Fairmont, I think. I’m not sure.”

“Mr. Durski,” I said, “have you ever seen Natalie wearing a jade pendant with a—”

“Oh, sure, all the time. She told me it was a gift from her brother. Ptolemy. Said he hired the best sculptor in all Alexandria to carve her face on the jade. That’s a crackpot, am I right?”

“The man across the hall from her...”

“Wakefield?”

“Yes. He said he’d never noticed her wearing it.”

“Well, he keeps pretty much to himself. He probably didn’t notice it.”

“How long has he been living here?”

“Moved in about two months ago. What’s Natalie done, anyway?”

“Nothing that we know of. We’d like to talk to her, that’s all.”

“Stan!” a woman yelled from somewhere in the apartment. “Is there somebody here with you?”

“No, Rose Ann,” he yelled back. “I’m sitting here in the kitchen talking to myself.”

“Stan?”

“Of course there’s somebody here with me. There’s a policeman here with me.”

“Don’t be so smart, Stan,” she said.

“Mr. Durski... you mentioned that Natalie gave you her key when...”

“That’s right.”

“Do you still have it?”

“Yep.”

“I wonder if I could have a look at the apartment.”

“I don’t see why not,” he said. “You look like an honest man, and besides, there’s nothing but a bunch of crap in there. I had a fire once in 7C, when the people was away, and the firemen came in and carried off everything that wasn’t nailed down, they don’t call them The Forty Thieves for nothing. And also, I get a lot of cops coming around here looking for violations so they can threaten me with a fine and get a payoff instead. But you look honest, and anyway, I’m gonna throw that crap in the garbage if I can’t sell it to whoever rents the place. You want the key?”

“Would you like to come up with me?”

“Nope, I’d like to get back to sleep. Just drop the key in my mailbox when you’re through, okay?”

“Stan!” his wife yelled. “Have you got the television on?”