Where There's Smoke

Twenty-Seven

If I had figured this correctly (and I was modestly certain I had), there was one thing Natalie and Arthur still had to do before leaving town forever. I knew what they had to do, and I knew where they planned to do it—but I didn’t know exactly where. That’s why I went back to the apart­ment.

I had put Henry on Natalie’s tail at one-thirty this af­ternoon, and it was now close to ten-thirty and I’d heard nothing from him. The possibility existed, of course, that he had phoned the apartment sometime after Lisette left. The possibility also existed that he’d picked up Natalie’s trail after her two o’clock appointment with Susanna Martin, and hadn’t called for fear of losing her. There were other possibilities as well, and I considered these for a moment, never allowing hope to infringe upon reality— I knew the case was closed, I knew Arthur and Natalie were as good as in the bag. But suppose, ah, suppose?

Suppose Natalie hadn’t kept her two o’clock date with Susanna? Or suppose Henry had picked up her trail as she left the building on Ninety-sixth, and then lost her later? Or suppose, even, that Natalie and Arthur did not plan to go where I expected them to go at midnight? Would this mean that they could ride over the horizon with obliter­ated pasts (his past, at least), free of Helene Wylie, free of police pursuit, free of anything but their own unlikely consciences?

Not a chance.

I knew who they planned to become, you see. Which was why I was relatively certain they’d be at the midnight mass Natalie had noted on her calendar. The mass was to be held in their honor. The mass was to be a sanctification of sorts. Not legally binding, but Natalie had proba­bly insisted on it, and if a man is willing to commit murder in order to escape his past, he’s willing to go along with anything.

They’d had it.

Either tonight, or three weeks from tonight, or three months or three years, somebody would knock on their door wherever they were, and politely introduce himself as a cop, and just as politely inform them that they were being charged with the murder of one Peter Greer, not to mention the minor charge of having swiped John Hiller’s corpse and set fire to it later. They would protest. I’m not Arthur Wylie, the man would say, you’ve made a dread­ful mistake. Here, let me show you all sorts of identifica­tion, let me prove to you…

No, Arthur, it wouldn’t wash.

Not tonight or any night in the future.

Just come along quietly, there’s no death penalty for murder in this state.

Morosely, I sat in the kitchen and waited for the phone to ring. The apartment was unusually still; even the bird was silent. It occurred to me that I hadn’t spoken to Maria all day, but I didn’t dare phone her now and tie up the line.

“Are you hungry?” I asked the bird.

The bird said nothing.

“Edgar Allan?” I said. “Are you hungry?”

The bird peeped. He did not squawk, he did not yam­mer, he did not caw. He peeped. I went to the cabinet, took out a can of tuna fish, opened it, and spooned the contents into the cage. He was not a bad-looking bird. His black feathers were sleek and shiny, his eyes were intel­ligent and alert, and he certainly had a hearty appetite.

“That’s a good bird,” I said.

I did not know very much about birds, good or other­wise, but I seemed to recall (from the Hitchcock film I’d despised) that there was a difference between crows and blackbirds, and whereas Maria had offhandedly named this bird Edgar Allan Crow, wouldn’t he take offense at such hasty baptism if he were not a crow but instead a black...

I suddenly remembered something.

“Excuse me,” I said to the bird, and left him eating in his cage, and went through the apartment to my bedroom. I didn’t bother looking through any of my dresser draw­ers. The only articles of clothing in the top drawer were handkerchiefs, underwear, and socks. My sweaters, in the middle drawer, were pullovers and cardigans, but they were in varying shades of blue (my favorite color) and wouldn’t do. My shirts, in the bottom drawer, were white, blue, beige, and pink (just one, a gift from Maria). I opened my closet door. I owned a black sports jacket, but it had cost three hundred and fifty dollars to have it hand-tailored, and I certainly wasn’t about to cut it apart, not for this miserable case. There was also a black raincoat hanging on the wooden clothes rod. I had bought it when I was in the Navy. The last time I’d worn it was in 1942, when I had “Peg” tattooed forever on my arm. I left the raincoat where it was, walked through the apartment again, and opened the door of the hall closet. “Raincoat” had triggered “rain,” and “rain” had triggered “um­brella.” Whereas my mother had always warned me never to open an umbrella in the house, I opened it now. It was black, all right, but was it big enough? I carried it into the kitchen, took a pair of scissors from the drawer near the sink, and got to work.

Occasionally, I glanced up at the clock. The phone re­fused to ring. It was eleven before I finished cutting the black silk. I carried the pieces into my study, placed them on the desk, and then went into the spare room Lisette used for ironing and for watching television, not neces­sarily in that order. From her sewing basket I took a nee­dle, a spool of black thread, and a thimble. The last sewing I’d done was aboard the U.S.S. Sykes in the year 1946, just before I was sent home from the Pacific. This hardly qualified me as a tailor, though; I had fastened a button to a pea jacket and darned three pairs of socks. I sat down at the desk now, threaded the needle, slipped the thimble over my finger, and began hoping the phone would not ring till I was finished.

It rang at twenty minutes to midnight.

I snatched the receiver from the cradle.

“Hello?” I said.

“Ben, this is Henry.”

“I’ve been waiting.”

“I’m outside an abandoned church on Haley and Somers,” he said. “The Fletcher girl is in there with a baldheaded guy. There’s something going on.”

“Give me ten minutes,” I said.

“The truck’s parked across the street, near a boarded-up Chinese laundry. If I’m gone by the time you get here, it means they took off, and I’ll call you later.”

“Right,” I said, and hung up.

I took my holstered .38 Detective’s Special from the bottom drawer of the desk and clipped it to my belt. I did not know what to expect at the church on Haley and Somers, and whereas a rolling stone may gather no moss, a stitch in time most certainly saves nine. Gathering up my own stitchery, I stuffed the products of my handiwork into the pockets of my topcoat, and then left the apart­ment.

It was raining outside, and I’d just cut up my only damn umbrella!