Day of Wrath (10 page)

"
Who said I was scared?" she said with a phoney laugh.

"I'm not scared. I just don't want to talk to yon. O.K.?"

I shook my head and the smile came right off her face.

"Look," she said. "Just get out of my life, O.K.?"

Not until you tell me what's frightening you."

"Nothing's frightening me!" she shouted and pounded so
hard on the arms of the chair that a bit of Coke spouted out of the bottle.
"Just quit saying that, O.K.."

"Is it what happened to Bobby?" I said. "Is that what's
bothering you? Did it have something to do with Robbie Segal?"

She bit her lip and looked longingly at the front door.

"Momma's not here right now, Sylvia," I said. "It's just
you and me."

She whirled in the chair. "I don't want to talk about
what happened to Bobby. Understand? I don't. O.K.?"

She bit her lip again. "I don't know anything about it.
So why don't you leave me alone."

"All right, Sylvia."

She made a small, satisfied face, as if she weren't quite
sure she'd won out.

I got up from the couch and started for the door. She
followed me with her eyes—the look of triumph growing bolder, less contained.

"I can't make any promises about the police, though,"
I said over my shoulder. "You'll have to talk to them."

"I don't believe you," she said cunningly.

"Be1ieve what you want. But I'm telling you, I'm going
to have to go to the police."

"Why?" she said sweetly. "Why do you have to do that?
I told you I didn't know anything. Why do you have to go to the police?"

"Because I think you're lying," I said, staring at her,
coldly.

For a second I thought she was going to throw the Coke
bottle at me. Sylvia Rostow was a little girl so used to getting her own
way that she thought she was invincible. And like most men and women who
slide through life on charm alone, she was fully capable of murdering anyone
who threatened her powers. "I hate you!" she said furiously. "You're a
real bastard."

"
All right, I'm a bastard. But if you don't want the police
to come calling, you'll answer my questions."

She Hung herself back in the chair and stared daggers
at me. "I'm not going to talk about Robbie," she said through her teeth.
"I don't know anything about Bobbie."

"What about the Caldwell kid, then? Do you have any idea
who might have done that to him?"

"I don't know," she said. "He hung around with some people
at school . . . "

"What people?"

"I don't know," she said and tossed her head dramatically.
"Greasers. Why don't you talk to them?"

"
What are their names?"

"I don't know."

"
C'mon, Sylvia," I said. "Give me a name."

"Hank Lemon," she spat out. There. Satisfied?"

I wrote the name down in my notebook. "Where does he live?"

"
On the other side of Eastlawn," Ashe said. "Near Bobby."

She'd lost interest in the talk. I could see it in her
face. Which probably meant that giving me Hank Lemon's name hadn't really
cost her anything she wasn't fully prepared to give up. Whether there was
more therewhether she actually suspected some connection between Bobby's
death and Robbie's disappearance, or whether she was just putting on a
show—I couldn't tell.

She liked being the center of attention. I knew that much.
On the other hand, her fear of the police seemed genuine. But then most
teenagers were afraid of the police. And most teenagers didn't like to
snitch on their friends, either.

She tilted the Coke to her lips and drained it noisily.

"
I don't want to talk any more,"
she said, tossing the empty bottle on the rug. "Go on and tell the cops
about me if you want to. My dad won't let anything happen to me." She got
up and walked across the room to the staircase. "Go on and tell them,"
she said over her shoulder. "See if I care."

I found an Anthony Lemon on Eastlawn in Madge Rostow's
phone book. The address was just a couple of houses down from Pastor C.
Ca1dwell's apartment. It would have been a short walk from the Rostow home.
Only I didn't feel like walking it. Not after the previous ' night. So
I stepped out to the street, got in the Pinto, and drove down the block—coasting
by the big yellow apartment houses and their treeless yards—until I got
to a small, red-brick four-family, with white siding on the upper story
and a tiny cement stoop. There were two holly bushes planted on either
side of the stoop and a pair of Pennsylvania Dutch planter boxes hanging
from each of the lower—story windows. The only things growing in the
muddy dirt of the planters were cigarette butts—a neat row of them, stubbed
and half—buried in the soil.

I opened the storm door and stepped into a small tiled
hall. There were two apartment doors on either side of the landing and
a staircase opposite the door, leading up to the second story apartments.
Another stairway led to the basement. Someone was working on his car downstairs.
I could hear an engine racing and the clatter of tools in a tool box.

I found Anthony Lemon's name on the mailbox—Apartment
Two—and knocked on the right-hand door. A small, fat man in a white T-shirt
and chino work pants answered my knock. The shirt was too small for him.
It rode up his big, pendulous belly, leaving a pale layer of naked flesh
hanging beneath it. The rest of Anthony Lemon was just as pale and fleshy
as his beer gut. Fat, sweaty face, ringed at the neck with double chins.
Curly black hair that looked wet to the touch. And a fat man's innocent
blue eyes and bee-stung lips.

"Yeah?" he said grulliy. "What can I do for you?"

His breath smelled of beer. The apartment behind him of
garlic and onions.

"I'm looking for Hank Lemon," I said.

"Downstairs," the man said and shut the door.

I turned to the stairway and the door opened again. The
fat man rested one arm on the jamb and eyed me suspiciously.

"Who are you?" he said.

"My name is Stoner. I'm a private detective." I got my
I.D. out of my wallet and showed it to him. "Are you Hank's father?"

"Yeah," he said slowly. "What of it?"

"I just want to ask the boy a few questions, Mr. Lemon.
He isn't in any trouble."

"This have something to do with that Caldwell kid getting
bumped off?"

I nodded.

"
That was something, wasn't it?" the fat man said with
vague enthusiasm. "Boy, that was something."

"Did you know Bobby Caldwell?" I asked him.

"Sure, I knew Bob. He was an O.K. kid. You can take it
from me. Good head on his shoulders. Good with his hands, too. He would
have made a damn fine mechanic. He and Hank . . . they worked on cars together."
His face darkened suddenly. "You don't think my boy had something to do
with the murder, do you?"

He didn't give me a chance to answer him. "You better
not come around here making any trouble. I got a boy in the Marine Corps
twice your size. You come around here making trouble for Hank—you're
going to be plenty sorry."

"
No trouble, Mr. Lemon," I said. "Just a few questions."

He eyed me again and jerked his head toward the basement
door. "Downstairs, like I said."

I could feel him watching me all the way down to the first
landing. "I'm keeping an eye on you," I heard him call out.

The basement walls were unpainted cement block, the floor
unpainted concrete. I followed a row of light bulbs to the doors that led
to the twin garages. A tall, skinny boy in workshirt and jeans was standing
in one of the garages, working on a Plymouth. He had the motor running
and the outside door open to vent exhaust. He didn't see me at first—he
was so engrossed in what he was doing. I had to walk up and tap him on
the arm to get his attention.

He jerked his head up from under the Plymouth's hood and
stared at me. He said over the roar of the engine. "You scared me."

He was a tall, swarthy sixteen year old, with dark brown
eyes, very white teeth, and a steep straight nose that made him look vaguely
like an Indian. The only feature he'd clearly inherited from his father
was his black, curly hair. He reached inside the car and shut off the engine,
then looked back at me.

"I said you scared me," he said again. His voice was high
pitched and boyish.

"Sorry," I said. "Are you Hank Lemon?"

He nodded.

"My name's Stoner. I'm a private detective."

He blinked once and grinned. "You're kidding?" he said.
"An honest-to-God private detective?"

I showed him my I.D.

"Far out!" he said. "Well, what can I do for you, Mr.
Stoner?"

"Sylvia Rostow gave me your name. She said you were a
friend of Bobby Caldwell's."

Hank Lemon's big grin died so quickly and completely it
was as if he'd never learned how to smile. "I don't really want to talk
about that," he said somberly.

I searched his face, looking for a trace of the fear I'd
seen in Sylvia Rostow's eyes. If it was there, I couldn't find it. Hank
Lemon didn't look frightened—just sad and, I thought, a bit angry. The
way anyone would look who'd lost a friend to senseless violence.

"I'd really appreciate it if you would talk about it,
Hank," I said. "A girl's life could depend on it. A girl whom Bobby cared
a great deal for."

"You mean Robbie, don't you?" he said.

"That's exactly who I mean."

The boy reached down and pulled a red rag from a tool
chest sitting on the garage floor. He stared at me as he wiped off his
hands. "You're working for her mother, aren't you?"

I told him yes.

"It's no wonder she's the way she is," he said after a
moment. He threw the rag back into the box and kicked it shut. "What with
her mother always bitching at her."

"What way is that?" I said.

He shrugged and looked a bit embarrassed. "A little spacey,
I guess. Bob was taking care of her, though. I think she would have been
all right, if this . ." He sighed heavily.

"How was he taking care of her?" I asked him.

"He loved her man," Hank Lemon said. "He looked after
her. Man, he loved that chick."

"
Do you think he would have helped her run away from home?"

"He would have helped her do anything," the boy said.

"She's been missing for five days, Hank," I told him.

"
I didn't know that. I hadn't talked to Bob since last
Friday."

"Did he say anything on Friday—anything that might explain
what happened to Robbie or what happened to him?"

Hank Lemon shook his head. "He talked about cars and he
talked about his music. That's all he ever talked about, except for Robbie.
He said he'd written a couple of new songs. And he was hoping to get a
gig this week-end to make enough money to finish up work on the Buick."

"Where did he play?" I said.

"He had some friends on the Hill. I never met them. They'd
play at small clubs, wedding receptions. That sort of thing."

I reached into my coat and took out the picture of Robbie
and her two older friends. "Do you recognize the man or the woman?"

"
No," he said.

"Could they be some of Bobby's musician friends?"

"I suppose. I told you I never met any of them. I'm just
not into making music like Bob was. I don't hang around with that crowd.
Some of them are just too spacey for I me."

"How is that?"

He didn't want to spell it out. At least, he didn't want
to spell it out to me—probably because I was the law.

"Just spacey, man."

"
You mean drugs, don't you?"

He stiffened up and said, "I didn't say that! You did.
I don't know what all they were into, and I didn't want to know. That was
their business, you know?"

"Do you have any idea why Bobby was murdered?"

He shook his head. "He was a good guy, mister. Easy going.
Real laid back. All he wanted to do was play his music and work on his
cars and love Robbie." Hank Lemon's swarthy face filled with grief. "I
guess that was asking too much, huh?"

"I guess it` was," I said heavily.
 

I SPENT THE REST OF THURSDAY AFTERNOON DRIVING through
the green, hilly streets of Roselawn. The Lemon boy had given me the names
and addresses of several other teenage boys—Bobby Caldwell's friends.
One by one, I found them. In yellowstone apartments and red brick colonials,
in ranch houses and stucco bungalows. Each of them told me the same things
about Bobby—that he'd been a gentle, likeable, unambitious kid, with
a passion for stock cars and music and Bobbie Segal. His Robbie. That was
the way they thought of her—as Bobby Caldwell's girl. He was taking care
of her, they all said. He'd do anything for her. Anything.