Neal Rafferty New Orleans Mystery #1: The Killing Circle (A Neal Rafferty New Orleans Mystery) (10 page)

Karen whisked in playing Miss Efficiency of the Year, with her blue-gray hair flipped out on one side and tucked under on the other, her glasses suspended around her neck on a black cord.

“Here are the receipts, all of them, shipped August 15, the same day as the auction, Roland.” Roland pointed the finger at me. She handed them over. “Is there a claim being made?” she asked me.

“No,” I said. “This is a routine inquiry.”

Roland's eyes closed in silent prayer. “That will be all, Karen,” he added to the amen.

I examined the evidence. All the receipts were there alright. The books had been insured for five thousand dollars through UPS. Fleming also had them insured for appraised value on his own policy, according to the typed information he had given me.

Engels’ hands slappped down on the desk. He pushed himself out of the chair on them and leaned forward.

“If,” he spat, “there is no claim being made, would you mind telling me what this is all about?”

I shook my head mournfully. “Gee, Engels, I'd like to, since you've been so cooperative and all, but discretion is of the utmost importance.”

He looked at me in disbelief. “You mean you're not going to tell me?”

“I'd like to, really,” I assured him, “but it wouldn't be—prudent.” I got up and put the receipts on his desk.

His hanging mouth snapped shut. “Then, if that's all . . .”

“Not quite. Who was Fleming with at the auction?”

He didn't answer.

“Was he with his wife?”

Still no answer.

“Was he with his son?”

“Well, now, maybe I shouldn't tell you. It might not be discreet.”

He started to straighten up smugly, but I grabbed one lapel. “One more time. Who was Fleming with?”

“His son,” he sputtered. I hoped he wouldn't cry in front of me.

“That's very good, Engels. Thanks very much.” I smoothed his coat. “You've certainly been most cooperative. I won't forget it.” I left him shaking his shoulders and brushing off his lapel.

I stuck my head into the auction room before I left. The auctioneer asked quietly who would start the bidding for a crusty closed chest at an outrageously high figure. A hand raised, a head nodded, a folded magazine lifted thirty degrees by the side of an aisle chair. The low voice said the price had gone up three thousand dollars.

14

Chase Manhattan Jones

The cabby who picked me up outside Barrow's wound over to Seventh Avenue in silence. The drive was relatively uneventful, the qualification being lane changes only at the slimmest opportunity and slamming of brakes at red lights that had turned red a block away. I was on the verge of figuring that I would make it to Broome Street in one piece when the cab pulled up to a red light at 42nd Street. The driver must have seen something that riled him because he started expounding on life in the jungle and the unsavory types inhabiting what he considered to be his backyard. I wouldn't go as far as to say that what he was commenting on didn't have a certain glimmer of truth, it's just that I wasn't listening—I was too busy keeping myself upright on the seat. He was talking at me through the protective shield that, as one guy told me a few years back, keeps the passenger from robbing the driver and the driver from molesting the passenger, craning his neck around so that I could hear him through the hole on the side. He swerved to avoid an opening car door, barely missing the cab in the next lane. He slipped into a hole between two fenders, passed the car ahead of us, moved back into the same lane, and slammed on his brakes to keep from plowing into the back of a truck that had abruptly stopped in front of us. At that point he interrupted his monologue long enough to curse at the truck driver and change lanes again, missing a parked car by inches. So that I wouldn't dwell on the tenuousness of existence, I tried to calculate how many extra miles a day the twelve thousand cabs in the city add to their meters by constantly changing lanes.

We were passing through Greenwich Village, rapidly approaching SoHo where Carter Fleming's Broome Street address was located. The building facades had begun to change. We made a turn and there were rows of iron-fronted ex-warehouses that had either been fixed up into loft apartments or still looked uninhabited.

I got out of the cab and looked up at the building. It was one of the ones that seemed to have barely made it through the last war. The only signs of life were some stricken plant specimens peeking out from the third floor windows. I clacked up the iron steps to the door. There were no bells and only one locked mailbox with no name on it. I banged on the iron door knowing that I wouldn't get an answer and I didn't. I stepped back and cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled Fleming's name. That didn't get me anywhere either. I sat down on the platform to wait. I waited for about twenty minutes, periodically getting up to waste lung power on Fleming's name, and finally I heard the inside bolt sliding. A paint-spattered girl opened the door. I told her I was looking for Carter Fleming and asked her if she knew where he lived in the building. She told me he lived on the fourth floor. I thanked her and started to climb.

After a few deep breaths at the top I rapped on the rickety wooden door. From the other side I heard what sounded like somebody blustering around moving furniture. I had to knock again before I was heard above the racket. The door opened.

“I don't know you.” The smell of beer and the voice came from behind a mass of dark hair that obscured what might have been an okay face if I could have seen it. He turned and pushed the door shut in one movement. I caught it but he didn't take notice of that. He kept going across the wide expanse of the loft to the refrigerator and took out another beer. I knew he didn't know me but I didn't know how he knew unless he was using a periscope.

I glanced around while he drained off half the beer. Wood debris and pieces of twisted metal were stacked in the back across from the kitchen area which consisted of the refrigerator, a stove, a sink and drainboard miraculously clinging to the wall, and a table with four chairs. The entire middle area of the loft was occupied by a mattress shoved up against the wall, with painted canvas hanging and leaning on the rest of the available space. While my apparently unwilling host stood in front of the opened refrigerator finishing his beer and opening yet another, I walked to the front where an easel was turned to the light trying to come in through the grimy windows. A small sofa and two chairs spilling their stuffing were arranged around a white plastic cube, creating a most unusual living area that Mrs. Fleming probably wouldn't want to know about. A ladder led up to a bed loft. A couple of bookcases crammed with books and papers stood around. A few lamps with hand painted shades completed the picture. I walked around the easel to view the canvas standing on it. Swirls of color were piled on into weird shapes with, I supposed, hidden meanings. I backed up to the window to see if I was missing something and was still trying to decide if it was very good or very bad when my host joined me. We appraised the canvas in silence for a few moments.

“Terrible, isn't it?” he asked more as a statement of fact. I shrugged and grunted noncommittally, my interest having been transferred to the tattoo, as amorphous as the painting, exposed by his shirt which was unbuttoned to the navel. “Well, go on,” he growled, “say it's terrible if you think it is.”

“Okay,” I said, “it's terrible.”

A laugh disturbed a few hairs. “Sold one almost just like it for a hundred bucks the other day. Wait a minute.” He went through a door under the bed loft. I heard water running. When he came back his shirt was buttoned and his hair was wet and combed back. The face was okay, but if he was Carter Fleming III he must have aged almost ten years since he arrived in New York.

He looked me over with surprise. “I don't know you, do I?”

“I thought we'd gone through that. The name's Neal Rafferty. I'm looking for Carter Fleming.”

“Friend of his?”

“By proxy.”

“Hm. Sounds like his old man's snooping again. Look, maybe we'd better have a chat. Why don't you sit down?”

That sounded okay to me so I moved over to the chair with the least amount of inner springs showing. Like Engels, he watched with concern as I sat down. I was beginning to wonder if I had a particularly catchy way of sitting down. Once I was in the cushion he smiled and gave a little snort of pleasure, like he'd really liked the way I'd done it.

“Shall I do it again?” I asked jumping up.

A few wrinkles of perplexity gathered on his forehead. “What?”

“Sit down.” I flashed it up a bit this time by crossing my right leg over my left knee after descending. This was a mistake. I was so busy being cute that I temporarily forgot that a spring could be hidden by some of the escaping stuffing and, of course, thudded down right on top of one, painfully. Maybe his concern had been sincere after all. I managed to get through the ordeal with some dignity and once I was situated more comfortably I smiled up at him.

A half-laugh displaced the perplexity and he asked, “How about a beer?” I raised my hand to decline. He scowled. “What's the matter, man, is it too early for you or do you need something more expensive?”

I got the drift. “A beer will be fine.”

He made the trip down to the refrigerator and came back popping open the can. When he hit the sofa he groaned loudly and arranged himself more carefully.

After a long gulp he sat forward and began to speak earnestly. “I'll tell you, man, this is a hard life. Frankly, I'm overdue for a change. You see, I can't paint worth a damn so I have to work at keeping up the image, which I can tell you is harder than hacking with the paints.” He shook his head and pointed with a finger. “This is not so for Carter and his girl. Because they're good. Real good. And they take it seriously which means it's a lot rougher for them. All I do is hack out a painting and take it up to Washington Square and play mad artist trying to make it to Tahiti or someplace. I put on a real show, swilling booze from a jug on the shoulder, getting drunk and proclaiming to the world that I'm too talented to cope with city life. The tourists eat it up and buy the junk. The locals know I'm full of shit but they bring their kids to watch. The kids think I'm better than a Punch and Judy show. People will believe anything you tell them if you're convincing enough. I try to impress that upon Carter and Lise but they're artists, not salesmen, and I guess the price they happen to be paying for the talent is poverty. It's okay, though. I manage to sell enough to keep us going. They'll make it if they stick with it ‘cause they're that good. You tell his old man that and you tell him Chase Manhattan Jones said so. If that isn't good enough tell him to check my Dun and Bradstreet rating. It's still good—God knows how. Maybe that will impress him.” He sat back looking depressed.

“You've got it wrong. Fleming didn't send me here to check up on his son. In fact, nobody sent me. I want to talk to Carter. Where is he?”

“No dice,” he said. “Look, uh, what did you say your name was? Neal? Look, Neal, I like all the cards laid out. I'm not going to tell you where Carter is until you tell me who you are and why you're here. Give.”

“I'm a private investigator from New Orleans. I want to talk to Carter before the police get interested in him. It might save him some trouble.”

“Balls. It might get him some. Who sent you?”

“I just told you—nobody sent me.”

“Balls again. Somebody sent you.”

“Okay, okay. So United Artists sent me. They're interested in getting Carter to play a part in the new Paul Gauguin movie. Maybe you'd like the lead.”

He laughed and rubbed his hands together “Oh, this is choice. A private detective who cracks wise. You fit the bill alright. You're even good looking in a rakish sort of way. Choice, really choice.” He stopped to do some more chortling. “Say, there, looks to me like you need some more hooch.”

“Looks to me like you need it more than I do. It isn't necessary for my image,” I said pointedly.

“No need to get hurt, now,” he said as he shuffled back to the refrigerator.

“Did the old man hire you?” he asked handing me a beer.

“Yeah. But don't get the wrong impression. He thinks I'm in New Orleans. Is Carter with Lise André?”

“I need more before I start talking,” he said sitting on the same spring. “Damn this life of poverty,” he muttered. “Is the old man going to put the police on them?”

I shook my head. “He's mad as hell at the kid but I don't think he's that mad. And I take it Lise is here pretty much with Mr. André's blessing.”

“Check. That's what you guys say, isn't it?”

I gestured impatiently. “You've got all the words down pat. Now all you need is a case.”

“Looks like I got one—figuring you out. Let's start with why the old man hired you.”

“What's with you, anyway? You in the protection racket or something?”

“Hey, this is my case. I ask the questions.”

“Will an explanation get me the dope on where they are or will I just be shooting the breeze?”

“You get the dope if the explanation's good enough and if you mean what you say about saving them trouble.”

I bolstered up with some beer. “Fleming hired me to find a missing set of books he bought at an auction. Somehow the kid figures into it. Maybe Lise, too. I won't know until I talk to them exactly how the whole thing stacks up. How I know all this I keep quiet, but if the police find out the same thing I did, they'll be after young Fleming pronto because a man has been murdered in New Orleans and the books being on the scene at the same time make the coincidence hard to swallow.” I held up a hand to silence his protests. “None of this means Carter the Third or Lise had anything to do with the murder. If they didn't then chances are they won't even know it happened. But better me than the cops to find out first. That way maybe I can lend some protection, since Fleming is my client. Is that convincing enough?”

“Some stuff, alright.” He stared at the floor for a minute then his head jerked up. “You better tell me how you know they're involved.”