Speak for the Dead (19 page)

“Again: why?”

“He may have been screwing Tommie Lee. It might tell me something about her.”

“I’m sure he was—or at least tried to.” Another deep pull on the cigarette. “Do you think it might tell you whether or not she was a whore? She was a model, so she might as well be a whore, is that it?”

“No. But it might tell me who killed her.”

“Do you mean Phil?”

“I don’t mean anybody right now. I’m just trying to learn what I can about Rebecca Crowell and everybody she knew.”

“Crowell—that was her real name, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Mmm.” Another drag and she stubbed out the long butt. “All right. I’ll be a good citizen—Phil Bennett is a son of a bitch. If that’s what Les wanted you to hear, he sent you to the right person.”

“Why should Les want that?”

“Because he was losing business—and other things—to Phil.”

“A lot?”

“From what Phil told me, he was taking away about half of Les’s customers.”

“When was this?”

“A year ago. A year last week.”

“That’s when you went to Bennett? Were you with Tanaka before that?”

“Yes.”

He wasn’t quite sure how to get to the next point, and Miss Eaton offered no help; she sat on the couch with one leg folded beneath her and waited with the kind of blank expression that, Wager thought, gynecologists must recognize. “Did Bennett help you with your work?”

“Yes. I’ll have to say he did. He is a good photographer.”

“What makes him so good?”

She gazed across the compact living room with the serving counter between it and the kitchen, the sloping ceiling of the stairway, the tiny electric fireplace set down in what Wager thought was called a “conversation pit” but which looked more like a shallow foxhole. “I guess it was the way he could bring things out of you. Most of the time, you’re over here, the camera’s over there, and it’s a real struggle to force yourself into that lens. With Phil, you know the camera’s there … but he makes it welcome you. I guess that’s not too clear. I’m sorry.”

“What’s he do that’s different from, say, Tanaka?”

“Les’s sessions are more … poised, cool. He makes you feel like one of those very still Chinese statues, and then he does a lot with the lights. Phil is just the opposite. He moves, he talks, he sings to you. You just feel … high. You feel like you’re unfolding, opening up.” The intensity faded from her voice. “It’s a little like falling in love,” she said flatly.

“Is that how it happened?”

“It?” Her lips twisted and she reached for another cigarette. “Yes, Detective Wager, ‘it’ happened that way.”

“What went wrong?” He held the lighter for her.

“I unfolded. He pretended to. I suppose you could say he was like his own little camera—take, take, take. Except that when he was through, he laughed.”

“Laughed?”

“It was as if all along he had been playing a trick—trying to see how much he could make a woman—me—care for him. How many things she would do for him.” Her mouth smiled prettily. “Would you like to hear the particulars?”

“No.”

She looked away again. “Anyway, he has his methods of degrading a woman. Emotionally, I mean. It’s as if he wants to see how far he can stretch those emotions before they break, as if he wants to make you know he can do anything with you. And he never stopped twisting and pulling.”

“Has he done this to a lot of people?”

“As far as I’m concerned, one too many.” Again the long butt was snuffed out. “If he did it to this Tommie Lee, I feel sorry for her.”

“Did Les Tanaka have anything going with Tommie Lee before she went to Bennett?”

“I don’t think so. If he did, it couldn’t have been much.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “He still likes me. Good old Les.”

Wager closed his notebook and stood. “Thanks for your help, Miss Eaton. I’m sorry I had to ask some of those questions.”

Her voice was only half-mocking: “An old-fashioned gentleman!”

“My Hispano heritage,” he said, and paused at the door. “Did Bennett’s portfolio work help you get better jobs?”

“Not exactly. But I manage to make ends meet.” She leaned against the half-closed door. “I still do some modeling, Detective Wager.” And that was all she would say.

T
HIS TIME IT
was the snap of the clock radio’s timer that woke him. The green figures said 10:00—he had slept for ten hours, and to judge from the stiffness in his neck, most of that time had been without moving. And he was hungry. Turning on the television to let the scratchy voices of Friday night’s John Wayne movie echo off the room’s walls, he set a chicken breast under the oven grill and began boiling rice. Half a red onion for a little
fuerza
, a bit of garlic
para la corazón
, and a dish of those round peppers that look so cool and green but explode like cannon balls between the teeth. It was a bigger meal than he had eaten in days, and more sleep, too; so that when he called in to the division headquarters, he sounded almost happy.

“Great God—it’s the Man of the Hour. Superdick himself.” Ross’s voice was loud over the background noise of a country-and-Western station.

“The one and only.”

“Did you write that story yourself?”

“What story?”

“What story! The one in the
Post
tonight. By your good friend Gargan.”

Wager didn’t feel quite as happy. “I haven’t seen it.”

“I reckon your press agent has a few copies.”

“Is there anything for me on the board?”

“Well, let’s see… . There’s a movie contract, and the F.B.I. telegraphed to say they need some help with a tough case… .”

“Is there a report on an interview, Ross?”

“Underneath all these TV offers, yeah.”

“Would you be kind enough to read it, please?” The Spanish inflection was back.

“How can I say no to such a renowned officer of the law, Detective Wager?” In the pause, he heard the crackle of a sheet of paper. “To: Denver’s Most Famous Detective; From: Detective Hall, Peon Third Class; Subject: Interview with one George Brock, 1308 Garfield, Apartment 1.” Ross waited for Wager’s squawk.

He kept his mouth shut.

Ross continued, “Said Detective Hall interviewed said witness at his home at said address at 2:45
P.M.,
29 October 1976. Said Witness stated that yes, Mr. Nick Mauro had been at home on Tuesday, 19 October. Witness remembers because he and Mr. Mauro did some work on the yard that morning. Mulching roses. Witness thinks Mr. Mauro ate lunch at home, but is not certain because he took his wife shopping just before noon, and when he came back, he did not see Mr. Mauro. The next time the witness saw Mr. Mauro that day was around four in the afternoon when Mr. Mauro came home from somewhere.”

“Does he say whether Mauro owns a car?”

“No. And he doesn’t say whether Mauro came home walking or driving. My, my—I’d better have a word with young Detective Hall; that kind of work is not up to your high demands.”

“That’s the whole report?”

“Filed sixteen-forty-five hours, Friday, 29 October.”

“Thanks.”

“Any time, Officer Wager. The detective bureau is eager to assist you in any way we can.” Ross sounded happy that Wager sounded mad.

He had planned one stop on the way to work, but now added another: the local supermarket newsstand. Under a four-column picture of Rebecca Crowell bending backward in a drapery-like evening dress, the story was headlined “
SOUGHT FAME, FOUND DEATH
.” It began, “She had just turned 23 and came to the City with one overriding ambition: to be a model.” Gargan’s article ran on from there, quoting Mr. Crowell’s puzzlement during a telephone interview that anyone would want to kill his daughter, and describing this reporter’s shock to discover that no one had told the bereaved parents about the mutilation of their daughter’s body. A smaller photograph showed the rounded shape of the conservatory; next to it was a shot of an abandoned car. The part of Gargan’s feature story that pissed Ross off—and that would bring the bulldog down on Wager’s neck again—came in the second long column of print: “Detective Gabriel Wager, who brings to the Homicide Division an outstanding reputation won in the Organized Crime Division of the District Attorney’s office… .” Gargan kept referring to him as the “renowned” or the “widely acclaimed” or the “greatly respected” police officer in charge of the investigation who had “promised an early solution to the crime.” Readers were also told that this reporter was fortunate enough to lend some assistance in locating Miss Crowell’s former employers, the New Faces Modeling Agency. “Ms. Jeri Roberts, owner and manager of the agency, expressed shock and telephoned the girl’s parents to express her sympathy.” An earlier employer, Mr. William Pitkin of the Rocky Mountain Tax & Title Service, also expressed shock and said he remembered Miss Crowell as an attractive and hardworking employee who could have been whatever she wanted to be.

Folding the paper neatly into a compact pad, he slid it into a trash bin and headed for Elton’s Place. Right now he had more to worry about than what the bulldog might make of Gargan’s story.

The tavern was located eight blocks from Mauro’s rooms in the middle of a series of single-story shops—cleaners, drugstore, shoe shop, hobby crafts. Its front window was painted blue with a hole left for a neon Budweiser sign. The door opened onto one end of the bar along which a Friday-night crowd of six customers sat staring at the television set over the far end. In the picture, a uniformed cop was busily thumping his riot stick on a black man’s skull; Wager waited until an ad for men’s cologne danced on, then caught the eye of the woman behind the bar.

“Hi—didn’t see you come in.” She smiled professionally.

That was because she sat beneath the television set like a cat watching a goldfish bowl. “Do you know Dominick Mauro?”

“Nick? Sure—he’s right over there.” The flabby arm pointed to a figure dim in the glow of a cigarette machine and settled comfortably at one of the few tables.

“Can you tell me if he was in here on the nineteenth? That’s two Tuesdays ago.”

The woman peered at Wager; her frizzy hair was bleached yellow like thick smoke and jiggled when she jerked her head. “Maybe you better ask Nick himself.”

Wager showed his badge. “I’m asking you.”

“Oh. Listen, this here’s a family place, you know? We got our neighbors come in here. There ain’t been no kind of trouble and we don’t want none.”

Wager smiled. “Then answer the question.”

“You’ll have to ask George. He’s my husband. He worked all that week.”

“All right. Where’s George?”

“Goose-hunting. He left yesterday and won’t be back until Sunday night.”

“Where’d he go?”

“Nebraska. Up near Scotts Bluff. We got relatives got a ranch near there.”

Two or three faces had turned down the bar to see what was keeping the woman from filling beer glasses.

“How about a draw,” said Wager.

She pulled it and almost dropped the wet glass as she set it on the bar. “That’s fifty cents.”

Wager had the coin ready. “Thanks.”

She turned back to the television picture where now the black man wore bandages and shouted angrily at a white police chief. Wager went to Mauro’s table and sat without a word.

The thick-bodied man squinted at him. “What the hell you doing here?”

“Asking about your activities on Tuesday, October 19th.”

“The hell you are!”

“You spent part of the morning helping your landlord fix his roses. Around noon you left. You came back home about four. Where’d you go?”

Mauro’s mouth hung slightly open. “I’ll be goddamned. You really have been poking your goddamned nose into my life, ain’t you?”

“Where’d you go that day?”

“Maybe I don’t want to tell you!”

“That’s your privilege.” Wager smiled for the second time in five minutes; he was beginning to feel like Mr. Sunshine. “If you’re sure you want it that way.”

Caution came into Mauro’s voice. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean if I don’t find out from you, I start asking all your friends. I tell everybody you know that I’m a cop and that I’m interested in your whereabouts on the day that a murder was committed.”

“Murder? You think I had something—? I didn’t even know that cunt!”

Most people would have said they’d never seen her or never met her. “Your friends will believe that, won’t they?” He aimed a thumb at the bar.

Mauro glanced at the woman bartender. When she saw his eyes, her face jerked back to the television set. “You sons of bitches ain’t changed in twenty years,” he said.

“But you have. You’ve paid your debt to society; now you’re an honest citizen. What’s an honest citizen like you got to hide?”

“You ain’t getting me on no murder!”

“Somebody put that head in the conservatory, Mauro. Somebody with a key.”

Even in the dim light, Wager saw the worry gather in wrinkles around the man’s eyes. “It wasn’t me, goddamn you! There’s lots of keys to that place!”

“No. There’s not. There’s six. I know the whereabouts of five. You are number six.”

Mauro licked at his lower lip and then drained the beer glass. “I … I went—let’s see, I went to the grocery store. And then took the groceries home. And then—Christ, I can’t remember! That was almost two weeks ago. What the fuck were you doing two weeks ago?”

“Where’d you go after the grocery store?”

“Let’s see… . Cheesman Park! I drove over to the park and walked around a while—fed the ducks.”

“Did you meet anybody?”

Mauro looked up. “You mean did I meet somebody who’d remember I was there?”

“Yes.”

“I bought some peanuts from that guy with the push wagon—you know the one. He might remember. Maybe.”

“Then where’d you go?”

“I drove back home. Then I came over here for a beer.”

“What time was that?”

“I don’t know! Mid-afternoon. Ask George—we talked about goose-hunting. He was going goose-hunting and we talked about that.”

“What time did you leave here?”

“I guess four. Maybe five.”

“What’d you do that night?”

“I don’t know… . I watched TV, I guess. I can’t remember if I came back here or not.”