Trace (Trace 1) (20 page)

“They weren’t the marks of a human being; they were made by a giant wolf,” Trace said.

Chico grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her head like a kerchief. In a thick Russian accent, she said, “Even a man who is pure of heart and says his prayers by night can become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.”

“Higher and higher with Maria Ouspenskaya,” Trace said. “Or was it Bela Lugosi?”

“Would you do the polka with Oscar Homolka?” Chico said.

“Don’t get started on your old-movie routines. You’re wandering.”

“All right. Give me those teeth back. You get your sweaty hands all over it and you’ll melt it or something and it won’t match anybody.”

“How’d you get a dentist to make a mold for you like that? Usually, you couldn’t get a dentist to hurry if your jaw fell off.”

“You really want to know?” Chico asked.

“Probably not. Not if it involves your having a cavity filled.”

For a split second, Chico looked pained, but she smiled. “I talked him into it,” she said.

Trace tossed the mold back to her and she caught it and replaced it in the bag.

She brought out a box. “The
pièce de résistance
,” she said.

She opened the box and took out a rubber suction cup with a long wire hanging from it.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a loudspeaker,” Chico said. “You can find it in some specialty sound shops. You plug that wire into your radio or your tape recorder and attach the cup to a wall and it gives a vibrating sound that seems to come from all over.”

“Or to a window,” Trace said.

“Exactly. That’s where the sound came from last night. It explains that circle on the window. It’s where the speaker was attached.”

“With this five-dollar kit, you too can be a spiritualist medium. Run your own séances. Mystify your friends. Scare the crap out of old people,” Trace said.

“Yeah, but it’s not five dollars either. All this cost me a small fortune.”

“Write it down for me and boost the prices. Then we’ll tell Groucho we lost the receipts,” Trace said.

“I’ll settle for breaking even.”

“You do what I say. Marks has been cutting my expenses again. I start giving him honest bills and I lose money, ’cause he cuts everything in half. We’ve got to triple everything just to stay even with that man. I swear he’s the most mistrustful man I ever met.”

“Maybe if your name wasn’t on it, he’d just pay me back the money I laid out,” she said hopefully.

“Don’t count on it. I know Groucho,” Trace said. “Anything else in that bag?”

“No. But I’ve got more coming. I lucked up and got hold of this newspaper reporter in Muffy’s hometown.”

“Wait a minute. How’d you find out her hometown?”

“A snap. I called the college and told the registrar I was thinking of hiring her for a job and they verified that she had a degree from them. And I told them I spilled coffee on her application, what was the name of her high school, and they gave it to me.”

“I never fail to be overwhelmed by the devious Oriental mind.”

“You think my people were shoguns because they were good with those swords? Of course we’re devious. Anyway, it’s a little town in upstate New York, near Ithaca, and I found out the name of the newspaper in that town.” She hesitated. “You want to know how I found out the name of the newspaper?”

“Yes. I want to know every trick you use.”

“I called Information. And I found this small daily newspaper and talked to a reporter and I charmed him a little bit. Well, like most newspapers, they keep the high-school yearbooks around.”

“I didn’t know that,” Trace said.

“Sure. Young kids are always wrapping their cars around trees and things or getting lost in boating accidents, and if the newspaper’s got a yearbook, then they’ve always got pictures of the victims without pestering the family.”

“Live and learn.”

“So as luck would have it, this reporter is coming down to New York City today. And he promised to drop off the yearbook for me.”

“You must really have charmed him,” Trace said sourly.

“I think the hundred dollars I promised him charmed him more,” Chico said. “Isn’t that terrific?”

“What do we need a yearbook for?”

Chico shrugged. “Maybe nothing. But maybe it’ll tell you something you ought to know about Muffy.”

“I hope so. I don’t see how I can get Groucho to go for three hundred dollars for a yearbook without there being something good in it,” Trace said.

“A hundred,” she corrected.

“That’s our cost. We’ll ask for three hundred and negotiate down,” Trace said. “Trust me. I’ve been through these negotiations dozens of times.”

“You’ve never won one,” she said.

“No. But I know all Groucho’s tricks and I’m overdue.”

Chico went to the bathroom and Trace took the green tooth molding out of the bag and held it in his hand, looking at it. When the young woman came back, he had his jacket on.

“I’ll be back in a while,” he said. “If you want to wait.”

“Where you going?”

“I want to ask Jeannie if she recognizes whoever might belong to these teeth. In case it was a friend waiting for her.”

“You want me to go with you?” Chico asked.

“No. You must be starved. Why don’t you go feed yourself and I’ll meet you back here later?”

“How much later?”

“I don’t know,” Trace said.

“Maybe I’ll be here and maybe I’ll go back to my place,” she said.

“Okay,” Trace said. “Leave me a note if you go.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be gone,” she said.

“Hi, son. Come to talk about peanut butter?”

“No, business.”

“Sounds serious.”

“It is. Last night somebody broke into Jeannie Callahan’s office, just about the time you were supposed to be meeting with her.”

“Damn, that’s too bad.”

“Why’d you miss the meeting?”

“I’m a suspect in the burglary?”

“In my eyes you are. Why didn’t you make the meeting with her?”

“Gentlemen don’t generally talk about things like that.”

“Make an exception in this case.”

“Oh, hell, why not? If I don’t talk about it to somebody, I’ll go crazy. Remember that little blonde I showed you?”

“In the pink sweater?”

“Yeah, that’s her. Well, yesterday, after you left, she came into the office here and she started, what do you young folks say, coming in to me.”

“Coming on.”

“Yeah, that’s right. She was coming on to me. So one thing led to another and I took her to dinner and then we stopped someplace and spent the night.”

“You missed a business meeting so you could get laid?”

“Sure. Wouldn’t you?”

“I guess I would.”

“If you were my age, I know you would.”

‘Thanks, Mr. Winfield.”

“Anytime, Mr. Tracy.”

“Well, what do I look like?”

“Let’s see,” Trace said. He stood in the doorway of Jeannie Callahan’s apartment, sizing her up. “The body is lissome and exquisite. Very nice. The right side of your face is an absolute joy to behold. I love your eyes and lashes. Your teeth are marvelous. Your smile warms my days.”

“Keep going,” she said suspiciously.

“And the left side of your face looks like a slab of liver that got tenderized by a tank tread.”

“Naff off,” she said, and swung the door closed in his face.

He caught it and pushed it back open. “But I’m willing to forget it,” he said. “Just keep your good side to me.”

“Okay. Since you’re partially nice, you can come in and get partially drunk with me.”

Trace helped himself to a drink in the kitchen and was pleased to note that Jeannie had already started to learn: the vodka was chilled and thick in the refrigerator’s freezer compartment, the way he liked it best.

Jeannie had a brandy in her hand, a large snifter almost full, when Trace joined her on the couch.

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine. Brandy wounds all numbs.”

“It numbs all wounds too. Any second thoughts about what happened in your office last night? Any flashes of memory?”

“No. Just a big fist coming out of the dark. And a grunt. Dammit, I wish I had been you. I would have clubbed that bastard.”

“It’s obvious you’re talking about my size and not my fighting heart,” Trace said. “What kind of stuff do you keep in that file cabinet?”

“Documents mostly. Betsy keeps most of the real records out in the computer room.”

“Yours filed alphabetically?”

“Is there any other way to file things? Drink up, you’re slowing me down,” she said.

“How many drawers in that file cabinet? I forget.”

“Four,” she said. She reached down and lifted Trace’s glass to his lips. He took a long sip before putting it back down.

“So that’d be like A to F, G to M, N to S, and T to Z in the four drawers.”

“How’d you do that so fast?”

“I was an accountant in an earlier life,” Trace said.

“I hate accountants.”

“Now I’m a drunk.”

“I love drunks,” she said.

“I noticed. So he broke into the second drawer, that’s G to M. What’s in that drawer that’s so important?”

“Ask him,” she said. “Catch him and ask him, and after he tells you, kick him in the nuts for me. I’m going to put a head on this. You ready?”

“Not yet,” Trace said. He noticed that she lurched a little as she walked toward the kitchen. She came back, put her glass down, and leaned back on the couch with her head on Trace’s shoulder. They sat quietly for a while.

“It wasn’t G to M,” she said abruptly.

“Why not?” he said.

“Top drawer doesn’t count. I keep my checkbooks and stuff in there. The files start with the second drawer, maybe like A to H.”

“Good. Now we’re getting somewhere. A to H.”

“Talk about it later,” she said. “Kiss me now.”

“That purple stuff on your face might be catching.”

“Them’s bruises, son. Honestly won on the field of battle. ‘We few, we ancient few, we band of brothers,’ how’s it go?”

“Happy few,” Trace said, “‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers, for he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.’”

“Very good,” she said. “I’m impressed.”

“The perils of a Jesuit education. I remember everything and understand nothing.”

“Kiss me anyway,” she said, and he did.

“It was Carey’s file they were looking for,” he said. “That’d be in that drawer.”

She nuzzled her face into the hollow between Trace’s arm and chest. “Wanna make love?”

“Not just now.”

“Another drink?” she asked.

“You just poured that one.”

“Somebody musta stolen it while my back was turned.”

Her glass was almost empty and he hadn’t even seen her drink it.

“No, I’ll pass this round,” he said. “Hold on. I want to show you something.”

He fetched from his pocket the green wax mold of teeth.

“Recognize that?” he asked.

“Obviously somebody who didn’t brush after every meal,” she said.

“I think that’s the guy who cold-cocked you,” Trace said.

“I didn’t get a chance to look into his mouth.”

“Recognize it, though? You know anybody with a big ugly mouth like that?”

“No. I only hang out with people with perfect teeth. I’m very prejudiced against bad teeth. Against empty glasses too.”

She got up and teetered out to the kitchen. He heard the bottle cap fall on the floor. When she came back holding a glass, her hand was wet.

“Only half full,” she said. “I’m tapering off.”

As she set the glass down, the telephone rang and Trace watched her go to the phone and stand there, swaying gently in her shoeless feet.

“Hello, George,” she said thickly. “No, I’m all right. Really, I’m feeling fine. Trace is here. Devlin Tracy. Right. Yeah. I’ll be okay. Thanks for calling. Oh. Okay.”

She turned and held the phone out to him. “It’s George. He wants to talk to you.” She carried the phone to him.

“Hello, Doc.”

Jeannie took a sip of her drink, then curled up on the couch and put her head in Trace’s lap.

“I met with Mrs. Carey and Muffy today. Dammit, they want to move Mr. Carey tomorrow. I couldn’t talk them out of it. I may have to get a court order to stop them.”

“Did you warn them?”

“I wouldn’t talk to that snotty broad. I don’t like her. But I told Mrs. Carey that her husband might die if she moved him.”

“What’d she say to that?”

“She said she wanted him home. She said her daughter would want that too.”

“Sorry, Doc.”

“Not as sorry as I am. I don’t even know if he’ll survive a trip home in an ambulance. Are you going to see Mrs. Carey?”

Trace thought a moment and said, “Yes, I am. Tonight.”

“Try to talk her out of it,” Matteson said.

“I just might be able to.”

“I owe you a big one if you can.”

“Okay.”

When he leaned forward to hang up the phone, Trace saw that Jeannie Callahan was sound asleep on his lap. He shook her shoulder. “Jeannie?”

“Yes,” she said softly, her eyes still closed.

“Did Mitchell Carey make out a new will in the hospital?”

“Carey? New will?”

“Did he make a new will out in the hospital?” Trace snapped the words to try to penetrate her drunken fog.

“New will? New will? No. He can’t even talk, how’s make will?”

He sat quietly for a moment and she was again asleep. When she was breathing deeply, he moved out from under her and gently placed a pillow under her head.

He emptied their two drinks into the sink, then unplugged the telephone so its ringing wouldn’t wake her. He put on his jacket and walked toward the door, then came back and kissed her on the cheek.

“I think I love you a little bit,” he said. “Maybe a whole lot. But what we’ve got here isn’t companionship, it’s two compulsions. Six months together and we’d both be dead, or our brains so pickled that we wouldn’t know if we were alive or dead. So long, little girl.”

When he left, he locked the door tightly behind him.