Читать книгу Tough Cop - John Roeburt - Страница 5

Outside the club, with handshakes and good wishes finally in limbo, Devereaux slid behind the wheel of his brand-new Buick convertible—a farewell gift from the Department.

He sat stock-still, then began jingling his key ring moodily. What, he wondered, already feeling the burden of sudden freedom after decades in harness, did a man in retirement do with his time? He fingered the ignition key. Where, he ruminated sadly, now feeling a little old and used up, did retired detectives pasture?

He looked into the street and read the signs as far as his eye could reach:

IN PERSON—BILLIE HOLLIDAY,

THE THREE LESTERS,

SUGAR JOHNSON—BOOGIE-WOOGIE PIANIST.

The row of after-theater clubs was just off Broadway. It was past midnight on a routine Tuesday night. The pushing throngs had disintegrated, and the few stragglers reeling under the shock of alcohol dragged into his focus in tortured slow motion. Taxicabs were glued bumper to bumper, their motors asleep and their drivers drowsing.

Devereaux sighed, and turned the key in the ignition.

The motor had coughed, awakening, when he saw her duck around the doorman and run to his car. She slammed the door.

“Hurry, please!” Her voice behind him was urgent.

“Ditching someone?”

“Yes.”

“Why my car?”

“Hurry, please!” She was close to tears.

Devereaux swung out from the curb in quick, automatic movements, oddly happy for the activity, grateful for the distraction. The Buick reached the avenue and turned into it.

“Who were you ditching?” he asked after a while.

“My father.”

“Under age?”

“I’m twenty.”

“Past the age of consent.” He signaled a car ahead, then passed it. “So what’s the problem?”

“He’s—unreasonably possessive.”

A red light showed and Devereaux stopped, then turned to survey her. Baby-faced, red-headed, cream-cheeked—a treat to the eye. Unspoiled looking; a budding flower in a cellophane wrapper.

“Why take you clubbing, then? Drunks are bound to make passes.”

“He didn’t. Take me clubbing, I mean. He followed us.”

The light showed green and the Buick loafed along at twenty-five. “Sneak off to City Hall with the boy friend,” Devereaux said. “That will kill Pop’s penchant for following you.”

“It’s not so simple as that.” He felt her sigh. “Even if I were in love, I’d be afraid to—to marry.”

Her tone revealed more than what was said. Fear, he adduced it to be. The pent-up fear of someone too taut to cry out. It engaged Devereaux, piqued his imagination. He swung out of avenue traffic and nestled into the curb.

“You’re out of danger now.” Devereaux smiled. “Maybe you’d like to come up front and just sit a while?”

She came to sit beside him, and he stared at her curiously. The make-up, if she wore any, was subtle; the hair-do enhanced the very young impression she gave. There was nothing in her face that he could read, nothing of the tensions he sensed in her. The fear he had detected was only evident in the small fluttering of her hands.

“You’re really in trouble, huh?” he said.

She nodded, and as her head came forward slightly, he looked into her eyes. The tensions that weren’t evident in her face lived in her eyes. He smiled at her sympathetically, and watched her draw her underlip in, brake its tremble with white, even teeth. Tears were close; a kind word would precipitate a flood.

He said gently, “Suppose I keep eyes strictly front while you let go and cry yourself out?” He saw the tears start down her cheeks, and turned severely front. Not long after, when the noises of grief had died away, he turned to face her.

Devereaux said, “In my time, lots of people have used me as a father-confessor. All kinds of people.”

She smiled gratefully at him with moist eyes, and his pulse quickened. He stared at her, surprised at her effect on him. Beautiful, he thought to himself regretfully. This unspoiled girl dabbing at her eyes was not the fruit of his forties.

“How bad is it?” he prompted.

“It’s a mess,” she said, accepting him as a confidant.

“Father a completely bad actor?”

“Yes.”

“A tyrant, eh?”

“Much worse than a tyrant.” She hesitated, and there was a look of revulsion in her eyes that haunted his imagination. He picked at the bits she had told him, and brought them closer to his thinking. Reviewing them, they seemed little against the violent emotional currents in the girl. Domineering fathers, like possessive mothers, were a commonplace. The iron fist and the silver cord—as a policeman he’d encountered both more often than not.

He looked at her doubtfully, at a loss, and then his imagination leaped. Much worse than a tyrant, she had said, with revulsion showing in her eyes. He looked at her searchingly, watched shame flushing her cheeks.

“What do you do, if anything?” he said after a long, awkward moment.

“I dance.”

“Ballet?”

She nodded. “Modern. The Graham School.”

“Professionally?”

“I hope to, ultimately.”

“Live home?” Devereaux smiled. “Shut me up any time you like.”

“I live home.”

“Why not make a break, keep house on your own?”

She drew a long breath. “I can’t.”

“You mean,” Devereaux pressed, “your father won’t allow it?”

“Yes. My father won’t allow it,” she said, and her tone told him clearly of bonds and bondage. He waited through a short silence, hoping her bursting need to talk would prevail. He was right. She said, “If he is my father.”

“Don’t you know?” Devereaux exclaimed.

“No. I mean, I don’t know”—she fumbled for words—“I don’t know for certain that he is.”

“But what makes you think that he’s not?”

“It’s something vague.” A hand moved nervously to her face. “It’s what he is, the feeling I have about him. I don’t feel him to be my father.”

Devereaux said impatiently, “Is there something actual that makes you doubt this man is your father?”

“Just impressions.” Her hand moved as if brushing something impeding her vision. “Impressions only.”

Devereaux regarded her critically. There were strong suggestions of irrationality, even hoax, but the emotional distress was real, and the girl had breeding and intelligence. Intelligence, unmistakably. It was in her face and speech and manner.

“I take it, then,” Devereaux said, accepting her as rational and believable, “that there is no infancy-to-now association with him in your recollection. This man, your father, is something recent in your experience?”

“Yes.” She smiled weakly. “Or is it no? He is recent —comparatively, that is. And I have no real infancy recollection of him.”

“When did you first become aware of him as your father?”

“When I was ten. From then on, all through my school life, there were visits, gifts, vacations away with him. But always estranged, never close. In a family sense, I mean. Then, last year, he brought me home to live with him.”

“You boarded out through your school years?”

“Yes. Through school and finishing school.”

“And absolutely no recollections of him prior to your tenth birthday?”

“No. Earlier, I merely knew of him, but vaguely.”

“How did you know of him?”

“From teachers in school, I suppose. From an occasional letter read to me.”

“Didn’t you wonder about it? Kids, even in tender years, have a strong interest in where they came from, a great curiosity about whom they belong to.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t wonder about it. Not consciously, anyhow.” Her face clouded. “Not having a home, in the true sense, I found my adjustment in the school, in my teachers. I remember believing that all children belonged to their schoolmistress and teachers, and to the school itself. I think I believed it quite normal to have a father in some shadowy somewhere who wrote letters and sent occasional gifts.”

“And when you were ten, he came out of his, ah, shadowy somewhere, emerged as an identity, a person?”

“Yes. He appeared suddenly, just before my tenth birthday.”

“Did you accept him as your father then?”

“Yes.”

“Affectionately, glad for a parent?”

She was remembering. “No. At first I resented him, I think. Later, I became afraid of him.”

“Why?”

“He had a way of staring at me, a frightening way of looking at me coldly and critically, as if I were a purchase he had to make up his mind about.”

“He gave you this feeling every time you met?”

“Until my fourteenth birthday. After that, he changed. I could feel the change.”

Devereaux prompted gently, “As if he’d decided to make the purchase?”

She smiled at him gratefully and nodded her head. “His attitude became fanatically possessive. He transferred me to another school, a more expensive one, and began to shower me with fine clothes, costly presents.”

“And these attentions didn’t bring you closer to him?”

“No. If anything, I resented him more, became more afraid. The clothes were far too grown-up, too sophisticated, for my age. I was fourteen, and there were negligées, gowns made by Parisian couturières. I felt indecent in them, and finally burned them in the school incinerator when my teachers began to look strangely at me, when my classmates began to whisper about me.” She shuddered, and her voice seemed to shrink. “There were imported perfumes when I was fifteen. And with every birthday there were hideously gaudy shoes with higher heels than before. I remember monstrous six-inch spikes that came on my sixteenth birthday.”

Devereaux interrupted the disturbing memories. “And these things made you suspect that he wasn’t really your father?”

“Does it sound like what a father would do?”

“Not the, er, usual father. What about your mother? Know anything about her?”

She shook her head. “He says she ran off when I was a baby, and was never heard from since. Before my tenth birthday, I had some attachment for a woman who ran a private home for waifs. I lived with her for a while, somewhere in the outskirts of a city, before I was placed in boarding school.”

“Remember her name?”

“I remember her as a Mrs. Jennings,” she said doubtfully.

“Can’t remember the whereabouts of that private home, I suppose?”

“No. But I’ve seen Mrs. Jennings. Anyhow, I think it was Mrs. Jennings.”

“Where?”

“Visiting my father. About a week ago.”

“Did you speak to her?”

“No. My father prevented that. He shouldered me out of the library quite obviously. I’d come upon them unexpectedly.”

Devereaux sighed involuntarily. It was his first feeling of solid ground. “Get any impressions from what you saw of them together?” he asked.

“Yes. There was hostility between them. I heard nothing said, but Father seemed barely able to control his rage.”

Devereaux said reflectively, “I don’t suppose you’d know where to locate this Mrs. Jennings—if she is your Mrs. Jennings?”

“I do,” she said, and Devereaux looked his surprise. “She’s registered at the Hotel Orleans as Mrs. Minna Gordon.”

“How do you know?”

“I followed her home that night.”

“Why haven’t you visited her, spoken to her?”

“I lack the courage.”

“But to inquire into your background, prove or dissolve your doubts?”

“I’m afraid. And I’m alone.” Her voice dropped to a barely audible key. “I’m just frightened all the time —as though something terrible was going to happen. To me.”

A silence fell. Devereaux reached into a dashboard compartment, found his cigarette pack, extracted one, gestured the pack at the girl, and then, surprised at her eager nod, held it closer to her. He worked an enameled lighter and held the flare out to her, letting the illumination linger for an instant.

She was more composed now; talk and tears had been a catharsis. Her eyes were bright, their depths unrevealed. They seemed remarkably free of their earlier pain; seemed curiously flat as they fixed upon his face expectantly, as if their burden had passed to him in some mystical transference.

Devereaux withdrew the flare and brought it to his own cigarette. He drew in smoke and exhaled it, thinking. Should he really involve himself? Sucker, he thought irritably, as the awareness grew that the decision had already been made for him. His first busy-body peek inside her had borne an implicit offer of help. That was how it was with him. Would he, he wondered, eyeing her in a lingering sidelong look, ally himself with her need if she were fat and fifty?

“No birth certificate?” he asked suddenly, taking charge of her problem.

“No. It was destroyed in a fire. This was in St. Paul. I’ve only school certificates as proof of birth.” Her tone now took his stewardship almost for granted.

“How do you know a fire destroyed your birth record?”

“He told me so.”

“Did you check?”

“Yes. I wrote the Town Clerk. He wrote back that the Hall of Records had burned to the ground fifteen years ago.”

After a moment, Devereaux said, “I suppose it’s idiotic of me to ask whether you bear the same name as this man—your father.”

“We bear the same name, of course.”

Devereaux puffed rapidly, then flipped the cigarette into the street. “I might be able to help,” he began slowly, facing her. “Maybe let you lean a little.” His eyes pinched at the corners in a shrewd, searching look. “If you were completely honest.”

There was a betraying start, then a look of bewilderment that was palpably forced came into her face. Devereaux said forbiddingly, “Lie, and I’ll dump you into the street on your lovely, lovely bottom.” His tone softened. “Now, how did you happen into the back of my car?”

“Why, I—I left the Club Fifty-Two so hurriedly, in panic.” She stopped, staring at his warning look. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“No, I don’t. Furthermore, I don’t believe anyone was after you, or that you were running from anyone, or that you were out with a boy friend, or that you were even at the Club Fifty-Two. And I do believe you landed in my car according to plan, by design, and by choice.”

He saw the awe filling her face, and for the life of him he couldn’t help chuckling. “Nothing really uncanny, nor is it any extrasensory perception, believe me. It’s a simple matter of propriety and twenty yards. Propriety wouldn’t permit an obviously proper young lady to enter a stranger’s automobile, whatever her haste and panic. And there was a taxicab parked twenty yards closer to the door of Club Fifty-Two than my car. Any fugitive, especially a frightened young lady handicapped by high heels, would run into the nearest available taxicab.” He looked at her for confirmation, watched her nod miserably, then resumed. “Those twenty yards and ordinary propriety, plus your great readiness to confide in me, make me certain that you picked my car, picked me, deliberately.”

“You’re right, in everything you’ve said,” she finally conceded in wilted tones. “I did pretend to run out of Club Fifty-Two, and I did pick you deliberately.” She seemed to droop. “I suppose you disbelieve everything I’ve told you now.”

“Shouldn’t I?”

“It’s all true,” she said hollowly.

“All right, then. I believe you.”

“Will you help me?” Her fingers were touching him.

“Yes,” he promised in a rush, then stopped, again surprised at her effect on him. His pulse was quickening, and there was a warmth flowing through him that he fought against showing in his face. Cavalier, and nothing more, he told himself sternly. He drew his arm away from her fingers. “Just how did you come to pick me as your champion?”

“I’d heard about you, read about you in the papers all week long.” Her voice bubbled with admiration. “Fascinating stories about your twenty years as a detective. About how wise you are, and how clever.”

It was flattery and he’d had much of it—up to his neck—but coming from her it was excitingly new. “Spare my blushes,” he said.

“I tried to see you yesterday, right after that farewell banquet they gave you. But there were too many people around you then.”

“Tell me your name,” Devereaux said.

“Jennifer Phillips.”

“And Mr. Whosis—which Phillips is he?”

There was a small hesitation. “Martin Phillips.”

Devereaux’s jaw fell. “Don’t tell me!” he said incredulously.

“Yes,” she nodded solemnly. “The Martin Phillips.”

Devereaux whistled. Martin Phillips, the grand slam among theater critics. The high priest of literature who used rattlesnake venom for ink. The man who said that the drama had died with Shakespeare, that glamour was buried with Queen Victoria.

“He’s a damned important figure, your so-called father,” Devereaux said soberly.

“I know,” she agreed dismally. Her fingers found his arm again. “Will you help me?”

“What was the name of that hotel?”

“The Orleans.”

“What does this Mrs. Jennings, or Mrs. Gordon, look like?”

“Gray-haired. About sixty, I’d say. Pale, like a sick person. Small, almost daintily small.” Her eyes shone at him and her voice was fervent. “Thank you so very much.”

“You’re a little premature,” Devereaux said. “Now, where can I drop you?”