Show Red for Danger Page 14

  There had, Cohen had told him, been rumors about Anton Zersk. Where they had started wasn’t certain; those who scoffed at them said that they had begun in the active, and self-serving, imagination of another director.

  “A very reformed character,” Forniss said. “Name of Hooker— Bertram Hooker. When they were making a lot of fuss on the West Coast a few years back—when they were making a lot of fuss everywhere, come to that—this Hooker bared his chest. Bared a lot of other chests. Very co-operative witness. Every time they ran out of headlines there was good old Hooker, with more chests to bare.”

  “Zersk’s?”

  Not publicly. But, when the headlines began to taper off a bit and the committee—“state committee, this one was”—decided they had milked the thing dry, Hooker did a lot of private hinting. He could not, then, name names, since his charges were no longer privileged and a few people were showing signs of biting back, but he could start rumors. A good many started about that time and one of them concerned Zersk. Whether Hooker actually started it—

  “Specifically?”

  “That Zersk and his wife weren’t really refugees from the Iron Curtain. That their escape, which seems to have got a good deal of publicity, only I don’t remember it, was rigged. That actually, they were agents, sent over to pervert the pure stream of American movies. You know the sort of stuff. Only—”

  He paused, considered.

  “Countries use agents,” he said. “Always have and always will, I guess. That the two hundred percenters see a dozen under every bush doesn’t mean that there isn’t one under every hundredth bush, does it? That Hooker obviously did a lot of lying—even the committee began to suspect that, finally—doesn’t mean he was always lying. Sometimes, maybe, he had the goods. And—”

  Again he paused.

  “Miss Belford got around a lot,” he said. “She was a real get-around girl. One of the people she got around with was this Hooker, Ben says. Nothing exclusive about it. Miss Belford wasn’t what you’d call an exclusive girl. But if Hooker did happen to have something and did happen to pass it along to Belford. Well—”

  “If she knew where anybody’s buried a body,” Heimrich said. “I quote the kids—young Latham, Chris the tragedy queen. And—more pure and unadulterated theory, Charlie.”

  “Yep,” Forniss said, and reverted. “Two grand a month is a nice solid chunk of motive,” he said. “Fielding’s the one we know she really had where it hurts. You don’t buy him?”

  At the moment, Heimrich neither bought nor rejected. He collected samples. Did Forniss have more to offer?

  Forniss thought he hadn’t.

  “The kid. Chris?”

  Forniss looked at him a little blankly.

  “I gather from what your friend Cohen says,” Heimrich told his sergeant, “somewhat from what Dale says, that Chris was very devoted to her mother. If she got the idea that Miss Belford had—well, say moved in. That it was because of her moving in that Mrs. Marley killed herself. Chris dramatizes things, you know.”

  “You think of the damnedest things,” Forniss said. “That was eighteen months ago.”

  “Children brood,” Heimrich said. “Also—it was during the last few weeks, I gather, that Dale had been showing interest in Miss Belford. And Chris has a crush on Dale. The child could have thought Peggy was moving in again and that once was enough and—” He shrugged. He finished his beer.

  “There was, if you’re right, a good deal of dragging around of the body,” Forniss said. “Awkward things, bodies.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Of course, she was a little woman. And the place has got tiled floors—waxed tile. A bit slippery. And girls like Chris often have pretty good muscles underneath.” He closed his eyes briefly. “I’ve heard,” he said, opening them again. He regarded the opposite wall of the taproom.

  Sergeant Forniss watched him, noted that he seemed to find much of interest in a reasonably uninteresting wall. It was a little, Forniss thought, as if Heimrich saw daylight there. Forniss also looked at the wall. One of the pictures needed straightening. It could hardly be that.

  “I tell you what we’ll do, Charlie,” Heimrich said. “You go ask Mr. Fielding if he found Miss Belford yesterday afternoon. I’ll go ask Mr. Zersk if he’s a Russian agent. And Mr. Dale, if I run into him, if he’s entirely sure that he didn’t expect Miss Belford to bounce in his direction when she bounced off Fielding. Annoying to be disappointed, it might have been.”

  Forniss looked at him, raised eyebrows.

  “Also,” Heimrich said, “you might tell Fielding the one about the mistake somebody made in stealing the design. And I’ll make sure the word has got to Mr. Dale. By the way, make it clear—very clear —that Mrs. Faye is sure she’ll never remember what she thought was wrong. And have young Crowley get out of uniform for a little chore. And—” He looked at his watch. “We’ll meet here around six-thirty,” he said. “I imagine we’ll get a telephone call.”

  XI

  Anton Zersk said he was not a Russian agent, or a Czech agent or any kind of agent and that Bertram Hooker was a rat—several kinds of a rat, which he duly listed. Zersk bristled; his harsh hair seemed to stand more than ever on end. He said he was damned tired of the whole business, and especially of people like Bertram Hooker. He said that if Hooker had done his song and dance—type qualified; fully explained—for Peggy Belford he, Zersk, knew nothing about it, because Peggy had never brought it up.

  He walked up and down his room at the Cold Harbor Motor Lodge and glared at Heimrich, who sat and listened—who, when Zersk bristled with especial fervor, said, “Now Mr. Zersk” in a soothing tone. Zersk was not a man who soothed readily.

  “Also,” Zersk said—and in the tricky word Heimrich for the first time detected a hint of alien accent—“Also, suppose she had and had tried to make something of it? I don’t say she wouldn’t, but what did she have? Something somebody else had told her. If I wanted to kill anybody, it would be Hooker himself, wouldn’t it?” He glared. “Wouldn’t I?” he repeated. He lighted a cigarette. “Which,” he said, “I may do when I get back to the Coast. On general principles. High time somebody did.”

  “Now Mr. Zersk.”

  “Also,” Zersk said, “don’t think the FBI didn’t check me out when this stuff started to go around. And, told me to forget it. Ask them.”

  “All right,” Heimrich said. “A lot of things crop up in this sort of business. We have to go round clearing them up. Wastes a lot of time, but there it is.”

  Heimrich left—left Zersk still glaring. It seemed likely, it seemed very probable, that he had wasted time. Which was part of the trade. All the same—

  Heimrich stopped in a telephone booth. He told Hawthorne to send through a request to Washington for any information available on one Zersk, Anton, who had escaped from Czechoslovakia with his wife by—as Heimrich now vaguely recalled—taking over part of a train. That did not seem improbable; Zersk, Heimrich thought, could dispense with a locomotive, himself provide driving power. He had it to spare.

  Heimrich got to the Inn’s taproom at six-thirty and found that, as he had hoped, the audience was adequate. The newspaper people were back, including reporters for the networks. That was excellent; news travels fastest that travels by air. Francis Dale and Paul Marley were having drinks together; George Latham and Chris had a table and Chris had a glass filled darkly. Heimrich trusted with Coke. He would hate to see Harold, the barman, get into trouble. Harold was not a man likely to.

  The press swarmed around Heimrich, who shook his head sadly and seemed a man preoccupied. He was told that he had as good as promised a story; that he had hinted at new developments. He was a man discouraged, apologetic. If he had, things had changed. He was a man for whom things had worked out badly; a man whose anticipated fish had got away. “Police appear baffled,” the Daily Mirror said, resentfully, and went to the bar. “Promised disclosures fail to materialize. Bourbon and water.”

  Heimrich nodded to Dale
, to Marley, a man deep in worried thought. He said, “Hello” to Latham, to Chris, and shook his head sadly. He found a table and awaited Forniss, who arrived in ten minutes, and arrived with shaking head. They ordered, glumly.

  Forniss talked briefly, in a lowered voice, the voice of a man who has met adversity. His words were audible only to Heimrich. Fielding had admitted, grumpily, that he had asked for Peggy Belford at the Inn the previous afternoon; denied, with more vigor, that he had found her; admitted he knew Collins slightly—“both members of the Peggy club,” Fielding said; denied that he had thought Peggy might have gone to Collins’s house, and that he had gone there to look for her. He also said that he was getting damn tired of being badgered, and if they wanted to make something of it to start making.

  “Being pretty damn sure,” Forniss said, “that we haven’t got anything good enough to go on. Not yet.”

  Heimrich sighed deeply. From without—from two tables away, which was the nearest table occupied—they were two frustrated men, met for a wake.

  “Told him about the mistake somebody made in stealing a design that had nothing to do with anything?” Heimrich asked, in a voice just audible to Forniss. Forniss nodded. “Anything in yet from L.A.?” Heimrich asked. “From official sources?” Forniss said, “Nope.”

  The bar telephone rang shrilly. Neither Heimrich nor Forniss looked up. “Call for you, captain,” Harold said, across the room. Heimrich looked at Forniss, shook his head, shrugged. He went across the room to the telephone at the end of the bar and said, “Heimrich,” into it. He listened for a moment. He said, “Well, if you—” and stopped momentarily. “I can hear you all right,” he said. “But O.K. I will.” He raised his voice on that and then listened again.

  “No,” he said, then, and spoke even more loudly. “Hear me all right now?” He got, it appeared, an answer. “All right,” he said, in the same carrying voice. “No, I can’t say we have. There are a couple—” Apparently, he was interrupted. He listened again. “Twenty-four more hours?” he said and then, after another pause. “No, I can’t promise anything. There’s one puzzling point and something might come—” Again he was interrupted. This time he listened for some seconds.

  “I don’t,” he said then, “say you aren’t right. But I don’t like to drop—”

  He seemed then, for the first time, to realize that his voice was carrying through the taproom. He looked quickly, a little sheepishly, around the room. People listened.

  “Look,” he said, in a somewhat lowered voice. “I don’t want to go into it on the phone. Suppose the sergeant and I come over and—” He stopped. “O.K.,” he said, after a moment, and his voice had a weary tone. “O.K., you can listen, anyway. If we come—”

  Whoever had called Heimrich was an impatient caller. Anybody in the taproom could guess that, since he so often interrupted Heimrich.

  “All right,” Heimrich said. “Ten’s all right. Just hold it open until then. Give us a chance?” He listened again. “Naturally,” Captain Heimrich said, and put the receiver back and walked slowly, heavily, back to his table.

  “The D.A.,” he said to Forniss, and still—no doubt forgetfully—spoke somewhat loudly. “The D.A.’s about ready to call it off. Talk to us if we go over there to Carmel, but I don’t—” He, evidently, again became conscious of his raised voice and again lowered it.

  They finished their drinks. They got up and walked across the taproom, two large and baffled men, and across the lounge into the dining room. One of the reporters followed them, came to their table. He couldn’t, he said, help overhearing. Was he to take it that—

  “Take it any way you want,” Heimrich said, glumly. “I haven’t any statement.”

  The reporter went away; carried news back to the pack.

  Heimrich and Forniss waited for food; when it came, ate slowly and steadily, their attitudes discouraging approach. They were not approached—not by reporters; not by Dale, who came in alone to eat, and was joined by Latham and Chris Waggoner. Some time later, Zersk and Marley came in together. They stopped at Dale’s table and there was brief colloquy. During it, Zersk looked quickly at Heimrich and Forniss and as quickly away again.

  “Getting a fill-in,” Heimrich said, his voice a mumble.

  It was a little after eight when Heimrich and Forniss left the Inn and went out to Heimrich’s car. The sun—the daylight saving sun—was preparing to set. Heimrich turned the car south on Van Brunt Avenue, which is NY-I IF. Near the Bear Mountain Bridge, I IF intersects U.S. 6, which will take a car to Carmel, Putnam County seat, the lair of Putnam County’s district attorney, who would have been surprised to learn the apparent extent of his influence on the New York State Police.

  “I suppose it’s worth while going round Robin Hood’s barn,” Forniss said. He was told that the night, he must remember, has a thousand eyes. They turned left on U.S. 6 and drove slowly for a few miles—drove east. At the intersection of NY-II they turned north, which is not the way to Carmel. They drove slowly, killing daylight. It was dusk when they turned left on NY-109, which took them back toward Van Brunt. It was almost dark—which helped—when they crossed IIF at The Corners, and continued west toward the Hudson.

  “I hope,” Forniss said, as they turned right on Van Brunt Pass, “that we weren’t too damned convincing. On account of, if they—whoever it is—thinks we’re as far up the creek as you sounded like, they might just decide to leave us there. Feeling safe.”

  “The ‘one puzzling point’ ought to take care of that,” Heimrich said. “Oh, I grant the risk, Charlie. But he can’t afford to be complacent. If there’s a puzzling point to clear up, he’ll want to clear it. I would in his shoes.”

  Forniss supposed so. He hoped so. He said, “He?”

  “Now Charlie,” Heimrich said. “I think so. Which still leaves us quite a choice, naturally. You gave Mr. Fielding the same—pitch?”

  “Yep. I don’t know if I was quite as—thorough, as you were.”

  “When among actors, do as actors do,” Heimrich said. “Crowley knows what to do?”

  “Yep,” Forniss said, and paused, since he was about, inferentially, to criticize. “I hope our client doesn’t double-cross us,” he said.

  “God knows, so do I,” Heimrich said, in a tone which caused Sergeant Forniss to regret that he had, once again, brought the subject up. “We’ve got to take the most likely. Take that chance.”

  “Crowley’s a good boy,” Forniss said. “And there’s always the dog. Scary-looking dog.”

  “There’s always Colonel,” Heimrich agreed. “This ought to do.” They were on Sugar Creek Lane by then, headed again toward the river. Heimrich nosed the car off the road, on faint tracks which led to a gap in a stone fence. When the car was well into the field beyond, not noticeable from the road, they got out.

  There was still light in the western sky, but it was dark enough. They walked on up Sugar Creek Lane, hugging shadows. Ten o’clock was the most likely time, but a man with an important job to do—such as saving his own life, for example—may grow impatient.

  Not to show himself until, and unless, he had cause; not to do anything until he had something very definite to do. Those were the instructions. The chances were a hundred to one that he would have no need to do anything. That was the prediction. The prediction came from a source in which Trooper Raymond Crowley had great trust. He himself was, Crowley realized, merely an added precaution. He parked his car as inconspicuously as he could on the edge of High Road and cut across lots, and crawled under a barbed-wire fence.

  He was any hatless, reasonably good-looking, notably muscular young man taking a walk—although perhaps a somewhat peculiar walk—on a summer’s evening. (A warm and sticky summer’s evening.) He wore slacks and a jacket, the latter because a jacket covers a gun in a shoulder holster, not because he needed a jacket for warmth.

  There was no reason to let Mrs. Faye know she was being protected. It would merely worry her needlessly, since there was almost certai
nly no danger. Instructions had been explicit.

  Stay in some convenient shadow, close enough to the door of the house so that he could reach it quickly, if he needed to. No reason to worry about the back of the house, because there was only one door there, and a door never used, and always bolted. The bolt probably was rusted in. But Crowley knew the layout; he had been there before.

  Just beyond the terrace, at the slope down from it toward the west, would be the best spot. The shadow of a big maple would be deep there, and there was not, in any case, much light on this humid, hazy night. He could see the house clearly, and could get to it quickly across the terrace—if he needed to, which he wouldn’t.

  He circled the house, keeping out of sight. He went a little distance down the slope and rounded the house and reached the place he had decided on. The slope there was a little steeper than he remembered it, which didn’t matter. Trooper Crowley watched the house as dusk gave way to darkness; watched lights come on; could see Susan Faye moving inside. She was wearing shorts and a halter, and he felt himself a Peeping Tom. Far from any other house, Mrs. Faye would feel safe from eyes, and would have a right to. He violated her right. Nothing to be done about that, of course. Follow instructions.

  He got there a little after nine. It was a few minutes after ten when Susan opened the door of the house and said, clearly, “Don’t be all night about it,” and let Colonel out, and closed the door after him.

  The great dog stood and sniffed the air at the far edge of the terrace—stood for some seconds so and then gave a great and exuberant bound forward. Colonel knew a friend when he smelled one.

  Their eyes adjusted, as even human eyes adjust, to the fading light. But still, they almost missed the start of the steep path—went past it once and as far as the driveway to the house; retraced their steps. Heimrich used a pencil flashlight then, unwillingly; guarded even its tiny beam with a cupped hand.

  The path went straight up, was faint trail more than path. It occurred to Heimrich, leading, that scrambling deer might have made it first. He scrambled himself, clutched at trees and saplings to pull himself forward; had to continue, at intervals, to use the pencil flashlight. Perhaps, he thought, halfway up, hearing Forniss scrambling heavily behind him, it would have been better to have used the drive. Except that, using it, they could not have avoided coming out in plain sight at the top, on the turnaround.