Beyond its existence, I couldn't. It remained nothing but a glimmer of a place where three murders connected—Doolan's staged suicide, the fatal mugging of Ginnie Mathes, and the hit-and-run of Dulcie Thorpe—and it provided nothing more than the hope that maybe my efforts were worth the trouble.
Nothing else presented itself in the folders of clippings, though I lost an hour plowing through a full drawer of mob material, with plenty on the Bonettis and a full file on the Tretriano family, right up to recent stories on Anthony and Club 52. Nothing underlined in these.
I moved on to the drawers of photos. I skipped the folder on myself and went right to the folder stuffed with shots of beautiful women, sometimes with Doolan posing with them, often indifferently composed, indicating he'd elicited help from some bystander to snap these visual keepsakes. The final dozen or so were from Club 52, including the sexy onstage shots of Chrome that I'd seen before.
This time I noticed another blonde, up by the stage, but her back was to the camera—tall, shapely, her sleek ash blonde hair curling under just before it hit her shoulders. Wearing tight jeans and a white blouse, she was in all of the performance shots. Never more than a sliver of her face was revealed, yet something about the way she stood jogged my mind....
Laying the photos out like panels of a comic book, I got the overall picture—the blonde was running point for Doolan! Obviously she would carve herself a place out near the stage, and when Doolan was ready to snap his camera, she would move to one side, taking the patron or two next to her along for the ride, giving him a path for a clear shot.
In addition, there were three photos of Doolan posing with Chrome, the singer's arm around him in one, another where she was kissing him on the cheek, and a final one where they were hugging, the old boy looking happy as hell. Couldn't blame him.
But the other blonde, the ash blonde, her presence was felt in those three pics as well. They were the work of somebody who knew her way around a camera—better than just a recruited bystander, superior to Doolan's own amateur-night photography.
Who was she? Was this the younger woman who had smudged her makeup dancing with Doolan that Cummings had told me about? Who Doolan had bought a gift for? Trying to make Chrome into Doolan's girlfriend was a stretch. Maybe the ash blonde was the real woman in his life. Who was she?
One of the photos was still in my hand when the office door opened, as if in answer to that question. And it was an attractive woman, all right, but not a very good candidate for Doolan's late-in-life lover—since this was his granddaughter.
"Mike," Anna Marina said, and forced a smile. "I'm glad you're here. Pat said you might be."
She was probably thirty-five and had a nice shape on her, well served by an orange paisley silk blouse and a short rust-color skirt with matching pumps. Good colors for a redhead like her, with her pug nose lightly dusted by freckles and her big dark blue wide-set eyes; even her lipstick was an orange-tinged red on thin but nicely formed lips. Her hair was in a shag that had been out of style for a while, but I didn't mind. I'd been out of style longer than that.
"Hi, kid," I said. "Come in and stay a while."
She shut the door carefully, as if afraid she might break the glass, and crossed the creaky floor to the client's chair. This was Cummings's office but I was feeling like a private detective again. And something about her manner told me this was business.
"Pat said you're looking into my grandfather's death." Anna had a nice voice, breathy, high-pitched but not squeaky. She sat on the edge of the chair, knees together. No purse.
"Yeah," I said. "I have my suspicions."
"Frankly ... so have I."
"Really?"
"Not about his suicide. I think he took his life. I mean, who wouldn't, facing that kind of death sentence?"
I frowned at her. "I can share my thoughts, Anna, if you want to know why I—"
"You've been in and out of his apartment, right? Looking into things, I mean."
I shifted in Pete's chair. What was this about?
"Yeah, Anna, I have. Why?"
"Did you notice something missing?"
"No."
"From the walls, I mean."
"No. Everything looked like it was where it belonged. Always did in your grandfather's apartment."
She nodded, then shrugged. "It's true that other things had been hung in their place."
"What things? In whose place?"
She sat forward, wide-eyed, and an urgency that had been bubbling under her surface made itself known. "The two paintings. By George Wilson? The famous abstract painter?"
"Never heard of the guy. Are these the two paintings Pat told me about? The valuable paintings that were left to you in your grandfather's will?"
She nodded. "Mike, they're worth a lot of money. Twenty-five thousand as a pair. They are just a bunch of colors and shapes, but the artist died recently and the value has skyrocketed."
I nodded. "And these paintings should have been in Doolan's apartment?"
"Yes. But they're gone. And I'd like you to find them—no questions asked."
"I could look for them, I guess. But there was no sign of a break-in."
She winced. "Mike ... are you going to make this hard? We are willing to give you a ... a twenty percent finder's fee. No questions asked."
"What's this 'no questions asked' stuff?"
She rose. She smoothed her skirt out. Tugged at her blouse as she thrust out her breasts, which were nice full high handfuls that went well with her narrow waist. Her face was pretty enough but with an odd blankness that hid calculation, or anyway tried to.
Then she was sitting on the edge of my desk, bracing herself with the heels of her hands pushed against the edge, which gave her a breasts-forward posture. Her crossed legs were bare, her knees white. Nice calves on her. She was a natural redhead, and I always get a kick out of that, when it comes time to compare the drapes and the carpet.
Anna Doolan, now Marina, had always been able to work guys into a lather without trying, which was how she'd won her high-school-football-hero husband. Who had gone on to further glory as an hourly worker at an upstate dog food factory
"You never liked me," she said, chin up a little. "But you always liked to look at me."
"I never disliked you. I just saw through you."
"We could have a weekend together, Mike. Just you and me. Harry goes to Vegas with some friends of his in June. We could go someplace else. Any place you like."
She started to unbutton her blouse. I was going to stop her, but what the hell—no charge for looking. The blouse hung open and then she helped it a little, letting her twins out for some air.
She didn't have a bra on. She didn't need one. Her breasts were creamy white and dusted with freckles, just like her face. Her areolae were barely darker than the smooth flesh around them and the nipples just a little darker than that, pert eraser tips that could rub a man's face until he'd forgotten any mistakes he ever made, or might ever make....
"Twenty-five percent," she said, and I got it.
"Get the hell off my desk, Anna," I growled, "and button up. I didn't steal your damn paintings."
She frowned, and slid down off the desk with her shoes hitting the floor like two little gunshots. The blouse hung open and the view was fine, but all I could think was How could this little tramp be related to Doolan?
"I'll go to a lawyer," she said. "I'll get a real private eye. We'll prove—"
"I didn't take the paintings, kiddo. Maybe whoever killed your grandfather did. If your grandfather was murdered, aren't you interested in finding out who—"