“Has he been an embarrassment to his family?”
“I hope to shout. But Albert never caused ’em any harm. He went his own way. He’s always been a friendly sort, in his quiet manner, and most people speak kindly of him, if they speak of him at all. Matter of fact, I always thought it was kind of low of that family, the way they didn’t look after Albert.”
“Oh?”
“His momma wasn’t near so partial to him after his breakdown, and his poppa never paid him much mind to begin with. After the mother and father died, Linda Sue… which seems to me kind of a silly name for her, now that she’s a woman of forty-five… Linda Sue told Albert to move out of the house. The Leroy home is one of those mansion-type things up on the West Hill, looking out on the river, don’t you see, one of those real old beauties up there, know the ones mean?”
“Yes.”
“They gave him a janitor job down in South End where they make the soup, but that’s all they done for him, far as I know. Some folks think Albert had money left to him, others think his janitor pay was high, like as if he was an executive, but was storing it away, hoarding, like a hermit. I suppose that’s what led to what happened to him. Somebody took a gun up there and shot him and went searching for buried treasure.” He laughed. “Dollars to doughnuts whoever-it-was didn’t find a thing.”
“You were talking to somebody across the street, a tall man. Who was that?”
“Raymond Springborn. Linda Sue’s husband. His family has money, too, got a lot of land holdings and property round town.” He leaned over, confidentially. “Some folks don’t know it, but I hear he’s part owner of that nightclub place, the one run by that girl who did that nudie thing in that Bunny book. Ah, that’s the name of the place, Bunny’s. He’s in it with that gal, and isn’t that pretty company for the hometown Kitchen Korner boy.” He cleared his throat. “Not to be disrespectful. I’m sure he isn’t having anything but business dealings with that gal. Mr. Springborn’s okay. Got a hell of a fine business head.”
“Sounds like you know him pretty well.”
“I sure do. He’s my landlord, don’t you know. Why you’re sitting in one of his buildings right now. If you look out front you’ll see it carved in the stone: Springborn Apartments.”
20
Cyprus was in the valley between East and West Hill and was a street which seemed to slash the town in half. Located on Cyprus was the local newspaper’s office, the county hospital, a public high school, a Catholic grade school, half a dozen churches and, just before the street turned into Highway 22, a drive-in movie playing a couple of skin flicks. I didn’t care about any of that. I was on Cyprus not for a guided tour of Port City, but because I was looking for Fuller Street.
Fuller was an offshoot of Cyprus and ran up the edge of West Hill, just as West Third Street ran up the outer edge of the Hill, on the riverfront side of town. Fuller cut through a respectable middle-class residential area, mostly two-story white clapboards that had seen better days but were far from rundown, while West Third crossed through the section filled with near-mansions that were old but not visibly decaying. Raymond Springborn and his wife Linda Sue lived in one of those near-mansions on West Third. Peg Baker lived in an apartment house just off Cyprus on Fuller, in the dip before the rise of the Hill. Between them was Port City.
The apartment house was two-story red brick trimmed in white, white wrought-iron handrails along the upper floor winding down around a wide cement stairway that came up the center front of the building. The structure had a blandly ageless quality: it could’ve been put up twenty years ago or yesterday. The parking lot was bigger than the ten-apartment complex required, and looked as though it might’ve been installed by a landlord who disliked mowing lawns; there were little squares of grass and shrubbery stuck here and there around the concrete lawn, like sprigs of parsley on a big empty plate.
I pulled the rental Ford into the largely vacant lot, only a third-filled now as it was past nine and folks were off to work, these cars remaining being second cars, or belonging to people who worked nights, like Peg Baker. I snuggled in between a station wagon and a Volks and turned off the engine and got out.
The phone book had listed Peg Baker’s address as 121 Fuller, and this was 121 Fuller, all ten apartments of it. Some of the tenants had their names on their mailboxes, six of the ten did anyway, but not Peg Baker. Knowing six of the places weren’t hers narrowed the field, but not enough. And the curtains on those four remaining apartments were all closed, too, in case I wanted to risk getting busted for window-peeking. I could always check with the manager to see which apartment was Peg Baker’s, but the manager lived elsewhere. On the door of a laundry room was a notice giving the manager’s name and address and hours at which to call. The hours were in the evening, but I used the pay phone in the laundry room anyway and tried the manager’s number and a recorded voice asked me to leave a message after the tone and I hung up. Damn.
I was just getting ready to pick one of the four doors at random and knock when I spotted what had to be Peg Baker’s car. Her registration would probably be visible, and on that would be her address. Hopefully that address would be more specific than “121 Fuller.”
It was no chore figuring the car as hers. The surprise was I hadn’t spotted it immediately, but I hadn’t, because it was hidden down there in the end stall on the opposite side of the lot from where I’d parked. It was crouching there behind a big blue four-year-old Caddy.
It was a pink Mustang.
Several years old, but shiny and pink and dentless like new, a sheltered pink baby that never grew up, a Peter Pan of a car, parked way down on the end where nobody could hurt it. The upholstery was pink. The carpeting was pink. The dashboard was pink. The gearshift knob was pink. I was afraid to look under the hood.
My joy at finding the car subsided at once: her registration was taped inside the front window, staring up at me in the face, the useless “121 Fuller” address thumbing its nose at me. It said, “Margaret Anne Baker,” and it said, “State of Iowa Motor Vehicle Licensing Bureau,” and “Port City” and sundry other bureaucratic bullshit, but nowhere did it say Apartment Number Such-and-Such.
What now? Back to pick a door and ask? I’d have to be careful how I went about it, as the laundry room and several windows were decorated with signs saying “No Solicitors Allowed,” warning that a city ordinance called for the immediate jailing of anyone practicing that forbidden art. I reminded myself not to spit on the sidewalk.
I was one hell of a fine detective.
So I wandered back to my car, head hanging low, to regroup my thoughts. I’d intended getting at Raymond Springborn via an indirect route, namely Peg Baker. Just how I would do that, I didn’t know; I would improvise, as time allowed for nothing but improvisation, and then what else could I have done but improvise, never having done this sort of thing before. My only other option would be a frontal approach with Springborn, and what with the body of his murdered brother-in-law Albert Leroy just fresh found, now was a decidedly bad moment to approach Springborn frontally. I could picture myself dropping in on the mournful family, perhaps while Springborn was gathering the sympathies of the Port City Chief of Police. Such a situation could bring up some embarrassing questions, such as, “Who are you?” or “What are you doing here?”
I sat in the Ford, slouched down, trying to think. For two cents I would’ve gone to sleep. For three cents I would’ve never waked up. I kept trying to think, trying. I couldn’t. Maybe Broker was right, maybe I was being an ass, maybe I should give it up. My initial feeling of indignant rage had dissipated by this time. I felt crumpled, like an empty paper cup, used, emptied, discarded.