“So he kept up with his past work-I mean, he didn’t lose touch being out here instead of in New York?”
Jack Plummer leaned over and patted his telephone. “Welcome to the twentieth century, Joe. Between this, the computer, and the fax, all Tucker Wentworth missed out on were the power lunches and the attending heartburn. He’d already culled a lifetime’s worth of contacts. All he had to do when he joined us was maintain them.”
I gave him a skeptical look.
He held up both his hands. “He’s an elder statesman. He doesn’t need to earn his stripes in the fast lane anymore; nor does he need to know all the nitty-gritty about who’s screwing who. He can play a more general game now and be just as successful. He can also afford to be generous, which does Morris, McGill good and obviously didn’t hurt our friend Charlie Jardine.”
“So what made that relationship click?”
Plummer shrugged. “Who knows? The son he never had? Some shared interest I know nothing about? Usually it’s a little thing, some initial connection. It grows from there; I don’t know why.”
“What did they do? Spend hours together in the office doing a My Fair Lady imitation?”
Plummer laughed again. “If they did, they kept their singing low. Yeah, they spent time together, but they both had their own work to do. I used to see Charlie doing a lot of reading in his spare time, presumably homework Tucker had assigned him. I guess they spent non-office hours together, too, but I don’t know for sure. You have to understand that Charlie was amazingly bright. He soaked up information like a blotter. I think a lot of his education from Tucker consisted of just being pointed in the right direction. That’s probably what made it so gratifying to Tucker-it was easy and rewarding. The American Dream.”
I mulled over all he had said for a few moments. “I take it Wentworth knows about his death by now?”
Plummer shook his head sorrowfully. “I guess so; everyone else does. He was in this morning, but he’s out of town until tomorrow night on business. I’m sure he heard the news on the radio, though.”
“So Katz hasn’t talked with him?”
“Not here. That doesn’t mean he didn’t drive his car through the poor bastard’s front door before Tucker left.”
I couldn’t resist asking, “What about McDonald? Did he come by?”
Plummer smiled. “Better manners. He called, but I stiffed him, too.”
I got to my feet. “Will you let me know if anything comes up I might be interested in?”
“Sure, if I think it’s fair to Tucker.”
I nodded. “Okay. Oh, there was something else. Do you know if Wentworth helped finance ABC Investments?”
Plummer looked thoughtful. “Finance it? I haven’t the slightest idea. I don’t doubt he steered some business their way, but that would stand to reason. You’ll have to ask him. If he did supply the financing, it’ll be in the public record-by law.”
“And what about Arthur Clyde? Do you know him?”
“Nope. I think I’ve seen him in the building a couple of times, when he was visiting Tucker, but I’m not even sure I’d recognize him if he walked in the door right now.”
“Okay. Thanks, Jack.”
“You bet. Give my best to Gail.”
Jack Plummer’s information had been full, detailed, and enlightening, but all it had done for me was to render Jardine’s portrait even murkier.
Charlie Jardine had come across as a young eager-beaver-bright, a quick learner, full of intelligent questions-a man on the go. Had that jibed with everything else I knew of his past and personality, I really would have been flummoxed by his grisly demise, but the contrasts kept my interest keen. For example, what did a golly-gee, super-motivated gofer have in common with Rose Woll’s portrait of a reckless, irresponsible, sexual sybarite?
And why had a man of minimal education and a dead-end future suddenly shifted gears? Which button had been pushed? Was it the death of his parents and the sudden inheritance? Had there been a bond there that had held him captive, which when severed had allowed him to soar? Or had his apparent aimlessness fresh out of high school merely been the signs of a man finding a foothold? And why the obsession to separate sex from emotion-the manipulativeness implied by all those mirrors and oils and the cocaine? Despite Rose Woll’s appreciation of him, Charlie seemed to me as sensual as an expert lathe operator, producing brilliant, complex results by coldly mechanical means.
People do not get themselves systematically executed like Charlie had without having gotten someone extremely pissed off. And despite his business partner, his employer, and one of his girl friends all agreeing that the dead man had been a very nice guy, I couldn’t shake Plummer’s image of Jardine as a deep, dark emotional well.
The paradox was, I found all that strangely heartening. It made me feel that in pursuing Charlie Jardine, I was following the right track.
The mood didn’t last. As I walked down High Street, Stan Katz poked his nose out of the Dunkin’ Donuts. “I was wondering when you’d get back.”
I looked at him incredulously. “You’ve been staking me out?”
He grinned. “Sure. You think you guys are the only ones who do that?”
“I thought you’d have better things to do. Christ, we came up with a fresh corpse for you. Why aren’t you hanging around down there, or did McDonald beat you out again?”
He gave me a sour expression. “I knew about Jardine before he did; I just don’t have a public outlet every hour on the hour. Besides, it’s no big deal-who cares when a body is ID’d? You people would have ’fessed up soon enough anyhow.”
He shifted gears, barely bothering to sound nonchalant. “I heard somebody call the stiff ‘Milly,’ but that didn’t mean anything to me.”
“Millard Crawford, called Milly for short. You can find out more about him in the court records. He was a regular customer. Shot at close range.”
Katz stared at me, his eyes narrowed. “What’re you up to?”
“Meaning?”
“Usually it’s ‘no comment,’ or ‘talk to the SA.’ Why so chatty?”
I turned to cross the street. “Fine. No comment, then.”
He reached out and touched my elbow. “No, no. Don’t get your shorts in a twist. I was just surprised, that’s all.”
“You know, Stanley, I’m not uncooperative just for fun. But you nag and nag and nag like a kid who doesn’t know when to quit. You should learn to win people over.”
He was shaking his head, unconvinced by my contrived irritation: “That’s not it. You want me to chase after Crawford instead of Jardine. Why aren’t you at today’s murder scene right now?”
The clever son of a bitch had me there. That was exactly why I’d given him Milly’s name. “Wouldn’t do any good. Besides, I was the first one there; rode in the ambulance with the guy. Tyler and his boys’re doing the technical stuff now. I’ll get into it later.”
He ignored me, correctly sensing he was on the right track. “In the interest of fair play, I was thinking I should get some comments from you about Jardine before I file my story.”
“Sure.” He’d turned tables on me. Now I was the one wondering what card he had up his sleeve. We may have been natural antagonists, but I had to admit he was tough, determined, and damned good at his job; all qualities I would have admired if he’d been a cop.
“For example, you just went to Morris, McGill, where Jardine was once employed, to investigate the highly unusual connection between that firm and ABC Investments.”
“Really? I thought I went there to hear them laugh about how they told you to take a hike.”
“I also know that you people think Crawford and Jardine were connected, and that you were about to question Crawford before he was killed.”
I smiled at him. “You didn’t even know Crawford’s name two minutes ago.”
He flared. “The name of the guy’s irrelevant; I heard you tell Dispatch you were parked at Horton Place just before all hell broke loose. You were there to interview somebody, only it turns out somebody beat you to it. Crawford and Jardine are part of a pattern.”