“Professionally?”
“Yes.”
“He thinks so.” She paused a moment and then smiled. “He liked to dress up like Peter Pan best of all. Maybe that tells you something about him.”
“I’ll work on it. You want another drink?”
“No, not now.”
“Then let’s go find that chili.”
It was nearly eight o’clock when we came out of the Adelphi entrance and turned left. We had decided to walk because the chili parlor that Janet Whistler had discovered was over on Fortieth Street, a little more than six blocks away. The weather was somewhere between crisp and cold and I remember thinking that a bowl of chili would taste good, even if I later had to ransack the medicine cabinet for something to put out the fire.
I spotted him sitting behind the wheel of the car that was parked in a no-parking zone. He didn’t look at me and for a moment I thought he may have felt that if he remained absolutely still, it would make him invisible. The car was a three-year-old yellow Camaro with a 327 engine. I gave him a cheery enough wave, but he didn’t wave back.
“Wait a minute,” I said to Janet Whistler and tried to open the door that was next to the curb, but it was locked. I went around to the driver’s side and tried that door, but it was locked, too. I noticed that the keys were in the ignition. The shoulder harness was strapped across his chest. His eyes were open and so was his mouth, the lips just slightly parted, but now that he was dead, they didn’t look quite so girlish.
Janet Whistler was staring at him through the windshield. “Is he dead?”
“Yes.”
“Who is he?”
“A cop called Francis X. Frann,”
“Do you know him?”
“Yes and I think we’re going to have to skip the chili.”
She nodded. “Has he got anything to do with us?”
“A little. You’d better find Procane and tell him.”
“What’ll I tell him?”
“That the cop called Francis X. Frann is dead, that he’s parked outside my hotel, that I’m going to have to call the cops, that Procane’s probably going to have to talk to them some time tonight, and that he’d better be able to prove where he’s been.”
“Anything else?”
“You’d better scoot.”
She nodded again, turned, and walked quickly up Forty-sixth Street. I went around in front of the car and wrote down the license number and the fact that it was a New Jersey plate. I went back up to my apartment and asked information for the number of Frank Deal. He lived in Brooklyn and a woman answered the phone. When I asked for Deal I could hear her call, “Frank, it’s for you.”
After he said hello I said, “This is St. Ives.”
“Now what?”
“It’s about Officer Frann again.”
“Me and Oller haven’t been able to run him down. Oller’s here now. What’s the matter, Frann still hanging around?”
“Sort of.”
“Where?”
“He’s in a car parked right outside my hotel.”
“Well, hell, he can keep till tomorrow.”
“He might even keep forever.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means he’s dead,” I said and hung up.
16
A tow truck came for the yellow Camaro, an ambulance came for Officer Frann, and Deal and Oller came for me.
“They say he was stabbed,” Deal said, “right in the heart.” He and Carl Oller sat at the poker table. I wandered around the room, making myself useful by straightening pictures, lining up books, and chain-smoking cigarettes.
“Why don’t you sit down, St. Ives?” Oller said. “You’re giving me the jitters.”
“Have a drink,” Deal said. “You look like you could use a drink.”
“I can,” I said and crossed over to the kitchen to pour myself a Scotch. “You want one?”
“Not me,” Oller said.
Deal shook his head. “Me neither.”
I carried my drink over to the poker table and sat down. “All right,” I said, “I’ve told you all I know about Frann.”
“The way it looks to me is he was gonna try to shake down your client,” Oller said. He was wearing a tweed sport coat that wouldn’t quite button anymore because of his stomach. The jacket had gray suede leather patches on its elbows.
“And you haven’t told us the name of your client,” Deal said.
“Or what it was you were buying back for him this morning.”
“Private papers,” I said. “Personal stuff.”
“It must have been goddamned personal if he was willing to pay ninety thousand bucks for it,” Deal said.
“We’re going to have to talk to him,” Oller said.
I nodded. “That’s what I told him.”
“What’d he say?” Deal said.
“He didn’t like it.”
“But he agreed to talk.”
“He agreed.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
Deal looked at Oller who nodded. “Tonight’s good. Who is he?”
I took a long drink of my Scotch and water. “His name’s Procane. Abner Procane.”
The two detectives looked at each other and then Deal shrugged elaborately, bringing his shoulders up high and dropping them. “Never heard of him.”
“What kind of business is he in?” Oller said.
“Investments, I think.”
“Loaded?” Deal asked.
“He’s not poor,” I said.
“I mean really loaded?”
“He’s worth a few million.”
“What I was thinking was if the kid wanted to shake him down for a few thousand, would it bother him enough to do something drastic about it, like sticking a knife in the kid?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I don’t think he’s much of a suspect.”
“But you’re gonna let us decide that, aren’t you?” Oller said and gave me a slow smile to show how sweetly reasonable he thought his request was.
“Sure,” I said.
“I suppose you can account for where you were this afternoon and evening,” Deal said.
“Here.”
“Alone?”
“Most of the time.”
“Who else was here?”
“Frann for one.”
“And for two?”
“A girl.”
“And you were probably sticking it into her while somebody else was sticking it into poor old Frann.”
“Probably.”
“We may want her name,” Oller said.
“I don’t think so.”
“You know something, St. Ives?”
“What?”
“We don’t really give much of a shit what you think.”
“Look,” I said, “I’ve told you all I know. About the airline terminal, about the buy back and about who my client is. I’m not going to bring anybody else into this unless you charge me with something and I probably wouldn’t even do it then.”
“He’s a real fuckin gentleman, isn’t he, Frank?”
“Knock it off,” Deal said. “What’s this Procane’s number?”
I told him and he said, “Is he home?”
“I think so.”
Deal rose and crossed to the phone, dialed the number, and then identified himself. “We’d like to talk to you, Mr. Procane. I think St. Ives has told you why.” He listened for a moment and then said, “Ten o’clock’ll be fine,” and hung up the phone. He walked around the room looking at pictures and books, even taking down a volume of Kipling’s poetry and thumbing through it, perhaps looking for “If.”
After a while Deal turned and said, “We got ourselves assigned to this one, St. Ives, because we’re pretty sure it’s tied into the Boykins killing. But Frann wasn’t just some two-bit hustler who got himself beat to death. He was a cop and that means that we’re not going to be working it alone. There’s going to be a whole swarm of us because cops don’t like cops getting killed. Am I making myself clear?”