“Why not? Who would know? His name was Pender then, like Joel’s. He lives lies, even believes them himself. It isn’t what a man is, it’s what he thinks he is-Joel says that. It isn’t who you are, it’s who people think you are. Joel’s got a million sayings.”
“If Keefer tried to get Francesca back, went down there to make a play, would that have made you tell Francesca what you knew? Would he have tried to stop you telling if he thought he had a chance with Francesca?”
She was silent. Then, “I always wanted Frank, even when he threw me over and I went to New York. He knew that. I might have told. But Frank’s no killer, it’s not in him.”
“A man who lives by lies, believes his own lies?”
She didn’t answer. I wanted her to think about it.
I said, “Who’s Joel Pender, Celia?”
“Frank’s uncle. From out west somewhere, always talking about cowboys. He’s been all over, I guess, a drifter. Frank always looked up to Joel, the exciting uncle when Frank was a kid in Pennsylvania. To me Joel’s a bum, but he’s mean and tough for his size. Half Frank’s size, and Frank’s afraid of him. When he’s drunk he boasts about being some kind of bodyguard once, running gambling games. I’ve seen him carry a gun sometimes even now.”
“Why does the Mayor give him jobs? Patronage?”
“Who knows? The Mayor likes him, I guess. He worked for the Mayor once a long time ago. Worked for that old man Emil Van Hoek, too. The Mayor’s wife’s father, you know?”
“Celia,” I said, “if Frank killed Francesca, and someone knew that, Frank would kill again, wouldn’t he?”
“Frank wouldn’t kill any-”
They were there in the living room. Two of them. One was Frank Keefer. The other was a scrawny little man with a dark, weather-beaten face, his small eyes sunk in deep sockets. He wore a cheap suit, looked sixty but I knew was younger, and stood tall for his five-feet-six or so. He moved more like his real age-maybe forty-five despite the aged face. To my left, low and fast toward my armless side, while Frank Keefer charged straight at me.
I tried to duck, and took a roundhouse right lead on my head that knocked me over a chair. The chair got in Keefer’s way, and I got up and jumped to the right away from the small man. I dug into my pocket for my pistol.
“Keefer, hold it!” I cried. “I just want-”
Keefer wasn’t listening. He charged like a bull, and I evaded again, staying away from the little man. Celia Bazer was screaming at Keefer. The small man grabbed her, slapped her face, and Keefer came on again, his big fists ready. I had no choice. I slipped aside again, he was an awkward amateur, and hit him across the face with my pistol.
He howled, a long line of red blood on his cheek, but tried once more. I hit him on the mouth with the gun. Blood spurted at me. He grabbed for his broken mouth, sat down on the floor, and stared up at me in disbelief.
I waved the gun at the scrawny one. “Get over near him.”
The small man went. In the corner Celia Bazer nursed her slapped face. The two men glared at me, Keefer moaning.
14
“You’re a rough pair, you are,” I said. “Why?”
“You always go around accusing people of murder?” the scrawny one said.
Now I saw that his cheap suit had been retailored to look handmade, his shirt was dazzlingly white, and something glittered in his tie. A stickpin, with a chip diamond set to look twice its size.
“You said I killed Fran!” Frank Keefer mumbled through blood and broken teeth. He stared at a tooth in his hand, incredulous and afraid of any injury.
“Did you?” I said.
“Why would he, mister?” the small one said. “That kid was our trip to heaven. If you’re here, you know that.”
He had drifter and con man written all over him. His cheap clothes made to look flashy with fake touches a drifter learns in a hundred vagrant tanks. I guessed that there had been times when he’d had newspaper for a shirt and burlap for shoes. The kind of sharp, clever face that always lost out no matter how much he schemed, because he was never quite smart enough to carry a scheme through. But there was violence, too. Violence of the kind that is dangerous when it has a bigger power behind it-bodyguard, vigilante, deputy sheriff.
“You’re Joel Pender?” I said.
He didn’t like my knowing his name. It was pure habit-a man who automatically tried to hide himself.
“I don’t know you, mister,” he said.
“Dan Fortune. I’m a private detective looking for Francesca Crawford’s killer. The New York police are in my corner. All I have, to do is whistle.”
“Then whistle and damn you!” Frank Keefer said through his broken mouth. “Look at my face!”
“It’ll heal and give you character,” I said. “Why start fights when you can’t fight? Maybe you just thought it would be easy to beat a one-armed man? Fight cripples?”
“You were pumping Celia, cripple,” Joel Pender said. He was a sweet man. “Why don’t you talk to us straight?”
“Fine,” I said. “Keefer, what did you talk about down in New York with Francesca Crawford? When you visited her?”
“I never went down to Fran-”
Celia Bazer spoke from her corner. “He was in that hotel, Frank. He heard us talking.”
“Heard?” Frank Keefer said, licked blood.
“Heard,” I said. “All of it, including lies. Muriel Roark told you Francesca was with Celia, and you got down to New York on Tuesday-the day she was killed.”
“I never went near her!”
“You didn’t know she was alone in the apartment?”
“No! I didn’t know Cele wasn’t back until after-”
Joel Pender said. “Shut up, Frank. This guy’s got something in mind.”
I said, “You thought Celia might be back, would be in her own bed that Tuesday night?”
“I didn’t go near the place until Wednesday,” Keefer said.
“No,” I said. “You were seen Tuesday evening. Maybe you came back that night, climbed in the window looking for Celia who would tell Francesca you still had a wife, had served time for wife-beating. You had made a new play for Francesca, maybe she gave you some hope. But if Celia knew, and talked…? So you came to kill Celia. It was dark, you were scared, Celia’s bed was occupied. Who else would be in that bed? So you stabbed her-only Celia wasn’t back, and you killed Francesca.”
Frank Keefer forgot his bleeding mouth. Only abject fear would make him do that. A fear that saw himself facing a judge, convicted, waiting to be sentenced to some narrow cell for the rest of his natural life-no more schemes, no more women, no more dreams of a golden future.
“You’re a liar!” he said.
Joel Pender faced danger a different way-with a sharp, cool calculation. His teeth ready, careful.
“He’s fishing, Frank,” Pender said. “If it happened like he says, no one could prove it, and he wouldn’t be talking.”
“Unless Frank was seen that night,” I said.
“I couldn’t have been,” Keefer said. “I wasn’t there. Anyway, I couldn’t have-”
“Shut up, Frank,” Pender said, and to me, “Who saw Frank?”
“Maybe Abram Zaremba, or one of his men checking up on Francesca,” I said. “He was killed last night, and where were you two last night?”
“Commissioner Zaremba?” Frank Keefer said, shaky.
Joel Pender had nothing to say.
I said, “It looks like Zaremba could have known who murdered Francesca. She saw the killer of Mark Leland, who was investigating the Black Mountain Lake project. Maybe Zaremba was having her tailed, at least, just to be sure she knew nothing vital. She was down in New York for a reason, I’m sure-hiding, using a false name, meeting older men. For all I know she could have been mixed with you two in some scheme to stop Zaremba, a little blackmail, or-”
Frank Keefer said, turned to Joel Pender, “Tell him, Joel! Tell him what Fran was doing. I don’t want to be tied in with any murder of Commissioner Zaremba, no way!”
“I told you shut up,” Pender said.