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She had agreed to meet him at James Coney Island, downtown at Travis and Dallas streets across from Foley’s department store. That would be best, she had said, because it was far enough away from her office that they were not likely to run into anyone she knew, and yet it was close enough for her to walk there and back on her lunch hour and still have time to eat.
Haydon had gotten there first and was sitting at a window table, watching the people come in and wondering if he could pick her out of the crowd before she started looking around and gave herself away. He did. Outside on the sidewalk she had paused at the door, assumed a determined expression, and then leaned against the chrome bar and pushed her way inside.
He half stood; she saw him, stopped, looked at him with a slightly surprised expression and started toward him. He watched as she made her way through the tables. She wore a lavender shirtwaist dress that went to midcalf and had shoulder pads reminiscent of the styles of the forties. Her taffy colored hair was pulled back and upward at both temples and fixed with combs in the style of Betty Grable. A white beaded purse was tucked under one arm as she approached.
“Could I see your identification, please,” she blurted. She said it with the mechanical determination of a much-rehearsed speech that was not to be denied.
“Of course,” Haydon said. “We’d better sit down.” He reached into his breast pocket and unobtrusively laid his wallet on the table. She leaned over and looked at it. Her face was oval, and her eyelashes were taffy like her hair.
“I’m sorry,” she said, relieved, pushing it back to him as she looked up. “I guess that could be forged. I’ve seen that on TV. Forged I.D.s.” She gave a short laugh, a little foolish grin. “I did call the police station to make sure you were real.”
“It’s all right,” Haydon said. “It’s good that you checked it out. We don’t have much time. What would you like?”
“Oh, just a coney and a Seven-Up, sugar free. A bag of chips, maybe.”
He stood in line and took a plastic tray and slid it along the chrome railing, getting two of the same thing, napkins, and a couple of straws. The black cooks with little white paper caps worked with the economy and swiftness of machines, their eyes never looking up as they sweated in the nearly visible smells of hot franks and mustard and onions. At the end of the line he paid and came back to the table and unloaded the tray. She waited.
“Go ahead,” he said, “I’ll talk while you eat, and then you talk while I eat. I learned a long time ago that it’s the most economical way.” He smiled.
“I guess so.” She looked at him curiously and then began eating her hot dog. She darted her eyes around the crowded lunchroom. It was a good place for a quick meal, and the small tables had a constant turnover of the men and women who poured out of the office buildings at noon to stretch their legs, catch some sun, and get a bite to eat.
‘‘I’ve read your interview with detectives Mooney and Lapierre,” Haydon said. “I’d like to go over a few additional points with you. I’ll be brief, and you can answer in any order you like when you’re ready.” He paused, and she nodded, chewing, and looking at him with wide, expectant eyes. ‘‘I’d like to know if Wayne Powell ever brought anyone to the office with him. Like a friend, someone who might hang around for a few minutes at the end of the day waiting for him to finish so they could go home. Anyone after hours. Were you ever there at night when he was working? Have you ever met his girlfriend, a woman named Jennifer Quinn?”
He paused at this point to let the questions settle a little, then continued.
“Did you ever get a look at what it was that Powell worked on at night? What was his attitude toward his night work? Was he protective? Indifferent? Are you aware of any meetings between Mr. Langer and Powell? Did you ever see them talking together? If so, do you know what about? How did Powell get along with Tease? Any tension there? Do you know if he ever discussed Powell’s night work with him?”
Patricia Beamon raised her hand to stop him as she chewed quickly and wiped her mouth. She swallowed and took a quick sip of her Seven Up.
“You’d better stop right there and let me cover what I can. I’m not sure I’m going to remember all your questions.”
She took another sip of her drink, looked out the window to the bright hot sidewalk a moment, and frowned slightly in the glare as she gathered her thoughts.
“The negative points first. I never saw Wayne talking with Mr. Langer. I was never there at night when he was working. There was no tension between Wayne and Tease, but I would say that’s more likely because Ray’s a marshmallow. If Mr. Langer said he should keep hands off Wayne, then Ray would never rock the boat no matter how much Wayne might goof off on the job.”
“Did Langer tell Tease to keep his hands off Wayne?”
“Well, I assumed it was something like that. That’s what he told Dean.”
“Dean Warner?”
“Right.”
“Did Warner tell you that?”
“We-Alice and I-assumed that’s what happened. I mean, after Dean talked with Mr. Langer, Wayne went right on doing what he was doing. It made Dean furious, but he didn’t do anything about it. And Wayne kind of rubbed it in too, when Dean was within hearing distance. He’d make little comments about ‘other’ stuff that he had to work on ‘later.’ Wayne tended to be a real smartass. He and Dean didn’t get along too well from the beginning. Of course, that didn’t go on long. Dean quit, you know, a little while after his talk with Mr. Langer.”
“Has Tease ever said anything about Powell’s night work?” Haydon was eating now. The coney was good, with sweet onions.
“No.”
The musical chairs in the lunchroom had picked up speed as the twelve o’clock lunch hour overlapped with the one o’clock crowd starting to come in. Chrome chair legs scrubbed across the floor by the dozens, and people shouted at friends when they saw a table opening up. The line at the counter stretched back to the door, where people had crowded in a knot so they wouldn’t have to stand outside on the blistering sidewalk.
“Did you ever inquire or hint about it?” Haydon had to raise his voice.
She shook her head. “You’ve never seen Powell bring anyone to the office? No one ever came to see him for any reason?”
“I saw his girlfriend once. A couple of months ago. Alice came into the lab and told me she’d been at the snack bar when this girl came up to the receptionist and asked for Wayne. Alice said she was sitting out there waiting for him. So I went out and pretended to get something. Boy, was I surprised.”
“Why?”
“She was young, and really pretty. Good build, beautiful white skin that just glowed, and gorgeous red gold hair that you could tell she really took care of. Green eyes. I mean green. Dressed in classy clothes. I remember she was wearing a really nice rust-on-rust striped dress with bateau neck and dolman sleeves.” Patricia Beamon shook her head and her eyes sparkled with admiration. “Looked like a million. Sharp.” She nodded.
“Why did that surprise you?”
“Well, Wayne . . . it’s kind of weird talking about him now.” She shrugged. “Wayne was sleazy, in a way. He wanted to be cool, but his idea of cool was about twenty years out of style. He came off kind of third rate. A loser.” She shook her head. “But this girl, she was something else. I just couldn’t see them together. But that happens a lot. Really classy girl with some squirrel. You ever notice that?” She leaned toward him earnestly, waiting for him to agree with her.
“Sometimes,” Haydon said. “You never saw anyone else up there with him or coming to see him?”
“Our clients would come to see him sometimes, but I know them.
No one other than her, and I only saw her that one time.”
“What about Alice?”
“What?”
“Has she ever commented about noticing anything?”
The girl winced one side of her face in an equivocal expression that said Alice was another story.
“I’m not sure Alice is all that observant,” she said. “She’s kind of mousy; in character, I mean. Timid, quiet. She’s a sweet girl, but she’s not real quick about social nuances. I mean, I’m not sure she’d notice something subtle, like secret interoffice romances. The meaningful glance sort of thing.”
“You said you were never there at night while Powell was working.
Did you ever see what he was working on?”
She casually pulled a potato chip from its sack and munched it carelessly with her front teeth as she thought about his question. A wispy tendril of her taffy hair had pulled loose from her combs and floated like a piece of seaweed near her eyes.
“I don’t know,” she said, with a kind of grimace and scrunching of her shoulders that meant she was walking on eggshells.
“What do you mean?”
“Well . . . “ She paused, trying to decide how she could put the best light on it. “One morning I was the first one to get to the lab. Whoever comes in first is supposed to get things started. You know. I was going around making the coffee, turning on the drying drums, starting the water in the sinks, all that, and I went into Wayne’s office. I didn’t have anything to do in there, I just-you know-stuck my head in. Well, I was curious. The VTR was sitting there, and I just punched the button. It was Vietnam news footage. Combat footage. Some pretty heavy stuff. You could actually see people getting shot, being killed. It was something. I saw a little of it, and then I shut it off and ran it back a ways hoping he wouldn’t notice. I guess he didn’t; he never said anything about it. But that was the only time I ever saw anything that wasn’t company footage. I guess he was working the night before and inadvertently left the tape. I don’t know. It never happened again.”
“Were you surprised at the footage?”
“Well, yes, I guess. I don’t know.”
“What do you think he was doing with it?”
She ate another chip, sipped her Seven-Up. “I don’t know.” She tilted her head a little. “Maybe he was working on a documentary for someone.” That sounded good to her. “Yeah, that would be my guess.”
Haydon finished his own hot dog while the girl munched her chips.
“This is really wild,” she said. “I’ve never been involved in anything like this before. Do you have any idea who did it?”
“We’re looking into it,” Haydon said.
The girl studied him. Then, as if she had decided to change the subject of her thoughts, she said, “We’ve got the creeps up there. At five after five that place is empty. No one hangs around anymore. Poor Alice isn’t even coming to work, claims she has the flu.” Suddenly she looked at her watch. “Say, do you have any more questions? I’ve got to get back.”
“No. That’s it for now,” Haydon said. “I appreciate your taking the time.” He reached into his pocket and gave her a card. “Will you call me if you think of anything else you might want to add to what you’ve already told me?”
She looked at the card and then up at him. “Sure.” Her eyes stayed with his a moment. “Oh, I owe you for the coney,” she said, and started digging in her purse.
Haydon shook his head. “My pleasure.”
Patricia Beamon looked up at him again. Haydon could see her mind working. “I’ll bet you need my home telephone number, don’t you.”
“That’s okay. I can get you through your office.”
“Oh,” she said. “Look, I’ll be glad to give it to you.” She touched her combs.
“It’s not necessary,” Haydon said. He stood, and she stood too, tucking the purse under her arm. She swiped at the tendril of seaweed.
“Well, I guess I’ll probably see you later.” She hesitated. “Thanks,” Haydon said.
He watched her work her way through the crowded diner, through the wad of people at the door, and out to the sidewalk. She gave him one last glance, through the plate glass window, and smiled before she disappeared around the side of the building.