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By the time Haydon got home Nina had already gone to the studio, leaving word with Gabriela that she would return for lunch. He went straight to the library, sat down at his desk, and called Mooney.
“I need a driver’s license check,” Haydon said. “Can you do it while we talk?”
“Pete’s here,” Mooney said. I’ll get him to punch it up.”
“Good. The name’s Ricky Toy. T-0-y. Chinese-American. It’s probably Richard.” He could hear Mooney relay the information to Lapierre. The office was small and close to the squad room coffeepot. Haydon could hear other voices in the background.
“Okay, he’s sending that through,” Mooney said. “Listen, I spoke with that Ray Tease again like you wanted. The guy’s such a fuckin’ weeny. So upset about poor Wayne. Can’t get over it. Such a shock. Ta-da, ta-da, ta-da. Anyway, I swallowed my urge to puke and had a real talky with him. Says he got along real good with Powell, and that, yes, Powell had privileges the others didn’t have. He said he didn’t see anything wrong with that since it was what Mr. Langer wanted, and after all, Mr. Langer owned the company. Right?
“I asked him if he knew the nature of Powell’s after-hours work, and he said absolutely not. Like it was honorable that he shouldn’t. Did Powell and Mr. Langer ever confer about the outside work during the day? No. How did he know that? Because they never talked period. How did he know that? Because it was his job to know what his employees did during work hours, and Powell never talked with Langer. . ..
“Just a minute.” Mooney covered the mouthpiece on the telephone with only partial success, and yelled to someone to please shut up because he was on the horn and couldn’t hear shit.
“Okay. I asked him if anyone else had access to the place at night, and he said all the department heads had keys. I asked him if it was usual that people worked at night, and he said occasionally, when there was an account deadline that couldn’t be met any other way. But it didn’t happen very often.
“Just a minute.” Pause with mumbling. “Okay, Pete’s got the stuff on Toy coming up on the screen now. Let’s see. Richard Man Toy, thirty-eight years old, five feet eight inches, black hair, brown eyes, one hundred and fifty-five pounds. No restrictions on his license. Had several moving violations in the last three years. One here, one in New Orleans, one in Van Nuys, California. All for speeding. Has a 1984 Mercedes sedan and a 1983 Audi sedan registered in his name. Address: Sixteen-eleven Marquis. That’s it.”
“Have they finished cataloging the footage in Powell’s office?”
“Yeah, they have. Nothing unusual there. All the film’s for their accounts. Nothing’s missing, and there’s nothing there that shouldn’t be.”
“Tease wasn’t very helpful, was he?”
“Naw, the little shit, and he’s never going to be. He doesn’t want to get crossways with his boss. When Langer farts, Tease smells violets.”
“What about Dean Warner? Has Pete been able to talk to him yet?”
“He can’t find him. He’s not home, day or night. You talk to Quinn?”
“Yes. Her relationship to Powell wasn’t what everyone thought. Strictly business, according to her. She doesn’t know anything about his work, but she put me on to Toy, a friend of Powell’s from California days. Also a cameraman.”
“You gonna look him up?”
“Probably. Okay, I guess that’s it, Ed. Just keep after the other things and call me when you come up with something. I’ll type the reports on my interviews and get copies to you two. How are things going down there?”
“Hot. The place looks like backstage at the opera, shit hanging out of the ceiling, cables all over the floors, damned electricians wandering around looking lost. It’s a zoo.”
“Cheer up. It’ll get better.”
“You say.”
“Stay in touch.”
Ignoring his self-imposed strictures regarding cigarettes before lunch, Haydon reached for the green box of Fribourg & Treyers that he had deliberately left at home when he went out that morning. He lit a cigarette with the gold ribbed lighter Nina had given him and inhaled slowly. His eyes fell on two more boxes of books he hadn’t opened, sitting at the end of the refectory table. There would be more than that by the time he got around to cataloging them now.
He ground out the cigarette, irritated with himself for having smoked it. It wouldn’t have been that difficult not to. He could have done it. It really hadn’t been all that good after all.
He turned to the two photographs he had taken from Powell’s bed room. He laid them side by side and looked at Ricky Toy first. Toy was a handsome man, squeaky clean and well groomed, with an open grin that offered no apologies. He was muscular; his stomach and chest rippled, and you could see the swell of his pumped up thighs through the snug tailoring of the white ducks. His hands were draped over the perky upturned bottoms of the two girls with all the self-confidence of a man who never doubted his own worth and who knew that a piece of ass was a piece of ass was a piece of ass. Toy was macho. Toy had fun. And Haydon was willing to bet that Toy looked out for Number One. Though he tried, Haydon could not make out the faces of the two girls whose legs and heart shaped bottoms were so remarkably identical in size and form. Both had long jet hair that fell over their heads and faces almost to the water’s edge.
He looked at the second picture. Jennifer Quinn had been right. The girl wasn’t pretty, but she wasn’t really unattractive either. She was simply plain. Looking at her, it Haydon realized that she would be difficult to describe. She had no distinctive features, only an easily for gettable face whose features were so feeble they almost refused to show up in the photograph.
The girl’s body fared no better. Her legs lacked the necessary sinews that created the liquid lines of the taut limbed Asian women in the other picture. Her calves were uniformly thin, her knees were too obviously cartilage and bone, her thighs unskillfully joined an androgynous pelvis beneath the tailored shorts. Even the summer light conspired against her as it fell full on her face and breasts, blanching the latter of any shadow that would have given them fullness and roundness, presenting them to the camera like two raisins on her bony chest.
Over the years Haydon had seen hundreds of naked women, as victims, or suspects, or evidence, or in some other way tangential or suspected of being tangential to a case. In every instance he looked at them without their consent. Regardless of which category they might fit into, their nakedness had not been meant for him. He never lost the uneasy feeling of intrusion. It seemed especially uncomfortable to him now. In appraising her this way, he could almost feel her humiliation at being so callously assessed. And, of course, others would have to see her as well. All strangers, all making the same prying evaluations of her anatomy.
But his appraisal told him something, or rather, it alerted his intuition. The photograph of the laughing girl, he felt, had captured a moment totally out of character. It was something that she herself projected in the way she laughed, not with abandon, or ease, or vivacity, but with an almost fearful reluctance. She was unaccustomed to everything she was doing in the photograph, to her open nakedness and to the sound of her own voice laughing.
Then there was Powell’s reaction. It had been a simple statement by Quinn: “He showed it to me and laughed about it.” Laughed? In what way? Derisively? Affectionately? Self-consciously? Scornfully? Bawdily? Laughter was not a simple thing, and certainly not here. Why did Powell have her picture on the wall? Not, surely, because he lacked for a pinup girl.
Haydon turned in his chair. Cinco was staring at him, his head slightly lowered as he peeped up through one of the frames in the French door. His tail began to swing. Haydon stood, remembered he was still wearing his suit coat, and took it off. He hung the coat over the back of his chair and took another cigarette from the box, picked up the lighter, and walked out onto the terrace. He paused and performed the rituals with the old collie, talking to him in a low voice as he ran his hand over the dog’s smooth coat. He straightened up, lit the cigarette, and headed for the far end of the terrace with Cinco shuffling along behind.
Leaning on the balustrade, Haydon stared off toward the edge of the grounds where the high rock wall was encrusted with old and new passionflower vines, their mallow blossoms burning in the late morning light as if to store a portion of the sun itself to nourish them in the shadows of the afternoon. A heavy bellied house cat moved through the dappled light atop the wall and stopped momentarily in a patch of fire. Cinco, standing by Haydon’s leg, saw it and closed his mouth, flicking his ears forward. But the urge passed, his ears relaxed, his mouth fell open, and he resumed his soft panting. He lay down where he stood, his eyes still on the cat though without the brightness of curiosity. Old games for young dogs. He wasn’t interested anymore. The cat moved back into the shadows.
Until now Haydon had successfully avoided thinking about Bill Langer. He dreaded having to talk to him, but it was inevitable. Whatever it was that brought him and Powell together could not have been healthy. Langer, the sharp, aggressive, ambitious, executive games man, was somehow tied to the aging beachboy who never quite made it. Could it be something as simple as blackmail? It was an obvious probability.
Even though Haydon was standing on a portion of the terrace shaded by a looming oak, the approaching midday heat had already begun to permeate the still air that lay among the trees. The cigarette smoke didn’t move. The cicadas, which sang the loudest in the greatest heat, had already begun the quavering droning that would persist throughout the day and into the early night. In the space of time it took him to smoke a single cigarette, he had begun to perspire even though he had stood perfectly still in the shade. It was going to be an unbelievable summer.
He went back inside, and Cinco stretched out on the terrace to absorb what was left of the night’s coolness in the slate and stones.
Haydon could not remember Thomas’ number. He looked through the H’s in his address book, but it wasn’t there. He went to the telephone book and then remembered Thomas always had an unlisted number. He hadn’t seen him in such a long time he couldn’t remember if he still lived in the city. He knew there had been some changes. He sat down at his desk again and called the Reuters office. A girl answered.
“I’m trying to locate Thomas Hennessey-excuse me, it’s not Hennessey . . . uh . . . “He had inexplicably forgotten Thomas’ last name.
“Herrick,” she said. “Yes, Herrick.”
“He doesn’t work for us anymore.”
“I know that, but he still lives in the city, doesn’t he? I’ve misplaced his address and thought you’d have it.”
“Yes, I think we do. Just a minute.”
She was gone longer than Haydon thought she would be, and when she came on again she said, “Who wants to know his address?”
“I’m an old friend. I—”
“You couldn’t even remember his last name.”
“Look, my name is Stuart Haydon. I’m a police detective with the Houston Police Department. If you want to call him first to verify that, please do.”
She hesitated a beat and then gave him Herrick’s address and telephone number. He thanked her and started to hang up.
“Listen,” she said. “If you talk to him, tell him hello for Nancy, will you? He’ll remember me. Tell him to give me a call sometime.”
Haydon said he would.
He called the number the girl had given him and was not surprised to hear a recording of Herrick’s deliberate British voice.
“Hello, this is Herrick. I am presently occupied and cannot speak with you at the moment. However, should you care to leave a message at the tone, I shall return your call as soon as I am able. Thank you very much.”
Haydon smiled. “Thomas, this is Stuart Haydon. I’d like to get together with you and pick your brains about something. Will you-”
“Stuart Haydon? Are you the Detective Haydon? Good Lord!” Herrick’s voice overrode the recorder and was followed by a full, rich laugh. “My God, man, where the hell did you come from?”
“Do you always eavesdrop on your recorder like that?”
“I’m in my pajamas and robe, Stuart.” Herrick seemed to think that was an explanation.
‘I’ve been wanting some interesting conversation,” Haydon said. “I think you’re the person I need to see.”
“Well, I’m sure you’re right there. Houston has damn few interesting conversationalists. You and me, Busch and Vanstraten. I won’t talk about petroleum, though. But you don’t want to talk about that, I’ll wager.”
“You win. The dinner’s on me. How about tonight?”
“On one condition.”
“Name it.”
“That you bring Nina. Sometimes you’re too moody for my blood, but Nina has never disappointed me.”
“Done. When shall we pick you up?”
“Where are we going?”
“The Remington.”
‘‘I’ll meet you there.”
“8:00?”
“Superb.”