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The conversation with Philip Greiner left Haydon feeling low, for several reasons. Greiner had had more than his share of personal tragedies, and it was difficult not to be influenced by the disheartening details of his story, despite the fact that he related them with a surprising amount of philosophical acceptance. Somehow Haydon didn’t feel that his own introspective bent would have taken him that far under similar circumstances. Greiner was a certain kind of survivor. Whatever it was that made the man endure, Haydon felt no kinship with it. He envied the dying man’s ability to reach ever deeper within himself and drag up handfuls of strength.
Haydon found himself once again in the late afternoon traffic. He knew better than to take the Loop. He turned off Memorial Drive onto Chimney Rock and followed it across Buffalo Bayou. Just past Woodway at the Tanglewood intersection, he turned left and followed the broad residential drive to San Felipe, where he turned left again and headed across the northern edge of the Galleria/Post Oak area toward the Remington on the other side of the Loop. He was too preoccupied even to become frustrated by the stubborn traffic, which inched along in the sweltering afternoon heat.
The other depressing thing about the conversation with Greiner, of course, was what he had learned about Roeg and Langer. He was afraid that Langer, whether he knew it or not, was in too deep to get out. The power Roeg offered his executives was an enormous seduction. Every day in this city men succumbed to far less enticement than he had held out to Langer. One way or the other, Langer was in trouble. He knew something about Powell’s death, if he hadn’t actually killed him himself, and he was covering it up to protect his own interests or Roeg’s, if there was any difference at this point.
Haydon passed under the Loop and turned onto Briar Oaks Lane, following the sweep of the drive into the entrance of the Remington. He left the Vanden Plas with the valet and went inside. As he passed the Living Room, he quickly scanned the guests to see if Siddons was there. Sometimes the old man took a few drinks while he waited for his wife to join him for dinner. He wasn’t there, and Haydon continued along the corridor to the lounge. He stopped at the steward’s booth and left his beeper. He didn’t like to have the thing go off when he was around people. The steward would come get him if it was necessary.
Before going into the lounge, he crossed the foyer to the telephone rooms. Gabriela answered, and Haydon asked if she had heard from Nina. Yes, Nina was having dinner with Mr. Mandel and the Nordstroms at Tony’s. She wanted him to join them at eight o’clock. There was not much mail; she read him the envelopes. There had been a call from Mr. Clay, the accountant, and a woman had dropped a package by for him a couple of hours earlier. Haydon tensed.
“Who was it?”
“She didn’t leave no name.”
“Did you ask?”
“No.”
“What’s in the package?”
“How do I know?”
“She didn’t say?”
“No.”
“What did she look like?”
“A woman. What do you mean, ‘what’? A woman.”
“Can you describe her?”
There was a long pause.
“I guess not. She was nothing particular.”
Haydon gave up. He thanked her and told her that if Nina called again to tell her he couldn’t make it. He was sorry. He returned across the foyer and went into the lounge and bar. The dark wood paneled rooms with low-beamed ceilings weren’t crowded; he was glad. He couldn’t really decide whether he wanted a table or not and walked through the lounge area to try to make up his mind. A couple of his favorite alcoves were already taken, so he circled around to the bar again and took a small table near the back. He had a good view of the bar and the entrance. His eyes rested in that general direction now, past two huge bronze bulls that sat on the backs of the leather covered wall seats that faced the two main dining areas.
He ordered a Tanqueray and lime from the waiter and lit a cigarette. He was almost embarrassed that the urge for a cigarette had come to him automatically when he ordered a drink. But it was good; it was very good.
Nina knew he wouldn’t accept the invitation to dinner, and he was amused at the thought of the panic Race must have felt when Nina insisted on inviting him. He wondered if Race had tried to dissuade Nina from making the offer. If he had, it only irritated her.
His thoughts wandered back to Langer. Alice Parnas had provided Haydon with a sound connection between Powell and Toy and Latin American war footage. He had the connection between Roeg and Langer and war footage from Philip Greiner. And he had a connection between Roeg and Langer and Latin America from Siddons’ knowledge of their activities down there through CIA contracts. It was a combination of a lot of probables. There was no direct proof that Toy was working for Roeg, but it was obvious he had been. And from what Greiner said about Langer’s responsibilities, he was probably the one who dealt with Toy and was juggling the Toy/Powell operation. That put him in a bad position.
The questions were: Was Powell killed because of what he’d seen on footage he was processing? Probably. Was it footage Toy had given him? Possibly. If it was the usual war footage, what could the subject have been that would have warranted Powell’s death? Something involving the CIA? Possibly. Who would have thought it necessary that Powell die for what he had seen? If it was CIA related, it could have been absolutely anything. Roeg could have wanted him killed if the tapes had revealed something of his companies’ involvement with covert activities. Langer could have wanted the tape kept secret too. It wouldn’t be great publicity for his company to have it spread about that it worked for the CIA. If this was the direction in which the answers lay, why did they even let it get into Powell’s hands in the first place? Haydon lit another cigarette and nodded to the waiter for a second Tanqueray.
Maybe Toy was running a little game on the side, setting up an extortion scam based on something he had filmed down there that was incriminating to Roeg International or Langer Media. If so, he might have given the video to Powell to process (would Powell have been in on it or would he have been processing the tape innocently?) and then someone (Langer?) surprised him while he was processing it, discovered the extortion possibility, and killed Powell to shut him up and then put out tracers for Toy. That would explain why Toy had dropped out of sight. But if Toy had disappeared, it was because he was aware that his extortion plans had been discovered. And when would he have first become aware of that? He hadn’t picked up Thursday’s paper, which means he probably had moved out Wednesday night. The night Powell was murdered.
What a damn mess. Why would Toy want to murder the man to whom he’d given the tapes to process? Did he need Powell’s expertise, then find it necessary to dispose of him once he had served his purpose? That didn’t seem right. He would have done it differently. Why involve Powell like that if you knew you were going to have to kill him afterward? Surely there would have been a better way to handle it.
He needed to talk to Dystal. Go over it with him, let the old bear mull it over in his mind. Whatever was going on, it didn’t bode well for William Langer.
Haydon lit his third cigarette and motioned to the waiter. He ordered a third Tanqueray. He finished them both as he watched the lounge and bar fill with the pre-dinner crowd. Some were waiting out the traffic, like himself; some were regulars at the bar who had no use for the white-clothed tables but sat looking at themselves and the others in the reflection of the long mirror.
Haydon watched one couple who, like himself, sat at an out of the way corner table. They were both in their early forties, he guessed, the woman a little nervous as she sipped her drink, the man tensely pensive, dabbing the bottom of his sweating glass on the white tablecloth. The woman said something, and the man shook his head slowly, rejecting the remark with hopeless resignation. She turned to him, her eyes no longer evasive, and put her hand on his as she spoke again, her expression pleading. Haydon could almost see the tears.
The man listened without looking at her, his face growing emotionless, afraid of showing something. He let go of his glass and rubbed his face with both hands. When he removed them his face seemed more tired, depleted. The woman leaned closer, looked as though she might embrace him, kiss him. She had forgotten everyone else in the room. The man hadn’t. He glanced quickly around, caught Haydon’s eyes. They stared at each other a moment and then Haydon looked away, took the last pull on his cigarette, and put it out.
When he dared look back their way, the man was dabbing his glass on the cloth again, and the woman had moved away from him, looking nervous once more. Haydon had seen hundreds of affairs. They were all traps. A few rare ones would survive the heat of their sexual excitement, become something more than what they were in spite of what they were. All of them were messy.
Haydon didn’t want to leave. He ordered dinner, a sauteed veal steak with morels and chanterelles, which he ate with a glass of red Bourgueil. He was almost through with the last of the steak when he saw the steward come through the door of the bar and say something to the captain, who looked through the amber light to Haydon. Haydon’s stomach tightened as the captain walked toward him. He drank the last bit of Bourgueil.
“Your beeper’s signaling, Mr. Haydon. Do you want to call from in here?”
“No,” Haydon said, getting up. “I’ll step outside.”
~
ED MOONEY WAS STANDING under the big cottonwoods, the cherry and blue flashers from the coroner’s van and the patrol cars alternating across his face as he talked with a couple of patrolmen. The neighbors stood around in little clusters on the edges of the light, watching the men talk. A couple of boys without shirts rested their arms on the handlebars of their bicycles, chewing gum and waiting to see the body. Everyone was waiting, forgoing their favorite television programs, standing in their undershirts, in their robes, slapping mosquitoes, and waiting for a chance to see the body.
Haydon parked behind one of the patrol cars and took his time going up to the sidewalk where the van was standing with its back doors swung open. The early night was close and muggy. White Oak Bayou wasn’t that far away. The two patrolmen turned around as Haydon came up.
“She’s just like the neighbor lady found her,” Mooney said as he turned and went with Haydon to the front door. He pulled open the screen with the spiderweb grillwork and they went into the living room, turned left through a doorway, and across a tiny hallway into the bedroom.
Alice Parnas was on the bed in her little bedroom amid the relics of another generation and the smell of oldness. She lay on her back in a clumsy sprawl, her faded yellow robe pulled open to her waist where it was cinched, then thrown open again from her waist down. Sweat had matted the hair around her face, and even in death her eyes were swollen from crying. There was a hole worn near the elastic waistband of her faded blue panties. In one of her pale hands she gripped a brown plastic medicine bottle without its lid.
One of the coroner’s investigators from Vanstraten’s office stood near the opened window that looked out into the front yard. The voices over the radios crackled in the still heat outside.
“Suicide, huh,” the coroner’s investigator said, winking. His name was Ernest Leighton, and he combed his hair in the oily pompadour waves of the fifties. He smoked Kools and sometimes left the crumpled up empty packs at the scenes he caught.
“This is all there is to it?” Haydon asked. He was looking at Alice Parnas’ swollen eyes, her cheekbones even flatter in death.
“Exactly,” Mooney said.
“I haven’t touched her,” Leighton said.
They all looked at her.
“They don’t always have ahold of the bottle like that,” Leighton said.
“Everybody’s a detective,” Mooney said, looking at Leighton. “Next door neighbor came over and found her,” he told Haydon. “Said Parnas’ old Chevy was in the driveway so she knew she must be here. House was open. She called several times, no answer, so she went in and found her. Officer Weingarten out there got the call, came by, and radioed in. While he was waiting he looked around the bedroom and saw your card on her clothes chest over there. Called it in. Lieutenant called me, I called you.”
Haydon heard somebody laugh outside. The sound stayed in his head and mixed with the sound of Alice’s sobbing, the extremes of hu man emotion confused in the crowded little bedroom where Alice’s nakedness was once more the focus of strangers’ unloving eyes, eyes that didn’t really want to see her naked but looked anyway because by dying without an explanation she had forfeited all her rights to stop them.
“Where’s the lid to the bottle?” Haydon asked.
Mooney looked around. “I don’t know,” he said. “You seen it, Ernie?”
“Probably up in that robe somewhere,” Leighton said. He didn’t move to look for it.
“Go ahead with her,” Haydon said. He turned and walked out of the room. He stood in the middle of the living room and looked at the dowdy chair where Alice had sat and cried that morning. The cherry and blue flashers were washing past the spiderweb grill on the screen door. He lit a cigarette. He was smoking too much. He had gotten it down to six a day while he was on leave, and he had already had twice that many today.
“So what do you think,” Mooney said.
Haydon shrugged. If he said what he really thought, Mooney would think he was losing touch with reality.
“I was going to come back and talk to her again,” Haydon said. “She was holding back a great deal. She knew more about those tapes Powell was working on than she wanted me to believe. I don’t know, Ed. I just couldn’t press her on it this morning. I should have, I didn’t. It was a big mistake.”
As they stood in the living room, he told Mooney about his conversation with Philip Greiner.