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Once again Haydon stood on the small front porch of the white stucco bungalow and listened to the air conditioner unit in one of the bedroom windows around the side of the house kick on and clatter laboriously. The houses on either side of Powell’s also had humming window units, and their blinds and curtains were tightly pulled against the afternoon heat. Next door a yellow metal water sprinkler wobbled on a bad bushing and threw water in an erratic, crazy pattern that was originally intended to be a circle.
He remembered the article he’d seen in the Wall Street Journal. The previous year Houstonians had paid out nearly three and a half billion dollars for cold air, more than the gross national product of forty-two African nations. The newspaper went on to quote other outrageous but nonetheless accurate statistics, a favorite technique of any journalist writing about Texas, and especially Houston.
More than seven hundred firms replace and install an estimated 90,000 air conditioners annually. They take up forty-four pages in Houston’s Yellow Pages. . . Ninety-five percent of the city’s four million residents air condition their homes, compared with fifty-five percent nationwide . . . A Houstonian millionaire enclosed and cooled his entire backyard-including the swimming pool . . . Monthly average usage of kilowatt hours in Houston last year was 1,125 compared to 526 in Chicago, 490 in Philadelphia, 391 in Los Angeles, and 267 in New York . . . Houston Lighting & Power Company will spend eleven billion dollars for the construction of power plants during the next eight years . . . The city’s skyscrapers are reflective boxes designed to keep out heat and retain precious cool air . . . and are built over five miles of cooled tunnels used by forty thousand office workers each day.
Heat and humidity. Humidity and heat.
He punched the doorbell again. He knew she was there, having already looked down the driveway and seen the low white Porsche in the garage.
When she opened the door she stood behind the screen in bright yellow shorts the exact color of sunflowers and a green cotton blouse with short, cuffed sleeves. The shirt was tucked neatly into the tailored shorts. She propped the foot of one bare leg against the inside ankle of the other foot and looked at him. Her strawberry blond hair was casually piled on top of her head, making her look cool and relaxed. He could see her green eyes even in the shadow of the room.
“Back again,” she said. She didn’t seem too surprised to see him, or too happy about it.
He said, “Mind if I come in?”
She didn’t say anything but pushed open the screen. He followed her into the living room, which was bathed in a pale light from the skylight. Boxes were scattered around the room, some half packed, some already taped closed.
“Just find a place for yourself,” she said, gesturing hopelessly with her hands. “Can I get you something?”
“No, thank you. You decided to move out?”
“Right. Place gives me the willies now.” She perched on a stool at the bar that looked into the kitchen.
“Where are you moving?”
She looked at him. “I guess you can get by with that, being a detective.” She smiled.
“That’s right.”
“Not far, really. In the Tanglewood area.”
“Nice,” Haydon said. “A little more expensive, isn’t it?”
She had crossed her legs indifferently, very relaxed. They were nice legs and she knew it, which made it easy for her to be comfortable on the tall stool.
“Yeah. A little more expensive. A step up. I’ve had some good luck. This place hasn’t been bad news for both of us.”
“When will you be completely moved?”
“Tonight. I’ve moved a little bit at a time over several days, and this is the last of it. Tonight’s the first night in the new place. It’ll be great to get out of here.”
“That’s good,” Haydon said. “You work hard, and you get rewarded for it. That’s good. But I’ll bet you’re exhausted.” He looked around at the piles of boxes.
“Not really. Moving little by little has helped.”
“Oh, I meant the two jobs,” Haydon said. “Holding down two jobs. But it looks like it’s been worth it. It got you out of here.”
She smiled, but it was shaky.
“You are working at two jobs now, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“You’re not working for the Census Bureau?”
For one striking instant her face revealed a startling vulnerability, and Haydon thought she was going to blurt out the entire convoluted story that must lie behind the deaths of Wayne Powell and Alice Parnas. But he may only have imagined it, for no sooner did he see it than it was gone, leaving him to wonder if it had really ever been there at all.
“No,” she said again.
“Yesterday morning I had a long conversation with William Langer,” Haydon said. “He identified the girl in the picture I took from Powell’s room as Alice Parnas, an employee in the photography lab where Powell worked. I went to talk to her, and she told me, among other things, that she and Powell had been lovers. She was very upset by his death. Last night she apparently committed suicide. I talked with her next door neighbor, Mrs. Spiegler. I wanted to know if she had seen anyone visiting Alice Parnas that day. She identified a photograph of you as being a woman who had come to her house and to Alice’s house taking census information.”
Jennifer Quinn shook her head. “It wasn’t me. The old lady’s mistaken. That kind of thing happens all the time to blondes. We all look alike to some people.”
“Then you wouldn’t mind meeting her in person.”
“No, certainly not, if it’s necessary.” She hesitated, frowned. “If you thought that was me, what did you think I was doing? You didn’t think I was working for the Census Bureau, did you?”
Haydon shook his head. “No.”
She uncrossed her legs and put both feet on the bottom rung of the stool. She clasped her hands together and put them between her knees and looked at him.
“If I’m suspected of something, don’t I have a right to know about it? Do I need a lawyer to tell me what my rights are in this?” She was getting a little agitated; her voice rose. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on here?” Her light complexion was flushed. He couldn’t tell if she was angry or frightened.
“Miss Quinn, at this point everyone related in any way in this case is suspect. We’ve checked on a number of people in a number of situations, and this is simply one of them. Whoever the blonde was who spoke to Mrs. Spiegler and Alice Parnas was also the last person to see Alice Parnas alive. We’re going to have to verify it wasn’t you.”
“Jesus Christ!” she said incredulously. Her eyes grew red around the rims as though she might cry. “That was a cute little chitchat act you put on about the two jobs. You think that was clever? You think. . .” She was definitely angry now. She threw her hands up in a gesture of exasperation. “Can’t you just question someone right out, be straightforward about it? That’s insulting.”
Haydon looked at her. She was glaring at him and made an irritated swipe at a stray strand of hair that had come loose and wandered in front of her face.
“The last time we talked, you said you had met William Langer. What were the circumstances?”
“The circumstances?” She looked at Haydon blankly, maybe a little flustered. “I don’t remember . . . ever meeting Langer. I’ve never met him.”
“But you said before that you had. You don’t recall that?”
“I never said that. What the hell are you trying to do anyway?”
“You can verify where you were yesterday, between two and about five in the afternoon?”
“Yes, by God, I can.”
“Where?”
“In the darkroom at the office. Working with a guy named Grant Sutton.”
Haydon looked around and saw the telephone on a cardboard box on a chair. He got up and picked up the receiver.
“What’s the number of your office?”
She blinked and gave it to him.
He dialed it, waited for an answer, and asked for Grant Sutton. As the receptionist told him Sutton was out of town for the weekend, he looked at Quinn, who instantly registered an expression of remembrance and impatience. She hopped off the stool, stepped over, and snatched the telephone out of Haydon’s hands. She covered the mouthpiece.
“Dammit, I forgot.” Her face was pink. She spoke into the telephone. “Sara? This is Jennifer. I forgot he was going backpacking. Do you know where he was going? Can I reach him?” She listened, nodded. “Okay. Thanks, thank you.”
She hung up.
“Colorado. Shadow Mountain national park. He’ll be spending one night in a lodge in Granby. There can’t be that many lodges in Granby.” She looked at him, containing her temper. “Look, I can’t help that,” she snapped.
“Surely he’s not the only one who saw you,” Haydon said.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, he was. I had been packing things here, and I was a sweaty mess. I just had a couple of hours of developing to do. I didn’t go through the reception area because of the way I looked. I went in through the side door, worked until I had it all done, and left.”
“We’ll talk to him when he gets back,” Haydon said.
“I know how it looks,” she snapped again.
“Don’t worry about it,” Haydon said. “We’ll cover it later.”
“Well, what else do you want to know?” She had one hand in the pocket of a cocked hip, the other hand coming across her waist and grasping the wrist.
“Nothing,” Haydon said. I’ll let you finish your packing.”
“When do you want me to meet the old lady? She’ll clear it up when she sees me in person.”
“I’ll get back to you,” Haydon said, making his way through the boxes to the front door. “Oh, could I have your new address?”
She told him. “I’ll remember it,” he said.
When he got to the front door she said, “Look, I honestly forgot about Grant taking a long weekend. I’ll try to track him down at that lodge and have him call you. I’ve got your card.”
“You don’t have to do that. We can wait until he gets back.”
“No,” she said. “I want to. I feel like a fool. I want him to tell you. I’ll track him down.”
Haydon nodded and opened the door and stepped outside. She stood in the doorway squinting into the outside glare.
He said goodbye and went to the car. The steering wheel was so hot it was oily. He left the door open while the air conditioner cooled down and then drove away. He didn’t look back. He didn’t have to.
Jennifer Quinn was pretty good, but she wasn’t good enough. Haydon believed her about Grant Sutton. He had no doubt that Sutton would verify her claim. It really was an oversight on her part that he was going out of town. She didn’t have an alibi and then she did, but she didn’t. Haydon appreciated the irony in that. But it wasn’t working anyway. A slip of the tongue was far more damaging than any number of small miscalculations in a well-made plan. Twice Quinn had referred to Mrs. Spiegler as “the old lady.” Haydon had never mentioned her age.
~
BONEY WALKER LEANED over the old pedestal sink, with crazed porcelain and nicotine stains where cigarettes had burned to stubs, and carefully eased the wooden matchstick into his nose. He probed cautiously, flinching as he touched the blood clots and blinking the tears out of his eyes. He looked at himself in the jagged space of the old mirror where the silver backing hadn’t peeled off. Nose all over his face. Eyes like Billy Whistle’s, all bugged. Lip sticking out like it was maybe something else growing there, not a lip; didn’t look like a lip.
He had been blind tired, but the night hadn’t brought him much sleep. His muscles, as tender as boils, had made his whole body throb, and he had had to breathe through his mouth because of the clotted blood in his nose. He had to dig it out. It would help the swelling go down, and besides, it bugged the shit out of him. Just like picking your nose. When there’s something there you gotta get it out. He touched a raw spot, and the pain was so sharp his knees almost buckled as if somebody had hit him, and he leaned his head on his arm on the edge of the sink. He turned on the water, using a pair of vice grip pliers because the handle had stripped out, and let the blood from his freshly bleeding nose drip into the rusty water and then down the drain.
He stood and looked through the black specks in the mirror. He reached for the brown paper towels he’d stolen out of a service station restroom and wet one and kneaded it to make it soft, as soft as you can get a brown paper towel and put a little piece of it on the match and poked it in his nose. It was like putting a knife in his nose. He wanted to sit down but couldn’t sit on the commode because it didn’t have a lid, so he backed away from the sink and sat on the floor in the doorway. He leaned his head back against the jamb, sweat streaming from his hair, from under his arms, slick with it against his sides. He had a wet paper towel wadded in his hand and he began rubbing it over his body, squeezing the water out of it onto him. He closed his eyes, which didn’t take much closing, and sighed.
In an instant he realized there were flies crawling on the piece of paper towel in his nose. He shooed them away and slowly slid off the doorjamb and onto his side on the floor. He was so tired. He rolled over on his back on the cracked linoleum. It was a little cooler on the bare floor. He put a ragged undershirt over his face to keep the flies off his nose.
Mother fucker. He would not forget that white nigger. He closed his eyes. He was going to lie there and think about what he could do to that motherfucking white nigger. If he went to sleep maybe he would dream up something that would be better than anything he could think up awake. Something real good.