4

Captain Jonathan Frank, commanding, Fourth Detective District, was talking to the desk clerk at the Hotel Dumont. Weigand waited. Frank said, “Fifth floor, and you’re sure on the street side? About half an hour after the—occurrence—and was in a hurry?” The clerk said, “Yes, but I told you—”

“Sure,” Frank said. “Catching a plane to Frisco and cutting it fine. You told me. What he said. Sure, I know that’s all you’ve got to go on. Nobody blames you. Hi, Bill.”

Bill Weigand said, “Hi, Johnny.”

“Twelve floors,” Frank said. “And the roof. Just in this one. Five front rooms to the floor so we come up with sixty rooms, and cross off the permanents—only why?—and you come up with fifty-four. Of which one is an old lady in a wheel chair, sure, but she’s got a companion. And across the street—” He shrugged. He spread his hands.

“Right,” Bill said. “And nobody saw anything or heard anything, and none of the rooms smells of powder and—”

“Snipers,” Frank said, with great weariness. “Crackpots. Some time we’ll wake up. Quit making guns except for cops. Make possession of all guns illegal. Make the manufacture of ammo illegal.”

“And,” Bill said, “abolish roofs. Allow no windows facing streets.”

“Very funny, Bill,” Frank said. “Your brain trust interested? In a crackpot sniping?”

“Not if it is,” Bill said, and was told, sure it was, and then looked at.

“This party,” Jonathan Frank said, “that friend of yours gave it? North?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” Frank said. “The ruckus. Be very pat. Only, Willings’s room isn’t on the front. One gets you a hundred it was a loony.”

“No bet, Johnny. Willings does stay here?”

“Does now. Checked in three or four days ago. Expects to be here about a week. Didn’t bring a rifle with him, far’s anybody noticed. Of course, nobody brought a rifle with him. They all tell us that. Only, somebody brought a rifle with him. On account, nobody spit a bullet into Payne.” Frank sighed. “I was taking the wife to the movies,” he said. He scrutinized Bill Weigand’s face again, with greater care. “You got something, Bill?”

“Bits and pieces. Odds and ends. Several people at the party didn’t like Payne too much, I’m told.”

“By those friends of yours?”

“By those friends of mine.”

“Happens Willings is in the bar now,” Frank said. “I—”

The clerk said, “Telephone call, Captain. In booth one.”

“—was thinking of having a little chat with him,” Frank said. “You want to, Bill? …”

“The Bottom of the Well,” so named because a writer who frequented it had once said that that was where he always felt he was, in a small, high barroom, with dark green walls. It does not at any time accommodate many, and when Bill Weigand went in it accommodated only three—a couple at a corner table; a large man with a red beard on a stool at the bar. “Only rum worth drinking,” the red-bearded man was telling the barman when Bill sat down beside him. Gardner Willings had a heavy voice, with something of a rumble in it. “Good rum,” Willings said, and sipped from a tall glass. Bill ordered scotch and water. He said, “Mr. Willings?”

“Don’t autograph,” Willings said. “Why should I?”

“No reason,” Bill said. “I’m a police officer. Name of Weigand.”

“I was off balance,” Willings said. “Slipped on something. The two-bit phony couldn’t punch his way out of a paper bag.”

He turned on his stool and looked at Bill Weigand. He had a square face under the red beard; he had light blue eyes. He was a very large man.

“What’s it to you, anyway?” Willings said.

“Payne’s dead.”

“So I heard. Late on, for my money. Service to American letters. Like to shake the hand that fired the shot.” The pale blue eyes were very intent. It occurred to Bill Weigand that he had never seen eyes quite like Willings’s. He had the slightly uncomfortable feeling that the light blue eyes were looking into his mind.

“Which wouldn’t be with myself,” Willings said. “People say I do. Say I pat myself on the back. Perhaps. Not this time.” He shifted his gaze, looked at Bill’s drink. “Pallid stuff,” he said. “Ought to drink rum. Virgin Islands rum.” He turned back to Bill. “I didn’t shoot the son of a bitch, he said. “Not worth the trouble.”

“You didn’t like him, obviously.”

“Lots of people I don’t like. Lots of things I don’t like. There are good things and bad things, and he was a bad thing. He was a fake, and I don’t like fakes. The Africa I Know.” He used a short, explicit word. He whirled on his stool toward the couple in the corner. “Sorry, lady,” he said.

“Oh,” the girl said, “I’ve heard the word, Mr. Willings. I’ve heard a lot of words.”

Willlings turned back to Bill Weigand.

“There you have it,” he said. “Honest girl. Mealy-mouthed bunch ride herd. But everybody knows the words. When a word’s a good word for what you want to say, you ought to use the word. Right?”

“Right,” Bill said.

“You’re thinking about that review I was going to make him eat. It was a stinker. Also, it was a lousy job. The man couldn’t write. You read it, I suppose?”

Bill shook his head.

“I’ll be damned,” Willings said. He seemed entirely surprised. “Everybody read it.”

“I didn’t, Mr. Willings—after this—incident. At the party. By the way, did you come to the party with that in mind?”

“What else? Heard about the party. Thought it might be fun. Getting Payne to eat, I mean. Long as I was there, I thought I might have a couple.” For the first time he smiled slightly. “A couple made the idea seem very good,” he said. “So I had a couple more. Idea seemed fine. I wasn’t drunk. I don’t get drunk.” He finished his long rum drink. He patted the base of the glass against the bar. The barman took the glass away and began to mix.

“After the incident,” Bill said. “What did you do?”

“Went up to my room. Had a nap. I sleep when it seems like a good idea. Didn’t know about somebody’s good deed for the day until about half an hour ago.”

“You’d known Payne for some time?”

“You’re a funny copper,” Willings said. “What are you after?”

“Anything I can get.”

“I’m the wrong tree to bark up. But—yes. Donkey’s years.”

“Disliking him all the time?”

“More or less. What difference does that make? You only see people you like?”

“I see all kinds.”

“Probably do,” Willings said. “So do I. In some ways, ours is the same trade. Find out about people. You put them in jail. I put them in books. I used Payne a couple of times. Remember Ponsby in my Turn at the Bridge?”

Bill remembered the title; only the title. He shook his head.

“Read it, didn’t you?”

Bill shook his head again.

“My God,” Willings said. “You can read?”

It sounded to Bill Weigand as if Willings really wanted to know, really wanted to resolve a doubt. Bill said, “Yes, I can read. Your character Ponsby was Anthony Payne?”

“Publicly, I deny it,” Willings said.

“Did he recognize himself?”

“As the chaser the girls laughed at? Sure he did. So he tried to put me into Uprising. Couldn’t swing it, of course. Not up to it.”

“He was a chaser?”

“And how.”

“They did laugh?”

“The bright ones. Faith did. Laughed him out of her life.” He drank. “Not all,” he said. “There’re always half-wits.”

“His present wife. Widow. She’s one of the ones who didn’t laugh?”

Willings shrugged his heavy shoulders and turned to his drink. It occurred to Bill Weigand that he had begun to bore the—justly—famous Mr. Willings. It is the fate of a policeman to bore many.

“No laughing matter, being married to Payne,” Willings said, into his rum drink. “How would I know? Don’t know the lady.”

Which seemed to take care of that.

“Met her couple of years ago,” Willings said. “Came down to the islands and looked us up. More damn people look us up. Thought, ‘Poor gal doesn’t know what she’s in for.’ Thought, ‘Too tender for the bastard.’ Thought, ‘Shame to waste her on the two-bit phony.’ Only met her that once. Had Sally use the gag, after that. ‘Willings is at work,’ with proper awe. Good at it, Sally is. Hear her, and you’d swear she believed it. Well?”

The last seemed to toss something into the air. Bill was not entirely sure what.

“She’s a good-looking gal,” Willings said, himself catching whatever it was he had tossed. (Sally, whoever Sally might be, or Mrs. Anthony Payne?) “Tender. Also, she’s got money. Could be why the bastard married her, couldn’t it? Not that I’ve anything against their having money. One of mine had money, you remember. Samantha, that was. Money’s a good thing to have.”

Weigand remembered nothing about Samantha, never having heard of her before. There seemed no use in mentioning this to Willings, who clearly thought that all the world would remember Samantha, who would have acquired fame by osmosis. To those who had much to do with Gardner Willings it must sometimes be hard to remember that Willings was the institution he took himself to be, or close to it.

“However,” Willings said, “I wasn’t thinking of Lauren particularly. He had this new one, you know. Pretty little thing and I’d guess about twenty. Tender. Half-witted, of course, or she’d have seen through him. But—tender. Too young to laugh. Not bright enough. But—pretty as hell.”

Bill Weigand waited. Willings seemed, now, entirely ready to keep himself going. Willings is willing, Bill Weigand thought, and rather wished he hadn’t.

“Couple of nights ago,” Willings said. “Having dinner with a man named Self. Starting some sort of magazine. Good stuff. Stuff nobody’ll want. Wants me to do something for it. Me.” He paused, apparently in wonderment. “And I may,” Willings said. “Just may. Nice kid, this Self boy. Reminds me of—” He stopped and drank and, for a moment, looked beyond the drink, at nothing—at the past.

“Anyway,” Willings said, “Payne came in with this girl—little dark girl with big dark eyes. Looking at the bastard with—” He paused. “As if her eyes saw greatness,” he said. “The poor, pretty, benighted little idiot. And Self started to stand up. Damn near knocked the table over. And then, just sat down again and looked at them. Good scene, and some time I’ll do it the way it ought to be done. Confrontation, see?”

“Right,” Bill said. “Because the girl was with Payne?”

“What else? His girl. Looking that way at this pink dome of nothing at all. Suddenly, his hands full of dust.”

“He say something to tell you that?”

Willings turned and looked at Bill Weigand, and with surprise. His look, Bill thought, is to say that I’m even dumber than he had thought. But when Willings spoke it was with resignation.

“No,” he said. “Said nothing. I see things, copper. It was the way I saw it.”

“Right,” Bill said. “This Self—James Self? I thought he ran a bookstore.”

“He runs a bookstore. Runs a bookstore. Writes reviews for—oh, Partisan Review. Gets out a magazine of his own. The poor bastard can’t write, you see.” There was a note of deep sorrow in Willings’s heavy voice, as he mentioned, with a kind of awe, this most tragic of human predicaments. “Got to do something.” He finished his drink and looked at his empty glass. He shook his head at it. He said, “You know Self?”

“Heard of him today,” Bill said. “He was at the party here.”

“Girl with him?”

Bill didn’t know.

“Didn’t see him,” Willings said. “Hell of a lot of nobodies. As you’d expect. Why does anybody give a party like that?”

“I don’t know,” Bill said, and reached the bottom of his own glass and stood up. “You’ll be in town a few days?”

“Probably. Why?”

“We like to know where people are.”

“I didn’t kill the bastard. Not worth the trouble.”

Bill Weigand said, “Right,” and went out of “The Bottom of the Well.” It was, he thought, mildly interesting that Gardner Willings had, more or less unprompted, brought up the “confrontation” scene which had involved James Self and a pretty dark girl with big dark eyes. And Anthony Payne. A small present to a deserving policeman? Present of small red herring?

Call it a night, now. Bill went out of the Hotel Dumont. On the sidewalk, Captain Jonathan Frank said, “Hey!” to him. Frank looked pleased. “Got him?” Bill said, and Frank, his voice sounding pleased, said it looked like it.

“Hiding on the roof,” he said, and pointed across the street toward the Hotel King Arthur. “Tried to make a run for it, and one of the boys had to stop him. Knocked him out, sort of. But he’ll come around, O.K.”

“Sure,” Bill said. “So that’s that.”

“Looks like it,” Frank said. “Lucky break. Find out where he ditched the gun, and we’re in.”