I tried to think of her in the hospital, tried to think of her as I’d seen her in the park when she’d called me a few days ago and shown up holding a gun. I tried to relate both these images to the woman I’d just seen in the photographs and—I couldn’t. I had never imagined there was a side to her like that and a part of me still refused to believe it, insisted the snaps were faked. But I knew better, of course; I knew better.
Stuffing my pockets with various things I’d gleaned from Elliot’s desk, I let myself out again, back to the numbing air that acted now to cleanse me. What I was beginning to learn, and suspect, about Elliot was starting to make me hate him. Then I thought of Jane again, how she’d looked in the lurid light of the amateur photos, and all I could feel was pity—for her, for me, for her parents if they ever found out.
I got in my car, backed out of Elliot’s curving driveway, and headed for the only man who could answer the questions I now needed to ask.
Hammond Advertising is located on the top three floors of one of those bunker-like buildings architects are so proud of these days, or at least that generation of architects who have confused function with ugliness. Squat, square, a tribute to concrete, it sat in the center of an island of asphalt, purple except for an occasional lighted window in its twenty stories, the purple of mercury-vapor lights.
The lobby was empty except for a mannish woman bent over, shining windows. Neither of us seemed especially happy to see the other.
I took the elevator up, got off, and stepped into a darkness in which I could make out the shape of a splashy reception area.
I was in a kind of frenzy, looking forward to seeing Bryce the way I’d look forward to seeing a priest. I had to unburden myself of what I’d found tonight. Feelings of love, hate, sorrow—I needed to talk to somebody.
The floor seemed limitless. I walked past dozens of inky office doorways. Scents of everything from tobacco to perfume to artist’s glue to cleaning solvent floated at me like phantoms from the shadows.
An odd noise stopped me a moment. I had a sense that it was an alien noise in this environment, but I wasn’t sure why. I looked left, right, beginning to sweat for no reason. I sensed eyes watching me from the gloom. Then I heard a more familiar noise—the peculiar booming sound a 16-mm motion-picture projector makes. I moved toward it through the gloom.
I opened a door into a screening room, where Bryce Hammond sat in a theater-style seat in the luminous arc of the projector light. Thick blue cigar smoke coiled like snakes through the light. He was laughing so hard he didn’t notice me.
On screen, in a black-and-white commercial that dated from some time in the mid-sixties, a wimpy man with a big hammer was destroying his lawn mower, pounding it into rubble. “Do what you’ve always wanted to do to that mower of yours—then come down and get a genuine Cartwright mower.” The final scene was of the guy standing on his dead mower like a white hunter on a carcass.
Another commercial started to run within seconds of this one, but I cleared my throat so that he’d notice me.
He glanced up, seeming strangely embarrassed. “By God, Dwyer, c’mon in!”
He punched a button on the arm of his chair. The screen darkened and the houselights came up.
“You caught me,” he said. “I was screening some of my old commercials for a client, some of the ones that won the Clios. I guess I take an inordinate pride in the work I did when I was—hot.” He waved an arm. Laughed. “You’re wondering where the client is, right? He’s off taking a leak.” He stared at me. “You all right?”
“Not right now I’m not,” I said. “I need to ask you some questions.”
His brow knitted, his handsome face grew serious. He nodded for me to sit down.
“Care for a beer?” he asked.
“Yeah. That sounds good.”
He went over to a wall panel, stepped deliberately on the floor, and the panel opened to reveal a dry bar. He took two bottles of imported beer from a small refrigerator and brought one of them over to me.
“Thanks.”
“You bet. Hell, you look like you could use it.”
I decided to get on with it. “What can you tell me about Stephen Elliot’s sexual tastes?”
He was obviously surprised by my question. “He was a lady-killer as far as I know.”
“No rumors to the contrary?”
He smiled. “There are always rumors to the contrary, you know that. Everybody thinks everybody else is queer, just as the old Quaker saying has it.”
“But nothing ever substantiated?”
He swigged from his beer. Even in a brown suit he seemed better suited to the deck of a yacht than an office. He shrugged. “No.”
“What about his background?”
“His background?”
“Yes, where he came from. What college did he go to? Where did he get his agency experience?”
He eyed me levelly. “Forgive my saying so, but you seem a little— Well, why don’t you try just sitting there and relaxing? You look like you’re going to jump down my throat if I say the wrong thing.”
“There’s something very wrong here, Bryce.”
“Like what?”
“Like the way Elliot spent money. You admitted he couldn’t have made it all from advertising.”
“What else?”
“His relationship with an older woman—nobody seems to know anything about her. Just that she seemed to fit into his life somehow. Know who I’m talking about?”
If he was lying, he was good at it. “No.” He paused. “Why did you ask me about his sex life?”
I had come here to take him into my confidence, to use him as a combination friend-shrink, but now I realized that I couldn’t, that I owed it to Jane to keep the photos secret.
“Why did you ask?” he repeated.
“I heard something.”
“What?”
I paused, seeing I was getting exactly nowhere. I made a show of relaxing. I even smiled. “I think maybe you’re right, Bryce. I think I’m a bit overwrought.”
“Hell, man, that’s easy to understand, what with Jane—well, you know.” He leaned forward, swigged his beer again. Then, “If it’ll comfort your mind any, I think Elliot was as straight as a ruler. He liked women too much to be anything else.”
He had just gotten done reassuring me when the door to the screening room opened and a man walked in.
The man came over in his country club style western clothes and when Bryce introduced him as Phil Davies, he shook my hand as if he were trying to choke it.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, and then I turned to Bryce, cuffing him on the shoulder. “I appreciate the beer and the talk. I guess I’m getting a little strung out is all. You know.”
“I sure do.” He grimaced. “This hasn’t exactly been my idea of a fun couple of days, either. As you know.”
We shook hands and I turned to leave. “Nice to meet you,” I said with a great deal of politeness to Phil Davies, a bald-headed, doughy-faced man.
Not that I felt any desire to be polite. Phil Davies was the man in the photograph with Jane.