Killed in Fringe Time Read online

  Reading the Times had been a mistake anyway since it was all there, all over the front page, plus an assessment of Bentyne’s “legacy” on the entertainment page.

  I skipped that article. His legacy to me was taking the shape of a giant pain in the ass.

  Thoroughly depressed, I called my beloved on the phone and caught her between sessions.

  “I miss you,” I said. “When are you coming home?”

  “The thing wraps up here tomorrow night. I’ll be back Thursday morning.”

  “I can hardly wait.”

  There must have been something in my voice, because she said, “Is there something wrong, Matt? Is the Bentyne mess getting to you? If you need me, I’ll leave right now.”

  “I always need you, but you stay there.” It was flattering to think that she’d bag the conference if I asked her to, but I knew I would be one sorry excuse for a boyfriend if I did ask. After bouncing around to a dozen schools and earning a poker-hand full of masters degrees, she’d finally settled down, worked hard, and was beginning to build a sizable reputation in American History between the War of 1812 and the Civil War, and this conference was a major recognition of her achievements.

  “You stay there,” I said again. “I can hold out for two more days. I just miss some sane company.”

  “Spot is perfectly sane,” she reminded me.

  “True, but he’s a lousy conversationalist. Anyway, I just wanted to hear your voice.”

  “Boy,” she said, “you must be in love.”

  “I am. You’re the one who proved it to me, remember?”

  “So I did. I like it.”

  “Me, too.”

  We got soppier than that before we hung up the phones, but I’ll spare you. When you’re in love, that kind of conversation seems perfectly natural at the time, but it looks immensely risible to outsiders.

  Anyway, having recharged my emotional batteries, I took Spot for a walk in the park and cleaned up after him. Then I let him run a little while, not long enough to suit him. Spot is a wonderful dog, but he’s easy to spoil. Any good thing that happens to him becomes a precedent, which he expects repeated for all time. Yesterday, he’d spent a couple of long sessions in the park, so why not today?

  I had to call him three times before he came back to me. Shocking insubordination. He sulked going back to the apartment but too bad for him. I left him plenty of food and water, and plunged out into the metropolis.

  The first place I plunged was one block west, to Columbus Avenue, which in recent decades turned from a slum into a sort of Greenwich Village of the North. This was where Peter Nast owned and operated Coif You!

  You wouldn’t think a storefront done up in silver and pink could be tasteful as well as striking, but this one was. I went inside and found Hernando behind a desk in a clean shop T-shirt (which reminded me there was a sweaty one in my hamper at home) reading Metal Hurlant comics in the original French.

  I said, “Hello, Hernando.”

  He looked up at me and grinned, showing a right upper canine of gold with a diamond implanted in it. Had to be a cap—that was a regular tooth, last night.

  Instead of addressing me, he called back over his shoulder, “Peter, you owe me five bucks! The hero showed up after all!”

  There was general laughter from what I guess you could call the cutting room. Hernando led me back past women and men in various states of styling. One of them said, “Hello, Mr. Cobb,” and I stopped a second to say hello to the new ingénue from Agony of Love, the Network’s top-rated soap opera.

  Of the production known as Coif You, Peter Nast was not only the proprietor, he was also the Star, and as such had his own studio, a miniature version of the big room outside, plus a little corner set off as a kind of living room—black leather recliner, matching love seat, big screen TV and VCR, currently playing Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

  Peter stood up to greet me, stopped the tape, and turned off the screen.

  “I’m so glad you came,” he said.

  “I gave my word. Besides, I need a haircut.”

  Besides me, Hernando went, “Tsk, tsk, tsk. We don’t do haircuts at Coif You! Especially Peter doesn’t. You are going to get a work of art to wear on your head.”

  Peter laughed, and said, “That’s enough, Hernando. Don’t you have anything to do?”

  Hernando raised an eyebrow and said, “Peter has threatened to cut all our throats if we pester you with questions about the murder.”

  “Good,” I said. “I don’t know anything, anyway.” Hernando sniffed his disbelief and walked away.

  “Now,” Peter said. “I’ve been thinking about you all morning.”

  That sounded ominous. “You have?”

  “Yes, your bone structure. And your personality. Despite what Hernando says, what we do here isn’t about us, it’s about our clients. We want something that suits you, that you can live with.”

  I acknowledged the truth of that. “I couldn’t live without my head,” I told him.

  “You see?” he said triumphantly. “Your personality. Obviously, you’re a good-looking man, you’ve never worried too much about your hair. In fact, you’re a little embarrassed to be here, especially since Doris recognized you.”

  “You saw that, huh?”

  “I keep up with what’s going on,” he told me. “So you don’t want anything too obviously styled, and you don’t want anything that takes a lot of maintenance.”

  “Maintenance?”

  “Setting, color touch-ups, blow drying, like that.”

  I was beginning to wonder what I’d let myself in for. “Uh, no. None of that. If you can avoid it.”

  “I have to avoid it. You wouldn’t do it, would you?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Definitely not. It’s not your personality. So if I gave you a style that demanded those things, I would be failing you, and failing in my job. So just trust me, and we’ll do fine.”

  Trust me, as Roxanne once pointed out to me, was what you said to somebody before you fucked them. I was beginning to think I might have been better off with Wolf and the razor cut.

  After a shampoo, I was escorted royally, my head wrapped in a towel, to the chair in front of the lighted mirrors. Peter whipped off the towel, and looked at the wet mess that was my head the way Michelangelo must have approached a piece of marble, a none too flattering comparison, come to think of it.

  He said, “Yes,” tentatively, then spun me around and looked again. Then he said “Yes!” decisively, and his scissors started to flash in the light.

  “So,” he said, with the blades snipping scant millimeters from my right ear, “I hope you didn’t keep my sister out too late last night.”

  Then I was sure I should have thrown myself on the mercy of Wolf. Under ordinary circumstances, I might have told Peter it was none of his business, or that his sister would have to be the judge of what was too late, but over the years I had grown very attached to my ears. Furthermore, I intended never to be alone with his sister ever again, if I could help it.

  So I just told him the truth. “I put her in a cab about quarter after one.”

  “That’s not bad at all. You’re a gentleman, Matt.”

  “I try to be.”

  “I worry about her. It’s corny, but I can’t help it.”

  He should worry about her, I thought. Someday, she’s going to scare someone less scrupulous than I, and he’s just going to kill her.

  I didn’t say that, of course. I said, “I’m a big brother too.”

  “It’s a terrible way for it to happen, but I’m glad that thing with Bentyne is over. That was bad.”

  Scissors still snipped.

  “I wish she’d settle down,” he said.

  Jesus, I thought, now he’s trying to fix me up with her.

  I was beginning to be sorry I ever walked onto that softball field, investigation or no investigation, but Peter let it lie, apparently figuring a word to the wise was sufficient. We
talked about sports for the rest of the haircut; Peter was very knowledgeable, though, as a Mets fan, understandably glum. It was my sovereign right as a Yankee fan to lord it over him and his team’s misfortunes, but I stifled myself in honor of having been his teammate the night before, and in the pursuit of a rapid exit.

  He finished cutting and whipped out a blow dryer.

  “I thought we weren’t going to use one of these,” I said.

  “Oh, this is just for me,” he responded over the roar of the machine. “You just let your hair dry naturally.”

  Then he was done, and I looked at myself in the mirror.

  I looked great.

  I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about my looks, but I looked absolutely great.

  My hair didn’t looked styled; it didn’t in fact, look all that different from the way I usually wear it. It just looked better.

  “This is terrific,” I said. “What do I owe you?”

  He waved it off. “This one’s on the house just like I promised. I’m pretty pleased with the way it turned out, myself. Just wash and comb it as you usually do, and see me again in about, oh, five weeks. Then you’ll pay just like everyone else.”

  “That soon?”

  He smiled, the expert talking to the tyro. “If you were on the air on the Network, instead of behind the scenes, I’d have you in here every three weeks. In five weeks, the proportionate lengths of the various parts of the hair on your head will be changed, and you won’t look just right anymore.”

  “I never knew a hairc—I mean a styling could make so much difference.”

  “Just between us, I give you permission to say haircut. If you really want to show your appreciation, turn up at the Ninety-Second Street diamond in Riverside Park on Monday night.”

  I told him I would do my best to be there, which was almost certainly a lie, but I didn’t stop to analyze it. I just got back out on the street as quickly as I could.

  My secretary smiled me some Cuban sunshine as I walked in. “There you are,” she said. “Gee, Matt, you look nice today.”

  I grinned.

  “Mr. Bates has been waiting here to see you,” she said. “I put him in Shirley’s office.” Shirley Arnstein was my other top person, on a par with Harris Brophy. She was down in Atlanta getting some things straight about our Olympic coverage.

  “What the hell,” I said irritably. “Send him down to Public Relations or something.”

  “I tried that, but he wouldn’t go along. He says he’s shy around people, and he trusts you. Was he really a hermit for thirty-five years? No phone, no TV, no radio, no newspapers or magazine?”.

  “That right.”

  She shuddered. “Imagine being in America with all that stuff available and not using any of it.”

  I laughed at her, but I agreed with her. It was like being an anorexic at a banquet. Still, a big part of freedom is the right not to do or have things if you didn’t want to. I was just glad this country still had enough space for people like Bates to go and do what they wanted to without bothering the rest of us.

  That didn’t mean I was enthralled with the idea of stopping in the middle of everything I was doing to babysit him, either. On the other hand, if I refused to see him, God knew what he’d do, but mouthing off to the first ten reporters he came across was a good possibility.

  After careful consideration, I decided the nuisance of dealing with Bates now was less than the nuisance of hearing Falzet moan about another Public Relations fiasco would be.

  As a matter of fact, I didn’t want to be in Falzet’s vicinity at all, now that the rhino horn business had broken. The Times that morning had been full of it, and animal rights groups had been picketing the building as I came in. It occurred to me that it would have been more impressive from a media point of view, and also more to the point, if a bunch of rhinos had been picketing the building, but I supposed that would have been kind of tough to organize.

  I often indulge in whimsy to avoid thinking about things that irk me. I made myself stop. That’s just fighting the problem, instead of solving it.

  It wouldn’t be fighting the problem, I told myself cunningly, if I were to gather more information before facing Bates. He was bound to ask questions. Besides, it was a good idea to let the cops know I was about to converse with a fellow suspect. It was my duty as a citizen. While I was at it, I would tell them about my talk with Marcie, another suspect, and apologize for how my duty as a citizen had managed to slip my mind in that instance.

  I picked up the phone and called Lieutenant Martin’s direct number. Rivetz answered.

  “Waddaya want, Cobb?” he demanded, recognizing my voice.

  “The lieutenant around?”

  “Nah, he’s upstairs with the deputy commissioner. Probably getting his ass handed to him over your precious Network star. Will I do?”

  I told him he would.

  “Good. Funny, isn’t it, how the rhino story leaked before we broke it down here?”

  “Astounding how these things happen,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Good word. Astounding. Seriously, I hope it did you some good to break it first. I just hope it turns down the heat on us.”

  “Is anybody picketing at Police Plaza?”

  “There’s always some assholes picketing at Police Plaza. I think the architect planned them in. But is anybody bitching about this case in particular? No.”

  “Then you’re already ahead. We’ve got pickets.”

  That perked him up a little. I took advantage of his relative good humor to give him a fairly detailed account of my conversation with Marcie last night.

  When I finished, he let out a low whistle.

  “Oh, Cobb, you poor bastard, you’ve got this gorgeous bimbo grabbing for your bod.”

  “Rivetz, believe me when I say that gorgeous she may be, but that I would personally rather go to bed with an electric hedge trimmer. On.”

  “Yeah,” he conceded. “I read the transcript of her interviews. I was going to accuse the detective of being a frustrated pulp writer and making her up.”

  “No, if it’s scary and weird, it’s probably Marcie all right. Now,” I said, “I’ve got another eccentric to deal with. Clement Bates has been waiting around three hours to see me.”

  “So see him,” Rivetz said. “I got my own troubles.”

  “Anything you want me to tell him? Anything I should avoid telling him?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, he’s a suspect, isn’t he?”

  “Cobb, do you really see our backwoodsman as the perp here?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “No conceivable motive. Lack of knowledge necessary to do it. I mean, sure, he had opportunity to wander around the theater to his heart’s delight, and for the sake of argument, he might even have had a kilo of Deth-on-Ratz concealed about his person. He could have been able to get intimate with the chicken—”

  “Anybody could have gotten intimate with the chicken, as it turns out. Your driver, Gambrelli, got to flirting with a script girl, and that picnic hamper thing wound up sitting on a table in a side room, unwatched, for a good fifteen minutes.”

  “Even so. Bates wasn’t a regular—he didn’t know that the chicken was going to be there.”

  “Yeah,” Rivetz conceded. “That’s the way we read it around here. The only way he could have known about it was to read it off the computer up at Bentyne’s place, and spending thirty-five years in the boonies, that’s one skill he’s going to lack.”

  “So I can talk to him?”

  “You can marry him, for all I care. It’s only a formality we’re making him hang around the city. Doesn’t look right if we start letting ‘suspects’ go back to hiding on their mountains.”

  “I think I’m also going to want to have a chat with Vivian Pikes”

  “A real suspect, this time.”

  “Yeah. I won’t blow your case for you.”

  “The lieutenant wouldn’
t let you live long, if you did. He’d tell your mother on you. Listen, to talk to this Pike woman, you’ve got to find her first, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Well, officially, I’m supposed not to want you to find her, so I’m telling you, whatever you do, don’t look for her at the house in Darien, even if the Network does own it. Got me?”

  “I got you.”

  It occurred to me that this was the most helpful and the least snotty Rivetz had ever been to me. Maybe personal troubles had mellowed him.

  “One thing about this Bates guy, before we hang up,” he said. “With all his eccentricity, he’s kind of boring, you know? I had a session with himself myself. No wonder that guy gave up on his book.

  “Something we turned up in a background check. Freelance writer named Frank Harlan was trying to sell a book on Bates about three years ago. No takers.”

  “Bates mentioned something about it. Still might be worth talking to Harlan, though.”

  “We will, when we find him. Guy apparently writes his way around the world and back. Tough life, huh? Those writer guys have it made.”

  I reflected for a moment on how nice it would be to be working on a laptop by the side of a loch in Scotland about now, eating smoked salmon, with the temperature about twenty degrees cooler than it was in New York.

  I was doing it again.

  I brought myself back to the present and said, “Listen, Rivetz, I hope everything works out okay for you.”

  He was gruff. “Yeah, thanks. I had no business dumping all my troubles on you.”

  “Forget it,” I said.

  “Hey, Cobb,” he said brightly. “What do you do when your nose goes on strike?”

  “What?”

  “Picket!” He laughed and hung up.

  I hit the intercom and told Jazz to send in Bates.

  He materialized like a genie—I hardly noticed the door open, then there he was, medium-sized, scruffy-bearded, and wearing the same suit and string tie he’d had on Friday evening.