When Elephants Forget (Trace 3) Page 7

  LaPeter nodded.

  “Doing women together, drugs, hanging out?”

  “Yeah, like that. We were friends.”

  “What about the girl who lives here? What’s her story?”

  “She moved in last year only. Jennie. She’s going to be a headshrink.”

  “You romancing her?” Trace asked.

  “Not me.” His nose wrinkled slightly as if he thought the idea altogether in bad taste.

  “What about Tony?”

  “What about him? He’s dead,” LaPeter said.

  “I know he’s dead. But he wasn’t always dead, was he? Were he and Jennie getting it on?”

  “I don’t know I ought to tell you anything like that. All you got is this card, no badge. Do I have to tell anything like that to somebody, no badge?”

  “No, you don’t have to. The problem, though, is that after me will be a lot of guys and they’ll have badges and you’ll have to tell them all over again, over and over. You tell me and maybe I’ll get this all straightened up and you won’t have to tell anybody again.”

  “I don’t know if I trust you.”

  “I’m hurt,” Trace said, “really hurt. In all my life, you’re the first person who didn’t trust me. Except my ex-wife. And my mother. But she doesn’t trust anybody.”

  “Hey, don’t be hurt,” LaPeter said. “It’s just that, well, it’s hard, sometimes, man, it’s hard, real hard.”

  Trace had no idea what the young man meant, but he said, “I can attest to that.” He wondered if he should do his Richard Nixon impersonation and repeat the line. It was the perfect Richard Nixon—imitation line. He decided to do it.

  “I can attest to that,” he said again. He twisted his head awkwardly off to one side, lowered his brows, and rolled his eyes up into his head. As he spoke, he nodded as if to himself and held his mouth open as if the words would be followed by a dribble of spit.

  LaPeter applauded and laughed. “I love it,” he said. “W. C. Fields. All his movies I see. Do it again.”

  “I don’t want to spoil it. Everybody loves my W. C. Fields,” Trace said. “So was Tony banging Jennie or not?”

  “Last year,” LaPeter said. “That was why she first moved in. They got hooked up last summer and then she was here, we were all juniors, but it didn’t last long and she stayed on anyway ’cause she pays her piece of the rent, but romances are bullshit.”

  Trace tried again. “I can attest to that,” he said, and waved his arms over his head, his fingers in two V’s, again imitating Nixon.

  “Love it. That’s the best W. C. Fields ever. Again?”

  “No. It’d only spoil the fragile beauty of the moment,” Trace said, miffed. “How long did their romance last?”

  “Like I said, not long, month or two maybe.”

  “And no nookying afterward?” Trace said. “I can’t believe that anything breaks up clean that way.”

  “Well, maybe once in a while, but they weren’t regular together, sleeping together anymore. That’s why my room looks like shit moved in to stay. That used to be my studio, where work was. Tony had one bedroom and I had one, then we got Jennie in here and she got my bedroom and I had to move into the studio with all my stuff, and everything it fucked up.”

  “Women are always doing it,” Trace agreed. “So where were you when Tony got iced?”

  “Iced. Good word,” LaPeter said.

  Trace did not know if he should be complimented or insulted by having his vocabulary praised by one who talked like this.

  “One of my very favorites,” he said. “So where were you during the ice job?”

  “Like that one too. Ice job. I was at a concert in the Poconos. Megan’s Friends. You ever hear of them?”

  “Of course. And I’ve heard of the Beatles and the Stones and Janis and Pegasus.”

  “I never heard of Pegasus,” LaPeter said.

  “I just made it up to see if you were still listening,” Trace said. “Where in the Poconos?”

  “At the theater in Stroudsburg they were. A friend of mine works for them down there, with the sound system, so I wanted to see how it all works. I’m into sound systems, I guess you figured out.”

  “You’re joking. Really?”

  “Yeah. That’s why I got all that equipment in there,” he said, pointing vaguely toward the bedroom that housed his noisemakers.

  “Was Tony into sound equipment too?”

  “No. Into junk he was. Gadgets. Phone machines and things. Tape recorders. Bugs. Stupid stuff. He liked toys.”

  “Who’d you go with?” Trace asked.

  “I told this to the cops, the family and everybody, you know, and they checked out everything, and if I need like an alibi, I got like an alibi because I went with these guys and that’s what the cops got told by them.”

  Trace took a small notebook from his pocket and pushed it and a pen across the table toward LaPeter. “Write their names down there in case I need them.”

  LaPeter wrote slowly, laboriously, and Trace said, “Were tickets expensive?”

  “What tickets?”

  “For Megan’s Friends? Were they expensive?”

  “Yeah. Twenty-five bucks and they weren’t either good seats.”

  “Everything else was sold out, though, right?” Trace said.

  “That’s what my friend said, the one who works there. I wasn’t going to go, but Tony lent me the money at the last minute, so I went with my friends. Those are the names there.” He pushed the paper back.

  Trace put the notebook and pen back in his pocket without looking at the list. “So what do you think happened to Tony?”

  “I think he got killed.” LaPeter chuckled softly.

  “Why did you do it?” Trace asked.

  “What, what?”

  “Calm down. I just wanted to get your attention again and see how you’d act and stop you from acting smart. Now why do you think he got killed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Try harder. Who hated him?”

  “Nobody hated Tony. He was just, well, he was just Tony. He was okay.”

  “You ever meet his parents?” Trace asked.

  “Just at the funeral.”

  “What family did you talk to?”

  “Huh?”

  “Before, you told me you talked to the cops and the family about where you’d been when Tony was killed. What family did you talk to?”

  “I told the father. He was up here after the funeral to talk to me. Him and a couple of guys, like big guys.”

  “Look like ugly twins?” Trace asked, and LaPeter nodded. “And Armitage wanted to talk about the murder?”

  “I don’t know,” LaPeter said. “Like he wanted to talk, but it wasn’t the murder so much. He wanted to talk about Tony and his other friends and stuff like that, more than the murder.”

  “Did Tony belong to any clubs or anything like that?”

  “No. I don’t think so. He was in a prelaw program, and not much for clubs he wasn’t. Neither was I. Why?”

  “Because of that mask he was wearing,” Trace said. “I thought it might have been an initiation or something. It wasn’t that?”

  “No. I don’t know of anybody that’d initiate Tony into anything. He didn’t join things.”

  “You never saw that mask before?”

  LaPeter shook his head.

  “Would you say you two were close friends?” Trace asked.

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “How close?”

  “To what compared?”

  “Well, was he your best friend at school here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now we’re getting to it. Was he the best friend you ever had in your whole life? The bestest goodest friend any boy ever had except for his dog?”

  “No. Ernie Wisniewski was my best friend ever. He taught me how to jerk off.”

  “Were you Tony’s best friend in the school?”

  “I don’t know. Tony had friends. He had money and people
wanted to be his friends, so he let them be.”

  “Did you know each other before school here?”

  “No. We met in a lit class when we were freshmen and we were okay, friends like, and then there was an ad in the paper for this house and we wound up, both of us going here at the same time, not knowing the other one was, and that’s how we got this place and became really good friends like we were. Are we going to do this a lot more because if we are, I’d like some more coffee? It keeps me awake.”

  “I’ll be going soon,” Trace said. “What kind of drugs did you and Tony use?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “People are always asking me what I mean when I think I talk in perfectly clear sentences,” Trace said. “What kind of drugs did you and Tony use? Now, don’t say ‘what do you mean?’ because what I mean is, before, I asked you if you and Tony hung out together and did women together and did drugs together and you said yes, and now I wonder what kind of drugs.”

  “All right, no big deal. We did grass sometimes.”

  “Nothing stronger? No coke or pills or like that?”

  “Just some smoke. That’s all we did. Just because I do music sounds don’t mean that I’m some kind of drughead. Those days, good-bye, are gone. You wind up like Hollywood Henderson, all bullshit and criminal charges. The world’s different now, Jack Kennedy ain’t president anymore.”

  “I thought that Tony might do more drugs than that. You know…” He smiled and lowered his voice as if someone might overhear. “His father being in the nightclub business, you know, Tony might have access to drugs.”

  “Not that I know about. Smoke only he used.”

  “Did he sell anything maybe?”

  “No.”

  “You never saw that?” Trace pressed.

  “Hey, we lived right here. Sure, most of the time he wasn’t around a lot and all, but I never saw nothing.”

  “But you smoked pot?”

  “Yeah,” LaPeter said.

  “Whose pot?”

  The gaunt thin youth thought a moment, then said, “Tony’s.”

  “Always Tony’s?”

  “Yeah. He always had smoke on him.”

  “Did he have a black suit? He was found in black pants and a black shirt? Were those his clothes?”

  “Cops showed me pictures,” LaPeter said. “Yeah, they looked like Tony’s regular clothes.”

  “That place where he was found on the Merritt Parkway. Does it mean anything to you? Anything special?”

  “Like what?” The young man seemed really interested.

  “Like it’s a place where you and Tony met somebody sometime. Or where you transferred cars or had a flat. Or were stood up by some girls. Something. Anything.”

  “No. Nothing like that. I wouldn’t even know the place.”

  “When did Tony give you money to go to the concert? And please don’t ask me what I mean.”

  “I don’t know. I told Tony about I wanted to go to the concert. About the money, I guess, I was complaining, and then that day he gave it to me.”

  “The day he died.”

  “Right, and he gave me twenty-five dollars and I went with my friends and then we hung out in the Poconos and we slept in a parking lot, then we came back.”

  “When did Jennie know that you were going to be out of town?” Trace asked.

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “Just curious,” Trace said.

  “I don’t even know if she knew,” LaPeter said. “I don’t think I told her I was going. I didn’t like tell her too much, ’cause, well, I didn’t see her all that much.”

  “Not your friend?”

  “Kind of a friend she is, but what I do isn’t really any of her business, if you know what I mean. So I don’t think I told her. Maybe Tony did.”

  “Where will I find this Jennie?”

  “I don’t think she’ll be here. She takes some summer classes and sleeps around somewhere else right now and I don’t know where. She works as a waitress at a diner a little bit from here.”

  “What diner?”

  “Cochran’s. You go out the door and you turn left and you go like six blocks and it’s there. But I don’t know when she works, if she works, or like that. You going to go there?”

  “Probably.”

  “Well, you see her, you talk to her, you be sure to tell her talk to me. We’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do about the rent here.”

  “I’ll tell her. Show me Tony’s room.”

  “Sure.” LaPeter led Trace down the hallway toward his room, but opened the door immediately to its left. The room was furnished with a bed and dresser, but the closets were open and empty and the only sign that it had ever been inhabited was a paper shopping bag near the door filled with electronic-looking gadgets.

  LaPeter said, “That’s Tony’s junk. His family didn’t want it. Probably I sell it.” He picked the bag up and put it outside the door to his own room.

  Trace backed away, then opened the door on the other side of the hall. “This Jennie’s room?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  The room was decorated a little more than Tony’s had been. Posters from the Alvin Ailey ballet company were on the walls. The sliding doors to the closet were open, but all Trace could see hanging up was a pair of blue jeans and a thin yellow sweater. A pair of winter boots were propped in a corner of the closet.

  “Thanks a lot,” Trace told the young man. “You’ve been a big help.”

  “Okay. Do what you got to do. If you find who killed Tony, then it’s a good thing to do that.”

  “Where are you from anyway?” Trace asked.

  “West Virginia. Why?”

  “Just wanted to know. Thanks again.”

  11

  “You Jennie Teller?”

  “Who you?”

  “Friend of Phil LaPeter’s. You Jennie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He didn’t tell me you were black.”

  “Maybe he thought you’d figure it out on your own. Some people do. Right off.”

  “Ho, ho,” Trace said.

  The woman waited.

  “So I was just talking to your roommate.”

  “’Bout what?”

  “About your other roommate.”

  “Un-uh,” the black woman no-ed. “Already told it all to the fuzz. No more. You a cop?”

  “I’m with the insurance company. Come to help the poor family pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. Money can’t do anything to ease the sorrow of a loved one’s passing, but isn’t it nice to know that you don’t have to be a burden on your family when you die? Do you have insurance? I’ll sell you some.”

  “Don’ need no insurance. Ain’t got no family to be burdening. Just put me in a pine box and lower me into the ground. No muss, no fuss, no bother. And no talk. Good-bye.”

  “Can I have coffee, then? While I think of something else?”

  “Yo’ dime.”

  She swished away to pour him coffee from the large metal urn in the center of the diner’s long counter. She swished nicely and was good to look at.

  She put the cup down in front of him and moved containers of milk, sugar and Sweet’n Low in front of him.

  “Forget the insurance. I just want to find out who killed Tony Armitage.”

  “I tell it all to the police.” She pronounced it PO-lice. “I got nothin’ to say to you. Get it from the PO-lice.”

  “I read what you told the cops. I didn’t seen it say anywhere that you two were lovers.”

  “Nobody asked. I’m not talking to you no more.”

  “What soured it up?” Trace pressed.

  “Who said something did?”

  “Your other roommate. Jack and the Beanstalk.”

  “Phillie talk too much.”

  “Just tell me what busted it up and I’ll leave.”

  “Nothing busted it up. We met, we liked each other’s looks, we crawled into the sack. It was good for a while an
d then it wasn’t good anymore, so we crawled out of the sack and moved along. Don’t have to be mo’ than that, you know.”

  “I know,” Trace said. “It’s one of the endearing things about feminism.”

  “What is?”

  “It made it so much easier to get women into the bed.”

  “A typical, dumb, narrow-minded, sexist view,” she said.

  “Good,” he said.

  “What’s good?”

  “That you finally stopped shucking and jiving and talking to me like some Harlem street urchin. I knew if I worked at it long enough, I’d get you talking English.”

  “It’s a shame sometimes to shatter people’s illusions,” the tall light-skinned woman said. “They like to hear me all cool and jazzy with hidden darknesses in my daytime soul. Yassuh, yassuh, yassuh, indeed. Help send that little pickaninny to college, gets her that edjOO-cation. Gets big tips. Oooooh, thank yo’, Mr. Charley.”

  “Well, stow it with me,” Trace said.

  “Don’t have to, since I’m not talking to you anymore anyway.” She walked away.

  Trace noticed a black man in a booth at the diner’s far end, watching him. The man was big, with a shaved skull; he looked like a brown bullet.

  A young man came into the diner and sat at the far end of the counter. He must have known Jennie because she leaned over and talked to him for a few moments. She poured him a cup of coffee, then took two packs of Sweet’n Low from the pocket of her light-green waitress’s uniform and set them in front of him.

  Trace concentrated on drinking his coffee. He had certainly screwed up this interview, he thought. Usually he had no trouble making people talk to him, but somehow he had rubbed the young black woman the wrong way. Dumb, he thought to himself. He had just been dumb.

  He looked up as the young man took a sip from his coffee, then got up and walked from the diner. He had left several bills in front of him and Jennie picked them up, tucked them into the top pocket of her uniform, and cleaned up the space where he had been sitting.

  She looked at Trace when she was done, shrugged, then walked back to him.

  “You want more coffee?” she said.

  “No. Here.” He took a business card from his wallet and on the back of it wrote his room number at the Plaza. “I’m there if you change your mind and want to talk to me. Might save everybody a lot of trouble.”