Man on a leash - By Charles Williams Page 0,46

trip to the bank. Lost in thought, he almost went past Paulette Carmody’s drive and had to slam on his brakes to make the turn. He parked in front of the walk on the circular blacktop drive and went up to ring the bell, thinking now that it was too late, that he should have called first. She’d probably heard about Bonner by now and might not feel like talking to anybody. She came to the door herself, and he suspected she’d been crying, though she’d done a good job of covering the effects with makeup. He started to apologize, but she interrupted.

“No,” she said. “I’m glad you came; I wanted to talk to you.” She led the way down the short vestibule into the living room. “Come on into the kitchen,” she said, “while I fix the drinks. It’s Carmelita’s day off.”

The kitchen was in front, on the opposite side of the living room, with a separate dining room in back of it. There was a door at the far end of it, probably to the garage. She opened the refrigerator for ice cubes. “Martini, vodka and tonic, scotch?”

“Vodka and tonic would be fine,” he said.

She began assembling the drinks, the old ebullience and blatant sexiness subdued now, though the simple sheath she wore was still overpowered by the figure that nothing would ever quite restrain. Her legs were bare, as usual.

“I’m sorry about Bonner,” he said.

“He made a lot of enemies,” she replied, “but I liked him. He was hard-nosed, bullheaded, and horny, and always in a brawl or trouble of some kind, but in most ways he was a simplehearted and generous kind of guy and a good friend. And lousy husband, naturally.”

“Then he’d been married?”

“Oh, yes, for about six years. But his wife finally gave up. Poker, and cheating on her all the time. Men. I’ll swear to Christ.”

They carried their drinks into the living room. Dusk was thickening in the patio beyond the wall of glass, and the pool was a shimmering blue with its underwater lights. She had heard very little of how it had happened, so he told her, playing down the gory aspects of it as much as possible.

“Then Brubaker thinks Jeri was killed, too?” she asked. “And Lew had an idea who did it?”

“Or at least they were afraid he did.”

“You realize you could have been shot, too?”

“I guess he wasn’t worried about me,” Romstead replied. That was no answer, he knew, but he didn’t have any better. “But about that radio officer on the Fairisle, was his name Tallant?”

“No,” she said. “Kessler. Harry Kessler.”

That wasn’t conclusive, Romstead thought; he could have changed it, unless he was on parole. “You knew him about four years ago?”

“That’s right. Actually, it was five years ago, of course, when your father picked us up out there, but I hardly noticed him then. Jeri did, though. She thought he was cute.”

“He’d have been in his late twenties? Medium height, slender, dark complexion, brown eyes, black hair?”

“Oh, no. The age and the build would be about right, but he was as blond as you are. Blue eyes.”

Romstead glumly shook his head. So much for that brainstorm. But then how did Tallant get into the picture?

“Anyway,” Paulette went on, “it seems to me he’d still be in prison. I don’t know how long a sentence he got, but it’s only been a little over three years.”

“Do you know where he was sent?”

She shook her head. “No, except that it must have been a federal prison. This happened at sea, so I don’t think any state would have had jurisdiction.”

“How’d the old man get wise to him anyway?”

She set her drink on the coffee table and lighted a cigarette. “Your father could read code, and Kessler didn’t know it. You see, when he was a young man and still sailing as mate on Norwegian ships—”

“Yes, I know about that,” Romstead interrupted. “He used to have both licenses and doubled as radio operator sometimes. Winegaard told me about it.”

“That’s right. And I gather that reading code is something you never entirely forget. You may get a little rusty, but you can always do it, like swimming or riding a bicycle. But I’d better start at the beginning.

“It was in 1968, when I made the first trip as passenger on the Fairisle, that I got to know this kook. I guess from what everybody said he was close to being an authentic genius—in electronics, anyway—but he didn’t have an engineering