Aphrodite Page 7

  “I have a responsibility—” Corning began.

  “I know you do. But so do I. If I’m right.”

  “So if you are right, you want whoever did it to keep thinking he’s home free.”

  Justin nodded. Corning went back to rooting through his desk until he found what he was looking for. “Here it is. Wally Crabbe.” He held up a scrap of yellow paper with a name, address, and phone number on it. “He lives mid-Island, about an hour from here. The town’s called Middleview.” The editor wrote down the information for Westwood. “You know,” Corning said slowly, “I also have a responsibility to report the facts. You don’t know if your theory is fact, do you, Detective?”

  “No I don’t,” Justin said.

  “And Susanna was a good friend. I have a responsibility to her, too—don’t you think?”

  “Yes I do.” “Then it would be irresponsible of me to say anything. At least for now.”

  “Thank you,” Justin said.

  “But you will let me know one way or the other, won’t you? When you have the facts, I mean.”

  “You’ll be the first, Mr. Corning. I promise.”

  Harlan Corning handed Justin the piece of paper with the scribbled information. As they shook hands, he said, “Good luck with this guy, Detective. You’re in for quite a treat.”

  6

  Wallace P. Crabbe was irate.

  This was nothing unusual, because Wallace P. Crabbe was almost always irate. But he always kept his anger deep inside him. Always. On the surface—at work dealing with incompetent co-workers, on dinner dates with women whom he found unattractive and uninteresting, at meetings with authors whose manuscripts he copyedited, catching the most minute grammatical and factual errors—he was civil and polite, hardworking and trouble free. He was never the life of the party. About that he had no illusions. On the other hand, he was always invited to the party because he was appreciative of good food, could talk about the latest novel, was a very good listener, and almost always had a benign smile on his soft and pleasant-looking face.

  That was the surface.

  Inside, he hated smiling while he was bombarded with a constant stream of drivel. He hated all the novels he read and all the food he forced himself to eat at obnoxiously trendy restaurants. He hated almost everything and everyone. Inside, Wallace P. Crabbe was a roiling storm. Had been since he was twelve years old and Tony DeMarco knocked his schoolbooks out of his hands into a big patch of mud, then shoved him into the same mud patch and left, laughing, with his arm around the beautiful and bewitching eleven-year-old Abigail Winters. Wallace had been just about to ask Abigail, who had the most appealing ponytail, to go out to the movies with him. Instead, she went to the movies with Tony DeMarco, and that was when Wallace decided that life was basically unfair and that he was one of the unlucky majority who were going to get screwed over and over again by that very unfairness. But he saw no advantage to griping about it. The more he complained, the greater the chance, he figured, of being shoved into ever deeper and ever dirtier patches of mud.

  By the age of forty-nine, Wallace P. Crabbe had managed to do everything he could to quietly prove his theory to himself and to show that he had zero chance of achieving the slightest bit of happiness. And with each additional proof, Wallace got angrier and angrier.

  Inside.

  He’d been married once, some years ago, and it had lasted six years, until his wife came home and told him she’d been seeing his best friend on the side. Wallace was not happy about losing his wife—she was fairly quiet and easy to be with—but he had to admit he was even unhappier about losing his friend, since he didn’t have all that many to spare. On the outside, he was understanding and rather gracious during the entire divorce process. Inside, he began having fantasies of his ex-wife and ex-friend in combination with such things as meat grinders and crossbows and hunting rifles. At age fifty-two, after his publishing company was absorbed by a huge German conglomerate, he was offered—and told to accept—early retirement. He accepted it gratefully and unhesitatingly and was well paid off. But ever since, he had had dreams about the human resources director who gave him the bad news in which his own hands were wrapped around her pale, too-thick neck and he choked the life out of her.

  Since he’d been laid off, he’d sold his one-bedroom Upper West Side apartment, making a tidy profit, as it was nearly mortgage free, and moved out to Long Island. Not one of the chic places, one of the suburban areas half an hour from the chic places. He got a small ranch-style house with a patch of a backyard and set himself up. Why not? What was in the city for him now? That was an easy one to answer: not much. The move didn’t affect whatever work came his way. He could still get his occasional freelance copyediting assignments, that was no problem. There was less noise, less hassle, less pretension in suburbia. His social life had suffered, no question about that; it was a lot harder to meet people, especially women, but even in the city his social life had been moderately successful at best. Currently, he was seeing a woman who worked at a magazine geared for home gardeners. He found her too angular to be attractive and too obsessed with various subspecies of daylilies to be interesting, but he saw her two or three times a week. Either she cooked a bland meal that he didn’t like or they went to a restaurant where the maître d’ kept them waiting too long before seating them. Through it all, Wallace P. Crabbe kept smiling. But slowly, he began retreating into the world within his 1950s two-bedroom ranch house.

  His routine there was very consistent. Every morning, Wallace had all three New York newspapers, the Daily News, the Post, and the Times, delivered. As well as Newsday, the Long Island paper. On Fridays, which was the day it came out, he also read the East End Journal. He had tried to break himself of this end-of-the-week habit several times but was unable to do it. He felt compelled to read the inane gossip about famous people he despised and the police reports about thieves stealing leftover chicken out of refrigerators and the idiotic letters to the editor about the new speed-bump controversy. He particularly was unable to resist the obituaries about the barbers who’d been cutting hair so many years they refused to use electric razors and the old biddies who’d been around so long they thought they’d come over on the Mayflower. So, over three cups of strong, black coffee, he read his papers, always in the same order—News, Post, Times, Newsday, on Fridays the Journal—and always cover to cover. Nothing made him angrier than reading about crooked politicians and slimy rich people who broke all the rules and got away with it. On almost any given day, Wallace would rant and rave—silently, to himself—about national politics, local politics, the heat, the cold, the lack of quality on TV, obscene music lyrics by gangster rappers, the price of groceries, the low level of water in the reservoirs. Later that day, right before lunch, when he’d speak with his girlfriend on the telephone or with someone calling to ask him about a possible copyediting assignment, he would bring up a story he’d read earlier, one that had knotted his stomach and caused his throat to constrict. When it provoked no anger on the other end of the line, he would let it drop and say, in an absolutely even tone, “Yes, you’re right, it’s just the way of the world. It’s nothing to get excited about.”

  After lunch, he usually spent a couple of hours at his computer, in chat rooms, talking to his new circle of anonymous and mostly pseudonymous friends. In the late afternoon and, if he had no plans, at night, Wallace P. Crabbe would retreat into his one passion that elicited no anger and that never let him down: the movies. He rented at least one tape or DVD a day, sometimes two or even three. He read every book he could about Hollywood: celebrity biographies and autobiographies, critical analyses, books on how to write screenplays, behind-the-scenes “making of” books. He was obsessed with Hollywood movies. Not all of them, not the silents—he couldn’t care less about those—but everything from the late thirties on. Screwball comedies. Melodramas. Noir thrillers. The Astaire and Kelly musicals. Mushy romances. He loved them all. At night he was usually awake until two or three in
the morning watching his rentals or old films on cable. He thought he knew everything there was to know about the movies; he could tell you who directed what and who the cinematographer was and even the theme song that played over the credits and who wrote it. Watching a 1940s Clark Gable picture or a 1950s Ava Gardner was the one thing that transported him into a state of relative inner calm.

  All in all, Wallace didn’t mind the fact that he was almost always angry. Something inside him had long ago told him to be afraid of what was in there, never to let it out, and since he hadn’t, he was fairly proud of the way he’d dealt with things. He was not all that unhappy with the way he’d organized his life, and he felt he had things pretty much under control.

  Until this past Friday, when Wallace’s two main obsessions had come together to drive him into a state of barely controlled fury.

  At first he didn’t even realize what the problem was. He had finished all the real papers and was aggravating himself with the East End Journal. He made a mental note to remember how much money the school board was trying to gouge the town for and he checked out the diagram of a house that some Israeli was building in the Hamptons that was supposed to be the largest private residence in the world. There were several decent obits, too, so while sipping his final half-cup of coffee, he read quarter-page summaries about the life of one man whose hardware store had been on Main Street since 1957 and the history of another who’d invented some kind of special lawn-mower blade that had revolutionized the lives of gardeners everywhere. The third obit was about an actor, William Miller. It was longer than the others, and somehow it seemed more personal. Wallace paid particular attention to it because it was about Hollywood.

  At first, Wallace P. didn’t know what was bothering him so much about the obit. One thing that annoyed him was that he’d never heard of William Miller, and he was convinced he’d heard of everybody. But it was more than that. It was the 1938 costume drama, The Queen of Sheba. And William Miller’s Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Even now, days later, Wallace felt the bile rising in his stomach. Nobody had ever been nominated for an Oscar for some historical piece of shit like that. And definitely not in 1938. Best Supporting Actor nominations that year were Gene Lockhart for Algiers—no one even remembered him—John Garfield for Four Daughters, Basil Rathbone for If I Were King, and—oh yes—Robert Morley for Marie Antoinette. Walter Brennan won for Kentucky. No goddamn William Miller. Nobody who had the word “cowboy” in the headline of his obituary. He didn’t even have to look it up. Christ!

  The Friday he’d read the article, Wallace had tried to calm himself down. He knew that the rage within was starting to spill over onto the outside. But he couldn’t contain it. Fucking small-town papers! How could they make a mistake like this? How could they not know? And then Wallace P. realized he wasn’t just thinking those things, he was speaking them aloud, yelling them, actually, although there was no one else in his house. For the first time in a long time, Wallace P. Crabbe also realized that he wanted to tell someone—no, needed to tell someone—about this horrible thing, this inexcusable error that seemed to him to spell the end of modern civilization. This was something he could not push away and ignore with a happy smile on his face.

  He tried calling his girlfriend but all he got was her office voice mail. He left a message saying that it was important and she should call him. He then called one person who still worked at his old publishing company, a fairly precise production guy, but although this person sympathized with Wallace’s opinions about the world’s ineptness, he didn’t see what the big deal was. After he hung up, he decided that this emergency called for some real action, so Wallace P. stormed to the phone book, looked up the number he wanted, once again grabbed the telephone hat hung on the wall of his small kitchen, and called the East End Journal. Amazingly enough, the person who picked up the phone was actually the man who owned and edited the paper, and he said he’d be more than happy to listen to Wallace’s tirade. The owner did indeed listen, although not nearly as long as Wallace would have liked him to. And he kept calling him “Wally,” which infuriated Wallace even more. At some point, the owner thanked him for spotting the errors and promised that he would take care of it. He asked for a phone number and address so someone could let him know when to look for the correction in the paper. The editor told him it would probably be printed in next Friday’s issue. Wallace gave him the information—but only after insisting that the editor write his name down as Wallace, not Wally. He made him spell it back to him and still, when the man hung up, he said, “Thanks for calling, Wally.”

  Wallace was certain that no one would ever call, sure that the guy was lying to him. If there was something of which Wallace was positive, it was that he did not trust anyone who insisted on calling him Wally. He was sure that the owner was listening to him just the way Wallace listened to everybody else: patiently, smiling, nodding, and paying absolutely no attention. Wallace P. was as sure about this as he’d ever been of anything in his whole life.

  So he was particularly surprised when someone from the police department called and asked if he’d be home in the afternoon. The policeman said that it was about the obit that had run in the paper.

  Wallace said he’d be home and he’d be happy to talk about it.

  He was delighted that someone had, in fact, been listening to him.

  That delight turned to anger once again when, before hanging up, the policeman said, “I’ll be there in about an hour, Wally.”

  The first thing Wallace Crabbe noticed about Justin Westwood was that he was sloppy. No. To be precise, it wasn’t sloppiness. It was a certain disdain for his own appearance. It seemed almost deliberate. The man’s hair was a little too long and unruly. How difficult would it have been to run a comb through it? He wasn’t fat, but if he didn’t start working out soon, he certainly would be. This man did not turn down that extra cookie after dinner. Which was fine, but when was the last time he’d done a sit-up? And his clothes. They were nice clothes. Not cheap. But the shirt could have used a little starch. Not too much, but some. And the pants could be creased. Oh yes. Those pants could absolutely be creased. Plus: brown loafers. Puh-lease.

  The first thing Justin noticed about Wallace Crabbe’s house was how extraordinarily clean it was. There seemed to be absolutely no dirt. Or clutter. Or anything personal except for the second thing he noticed, which was that there were at least several months’ worth of newspapers stacked up in his kitchen. Crabbe saw him eyeing the stack, immediately got defensive and said, “I use them as sources of reference. I save them for four months exactly. Then I throw them away. Each day I throw out the ones from four months ago.”

  Justin nodded casually, as if it weren’t the weirdest thing he’d seen in a long time. “Did you save Bill Miller’s obituary?”

  “What’s so damn important about this obituary that you had to come all this way to talk to me?”

  “The woman who wrote it was murdered.” He watched Crabbe’s face, waiting to see the reaction. The news seemed barely to register. “You don’t seem too upset by that.”

  “Didn’t know her,” Crabbe said. “And she certainly wasn’t a very accurate or competent journalist.”

  “So you couldn’t care less?”

  “I couldn’t care at all.”

  “Nice.”

  “Mr. Westwood—”

  “Detective Westwood. As long as we’re being concerned with accuracy.”

  “Detective Westwood. Did you drive all this way so you could impugn my character?”

  “No. I’d like you to tell me what got you so upset about the obit.”

  “Who said I was upset?”

  “Weren’t you?”

  “Yes. But it was hardly irrational, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  Westwood didn’t say anything, waited to see where this guy was going with it.

  “I had every reason to be upset,” Wallace Crabbe said. “There are standards to be kept up.”
<
br />   “And this obituary violated your standards?”

  “The obituary violated everyone’s standards. First of all, it said that this … this …Miller person … was nominated for an Academy Award in 1938. Preposterous. This man was never nominated for an Oscar. Believe me. Not in 1938, not ever.”

  “He was an old man. He exaggerated.”

  “He didn’t just make up the award. He made up the movie.”

  “The Queen of Sheba?”

  “Didn’t exist.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Detective, I assume you know all about clues or evidence or whatever it is you do. I know movies.”

  “There was no movie called The Queen of Sheba?”

  “Not since a little thing I like to call ‘talkies’ came in.”

  “Speaking of evidence, Mr. Crabbe, when I called you earlier you said you’d been away.”

  “Yes. That’s right. I went away with my girlfriend for two days.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “I don’t see that it’s any of your business.”

  “It kind of is,” Westwood said. “I’d like to see if you can account for your whereabouts when Susanna Morgan was murdered.”

  “I have no idea when she was murdered, but whenever it was, I most certainly can account for my whereabouts. The two days I’m referring to, I was in the Poconos. At a small lodge called Pococabana.”

  “I assume you can prove that.”

  “Whenever you’d like me to.”

  Westwood nodded. He hadn’t really expected this little guy to be involved in the murder. He was lingering now just because he felt like being as annoying as possible.

  “Was there anything else?” he asked. “In the obit, I mean. Anything else that bothered you.”

  “Other than the writing style? All the other credits were TV and theater. I don’t watch TV and the theater’s irrelevant in today’s world— it doesn’t concern me.”