It was time to shake the local branch of the family tree and see what might fall out. I caught a cab, which wallowed slowly crosstown through the rush-hour traffic. As I sat in the nearly motionless cab, somewhat out of joint from my talk with Patern, my own past suddenly reared up from behind an idle thought and leered at me.
The time I'd spent with the circus had been nightmare years, notwithstanding the fact that the man who was my boss is one of the finest human beings in the world. Phil Statler had saved my life by helping me up off a series of psychiatrists' couches where I'd been trying to discover just what the hell I was supposed to do in a world of giants.
Born into a perfectly normal Nebraska family, I was the product of a pairing of recessive genes. Nature had compounded her bad joke by endowing me with a fairly well-muscled intellect, and considerable gymnastic skills which I'd parlayed into a black belt in karate. By the time I reached my early twenties, I was in the circus and earning a living. It was Phil Statler who'd discovered the control I had over my body, and who'd groomed me into a headliner, away from the clowns and freaks. The man had given me dignity.
But simple dignity hadn't been enough. Perhaps because I was a physical deviate, I was drawn to the problems of other kinds of deviates. I earned a B.S. in sociology, then used my money and time off from the circus to finance my doctorate in criminology. Somewhat to my surprise, I'd been offered a teaching position at the university. There was probably a certain irony in my choice of New York City as a base of operations; my brother, Garth, was a detective on the New York City police force. All disgustingly normal six feet of him.
Garth always maintained that I had a tendency to over- compensate; that was how he explained my private investigator's license. I'd lucked out more than a few times in my life. I wasn't rich, as they say, but I was reasonably happy.
I caught Garth just as he was leaving the station house. He was almost an exact replica of our father: big, rawboned, a wheat-colored thatch of hair atop a head that despite his considerable size seemed too big for the rest of his body. After all his tough years in a city of cold stone, steel, and glass, he still walked with the ambling gait of a farmer. I loved the man; he'd carried me on his broad shoulders through a tortured childhood brimming with jeers and cruel jokes.
Despite his bellowing protests, I managed to maneuver Garth back into the tiny broom closet he called an office. There were dark rings under his blue eyes. Garth always looked tired; maybe it had something to do with being an honest cop who felt a personal responsibility toward eight million people.
"Hello, brother." I flashed my largest grin.
"Don't give me that 'brother' crap, brother," he growled. "You always say that when you want something."
"One reason you're such a good cop is your uncanny perceptiveness."
Garth grunted. "Perceptive? I read you like a book; make that a cheap pulp thriller." "Tut-tut. Compliments won't get you anywhere. I would like to find out a few things."
"This isn't the public library, Mongo. You're a private snoop; you can't just walk in off the street and pump me for information"-he allowed himself a thin smile-"like you always do."
"Now, don't get righteous on me. A retired cop working private could come in here anytime and get information."
"You're not retired, and you're not a cop."
"I'm a colleague, and I'm your brother." I tried to put a little whine in my voice; that usually got to him.
He wasn't moved. "I'm hungry, and it's my dinner hour."
"You've grown callous, Garth. I'll buy you whiskey sours and a steak. Consider that an official bribe."
"What the hell do you want, Mongo?" Garth asked wearily.
"Well, now that you mention it, I would like to see the file on-"
Garth shook his head determinedly. "Uh-uh. You know I can't actually let you look at any files."
"Then you look for me. See what you've got on the murder of a Dr. Arthur Morton. It would be early August, about five years ago, so you may get your uniform a little dusty."
"Morton ask you to find his killer?" The question was a typical way of his asking what my concern in the matter was.
I filled him in on Victor Rafferty and Arthur Morton's relationship to him, emphasizing the fact that both had died violent deaths a few days apart.
Garth frowned. "You think there may be some connection between the deaths?"
"Can't say, but I do think it's worth a little digging. Somebody else apparently got hurt in connection with Rafferty, and it upset some important people." I showed him the Xeroxed copy of the photo taken outside Rafferty's home.
Garth studied it. "They do look important."
"And they had the juice to keep everybody away from whatever was happening. That's Rafferty's house. Quite a gathering, huh?"
"Which one is Rafferty?"
"He's not there," I said. "That picture was taken two days before his dive into the furnace. I'd like to find out where he was, and what those men were doing at his house."
"Who's the creep in the winter coat?"
"Beats me. I'm just playing a hunch that there could be a tie-in with Morton's death. Morton was killed in his office- at three-thirty in the morning. What the hell was he doing in his office at that hour? And who would bother to break into a neurosurgeon's office in the first place? No money, and damn little chance of finding any narcotics. Now, isn't that enough to make a cop's nose twitch?"
"I'll pull the file," Garth said seriously.
"When?"
"First thing in the morning," he said, starting to rise. "Right now I'm going to take you up on that bribe offer."
"Rain check, brother," I said. "I'm in a big hurry on this one. I plan to be in Acapulco on Thursday, and I want to earn as much of my client's money as I can before I leave."
"You're going to roil the waters and then swim away? That doesn't sound like you."
"I'm hoping there won't be a week's worth of mud. If there is-well, I need a rest and my colleagues need the work."
"There goes the last of my illusions; I thought you were indestructible."
"What time can I get to you tomorrow, Garth?"
He considered it, then said: "Make it ten. And bring black coffee."
Now I needed a phone directory. I stopped in a bar around the corner from the station house and ordered a corned beef on rye and a beer, which I took into one of the phone booths in the rear.
Harold Q. Barnes was the name of the watchman who'd seen Rafferty fall off the catwalk. But there was only one Harold Q. Barnes listed, and his name was in large, black type in front of the words FILM COMPANY. The address was near Washington Square. I finished my corned beef sandwich in the cab.
Harry Barnes's combination house-movie studio was a converted brownstone in a fashionable district where the remodeling costs alone started at around a hundred thousand dollars. The place was all glitter on the outside and blue funk on the inside; Harry Barnes made dirty movies.
A young, very gay male let me in the door, examined me with an air of jaded disbelief, then motioned me over to where a crowd of actors and actresses were waiting, shuffling their feet. Nobody else paid any particular attention to me. These people had their own problems; the room smelled of sour hope and anxiety.
I recognized a casting "cattle call" when I saw one. The men and women were waiting in line for parts in an X-rated quickie that would probably be shot in forty-eight hours over the weekend. The men were uniformly good-looking and wore tight pants. Most of the women were well past whatever prime they might have had; many were young and just looked old-would-be discoveries on the run from places like Des Moines and Peoria. Or Nebraska. They'd come to New York to chase a star and had washed up, a thousand disappointments later, on the barren shores of the flesh trade.
I waited until the young man's back was turned, then made my way past the crowd, down a fluorescent-lighted corridor that looked as if it led to where the action was. There were now a few giggles from the women; they were speculating as to what role I was going to play in Harry Barnes's next film and what my qualification-singular-might look like.
Barnes was enjoying himself in a large, soundproofed studio deep in the bowels of the brownstone. He was gnawing on a hamburger as he directed a scene involving two big- breasted women writhing on the floor in the tepid embrace of an obviously bored, pimply-faced boy of nineteen or twenty. Again, nobody paid the slightest bit of attention to me: the people on the floor because they didn't care; Barnes because he was totally absorbed in his art.
Barnes was a big man with red hair, moustache, and goatee. He had small eyes that only looked red because of his hair and the bright lighting. Beads of sweat marched like drunken soldiers down his forehead. He turned and spotted me.
"Hey! What the-?" He almost choked on the last bite of his hamburger. He finally got it down, but the sight of a strange, uninvited dwarf standing next to him seemed to have short-circuited his vocal cords. He rose halfway out of his director's chair, his hands flapping nervously at his sides, and sputtered.
"My name's Frederickson," I said quickly. "I'm a private detective. I'd like to ask you some questions about a man named Victor Rafferty. I'll only need a few minutes of your time."
Pay dirt. He stopped sputtering and his hands grew still as he tried on a variety of expressions and settled for surprise. He obviously recognized the name. The three people on the floor continued to writhe around one another as he came over to me.
"All right, dwarf, what did you say your name was?" Barnes's voice was deep, well modulated, pleasing; it clashed with the rest of the package.
"Frederickson." I extended my hand, but he ignored it.
"You said you wanted to talk to me about Rafferty. I'm a busy man."
"I can see that. This won't take long. You worked for Victor Rafferty five years ago. Is that right?"
Barnes turned to watch the fleshy tableau behind him. "Yeah," he mumbled. I seemed to be losing his attention.
"Mr. Barnes, is there someplace we can go to talk?"
He hesitated, then nodded in the direction of a closed door across the corridor from the studio. I followed him through it, leaving the two women and the boy alone in their curious circle of hell.
The cork walls of the spacious office were covered with glossy pornographic photographs. I shut the door of the office behind me as Barnes settled down behind a large oak desk and folded his hands across his ample stomach. He didn't invite me to sit, but I considered myself ahead of the game as long as he was talking to me.
"Yeah, I worked in the Rafferty lab," he said. "But Rafferty himself didn't hire me. I only knew him by sight. There were mostly technical people there; they tested different kinds of metal alloys."
"I understand that. But you claim to have seen Rafferty die."
"I don't claim, I did see him die. What's your interest in Rafferty?"
"It's an insurance matter; a few old loose ends that were overlooked at the time and have to be straightened out. Some people don't think Victor Rafferty is dead."
His hands rose, fluttered like wounded birds a few inches above the surface of his desk, slowly came back to a landing. It was the most curious gesture I'd ever seen, and it struck me that it could be learned, practiced, purposely exaggerated. Aside from his voice, Harold Q. Barnes was almost too gross, too vulgar, as if he consciously worked at it. The man would bear closer study.
"What the hell does that mean?" Barnes snapped. "Somebody calling me a liar?"
"Insurance people are professional skeptics," I said soothingly. "They like to keep going back over the same details."
"That's crazy," he said, a distant look on his face. "Rafferty died five years ago. Who'd be interested now?"
"You were the last person to see him alive. Is that correct?"
"That's what I told the cops, and that's what I told the insurance companies. I don't-"
"Mr. Barnes, would you tell me exactly what happened?"
Barnes shrugged, then spoke as if he were reciting. "He was walking on the catwalk over the smelting furnaces. He stopped and leaned over a railing, like he was looking at something down there. All of a sudden he reached for his head, like he was dizzy. I tried to get to him, but I was too late. He fell over the railing into one of the open vats. His body exploded when it hit that hot metal. There was nothing left of him. I called the cops, but there wasn't anything anyone could do for him."
Barnes seemed immensely pleased with himself, like an actor who has learned his lines well.
"This was on a Sunday, wasn't it?"
"Yeah. I only worked there on weekends."
"Was there anyone else around?"
"No. The lab was closed on Sundays. I kept an eye on the place and checked the furnaces; they have to be kept hot, y'know."
"Why did Rafferty take you along with him, Mr. Barnes?"
"I had to let him on the catwalk. There's a steel door."
"He owned the building. Why didn't he have his own key?"
"Hell, I don't know. He must have forgotten it."
" Why did he want to go on the catwalk?"
"He never said."
"What was Rafferty doing there on a Sunday?"
"I don't know. I wasn't being paid to ask the boss questions. They tell me he was a weirdo. Maybe he just wanted to make sure everything was running like it should."
I didn't seem to be making much progress in that vein, so I gestured around the office to change the subject. "This is quite a setup you have here."
His eyes clouded with suspicion. "Yeah, I make out. What's it to you and the insurance company?"
"I'm interested in making movies myself."
Barnes's face brightened. "Hey, you ever think of acting? I might be able to build a whole film around you. Something really kinky."
"No, thanks. How do you get started in a business like this?"
"Good luck and clean living," he said with a smirk.
"And a little money."
"Some." Barnes was getting nervous again; his hands were beginning to twitch, ready for takeoff.
"About how much, would you say?"
He shook his head. "I don't discuss my personal business. You said you wanted to talk about Rafferty; okay, we talked. You said you don't want to be a movie star; that's all right too."
"It's quite a career jump from watchman to movie producer. I was hoping you might be able to give me a few tips. Who gave you your big break?"
Barnes rose threateningly from his chair. "I'm tired of this conversation. You found your way in here; now find your way out!"
I found my way out and waited a few feet beyond the entrance to the brownstone until one of the women who had been on the studio floor emerged. I almost didn't recognize her with her clothes on. She was big and lumpy, didn't wear a bra and should have. She hadn't bothered to clean off her theatrical makeup, and her face looked like a cake that had been forgotten in the oven. I stepped in front of her.
"Excuse me, ma'am. My name's Frederickson. I'd like to talk to you for a minute."
She stared down at me over the twin peaks of her breasts for what seemed a long time. "I saw you inside the studio, buddy. Whaddya want?"
"Just talk."
"I ain't no hooker, mister. I'm an actress."
"Anybody can see that right away," I assured her. "I said I just want to talk."
"No offense, but you ain't, uh, normal. I don't know how you get your kicks."
"I'd get a big kick out of your talking to me."
She sniffed. "The street ain't no Times Square rap parlor, buddy. I'm busy; I got another job to get to."
She started to walk past me. I flashed a twenty and she almost broke a platform heel stopping.
"Twenty bucks, sister, for twenty minutes of your time. A buck a minute."
She took the bill and stuffed it down the front of her dress; I wondered if she'd ever find it again.
"What do you want to talk about?" She could turn her tone on a dime; her voice was now positively saccharine.
We started walking toward Third Avenue. "Tell me about Harry Barnes."
She seemed relieved; I think she'd been expecting me to grab her leg. "That's all you want to talk about?"
"That's it. What do you know about him?"
She darted a glance sideways at me. "You ain't going to tell him what I say, are you?"
"Not a word, love. Cross my heart."
She made a face. "He's kinky."
"Oh-oh," I clucked. "What does that mean?"
Her breasts bounced violently as we stepped down off a curb, and then settled back into their normal, quivering rhythm as we crossed the street. "He ain't no professional," she said, demurely supporting her breasts with a forearm as we stepped up on the opposite curb. "I mean, there's lots of guys making skin flicks. Most of them treat you like a professional. Harry ain't like that. He likes to touch his girls, sleep with 'em, that kind of thing."
"What's his product like?"
Another face. "I don't know how he makes any money on the shit he turns out. The stuff he makes would have been okay a few years ago, but everything now is synch sound and color. Real Hollywood. It's like Harry makes 'em as a hobby." She shrugged. "Still, he pays pretty good. Standard."
"Where do you suppose he got the money to get started?"
"Gee, I don't know, mister. I ain't interested in the business end. He just started is all."
"When?"
"Oh, I don't know. A few years ago."
"Five years?"
"Maybe. Yeah, that sounds about right. I hear he used to be a janitor, or something like that. One day he was just there in the business. Maybe some mob guys set him up, or something like that."
"Or something like that. Thanks, sister." I started to walk away.
"Hey, Mr. Whatever-your-name-is! You still got ten minutes left!"
I blew her a kiss.
It was a little before ten. I took a cab back to the university; I found one of the night guards, and he let me into the building where I had my office. On the way up to the third floor, I took off my jacket and removed the miniaturized tape recorder I kept in a pocket sewn into the lining; the recorder had been running throughout my talk with Harry Barnes.
The recorder was a component of a machine called a Stress Evaluator, and it was the latest invasion-of-privacy wrinkle. It was reputed to be far more accurate than the polygraph, and was certain to arouse more controversy. What it did was measure the relative stress in a person's voice, then relay that information to the operator by means of a line graph fed out of the machine on a paper tape. It was assumed that a person was under more stress when he or she was lying. A recording was played at low speed into the machine, and the paper tape came out the other side. All the operator had to do was to compare the spikes on the graph with the corresponding response to any particular question to determine whether the person had, in all probability, been lying. Instant Truth. The machine was a long way from courtroom use, but I was impressed by its potential uses-and abuses. That was what I'd told the American Bar Association in the evaluation report they'd asked me to write.
Using the pause control between each question and answer, I played the Barnes tape into the machine, then scanned the readout. The parts of Barnes's story where he talked about Rafferty's supposed death were consistently skewed toward the high end of the graph.
According to the machine, Harold Q. Barnes had been lying through his teeth.