Free Deadfall (Nameless Detective) by Bill Pronzini

“Didn’t understand him or his poetry.”
    Score one for Kenneth.
    I said, “You get your money that night?”
    “Damn right.”
    “So he was in good spirits.”
    “Sure he was,” Dessault said. “Kind that come out of a bottle.”
    Melanie snickered. I didn’t say anything.
    The girl said, “I told you, he’d got this snuff box. One of a kind or something, worth a lot of money. Crap like that made him happy.”
    “Did he say where he got the box?”
    “No.”
    “Do you know anybody who speaks with a Latin accent?”
    The abrupt shift in questions seemed to confuse her, throw her off balance. “Latin? You mean Mexican?”
    “Mexican, South American—like that.”
    Dessault had come away from the wall again and was scowling at me. “How come you want to know that? What does that have to do with anything?”
    I ignored him. “Well?” I asked Melanie. “Anybody?”
    “No,” she said. “The only person I know with an accent is Alex Ozimas.”
    “Who’s he?”
    “Filipino fag. He and Kenneth had some business deals.”
    “What kind of business?”
    “Who knows? I never asked.”
    “I thought your father didn’t like homosexuals.”
    “He didn’t. But he’d do business with anybody. Alex was at the house a couple of times while I was there. He was there that night, come to think of it.”
    “The night Kenneth died?”
    “Yeah.”
    “His name isn’t on the guest list.”
    “Well, he was just leaving when I got there.”
    “What time was that?”
    “After five. Five-thirty, about.”
    “Did you talk to him?”
    “No.”
    “Your father mention him?”
    “No.”
    “So you don’t know why he was there.”
    “No.”
    “You have any idea where he lives?”
    “In the city someplace, I think.”
    “Anything else you can tell me about him?”
    “No.”
    Dessault punched out his cigarette in an abalone shell ashtray and moved up to stand alongside the girl. He put one hand on the back of her neck, began to rub it, and she shivered visibly and leaned against him. She had it bad, all right. But then, maybe he was what she deserved.
    He said, “Listen, we’ve had about enough of this. We’ve got things to do. Haven’t we, Mel?”
    She looked up at him; but with the cockeye, it seemed as if she were still looking at me. “Yes,” she said. “Lots of things to do.”
    “So why don’t you just get out of here,” he said to me. “Right now.”
    I could have pushed it; I felt like pushing it. These two had put me in a foul mood. But I had run out of questions to ask, and besides, the atmosphere of the place was oppressive and I was as sick of them as they were of me.
    “Okay,” I said. “But maybe I’ll be back.”
    “You’ll talk to yourself if you do. You won’t get in.”
    There was nothing more to say. I put my back to them and went to the door. But Dessault followed me, so that when I turned coming out on deck, he was about two feet away.
    I couldn’t resist the impulse; I said, “ ‘Gold in the hills and valleys of my mind, the big gold rush.’ That’s real good stuff, Richie. Ferlinghetti would love it.”
    “Fuck you,” he said, like the poet he wasn’t, and for the second time in twenty minutes he shut the door in my face.

Chapter Seven
    Back in the car, I used my new mobile phone to call Directory Assistance. No listing for Alex Ozimas or anybody named Ozimas. I called the office, to ask Eberhardt to check our copy of the reverse directory of city addresses—but all I got was the answering machine. So then I rang up the Hall of Justice, to see if Ben Klein was familiar with Ozimas—and he was out, too, and there wasn’t anybody else around who knew anything about the Purcell case.
    I made a U-turn and drove across the Fourth Street drawbridge and uptown to Union Square, where I deposited the car in the underground garage. Powell Street was jammed with tourists, as it almost always was these days: there are several good hotels along its length and it contains