Free Jade in Aries by Donald E. Westlake Page B

there?”
    “Yes. You want to see it?”
    “Please.”
    Weissman produced his key ring again, and unlocked the door. “The light isn’t working,” he said. “Just a second.” He fumbled around inside, and produced a long flashlight. “Here we are,” he said, and switched it on.
    The shed was as I’d imagined it: simple, wooden, unheated, with a concrete floor. Soft-drink cases had been placed face down on this floor and one-by-twelves stretched across them. On these were stored the bolts of cloth, as brightly colored and fantastically designed as anything in the shop itself.
    Weissman said, “Some of the cloth was ruined, of course. Stew’s trying to see if we can collect on the insurance.” He flashed the light upward, and I saw the hole where Cornell had crashed through. He had torn down the light fixture with his passage, and had left a ragged, jagged hole oddly circular in shape, about three feet in diameter. Boards had been laid across the roof to cover the hole and protect the interior from the elements. “We’ll have to get it fixed soon,” Weissman said. “If there’s a thaw, that stuff I put up there won’t keep the water out. But we can’t do anything until we hear from the insurance company.”
    “Why is the cloth here?” I asked. “Do you make the stuff you sell?”
    “Not really. But lately a lot of men”—he used the term without apparent self-consciousness—“have gotten into doing their own clothes. So we sell material, too. And patterns. I do some patterns, and then you can get some commercially, too. Not much yet, but it’s coming in.”
    “I see. You aren’t a partner, are you?”
    “Oh, Lord, no. I get a percentage on patterns they sell, naturally. And when they sell things that were made from my designs, I get a part of that, too. Also, I help out in the store sometimes, I clerk and like that, and Ronnie pays me.”
    “What about Stewart Remington? I understand you live with him?”
    He suddenly blushed, and seemed very flustered. “Well, sort of. Just for a while, you know, until I get used to New York. I haven’t been here very long.”
    Weissman wasn’t a suspect; I wasn’t interested in him. I said, “Remington is Cornell’s lawyer. Did he do the legal work for the store?”
    “Oh, of course. He does all our legal work, the whole crowd. Whatever we might need, contracts or whatever. And he does our taxes, and he’s Jammer’s accountant.” He smiled, over his embarrassment now. “He’s sort of our link to the square world,” he said. “He makes sure we have all our i’s dotted.”
    I would have to talk with Remington again, away from Cornell. I stepped back out of the storage shed, saying, “What about Bruce Maundy?”
    “Bruce?” Weissman shut the door and put the padlock back in place. “He’s all right. He wants to be a playwright. Actually, he’s had a couple of things produced. In coffee houses, you know. Off-Off-Broadway.”
    We went back into Jammer. I said, “Does he live around here, too?”
    “No, in Queens. He lives at home with his mother.”
    “Does he do anything for a living? Besides the playwriting.”
    “Oh, sure. He works for a ticket agency in Manhattan. To be near the theater, you know.” Weissman grinned, poking amiable fun at his friend’s pretensions.
    I remembered the other two names from Cornell’s suspect list. “Leo Ross,” I said. “Tell me about him.”
    “He’s an interior decorator, he and Henry Koberberg have a business together. I understand they’re very successful.”
    Henry Koberberg was the final name on the list. “Do they live together?”
    “Yes.”
    “Around here?”
    “They used to, but they moved to Manhattan last year. Before I came around. I never saw their old place. The new place is really beautiful, it’s like being inside a giant plant.”
    “Where in Manhattan?”
    “In the East Sixties.”
    A very expensive section; Leo Ross and Henry Koberberg must be doing very well indeed. I