I could tell the room had been nice once. There was a dusty, but fussily attractive, old-fashioned lampshade casting a pool of light over a comfortable stuffed armchair. A messy coffee table sat in front of the gas heater. Tall bookshelves stood to each side of the mantelpiece, stacked two deep. More books littered every surface. They were even stacked on the floor in wavering waist-high towers.
I had the feeling that Walenski had stopped trying some time ago and had just been going through the motions ever since.
There was only the one big chair and, with the papers and mug on the coffee table, it was obvious Walenski had been occupying it. The old guy pointed through a doorway to the kitchen. 'Bring some chairs.'
Monty snagged two before I could get one for myself. He knew I'd hate it and was just trying to push my buttons. I waited while Monty positioned the two chairs on the far side of the coffee table which stood in front of the heater. This was going full blast and the room was so hot, it was almost stifling. Again, a wave of claustrophobia swept over me. Nausea roiled in my belly. My heart raced and I felt the first rush of a panic attack. Had to get a grip.
I sat down clasping sweaty palms over one knee and looked to Monty but he'd wandered off exploring. Typical. I smiled and felt my heart rate begin to return to normal.
Walenski shuffled over to the armchair. 'I've been sorting through it for you.'
I waited, figuring I'd work out what he was talking about soon enough. Besides, I needed to do my meditation breathing.
The old guy lowered himself into the chair with painful care and began reading. I glanced at Monty who had prowled across the room. He grinned then poked his nose into the little kitchen. I heard him opening and closing cupboard doors. Luckily, Walenski was oblivious. Monty caught my eye as he returned to the living room, giving me a little half nod which I took to mean the place was lived-in. Then he opened the door to a bedroom. No rules for the Montys of this world. From the glimpse I caught, the bedroom was as cluttered and fussy as the lounge room with lots of knick-knacks and books.
Walenski kept reading. If it was Joseph Walenski. How had Arthur found him?
'Mr Walenski, I was-'
'It's waited this long, you can wait another five minutes,' he told me, then went back to reading. He looked weary, but he looked like a man who had wrestled with his demons and beaten them.
Monty winked at me and kept moving, this time over to the window that looked down into the street. He ran his finger over the sill and lifted it to show me the layer of dust. It showed up as a pale line on his dark skin. Either this was the actor's own home or this was the real Joseph Walenski's home.
I rolled my eyes and noticed the ceiling. It was pressed metal. Everything in this flat had seen better days, including the old guy.
Before Genevieve's murder, Walenski had lived on an invalid's pension, courtesy of a car accident that killed his parents and injured him when he was in his early teens, but after Genevieve's death his bank account had not been touched. I'd seriously considered that Walenski might be dead. Yet here he was. Supposedly.
I studied the old guy as he read the pages. If this was him, the missing witness had not aged well. The real Joseph Walenski would have been 53, yet this guy looked nearer to 70.
I cleared my throat. 'So how did Arthur find you?'
'Nearly finished.' He held up his hand and shuffled about 20 pages into order. There was a much larger pile of faded typewritten pages covered in scribbled notes. A manuscript. And, from the look of it, he was giving us roughly the first chapter.
Satisfied that the pages were straight, Walenski sat there for a couple of heartbeats staring into the blue flames of the gas heater.
Going on gut instinct, I was inclined to believe that this was Joseph Walenski, the man who had not come forward to save his best friend. But why? I couldn't keep quiet any longer. I shifted on my seat. 'I have some questions, Mr Walenski.'
Monty returned to stand behind my chair. I felt him as a familiar, if challenging, presence at my back.
Walenski looked across at us, his faded blue eyes glistening with tears. He blinked and the tears rolled unchecked down his face.
'I let him down. O'Toole didn't kill Genevieve.'
Sympathy wrenched at my gut, but it didn't stop my questions. 'Then why didn't you confirm Pete O'Toole's alibi?'
A grimace of pain twisted Walenski's features. 'You think you know yourself but you don't, not until you're tested. I failed. I dithered for a week. Truth is, I was a gutless coward. Maybe I would have come forward, but then O'Toole killed himself and there was no point. Guess I'll never know if I would have gone to the police.'
Angrily, he slid a large rubber band around the pages. It snapped, spinning away. He swore softly, his fingers trembling as he shoved the manuscript into a faded manila envelope. He stood and held it out to me. 'Go on, take it. I'm not going to hide anymore. When you finish it you'll understand why I let O'Toole down, and why he killed himself.'
I came to my feet and took the envelope, pulling the manuscript halfway out. It was called Unimportant Murders and headed Chapter One. The feel of the paper and the look of the faded typewriter print told me that this was an old manuscript.
'You wrote this to exonerate O'Toole? You wrote a book?'
'I'm a writer. I've been published in top-paying markets!' He bristled, then added, 'of course that was 25 years ago, but the only reason I haven't been published since is because I haven't submitted.'
'Okay, okay.' I caught Monty's secret smile. Creative people can be so defensive. 'But why write a book? You could have done an interview to exonerate O'Toole.'
He shook his head. 'People can twist your words. I had to tell O'Toole's story so the public got the whole picture. You don't know what it was like back then. When he killed himself everyone saw it as an admission of guilt. But I knew better. I knew the real O'Toole. He wasn't what the police made him out to be. True, he didn't have much schooling and he'd had a rough start in life, got in trouble with the law in his teens, got his first girlfriend pregnant. But he'd married her and tried to do the right thing. He wasn't stupid. He'd taught himself to paint.
'And he cared about the kids on the Street. The injustice of it really got to him. He would talk for hours about things that had happened while he was driving the taxi. After a while I began taping him. He didn't mind. In fact, he got a real buzz when I sold a couple of stories based on stuff he'd told me. I had a ringside seat to his life.
'More than that, in the last week before Genevieve's murder I was one of the players. After he killed himself, the book just poured out of me. I was going to send it to a publisher. I dreamed of it clearing O'Toole and being a bestseller.' He paused, then didn't go on.
'So what happened?' I gestured to the faded pages on the coffee table. 'Why didn't you submit your book?'
All the fight went out of him. 'I had my reasons. Good reasons. You'll see when you read it.'
I glanced down. I was tempted to scoop up the rest of the book and run. 'Why can't I have the rest of it?'
'It's not ready. I did the first draft, but when I went back to tidy it up I realised I couldn't send it out.'
'Why not?'
'You'll understand when you've read it.'
I hated it when people did that.
'If it wasn't O'Toole, who did kill Genevieve?' I asked, cutting to the chase.
He cast me a dry look. Walenski was no fool. 'I can make an educated guess and I know why.'
'Then who is your best guess? And why?'
He shook his head. 'I want you to read it as it unfolds, see if you agree with me.' He hesitated, a self-conscious grin lighting his face and suddenly the years slipped away from him and he was charming. 'I want you to make it into a movie.'
I bit