Coward's Kiss (8 page)

“You heard me talk about her. About the type of person she was. Did she sound like that newspaper story?”

“No.”

“That just wasn’t her, Ed. Maybe I didn’t know who she was or where she came from, but I certainly knew the sort of girl she was. And, damn it, she wasn’t a tramp!”

“Not when she was with you,” I said.

“She was still the same person, wasn’t she?”

“Not necessarily.” I got a cigarette going and talked through a mouthful of smoke. “Look at it this way. She was living two lives. Part of the time she was Bank Street’s Alicia Arden and the rest of the time she was your girl Sheila. She probably had two personalities, one to go with each name. You must have represented a better way of life to her, Jack. You told me about the first time you took her to lunch, how she stood there like a kid with her nose against a candy-store window. It wasn’t the luxury that excited her. It was the respectability.”

“Is it so damned respectable to be a mistress?”

“It is if you used to be a prostitute.”

“Ed——”

“Hang on a minute. You were a cushion, Jack. A security blanket. A nice decent guy with a nice clean safe apartment in the fabulous Fifties. She was a little girl up j to her neck in trouble with a batch of very unpleasant | people. Hell, she was in over her head—that’s why she j was killed. But when she was with you she could pin her hair up and relax. She could be calm and cool and cultured. She was in a very lovely dream world and life was j good to her. Naturally she was a different person in that world. You made her that way.”

“She seemed so honest, Ed.”

“She was honest enough,” I said. “She could have lied to you, could have invented a background for herself. Instead she left the past blank. That’s honest, isn’t it?”

“I suppose you’re right. It’s . . . hard to accept the whole mess, Ed. I still don’t know what’s happening. You know how I felt when I saw the story this morning? First I read the headline and thought the police would be breaking down my door any minute. Then I read the first paragraph and I thought: God, the girl was somebody else and Sheila is still alive. It took me a few minutes to come to my senses again.”

I didn’t say anything. Things were starting to take form in my mind and I wanted to get rid of Jack so that I could think straight. My human equation was setting itself up.

“You mentioned something about her being in over her head, Ed. Were you kidding?”

“No,” I said.

“What’s it all about?”

“I don’t know. Did she ever mention anything to you about a briefcase?”

“A briefcase?”

“Yeah.”

“No,” he said. “Never.”

“Ever see one around the apartment?”

“No. Why?”

“Just wondered,” I said. “Look, you’re free as green stamps now. If the police have her under one name they won’t look for another. If they’ve nailed her to one address they won’t worry about a missing girl on Fifty-first Street. You can stop worrying and start living. Like the books say.”

For a moment or two he said nothing. Then: “I see. What do I do now?”

I frowned at the phone. “You pretend you’re a family man,” I said. “You take good care of your wife and your kids. You remove a lot of appendixes and split a lot of fees and have a ball.”

“Ed—”

“Give my best to my sister,” I told him. “So long.”

I hung up on him before he could thank me or tell me anymore of his problems or do whatever he was going to do. He was out of it now and I was bored with him. He had his small fling, got into a mess, and I helped him get out of it smelling of roses—which was more than he deserved. And in return for that I was getting warned, shot at and generally annoyed.

I decided to send the bastard a bill.

I went down the street for breakfast because it was too damned early to try stomaching instant coffee. I read the rest of the Times with breakfast but couldn’t keep my mind on what I was reading. I had the names of all the characters now and things were setting themselves up.

The human equation—X and Y and Z. X killed Sheila, Y cleaned up her apartment and Z had the briefcase.

And I had the names to fit the letters.

Peter Armin. I couldn’t figure him for X, the killer. He just didn’t fit there at all. And I knew that he didn’t have the briefcase because he wouldn’t go to such a hell of a lot of trouble to get it from me if he did. That put him in the Y position—the joker who straightened things up, stripped Sheila and otherwise tampered with the scenery. I couldn’t figure out why—that would come later, with luck—but it was in character. He’d given my apartment a thorough search the night before without disturbing a thing. It stood to reason that he’d be equally considerate of Sheila’s apartment.

That left X and Z. Now—

“Nice morning,” the waitress said.

I looked up at her. “Is it? I hadn’t noticed.”

She started to laugh. I must have said something funny as hell because she was laughing hysterically. I tucked X and Z away for future reference, paid her, tipped her and went home.

I got there in time to answer the phone.

It was the man with the raspy voice again.

“You had time to think. Now you can go or get off the pot, London. How much?”

“How much for what?”

“The briefcase. Come on, quit stalling. What’s the price?”

“I haven’t got it,” I said.

There was a pregnant pause. “That’s your story? You haven’t got it?”

“That’s my story.”

“One last chance,” he said. His voice was supposed to sound coaxing. Try coaxing in a rasp. It doesn’t come off. “One last chance, London. You’re a smart boy. I play very rough. How much do you want for it?”

“Are you Bannister?”

“I’m Al Capone,” he said. “What do you say, London?”

I said: “Go to hell, Al.” And I hung up on him.

I made coffee, filled and lit a pipe, sat down to think. I was pretty sure it was Bannister on the phone. I was just as sure that Bannister was X—that he had killed Sheila-Alicia himself or had ordered the killing.

That left Z and it left Clay, so I put the two of them together. He was the one with the briefcase.

It played itself out that far and it hit a snag. I couldn’t carry it any further. It looked as though Sheila-Alicia had teamed up with Clay to pull something on Bannister. Or as though Sheila-Alicia had something Bannister wanted, and she gave it to Clay, and then Bannister killed her. But there wasn’t much point in listing possibilities. First I needed more facts.

Like Bannister’s name. Like Clay’s name.

Like an idea of what was in the briefcase.

I gave up for the time being, picked up the phone again and gave Maddy a ring. It was too early to call her, too early for her to be properly awake. I could have been polite, waited a few hours to call her, but I didn’t feel polite to begin with. Too many people had called me early in the morning for me to take anybody else’s sleep into consideration.

Still, Maddy was special. And I felt guilty, expecting her to answer the phone with sleep coating her tongue and clogging her pores. She surprised me. Her hello was fresh and happy and very much awake.

“Sleep well?”

“It’s Ed,” she said gaily. “Hello, Ed. Yes, I slept well. Like a hibernating bear, sort of. Then I woke up and saw my shadow. Or is that with groundhogs? I guess it is. Anyway, I slept soundly and awoke bright-eyed and hungry. You missed a phenomenal breakfast, sir. Fresh orange juice and pancakes with real maple syrup and crisp bacon.”

She said all this with one mouthful of air, then stopped and caught her breath. “And then it was all topped off with a phone call from you. How sweet! You’re still alive!”

I laughed, picturing her in my mind. Her phone was by the side of her bed. She would be sitting on the edge of the bed with a cigarette in one hand and the phone in the other. She’d be wearing old slacks and a man’s shirt and she’d look lovely.

“Damn you,” she said suddenly.

“Why?”

“Because you wouldn’t call at this hour just to be nice. I’m never awake this early and you know it. You’ve got some more detecting for me to do.”

“I’m afraid you’re right.”

“Damn you again. What is it?”

“Clay.”

“Clay,” she said. “You want more inside info on this off-Broadway behemoth. You want the high-up way-out lowdown on this murky man of mystery, this heavyweight hotster, this——”

“You should be ghosting for Winchell.”

“I’m a gal of many talents,” she said. “What do you want to know about him?”

“Who he is.”

“Oh,” she said heavily. “It couldn’t be something simple, like what he eats for breakfast or what brand of cigarettes he smokes. Cigars, I mean. It has to be——”

“Just who he is. All I’ve got now is a name. I’d like a first name to go with it. If you can find out.”

“Lee Brougham would know,” she said thoughtfully. “But he’s supposed to be in California. I told you that.”

“Uh-huh.”

She was silent for a minute. “This,” she said, “is going to be a bitch.”

“I’m afraid you’re right.”

“Hell of a conversation. You keep being afraid and I keep being right. Let me think this out for a minute, Ed. I can find out who directed ‘Hungry Wedding.’ Nobody would boast about it, but somebody must have directed the dog, and I can find out who. And he just might have a list of backers, which he just might let me look at. And Clay just might be on it. There’s no guarantee, Ed. It’s a shot in the dark.”

“That’s the only kind there is.”

“So I’ll fire away. It may take an hour and it may take six hours and it may take three weeks. Anything interesting happen last night?”

“Nothing much,” I lied. “I spent a little time with a girl.”

“Who?”

“You,” I said. “Remember?”

“Ed——”

“I’ll have more to tell you,” I said. “When you get over here.”

“Where?”

“Here,” I said.

“Your apartment? No, don’t tell me you’re afraid again and I’m right again. You don’t want me to call with the precious information. You want me to trot it over. Right?”

“Right.”

She sighed. “I’ll take cabs all over the city,” she told me. “And I have a hunch you’re going to wind up shelling out for another dinner tonight, Mr. London, sir.”

“It’s all deductible,” I said. “See what you can find out.”

I was lighting my pipe when the doorbell rang.

An hour had passed since I talked to Maddy. Maybe a little more than an hour—it was hard to say. I finished lighting the pipe and started for the door, then stopped when I was halfway there.

It was too soon for it to be Maddy. It could have been anybody else in the world, ranging from the Con Ed man coming to read my meter to a girl scout selling cookies. But I was feeling nervous. I went back for Armin’s Beretta and hoped to God it wasn’t a girl scout selling cookies.

I felt only halfway ridiculous holding the gun in one hand while I opened the door.

I felt completely ridiculous when the big one knocked it out of my hand.

There were two of them—a big one and a small one. The big one was very big, a little taller than I am and a hell of a lot wider. He had a boxer’s flattened nose and a cretin idiot’s fixed stare. His jacket was stretched tight across huge shoulders. His eyes were small and beady and his forehead was wide and dull.

The small one wasn’t really that small—he looked small because he was standing next to a human mountain. He wore a hat and a suit and a tie. He had his hands in his pants pockets and he was smiling.

“Inside,” he said. “Move.”

I didn’t move. The big one gave me a shove, his arm hardly moving, and I moved. I backed up fast and damn near fell over. The big one reached out a paw and scooped up the Beretta. He pitched it at a chair. He seemed contemptuous of it, as if it was some kind of silly toy.

The small one turned, closed the door, slid the bolt across. He turned again, his eyes showing the same contempt for me that the big one had shown for the gun.

“Now,” he said, “we talk. That briefcase.”

SEVEN

THE big one held his hands in front of his chest and flexed his fingers. The small one had a bulge under his jacket that was either a gun or a lonely left breast. I remembered Peter Armin and thought about reasonable men. These two didn’t look reasonable at all.

They didn’t talk now. They were waiting me out, waiting for me to say something or do something. I wondered if I was supposed to offer them a drink.

“You’re out in left field,” I said finally. “I don’t have the briefcase.”

“The boss said you’d say that.”

“It’s the truth.”

Their faces told me nothing. “The boss said to ask you nice,” the smaller one said. “He said ask you nice, and if you didn’t come up with the briefcase, then work you over.”

“He had to send two of you?”

They didn’t get angry. “Two of us,” the talker said. “One to ask nice, the other to work you over. I’m asking nice. Billy takes care of the rest.”

“I don’t have the briefcase.”

The little one considered that. He pursed his lips, narrowed his eyes, then made a small clucking sound with his tongue. “Billy,” he said softly, “hit him.”

Billy hit me in the stomach.

He wound up like a bush-league pitcher and telegraphed the punch all over the place. He had all the subtlety of a pneumatic hammer and I was too dumb to get out of the way. My legs turned to gelatin and I wound up on the floor. I opened my eyes, saw little black circles. I blinked the circles away and looked at Billy. His hands were in front of his chest again. He flexed them, smiling the smile of a competent workman who is proud of his craft.

Something made me get up. I wobbled around and wondered if he was going to hit me again. He didn’t. I looked at him and watched his smile spread. I said a few words about Billy, and a few more about his mother, and still more about the probable relationship between the two of them.

He couldn’t help understanding them. They were all about four letters long. He growled and moved at me.

“Billy!”

He grunted, stopped in his tracks. The hands that were balled into fist now unwound. He flexed his fingers.