One Lonely Night (10 page)

That brought her head up. Her eyes got wide and stared at the wall. “I ... I’m not concerned with names.”

“I am.”

“But you ... I’m ... please, what have I done? Haven’t I been faithful? Must you go on....” She had kept it up too long. The panic couldn’t stay. It left with a rush and a pleading tone took its place. There were tears in her eyes now, tears she tried hard to hold back and being a woman, couldn’t. They flooded her eyelids and ran down her cheeks.

“Ethel ... quit being scared of me. Look in a mirror and you’ll know why I called you tonight. You aren’t the kind of woman a guy can see and forget. You’re too damned serious.”

Dames, they can louse me up every time. The tears stopped as abruptly as they came and her mouth froze in indignation. This time she was able to look at my eyes clearly. “We have to be serious. You, of all people, should know that!”

This was better. The words were her own, what was inside her and not words that I put there. “Not all the time,” I grinned.

“All the time!” she said. I grinned at her and she returned it with a frown.

“You’ll do, kid.”

“I can’t understand you.” She hesitated, then a smile blossomed and grew. She was lovely when she smiled. “You were testing me,” she demanded.

“Something like that.”

“But ... why?”

“I need some help. I can’t take just anybody, you know.” It was true. I did need help, plenty of it too.

“You mean ... you want me to help you ... find out who ... who did it?”

Cripes, how I wanted her to open up. I wasn’t in the mood for more of those damn silly games and yet I had to play them. “That’s right.”

It must have pleased her. I saw the fingers loosen up around the glass and she tasted the drink for the first time. “Could I ask a question?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“Why did you choose me?”

“I’m attracted to beauty.”

“But my record ...”

“I was attracted to that too. Being beautiful helped.”

“I’m not beautiful.” She was asking for more. I gave it to her.

“All I can see are your face and hands. They’re beautiful, but I bet the rest of you is just as beautiful, the part I can’t see.”

It was too dark to tell if she had the grace to blush or not. She wet her lips again, parting them in a small smile. “Would you?”

“What?”

“Like to see the rest of me.” No, she couldn’t have blushed.

I laughed at her, a slow laugh that brought her head around and showed me the glitter in her eyes. “Yeah, Ethel, I want to. And I will when I want to just a little more.”

Her breath came so sharply that her coat fell open and I could see the pulse in her throat. “It’s warm here. Can we ... leave?”

Neither of us bothered to finish our drinks.

She was laughing now, with her mouth and her eyes. I held her hand and felt the warm pressure of her fingers, the stilted reserve draining out of her at every step. Ethel led the way, not me. We walked toward her place almost as if we were in a hurry, out to enjoy the evening.

“Supposing your father ... or somebody you know should come along,” I suggested.

She shrugged defiantly. “Let them. You know how I feel.” She held her head high, the smile crooked across her lips. “There’s not one of them I care for. Any feeling I’ve had for my family disappeared several years ago.”

“Then you haven’t any feeling left for anyone?”

“I have! Oh, yes I have.” Her eyes swung up to mine, half closed, revealing a sensuous glitter. “For the moment it’s you.”

“And other times?”

“I don’t have to tell you that. There’s no need to test me any longer.”

A few doors from her building she stopped me. Her convertible was squatting there at the curb. The cars in front and behind had parking tickets on the windshield wiper. Hers bore only a club insignia.

“I’ll drive this time,” she said.

We got in and drove. It rained a little and it snowed a little, then, abruptly, it was clear and the stars came in full and bright, framed in the hole in the sky. The radio was a chant of pleasure, snatching the wild symphonic music from the air and offering us orchestra seats though we were far beyond the city, hugging the curves of the Hudson.

When we stopped it was to turn off the highway to a winding macadam road that led beneath the overhanging branches of evergreens The cottage nestled on top of a bluff smiling down at the world. Ethel took my hand, led me inside to the plush little playhouse that was her own special retreat and lit the heavy wax candles that hung in brass holders from the ceiling.

I had to admire the exquisite simplicity of the place. It proclaimed wealth, but in the most humble fashion. Somebody had done a good job of decorating. Ethel pointed to the little bar that was set in the corner of the log cabin. “Drinks are there. Would you care to make us one ... Then start the fire? The fireplace has been laid up.”

I nodded, watched her leave the room, then opened the doors of the liquor cabinet. Only the best, the very best. I picked out the best of the best and poured two straight, not wanting to spoil it with any mixer, sipped mine then drank it down. I had a refill and stared at it.

A Commie. She was a jerky Red. She owned all the trimmings and she was still a Red. What the hell was she hoping for, a government order to share it all with the masses? Yeah. A joint like this would suddenly assume a new owner under a new regime. A fat little general, a ranking secret policeman, somebody. Sure, it’s great to be a Commie ... as long as you’re top dog. Who the hell was supposed to be fooled by all the crap?

Yet Ethel fell for it. I shook my head at the stupid asses that are left in this world and threw a match into the fireplace. It blazed up and licked at the logs on the andirons.

Ethel came out of the other room wearing her fur coat. Her hair looked different. It seemed softer. “Cold?”

“In there it is. I’ll be warm in a moment.”

I handed her the glass and we touched the rims. Her eyes were bright, hot.

We had three or four more and the bottom was showing in the bottle. Maybe it was more than three or four. I wanted to ask her some questions. I wanted the right answers and I didn’t want her to think about them beforehand. I wanted her just a little bit drunk.

I had to fumble with the catch to get the liquor cabinet open. There was more of the best of the best in the back and I dragged it out. Ethel found the switch on a built-in phonograph and stacked on a handful of records.

The fireplace was a leaping, dancing thing that threw shadows across the room and touched everything with a weird, demoniac light. Ethel came to me, holding her arms open to dance. I wanted to dance, but there were parts of me trying to do other things.

Ethel laughed. “You’re drunk.”

“I am like hell.” It wasn’t exactly the truth.

“Well
I’m
drunk. I’m very, very drunk and I love it!” She threw her arms up and spun around. I had to catch her. “Oo, I want to sit down. Let’s sit down and enjoy the fire.”

She pulled away and danced to the sofa, her hands reaching out for the black bearskin rug that was draped over the back of it. She threw it on the floor in front of the fire and turned around. “Come on over. Sit down.”

“You’ll roast in that coat,” I said.

“I won’t.” She smiled slyly and flipped open the buttons that held it together. She shrugged the shoulders off first letting it fall to her waist, then swept it off and threw it aside.

Ethel didn’t have anything on. Only her shoes. She kicked them off too and sunk to the softness of the bearskin, a beautiful naked creature of soft round flesh and lustrous hair that changed color with each leap of the vivid red flame behind her.

It was much too warm then for a jacket. I heard mine hit a chair and slide off. My wallet fell out of the pocket and I didn’t care. The sling on my gun rack wouldn’t come loose and I broke it.

She shouldn’t have done it. Damn it, she shouldn’t have done it! I wanted to ask her some questions.

Now I forgot what I wanted to ask her.

My fingers hurt and she didn’t care. Her lips were bright red, wet. They parted slowly and her tongue flicked out over her teeth inviting me to come closer. Her mouth was a hungry thing demanding to be tasted. The warmth that seemed to come from the flames was a radiation that flowed from the sleek length of her legs and nestled in the hollow of her stomach a moment before rising over the convex beauty of her breasts. She held her arms out invitingly and took me in them.

I CAME AWAKE with the dawn, my throat dry and my mind groping to make sense out of what had happened. Ethel was still there, lying curled on her side up against me. Sometime during the night the fire had gone down and she had gotten up to get a blanket and throw it over us.

Somehow I got to my feet without waking her up. I pulled on my clothes, found my gun sling and my jacket on the floor. I remembered my wallet and felt around for it, getting mad when I didn’t find it. I sat on the arm of the sofa and shook my head to clear out the spiders. Bending over didn’t do me much good. The next time I used my foot and scooped it out from under the end table where I must have kicked it in getting dressed.

Ethel Brighton was asleep and smiling when I left. It was a good night, but not at all what I had come for. She giggled and wrapped her arms around the blankets. Maybe Ethel would quit being mad at the world now.

I climbed into my raincoat and walked out, looking up once at the sky overhead. The clouds had closed in again, but they were thinner and it was warmer than it had been.

It took twenty minutes to reach the highway and I had to wait another twenty before a truck came along and gave me a lift into town. I treated him to breakfast and we talked about the war. He agreed that it hadn’t been a bad war. He had gotten nicked too, and it gave him a good excuse to cop a day off now and then.

I called Pat about ten o’clock. He gave me a fast hello, then: “Can you come up, Mike? I have something interesting.”

“About last night?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll be up in five minutes. Stick around.”

Headquarters was right up the street and I stepped it up. The D.A. was coming out of the building again. This time he didn’t see me. When I rapped on Pat’s door he yelled to come in and I pushed the knob.

Pat said, “Where the hell have you been?” He was grinning.

“No place.” I grinned back.

“If what I suspect goes on between you and Velda, then you better get that lipstick off your face and shave.”

“That bad?”

“I can smell whisky from here too.”

“Velda won’t like that,” I said.

“No dame in love with a dope does,” Pat laughed. “Park it, Mike. I have news for you.” He opened his desk drawer and hauled out a large manila envelope that had CONFIDENTIAL printed across the back.

When he was draped across the arm of the chair he handed a fingerprint photostat to me. “I took these off the corpse last night.”

“You don’t waste time, pal.”

“Couldn’t afford to.” He dug in the envelope and brought out a three-page document that was clipped together. It had a hospital masthead I didn’t catch because Pat turned it over and showed me the fingerprints on the back. “These are Oscar Deamer’s too. This is his medical case history that Lee was holding.”

I didn’t need to be an expert to see that they matched. “Same guy all right,” I remarked.

“No doubt about it. Want to look at the report?”

“Ah, I couldn’t wade through all that medical baloney. What’s it say?”

“In brief, that Oscar Deamer was a dangerous neurotic, paranoiac and a few other phychiatric big words.”

“Congenital?”

Pat saw what I was thinking. “No, as a matter of fact. So rest easy that no family insanity could be passed on to Lee. It seems that Oscar had an accident when he was a child. A serious skull fracture that somehow led to his condition.”

“Any repercussions? Papers get any of it?” I handed the sheets back to Pat and he tucked them away.

“None at all, luckily. We were on tenterhooks for a while, but none of the newsboys connected the names. There was one fortunate aspect to the death of Oscar ... his face wasn’t recognizable. If the reporters had seen him there wouldn’t have been a chance of covering up, and would some politicians like to have gotten that!”

I pulled a Lucky from my pack and tapped it on the arm of the chair. “What was the medical examiner’s opinion?”

“Hell, suicide without a doubt. Oscar got scared, that’s all. He tried to run knowing he was trapped. I guess he knew he’d go back to the sanitarium if he was caught ... if he didn’t stand a murder trial for Moffit’s murder, and he couldn’t take it.”

Pat snapped his lighter open and fired my butt. “I guess that washes it up then,” I said.

“For us ... yes. For you, no.”

I raised my eyebrows and looked at him quizzically.

“I saw Lee before I came to work. He called,” Pat explained. “When he spoke to Oscar over the phone Oscar hinted at something. He seems to think that Oscar might have done other things than try to have him identified for a murder he didn’t do. Anyway, I told him you had some unusual interest in the whole affair that you didn’t want to speak about, even to me. He quizzed me about you, I told all and now he wants to see you.”

“I’m to run down anything left behind?”

“I imagine so. At any rate, you’ll get a fat fee out of it instead of kicking around for free.”

“I don’t mind. I’m on vacation anyway.”

“Nuts. Stop handing me the same old thing. Think of something different. I’d give a lot to know what you have on your mind.”

“You sure would, Pat.” Perhaps it was the way I said it. Pat went into a piece of police steel. The cords in his neck stuck out like little fingers and his lips were just a straight, thin line.