So Nude, So Dead (21 page)

“Just a minute.”

He waited patiently, his heart loud in his ears. The peephole didn’t open, and he surmised that his voice had been recognized.

The door swung wide, and he caught his breath at the sight of her.

Her black hair was swept to one side of her head, leaving a free, sweeping line on the other side, exposing the flawless curve of her face and neck. Her lips were heavily rouged, parted to show white teeth. Her lashes were dark and sooty around her eyes; the hollow of her throat deep.

She wore white.

The gown was skin-tight, following every line of her body, sweeping over her wide hips, hugging her thighs.

“You’re back,” she said. Her voice was cold, distant.

“Yes, Babs, I’m back.”

“Come in.” It was not an invitation. It was resignation to an inescapable fact. He stepped into the apartment and she closed the door gently behind him. “You’re wasting your time, Ray,” she said. “It’s all over.”

“I know,” he said softly. “That’s why I’m here.”

“To pick up the pieces?”

“Something like that. Yes, to pick up the pieces.”

“There’s nothing to pick up.” She speared a cigarette from a container on the coffee table, put it between her lips. He leaned over for the silver lighter and put flame to it.

“Thanks,” she said.

“You’re a funny gal,” he said, putting the lighter back on the table.

“Ray, I haven’t got time for idle talk. I’m due at the club by nine.”

“The club can wait,” he said harshly.

“If you came here to make a scene, I—”

“I came here to make a scene, Babs. I came here to make a damned big scene.”

“We’re finished, Ray. Over and done with. I don’t like to share my men, especially with Chinese sluts who—”

“I know. I should have had the answer when you went into your jealous fit a little while back.”

“Stop talking riddles.” She blew out smoke in a furious stream, cupped her elbow in her other hand.

“You liked Sanders, didn’t you?”

Babs stared at him silently, a crafty look coming into her eyes. “What’s this all about?” she asked.

“It’s about the murder of Eileen Chalmers.”

“Oh.”

“That’s all? Just a small oh?”

“What do you want me to say? The girl is dead.”

“Sure. And you killed her.”

“What?” Babs snorted contemptuously. “Are you out of your mind?”

“I was, Babs. No more now, though. I’m thinking straight for the first time in three days.”

“Why would I kill Eileen? She was my friend.” She drew in on the cigarette again. “This is absurd, Ray.”

“Not so absurd. Eileen was your friend, true. But Sanders was your business partner.”

“Business?” A surprised look crossed her face, leaving her brows high on her forehead. “Really, Ray—”

“It took me a while to figure it. You, Sanders, and Massine. The triumvirate. Sanders picked up the stuff on his little jaunts, and you and Massine distributed it. It was really simple. When the Kramer band went on the road, Charlie pushed the stuff. You did the same thing with the Lewis combo, all over the country. Nationwide distribution. A wonderful setup.”

“What stuff are you referring to?”

“Cut it, Babs. I’m on to you, don’t you see? I know all about it now, so we can stop kidding each other.”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“All right,” Ray said tiredly. “We’ll do it the hard way. I’ll explain it. I’ll explain it all. Then you’ll know I’m not bluffing. Then we can call the police.”

“You’d better explain,” she said. She put out her cigarette, lighted another one.

“The heroin. Sanders supplied, you and Charlie distributed. That was fine—until you decided you wanted more from Sanders than a simple business partner. You wanted Sanders, period. That might have worked, too. He liked you and he dated you, and he probably slept with you.”

“You’re getting insulting,” Babs said.

“Still playing the great lady. You didn’t feel so ladylike when you found out Sanders was seeing Eileen, did you? I can imagine the jealous fit you threw when you learned about her coming baby. That must have really given you a laugh. It was so amusing that you decided to kill Eileen, get her out of the way so that you’d have a clear path with Sanders. No second fiddle for Barbara Cole. All or nothing at all.”

Babs was silent now. She puffed meditatively on her cigarette, watching Ray as he spoke.

“I should have tumbled when I saw this place. Your clothes, the whole layout, all smelled of money. More money than any band vocalist ever made. But narcotics is a lucrative business. That should have tipped me. It didn’t. I’m slow, I guess. I didn’t catch on.

“And then you gave me another tip, a tip that should have blown the whole thing sky-high. But I was considering a few nice things you did that morning, and the full meaning didn’t hit me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your note. A full band rehearsal, you said. You said you had to be there. The first time I met Kramer, he was having a rehearsal. I asked him where his vocalist was, and he told me she never rehearsed with the band. It didn’t click when I read your note. I was too busy concentrating on the last part of it, the part that asked me to wait for you, the part that said you’d have something for me. You probably meant your body, and you were right in thinking I’d wait around for that. It could have meant heroin, though I doubt if you planned it that way, and I’d sure as hell wait for that, too. Either way, you wanted to make sure I’d be there when the cops arrived. That’s why you pressed my suit, or had it pressed, and washed my shirt. You were putting me in a nice frame of mind, to make sure I’d stay there and get nabbed by the cops.”

“That’s silly. I could have turned you in at any time. Why should I have sneaked around about it?”

“That puzzled me, too. I wondered why you hadn’t turned me in before. But then I realized that the cops showed up only
after
I told you I thought Eileen had been killed for the heroin. You knew then that I knew about the missing horse. Before that you weren’t sure.

“You see, I kept wondering why anyone would bother to kill Eileen. If they wanted the heroin, all they had to do was take it. Eileen and I were both higher than the moon. I figured then that whoever’d killed her had wanted her dead besides wanting the heroin. I thought this was Sanders until just a little while ago. He had every reason to kill her, being the father of her unborn child, and wanting to get her out of his hair. But Sanders didn’t know the horse was gone until he read about it in the papers. If he’d killed Eileen and lifted the heroin, he wouldn’t have had me beaten to find out where it was.

“The way I figure it now, the heroin was just an accident. You came up to Eileen’s room with the express purpose of killing her. You couldn’t have known that she’d stolen the stuff from Sanders that afternoon. But when you found it there, you picked it up, and that gave you more ideas.”

Babs turned her back to Ray, walked over to a cabinet against the wall and leaned on it, facing him again.

“Oh, I know you killed Eileen, Babs. You killed Massine, too. It had to be you. In the beginning, Massine was the only person I told about the sixteen ounces, and he was surprised as hell. When I left him, I called you about half an hour later. You weren’t home. I went to see Sanders then, and when I went back to Massine, he was dead. Sanders couldn’t have done it. Massine had contacted someone else, someone he could tell his startling information to. That someone was you. I knew it wasn’t Sanders because I was with him all the while. Does that make sense?”

“Why should I kill Massine if what you say is true? What possible purpose would that serve?”

“Simple. This is where your bigger ideas come in. You had sixteen ounces of heroin now—pure heroin, worth a fortune. Sanders didn’t know you had it, and Massine didn’t know, either. With Eileen out of the way, you had smooth sailing from there on in with Sanders. But why split the take three ways? You’d switched to Kramer’s band when the Lewis combo got stalled down in the Ace High. You sure as hell couldn’t distribute on a band that stayed in one place. Eileen was happy to make the change; anything to get away from her husband. All right, there were now two of you on Kramer’s band, you and Massine. Why take Massine into the picture at all? When he told you he knew about the sixteen ounces, you probably told him to stay right where he was, that you’d be right over. You went over, all right, and you put a hole between his eyes.”

Babs smiled. She turned and opened a drawer in the cabinet. When she faced him again, she was holding a Luger in her hand. A silencer was attached to the muzzle of the gun. He looked at the weapon uncomprehendingly for a moment. He had not suspected he was so close to goading her into action, and yet he was not really surprised by the gun because she had turned and lifted it from the drawer as casually as if she were reaching for silverware.

“Is that the gun you used?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. Quickly, she slid out the clip. She put the clip on the cabinet behind her and then she held out the gun to Ray. “Here,” she said, “take it.”

He took the Luger, puzzled. She was back at the cabinet again, opening another drawer, and then turning once more. This time she was holding a candy tin on her open palm, the same tin Eileen had showed him three nights ago in the hotel. His pulse quickened at the sight of it.

“I was right, then,” he said.

“Except about one thing. If I’d planned to share this with Sanders, why didn’t I tell him about it?”

He thought this over, his forehead creasing. “Maybe you planned to cross him, too. How should I know?”

Babs’s lashes lowered, and a sensuous look crossed her face. “You came along, Ray. You came along, and I didn’t want to share this with anyone but you. That’s why I didn’t tell Sanders I had it. That’s why I let him go on his own wild-goose chase searching for it.”

“Bull!” Ray shouted. “If you cared so much about me, why’d you tell Sanders where his goons could pick me up? That was another tipoff, Babs. I called you just before I went to see Eileen’s doctor. You were the only one who knew where I was. And then suddenly I’m picked up and worked over. Funny how you don’t think of these things at the time. You’re too caught up in the present. I was too busy getting my brains beat out.”

“I had to do that, Ray,” she said. She had reached into the drawer again, her back to him, and he saw the glint of a metallic object as she placed it on top of the cabinet. “If I hadn’t told Tony where to find you, he’d have suspected me. That would have ruined all my plans. All my plans for you and me, darling.”

“You didn’t have to tell him anything, Babs. He didn’t know I’d called you.”

“He was here when you phoned.”

“Pretty damned convenient, all right.”

“He was here because he was worried about the loss of the heroin. Do you realize how much that tin is worth, Ray? We’ll be rich! Just you and me. There’s enough here to set us up for life.”

Ray thought of the heroin again, and a shiver ran up his spine. It had been three days, and there were sixteen ounces across the room on the cabinet. What the hell was she doing there, he wondered. Why didn’t she face him?

“Besides, Ray,” she said softly, turning her head over her shoulder, “I didn’t know he would hurt you. Tony was always gentle. I didn’t know he’d call in any outsiders. I didn’t want you hurt then, and I don’t want you hurt now. If I planned to hurt you, would I have given you my gun? Would I be talking to you like—”

“You can save it, Babs,” he said. “You’re a murderer, and I’m calling the police.”

She turned then, and he realized what she’d been doing at the cabinet. She was cooking a fix. Christ, it had been long, too long. Ray stared at the heroin in fascination, the blood rushing through his veins.

She reached into the open drawer again. When she withdrew her hand, she was holding a hypodermic. Carefully, gingerly, she put the spoon down on the cabinet top.

“Just a little while longer, Ray,” she said. “Just a little while. I’m going to fix you, honey. I’m going to give you the ride you’ve been dying for. Just a little while, honey.”

He didn’t say a word. He watched her as she expertly sucked the heroin into the syringe. He saw the white fluid filling the glass cylinder, and he wet his lips. A white-hot flame was licking at his chest now, searing his stomach.

Heroin, heroin. The old song sang in his ears beneath the steady beat of his blood. Heroin, heroin!

There was a fix across the room, waiting. After all this time, there was a fix.

She turned away from the cabinet again, held the needle up to the light. Then she faced him fully, smiling at him, holding the loaded hypo in her right hand.

He looked at her, his heart beating rapidly. His eyes followed the taper of her arm to the hypo she held in her hand. The needle tip caught little flecks of light, snapped them back into the room.

“You and me,” she said huskily, “and a fortune in heroin, Ray. Just you and me.”

She was closer to him now. She held the needle poised in her right hand, and she was breathing heavily.

“You can have both, Ray, in any order you want them. Me, and the heroin in this syringe.”

He looked at the hypo again, wet his lips. Babs and the heroin, both.

She held the needle out and whispered, “Take it, Ray, Take it. Take it. You need it, Ray. Go on, take it.”

There was something in the voice that irritated him. He’d heard the voice before. It belonged to Phil Ragow, and to Louis, and to Charlie Massine. It belonged to every pusher he’d ever known, the oily coaxing, the gentle insistence, the almost pleading quality.

“Go on, Ray,” she said, and her voice was soft. “Take the needle.”

He looked at the needle. He thought of all the other needles he’d ever had, and the sweat broke out on his brow, covered the back of his hands, ran down his back. Three days it had been, three whole days without a shot. How long could you go without a fix? How long could you go before you dropped dead?

“Do you want me first, Ray? Is that it, baby? Me first, and then the shot. All right, baby. Any way you say. Anything you want.”