Strange Embrace (18 page)

She gave him a look of pure hatred. Fortunately, he thought, looks could not kill. But razors could.

“You might as well give up, Jan,” he said, stalling.

Her laughter was shrill, chilling. “I should give up? I’ve got the razor, Johnny. Why should I give up?”

“Because you can’t get away with killing me,” he told her. “And on the other hand you can’t get out of here unless you do kill me. You wouldn’t get too far running stark naked through the streets. A girl draws a lot of attention that way. And I’m not only between you and your clothes—I’m between you and the closet.” He knew he had to keep stalling—so he could think, so he could distract her from the razor. “Just for the hell of it,” he said, “how right was I? Any mistakes?”

“Not many.”

“Set me straight.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You made it a little too coldblooded, Johnny. I wasn’t planning on killing Elaine.”

“No?”

“No. That night, I got there a little while after Carter left. We had been—lovers—for only about two weeks, Elaine and I.”

He studied her. She seemed oddly embarrassed, but she went on talking.

“We made love, Johnny. Good love. And then we were lying in each other’s arms and she—she told me I was going to have to pay. Four hundred dollars a week, no less. She had made a tape recording of the two of us in bed. She said I would pay, or she would send the recording around. Copies to the scandal magazines. A copy to you. A few copies to important people in Hollywood. She wanted twenty thousand dollars a year to keep that recording silent. That’s a lot of money, Johnny.”

“Couldn’t you argue her down?”

Jan let out a burst of that chill laughter. “I didn’t even try. Maybe she would have settled for less, at the moment. But blackmail goes on forever, Johnny. It doesn’t stop. You know that, don’t you?”

He nodded. “She would have bled you white. She would always have had a copy of the tape lying around somewhere. And you would pay as long as you lived.”

“That’s right.”

“So you killed her. You just happened to have along a razor…”

She sighed. “It was her razor, Johnny.”

“What?”

“Elaine’s razor. I got out of bed and went to the bathroom to wash up. I opened the medicine cabinet and this razor was on the bottom shelf. She used a straight razor on her legs, see? She told me once that it had been her father’s and she hung on to it for sentimental reasons. I don’t know if that’s the truth, but a couple of times I had watched her strop the razor and shave her legs. I—I even took the strop later. I have it now.”

“So you grabbed the razor—”

“Yes. I walked back to the bedroom, still naked, holding the razor behind my back. I sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at her. She started to tell me what she was going to do with all the money I would be paying her. She said she was a little worried about income taxes. She didn’t want to pay them but she thought they would pick her up for tax evasion. She thought maybe she should report some of the money as gambling winnings. I listened to a few minutes of that. Oh, I didn’t kill her because of the money, Johnny. That’s hard to believe, isn’t it?”

“Sort of,” he said. He was calculating whether he could risk a step now.

“It’s the truth, though. I had been—with me, it was love, Johnny. Perverted, unnatural, but real. I loved Elaine. And then this girl that I loved—she wanted to blackmail me. She was throwing all that love right back in my face.”

“So you killed her.”

“Yes.”

Any second now, he thought. Any second it would be time to rush her, time to take the blade away from her. She was weakening. It seemed to Johnny that her hand—the one holding the razor—was beginning to tremble a little…

He wondered who would win. He would have to go in low and fast, and he would have to get her when she was not ready. But all he had was his body. She had a razor and she had already killed two people with it.

“I washed the razor,” she said. “I was going to leave it there. Then I thought that maybe they would think it was just a sex killing, an unknown burglar or somebody who just happened to sneak into her room and kill her. So I didn’t want them to know it was her razor. I took it along, and the strop.” She looked away, but only for an instant. “I didn’t know I’d be using it again, Johnny. Not then.”

There was a lamp on the bedside table. He could throw it at her, try to catch her off-balance. It might work. But she started to talk again, and he wanted to listen.

“At first,” Jan said, “I couldn’t think about anything except getting away. I took enough time to dress and try to wipe my fingerprints off everything I had touched. Then I left. I was still shaking when I got here.”

She was shaking now. The lamp, he thought. The lamp, and a quick toss at her head, and go in low…

She took a step toward him. “I’m going to walk to you,” she told him. “You’re in a corner. You can’t get away. I’m going to walk in on you and I’m going to kill you, Johnny Lane.”

She said it as casually as if she were telling him the time of day. She took another step—she was no more than six feet away, now. The light from the ceiling glinted off the blade of the razor. It hypnotized him the way a snake hypnotizes a bird.

“So you’ll kill me,” he heard himself saying. “Then what will you do?”

“It won’t matter to you. You’ll be dead.”

“What’ll you do, Jan?”

“Run,” she said. “Get dressed and get out and run like hell. Just run.”

“They’ll catch you, Jan.”

“Maybe not.”

“They’ll catch you. And they’ll kill you. One more murder isn’t going to help any.”

“Won’t hurt me, either. They can only kill me once. I might as well hang for three sheep as for two.”

“Is that why you killed Tracy?” One more stall, Johnny thought. He bunched his muscles.

She studied him. “I killed Tracy to throw them off the trail,” she said. “You figured it out neatly enough. No, I didn’t make love to him first, Johnny. He wanted me. God, how he wanted me! A pass a day, day in and day out. So I went up to his goddamned penthouse and offered him my fair white body. He was positively drooling. We took off our clothes and got into bed and I looked at that rotten, superior smile of his and I cut his damned throat and watched him die.”

She took another step toward Johnny.

No time to get ready. Only time to act, only time to move swiftly and efficiently.

He fell away from her, reaching at the same time for the lamp. His fingers closed around the base of it and he heaved it as hard as he could, throwing straight for her face. He let himself fall backward, then hit the wall with one hand and pushed off from it, coming at her right behind the lamp.

The lamp staggered her. She almost lost her footing but she did not let go of the razor. He saw it coming at him in a downward arc as he pulled into her. Then he felt it bite into his side as the two of them sprawled to the floor. He had landed on top of her. He heard the air whoosh out of her lungs and he saw her jaw go slack. He got up. She got up.

The razor stayed on the floor.

She looked much younger without the razor. She looked younger and weaker and very unfortunate. His eyes scanned her naked body, her empty face. He tried to see her as an object of sexual desire, as something of love. Or as something to hate or fear.

He could see her only as a broken woman, to be pitied. He glanced from her to the blade on the floor. It was no longer a murder weapon. It was a toy, the latest addition to the prop inventory. It was silly to think that two persons had been killed with such a toy.

He looked at her again. Her mouth worked for a minute before any words came out.

“Just for the record, Johnny,” she said quietly, “you’re lousy in bed.”

He had heard that one before. He thought back to Sondra, Sondra Barr with the violet eyes and the lovely red-gold hair.

“Real lousy,” insisted Jan.

“That’s because I’m not a girl,” Johnny said.

His answer surprised her. And hers surprised him. “Aren’t you going to hit me, Johnny?”

He shook his head. Was this what she expected of men? That in the last analysis they would beat her? No wonder she preferred girls.

“Then what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to take you to a cop named Haig,” he announced, “and you’re going to tell him just how you murdered two people.”

S
HE SAT NEXT TO JOHNNY
in the back seat of the taxi to Police Headquarters. The razor and the strop were in his pocket. He did not say a word during the ride. Neither did she.

He told the desk sergeant he was going in to see Haig. The cop started to give him directions.

“I know the way,” Johnny told him. “I’ve been here often enough. And don’t tell him I’m coming. It’s a surprise.”

It was a surprise. It was not a pleasant surprise, judging by the look on Haig’s face. To be perfectly accurate, Johnny thought, you could only say that Haig turned purple. Literally. His face was the color of grape juice.

“That’s right,” Johnny insisted. “I’ve caught your killer for you.”

“Once a night oughta be enough,” the big cop said. “You wanta spend a week in jail, Johnny?”

He laughed. “This is Jan Vernon, Sam.”

“We’ve met. Listen, Johnny—”

“Miss Vernon is a beautiful woman,” he went on. “Also an accomplished actress.”

“Dammit, Johnny—”

He glanced at Jan. “Also a murderess,” he went on. “She killed Elaine James and Carter Tracy. She tried to kill me but she failed, which explains my presence.”

If Haig’s face had not already turned purple, it would have then. He started to yell at Johnny, then changed his mind and turned to Jan.

“You want to press charges for criminal slander?” he said. “You got a witness. And this bastard’s rich. You’d get a nice settlement out of the deal.”

Johnny shook his head. “She won’t sue me, Sam. She’ll give you a confession instead. I’ve got the razor in my pocket, the one she used on both of them. You’d better get a stenographer in here for a statement. Jan feels talkative.”

Haig started to say something. Then, evidently, he noticed the look in Jan Vernon’s eyes for the first time.

So he did not say anything.

Nobody did, not for a second or two. Then Jan cleared her throat.

“He’s telling the truth,” Jan said. “You’d better get that steno. I’ll tell you all about it.”

“If you’re looking for an apology,” Haig said, “I’ve got news for you. You can go straight to hell.”

Johnny looked out of the window. They were still in Haig’s office, and night had given away to dawn. Jan’s statement had been dictated, typed and signed. Jan had been led off and locked up. Soon, Johnny thought, he would go home. And sleep for thirty-six hours. At the very least.

“So you came up with the killer,” Haig chided. “But you did it back-asswards, Johnny boy. You should have come straight to me, Johnny. What would you have lost that way?”

“A case,” Johnny said.

“Huh?”

“The evidence against that girl wasn’t enough to stuff a thimble with it. Nothing could have been proved until she cracked.”

“We would have broken her.”

“Sure—if you hammered away long enough. But be reasonable, Sam. What would you have done if I had come in here tonight—last night, whenever the hell it was. What would you have done if I had handed it to you? No evidence, no proof. Just an idea.”

“We would have picked her up.”

“Be honest for a minute, Sam. Drop the
Dragnet
routine. You would have thrown me out on my ear.”

“‘Well, after the bit with Buell…”

“That’s what I mean. Even if you went through the motions, you never would have dragged it out of her. I managed to. So why yell at me? I handed you a killer, didn’t I?”

Haig looked at his desk. Then the desk grew boring, and he turned to look through the window. That was no better. Finally he looked at Johnny.

“If I produced a play,” he said carefully, “and—”

“That’ll be the day.”

“Listen to me,” Haig said. “Hear me out. Let’s say I produce a play. Let’s say the critics like it. Let’s say the audience likes it. Let’s say it runs for three years and the movies buy it for a quarter of a million dollars.”

“All right—let’s say it.”

“Let’s,” Haig agreed. “Now wouldn’t you be madder than hell?”

It was seven in the morning when Johnny got home. Ito, of course, was still awake. Or had just awakened. No matter what time it was, you could always be certain of two things. The sun had not yet set on the British Empire, and Ito was awake.

“Jan did it,” Johnny said. “Someday I’ll explain the whole thing. But not now.”

Ito nodded.

Johnny said pleasantly, “I am going to sleep. No calls, no telegrams, no anything. I am going to sleep. I shall slumber for thirty-six hours. Maybe longer.”

He was wrong, of course. No human being sleeps for thirty-six hours, unless he had just finished fighting a losing battle with a tsetse fly. It is impossible to sleep for thirty-six hours, and Johnny didn’t.

He woke up after twenty-nine.

At which point he tried to fall asleep again. And failed.

Ito wisely said nothing until after breakfast and coffee and the first cigarette of the morning.

“There were quite a few phone calls,” he said then. “The newspapers, mostly.”

“What did you tell them?”

“To go to hell in a handbasket,” quoted Ito inscrutably. “Was that the right thing to say?”

“Better to go to hell,” remarked Johnny, “on wheels. Any other calls?”

“One from Ernest Buell. He wants you to call him. He says that, although you are a son of a female dog, so is everyone else in show business, including himself. He still wants to direct
A Touch of Squalor
if and when you manage to reassemble a cast. He realizes that it will not be easy to replace a murderess and her two victims, but that he’d love to help, and you should call him.”

“I will.” Johnny said. “Any others?”

“The author of
A Touch of Squalor.
He wants to know what’s going to happen to his play.”

“He’s not the only one. Anybody else?”

Ito thought for a moment. “One more,” he said. “That young bearded Zen. The hand-clapper.”