“Please,” she said through her long and classic nose. “I was thinking of having another shot of Scotch, Stevie dear.”
“It’ll have to wait. What did you come here for?”
“Nothing important.”
“Spill it.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You will.” I grabbed her arms and let my hands talk for me. She yielded to the pressure almost willingly, smiling her teasing smile at me. She let me drag her up close, so that the mink fell away and she was rubbing me with her shoulder. Her small handbag bounced to the rug and lay there. When she began to stoop for it, I increased the pressure. I was mad enough to hit her. “We’re wasting time,” I said. “Either you tell me, or you can tell it to Lunt. Down under the lights, at the police sweatbox, baby.”
“You wouldn’t,” said Lila, examining me for strength of character. “You wouldn’t turn me in for this, Steve.”
“Don’t fool with me, baby. I’ve got no time for games.”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
“There were some letters, Steve.”
“What kind of letters?”
“Silly stuff I wrote to Greg, not too long ago.” She gave me her eyes, loading them with conviction and girlish honesty. “I used to be quite fond of Greg. Don’t laugh, but it was a big deal for me when I met him. I thought I was in love with him. Then, Greg decided to play another woman. Vivian Debevoise. He went for her all the way. He pursued her in and out of the office. I became a bit aggravated with him. That was when I wrote him the threatening letters.”
“You lie like hell,” I said, still holding her where I wanted her. She winced under the sting of my hands. But she didn’t change her story.
“I’m telling you the truth,” she said softly. “I wrote a few very stupid letters to Greg.”
“You threatened to kill him?”
“Exactly. And that’s why I’m here—to get those letters. If the police discovered them, I’d have to face a lot of mad questions, Steve. And my career might be ruined.”
“Did you find the letters?”
“I didn’t have a chance to move,” Lila said. “I was hit as I entered this room.”
“Why would the letters be in his bedroom?”
“If you release the clutch, I’ll show you.”
I let her go. She took off her shoes and climbed on the bed. Over the headboard there were two French aquatints, drawings of buxom woodland maidens pursued by centaurs with gleaming eyes and obvious purposes. They were symphonies of Gallic nudity, richly curved and sensuous in shading and detail. She removed the picture on the right. In the wall behind the picture was a small square frame, the door to a wall safe of the easy-to-open variety. Lila came back to me, a bit flushed, a bit flustered, but still looking for some signs of belief in her sad little tale.
“Very fancy,” I said. “But you still haven’t answered my question, baby. How did you know the letters would be in that safe?”
“I didn’t, of course. But I thought it would be worth the chance. There are no other hiding places in Greg’s house.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I knew Greg pretty well,” she said without a blush. “I’ve been here quite often.”
“You had a key to the front door?”
“Naturally.”
“Who else had a key?”
“I wouldn’t know. But Greg was generous with this place. He used it for all kinds of things. Store parties, meetings, conferences.” She sighed wistfully. “Poor Greg. Actually, he was a damned fool about many things.”
“Especially the dolls?”
“He had his moments.” She put on her shoes and wiggled away from me. She stood over me, estimating me, weighing me in her sharp intellect. She leaned over me in the pose of an anxious sweetheart. “You don’t have to tell Lunt you found me here, do you, Stevie?”
“I’ll think about it.”
“I’d appreciate your silence.”
“Still worried about your career?”
“A girl has to be careful,” she said.
I leaped up and clamped my hand over her mouth. There was a noise downstairs. The flat click of a latch? A door moving open? A door shutting again? I jerked her toward the wall on the far side of the room. I switched out the light. We stood together, the sound of her breath loud in my ears. Her pulse beat fast under my fingers on her wrist. We listened together. There were footsteps outside on the landing.
Then the door opened and a man walked in.
“Lila?” he whispered.
But I had slammed out at him before the word really left his lips.
He went down on his knees, the wind knocked out of him. He rolled around on the rug, groping for the hurt part of his gut.
I switched on the light and saw that it was Larry Pettigrew!
CHAPTER 17
Pettigrew looked at Lila blearily. She filled another glass of Scotch for him and watched him down it and make a face at it. His handsome pan was clouded with discomfort. He was caught and tied in knots by my unexpected appearance.
“I’ll give you one more chance, Pettigrew,” I said. “Either you talk, or I turn you both in to Lunt.”
“Where would that get you, Conacher?”
“Oh, tell him, Larry,” Lila said, joining him on the bed. “Please tell him.”
“What’s wrong with my story?” Pettigrew stared at me arrogantly. He had the same type of personal calm as Lila’s. These two were made for each other. Two commercial characters on the climb to the top, and let the corpses of competitors fall where they may. Pettigrew could do nothing to veil his naturally snide nature. He was tempting me again, tempting me to put away my automatic and take another poke at him, to level him, just to bring him down to my size again. He was content to hang onto his original yarn, that he had come here accidentally, because it was on his way home. He had seen the front door open and walked in. “I saw the light on up here,” he said. “What better motive could you want from me?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, tell him,” Lila said again.
A deep look passed between them, an invisible message; a quick sharp, electric connection that meant something to each of them. These two knew each other well. In the dramatic pause, they could have passed for lovers. For the first time since I met Lila, her eyes were being used for something more than simple deduction. She telegraphed a deep and emotional concern for Pettigrew. They could have been honestly in love.
“All right,” Pettigrew said. “I came up here because I was worried about Lila.”
“You can believe him, Steve,” she said. “Underneath that marble front beats a heart of mush.”
“Let him talk,” I said.
“I was worried,” Pettigrew went on, “about her damned love letters to Wilkinson. We talked about them at lunch today. I sort of felt Lila’d decide to come up here and get them. I told her she had nothing to worry about, but she seemed stubborn about them. That was why I checked through on my hunch and came here after work.”
“Larry Pettigrew, Boy Scout,” said Lila.
“I’m not sorry I came, Lila.”
“I didn’t get the letters, lover boy.”
“Why not?” Pettigrew surveyed the nose of my automatic. He snickered and fondled the thin thread of mustache under his pretty nose. “Why not let her take them, Conacher?”
“You’ve been seeing too many bad movies,” I said. “Private investigators don’t play like career boys in department stores. We keep our noses clean with the city dicks.”
“Those letters could be worth money.”
“You haven’t got enough to bribe me.”
“It can be arranged,” he sneered. “Let’s say, one thousand?”
“For one grand, I wouldn’t give you the right time, Pet
tigrew.”
“How much does it take?”
“A stiff kick in your butt,” I said, moving in and letting him feel the nose of my gun on his chin. He started to crawl away. I used my free hand to jerk him to his feet. “You’d better take this boy out of here, Lila,” I said. “And do it quick, before I change my mind and phone my friend Lunt.”
“He didn’t mean any harm,” Lila said. “Apologize to Steve, Larry.”
“He can kiss my—”
But I hit him before the nasty word came out. He staggered back, holding his handsome jaw and grumbling at me. He fell against the wall and Lila dashed after him, but he shrugged her off and started my way again.
“Next time, it’ll be for keeps, Pettigrew. Now get out of here before I really let you have it.”
Lila dragged him away. I heard them mumbling and arguing all the way down to the vestibule. Then the door opened and the door shut and I was alone in a large box of silence. I took a quick drink of Scotch and went to work on the wall safe above the bed.
It was a simple box, of the key type. It was cleverly fitted into the wall, but the rim of the tiny vault had been fashioned of wood, which meant that the entire frame would drop open if I could force the edge with my penknife. The metal began to loosen away from the wood after a while. The knife rammed deep and some of the small screws popped out. I could jam the blade all the way up to the handle after that. The frame gave way and the door eased loose. I plunged the knife again and felt the thing yield to my pressure. Then the door was open and my hand was in up to the elbow and feeling for the contents. My fingers touched a strange and unexpected pile of debris in there. The entire back of the safe was jammed with small hard objects. Diamonds? Jewelry?
I never did find out.
Somebody clicked the lights off.
Then a figure hurled itself at me and I went back on my tail on the bed, groping around to lay my clutching hands on him. And missing him completely. He had a gun and knew how to use it as a massage for my aching head. He brought the gun down hard, alongside the flat ridge of my forehead. I heard him grunt under the pressure of the blow.
And that was all I heard.
After that, the long black silence.
CHAPTER 18
I awoke in a pocket of gloom. My first impulse was to keep slamming at the bastard who had put me here. My first impulse died when I began to grope. It was thick black quiet I found myself dumped into, a soundless, airless cell from which there would be no escape. You wake up stiff and tired after a slap on the head. You suck in the first conscious breath and open your eyes and expect sunlight. And when you get nothing but dark, panic grabs you.
I was on my knees, doubled up and with my head plunged into a soft cloth. Somebody had thrown a coat over me; that was it. The material smelled vaguely of man, a combination of tobacco smoke and sweat. I jerked it away from my nose and reached up. My fingers now held more of the same. Another great hunk of haberdashery. And then another.
I was in Wilkinson’s closet.
The doorknob lay straight ahead of me, and through the thin crack of the door, the bedroom came into focus. I pushed the door open slowly and looked out at a tableau of confusion. The bed itself was a mess. I must have given the character who assaulted me a hard time. The mattress lay askew, half on the floor, the sheets and covers boiled up into a nightmare of upset. But I was interested only in the wall safe.
I jumped up on the bed to examine the hole. It was as empty as my head. The sneaky louse who had dropped me into the closet must have had a field day for himself. I stared at the wall and began a slow burn. Larry Pettigrew! The bastard must have returned with Lila, to grab her letters and run for it. Because there was nothing left in the safe but dark gray air.
I got off the bed and treated myself to a few stiff shots of Wilkinson’s Scotch. The hate in me would boil and bubble with fresh energy now. It was this sort of experience that makes a private operator go back to plumbing, or carpentry. You find yourself trusting the wrong people at the wrong times. You find yourself standing the way I was standing—in Wilkinson’s john, examining the hot welt of crimson across my forehead. I doused myself with cold water. I listened to the banging of a thousand anvils behind my eyes. The crumb might have killed me. I stuck some adhesive over the big gash and listened to my heart hammer out the gut-buckling rhythms of my frustration.
“The lousy bastard,” I said to the mirror.
The mirror had no answer for me.
But another answer came from the bedroom.
“Having a ball?” a voice said.
I almost leaped back into the bedroom. And I almost dropped when I saw the new visitor. It was Vivian Debevoise.
“What in hell are you doing here?” I asked.
“A damned good question,” she said. “How about you talking first, dream boy?”
She was as high as a rising kite in a strong breeze. She was rolling and roaring with liquor. You can always tell how drunk a dame is by the way she moves under the spell of the alky. Vivian’s every movement became an exaggeration of her normal behavior. She waltzed across the room, bumping her hips as she came. I met her halfway.
“Let’s have a look at your baggage,” I said.
I grabbed her purse, one of the large varieties us phony alligator. I opened the zipper and upchucked the contents. She had nothing but the usual feminine stuff in her bag; lipstick and powder and a small wallet and keys. She stood near me, watching me fumble and fuss with her possessions.
“Looking for something special?” Her voice was a few octaves lower than Tallulah’s. She was drunk enough to be asleep and dreaming. But she managed a quick flip of her watery eyes at the wall safe over the bed. “Did you get what you want?” she asked. “You naughty, naughty boy, you.”
“When did you get here, Vivian?”
“Lost my wrist watch, handsome.”
“Where did you come from?”
“Sewer,” she said with a husky laugh. “Just crawled out of a sewer. Funny I missed you on the way out.”
Her liquored wisecracks didn’t amuse me. No part of her amused me. You look at a dame like Vivian Debevoise and your mind begins to build its own fantasies. You run your eyes over her big-boned frame and wonder about the mechanics of her amours with a man like Wilkinson. She was cut on generous lines, the broad-hipped type of Venus.
Her sneering lips said: “You finished undressing me, dream boy? You’ve got the dirtiest eyes in the world.”
“Your blouse is wide open.”
“I like it that way.”
“And you’ve been drinking too much.”
“I’m better when I’m drunk.”
“Not for me, you aren’t.”
“Try me.”
The sound of dull chimes from downstairs made me pause. The damned clock was bonging seven times! That meant I must have been asleep in the closet for almost two hours. I checked my wrist watch. The glass was cracked. The hands had stopped at 5:17. The sudden knowledge stunned me. A parade of elephants could have waltzed through this bedroom while I slept in the closet. Whoever put me away must have made sure I was stiff for a while.
“Why did you come here, Vivian?”
“Here we go again.”
“Better talk, or I’ll have to play rough with you.”
“I can’t wait, little man.”
She had her body close to mine. She had challenged me with a lousy tactic, the phony bravado all drunks use when unsure of their adversaries. But I was in no mood for this kind of sport. Not now. Not when a fresh burst of hammer music clanged in my brain.
I jerked her around and pulled her to the bed. “Let’s start all over again, Vivian,” I said. “You came in here looking for something. What? What was it?”
“You, dream boy. Only you.”
She was asking for it. I hit her across her veneer
ed cheek, high up, near the eye. She went back down under the force of the slap, holding her face and making thin squealing noises. She raised herself slowly and smiled at me.
“Oooh, what a nasty man,” she said.
“Still want to play?”
“You can play nicer than that.”
“Not right now I can’t.” I pulled her up again and her blouse snapped open wider and she made a wicked face at me, loose and sexy, like a two-bit whore on a two-bit job. She had plenty of surface for the mattress, a big and blowzy blonde all the way. When she fiddled with the blouse, she fiddled to open the breach wider. I grabbed at her hand and hit her again. “Maybe I’d better make it sound important, Vivian. You want to say your little piece to the city dicks?”
“The dicks?” she asked mumblingly. “The dicks?”
“I’m going to take you in unless you talk.”
“You wouldn’t,” she whispered, suddenly afraid. “I don’t want to see those cops again. Never, never again.” She broke down under an inner conflict she alone could understand. She began to sob in great, surging gasps of sorrow. She was hard and big, and she broke down that way. Big hard gestures. Big hard sounds of emotional strain. “Let’s have another drink, detective. Let’s you and me forget this nonsense.”
“Then you want me to take you in?”
“I want you to be nice.”
“Let’s go,” I said, and pulled her off the bed. She came away grudgingly, slipping and sliding to her knees. She reached out for me and held me motionless, her strong arms around my legs, her face streaked and seamed with tears. “You’re a big gal, Vivian,” I told her. “I’d hate to have to haul you down the stairs.”
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