Kim

by Robert Colby

  “My God, the whole thing gives me the creeps,” said Kim, finishing her drink in one giant swallow. “How can you fight someone who picks up the phone and orders trouble for you like it came in neat packages shipped by Sears and Roebuck?”

  “That’s my job, Kim. Let’s get on with this. Now, when Tarino put you ashore after that weekend, what was his attitude?”

  “Possessive. He acted as if it were just the beginning of a long, cozy relationship. He told me he was crazy about me and he dropped a few hints about marrying me. Imagine! When I told him I was engaged that didn’t bother him at all. He seemed to think it was funny, as if it was time for me to put away little boys like Howard Massey and come play with a real man. But he asked a lot of questions, very casually, about Howie and Aunt Martha.

  “When he drove me home, he said, ‘I’m busy tonight, baby, a business thing. So you’ll just have to go it alone. But tomorrow night I’ll send someone to bring you over to my club, The Frolic. I’ll show you around, check the operation awhile, and then we’ll cut out by ourselves. Ten o’clock, and don’t be late, baby.’”

  “And what did you say to that?”

  “I got mad. I climbed out of the car and then I leaned back in and I told him it was a real gay week end and thanks a lot. But I wasn’t planning on making a career of him. I was going to be married and I couldn’t possibly see him again, even if I wanted to, which I didn’t. I told him to take back his heart, I ordered liver. And goodbye!”

  “That’s when he got mad,” I said. “And threatened you.”

  She shook her head. “Not a bit of it He didn’t say a word. He just sat there with this lazy, cocksure, how-little-you-know grin on his face. Then he drove off.

  “The next night Howie still hadn’t come back, though he was due. He had called to say he had been detained. I pictured him having a perfectly marvelous, convention-type ball. And I was irritated. I was in bed, reading a book when the doorbell rang. I threw on a robe and went to see. A man was standing there. He was nicely dressed and very polite. He said, would I please hurry and get ready since it was exactly ten o’clock and Mr. Tarino was expecting me at The Frolic in just a few minutes. The man said he had a car at the door and he would wait downstairs. He left while I was still trying to explain that I wasn’t going.”

  “But you did go after all.”

  “Yes. There’s something about a man like Tarino who is so absolutely confident, so dominantly male … I don’t know, it’s intriguing for a time. Because if there’s anything I hate it’s a spineless slob who doesn’t even know what he wants. Anyway, I had nothing better to do. So I went. And I was sorry. Because it was … well, it was a repetition of the first time. I guess every female is wanton in some part of herself. And a certain type man will bring out the worst in her. Eddie Tarino brings out the worst in me. It’s a crazy, abandoned feeling and I like it — but not with him. I know I sound confused. But you can loathe someone and be excited by him, too. Regardless, I just got myself in deeper by giving in to him.”

  “And the next night?”

  “Howie was home and I went out with him. It was after he left me that he got the beating. And the threats. And earlier in the evening, some man phoned Aunt Martha and threatened her, too. End of story. Except that Howie and my aunt would like to just ignore the threats and see what happens. They’re both very brave. I’m the one who won’t let them take a chance.”

  She jumped up suddenly and took the empty glass from my hand. “Listen,” she said. “You’ve simply got to have another drink with me. Because all this sensible talk is sobering me up by degrees. And if you knew how frightfully nervous I am, you wouldn’t allow that to happen, would you?”

  “What makes you so nervous?” I said. “Are you expecting Tarino? Relax. I won’t let the bad man get you.”

  Smiling, she roughed my hair. Carrying both glasses, she went off to make with the drinks. Even the touch of her hand had been electric. And I’m not easily electrified.

  When she came back, she set the glasses on the table and stood looking down at me. She was frowning, her face drawn with the effort to say something to me.

  She sighed and I watched her breasts surge in the tide of her breathing. “I hope,” she said, “that you won’t get the wrong impression of me. I’m not some little brat spoiled by too much money. I’m quite steady and reliable most of the time. I don’t usually have this much to drink. And in spite of what I told you about Eddie …”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, I wanted to be honest with you because I didn’t see how you could help me. otherwise. But it was a rather embarrassing admission and I don’t want you to think that I’m some … some nymphomaniac or something. Because I’m not.”

  “You’re not?” I made a face like disappointment She tried to ignore it but a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.

  “It’s only that Howie was the first man I ever knew in that way and I … I suddenly realized that he might be the last and I got a little panicky. April is only two months off and after I’m married …”

  “After you’re married, what, Kim?”

  “After I’m married it will be too late to wake up to how much I might have missed. Because afterwards I’ll never, never have another affair. I wouldn’t do that to Howie. Or myself.”

  “You wouldn’t?” I gave her the wide-eyed stare with open mouth. Kidding her because she had been speaking with such pouting, little-girl seriousness.

  “No, I wouldn’t,” she said.

  “Well, be calm, honey. April isn’t here yet.”

  “I know,” she said. And with that she moved into my arms and fastened herself against me. We touched everywhere, her mouth spreading over mine, her breasts heaving, the impact of that hungry body was such a shock that for a moment I was goddamn near paralyzed. Then I found that split in the skirt and was making use of it when she pushed away and left me. But all she did was to float around the room in a trance, dousing lights. I was still in a little bit of a trance myself.

  Then she was standing near in the dark and saying, “Maybe I am a nympho, maybe I am. But I don’t care, I don’t care!”

  And then I heard the zipper. When I looked again, the dress was gone and she was swaying above me in panties and bra. Her hands worked frantically but she couldn’t seem to unhook the bra. So she sank down to her knees in front of me and I unhooked it for her. She fell backwards into my arms and my hands wound up under her breasts, lifting while a pale slice of moonlight touched the nipples. She turned half around and I felt one dainty hand creeping over my thigh, dropping down, to squeeze.

  “Oh Rod,” she said hoarsely, “you are … you are a lot of man!”

  She stood, then, naked, but for her panty hose, smiling tauntingly down at me. Suddenly the tease went out of her face and was replaced by a trance-like intentness. Fascinated, my eyes filmed every contour, every peak and valley of her body.

  Later, in some idle moment, I would project her on the screen of my mind and the whole goddamn beautiful crazy show would live again.

  “Make room for love, lover,” she said in a tight husky voice. I pulled her down. She rolled into my arms and glued her mouth to mine. Her hands, like homing pigeons, fluttered to caress me. Then one smooth leg wound itself about mine. She made some artful adjustments and with breathy excitement said, “It’s like after the countdown at Canaveral. And now we’re rocketing upward, lifting, lifting. Oh Lord, angel-man, don’t stop until we come crashing down and … and …"

  • • •

  And after a timeless interval of atomic passion, we lay supine, smoking thoughtfully in that vacuum which follows all sensual explosions. Kim had dressed in the dark and was beside me on the couch. She seemed vastly contented and in a playful mood. She turned, pushed a jet of smoke at me, and said, “Say, did you hear the one about the window washer who scared the boss half out of his secretary?”

  “No,” I answered. “Tell me.”

  She laughed. And in the little ci
garette-puffing hush that followed I heard a small sound, just a whisper of metal. I knew right away but I couldn’t seem to move fast enough.

  I turned my head and the front door was opening. A guy stood there, a bulky silhouette in the light from the hall. I saw the gun and the arm extending carefully.

  I heard Kim catch her breath with a little gasp. She went rigid, trembling against me. I gave her a shove and she went down on the floor, screaming.

  The shot came as I hurled myself over the back of the sofa, my weight bringing it crashing down beside me. The gun had a big sound — the thunderous finality of a .45. Kim had stopped screaming and the shot was the only sound, filling the room, bouncing off the walls. Then another. And another.

  I had crawled behind the sofa and my own gun was in my fist. I fired blindly, then took aim for the second shot. But I never pulled the trigger.

  Because the doorway was empty.

  Six

  By the time the cops came, there wasn’t anything for them to see but three bullet holes in the sofa. Kim hadn’t been hit and that didn’t surprise me at all. She was supposed to be plenty scared, which she was. But I had a hunch the shots were fired at me. Why should Tarino have Kim Rumshaw killed? It didn’t make sense.

  The police offered to leave a man on guard out in the hall. But Kim wanted to stay for the night with her aunt. So I drove her over there and then I went home and paced for a couple of hours — partly because Kim had left me about as relaxed as a Mexican jumping bean, but mostly because I wanted to think out a campaign to nail Tarino for such a long stretch that Kim Rumshaw would be some nice old lady’s mother by the time he got out.

  One of the things I thought about in that five-mile hike around my living room was how the guy got hold of a key to open that door to Kim’s apartment. Because he came in with a key, no doubt about it, and Kim hadn’t been loaning her spare to Tarino, even in her weakest moment. Of course to a guy who had stooges like this, a key to most any door was a small problem. But why the hell didn’t she think to put the chain on the door? Kim. What she said as an excuse was that since I was there she felt perfectly safe and it hadn’t occurred to her. Well listen, baby, let me clue you. Until they send my Superman costume from Hollywood, I’m just as dead from lead as anyone. That’s what I told her.

  I fell asleep wondering what would happen when Tarino’s boy took back the word on what milady wasn’t wearing when he burst in and found us on the sofa. That was an unpleasant thought and I must have put it aside quickly. Because what I dreamt about had nothing to do with a jealous and vengeful Tarino …

  Around ten the next morning I went to see Kim’s boy friend, Howard Massey. His auto barn was out on 79th in the west section. He had a dealership for one of those little foreign bugs. Nice economy but I can’t stand the goddamn things because I’m a hell of a big guy and my knees keep rubbing the skin off my ears. I always feel like a gawky oversized kid in a soapbox derby.

  Massey Auto Sales was composed of a small showroom and a large lot jammed rump to whisker with the little beetles. These were such tiny jobs you wondered if they gave you a wind up key with the mortgage papers. Behind the showroom was a service garage where they fixed you up with a new spring and rubber-band kit every couple of thousand miles.

  I found Howard Massey in a windowless office adjoining the cashier’s cage. He was behind an acre of desk, dictating a letter to a redhead of such admirable proportions that I didn’t think she’d last a couple of days after the Massey-Rumshaw wedding in April. She gave me a demure glance and departed, leaving me her pre-heated chair. I watched her fanny wave good-bye from the doorway and then turned my attention to Massey.

  He was about thirty and close to six feet with a crew cut of reddish brown. He had dark solemn blue eyes and one of those big Kirk Douglas jaws containing a dimple that would swallow a Greek olive.

  It was a Florida-type day they don’t tell you about in the travel folders — sunless and damn cold for Miami. Over at the beach the sand was frozen so hard the kids were playing hockey. On roller skates! And probably because Massey’s office was unheated, he wore wool slacks and a white knitted sweater with a blue diamond design under his open cashmere jacket. All the sweater needed was a two-foot letter across his broad chest to give him the final Joe-college stamp of approval. He would be the sort who took the letter seriously, even now. And I figured him to have a boyishly disarming grin to match sweater and hairdo. He did. He flashed it like a credential as we crushed hands. Then he sat down again and his face returned to a kind of scout master’s dignity.

  “I heard about last night,” he said. “Kim called me early this morning.”

  His introductory grin had told me that he hadn’t heard all about last night.

  “Hell of a thing,” I said. “Close. Another couple of inches and I’d have been coughing up slugs like a skid-row vending machine. But I don’t think Miss Rumshaw was ever in any real danger. It was a scare act. When those boys miss, it’s because they’re not trying.”

  “That’s not the point, Mr. Striker. That’s not the point!” Massey pounded a fist the size of a scrub woman’s knee into his palm. “She might have been hurt, she might have been killed! You’ve got to stop this Tarino thug and I don’t care how you do it.”

  “I don’t care how, either,” I said. “But the law has a rule in the goof book for every occasion. And I guess we’ll have to play it their way. Unless I can catch the bastard in the act, I’m gonna sneak underground for enough evidence to keep him dancing in lock step for about twenty years.”

  “Well, of course I don’t want to take the law into my own hands,” said Massey. righteously. “But I can stand just so much. If I had my way, we’d ignore Tarino. Call his bluff. Then next time he sent one or two of his gorillas, I’d be ready. And I mean ready! I could kill a couple of those guys and sleep like a baby the same night. Scum. That’s all they are.”

  “I take it you weren’t quite ready the first time,” I said. “When they beat you up.”

  He frowned, clenched his hands and studied them as if they were a couple of weapons which had failed him like jammed guns.

  “There was nothing I could do,” he said. “I was completely surprised and it wasn’t exactly a fair fight. One of those mugs grabbed me from behind and got me in a strangle hold while the other pounded me. Then they ran off.”

  I nodded and gave him my thinking-it-over look while I studied him. He was a good-looking guy in a dull sort of way. I mean, you would expect to find his type at the church picnic, helping the old ladies singe the marsh-mallows. Or heading some committee in the crusade against vice and corruption. In war-time, he would be the noble-faced captain who led the company over Sucker Trap Ridge into a goddamn tornado of enemy fire, losing all but three of his bloody men. After, he would have flashed his disarming grin and said he was “just obeying orders.” It just never occurred to him to question the orders given by some colonel (as fat on one end as the other) who was sending him into a massacre.

  Yeah, Massey was that type and I understood what Kim meant when she said he was comfortable but not very exciting. He was the dream-boy of all the Aunt Marthas.

  “What did these guys look like?” I asked him. “The hoods who beat you up.”

  “I never got a look at the one who grabbed me from behind,” he answered. “But he must have been wearing one of those short-sleeved sport shirts. Because I saw his arm and it was tattooed. I couldn’t make out the design. The other was about five-nine or ten and burly. He had a hawk nose and his face was pocked. He wore dark trousers and a tan shirt, the army issue variety. That’s all I can tell you. There was about half a moon but still it was plenty dark in that parking lot.”

  “They never tried to hit you in the face — just the body?”

  He shook his head. “Just the body. But with inhuman force.” He stood up suddenly and hoisted his sweater and shirt, showing me four yards of hair and half a dozen ugly welts on his chest. They had turned purple. “This p
ock-faced thug gave me the knee down here, too,” he said, touching his crotch.

  I offered him a sympathetic grunt. “A very professional job, Mr. Massey.” He pulled himself into shape and sat down. “Now what was said to you in the way of threats?”

  “The one who was hitting me said, ‘That’s just a sample, buster. Keep away from the Rumshaw doll or next time we’ll cut you a new face she won’t recognize even after they patch you down at the morgue.’ He had a switch-knife in his hand and while he was talking he pressed the point up here under my chin until a couple of drops of blood came. He smeared the blood on my cheek with his finger and said, ‘Remember this, sonny.’ Then he gave me a kidney punch and when the other let go, he shoved me to the ground. I tried to get up but I was half out and paralyzed for a moment. I heard them run off and then there was the sound of a car gunning, up the block.”

  “All right. Now, Mr. Massey, during this clobbering you got, was the name Tarino mentioned?”

  He examined the ceiling, squinting his eyes and cocking his head as if he was listening to a playback. “No,” he said. “I’m certain they didn’t mention Tarino. The name wouldn’t have registered with me anyhow. Because it wasn’t until the next day, when Kim found out that Mrs. Rumshaw was threatened, that she told me about him.”

  “And what did she tell you?”

  “Why, she told me everything!” He wore the smug expression of a guy whose babe has leveled with him all the way down the line.

  “Everything?” I said.

  “Of course. We have no secrets. She told me how she accepted the invitation to go along on the cruise because she was lonely and Tarino made it sound like there would be a group of older people along as chaperones. And then it turned out to be a gambling ship with wild parties in the staterooms. The minute she saw what an evil mess she had gotten into, Kim asked Tarino to take her back or put her on some island where she could catch a plane. Of course he only laughed. And tried to make love to her. He forced her to kiss him and tore her dress. But she got away and locked herself in her stateroom.”