She stood up now, the silk stuff of her gown making a faint, brittle rustling; it was the kind of female sound that always sets a man’s heart pitter-pattering, whatever the circumstances. Her face still showed nothing of what she was feeling.
“I didn’t hear your car,” she said. “Perhaps I was playing too loudly.”
“I left it at the gate,” I said.
“Yes, but usually I hear when a car stops anywhere about.”
“It was the music, then.”
“Yes. I was distracted.”
We stood there, with fifteen feet or so of floor between us, gazing at each other in a helpless sort of way. I hadn’t known how hard this was going to be. I was holding my hat in my hand.
“Where is he?” I asked.
She drew back her shoulders and lifted her head, her nostrils flaring, as if I had said something offensive. “Why have you come here?” she asked.
“You told me to. On the phone.”
She frowned, her brow wrinkling. “Did I?”
“Yes, you did.”
Her mind seemed somewhere else; she was distracted, all right. When she spoke again her voice had become unnaturally loud, as if she meant it to carry. “What do you want with us?”
“You know what?” I said. “Now that you ask, I’m not really sure. I suppose I thought I could get some things cleared up, but all of a sudden I can’t seem to remember what they are, exactly.”
“You sounded very angry, when you called.”
“That’s because I was. I still am.”
Her mouth twitched in what might have been a smile. “You don’t show it.”
“It’s what they teach you at detective school. I think it’s called ‘masking your emotions.’ You’re not bad at it yourself.”
“Do you care to tell me what it is you’re angry about?”
I laughed, or made a laughing noise, anyway, and shook my head. “Ah, sweetheart,” I said, “where would I begin?”
There was a sound off to my left, a sort of strangulated gurgle, and when I turned to look where it had come from I was surprised to see Richard Cavendish sprawled on a sofa, asleep or passed out, I couldn’t tell which. How had I not noticed him when I first came into the room? A body on a sofa—that’s the kind of thing I’m not supposed to miss. He was lying back with his arms flung out to either side and his legs splayed. He was wearing jeans and shiny cowboy boots and a checked shirt. His face had a gray pallor, and his mouth was open.
“He came stumbling in here a while ago, very drunk,” Clare said. “He’ll sleep for hours and remember nothing in the morning. It often happens. He’s drawn by the sound of the piano, I think, though music repels him, or so he likes to tell me.” She did that tense little smile again. “It’s like the moth and the flame, I suppose.”
“Mind if I sit down?” I said. “I’m kind of tired.”
She pointed to an ornate, lyre-backed chair upholstered in yellow silk. It looked too delicate to support my weight, but I sat on it anyway. Clare returned to the music stool and arranged herself there, one knee crossed over the other under her gown and an arm draped along the lid of the piano. She sat with her back held very straight. Somehow I hadn’t noticed before how long and slender her neck was. The diamonds at her throat sparkled, reminding me of the lights of the city I had been watching earlier from my office window, while I waited for her to call.
“I saw Peterson,” I said.
That got a response. She drew herself forward quickly as if to jump to her feet, and I saw the knuckles of her left hand tighten where it rested on the piano lid. Her black eyes were wide, and an almost feverish light came into them. When she spoke, her voice was choked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I just did,” I said.
“I mean, before now. When did you see him?”
“Today, around noon.”
“Where?”
“It doesn’t matter where. He called me, said he wanted to meet, I met him.”
“But—” She blinked rapidly and gave herself a tiny shake that ran all the way down to the tip of her shoe where it was peeping out from under the hem of her blue gown. “What did he say? Did he—did he give any explanation of why he pretended to be dead? He can’t just have appeared like that, with a phone call and a request to meet you. Tell me. Tell me.”
I fetched out my cigarette case. I didn’t ask if she minded if I smoked; I didn’t feel like being that polite. “He was never your lover, was he,” I said. “That was just a line you fed me, so there’d be a reason for you to hire me to go search for him.” She began to say something, but I spoke over her. “Don’t bother lying,” I said. “Look, the fact is, I don’t care. I never really bought the please-find-my-lost-boyfriend line anyway—just from your description of him I knew Peterson was the kind of guy you wouldn’t give the time of day to.”
“Then why did you pretend to believe me?”
“I was curious. Plus, if I’m honest, I didn’t like the prospect of you walking out of my office and my never seeing you again. Pathetic, right?”
She blushed. That threw me, and made me wonder if I should revise, even if only by a little, all the harsh conclusions I’d been coming to about her and her character since I’d talked to Peterson that morning. Maybe she was the kind of woman who gets wrapped easily around men’s little fingers. Who was I to judge her? But then I thought about the lies she’d told me, if only by omission, thought of all the ways she’d deceived me from the start, and the anger surged up in me again.
She was sitting now with her face turned to the left, showing me her perfect profile. You can hate a woman and still know that all she has to do is beckon and you’d throw yourself at her feet and shower her shoes with kisses.
“Please,” she said, “tell me what happened when you met him.”
“He had a suitcase with him. He wanted me to deliver it to a man called Lou Hendricks. Know the name?”
She shrugged dismissively. “I suppose I’ve heard it.”
“Damn right you have. He’s the guy Peterson was supposed to bring the dope to.”
“What dope?”
I chuckled. She was still looking away from me, still giving me the classic profile, the one that was so much better than Cleopatra’s. “Come on,” I said. “You can stop pretending now—the charade is over. You’ve got nothing to lose by being honest—or have you forgotten how to do that?”
“There’s no need to be insulting.”
“No, I agree, but it’s kind of enjoyable.”
I’d been tapping the cigarette into my cupped palm, and now Clare stood up and took a big glass ashtray from the lid of the piano and came and handed it to me, and I emptied the ash from my hand into it and then set it on the floor beside my chair. She turned with another swish of silk and walked back and sat down again on the piano stool. Even though I was mad at her, mad as hell, the knowledge ached in me that I had lost for good whatever small fragment of her she had briefly allowed me to think was mine.
“Tell me something,” I said. “Was it all a pretense?”
I noticed the drapes at the window on the left stirring a little, though I couldn’t feel the least draft.
“What do you mean, all?”
“You know what I mean.”
She looked down at her hands where they were clasped together in her lap. I was thinking of the lamp beside my bed with the blood-red roses painted on it, and her moaning in my arms, and her eyelids fluttering, and her fingernails pressing into my shoulder.
“No,” she said, in a voice so small and soft I could hardly hear it. “No, not everything.”
She lifted her eyes to mine and with a begging look put a finger to her lips and gave her head a tiny, quick shake. I returned a blank stare. She needn’t have worried; I wasn’t going to say out loud the thing she was silently asking me not to say. What would be the point? Why add more damage to what had already been done? Besides, I was desperate to believe she had gone to bed with me because she’d wan
ted to, that it wasn’t another thing she’d done for the man she really loved.
Those drapes stirred again. “You’re asking a lot, Mrs. Cavendish,” I said, loud enough for everyone in the room to hear. Clare nodded and lowered her head again. I stubbed my cigarette into the ashtray on the floor and stood up.
“All right, Terry,” I called. “You may as well come out now. We’re done playing.”
* * *
At first nothing happened, except that Clare Cavendish gave a funny, stifled little squeak, as if something had stung her, and clapped a hand over her mouth. Then those mysteriously moving drapes parted and the man I knew as Terry Lennox stepped into the room, wearing that smile of his I remembered so well: boyish, embarrassed, a little rueful. He wore a double-breasted dark suit and a blue bow tie. He was tall and thin and elegant, the elegance made all the more pointed by his seeming unawareness of it. He had dark hair and a trim mustache.
It struck me that I’d never seen his real face. When I’d first known him, some years back, his hair was white and his right cheek and jaw were frozen, the dead skin lined with long, thin scars. In the war he’d been caught in a mortar blast and then captured by the Germans, who had patched him up any old how. That, at least, was the story he’d spun. Then, later, when his wife got murdered and it looked like he was going to take the rap for it, he’d fled to Mexico—with my help, I may as well say—where he’d faked his suicide and had a big piece of plastic surgery done, an expensively expert job this time, and changed himself into a Suramericano. I’d seen him once under his new identity; then he’d disappeared from my life. And now he was back.
“Hello, old sport,” he said. “Think you could spare me a cigarette? I smelled the smoke of yours and developed a sudden craving.”
I had to hand it to Terry—who else could have hidden behind a curtain for half an hour and come out as poised and self-mockingly smooth as Cary Grant? I stepped forward, taking out my cigarette case and flipping it open with my thumb and holding it out to him. “Help yourself,” I said. “You give it up, or what?”
“Yes,” he said, taking one of my cigarettes and rolling it appreciatively in his fingers. “It was affecting my health.” He put a hand to his chest. “The dry air down there doesn’t agree with me.”
Strange, isn’t it, how even at a time like that people plunge right away into small talk? Clare was still sitting on the piano stool with her hand over her mouth. She hadn’t even turned to look at Terry. Well, she didn’t need to.
I offered a match and Terry leaned down to the flame.
“How was the flight?” I asked. “You came up from Acapulco, right?”
“No,” he said, “I was in Baja on a little vacation when Clare called. Luckily I was able to catch a local crop duster to Tijuana and then a Mexicana Airlines flight up here. The plane was a DC-3. I clutched the armrests so tightly my fingers are still numb.”
He did that trick he always used to do, taking a big draw of smoke and letting it hang on his lower lip for a second before inhaling it. “Ah,” he said with a sigh, “that tastes good.” He put his head to one side and ran a critical eye over me. “You look pretty ropey, Phil,” he said. “Been having a hard time with all this business with Nico and so on? I’m sorry—truly, I am.”
He meant it, too. That was Terry—he’d rob you of your wallet, knock you down, and trample on you, then a second later help you up, dust you off, and offer you his deepest apologies. And you’d believe him. You’d even find yourself inquiring if he was all right and saying you hoped he hadn’t strained his wrist or anything by having to keep that heavy-looking gun trained on you while he was going through your pockets. Am I being unfair? Maybe a little. In the old days, when I thought I knew him, he’d been pretty straight. Couldn’t hold his drink or hold on to his money, and always had a woman problem, but I’d never known him to be seriously crooked. That last bit had changed now.
“How’s Menendez?” I asked.
He smiled wryly. “Oh, you know Mendy. He’s the cat that always falls on his feet.”
“You see much of him?”
“He keeps in touch. I owe him a lot, as you know.”
Yes, I knew. It was Menendez, along with Terry’s other old wartime buddy, Randy Starr, who’d helped him disappear and find a new identity after his so-called suicide in Otatoclán. The three of them had been in a foxhole together somewhere in France when that mortar shell landed, and it was Terry who’d saved all their lives by grabbing the shell and running outside and heaving it into the air like a quarterback throwing a Hail Mary pass. Or that, at least, was how the continuing story went. I never knew how much to believe about Terry and his adventures, and I still don’t. For instance, later on I’d discovered that he wasn’t Terry Lennox from Salt Lake City, as he claimed, but Paul Marston, a Canadian, born in Montreal. But who else might he have been, before that? And who would he be, I wondered, the next time I saw him, if I ever should see him again? How many layers does an onion have?
“Mendy’s based in Acapulco, right?” I said. “That where you are, too?”
“Yes. It’s pleasant there, on the ocean.”
“What is it you call yourself? I’ve forgotten.”
“Maioranos,” he said, and looked sheepish. “Cisco Maioranos.”
“Another alias. Doesn’t suit you, Terry. I’d have said—”
“For God’s sake!” Clare cried out suddenly, rising in a flurry from the piano stool and turning on us with white-faced fury. “Are you going to stand there chatting all night? It’s grotesque! You’re like two awful little boys who’ve done something naughty and got away with it.”
We turned and stared at her. I think we’d forgotten she was there. “Steady on, old girl,” Terry said, with a less than successful attempt at lightness. “We’re just two old friends doing a bit of catching up.” He tipped me a quick wink. “Aren’t we, Phil?”
Clare was going to say something more, since it was obvious there was a lot she had to say, but just then there was a gentle tapping on the door and it opened a little way and a weird apparition appeared there. It was a head, with a face as white as a Noh actor’s mask and a lot of hair gathered up in a sort of close-fitting mesh. We stared at this thing, all three of us, and then it spoke. “I was looking for a book in the library and heard voices. Have yiz no bed to go to?”
It was Clare’s mother. She came all the way into the room now. She was wearing a pink woolen dressing gown and pink slippers with pink bobbles on them. The white stuff on her face was some kind of beauty mask. Her eyes staring out of it were red-rimmed, like a drunk’s, and her lips were the color of raw steak.
“Oh, Mother,” Clare said in a tone of desperation, with a hand to her forehead, “please go back to bed.”
Mrs. Langrishe ignored her and stepped into the room and shut the door behind her. She was looking at Terry and frowning. She said, “And who is this, may I ask?”
Terry didn’t hesitate but moved toward her smoothly, smiling, with a slim hand extended. “Lennox is the name, Mrs. Langrishe,” he said. “Terry Lennox. I don’t think we’ve met.”
Ma Langrishe peered at him for a moment, trying to fix him, then suddenly smiled. None of them, the young ones or the old, could resist Terry when he turned the charm on them, like a spray of mist from a perfume bottle. She took his hand in both of hers. “Are you a friend of Richard’s?” she asked.
Terry hesitated. “Ehm—yes, I suppose I am.”
His glance flickered in the direction of the sofa, and now Ma Langrishe looked there as well. “Why, there he is!” she said, and her smile broadened and grew softer still. “Ah, God, will you look at him, sleeping like a baby.” She turned to Clare and the lurid gash of her mouth tightened. “And what are you all dressed up for?” she demanded. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“Please go back to bed, Mother,” Clare said again. “You know we have that meeting with the Bloomingdale’s people in the morning. You’ll be exhausted.”
&n
bsp; “Ach, will you leave me alone!” her mother barked. She turned to Terry again with a roguish twinkle. “Have you and Richard been out on the tiles, is that it? The poor boy, he shouldn’t drink—it goes straight to his head.” She turned and again gazed indulgently at the figure sprawled on the sofa. “He’s a terrible man, so he is.” As if he’d heard her, Cavendish stirred in his sleep and gave a loud snort. The old woman cackled delightedly. “Listen to him! Isn’t he a fierce rascal altogether.”
At last she noticed me. She frowned. “I remember you,” she said, pointing a finger at my chest. “You’re what’s-his-name, the detective fella.” Her lips curved upward in a sly, malignant smile, and the white mask developed a mesh of tiny cracks at either side of her mouth, and for a second she looked uncannily like a clown. “Have you found her ladyship’s pearls?” she asked, in a softly suggestive, crooning voice. “Is that why you’re here?”
“No, I haven’t found them yet,” I said. “But I’m hot on their trail.”
The clown’s smile died instantly, and she pointed that finger again, and this time it had an angry tremor. “Don’t you be making a mock of me, my bucko,” she rasped.
“I think, Mrs. Langrishe,” Terry said, cutting in smoothly, “I think Clare is right, I think you should go back to bed. You don’t want to miss your beauty sleep.”
She looked at him and her eyes narrowed. I guess she’d dealt with too many smooth talkers like Terry over the years to be taken in for long by his hazy charm.
Clare stepped forward and laid a hand lightly on the woman’s arm. “Come along, Mother, please,” she said. “Mr. Marlowe and Terry are old friends. That’s why I invited them over tonight—it’s sort of a reunion.”
I judged the shrewd old bird knew she was being lied to, but probably she was tired and was happy enough to accept the lie and bow out. She smiled sweetly at Terry again, threw me a scowl, then allowed herself to be led away, to the door. Clare, walking her along, glanced back at Terry and at me. I wondered if a day would come when she’d look like her mother looked now.
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