The Brass Cupcake

by John D. MacDonald

  She rode beside me in silence all the way back to Florence City. It was only as I slowed in front of the dark Western Auto and swung into the alley, the headlights sweeping the cinder-block wall, that she sat up on the edge of the seat.

  I parked the car and we sat in the darkness. The neon sign atop the next building flicked on and off, on and off. I ran my hand along the top of her shining head and then down to the back of her neck where the hair hung silky-thick. I squeezed it and it sprang back, alive, as I opened my hand. On the way up the steps she walked ahead of me and then stood quietly on the landing as I found the right key and opened the door.

  I pushed the draperies back so that the neon sent its pale redness into the room, off and on, off and on, the furniture bulking oddly large in the intermittent shadow. It was a strange half hypnosis that had caught us, making words impossible, making motions slow, lethargic, tantalizing.

  She linked her hands at the back of my neck and brushed her lips slowly back and forth across mine. When I tried to hold her tightly she pushed me away. I sat on the edge of the studio couch and watched her. She and the straight chair were between me and the widest window, between me and the red neon.

  Her motions were slow, and as highly stylized as a dance. The one-second glow of the light and then the half second of darkness gave it the flavor and effect of one of those early films. She hung the suit jacket over the back of the chair, the fabric softening the hard outline of the wood. She looked down at her two hands close together at her left side, and I heard the thin sharp teeth of the zipper. She stepped out of the skirt and put it across the seat of the chair. She pulled the blouse up over her head and laid it over the back of the chair, over the jacket.

  She turned in silhouetted profile to me, her heavy hair hanging forward as she reached both hands up behind her to the small of her back. The bit of fabric slid down her arms, held forward, and she turned and put it on the chair. It was like the dances of Java, where every motion must be done in exactly the proper way.

  She sat on the chair then, and I heard the fabric whisper as she stripped the nylon hose down off her long legs. She stood up again, in profile, sliding other diaphanous fabric down the lean lovely line of legs, bending over, her knee lifting as she stepped out, putting the last bit of fabric on the chair.

  And then she turned toward me and stood very still while the red neon in the distance went on and off a dozen times, silhouetting her with her lyre-curve of hip, as lovely as the stylized figure in a frieze. Then, each time the light came on, she was a half step closer to me, coming toward me with an almost unbearable slowness, coming like the sound of distant trumpets, dissonantly sweet like a song from brazen throats, a song of brass.

  And it was a slowness, a soft and sliding slowness, a drowsy low-swinging slowness, tempering haste, fitted to sweet cadence, a merged and welded slowness that, when at last it could be borne no longer, climbed up a thousand microtonal scales, climbed into a joined quickness, a thick-twisting harsh unbearable quickness, blood cousin to pain, daughter of furies, a wild shout thrown upward at the stars in crescendoed apex, then sweet-fading back down through the endless spirals back to slownesses, and lingerings, and severances.

  I gave her one of the two lighted cigarettes and watched the pink glow against her nose and cheeks as she inhaled. She sighed. Then with a voice as rusty as though it were the first time she had ever spoken, she said, “I love you.”

  “I love you. The last thing we were going to say, isn’t it? We old sophisticates.”

  “Tell me I’m good.”

  “That’s a funny request. You’re good. You’re the girl. The one. The dear. The cupcake. Why ask?”

  “Vanity. I was never any good before. All elbows or something. Room left in my mind to stand off and watch. No room this time, Cliff. No room at all. Not with you. Now I ought to be ashamed. I ought to be ashamed for being easy, a pushover, a round-heeled wench. I’m trying to be ashamed. I’m really trying.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “Not well. I feel too good. Like a damnable cat on the hearth. Or more like I’d been washed down a river and over a dam and out to sea and now I’m floating out there, all drowned. Give me time. In a little while I’ll be ashamed. I won’t be able to look at you in the daylight. I’ll blush and drop my eyes and stand all pigeon-toed.”

  “Simpering, maybe?”

  “Probably. As long as we’re on the topic of me, I will add that I am suddenly famished, starved, raving-mad hungry.”

  A half hour later, with the draperies pulled across the windows, the lights on, she sat at the table wearing my beach robe. As I put the scrambled eggs in front of her, she leaned her cheek against my arm. I took my plate and sat opposite her.

  “You are blushing!” I said.

  “Shut up, Bartells. Eat your eggs and don’t look at me.”

  It was that sort of Sunday. The sort that starts you wondering why a man could have been so wrong so long.

  14

  WHEN I CAME OUT of the bathroom I found that she had folded the studio couch back into its normal width, and had neatly put the cover on it. It was a clear cold bright day. She looked composed, her face made up, her hair pulled back to such shining tautness that it gave a faintly Oriental tilt to her eyes. It was far, far easier to believe that she had just come in the door than to try to remember that she was Melody, who reached up for you out of the silken darkness of sleep.

  Her suit looked as though it had just come from the cleaners.

  “Hello, darling,” she said.

  “Do I detect a crispness of tone, my love?”

  She sat in the straight chair, her legs crossed, her left hand on her hip, her right hand with the cigarette held off by her right shoulder, the elbow sharply bent. She looked as though she were waiting for tea to be brought.

  “There are things we have to say, Cliff.”

  I picked a tie from the closet, stood in front of the bureau, and knotted it, seeing her reflection in the glass. “Speak out.”

  “In most ways,” she said in a lecturer’s tone, “we are right for each other. But there is a streak of antagonism.”

  “Before breakfast?”

  “Please don’t joke, Cliff,” she said. “Last night, after one of…” She met my eye in the mirror and flushed. “Don’t look at me like that. Last night we said a lot of things. Marriage was included.”

  She looked cute sitting there trying to be practical. “I think,” I said, “that we decided it was inevitable, so we’d better relax and enjoy it”

  She rose with one long graceful motion and came up behind me and put her hands lightly on my shoulders, leaned her forehead between my shoulder blades. “Now you can’t watch me. Listen, Cliff. That was last night. This is today. This morning. You know, cold morning light. I want to forget that we said anything about marriage. You can think it over. There’s no obligation at all. Then later one day you can ask me, if you still want to.”

  I turned around and lifted her chin with my knuckles. Her eyes were wet.

  “You want a chance to reconsider, kitten?”

  “No, you big darn fool! I don’t want to trap you, is all.”

  “All right. I’ll wait a few days. Now let me tell you something, Melody. Things can get very, very rough for me today or tomorrow or the next day. I’m going to be mixed up in a bad way with some people who might get very upset.”

  Her face went pale. “Cliff, I…”

  “Don’t talk. Listen. This isn’t melodrama. Maybe I could have run out, with you. That might have been an answer. But I don’t think it would have been a good answer. I think I may have gone broody on you, thinking of things left undone. This is my baby, and I’m not telling you anything about it except that I may not be a hell of a good insurance risk this week. I’m going to feed you breakfast and then I’m going to check you into the Coast Hotel. Until the all-clear sounds, you’re going to stay in that room, have your meals served there.”

  I opened the botto
m bureau drawer, reached under the shirts, and took out the small automatic, a Belgian .32, Browning patent. I checked the clip, jacked a round into the chamber, and put the safety in off position.

  “Handle gingerly,” I said. “Put it in your purse. If you want to fire it, you…”

  She took it out of my hand, pushed the release that dropped the clip, worked the slide and ejected the round, thumbed the round into the top of the clip, and slapped it smartly back into place. “If I need it, I know how to work the slide.”

  “You fascinate me.”

  “Dave taught me about guns. He was a bug. I’m a good shot with rifle, pistol, revolver, and shotgun. But, Cliff, I think you’re being an alarmist about…”

  “Maybe so. Trumbull doesn’t fit neatly anywhere as yet. So we’ll make like boy scouts.” She watched me as I put on the shoulder holster of soft, hand-tooled Mexican leather, socketed the .38 special into the spring clip. I put on the coat that was cut full enough to almost hide the bulge it made. A special is too big a gun for such a rig, but with the sole exception of the magnum, it’s the only small hand weapon worth a hoot in a whirlwind for outdoor work.

  Even her lips were pale. “Couldn’t you tell me?”

  “I’d rather not.”

  She shrugged hopelessly. I bought her breakfast at the diner, drove her to the Coral Strand, and waited while she got her bags and paid off the harridan, then followed the battered but serviceable Chevvy to a gas station for oil, then to the hotel parking lot. I carried her bags in and turned them over to a bellhop. I went upstairs with her and told her again not to leave the room. Back in the lobby I bought a few magazines and sent them up to her.

  Then I went to the office. Wilma Booton gave me her welcoming sneer.

  “Is anybody in there with Arthur?” I asked, pointing at the closed door.

  “Mr. Myers is in conference.”

  I smiled at her and walked to the closed door. She wailed at me. I turned the knob and looked in. Arthur was dictating to Kathy. His feet, under the desk, were making little prancing sounds.

  “Thanks, Arthur, for going to bat for me the other day.”

  He bounced up and down in the chair and his plump cheeks shook. “Now, Cliff! You know I couldn’t have done you any good. The home office was on the phone this morning already. They say that they want a report on how we’re…”

  “Take a walk, Kathy,” I said. She gave me a sullen look and went out. She slammed the door so hard that the big window rattled in its frame.

  “Now what’s eating her?” Arthur asked in an abused tone.

  I sat in the chair Kathy had vacated. “Today, Arthur, is B day. Bonus day. Tonight we make the transaction.”

  His fat white fingers danced up and down the edge of the desk. “Are you sure? Are you positive? This is a terrible risk. All that money! We’ve got to be certain that this isn’t somebody trying to cash in on…”

  I shut him up by tossing the gold locket on the desk. He made little cooing sounds in his throat as he picked it up and examined it. “The inventory came airmail,” he said, “and this was on it, with a big two-carat diamond in it listed at four thousand. You got the right people.”

  “Then suppose you get on the phone and get the bank They’ve had time to accumulate the right kind of money. Tell them that I’ll pick it up at their closing time, two o’clock. You’ll have to be along, you know.”

  He reached for the phone. “I know, I know.”

  I stood up. “If you want anything, I’ll be in my office for a little while.”

  He waved at me and I opened the door and went out. shutting it behind me. As soon as I was seated at my desk Kathy came in. She stood and stared at me without friendliness. The difference was there, and it was startlingly obvious. Kathy the maiden was no longer. Her eyes were hard.

  “Cliff, I wanted to tell you that you’re the…”

  She broke off quickly as Andrew Hope Maybree came in. His glasses sparkled like diamonds. He stood beside Kathy and put an arm possessively around her waist.

  “Cliff, old man, I guess you should be one of the first to know. Kathy and I are going to be married.”

  “When was this decided?” I asked blankly.

  He blushed. “Why, yesterday, Cliff. Yesterday. Happened like lightning.”

  Kathy’s eyes were hard over her forced smile. The pattern wasn’t hard to see. Andrew had been available to put out the fire. I looked at his salesman’s face and at those big squirrel teeth, and the eyes shifty behind the sparkling glass, and I was surprised at the sudden enormous dislike I felt for him. Up until that moment I had tolerated him. Now the idea of him and Kathy made me feel slightly ill.

  I came around the desk fast, shutting the office door. I thrust my face toward Andrew’s, wearing a wide and delighted smile. “Why, that’s wonderful!” I said. He coughed nervously and pulled his face away.

  “Thanks, thanks, Cliff. I thought you might be…”

  “Sore? Me? Hell, I’m delighted. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”

  Kathy seemed relieved when his arm dropped from around her, as though she had been holding herself tense within his embrace.

  Andrew licked his lips with a pointed tongue and giggled nervously. He couldn’t seem to puzzle out my reaction.

  I pumped his hand, grinding down on the knuckles until I saw him go a little white around the lips, and then I let go of his hand and thumped him on the shoulder, yelling, “You sly old dog, you!”

  “Heh, heh, heh!” he laughed flatly, backing a bit away from me.

  I slapped down on his shoulder with my left hand, and made a gentle-looking chop at his jaw with my right fist. It glazed his eyes for a fraction of a second and I felt his knees sag. I gave him a roar of laughter and another tap. He moved away fast, yanking out a handkerchief and holding it to the corner of his mouth, his eyes wide and alarmed. “Now look!”

  I thumped his shoulder again. “Lucky dog, you!” I knuckled him in the middle and he wheezed hard, bending over a little.

  Suddenly I was disgusted with myself and with what I was doing. It smacked of the probable reaction of Gilman or De Rider. I let my arm drop to my sides. It was then that Kathy charged around me. She was a small dark fury. She hammered him on the chest with both fists and kicked his shins with all her might, screaming, “I hate you! I hate you!”

  “Kathy, honey, I…” He was trying to hold her off.

  “I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth!”

  She turned away from him and plunged blindly for the door. Arthur swung it open and she ricocheted off him. He turned and stared after her. “Isn’t she peculiar today?”

  Maybree pulled himself together. He walked toward me with a quite unexpected dignity. “I don’t know quite how you did that, Bartells. However you did it, it was a stinking trick.”

  It was probably his Sunday punch. I had plenty of time to decide to block it, and then change my mind and decide it would be better for my soul if I took it. His fist was like a sack of pebbles. It hit me on the corner of the jaw just in front of my left ear. Lights flared behind my eyes and my ears hummed. I shook my head and saw Andrew stalk out, holding himself very erect.

  “Has everybody gone nuts this morning?” Arthur cried, hopping from one foot to the other.

  I brushed by him and headed out, saying back over my shoulder, “I’ll see you at the bank at five minutes of two, Arthur.”

  Commissioner Guilfarr looked at me across his desk. Sitting down, he looked like a man of more than normal height. Heavy raw shoulders and a wide chest, lean when seen in profile. His skull was long and narrow, with a prow of a jaw and a descending hook of a nose. Cropped reddish-gray hair, eyes as green as a cat’s, a politician’s mellow, flexible voice. Given a shade more intelligence and a new pair of legs instead of the stumpy little bandy legs that were almost a deformity, and he would most probably have been a state figure if not a national one. The knowledge of this was in him, and the hunger for unatta
inable places, and so there was a self-scorn in him that made everyone uncomfortable.

  “Chief Powy will be right over,” he said. “Surely there’s nothing you could tell so important that we have to wait for Powy.”

  “I guess you’ll have to humor my little whim,” I said.

  His mouth twisted as though he had tasted something unpleasant. Powy rapped at the door and came in without waiting for an invitation. The little eyes swept across me and the bullfrog voice said, “Any business Bartells has with the law ought to be taken up with me before—”

  “Shut up and sit down, Powy,” Guilfarr said wearily.

  Powy shoved a walnut chair closer to the desk with his foot and eased himself tenderly into it.

  “Now if you can bring yourself to talk, Bartells…” Guilfarr said.

  I had to make my act good. I gave Powy a fawning smile. “The Chief and I understand each other, Commissioner. I admit I was pretty stubborn for a while. But now I understand that the best thing I can do is co-operate, all down the line.”

  Powy coughed and stared at me.

  I said quickly, “I know that Chief Powy is going to get word the moment that we make the withdrawal from bank. I want it to be clearly understood that I’m not bucking the department. I held a grudge for a time and I admit it.”

  Powy chuckled. “So the boys beat a little sense into you, eh?”

  I made my smile as rueful as I could. “I don’t want any more of that. No, sir!”

  “Am I to understand,” Guilfarr said, “that you’ve made contact with the murderer?”

  “That’s right. I’m to hand over the money tonight. I’ve been thinking it over. I’m over a barrel either way. But I’d rather be on the side of the law.”

  Powy leaned forward in his chair. “When and where?”

  “Now, wait a minute. I’m going to be the man on the spot,” I said. “I’m willing to cross them up, but I don’t want it handled in such a clumsy way that I’m going to end up with holes in me. I’ll tell you on one condition.”