Violence Is My Business

by Stephen Marlowe

  “Thursday night would be all right.”

  “It would have to be sooner than that.” I waited. She didn’t say anything. “Tomorrow night?”

  “My, you are in a hurry.”

  “I meant to call you sooner.”

  “I’m afraid tomorrow night I’m—sitting up with a sick friend.”

  Monday is the least likely night for a call-girl to be working. I wondered if that meant she was sentimental, having a last drink to the memory of Duncan Hadley Lord or smoking a quiet cigarette and staring across a table set for two at the ghost of him. It didn’t figure with a call girl, but there was something about her voice. Cool and yet vibrantly alive and, somehow, wistful.

  “You could always send flowers,” I suggested.

  Her laughter was throaty and easy. It sounded as if she was a girl who liked to laugh but would not laugh unless she meant it. “No, Chester. I think we’ll have to make it some other time. I’m really sorry.”

  “In honor of my real name?” I said.

  She laughed again. “The man won’t take no for an answer.”

  “Not unless I have to. How about it—Bobby?”

  “Well, then, we’ll make it in honor of your telephone manner. You’d be surprised what you could get to know about a person from how he is on the telephone. What will we do?”

  “Dinner at the Ante-Bellum Inn, then a drive down into Virginia. How does it sound?”

  “It sounds swell. I guess maybe I will send flowers. Pick me up here at eight, Chester, and we’ll have cocktails. All right?”

  “Fine,” I said. I hung up feeling a little like a heel. But then I thought of Duncan Hadley Lord, and the feeling went away.

  * See Murder Is My Dish by Stephen Marlowe.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  HERE is your party in College Station, Virginia, sir,” the long-distance operator told me late Monday afternoon.

  I sat in the swivel chair, looking, across the scarred desktop where I do my doodling, at Jerry. He sat on the other side of the desk leaning forward anxiously, so I jerked my head toward the door of the small inner office that acts like a psychiatrist’s couch for some of our clients. Jerry got up and went in there. A moment later I heard a click as he picked up the extension phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Lord? This is the Drum Agency calling. Chet Drum speaking. First of all I want to tell you how sorry we are here over what happened. If there’s anything …”

  “No. No, of course not, Mr. Drum. And thanks for your sympathy.” She got the words out well enough, but her voice was held together with wires.

  “Our report is ready, Mrs. Lord, but there isn’t any law says we have to deliver it. That’s up to you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “If you want, we could destroy the report and return your retainer to you.”

  “Oh, I see. No, Mr. Drum. No, I don’t think so. You see, Duncan … Duncan never left a note. At least none that we’ve found. In the morning I’m going through the papers in his office with Professor McQuade. As you know, he’s a very dear friend of the family. But Duncan always kept such a spartan office, I’m sure we won’t find anything. I … I think I’d like to see that report, despite everything. In the morning?”

  “You name it.”

  “How’s eleven o’clock in my husband’s office?”

  “Fine with me,” I said. “One more thing, Mrs. Lord. You didn’t by any chance let your Husband find out you had a detective on him, did you?”

  There was a silence, then the phone almost crackled with her anger. “What kind of question is that?”

  “All right. Sorry. I’ll see you at eleven tomorrow.”

  When he came back into the room Jerry said, grinning: “Heel.” After the grin went away, Jerry looked grumpy.

  “Someone has to be. Anyhow, at least we’re on record saying we’re willing to forget about the report, to destroy it and return the client’s money. That ought to sit pretty well with you and Laurie.”

  Its funny how those things can sometimes jump up and bite you. We were on record all right.—

  IT WAS raining when I picked Bobby Hayst up that night, a steady black autumn rain with almost no wind and a raw dampness in the air.

  The apartment hotel was located on one of the newer streets which end at Rock Creek Parkway before the red brick of Georgetown begins. It was caned Potomac Apartments and came equipped with a, glassed-in lobby, a planter which tried to reproduce a tropical rain forest in sixty square feet of moist soil and a liveried doorman who announced me on the house phone.

  The name on the door was Roberta Hayst. Somehow I had expected it to be Barbara. That was the first surprise about Bobby Hayst, a small, neutral surprise. All the others were king-sized and pleasant.

  Bobby Hayst was a pretty blonde in an aqua cocktail dress and a mink shrug the color they call champagne. But that’s like saying the Lincoln Memorial is a granite monument to a former president. She had warm smiling eyes which mirrored and were cooled slightly by the color of her dress. Her blonde hair was thick and worn long enough to brush her shoulders. Her lips looked eager for laughter or talk. She had an ingenuously curious way or looking at you, as if you were a gift left at her door Christmas Eve. She wasn’t stunning. She wasn’t as obvious as a ripe peach with a stem about to break. She didn’t have any up-from-under looks or coy smiles. She didn’t even have an special way of standing to show the firm upward thrust of her good breasts or the lovely curving line of her slim waist and small round hips. One tiny smile was all she needed, or maybe she didn’t even need that. As far as I was concerned she didn’t need anything. She had it all. She was beautiful.

  I grunted something not very world-shattering and held out my boxed orchid. I followed her inside and closed the door. Don’t ask me what that apartment looked like. It was probably very nice, but I never saw it.

  She turned around with the orchid and said, “Put it on for me, Chet?”

  She stared with frank, eager curiosity at my face while I pinned the orchid on for her. She had a way of staring at you; maybe it was the only gimmick in her bag of tricks. She made you feel, before you’d said ten words, that you were the greatest adventure that had ever dropped out of the blue on her sheltered life. Considering her equipment, it was a pretty good trick. Hell, it might have been necessary. Because half her dates, knowing her profession and then seeing her, would have clubbed her and dragged her by that beautiful yellow hair, to the nearest bed.

  “There we are,” she said, tearing her eyes away from mine and looking down at the orchid. “Like a cocktail?”

  I said bourbon on the rocks would be fine.

  “Jack Daniels all right?”

  “It’s the only bourbon a real drinker will drink.”

  That’s the way it went. She had my favorite whisky. She drank it on the rocks too, with no delicately reluctant sips and no ladylike oh-this-is-so-strong grimaces. But she didn’t open up her throat and pour the Jack Daniels down either. She drank it as I did: she enjoyed it.

  Then she went to the window, scowled out at the rain and put her mink shrug to bed. She wore a sensible dark blue plaid raincoat instead, with a matching round hat that turned her hair to gold. From the hall closet she got one of those big hatboxes a model carries, and we were all set.

  We drove through the rain across Francis Scott Key Bridge, the tires whispering, the wipers thumping, then down Mount Vernon Memorial Boulevard along the Potomac and south in Virginia on Route 1. She sat sideways looking at me while I drove. We didn’t say much. Once on the outskirts of Alexandria a taxi cut us off and I had to throw the wheel hard to the right. Bobby came against me heavily, her hair brushing my cheek. She squeezed my arm and leaned away again. I don’t usually have to pay for an evening’s entertainment and I was going to pay for this one, but she was electric. Just her touch like that and my throat felt constricted.

  A few minutes later we parked in the big lot behind the Ante-Bellum Inn. The rain was c
oming down harder, so I grabbed her hand and made a run for it.

  The Ante-Bellum is one of those big Georgian places in northern Virginia. Good Southern food, candlelight, a big dancefloor and the kind of music you can dance to without bringing home a case of indigestion. We had more Jack Daniels, clams, Southern fried chicken with good Oryieto wine in a wicker bottle-jacket, deep-dish apple pie with ice cream, and brandy in our coffee.

  After that we danced. They played slow foxtrots and some South American numbers and even a few waltzes. Bobby was the best dancer I’d ever had in my arms, and I told her.

  She smiled. “You lead beautifully.” The music stopped. “I’m glad you got my number from Ike.”

  “I’m glad you decided not to sit up with your sick friend.”

  We went back to the table and had one for the road. The candlelight made her eyes dance. Her hand appeared on the table. I covered it with mine.

  “What do you do, Chet?”

  “Oh, I’m an investigator.”

  “Like for an insurance company?”

  “Something like that. Smoke?”

  We smoked, and I paid the check. Then, because the music had started again, we went to the dancefloor before we went to the check room. There was no space between our bodies this time. Bobby danced warmly and supplely against me. The electricity was there, stronger than ever. At the break in the music, Bobby stepped back and looked at me. Her eyes were funny. They looked warm and eager, but confused. She brushed a wisp of hair back from her forehead.

  “Wow,” she said softly. Her cheeks were flushed. The couples were drifting off the dancefloor, but we just stood there looking at each other, holding hands.

  “Yeah,” I said. Me too.”

  “We hardly even talked. I’m usually pretty good at idle chatter, honestly. That’s part of my hue of work, or do you mind me putting it like that.”

  “No. I don’t mind.”

  She actually blushed. “You do funny things to me, Chester Drum. I haven’t felt like this since I was a little girl. Or blushed either, darn it.”

  “Look who’s talking. You socked me right between the eyes, Bobby.” That was the truth.

  “I guess if I knew why, it wouldn’t be there. But it’s not supposed to happen. So pardon me if I act all mixed up. You, you big lug, you’re supposed to get socked between the eyes. They—they tell me I’m pretty good. I wouldn’t know right now. I feel like a girl on her first heavy date. Well,” she added in a barely audible voice, “are you going to keep me here stuffing your ego with compliments all night?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Is it very far, where you’re taking me?”

  I didn’t say anything right away. Route 1 is lined with first-class motels. Bobby had her hatbox and I had an overnighter. And we felt the way we felt. There’s never anything permanent in that kind of feeling, it’s too sharp and sudden and all-consuming. There is only one answer to such a feeling—jump in head-first and enjoy it while it lasts. If you don’t then you’re one of the pale people, the shadows in doorways with life rushing by, too timid to grab at it, too frightened to leap into it, too cautious even to admit it was there.

  A night with Bobby, the way we felt? Or a week, or however long it would last? I thought, why not, we’re grownups, we know the score, we’d have no regrets? Besides, get right down to it, that’s why Bobby thought she was here.

  But then I remembered a man failing through space with his whole life suddenly and irrevocably behind him. And I knew I wanted to know why. I had to know why.

  “It’s pretty far,” I said. “It’s a long drive. Come on.”

  We got our coats and ran out through the rain to my car. On the front seat, Bobby came into my arms. She snuggled there with her head against my chest. I smelled the clean fresh smell of her hair. I lifted her head and kissed her on the mouth. It was a long kiss and a good, one but it completed nothing. It was like a promise.

  “Hurry, Chet,” she said breathlessly. “Drive fast.”

  I drove fast. I didn’t want to think that she was going to hate me before the night ended.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE PLAN had called for telling Bobby Hayst nothing until we drove off the road to Duncan Lord’s farm house. But the plan had been made when Bobby Hayst was just a name. Now she sat next to me, her head on my shoulder, her eyes shut, a faint smile on her lips, and I knew I couldn’t sock her with it like that.

  Once she had opened her eyes drowsily and asked, “Where are we, Chet? It seems we’ve been driving for ages.” It was a question that didn’t want an answer. She turned her head, still drowsily, and kissed the side of my neck and mumbled against it, “Hurry up, darn you.” That made me feel like cock-of-the-walk, but it also made me feel like Bluebeard, if Bluebeard had a conscience after he’d opened his hotel for women.

  “Passing through Richmond,” I said. “Be there in about twenty minutes.”

  She straightened up slowly and I felt the warmth of her body leave my side. She was wide awake suddenly. “That’s funny,” she said.

  “No. It isn’t funny.”

  “I don’t understand you, Chet.”

  We stopped for a light. It was near Main Street, the old center of town before Broad Street had been built out to the new railroad station. It was the last traffic light before we hit the open road again. I didn’t say anything until we were moving. I didn’t want her to run out on me.

  “A farmhouse on Route 60,” I said when we were rolling. “On the way to College Station. We’re going there.”

  She let out a little gasp. I felt the seat move under me and knew she had changed her position. She was sitting stiffly against the door now. There was a lot of space between us.

  Her voice was very cold and distant, but the worst thing about it was the disappointment, like the voice of a small child whose favorite doll had been snatched away. “Duncan Lord’s farmhouse?”

  I watched the wipers cutting pie-wedges through the rain on the windshield. Neon slipped by, glowing wetly like neon does in the rain. A couple of gas stations, an all-night diner, a custard stand. I cut out to pass a Greyhound bus.

  “Yeah, baby,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  She lit a cigarette and smoked for a while. “Who are you?” she asked finally, in a defeated little voice. “I mean, besides the name? It is your name?”

  “I’m a private detective working for Mrs. Lord.”

  She laughed. A harsh, ripping sound.

  “Bobby,” I said. “Bobby, I couldn’t know it was going to work out like this for us. Bobby.”

  “Me,” she said. “I’ve been around. I’ve been through the mill. I’m supposed to know the score. That’s pretty funny. To let a thing like this happen. Oh, brother!”

  The neon faded behind us. The dark tidewater flats rushed by. An occasional farmhouse loomed and retreated, the lights in the windows like brooding yellow eyes watching us. I said, “We’re almost there.”

  The harsh laugh again. I hardly recognized Bobby’s voice. “Are you going to take notes?” Then a new thought entered her mind. “Have you been here before? You seem to know the way. Did you follow us out here? Did you look through a keyhole, peeper? Or maybe you had one of those infra-red camera gadgets?”

  “All I want,” I said, “is to find out if Duncan Lord had a reason to kill himself.”

  Silence.

  “If you gave him a reason.”

  When she moved, she moved fast. Her hand stung my face. “Stop the car. Let me out. I’ll hitchhike back. I’ve done it before. Stop the car.”

  FIVE minutes later, we reached Duncan Lord’s farm and pulled to a stop in front of the dark house with its caved-in porch and battered roof. There was no real reason to go in there now, but I wanted to go through with it.

  I opened the door and stepped out on wet gravel. I started going around the car. Then I heard the door on Bobby’s side open and slam. Her high heels kicked up gravel as she ran.

  “Hey, you little fool!�
�� I shouted. “It’s the middle of the night.”

  She didn’t stop. I ran after her. Over gravel at first, then into mud and the hayfield. She was a dark blur racing through the rain. She could really move, or she was desperate. She’d had about fifty feet on me and I was cutting the gap down only slowly. Then suddenly her dim shape wasn’t there ahead of me. I heard a whimper.

  I almost fell over her. She’d gone down in the mud and she was curled up, holding her ankle with both hands. When she saw me she tried to get away again, first on hands and knees and then hobbling. I grabbed for her and got her coat, slipping in the mud myself. She ran out of her coat, went on a few steps and stumbled again. This time she went out flat, knocking the wind from her lungs. By the time I draped the coat over her and picked her up, she was drenched. She didn’t fight me. I carried her back to the farmhouse.

  I used one of the keys on a ring of skeletons I carry to open the front door. I went inside with her in nly arms. It was dark, cold and damp in there. I couldn’t see anything. I heard rain dripping steadily in through the roof.

  “Room on the left,” she gritted. “Roof’s good in there. Candles.”

  I took her through a dark archway and bumped a bed with my knees. I set her down and groped back across the room. On a dresser I found three candles stuck in their own melted wax in saucers. I lit two of them and brought one over to the bed. There was a night table and I set the candle down. The room was cold but could be cozy, with the big bed, the dresser and a couple of big old-fashioned rockers. There was a fireplace with dead ashes on the hearth.

  “Get out of your clothes,” I told Bobby. “You’ll be chilled to the bone. Let’s have a look at that leg.”

  “Wood in the next room. For the fire.” Her teeth were chattering.

  I found the wood and brought back two big split logs and some kindling. In five minutes I had a pretty good fire going. When I turned around, Bobby was just slipping sleekly under the covers. Her clothing was in a pile on the bed beside her. She pulled the covers up to her neck.

  “Cold, she said. “Can’t get warm.”