So Nude, So Dead

by Ed McBain

“A has-been, mostly. Used to play a great horn, but drink put an end to that. He coasts along now, on his name and his reputation. He doesn’t play much, anyway. Mostly just fronts the band.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “That’s about it, Ray.”

  “What about Tony Sanders? Do you know him at all?”

  “I’ve dated him a few times.”

  “Oh?” Somehow, Ray didn’t like that. He felt a knot of resentment in his chest, and he struggled to keep his voice even. “Have you seen him recently?”

  “A few days ago. I had dinner with him. Why?”

  “Just wondered.” His forehead creased into a frown, and she sat up abruptly and looked directly into his face.

  “Why, you’re jealous!”

  “Don’t be foolish.”

  “You are, too.”

  “What’s there to be jealous about?”

  She giggled and pushed her hands against his chest. “Nothing. But you’re jealous—I can see it in your face.”

  “Sanders went out with Eileen, too, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, he did.” She had stopped giggling.

  “How often did he see her?”

  “Not too often.”

  “Did he know she was pregnant?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Ray shook his head in disgust. “All blind alleys. Every last one of them.”

  “Forget them,” Babs said.

  “I’m tired of it,” he said frankly. “I’ve been on the go all day. First the cops and then a hundred people. None of them know anything. None of them care.”

  “Who’d you see?” Babs asked.

  “Rusty O’Donnell first, and then Kram—”

  “Oh, you met Rusty?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did she have to say?”

  Ray shrugged. “Not a hell of a lot. I was surprised she’s Chinese. You didn’t tell me.”

  Babs’s voice grew suddenly cold. “You didn’t ask me.”

  “Ummm. Well, we talked around a little, and then I left.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Oh, I don’t remember. Kramer, I guess. Yes, Kramer and Eileen.”

  “How long did you stay?”

  “Oh, a little while.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing,” he said, puzzled by the tone of her voice.

  Babs rose suddenly, walked across the room and leaned on the liquor cabinet. “I’d be damned surprised if nothing happened.” She bit off the words.

  “I’m telling you, we talked. What did you ex—”

  Babs’s eyes flared, and her lips skinned back over even white teeth. “You’re a liar.”

  “What!”

  “Did she do her little dance for you? I understand that’s her specialty. She lures little boys into her opium den and wiggles at them sideways.”

  “Babs!”

  “No wonder you’re tired.” She gave a hard little laugh, throwing her head back.

  “Babs, I didn’t say I was tired. I just—”

  “Get the hell out of here!” Babs said.

  “What?” He blinked at her, puzzled. “Hey, what’s—”

  He reached for her, and she shoved out at him, her hands flat against his chest. He stumbled backward several paces, staring at her curiously.

  Her voice was dead cold now. She seemed to be a different person standing before him. Fury glowed in her eyes, etched the hard line of her mouth.

  “From one woman to another, eh, Ray? Regular Casanova, aren’t you?”

  “For God’s sake, Babs, listen to me! I—”

  “What makes you think I’ll share you with her? What makes you think I’ll share you with any woman?”

  “Babs, I—”

  She slapped him suddenly and viciously. “Get out!” she screamed. “Get out!” She ran into the bedroom, and he heard the lock click on the other side of the door.

  “Babs!” he shouted.

  Her voice was sweet when it answered. “You can find your way out, can’t you, darling?”

  “Babs, don’t be ridiculous.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Babs!”

  He waited outside the doorway for a long time. Finally he realized she wasn’t coming out while he was there.

  He walked into the living room and dressed slowly. Once more, before he left the apartment, he called her name.

  She didn’t answer.

  Chapter Seventeen

  He walked the streets, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched.

  Dusk was a faint wash against the sky. The late workers were scurrying toward the subways, their faces studiously indifferent.

  So this is how it ends, he thought.

  Wham, bam, thank you ma’am. It was nice knowing you, and it was swell and all that, but goodbye, my friend, and good luck, and drop dead. Period.

  It seemed to him now that his life had been a series of goodbyes ever since he’d hopped on the merry-go-round. He’d broken with his parents first, and then his old friends, and then his music, and then Jeannie, and now…

  The goodbye with Jeannie had been a classic. Hearts and flowers in the background, and the smell of magnolia blossoms, the lonesome shrill of a train against the night. He tried to make fun of it now, but somehow it didn’t quite come off that way. He could remember the scene vividly, could almost reach out and touch the objects in the room. The two roses in the tall vase on the table. The white wisp of curtain that lifted and fell with each dying breeze. The white terry robe Jeannie had wrapped around her. Her hair bunched at the back of her neck, tied there with a green ribbon, smelling of soap, smelling clean.

  The breeze had been warm, a breeze that carried the distant sounds of the city with it, the hurried footsteps on the pavement below, the impatient honking of the taxis, the jingling of the ice cream truck’s bells.

  She stood by the window, and her head was slightly bent. She had one arm raised against the window frame, and her eyes were looking down at the little park across the street—but he knew she wasn’t seeing anything.

  There was that peculiar silence in the room, with the traffic sounds muffled and obscured in the distance, a summer silence bred of heat, tense with the hushed expectancy that descends upon a city before an electric storm.

  “It’s no go,” she said. She kept her head turned, her eyes averted from his.

  “What? What’s no go?” He was straddling the kitchen chair, staring at her intently. It was hot, and his armpits were wet, his face sweaty.

  “Us, Ray.”

  Silence occupied the room again, pushing into every corner. He heard the drip of the tap splashing against an upturned glass. Behind that, like a subtle counterpoint, was the ticking of the white-faced clock over the stove.

  “Okay,” he said.

  She turned quickly. “You don’t understand, Ray. It’s not what you’re thinking.”

  He shoved his chair back, the scraping harsh and grating. “I understand, Jeannie. We don’t have to go into it.”

  She tried to smile, but her eyes were wide and glassy-looking. He saw tears behind them, and he wished she wouldn’t cry. He couldn’t stand it if she started crying.

  “No, Ray, I don’t think you’ll ever understand. Oh, I know what you’re thinking. The rat deserting the sinking ship, isn’t that it?”

  “Something like it,” he said. He had the peculiar feeling that he was no longer a part of what was happening. He had stopped participating the moment she’d said it was no go. From then on, he was only watching, a mildly interested spectator watching two strangers go through a curious ritual.

  “That isn’t it at all,” she said.

  “All right, Jeannie. Let’s just forget. We’ll shake hands, and I’ll leave, and that’ll be—”

  She went on talking as if he’d never interrupted. “You see, Ray, if I cared less it wouldn’t matter at all. That’s the trouble. I care too much.” She tried to smile again, and the smile stuck to her fac
e like a mask.

  “Look, Jeannie—”

  “My first love. You’re my first love, Ray.” She bit her lips. He knew the tears were close now, and he wanted to get out of the room. Beyond the window, beyond the rooftops, out over the river, the sky was turning gray, tremendous billowy clouds piling up on the horizon. The breeze was stiffer now, and the curtain flapped against her arm as she stood by the window. “That sounds corny, I know. People have first loves in kindergarten. They get over them.”

  She turned, and her eyes were wide, with her brows pinched together, and her lips parted in anguish. “This was it for me, Ray. First love with all its heartaches, all its wonderful discovery. You. That was enough. Just you, and that was all. The beginning and the end. You. Everything was you.”

  “Jeannie—”

  “Please, darling. Let me talk. I know I’ve lost you now, and that’s why I’m letting you go. I’m being selfish, but not because I want to, Ray. I just—I just can’t take it anymore, it’s like watching a dream die, watching it crumble before your eyes, sink into the dust, vanish. Ray, Ray, you don’t know how it is, watching you and—and the drug. I—I can’t do anything. I can’t stop it, can’t tear it out by its filthy roots, trample it, step on it, kill it. I watch. I just watch, and I see you and my love for you and it rips out my insides until I want to die.”

  “Jeannie, for God’s sake, let’s just—”

  “That’s the way it is, Ray. First love. You’re supposed to be hurt the first time, aren’t you?” She turned to the window again, and the first drops began to fall from the sky, pattering silently on the roof, drumming against the pavements.

  “It’s raining,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  She stood watching the slanting rain, the sky asphalt now, the steady tattoo filling the small room.

  “So that’s it,” she said at last. “We’ll live, I suppose.”

  “We’ll live,” he repeated blankly.

  “They say you always love hardest the first time. They say that your first love always stays with you, buried somewhere in a dark corner of your heart. It’ll be that way with me, Ray. No matter what, it’ll always be that way with me.”

  He didn’t say anything. He walked softly to the door and opened it. A fresh gust of wind swept across the room, lifted the curtain, ushered him out. She was standing with her back to him when he left, looking out the window.

  Beneath the steady patter of the rain, he heard her quiet sobbing…

  He walked now, and he thought of Jeannie, and of the things she’d left unsaid. She hadn’t mentioned the money he’d taken from her, or the money he’d stolen. She had kindly forgotten all about the sapphire ring he’d taken from her jewel box and hocked. Or the luggage. Or the wristwatch. She had never mentioned the fact that he had once brought a drunk to her and asked her to spend the night with him. She had slammed the door in the drunk’s face, and then held Ray tight to her breast while the shivers of addiction had ravaged his body. She never mentioned that.

  First love.

  She picked a fine one, all right. The first one should be the best. By all rights, it should be the very best, the indoctrination, the initiation into the mystery, the one to remember. It should be the one to look back on, the one that cherished memories of hay rides or roller coasters, or Fifth Avenue buses, or lazy Saturdays on the beach with twisted straws in empty coke bottles and white, white teeth and browned faces. The first one should be all excitement and eagerness and youth and laughter. Seagulls against a pale blue sky. A distant sailboat. The first love should be…

  First love. Your first love always stays with you. He stopped short. Why sure, sure! If your husband is playing around, you look elsewhere. But you don’t go to your pusher, and you don’t go to your present employer. You go to your first love!

  Not Charlie Massine, then. And not Scat Lewis!

  By Christ! By the good holy Christ.

  Ray began running.

  * * *

  Hunter College was decked in its spring finery. The evening session students, slim, long-legged girls in silk dresses, sat on the side steps, their skirts tucked coyly under their shapely buttocks. Ray glanced briefly in their direction, then walked into the lobby of Tony Sanders’s house. He climbed the two flights to Sanders’s apartment and rapped loudly on the door.

  The door opened almost instantly, and Ray backed away in surprise.

  An astonished look crossed Sanders’s handsome features. “Oh,” he said, “it’s you.”

  “Mind if I come in?”

  “Well, friend—”

  Ray shouldered his way past Sanders, walked into the living room. “Hope I didn’t catch you dressing again,” he said.

  Sanders passed a hand over the cleft in his chin. His indolent mouth registered no emotion. His gray eyes were placid. “No,” he said. “Not quite. I’m pretty busy, though, and I’d appreciate it if we could make it for some other time.”

  “I’m pretty busy, too,” Ray said.

  “Well, I’m afraid that’s not much concern of mine.”

  “I forgot to ask you a few questions last time.”

  Sanders shrugged his broad shoulders. He wore a white shirt open at the throat, tucked meticulously into gray flannel slacks. “All right, ask your questions. But please make it fast.”

  “Eileen was pregnant,” Ray said.

  “I know. Is that meant to be a revelation?”

  “You said you saw her the day she was killed.”

  “Yes, in the afternoon.” Sanders gestured impatiently. “Look, friend, I thought you had new questions. It seems to me we covered all this ground the last time you were here.”

  “Partly,” Ray said. “Eileen went to see her doctor that morning. Then she saw you in the afternoon.”

  “Well, what of it?” Sanders began kneading the big knuckles of one hand with the palm of the other.

  “Kramer thinks Scat Lewis was the father of the child. If you know Scat Lewis, you’d understand how foolish that premise is.”

  “Come on, let’s get on with this. If you’ve got any questions, ask them.”

  “Lewis thinks Charlie Massine was the impetuous boy. Eileen was an addict, and an addict will do most anything for a shot. But Massine was a businessman—and a roll in the hay isn’t a roll in the bank. Eileen may have been willing to shack with him for a shot, but I doubt if Massine would have settled for anything less than hard cash.”

  “All of which explains your theory that Massine wasn’t the father, either,” Sanders said, derision in his voice.

  “Right. You’re the father.”

  Sanders didn’t explode. He began chuckling instead. He walked to the bar and raised the top, resting it gently against the wall. Carefully, he unscrewed the cap of a Scotch bottle and poured himself a hooker, without offering one to Ray.

  “You’ve got a sense of humor, all right,” he said. He lifted the shot glass to his lips, tossed it off quickly.

  “I’ve got more than that. I should have realized it all along. You were the logical guy. Good-looking, rich, charming—and her first love. The shoulder to cry on. The comforting heart.”

  “I still find all this very amusing,” Sanders said. “Have you thought of going into musical comedy?”

  “No,” Ray said thoughtfully, “but I did think of going in to see Eileen’s doctor. He told me a lot. Everything, in fact.”

  Sanders turned, slowly, and his face looked interested for the first time since Ray had stepped into the room.

  “Really?” There was a slight waver to his voice.

  “Really,” Ray said. “I began wondering why she’d see you right after seeing her doctor. I told Dr. Simms I was her brother. He told me all about her, everything I wanted to know.” Ray took a deep breath. “Even who the father of the child was.”

  He waited while his lie registered on Sanders. The color seemed to drain from Sanders’s face. He leaned back against the bar, his knuckles whitening with his grip.

&nbs
p; “Tony Sanders,” Ray said. “Eileen told the doctor all about it.”

  Sanders turned his back, poured another jigger of Scotch and swallowed it quickly. When he turned to face Ray again, he had regained all his composure.

  “So what?” he asked. “What does it mean? Nothing. Not a damned thing.”

  “It can mean a lot.”

  “It can mean that a high-grade piece just wasn’t very careful.”

  “It can mean murder,” Ray said softly.

  “Really, friend, that’s absurd. The girl was married and certainly old enough to know what she was doing. I’d hardly kill her for having become pregnant. In fact, I should think the reverse would apply.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “You’re a little slow on the uptake.”

  “Sometimes.” Ray grinned. “Some people are even slower, though. For example, I never even thought to ask Eileen’s doctor who the father was.” Ray shrugged. “Maybe he knew. I sure as hell didn’t until you told me a few seconds ago.”

  Sanders’s face turned white. He kept his teeth clamped together in a frozen smile, but his eyes were hard and mirthless.

  “Get the hell out of here,” Sanders said.

  “Sure. I was going anyway. I think the police might want to hear about this. It might interest them.”

  Sanders gave a short, brittle laugh. “You think they’ll believe you—take your word over mine?”

  Ray considered this for a moment. He studied Sanders’s handsome, arrogant face, the expensive cut of his clothes. Sanders, the playboy supreme. His own yacht, and his own plane. He knew the Continent like the back of his hand, had been all over the world— Canada, Mexico, Alaska, India. He was rich, and charming, and poised.

  And Ray Stone? One word took care of that as far as the police were concerned. Hophead.

  “Maybe you’re right,” Ray said. “Maybe I’ll plow through it myself, Sanders.” His voice lowered. “I’m getting closer, lots closer. I haven’t got it all yet, but I’m getting pretty damned close. Maybe I’ll be back.”

  “Maybe you won’t,” Sanders replied.

  “We’ll see.” Ray opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. He waited outside the door, thinking for a moment, then started down the steps.

  He ran down quickly, not sure what his next move would be, but filled with a sense of accomplishment, and feeling better than he had since he’d discovered Eileen’s cold body. He was on the last few steps when the lobby door swung open, and a heavily built man walked in.