by Ed McBain
“We didn’t, though, did we?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Nothing. Forget it. Do you know why I came here?”
“No.”
“I suddenly got fed up, Josh. Right up to here.” She passed one slender hand across her throat, “I said to myself, ‘If Del can roll in the hay with that auburn bitch, then I can…’ ”
“Cut it out, Gail.”
“Why? You know it’s true, and I know it. That’s the worst part. If I hadn’t known, I’d have been better off.”
“Gail!”
“She’s as much to blame as he is,” Gail snapped. “Del was a chippie chaser, but Lydia…”
“For Christ’s sake, Gail…”
“Oh, I know she wasn’t the only one, Josh. But she was the big one, the grand amour, the ready, steady slut.”
“Gail, he’s dead. There’s nothing more, nothing to…”
“I know. I know, and I’m glad. Friday night I figured it all out. He told me he was going to see another client, but I knew damn well it was a woman again. Not Lydia this time.” She chuckled again. “I wonder if auburn Lydia knew.”
“He was with a client,” I said.
“No, Josh. A woman. I know.”
“Look, Gail, give the devil his due. Del was with a client. He went up to see one of our Western writers. I know.”
“I say a woman, but I won’t argue. I don’t need excuses, anyway. If he wasn’t with a woman these past few days, it’s the first time he wasn’t. I decided two could play the game. It took me a long time to decide. I tossed on an empty bed all weekend long. And then I decided, and here I am.”
“Why?” I asked.
Gail Gilbert smiled, and there was the age-old look in her eyes, the look that had given Samson a haircut and Rhett a severe pain in the Civil War. She didn’t say anything, but it was all there in the slope of her eyes, in the careless tilt of her hips, in the tongue-moist wetness of her lips.
Her hands moved rapidly to the buttons on her duster.
“Look, Josh,” she said.
The duster fell away from her breasts, parting like curtains, showing the Gail Gilbert that only Del had known thus far. The denim clung to the globes of her breasts for a brief instant. She brushed the duster aside with an angry movement, and it swirled back over her hips, revealing a flat, hard stomach, a shadow-filled navel, firm, crimson-tipped breasts high on her chest.
“This is why I came.”
Her voice was low, and the muscles on her stomach shivered. She took a step closer to me, and it could have been a hell of a dramatic moment if the phone hadn’t decided to shrill again.
I picked up the receiver quickly, unsure of my emotions, watching as Gail walked closer to me.
“Hello?”
“Blake?”
“Yes.”
“This is Carlyle Rutherford. What the hell is going on at your office?”
“A little trouble,” I said vaguely. Rutherford was the Hollywood agent who was handling the movie rights to the Cam Stewart property. He, of course, stood to lose a goodly commission if the deal fell flat. “You’re not calling from the Coast, are you?”
“I just got into the city. What’s this latest nonsense of yours?”
“What nonsense?”
Gail stopped about three inches from my chair, and dropped the duster to the floor. It fell in a blue heap at her feet, and she looked like an alabaster statue in a small garden pool.
“It’s still sauce for the goose,” she whispered. “Dead or not.”
“Who’s there with you?” Rutherford asked.
“No one,” I said. At the same moment, Gail stepped behind my chair and put her arms around my neck. I felt her warm skin against my bare back, and then her, lips trailed across my neck, her breath standing my hair on end.
“What’s this new business about twenty-five percent, Blake?”
I tried to move away from Gail, but she had me in a hammer lock, and her tongue was playing with my ear now, and her hands were roving over my chest, smoothly, easily. “Just what it sounds like, Rutherford. We want twenty-five percent of the movie deal.”
“You must be out of your mind.”
“I’d hardly say that, Rutherford.” I stood up abruptly, lifting the phone and moving away from Gail. “We control the TV rights to those books, and we intend to use them.”
“This is highway robbery, Blake.”
“Maybe so. If you want a release of the TV rights, though, you’ll have to do it our way.”
Gail was back again. Only this time, she wasn’t behind me. She stood in front of me, her breasts pressing against my chest. She placed her hands on my hips, and she pulled herself toward me and buried her lips in the side of my neck.
“Hang up,” she whispered.
I wanted to shove her away, but I was also half tempted to hang up. Her body was warm, but it made me forget the heat that was everywhere around us.
“Well, get this, Blake,” Rutherford said. “I’m not going to put up with any of your damned shenanigans. Your practices are pretty well known throughout the field, and I’ll be damned if you’re going to get away with another hijack.”
“Hang up,” Gail whispered urgently.
“I’d be careful what I say,” I warned Rutherford.
“I’ll say whatever the hell I damn please to a crook like you.”
I could feel Gail’s breath on my face, warm, ragged. She kissed my cheek, and I listened to Rutherford’s drone, and I wondered which was the reality. Gail Gilbert in my arms. Gail Gilbert, my partner’s wife. My dead partner’s wife. Warm, and alive, and wanting. Or Rutherford, going on and on and on.
“…the deal goes through exactly as we first planned it, and if you don’t care for the terms, you can just stuff it.”
“Uh-uh, Rutherford. You’re forgetting one little thing.”
“What’s that, Blake?”
“A little item that puts the deal in my lap, and not yours. If you…”
Gail’s hands were warm, and her lips were insistent. She planted quick kisses along the line of my jaw, allowed her lips to trail over my chin, ducking her head beneath the telephone receiver as I moved it out of her way unconsciously.
“What was that?” Rutherford asked.
“Just this,” I said. “I want Dave Becker to make the pilot film for television, and he’ll agree to that or he’ll never get to make a Draw Hudson movie.”
“Draw Hudson…” Rutherford started.
“Draw Hudson is the hottest Western character today. He’s in every one of Cam Stewart’s books, and I control the TV rights to those books. If Becker won’t agree to my terms, I’ll sell Hudson to the highest bidder, and you know what that’ll mean.”
“Blake, you can’t…”
“I damn well can, and I will. Your potential audience will see Hudson on its TV set once every week, and the TV people will be free to choose incidents from any one of the books. That’ll leave your producer Becker with a movie property worth exactly beans. For Christ’s sake, Gail!”
“What, Blake?”
“Nothing.” I elbowed Gail away, and she came back at me with sleepy eyes, long lashes touching, lips parted and moist. “I’m being generous as it is, Rutherford. I’ve agreed to pay for half the cost of the pilot film, but I don’t like being left in the cold on the movie end. After all, this is valuable property, and there are two sides to the coin.”
“Like what?”
“Like the possibility of the movies ruining the television sale of the property. If that happens, I’m left with a pilot film and an empty bag. Uh-uh—I want protection whichever way this deal works out.”
“By that, you mean you want twenty-five percent of all the film profits.”
“You hit it, Rutherford.”
“And if we don’t give you that?”
“You’ll be up to your ears in lawsuits from the second you sign a contract.”
“On what charge?”
“Suppose we sign a contract excluding TV rights?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Becker wouldn’t come near a contract like that.”
“Maybe he would.”
“You’ll be laughed right out of the business. Go ahead, ask Becker if he’ll sign for just movie rights. Make sure you tell him Draw Hudson will then go to the highest bidder. Ask him what he thinks.”
“Well…”
“I’ve got you where it hurts, Rutherford. If you close the deal without me, I sue the pants off you. And you can’t close without TV rights because no one is that foolish. You have to do business with me.”
“You’re referring to that agreement again, aren’t you?”
“Correct, my friend. Signed by Cam Stewart.”
“How do I know such an agreement exists? I’ve never even seen the goddamned thing!”
“You can take my word for it, Rutherford.”
“In this business, Blake, I take no one’s word. Least of all yours.”
“Then drop by the office and I’ll show it to you. We’ve got two copies of the thing. The original is in our office safe and…”
Gail chose that moment to push the phone away from my mouth and clamp her lips onto mine. It was something. It was really something. I forgot all about Del, and damn near all about Rutherford. I wrapped my loose arm around her, pulling her closer. Her lips were sweet and wet and expert and full of longing. I lost myself in her kiss, swallowed in a widening whirlpool that tried to pry my fingers loose from the phone receiver. Her breasts were riveted to my chest and her body moved frantically.
“Blake?” Rutherford’s voice called from a long way off. “Blake?”
I lifted the receiver limply, pulled my lips reluctantly from Gail’s. Gail could wait. Gail had been waiting a long time now.
“Yeah, Rutherford. I said I’ve got the original in the office safe and…”
Gail didn’t interrupt me this time. An idea did. An idea and a picture. The picture was of Del Gilbert lying like a limp sack on the floor of his office, with the safe door wide and a sheaf of papers scattered all over the rug.
The safe. Open.
“Well, Blake? Say, just what the hell is going on there?”
“I’ve got the agreement,” I said, gulping hard. “One in the safe, and a photostat.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Rutherford said sharply. “You can reach me at the Astor, Blake. Goodbye.”
He hung up, and his voice left my ear to be replaced by Gail’s.
“At last,” she murmured.
4.
I kept my hand on the cradled receiver, and Gail covered it with her own. She lifted her face, and her lips shone wetly. The heat had put a high sheen on her body, and it glistened now as the slanting rays of the sun streamed through the blinds.
“You’d better go home,” I said.
She threw her arms around my neck, thrust her hips at me. “Uh-uh.”
I disengaged her arms and pushed her gently away from me. “Gail,” I said, “go home.”
She stuck out her lower lip like a hurt child, and ducked her head. “I won’t, Josh. It’s taken me a long time to work up the courage for this. I’d have enjoyed it more if Del were alive, but I’m not going to stop because he’s dead.”
“Stop talking like a damn fool,” I told her. “In the first place, you’ve got to be a Zulu to enjoy a bed in this weather, and in the second place, the police are going to be crawling all over your apartment in about zero minutes flat. It’ll look real cozy if they find you here.”
“The hell with the police.”
“Sure. And the hell with the law, and the hell with murder, and…” I cut myself short and snapped my fingers, sidestepping Gail and heading for my locked desk. She followed me across the room, the sun playing subtle tricks with her hips. She seemed completely unaware of her nudity.
I fished in my trouser pocket for my key ring and said, “Where’d you dump your clothes, Gail? You’d better put something on.”
“I came in the duster,” she said defiantly.
That straightened me up, and I stared at her in disbelief. “Just the duster? Holy Jesus!”
“I told you why I came, Josh. I wasn’t kidding. I’m still not kidding.”
“Some other time, Gail. For God’s sake, your husband was just murdered!”
“Requiescat…” she started.
“Look, Gail,” I said, “you’re a lovable wench. There’s nothing I’d like to do better than you-know-what. Come back after Del is buried, and when the temperature has dropped to 150. Right now, unless you want to be up to your pretty nose in a murder rap, you’d better get the hell home.”
She stared at me in silence for a few moments, and her eyes turned cold and forbidding. She seemed suddenly aware of her body, and she crossed her arms ineffectually over her breasts, the nipples peering at me like curious, snub-nosed children.
“Sure,” she said. “If that’s the way you want it.”
“That’s the way I want it.”
She turned quickly, walked across the room with her head high. My eyes followed the sway of her buttocks in spite of myself, and I finally turned away and stuck a key into the desk lock. Behind me, I heard Gail rustling into the duster. I twisted the key and the flap of the desk dropped. I found a smaller key on the ring, inserted it into one of the cubbyhole drawers at the back of the desk. My fingers found the paper I wanted, and I removed it from the drawer quickly, unfolded it, and turned to let the sun hit it.
Gail was buttoning the duster, her back to me.
I looked at the paper. It was the photostat, all right, and it still gave the Gilbert and Blake Agency the sole and exclusive right to handle radio and TV rights to all the Cam Stewart books. That was good enough for me. I folded the stat in half, and then in half again.
“I’m leaving,” she said
“I’ll call you, Gail. I’ll call you a little later.”
She walked to the door, opened it quickly, and said, “Don’t bother.” The door slammed behind her, and I listened to her heels clicking along the outside corridor, to stop finally by the elevator bank. I took out my wallet and stuffed the stat into the zipper compartment, putting the wallet back into my pocket and buttoning the flap over the pocket. I walked into the bedroom, then took a clean shirt from the dresser drawer, and slipped into it. I took my tie from where I’d dropped it in the living room, knotted it hastily, and pulled on my jacket. I took a last look around the apartment and then left, locking the door behind me.
When I reached the elevator banks, Gail was gone.
* * *
A uniformed cop leaned against the entrance door to my office. His blue shirt was stuck to his chest, great circles of sweat starting under his armpits and merging over his breastbone. He looked tired, and hot, and sick of a silly job like watching an office after a man had been killed in it. I approached him warily. My previous experience with cops had come from three sources, namely: a) the stories our fertile writers concocted and which I then sold for fabulous and not-so-fabulous prices to the publishing field at large. The cops in these stories bore little or no resemblance to any police officer, living or dead. b) a ticket I’d received for speeding on the George Washington Bridge during World War II. I was in uniform and hurrying to get back to camp before I got on some sergeant’s slop list. That didn’t faze the cop a bit. He wrote out the ticket in his leisurely way, as if I wasn’t already in the pit with the pendulum descending lower and lower. This cop also bore no resemblance to any police officer, living or dead. And c) Di Luca, the amiable hashish smoker from Scotland Yard in Manhattan.
This was not an auspicious background upon which to build a familiarity with the City’s finest.
“Hello,” I said.
The cop tilted his hat back on his head, and stared at me as if I were a praying mantis. I got the distinct impression that he’d have stepped on me if it weren’t against the l
aw. He had straight red hair, and the hair was matted against his forehead. He removed his cap, shoved the soggy red mass back onto the top of his skull where it belonged, and then put his hat on again. His eyes told me he was blaming me for his having worn his winter headgear on a sweltering summer day. “The office is closed,” he said.
“I know.”
“Then shove off.”
“It’s my office,” I said.
“It’s still closed. Mister, it’s too damned hot to argue.”
“Officer,” I said, “there’s something I’d like to check inside.”
“And what was that?”
“Some papers in the safe.”
“Well, forget them. If they’re in the safe, they’re safe. Besides, there’s nobody in there but the police.” He paused and eyed me accusingly. “And they’re scrupulously honest.”
“Without doubt,” I said. “Only what I hope is in the safe may not be in the safe at all. In which case, the police might want to know about it.”
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Blake. Joshua Blake.”
He turned and looked at the lettering on the door. “Gilbert and Blake.” He lifted his hat again, scratching his head with the fingers of the same hand. “Guess it was Gilbert who got it, huh?”
“Yes, I guess so.”
“And you want to check something in the safe?”
“Yes.”
He stared at me again. “I’ll check inside,” he said at last. He turned to open the door, muttering, “Jesus, what a beat!”
I lit a cigarette and waited outside for him. I’d taken about five drags on it when he appeared again. “All right,” he said, “go on in. Don’t touch nothing.”
“Thanks,” I said.
He was still muttering about his beat when I opened the door and walked into our reception room. It was strangely quiet. This was an eerie silence—the silence of a cathedral, the silence of a funeral parlor.
I walked through the long room quickly, opening the door to Del’s office.
The sun knifed through the Venetians, laying long golden bars on the top of Del’s desk. Behind the long desk sat Detective-Sergeant Di Luca, his hands clasped before him, his head bent to study the spot on the rug where Del had lain a few hours before.