by Ed McBain
“Sorry to be getting back to you so late on this,” Heatherton said, “but we ran into a bit of a problem.”
“What do you mean?” Geoffrey asked.
He could not imagine anything so urgent that it could not have waited till morning. This was a routine notification of next of kin, and it was now past ten-thirty in London.
“Well,” Heatherton said, “we tried the numbers you gave us for these people—the one in London, and the other in Henley—and we got two other people entirely.”
“I’m sorry,” Geoffrey said, “I’m not following you.”
“There’s no Reginald Holmes at the London number, and no Jocelyn Bradshaw at the Henley number.”
“Moved, have they?”
“Well … no, it doesn’t appear so. The people who answered the telephones said they’ve lived at those addresses for the past ten—well, ten years in the case of the London man, seven for the one in Henley.”
“Uh-huh,” Geoffrey said. He hadn’t the foggiest notion where Miles was leading.
“Which I thought decidedly peculiar in that these are the identical addresses listed in the passport,” Heatherton said.
“Are you saying the addresses and phone numbers in Miss Holmes’s passport do, in fact, exist, but the people she’s listed as brother and friend do not live at those addresses?”
“That’s exactly the case,” Heatherton said.
“Then where do they live?”
“There are thirteen Holmeses in the London directory, and two of them are Reginalds. Neither of them had ever heard of a woman named Gillian Holmes.”
“How about Henley?”
“Not a single Jocelyn Bradshaw there.”
“Mmm,” Geoffrey said.
“Or in London, either, for that matter. We checked on the offchance.”
“Mmmm.”
“Yes. Exactly what we wondered.”
“How do you mean?”
“Why the false names?” Heatherton said.
“Yes.”
“Yes,” Heatherton said.
“And what did you conclude?”
“Well, that’s what’s taken me so long to get back.”
“Miles, I seem to be having enormous difficulty following you tonight. Perhaps you ought to ring me sometime tomorrow morning, when we’ve both had …”
“The passport could have been issued anywhere in the U.K., you see, even though you’d told me it was written in London.”
“Yes. Last June.”
“The woman was how old?”
“She listed her date of birth as 1943.”
“That would have made her forty-nine.”
“Yes.”
“And she’d never had need of a passport till last year? Woman living so close to the Continent? Never traveled abroad in all her forty-nine years?”
“Well, perhaps she was a homebody,” Geoffrey said. “Or this may have been a simple renewal.”
“No, it wasn’t a renewal. Nor quite that simple, either.”
“How do you know?”
“We’ve run her through, Geoff.”
“Run her …”
“Through the computer, yes. That’s what’s taken all this time. I must admit I didn’t like the smell of it from the start. Otherwise, I’d have let it go till morning. But …”
“Perhaps you should have done,” Geoffrey said. “I really hate to see you working so late on my be …”
“In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t. She’s not in the computer, Geoff.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean the British government has issued scores of passports to women named Gillian Holmes over the years, but none of them was born on February 9, 1943, in Colchester, England.”
“Then …”
“Moreover,” Heatherton said, “the number on the passport, although valid, was the number issued to a Scottish passport holder named Hamish Innes McIntosh, who was born in Glasgow on the third of November, 1854, and who most certainly should be dead by now.”
There was a long silence on the line.
“Then you’re saying the passport is counterfeit,” Geoffrey said.
“Yes, dear boy,” Heatherton said. “That’s precisely what I’m saying.”
She had looked for him at lunchtime and again at dinner, but he had not come to the dining car, and she was beginning to wonder if he’d taken ill. Well, he was a doctor, he should know how to take care of himself, and yet she was concerned. The man sitting across from her at dinner was an elderly tractor salesman from Burbank, who was on his way to Chicago to meet with a son from whom he’d been estranged for the past seven years. His eyes welled with tears when he talked about the young man, who sounded like a Grade-A shit to Elita.
The man explained to her that they had crossed over from Mountain Time to Central Time when they’d left El Paso at six P.M., at which time she should have set her watch ahead an hour, although she wouldn’t have to touch it again because it would remain Central Time all the way to Chicago. But, of course, if she was traveling on to New York …
“Yes, I am,” she’d said.
… then she’d have to set it ahead yet another hour when they crossed over from Valparaiso, Indiana, to Warsaw, Indiana. He warned her to be very careful in New York, as it was a very dangerous city. She had the good grace not to tell him she’d been born and raised there.
On her watch now—which, as instructed, she’d set ahead at the dinner table—it was already twelve minutes to midnight, wherever they were. They had left the station in Little Rock at eleven-thirty or thereabouts, so she guessed they were still in Arkansas, although it all looked the same out there in the dark. She wondered again if Sonny was sick. She thought of going back to the dining car to ask the porter who’d served them breakfast if he knew what had happened to the Indian gentleman. Half British, Mom, don’t forget. Was it possible he’d got off the train earlier than she’d expected? But he’d told her he was traveling to New York.
She left her seat in the coach section, and walked forward to what they called the Sightseer Lounge, which was a two-story car with a café on the lower level and these huge wraparound picture windows upstairs. She looked briefly into the café. A waiter was leaning against the serving counter. Otherwise, the place was empty. She debated going back to her seat, and then went upstairs instead.
He was sitting in one of the lounge chairs at the far end of the car.
Looking out at the star-drenched night.
Thoroughly absorbed in his own thoughts.
So very beautiful.
“Hi,” she said.
He turned, looked up, smiled.
“Hi,” he said.
“Mind if I join you?”
“Please,” he said.
She took the chair alongside his.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Sure.” A puzzled look crossed his face. “What do you mean?”
“I haven’t seen you around,” she said.
“I looked for you at lunch,” he said.
“Oh? When was that?”
“Around two.”
“I went in at noon.”
“Must’ve missed you then,” he said.
“Too bad,” she said.
Silence.
The stars wheeling overhead. The night flashing by.
“Did you have dinner?” she asked.
“No, I wasn’t very hungry.”
“Well, sure, if you eat lunch so late.”
Silence again.
The rattle of the wheels over the tracks, the evenly spaced clickety-clacks. Outside, the telephone wires swooped and dipped from pole to pole, and clouds scudded across the sky.
“Which car are you in?” she asked.
“I’ve got a sleeper,” he said.
“Doctors must make a lot of money.”
“Not this doctor. My mother paid for it.”
“Ah.”
“Ah,” he repeated.
Another silence, lon
ger this time.
“Listen, would you like to be a good Samaritan?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“I mean, if it isn’t any trouble.”
“No trouble at all.”
“I ordered a scotch at dinner and they carded me, would you believe it? I mean, on a goddamn train—where you have to change your watch every five minutes and you never know where the hell you are—they refuse to serve me ’cause I’m not twenty-one. Could you do me an enormous favor and ask the waiter downstairs for a scotch and soda, please, before I die of thirst?”
“I’d be happy to,” he said, and got up at once.
“Wait, let me …”
But he was already on his way.
He came back with two drinks in actual glasses, never mind cardboard containers. His estimation in her eyes went up at least two-thousand percent; she hated to drink whiskey in anything but a glass.
“How much do I owe you?” she asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Is your mother paying for these, too?”
“Cheers,” he said in dismissal, and clinked his glass against hers.
“I owe you one,” she said. “Cheers.”
They both drank.
“You have no idea how good this tastes,” she said. “What are you drinking?”
“Gin.”
“I’ve never developed a taste for gin,” she said.
“I feel the same way about scotch.”
They sat sipping their drinks.
Alone with him in the car, alone with him and the stars and the night and the dark silence of the entire universe, she felt as if she’d known him a long, long time.
“Why’d you decide to become a doctor?” she asked.
Her voice softer now, almost a whisper.
“I wanted to help people,” he said.
“That’s totally amazing,” she said. “Because that’s just why I want to be a social worker. So I can help people.”
“I can’t think of anything nobler,” he said.
“I totally agree.”
“I just hope I never change my mind about it. I see so many doctors … well, I’m sure you know. They forget why they went into it in the first place. They forget the purity … the innocence … the dedication. They become nothing more than businessmen of another sort. I hope I never get that way.”
“That’s very beautiful,” she said.
“I mean it sincerely,” he said.
“You’re a very beautiful person,” she said.
“Well … thank you,” he said. “That’s very kind of you. Thank you.”
“Do you feel you’ve known me a long time?” she asked.
“Yes. Since at least this morning,” he said.
“Oh, stop it,” she said, and playfully tapped his hand. “I’m being serious.”
“Yes, I feel I’ve known you a very long time.”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly.”
“Because I do. I feel I can tell you anything I’m thinking … or feeling … or hoping … and you won’t laugh at me. I think that’s very rare. And very beautiful,” she said.
“I think you’re very beautiful,” he said.
“Oh, sure.”
“Gorgeous and intelligent and the youngest fifteen-year-old at UCLA.”
“You know, I really believed you?” she said, turning to him and putting her hand on his arm. “That you thought I was fifteen?”
“You didn’t.”
“I did, I swear to God. I kept wondering, does he really think I’m only fifteen? Do I seem that immature to him?”
“On the contrary. You seem very mature.”
“People are always telling me I seem older than nineteen.”
“Well, you do. There’s a very … serious and sensitive side to you, isn’t there?”
“Yes,” she said softly.
“Which is in such marvelous contrast to your playfulness.”
“I love having fun, don’t you? Don’t you just love doing fun things?”
“I do.”
“Unexpected things.”
“Yes.”
“Things that … oh, you know!”
She took her hand from his arm, raised it suddenly, tossed it in a What-the-hell gesture, and then put it immediately on his arm again. He covered her hand with his own. She turned to look into his eyes.
“Elita?” he said.
“Yes, Sonny?”
“Would you like to sleep with me tonight?”
“Yes, Sonny,” she said, “I really would.”
She would always remember this night—or at least while it was happening she thought she would remember it always—as the night she stopped being a girl and became a woman. Because no matter what she and the other college girls her age told themselves about being women and wanting to be called women, she knew in her deepest heart that nineteen was still a girl, nineteen was still a teenager, and a teenage girl was simply not a woman, any more than a teenage boy was a man.
Sonny Hemkar was no teenager.
He’s no teenager, Mom. I thought you’d be delighted to learn that. Mom? Please, Mom, come in off that fire escape, okay?
Until now—until this night in his sleeping compartment, the countryside flashing by outside, the train speeding through the darkness—until these deliriously empty hours of the night when she was full of him and full of herself, Elita had known only three men intimately, all of whom she now realized were merely boys, although one of them had been twenty-four years old. Until now—
There was something frightening about the intensity of his passion.
She found herself wanting to say No, don’t kiss me, even as his lips found hers and even though she wanted desperately for him to kiss her. She found herself wanting to protest his hands on her breasts, heard herself actually saying, “No, please don’t touch my breasts,” longing for him to touch her.
He unbuttoned her blouse …
“Please don’t,” she said.
… spread the blouse in a wide V over her bra, his hands cupping her breasts, urging them out of the bra …
Please don’t, she thought.
… her breasts overflowing the bra, “Oh, please no,” she said, her nipples stiffening to his touch.
She had already told him how much she really did want to sleep with him tonight, but now she kept repeating over and over again in her mind and aloud, please don’t, please don’t, breathless in his fierce embrace, terrified by her own response to his ardor.
Never in her life …
His hands were everywhere, her blouse and skirt falling away, dropping to the floor of the compartment in a clinging whisper of cotton and silk. There were suddenly lights outside, flashing past in a blur, some sort of village or town, traffic lights and street lights, window lights, bright circles and rectangles in an otherwise pitch black landscape. The lights flickered momentarily on her breasts and her belly. She was virtually naked now, standing before him in high heels and panties, her bra still fastened but pulled below her breasts. He did not remove the bra. He could easily have unclasped it to allow her breasts complete freedom, but he chose instead to keep them in partial bondage, lifted by the restraining nylon cups, their sloping tops and nipples elevated to his hands.
The lights of the town fell behind.
A new and deeper darkness enclosed them.
In the darkness his lips found her mouth again. His hands consumed her breasts. Her own hands hung limply at her sides. She could feel the nylon of her panties brushing the insides of her arms, just below the elbows. Her panties were wet, she was afraid he would touch her down there and discover that she was soaking wet, but she wanted him to touch her, find her, and she willed him with all her might to let his hand drop between her legs and into her panties where he would find her achingly wet for him, but he would not release her breasts.
She leaned into him, her hands still hanging loose at her sides, leaned into him with her nipples and her breasts,
offering them to his passion as if in sacrifice, her entire body seeming to rush upward into her nipples, hard and burning and yielding to his hands where they worked her relentlessly. She was beginning to feel dizzy. She thrust her tongue into his mouth and jutted her hips toward him, searching for him, finding him hard against the nylon panties, don’t take off all my clothes, she thought, please don’t …
Reading her mind … seeming to read her mind … he did not, would not release her from the bra, choosing instead to keep her partially restrained, nipples bursting … did not, would not remove the bikini panties …
But yes, oh Jesus …
Yes.
… rolling them down now, over her hips, down to …
Yes, that’s it, she thought.
… just where the tangle of her pubic hair began …
Find me, she thought.
… the waistband pressing against the upper side of the blond triangle that defined her …
Please don’t, she thought.
She could not later remember how long he kept her poised between girlhood and womanhood. She could not later remember how long she stood there partially clothed, leaning into his questing hands, trembling as he probed her, discovering her wetness, exploiting her wetness, quivering beneath the onslaught of his incessant touch. When at last he lifted her onto the bed and spread her legs to the darkness and to the night and to his brilliant hardness and murderous passion she thought No, don’t fuck me, but he was already fucking her, oh yes how he was fucking her, and she knew she would never in her lifetime be the same again.
3
Never in his life had Geoffrey Turner been inside a morgue. Even this early in the morning, there were people working in blood-stained smocks. Bloated bodies on stainless steel tables. Blood dripping into stainless steel basins. Everywhere Geoffrey looked, he saw the obscenely exposed insides of human beings. But the greatest obscenity was the stench. It was the stench of putrefaction, a sickly sweet odor that made him want to wash out his nostrils with salt water. The detective with him seemed not to mind any of it at all.