Coward's Kiss

by Lawrence Block

  “Mr. Bannister?”

  “Maybe. I think I’ll hold onto your gun. I might need it sooner or later.” I shrugged. “I didn’t invite you here, anyway.”

  His smile returned. “As you wish,” he said. “I have another at the hotel.”

  “A thirty-two? The one you shot the girl with?”

  He laughed now. “I didn’t kill her,” he said. “And if I had, I’d hardly hold onto the gun. No, the other is a Beretta, the mate to the one you’re holding. Good night, Mr. London.”

  I didn’t move. He turned his back on me and walked past me to the door. He left the apartment quickly and closed the door after himself. I listened to his footsteps on the stairway, heard the front door slam behind him. I walked to the window and watched him cross the street and get into a maroon Ford a year or two old. He drove away.

  Something kept me at the window, waiting for him to circle the block and come back for me. This didn’t happen. After ten minutes, with no sight of him or his car, I went to the door and slid the bolt into place. The lock itself wasn’t doing me a hell of a lot of good lately.

  I spilled cognac into a glass and drank it. I juggled names like Peter Armin and Bannister and Alicia and Sheila and Clay and I tried to fit them into the human equation along with X, Y and Z. Nothing added up, nothing took form.

  At least I knew what we were looking for now. A briefcase—but it didn’t do me a hell of a lot of good to know that. First I had to figure out what was in the case.

  Which was a good question.

  Anyway, it was a good thing I hadn’t given in to temptation and spent the rest of the night with Maddy. I would have missed Armin’s visit.

  Or would I have? I couldn’t help smiling. The funny little guy probably would have sat in the darkness all night long, waiting for me with the little toy gun in his hand.

  I looked at the gun, smelled the barrel. It hadn’t been fired recently. I stuck it in a drawer and went to bed.

  SIX

  I SAT in an overstuffed chair in the middle of a neat and spacious room. A healthy fire roared in the fireplace and animated figures of X, Y and Z danced in crackling flames. The man called Clay shuffled into the room with a girl on his arm. He wore a Broadway suit and a snap-brim hat. There was a cigar in the corner of his mouth and pale green smoke drifted from it to the-ceiling. He did not have any eyes.

  I looked from him to the girl. I saw she was a skeleton with long blonde hair. She wore only a pair of nylon stockings and a garter belt. She did a stripper’s bump-and-grind, tossing loins of bone at me.

  I turned and saw Bannister. He was built along the lines of an anthropoid ape. His arms were longer than his legs. He had a length of lead pipe in one hand and a baseball bat in the other. “The briefcase,” he rasped. “The briefcase the briefcase the briefcase the briefcase.”

  I looked down. There was a briefcase on my lap. It smelled of good leather and death. I clutched it in both hands and hugged it to my chest.

  When I looked up again Bannister had turned into Peter Armin. He was pointing a Beretta at the man called Clay, whose face had changed to Jack Enright’s. “Help me, Ed,” Jack was saying. And “Help me,” chorused X, Y and Z. They were still dancing in the fireplace, skipping gaily in the flames.

  Armin turned, pointed the Beretta at me. “I, Mr. London, am a reasonable man,” he said. “And you, Mr. London, are a reasonable man. We are not men of violence.”

  Then he shot me.

  I looked up at the skeleton. Her hair was black now and her face was Maddy Parson’s face. She screamed a shrill, piercing scream. She stopped, then shrieked again.

  The third scream wasn’t a scream at all. It was the telephone ringing, ringing viciously, and it brought back reality in bits and pieces. I got oriented again—I was in bed, it was early morning, and the phone was going full blast. I picked up the receiver and growled at it.

  “Ed? This is Jack, Ed.”

  I asked him what time it was. It was the first thing I thought of.

  “Time? Eight or so, a few minutes after. Ed, I’m calling from a pay phone. Can we talk?”

  “Yes,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

  “They’ve identified her.”

  “They?”

  “The police.”

  “They identified Sheila Kane?”

  “That’s right.”

  It didn’t seem possible. I figured they might tag her eventually if they worked on it long enough, but it would be a few weeks, even with luck—not overnight.

  “Do you have a newspaper handy, Ed?”

  “I’ll read it later,” I told him. “Jack, you’re in trouble. If they’ve got her labeled they’ll have you in nothing flat. You better beat them to the punch. Get in touch with Homicide, tell them you’re surrendering voluntarily, you didn’t kill her, you’re just guilty of withholding evidence. That way——”

  “Ed.”

  I stopped.

  “Ed, do you get the Times?”

  “Sure, but——”

  “It can explain better than I can. I’ll hold the line. Get your newspaper and read the story. Check page 34—that’s the second page of the second section. Go on—read it. Then you’ll see what I mean.”

  I was too foggy to argue with him. I managed to get out of bed, found a robe on a hook in the closet, slipped it on. I padded barefoot from the bedroom through the living room to the door, opened the door and picked up the paper. I carried it inside, shut the door and got rid of the first section on the way back to the phone. I ran my eyes over page 34 until I came to the right story. The headline said:

  POLICE IDENTIFY CORPSE

  FOUND IN CENTRAL PARK

  The article ran seven paragraphs but the kicker was right there at the top in paragraph one. They had a make on the dead blonde, all right, but that was no reason for Jack to hand himself in at headquarters.

  Not at all.

  Because they had identified her as Alicia Arden, twenty-five, of 87 Bank Street in Greenwich Village. The identification was a pretty simple matter, too. Somebody sent her prints to the FBI’s Washington office. Her prints were on file there—Alicia Arden had a record. She’d been arrested in Santa Monica four years back on a disorderly conduct charge, had drawn a suspended sentence and had vanished from the area—at least as far as the police records show.

  The story ran downhill from there on to the finish. The possible identity of the killer was unknown. Clues were conspicuously absent. Miss Arden had no friends or relatives. Her Village apartment was one room plus a bath, and nobody in her building knew the first thing about her.

  The police were pursuing all angles of the case thoroughly, according to the Times reporter. I read between the lines and saw that they were getting ready to write the murder off as unsolvable. A detective sergeant named Leon Taubler was quoted as saying that, although the girl hadn’t been sexually molested, “It looks like a sex crime.”

  All the unsolved murders in Manhattan look like sex crimes. It helps the police and the tabloids at the same time. One hand washes the other.

  I picked up the phone again. Jack’s voice was hoarse. “You read the story? You see what I mean?”

  I answered yes to both questions.

  “I can’t believe it,” he said heavily. “They must have made a mistake.”

  “No mistake.”

  “But—”

  “Fingerprints don’t make mistakes,” I said. “And even if they did, it’s a little too much to expect both gals to be missing at the same time. There’s no mistake, Jack.”

  “It doesn’t seem possible.”

  “It does to me. Sheila—Alicia—was living two lives at once. I more or less figured that much last night. A girl I know recognized her picture, met her once at a party. She was using the Alicia name at the time. So the newspaper story wasn’t as much of a shock to me as it was to you.”

  “Why would she give me a wrong name?”

  “She went to you because she thought she was pregnant,�
�� I improvised. “She handed you a phony name automatically. Then she stayed with it. It was easier than admitting a lie.”

  There was a long pause. “What’s disorderly conduct, Ed? What does it mean?”

  “All things to all people. It’s like vagrancy—a handy catch-all for the police. The New York cops use it for prostitutes. Easier to prove. God knows what it means in Santa Monica. Anything from keeping bad company to walking the streets in a tight skirt.”

  “You heard me talk about her. About the type of person she was. Did she sound like that newspaper story?”

  “No.”

  “That just wasn’t her, Ed. Maybe I didn’t know who she was or where she came from, but I certainly knew the sort of girl she was. And, damn it, she wasn’t a tramp!”

  “Not when she was with you,” I said.

  “She was still the same person, wasn’t she?”

  “Not necessarily.” I got a cigarette going and talked through a mouthful of smoke. “Look at it this way. She was living two lives. Part of the time she was Bank Street’s Alicia Arden and the rest of the time she was your girl Sheila. She probably had two personalities, one to go with each name. You must have represented a better way of life to her, Jack. You told me about the first time you took her to lunch, how she stood there like a kid with her nose against a candy-store window. It wasn’t the luxury that excited her. It was the respectability.”

  “Is it so damned respectable to be a mistress?”

  “It is if you used to be a prostitute.”

  “Ed——”

  “Hang on a minute. You were a cushion, Jack. A security blanket. A nice decent guy with a nice clean safe apartment in the fabulous Fifties. She was a little girl up j to her neck in trouble with a batch of very unpleasant | people. Hell, she was in over her head—that’s why she j was killed. But when she was with you she could pin her hair up and relax. She could be calm and cool and cultured. She was in a very lovely dream world and life was j good to her. Naturally she was a different person in that world. You made her that way.”

  “She seemed so honest, Ed.”

  “She was honest enough,” I said. “She could have lied to you, could have invented a background for herself. Instead she left the past blank. That’s honest, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose you’re right. It’s . . . hard to accept the whole mess, Ed. I still don’t know what’s happening. You know how I felt when I saw the story this morning? First I read the headline and thought the police would be breaking down my door any minute. Then I read the first paragraph and I thought: God, the girl was somebody else and Sheila is still alive. It took me a few minutes to come to my senses again.”

  I didn’t say anything. Things were starting to take form in my mind and I wanted to get rid of Jack so that I could think straight. My human equation was setting itself up.

  “You mentioned something about her being in over her head, Ed. Were you kidding?”

  “No,” I said.

  “What’s it all about?”

  “I don’t know. Did she ever mention anything to you about a briefcase?”

  “A briefcase?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No,” he said. “Never.”

  “Ever see one around the apartment?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Just wondered,” I said. “Look, you’re free as green stamps now. If the police have her under one name they won’t look for another. If they’ve nailed her to one address they won’t worry about a missing girl on Fifty-first Street. You can stop worrying and start living. Like the books say.”

  For a moment or two he said nothing. Then: “I see. What do I do now?”

  I frowned at the phone. “You pretend you’re a family man,” I said. “You take good care of your wife and your kids. You remove a lot of appendixes and split a lot of fees and have a ball.”

  “Ed—”

  “Give my best to my sister,” I told him. “So long.”

  I hung up on him before he could thank me or tell me anymore of his problems or do whatever he was going to do. He was out of it now and I was bored with him. He had his small fling, got into a mess, and I helped him get out of it smelling of roses—which was more than he deserved. And in return for that I was getting warned, shot at and generally annoyed.

  I decided to send the bastard a bill.

  I went down the street for breakfast because it was too damned early to try stomaching instant coffee. I read the rest of the Times with breakfast but couldn’t keep my mind on what I was reading. I had the names of all the characters now and things were setting themselves up.

  The human equation—X and Y and Z. X killed Sheila, Y cleaned up her apartment and Z had the briefcase.

  And I had the names to fit the letters.

  Peter Armin. I couldn’t figure him for X, the killer. He just didn’t fit there at all. And I knew that he didn’t have the briefcase because he wouldn’t go to such a hell of a lot of trouble to get it from me if he did. That put him in the Y position—the joker who straightened things up, stripped Sheila and otherwise tampered with the scenery. I couldn’t figure out why—that would come later, with luck—but it was in character. He’d given my apartment a thorough search the night before without disturbing a thing. It stood to reason that he’d be equally considerate of Sheila’s apartment.

  That left X and Z. Now—

  “Nice morning,” the waitress said.

  I looked up at her. “Is it? I hadn’t noticed.”

  She started to laugh. I must have said something funny as hell because she was laughing hysterically. I tucked X and Z away for future reference, paid her, tipped her and went home.

  I got there in time to answer the phone.

  It was the man with the raspy voice again.

  “You had time to think. Now you can go or get off the pot, London. How much?”

  “How much for what?”

  “The briefcase. Come on, quit stalling. What’s the price?”

  “I haven’t got it,” I said.

  There was a pregnant pause. “That’s your story? You haven’t got it?”

  “That’s my story.”

  “One last chance,” he said. His voice was supposed to sound coaxing. Try coaxing in a rasp. It doesn’t come off. “One last chance, London. You’re a smart boy. I play very rough. How much do you want for it?”

  “Are you Bannister?”

  “I’m Al Capone,” he said. “What do you say, London?”

  I said: “Go to hell, Al.” And I hung up on him.

  I made coffee, filled and lit a pipe, sat down to think. I was pretty sure it was Bannister on the phone. I was just as sure that Bannister was X—that he had killed Sheila-Alicia himself or had ordered the killing.

  That left Z and it left Clay, so I put the two of them together. He was the one with the briefcase.

  It played itself out that far and it hit a snag. I couldn’t carry it any further. It looked as though Sheila-Alicia had teamed up with Clay to pull something on Bannister. Or as though Sheila-Alicia had something Bannister wanted, and she gave it to Clay, and then Bannister killed her. But there wasn’t much point in listing possibilities. First I needed more facts.

  Like Bannister’s name. Like Clay’s name.

  Like an idea of what was in the briefcase.

  I gave up for the time being, picked up the phone again and gave Maddy a ring. It was too early to call her, too early for her to be properly awake. I could have been polite, waited a few hours to call her, but I didn’t feel polite to begin with. Too many people had called me early in the morning for me to take anybody else’s sleep into consideration.

  Still, Maddy was special. And I felt guilty, expecting her to answer the phone with sleep coating her tongue and clogging her pores. She surprised me. Her hello was fresh and happy and very much awake.

  “Sleep well?”

  “It’s Ed,” she said gaily. “Hello, Ed. Yes, I slept well. Like a hibernating bear, sort of. Then I woke up and sa
w my shadow. Or is that with groundhogs? I guess it is. Anyway, I slept soundly and awoke bright-eyed and hungry. You missed a phenomenal breakfast, sir. Fresh orange juice and pancakes with real maple syrup and crisp bacon.”

  She said all this with one mouthful of air, then stopped and caught her breath. “And then it was all topped off with a phone call from you. How sweet! You’re still alive!”

  I laughed, picturing her in my mind. Her phone was by the side of her bed. She would be sitting on the edge of the bed with a cigarette in one hand and the phone in the other. She’d be wearing old slacks and a man’s shirt and she’d look lovely.

  “Damn you,” she said suddenly.

  “Why?”

  “Because you wouldn’t call at this hour just to be nice. I’m never awake this early and you know it. You’ve got some more detecting for me to do.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right.”

  “Damn you again. What is it?”

  “Clay.”

  “Clay,” she said. “You want more inside info on this off-Broadway behemoth. You want the high-up way-out lowdown on this murky man of mystery, this heavyweight hotster, this——”

  “You should be ghosting for Winchell.”

  “I’m a gal of many talents,” she said. “What do you want to know about him?”

  “Who he is.”

  “Oh,” she said heavily. “It couldn’t be something simple, like what he eats for breakfast or what brand of cigarettes he smokes. Cigars, I mean. It has to be——”

  “Just who he is. All I’ve got now is a name. I’d like a first name to go with it. If you can find out.”

  “Lee Brougham would know,” she said thoughtfully. “But he’s supposed to be in California. I told you that.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She was silent for a minute. “This,” she said, “is going to be a bitch.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right.”

  “Hell of a conversation. You keep being afraid and I keep being right. Let me think this out for a minute, Ed. I can find out who directed ‘Hungry Wedding.’ Nobody would boast about it, but somebody must have directed the dog, and I can find out who. And he just might have a list of backers, which he just might let me look at. And Clay just might be on it. There’s no guarantee, Ed. It’s a shot in the dark.”