“Why, my God, that’s—that’s cynical! Who wrote it?”
“A cynic, probably. Does it matter?”
“I don’t think so.”
They were on Roosevelt Road, boring west through Wheaton into a blazing sunset. Erika lit two cigarettes, handing one to Lockington. She said, “Y’know, there are times when I could almost like you—you certainly aren’t a hypocrite!”
“We’ve all been hypocrites at one time or another.”
“Oh, boy—a week ago you said that we’re all whores—now we’ve all been hypocrites! You don’t like the human race, do you?”
“I like it—I just don’t trust it.”
“Define hypocrisy! What is it?”
“A guy in a restaurant men’s room—if there’s another man in there with him, he pisses and he washes his hands—if he’s alone, he pisses and he doesn’t wash his hands. That’s hypocrisy.”
“And you don’t wash your hands?”
“What’s to be gained? The cooks never wash theirs.”
“You’re certain of that?”
“Absolutely—I know a whole bunch of cooks.”
Erika Elwood shook her head. Her sigh was audible above the roar of the old Pontiac’s engine. She said, “Oh, Jesus, there’s just nothing like stimulating conversation, is there?”
35
Erika Elwood’s place had turned out to be a small, white singlestory dwelling on ten or more heavily-wooded acres, situated well back from a lumpy macadam side road that branched northwest from Route 31. From its site, no other buildings could be seen. The property was surrounded by a split rail fence, corn fields, and silence. Lockington was familiar with none of these. Lockington was a city boy.
She’d let him in, following him closely, slamming the door, locking it hurriedly behind them. She’d pitched her handbag onto the padded seat of a John F. Kennedy rocking chair. She’d peeled off her gray suitcoat and draped it over the handbag before settling into a large overstuffed chair that had a flouncy, flowered slipcover. She’d exhaled relievedly. Lockington had parked himself in the lefthand corner of a four cushion black leather sofa, a luxuriously comfortable piece of furniture, but far too masculinely severe to be in keeping with the feminine appointments of the living room, its starkness tending to make it a focal point. He’d looked around. “Nice little place—cozy—how long have you lived out this way?”
She’d said, “Not long. I tired of a lakefront condo—the constant hubbub, the sense ofbeing closed in—it’s better here.”
“All but for the long drive—that must be a bastard.”
She’d shrugged. “Well, there is no free lunch. Do you want television?”
Lockington had said, “Oh, Christ, no!”—a trifle bluntly for a guest, he’d thought after he’d done it, but he’d justified it by reasoning that he wasn’t a guest, he was an employee.
Then she’d come up with a more agreeable idea. She’d said, “Martini?”
Lockington had said, “Yes, if you will.”
“Gin or vodka?”
“Vodka, please—gin is for fairies.”
“Dry?”
“Very.”
Within a couple of minutes she’d been back in her flowered chair, raising her frosty slim-stemmed glass to him in an unspoken toast. She’d said, “Well, Mr. Lockington, here we are.”
Lockington had thought about it. He’d said, “Yes, we sure as hell are.”
“You have your—your gun, I trust.”
Lockington had shaken his head. “It’s at home—I haven’t carried it since I was suspended. I’ll use yours, if necessary. Incidentally, I’d like to take a look at it.”
She’d nodded, getting up to go into her bedroom, returning with the Repentino-Morté she’d mentioned during her visit to his apartment, carrying the weapon gingerly. Lockington had taken it, balancing it in the palm of his left hand, studying it. It was an exquisite piece of workmanship. He’d said, “This is the most expensive handgun in the business—deadly accurate. How did you come by it?”
“It was a gift.” She didn’t elaborate.
“Has it been fired?”
“Not to my knowledge—certainly not by me!”
Lockington had ejected the round from the chamber, popped the clip, squinted down the barrel, squeezed the trigger several times, feeling the hammer click home with deadly precision on a reasonably light pull. He’d jammed the clip back into the pebbled handle, snapped a round into firing position, engaged the safety, and slipped the Repentino-Morté into a jacket pocket.
Erika Elwood had watched the process, mesmerized by his deft handling of the pistol. She’d lowered her gaze and said, “Thank God you’re on my side!”
Lockington had winked at her. “Am I?”
She’d glanced up quickly, evaluating his smile. “Don’t even joke about that!”
“Okay. Sorry.”
Her vodka martinis had been first-rate, and during their second he’d felt the tightness begin to come undone. So, apparently, had Erika Elwood. She’d cleared her throat and said, “Uhh–h–h, look, would it be all right if I call you ‘Lacey’?” ‘Mr. Lockington’ sounds so—so doggoned stiff.”
“Yeah, and that ain’t all—you’re wasting three syllables every time around.”
“Right—and call me ‘Erika.’ Back at Classic Investigations, you remarked that we don’t like each other, and that isn’t entirely true, at least not from where I sit. I know you have cause to detest me but I have nothing against you—nothing at all. You’re brusque, you’re to the point—‘unpolished’ could be the word, I suppose—but I appreciate that. In my field I seem to meet so many of the other kind—the suaves, the effusives—you know the types.”
“Too well.”
“And, honestly, I admire the hell out of you, please believe that!” She’d shrugged apologetically. “All right, I thought I should get that off my chest.”
Lockington had said, “Well, I’ve found it difficult to reconcile what Erika Elwood probably is with what Erika Elwood does. She may be quite a decent young lady, but she makes her living as a character assassin. I might get over that.”
“I hope so—Lacey.” Her smile had been a warm, frank, outgoing thing, and Lockington had liked it. She’d said, “You and I can be friends.”
“We can try.”
“Then we’ll be friends, because I just can’t imagine you trying and failing.”
“It’s happened more often than not.”
They’d had a third martini, then, while Lockington had worked on his fourth, Erika Elwood had headed for the kitchen.
It’d been a simple meal, served at a small, round maple table with a brown-checked tablecloth. There’d been green salad, broiled porterhouse steaks, baked potatoes with sour cream, sliced tomatoes, butterscotch pudding, and coffee laced with an excellent dark rum. Lockington had gone through it like a Sherman tank goes through a tool shed. She’d shooed him back into the living room while she’d washed the dishes. He’d paged through a couple of old news magazines, noting that her address on the mailing labels had been 814 N. Michigan Avenue. Swank area, and she’d dumped it in favor of a little white house in gongaland. That was a plus for her in Lockington’s ledger.
She’d brought in a chromed bucket, placing it on the coffee table. In the bucket, packed in ice, had been a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream. They’d drunk it from tiny glasses, smoking, talking, running a gamut of subjects, feeling each other out, the lights low, the blinds drawn, Lockington in his corner of the black leather couch, Erika in her big chair, the Repentino-Morté Black Mamba Mark III on an end table to Lockington’s left, looking every bit as dangerous as Lockington knew it to be. In the early light chatter Lockington had learned that Erika detested basketball, and Erika had learned that Lockington was wild about blackberries.
Yes, she’d loved Tom Sawyer, also Ivanhoe, and Tale of Two Cities—so much for novels, what was Lockington’s favorite short story? Well, “The Lady or the Tiger,” probably, what wa
s hers? Oh, “The Gift of the Magi,” easily. She’d added that William Sidney Porter must have been a wonderful human being despite the fact that he’d done a portion of his best writing in the Ohio State Penitentiary.
The haphazard talk had gone on, the cuckoo in her kitchen clock screeching 8:00, then 9, 10. Lockington abhorred cuckoo clocks—they were thought-disrupting.
The Bailey’s Irish Cream had gone the route of all Bailey’s Irish Cream, replaced by a bottle of blackberry brandy, because he was wild about blackberries, she’d told him, and he’d thanked her. They’d gotten into the subject of dogs—German Shepherds, Belgian Schipperkes, curbstone setters. She’d owned a toy poodle once but he’d bitten the mailman and she’d been forced to give him to a couple that lived on a farm. They’d drifted to movies—The Third Man, Bridge on the River Kwai, Elvira Madigan, motion pictures with substance—then music—Herbert, Friml, Romberg. She liked most music, excluding the new country stuff and rock, which wasn’t music in the first place, and Lockington had been forced to give her another plus for that. He’d asked if she cared for ragtime, and she’d said certainly, Scott Joplin’s “Solace” had been a work of pure genius. Lockington had agreed, wondering if she’d ever heard a ragtime number called “African Violet” by an Australian contemporary ragtime composer named Dave Dallwitz. She’d said no, was it good? He’d told her that it was a haunting song, that he had it on a cassette at home and he’d play it for her sometime. Inevitably, their conversation had drifted to the threats she’d received. She’d said, “What do these people want, anyway—what’s their purpose?”
Lockington had said, “Whoever they are, they want the same thing Mussolini wanted, the same thing Hitler wanted—nationwide attention, then political power, then control of government, then a shot at world domination. The shortcut is fear—fear, hell—stark terror.”
“And they’ll kill?”
“Of course, they’ll kill. If you want to see what a man’s made of, threaten his life!”
“That won’t necessarily alter his political viewpoint.”
“No, but it’ll sure as hell influence his behavior!”
“LAON can’t be big, it’s certainly not national in scope—how many people have ever heard of LAON?”
“The two previous Stella Starbrights, possibily. Were you in contact with them—had they received warnings?”
“I have no idea—I haven’t seen Eleanor or Connie in months. Their ex-husbands might know.”
“Doubtful. They’d have said something, wouldn’t you think?”
“Yes, if they didn’t put it all down as crank stuff. The media hasn’t picked up on this—I wonder about that.”
“The media protects its own. If a couple of singers had been killed, or a few football players, the press would have aired it out in grand fashion, looking for parallels, but newspaper people are involved so it’s being soft-pedaled.”
“But why?”
“To aid in the investigation.”
“You don’t like the press, do you?”
“Not at all, but in this case it’s doing the right thing—this group wants attention, recognition as a force to be dealt with, and it isn’t getting it. It has to be damned frustrating.”
“How many of them are there, would you say?”
“‘They’ is an assumption. LAON, or whoever, whatever it is we are dealing with, could be one man, one woman. Numbers be damned, it has to start somewhere, and a few dedicated lunatics can get you around that first corner in a hurry—providing you get the desired publicity.”
“You think that we’re dealing with insane people?”
“Look, Erika, the mentally sound don’t kill except in selfdefense or to enforce the law.”
The telephone had jingled and she’d gone into her bedroom to take the call, unsteady on her feet, feeling her drinks. There’d been evenings like this with Julie, conversation, laughter, agreement, differences of opinion. Julie’s opinions had been unshakable, chiseled in granite, and they’d clashed on a variety of subjects, but their first few minutes in bed had ironed out the wrinkles. He’d sat there in Erika Elwood’s dim living room, nursing his blackberry brandy, trying not to think about Julie because Julie was gone and there was no way to bring her back, and Lockington had been half-crocked on martinis, rum, Bailey’s Irish Cream, blackberry brandy—Christ, what a horrendous mixture!
His hostess-employer had returned to the living room in short order and a single glance had told Lockington that the party was over. Erika Elwood had been stone-sober, ashenfaced, walking straight. In awed tones, she’d said, “They’ve just found Gordie—dead in an Evanston motel room—shot in the chest!”
Lockington had reached to take her by the elbow, tugging her gently onto the couch beside him. He’d said, “Gordie—who’s Gordie?”
She’d said, “That’s right, you wouldn’t know—Gordon Fisher, the Sentinel’s chief attorney.”
36
Lockington frowned, telling the truth. “I wasn’t acquainted with the man. Who was on the phone?”
“One of the Sentinel pool secretaries—she heard it on the 10 o’clock news.”
“You knew this Gordon Fisher well?”
“No, not really well, but well enough to have talked to him dozens of times. He came to the Sentinel Building twice, maybe three times a week—legal matters to be discussed with Max Jarvis. He always bought coffee for the house—pleasant man, excellent sense of humor—everybody liked Gordie.”
“I wouldn’t say that—somebody didn’t.”
“Gordon was Eleanor Fisher’s husband.”
“The first Stella Starbright?”
“Yes—they met at the Sentinel—they clicked instantly. They were married within a matter of a few weeks. That was when Eleanor quit and Connie took over the column.”
“Were they happily married?”
“What’s ‘happily’? Apparently they got along. Eleanor was a cutter—probably alcoholic, certainly nympho—couldn’t say no to a drink or a man. It was what they call an open marriage—Gordie got around a bit, too—I’ve heard that he swung both ways, but that was only hearsay.” She was steadying now, the tremor slipping from her voice. “Whatever—the marriage didn’t last.”
Lockington said, “Fisher’s political leanings—pronounced?”
“Oh, God, yes—left—just as far left as you can get!”
“Uh–huh—how far left is that?”
“Gordie was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party—he’d handled God knows how many cases for the ACLU.”
Lockington lit a cigarette. “On the basis of that, you’re thinking LAON.”
“Oh, certainly, it has to be! Gordie was outspoken in his criticism of this administration and of the Government.”
Lockington was shaking his head slowly. “Why LAON? LAON can’t take on the job of killing all the Commies in Chicago—that’d take a brigade of infantry six months!” He sat staring at the ash of his cigarette. “Fisher’s ex-wife is killed, then Fisher’s gone in a week. He had to know something—something he had no business knowing.”
“Information connected to Eleanor’s death?”
“Five’ll get you ten.”
“Then he had news having to do with this goddamned guerilla group. This is too coincidental to be a coincidence!”
Lockington’s scowl was dark, brooding. “How does the killer manage to get this close—obviously his victims know him and they trust him—or her—right?”
Erika Elwood was sitting hunched over. She said, “Oh, Jesus H. Christ, where’s that God damned Italian revolver?”
“It isn’t a revolver, it’s a pistol—it isn’t Italian, it’s Japanese, and it’s right here on the table beside me. I think you’d better get some sleep. What time do you roll out in the mornings?”
“Sixish, and if you think I’ll be able to sleep tonight, think again!”
Lockington said, “Well, take a whack at it—I’ll be right here on your couch.”
“I’m scared!”
“Don’t be—I’m a light sleeper and one helluva pistol shot.”
She bounced to her feet, moving in front of him, placing her hands on his shoulders. She said, “Lacey, come to bed with me—I’ll be damned if I’m going in there alone!”
“Not because you’re afraid—I’d need a better reason than that.”
“I have one—I’ll show you my butterfly tattoo—will that do?”
“Uh–uh.”
She took his head between her hands, mauling it, tilting it back to peer down into his eyes. “All right, I need a screwing, and I need it very badly—is that a little better?”
“It’s better, but it’s probably a goddam lie.”
She smiled, shaking her head. “If it’s true—would you?”
“If it’s true, of course I would, but I have only your word that it’s true.”
“Put your hand under my skirt, Lacey.”
“Is that an order?”
“No, it’s a challenge. Do it, damn you!”
Lockington complied, his right hand moving to a position north of her knee, halting there. He looked up, saying nothing.
She said, “Don’t stop there! You know where the transmission is!”
His hand inched upward, leaving nylon to hit hot flesh, pausing again. He said, “You’re sure?”
“Lacey, for your information, I am not a virgin—feel me!”
Lockington slipped a finger upward under the elastic of her panties leg before altering course ninety degrees to reach the crease of one of the most enticing women he’d ever set eyes on.
Her feet shifted to left and right, granting him unhindered access. Her fingers dug into his shoulders. She twitched and gasped, “Am I wet?”
“Yes, you’re wet.”
“How wet?”
“Very.”
“Would my condition indicate that I’m ready to be entered?”
“My limited experience leads me to believe that you are rapidly approaching that point.”
She threw back her head and laughed. She said, “In the bedroom we’ll speak English.”
Lockington said, “Suits me.”
The Fifth Script: The Lacey Lockington Series - Book One Page 15