“I could eat four hours’ production from the slaughterhouse. Barbecued.” He thought about it for a second. “Yes, definitely barbecued. I’ve been in Kansas City almost twelve hours and I haven’t had barbecue yet.”
“Well,” Cheryl said. “We’ll have to fix that, won’t we? Where do you want to go?”
“Arthur Bryant’s is the best place. If you want to go there.” Arthur Bryant’s was in the Negro neighborhood. Garrett would have run a gauntlet to get at the barbecued beef there, but Cheryl might get nervous.
“Why shouldn’t I want to? I go there often; they know me. Besides, I’ve got a big strong baseball player to protect me, haven’t I?”
“Oh,” Garrett said. “Absolutely.” She had a way of making all her come-on lines sound as if no one had ever used them before.
Arthur Bryant’s was crowded, as it was every night. Garrett and Cheryl went through the line, getting an order of beef, one of ribs, some greens, and peas and rice. They were going to share everything.
They found a spot and ate. It was every bit as good as Garrett had remembered it.
“I wish we could get this in New York,” Garrett said, waving a denuded rib as punctuation. “I still can’t believe anything tastes this good.”
Cheryl was doing an expert job on a rib of her own, teeth and lips and fingers perfectly coordinated.
I never thought, Garrett mumbled, I’d ever be jealous of a spare rib.
Cheryl put the bone daintily on her plate and said, “Don’t worry, there are plenty of things in New York I’d trade good barbecue for. Or in Washington. I can’t wait until fall and the session starts again.”
So they talked about Washington for a while. Some Blues came in, going for their after-game meal, recognized Garrett and came over to say hello. They were delighted to meet Cheryl; then, in that unsuave way men develop in the army or on ball teams and similar all-male situations, they gave Garrett sly winks and nudged each other and made suggestive gestures.
Eventually Garrett stopped laughing long enough to tell them to get lost. He apologized to Cheryl, who said she didn’t mind. “They probably meant it as a compliment.” They left the restaurant.
Cheryl drove west, toward the river, and the State of Kansas. “Where are we going?” Garrett asked.
“Mission Hills,” Cheryl said. “I want you to see something.”
Gravel crunched under the Hudson’s tires as Cheryl drove off Ward Parkway and up to the big oak doors of a mansion that could have been built from the same set of blueprints as The Homestead.
Cheryl might have been reading Garrett’s mind. “This one doesn’t have a name,” she said.
She used her key and opened the door.
“I don’t know why you bother with an apartment in town when you’ve got a place like this,” Garrett said.
“Very funny. Come on inside.”
Garrett stepped in as Cheryl hit a switch by the door. Lights came on, accompanied by a whoosh of air conditioning.
Garrett wanted to rub his eyes. It was hard to believe this inside and that outside belonged to the same house. From what Garrett could see, a mad family of modernist interior decorators had been turned loose in here and told not to miss a thing.
The whole place was chrome and glass and white wood, in abstract shapes or unorthodox ones. There was a round chair, for example, and a glass-and-metal coffee table in the shape of an arrowhead. Someone had put a spiral staircase in the room, and poked a hole in the ceiling to give it some place to go.
Cheryl was talking. “Isn’t this wild? This was what the Late Junior Klimber was supposed to come home to. Mrs. Klimber keeps it in perfect repair. She spends a fortune on it, has people in to clean once a week. What do you think of it?”
“You first,” Garrett said.
“I like it,” Cheryl said.
Garrett looked around the room again and decided it figured. It was like her: dangerous, somehow threatening, yet very seductive. There was drama in the glinting angles of aluminum and the muted pastels of the walls and carpet. The lamps were all cones and cylinders that erupted from unexpected places in the walls, casting hard-edged shadows and illuminating the room only by reflected glow.
“I like it to look at,” Garrett said at last. “This is not a place for living. Is the whole house like this?”
Cheryl nodded. “Pretty much. The beds are normal.”
Garrett let that go. Cheryl suggested they sit down and talk for a while. “You’re not likely to find a cooler place—the air conditioning is wonderful.”
They sat on a sofa that was white wood with black velvet cushions. “So,” Cheryl said. “What’s a nice guy like Russ Garrett doing in a spot like this?”
Garrett was still trying to decide on an answer when Cheryl said a rude word.
“What’s the matter?”
“Look,” she said. She pointed a red nail at a small orange spot on the frilly collar of her blouse.
“Oh,” Garrett said. “That’s too bad. It hardly shows, though.”
Cheryl ignored him. “I’d better go run some cold water on this before the stain sets. If it isn’t too late. Damn—I just got this when I was in New York—do you see what I mean about trading barbecues and Kansas City?”
She excused herself and dashed up the spiral staircase. Garrett got up and started looking the room over in more detail. He was especially interested in what might be behind some free-standing screens at the far side of the room. It turned out to be bookshelves, which made sense to Garrett—it would be hard to make bookshelves look futuristic.
The books themselves were something else again. It was all science fiction; many of the volumes were bound pulp magazines. Garrett had the impression of being under assault by the emphatic adjectives that made up the titles: Amazing, Astounding, Unknown, Startling, Bizarre, Thrilling. Apparently Junior Klimber had been a science-fiction fan, saving his dimes and buying this stuff the way Garrett had hoarded Doc Savage and The Shadow and Operator No. 5. Maybe his mother had nagged him about wasting his time on junk; maybe that was why, after he went away, and after she was afraid she’d be losing him to a wife, she’d had the magazines bound and given Junior this science-fiction house to keep them in.
There were books here, too, all of which seemed to be published by small publishing companies with names nearly as strange as those of the magazines. Garrett checked a couple of volumes at random and made another discovery—Mrs. Klimber had been keeping the library up to date. God alone knew why.
There was even something from this year—The Demolished Man, by someone named Alfred Bester. He looked at the first couple of paragraphs, got hooked, and read the best part of three chapters before a starburst clock with no numbers on it on the wall above bonged midnight and made him realize Cheryl had not returned.
He started to call up the staircase to her, stopped himself, decided that was stupid, and went ahead and yelled. No answer. He called again. There was silence except for the quiet hissing of the air conditioning.
Garrett climbed the spiral staircase, sorry for the noise his feet made on the white-enameled metal steps but not knowing exactly why.
He found himself in a little alcove at the top, a little square of space that opened onto the second-floor corridor. The corridor was dark except for the light from the alcove itself and for a little slice of light gleaming around a not-quite-closed door at the end of the hallway.
“Cheryl?”
Garrett walked down the hallway, consciously stifling the desire to creep silently. He walked to the doorway, stood outside, and tried again. “Cheryl?” He told himself she was probably asleep, that she’d rinsed the blouse, lay down to wait while it dried, and dozed off.
No answer.
Garrett took a breath and pushed open the door. He took another as he looked inside.
Cheryl was leaning against the frame of the room’s other door, the one that led to the bathroom. She was wearing her slacks, bra, and a knowing smile. One lovely arm rest
ed on her head, the other on her hip, just below where the slacks started. She was a sinuous, seductive arrangement in pink and black and white.
“Hello, Russ,” she said. “I was wondering how long it would take you to come looking for me.”
“Yeah. I ... um ... got involved in a book and didn’t realize how long you’d been gone.”
“I think I’ve just been insulted.”
“How come there are brand-new science-fiction books downstairs?”
“Mrs. Klimber was going to donate her son’s collection to the U. of K., but they didn’t want it—not serious-enough literature or something. One day she’s going to make them take it, and when that happens, the Junior Klimber Science Fiction Collection is going to be complete.” Cheryl pouted and crossed her arms under her breasts, deepening the shadow between them.
Garrett noticed. He also noticed that Cheryl was aware he had.
“Now I know it!” Cheryl said in mock anger. “I am being insulted.”
“No,” Garrett said.
“Yes,” Cheryl insisted.
“Maybe,” Garrett suggested, “I can make it up to you.”
“I doubt it.”
“I can try,” Garrett said. “Come here.”
She came to him. Slowly, brazenly. With a smile on her lips that was both skeptical and challenging. Garrett was going to wipe that smile off her face if it killed him.
8
They’d fallen asleep with the lamp on. Garrett woke up to a feathery touch on his thigh and the sound of the clock downstairs telling the otherwise-silent house that it was half past three.
“You were hurt,” Cheryl said, tracing his scar with her finger.
“A Communist shot me,” Garrett told her. “In Korea.”
“I never thought a bullet wound would look like that.”
“That’s not a bullet wound. That’s where they operated to put the bone back together.” He reached down to move her hand. “That dent in the flesh—that’s the bullet hole.”
“Both legs,” she said. “Poor Russ.” She leaned and kissed the scar, then moved, still kissing.
“You’d better watch that stuff,” Garrett warned her.
“I’m not worried,” she said. “You’re not bad, for a child.”
“You’re pretty decent yourself, for an old lady.”
Garrett didn’t smile. All the bantering didn’t hide the fact that “not bad” was all it had been. Oh, she’d responded all right, but it had been all physical, just as she would have sneezed if he’d rubbed her nose. He’d never gotten close to where that smile lived. Hadn’t caught sight of the real Cheryl Tilton, assuming there was one.
Cheryl stopped what she was doing. “I’ll be right back,” she said. She patted Garrett on the chest and strode gracefully to the bathroom.
Garrett watched her, then closed his eyes again. He opened them to another feathery touch, this time at his throat. It wasn’t the same touch as last time—this one was ice cold.
“Don’t move, Russ,” Cheryl cooed. “This is Junior Klimber’s razor. It’s very sharp. You’d think he would use an electric razor, wouldn’t you? But he didn’t.”
Garrett tried not to swallow. Every time he swallowed he felt the edge of the razor take just the tiniest bite into his skin.
“This isn’t necessary, Cheryl,” he said. “I shaved this morning in New York.”
“I don’t plan to cut your whiskers,” Cheryl said. “Your throat, I think. Or something else.”
Garrett could feel himself starting to sweat.
“I can—don’t move, Russ! I told you that already. You make me nervous when you move.” Her voice dropped back into the soft coo. “I can get away with it, too. You followed me here; got me to let you inside; forced yourself on me. There’s evidence of that, isn’t there? Then you went to sleep, and I tried to sneak away, and you woke up and tried to stop me. I ran into the bathroom, grabbed the razor to protect myself ... I guess it had better be your throat, after all.”
“What,” Garrett asked slowly, “is the big idea behind all of this?”
“Why should I tell you? It will give you something else to think about.”
Something rang false in Garrett’s mind. “Okay, Cheryl. Not funny. Put it away.”
“I’m not joking, Russ.” Garrett looked at her face. The woman would have made a hell of a poker player. He was sure Cheryl was playing some sort of sick game with him. He couldn’t believe this woman would pass up the chance to tell him why he was about to die.
It also crossed Garrett’s mind that that particular line of reasoning might be something cooked up in a desperate portion of his brain to let him go out with a tiny shred of dignity.
“I’m going to count to five,” Garrett said. “You’d better cut my throat by the time I’m finished, or I’m going to take that thing away from you and carve my initials in you. One.”
Cheryl only smiled at him.
“Two. Three.” Garrett could feel himself starting to tremble. He wished he’d said he was going to count to three. “Four. Five.”
Cheryl was pulling her hand away from his throat even as Garrett’s left hand was catching hold of her wrist. “Let go of it,” he said. She didn’t; he twisted her wrist, hard. Cheryl yelped and let go. The razor fell over the edge of the bed onto the floor.
The wrestling match finished with them sitting up in the center of the bed, facing each other. Cheryl was laughing, loud, joyful laughter. “That was exciting! God, that was good!”
“Stop it!” Garrett commanded. Cheryl kept laughing.
“You crazy bitch, stop it!” Garrett hit her, openhanded, once, very hard. Cheryl rocked to the side. Her black hair flew. She lay there a second, then with her arms pushed herself back to sitting position.
Garrett was still taking in the fact that he had hit a woman for the first time in his life. He looked at Cheryl.
Her mouth was open in surprise. She was holding her hand to the red mark on her face. Her lovely naked body trembled as breath rasped in and out of her.
Garrett started to speak, to say something that would make sense of the whole business, but the look in Cheryl’s eyes stopped him.
“Now, Russ,” she said reaching for him. “Right now. You win. I’m yours. Only right now, please?”
“Lie down,” Garrett told her.
At last he had found the real Cheryl Tilton. What she liked was power. Political. Physical. Sexual. It made no difference who had it—Cheryl just liked to be around it and to see it used.
Garrett was still angry enough over the little razor charade to use all of his now. And Cheryl cooperated all the way. The challenging smile was gone for now. Now was the time for gasps and whimpers.
They moved together now like parts of an engine barely under control, shuddering and groaning, oiled with sweat, and at last finishing the job in a stroke of frozen power. All that was lacking was a cloud of steam.
They fell apart, instantly reached for each other, and lay panting in each other’s arms.
Over the sound of their breath, Garrett heard the faint chimes of the clock downstairs. He counted them, then started to laugh.
“What?” Cheryl asked wearily. “What is it?”
“Five o’clock lightning,” Garrett told her. “This Yankee just got hit with some five o’clock lightning.”
“Mmmm,” Cheryl said. “That’s nice,” then pillowed her head on Garrett’s chest and went to sleep.
9
Garrett stepped out of the shower, dried himself, then started to put on the clean clothes he’d spread on the bed. There was a knock on the hotel-room door.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me. Martin. Let me in, Garrett, all right?”
“Sure, just a second.” Garrett finished buttoning his trousers, then let the detective in.
Martin looked sour. “When did you finally get back here?”
“About an hour ago,” Garrett told him.
“Jesus, Garrett, it’s four thirty
in the afternoon!”
“I didn’t see any punch clock downstairs. When was I put on the payroll?”
“All right, all right.” Martin raised a hand. “If you want to know, I was worried about you. Vicious would tan my black hide if I let anything terrible happen to you out here.”
“I’m touched.”
Martin wagged a finger at him. Garrett put on his socks.
“I had a date last night,” the ball player said.
“How was it?” Martin was still sour.
Garrett grinned. “Amazing,” he said. “Astounding. Unknown. Startling. Bizarre. Thrilling.”
“Well, I’m glad you had a good time.”
“What do you mean?”
“You got a million phone calls last night. Went on till past two o’clock in the morning. I could hear it through the walls. After the plane trip I didn’t think anything could keep me awake, but that did the trick.”
“Yeah, there was a note for me when I came in. Some woman, apparently. Never left a message, except on her last call; said she would try again today—meaning tonight, I guess—the day clerk didn’t have any other messages.”
“You gonna be here tonight?”
“Later on. I’m meeting Hal Keating for dinner at the Plaza, then making a duty call on the ball game. We were going to hit a few spots, but we can drink back here just as easily.” Garrett stood at the mirror and knotted his tie. “You’re welcome to come along if you like.”
“No, some big shot in the police department here is having me over to dinner at his place to show what a liberal he is. Talk about astonishing and bizarre and all that crap. I tell you ...”
Garrett wasn’t listening. “I wonder who could have been trying to call me,” he mused.
“Break any hearts when you were here the last time?” Martin asked him.
“No,” Garrett said. “That was a time when I was ... Let me put it this way: the only broken heart I had anything to do with in Kansas City was my own, and I brought that with me.”
The phone rang. “Speak of the devil,” Martin said. Garrett picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
Five O'Clock Lightning Page 16