“Fine,” she said.
She carried her glass of wine, and he carried his bottle and glass of beer. As he had said, his room was nice, big, and shiny. He showed it off proudly: the stack of fluffy towels, the neatly wrapped little bars of soap, the clean glasses and plastic ice bucket.
“And two beds!” he chortled, bouncing up and down on one of them. “Never thought I’d get to stay in a room with two beds! I may just sleep in both of them, taking turns. Just for the sheer luxury of it! Now … where’s that list?”
They sat side by side on the edge of the bed, discussing his planned itinerary. Never once did he touch her, say anything even mildly suggestive, or give her any reason to suspect he was other than he appeared to be: an innocent.
She turned suddenly, kissed his cheek.
“I like you,” she said. “You’re nice.”
He stared at her, startled, eyes widening. Then he leaped to his feet, a convulsive jump.
“Yes, well …” he said, stammering. “I thank you. I guess maybe I’ve been boring you. Haven’t I? I mean, talking about myself all night. Good Lord, I haven’t given you a chance to open your mouth. We could go downstairs and have a nightcap. In the bar downstairs. Would you like that? Or maybe you want to split? I understand. That’s all right. I mean if you want to go …”
She smiled, took his hand, drew him back down onto the bed.
“I don’t want another drink, Chet,” she said. “And I don’t want to go. Not yet. Can’t we talk for a few minutes?”
“Well … yeah … sure. I’d like that.”
“Are you married, Chet?”
“Oh no. No, no.”
“Girlfriend?”
“Uh, yes … sort of. Sure, she’s a girlfriend. A junior at the Academy, which is against the rules because we’re not supposed to date the students. You know? But this has been going on for, oh, maybe six or seven months now. And she’s been sneaking out to meet me, but vacation started last week and we’ve got plans to see each other this summer.”
“That’s wonderful. Is she nice?”
“Oh yes. I think so. Very nice. Good fun—you know? I mean fun to be with. Alice. That’s her name—Alice.”
“I like that name.”
“Yes, well, we usually meet out of town. I mean, the place isn’t so big that people wouldn’t notice, so we have to be careful. I have wheels, an old, beat-up crate, and sometimes we go to a roadhouse out of town. Sometimes, on a nice night, we’ll just take a walk and talk.”
“Is she pretty?”
“Oh yes. I think so. Not beautiful. I mean, she’s not glamorous or anything like that. She wears glasses. She’s very nearsighted. But I think she’s pretty.”
“Do you love her, Chet?”
He considered that a long moment.
“I don’t know,” he finally confessed. “I really don’t know. I’ve given it a lot of thought. I mean, if I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I really don’t know. But it’s not something we have to decide right now. I mean, it’s only been six or seven months. She’s coming back for her senior year, so we’ll have a chance to get to know each other better. Maybe it’ll just; like, fade away, or maybe it’ll become something. You know?”
She put her lips close to his ear, whispering …
“Have you had sex together?”
He blushed. “Well, ah, not exactly. I mean, we’ve done … things. But not, you know, all the way. I respect her.”
“Does she have a good body?”
“Oh God—oh gosh, yes! She’s really stacked. I mean, she’s a swimmer and all. Doesn’t smoke. Has a beer now and then. Keeps herself in very good shape. Very good. She’s almost as tall as I am. Very slender with these big … you know …”
“Why haven’t you had sex with her?”
“Well, uh … you know …”
She wouldn’t let him off the hook. It was suddenly important to her to learn what Chet and Alice had done together.
“She wants to, doesn’t she, Chet?”
“Oh yes. I think so. Sometimes we get started and it’s very difficult to stop. Then we cool it. That’s what we say to each other: ‘Cool it!’ Then we laugh, and get, uh, control again.”
“You’d like to, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh yes. I mean, at the moment, when we get all excited, I’d like to. I forget all my good intentions. I know that someday—some night rather—neither of us will say, ‘Cool it!’ And then …”
“Is she on the Pill?”
“Oh no! I asked her that and she said, ‘What for?’ I mean, she doesn’t play around. She’s right. Why should she take those dangerous drugs?”
“But what if you both get excited and don’t say, ‘Cool it,’ and it happens, like you said? What if she gets pregnant?”
“No, no. I mean, I’d, uh, like take precautions. I’m not a virgin, Irene. I know about those things. I wouldn’t do that to Alice.”
She leaned forward, whispered in his ear again.
“Well, ah, yes,” he said. “Yes, she could do that. If she wanted to. And I could, too, of course. I know about that.”
“But you’ve never done it?”
“Well, uh, no. No, I’ve never done it.”
“Why don’t you take your clothes off?” Zoe Kohler said in a low voice. “I’d like to do it to you.”
“You’re kidding!”
“No, really, I want to. Don’t you? Wouldn’t you like the experience?”
She had said the right word. He wanted to experience everything.
“All right,” he said. “But you must tell me what to do.”
“You don’t have to do anything,” she assured him. “Just lie back and enjoy it. I have to go into the bathroom for a minute. You undress; I’ll be right back.”
His innocence was a rebuke to her. She was confused as to why this should be so. She didn’t want to corrupt him; that would come soon enough. What she wanted to do, she decided, was to save him from corruption.
She thought this through as she undressed in the bathroom. It made a kind of hard sense. Because, despite how blameless he was now, she saw what would eventually happen to him, what he would become.
Years and the guilt of living would take their toll. He would lie and betray and cheat. His boy’s body would swell at the same time his conscience would atrophy. He would become a swaggering man, bullying his way through life, scorning the human wreckage he left in his wake.
What was the worst, the absolute worst, was that he would never mourn his lost purity, but might recall it with an embarrassed laugh. He would be shamed by the memory, she knew. He would never regret his ruined goodness.
So she went back into the bedroom and slit his throat.
10
THURSDAY, JUNE 5TH …
“All right,” Sergeant Abner Boone said, flipping through his notebook, “here’s what we’ve got.”
Standing and sitting around the splintered table in Midtown Precinct North. All of them smoking: cigarettes, cigars, and Lieutenant Crane chewing on a pipe. Emptied cardboard coffee cups on the table. The detritus of gulped sandwiches, containers of chop suey, a pizza box, wrappers and bags of junk food.
Air murky with smoke, barely stirred by the air conditioner. Sweat and disinfectant. No one commented or even noticed. They had all smelled worse odors. And battered rooms like this were home, familiar and comfortable.
“Nicholas Telemachus Pappatizos,” Boone started. “Aka Nick Pappy, aka Poppa Nick, aka the Magician. Forty-two. Home address: Las Vegas. A fast man with the cards and dice. A small-time bentnose. Two convictions: eight months and thirteen months, here and there, for fraud and bunko. He got off twice on attempted rape and felonious assault.”
“Good riddance,” Detective Bentley said.
“The blood on the bathroom floor was definitely not his. Caucasian female. So it’s confirmed; it’s a female perp we’re looking for.”
“How do you figure the fight?” Detective Johnson asked.
“That’s another thing,” Sergeant Broderick said. “She’s obviously got a new knife. My guys are wasting their time trying to track the one that got broke.”
“Right,” Boone said. “Drop it; we were too late. We can use your guys on people who knew the convention schedule. We’ve got nearly two thousand names so far.”
“Beautiful,” Broderick said, but he wasn’t really dismayed. No one was dismayed by the enormity of the search.
“Johnson,” Boone said, “anything on the Mace?”
“Getting there,” the detective said. “The stuff was sold to a lot of security outfits, armored car fleets, and so forth. Anyone who could prove a legitimate need. We’re tracking them down. Every can of it.”
“Keep on it. Bentley, what about that waitress from the Hotel Coolidge? The Ashley kill. His scarred hands.”
“We check with her mother every day, sarge. She still hasn’t called in from the Coast. Now we’re tracking down her friends in case anyone knows where she is.”
“As long as you’re following up … Lieutenant? Anything new?”
“Nothing so far on the possibles. Some have moved, some are out of town, some are dead. I wouldn’t say it looks promising.”
“How did the decoys miss her at the. Adler?” Edward X. Delaney demanded.
“Who the hell knows?” Bentley said angrily. “We had both bars in the place covered. Maybe she brought him in off the street.”
“No,” Delaney said stonily. “That’s not her way. She’s no street quiff. She knew there were conventions there. The lobby maybe, or the dining room. But it wasn’t on the street.”
They were all silent for a moment, trying to figure ways to stop her before she hit again.
“It should be about June twenty-ninth,” Boone said, “to July second. In that time period. It’s not too early to plan what more we can do. Intelligent suggestions gratefully received.”
There were hard barks of laughter and the meeting broke up. Sergeant Boone drew Delaney aside.
“Chief,” he said, “got a little time?”
“Sure. As much as you want. What’s up?”
“There’s a guy waiting in my office. A doctor. Dr. Patrick Ho. How’s that for a name—Ho? He’s some kind of an Oriental. Japanese, Chinese, Korean, or maybe from Vietnam or Cambodia. Whatever. With a first name like Patrick, there had to be an Irishman in there somewhere—right? Anyway, he’s with the Lab Services Section. He’s the guy who ran the analysis on the blood from the bathroom floor and said it was Caucasian female.”
“And?” Delaney said.
Boone shrugged helplessly. “Beats the hell out of me. He tracked me down to tell me there’s something screwy about the blood. But I can’t get it straight what he wants. Will you talk to him a minute, Chief? Maybe you can figure it out.”
Dr. Patrick Ho was short, plump, bronzed. He looked like a young Buddha with a flattop of reddish hair. When Boone introduced Delaney, he bowed and giggled. His hand was soft. The Chief noted the manicured nails.
“Ah,” he said, in a high, flutey voice. “So nice. An honor. Everyone has heard of you, sir.”
“Thank you,” Delaney said. “Now, what’s this about—”
“Your exploits,” Dr. Ho went on enthusiastically, his dark eyes shining. “Your deductive ability. I, myself, would like to be a detective. But unfortunately I am only a lowly scientist, condemned to—”
“Let’s sit down,” Delaney said. “For a minute,” he added hopefully.
They pulled chairs up to Boone’s littered desk. The sergeant passed around cigarettes. The little doctor leaped to his feet with a gold Dunhill lighter at the ready. He closed the lighter after holding it for Boone and Delaney, then flicked it again for his own cigarette.
“Ah,” he giggled, “never three on a light. Am I correct?”
He sat down again and looked at them, back and forth, beaming.
He was a jolly sight. A face like a peach with ruby-red lips. Tiny ears hugged his skull. Those dark eyes bulged slightly, and he had the smallest teeth Delaney had ever seen. A child’s teeth: perfect miniatures.
His gestures were a ballet, graceful and flowing. His expression was never in repose, but he smiled, frowned, grimaced, pursed those fall lips, pouted, made little moues. He was, Delaney decided, a very scrutable Oriental.
“Dr. Ho,” the Chief said, “about the blood … There’s no doubt it’s from a Caucasian female?”
“No doubt!” the doctor cried. “No doubt whatsoever!”
“Then what … ?”
Dr. Ho leaned forward, looking at them in a conspiratorial manner. He held one pudgy forefinger aloft.
“That blood,” he said in almost a whisper, “has a very high potassium count.”
Delaney and Boone looked at each other.
“Uh, doctor,” the sergeant said, “what does that mean? I mean, what’s the significance?”
Dr. Ho leaned back, crossed his little legs daintily. He stared at the ceiling.
“Ah, at the moment,” he said dreamily, “it has no significance. It means only what I said: a high potassium count. But I must tell you I feel, I know, it has a significance, if only we knew what it was. Normal blood does not have such a high potassium level.”
Edward X. Delaney was getting interested. He hitched his chair closer to Dr. Patrick Ho, got a whiff of the man’s flowery cologne, and leaned hastily back.
“You’re saying the potassium content of that blood is abnormal?”
“Ah, yes!” the doctor said, grinning, nodding madly. “Precisely. Abnormal.”
“And what could cause the abnormality?”
“Oh, many things. Many, many things.”
Again, Delaney and Boone glanced at each other. The sergeant’s shoulders rose slightly in a small shrug.
“Well, doctor,” Boone said, sighing, “I don’t see how that’s going to help our investigation.”
Dr. Patrick Ho frowned, then showed his little teeth, then pouted. Then he leaned forward, began to speak rapidly.
“Ah, I have said I wish to be a detective. I am but a lowly scientist—let me speak the truth: I am but a lowly technician; nothing more—but in a way, I am a detective. I detect what can be learned from a drop of blood, a chip of paint, a piece of glass, a hair. And about this high-potassium blood, I have a suspicion. No, I have a—a—what is the word?”
“A hunch?” Delaney offered.
The doctor laughed with delight. “What a word! A hunch! Exactly, Something is wrong with this blood. The high potassium should not be there. So I would like to make a much more thorough analysis of this puzzling blood.”
“So?” Sergeant Boone said. “Why don’t you?”
Dr. Ho sighed deeply. His face collapsed into such a woebegone expression that he seemed close to tears. This time he held up two fingers. He gripped one by the tip. He talked around his shortened cigarette, tilting his head to keep the smoke out of his eyes.
“One,” he said, “we are, of course, very busy. A certain amount of time must be allotted to each task. I have, at this moment, many things assigned to me. All must be accomplished. I would like to be relieved—temporarily, of course,” he added hastily—“of everything but the detection of this strange blood. Second,” he said, folding down one finger, switching his grip to the other, “second, I must tell you in all honesty that we do not have the equipment in our laboratory necessary for the subtle blood analysis I wish to make.”
“And where is this equipment available?” Delaney asked.
“The Medical Examiner has it,” Dr. Ho said sorrowfully.
“So?” Boone said again. “Ask them to do the analysis.”
That expressive face twisted. “Ah,” the doctor said in an anguished voice, “but then it is out of my hand
s. You understand?”
Delaney looked at him intently. This little man was trying to score points, to further his career. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, in the right circumstances, it might be admirable. But he also might be wasting everyone’s time.
“Let me get this straight,” the Chief said. “What you’d like is to be temporarily relieved of all your other duties and assigned only to the analysis of the blood found on the bathroom floor at the Hotel Adler. And then you’d like to use the machines or whatever in the Medical Examiner’s office to make that analysis. Have I got it right?”
Dr. Ho slapped his plump thigh. His eyes glowed with happiness … briefly.
“Exactly,” he said. “Precisely.” Then his face fell; the glee disappeared. “But you must understand that between my section and the Medical Examiner’s office there is, ah, I would not say bad feeling, oh no, but there is, ah … what shall I say? Competition! Yes, there is competition. Professional jealousy perhaps. A certain amount of secrecy involved. You understand?” he pleaded.
Indeed, Edward X. Delaney did understand. It was nothing new and nothing unusual. Since when was there perfect, wholehearted cooperation between the branches of any large organization, even if their aims were identical?
The FBI vs. local cops. The army vs. the air force. The navy vs. the Marines. The Senate vs. the House of Representatives. The federal government vs. the states. Infighting was a way of life, and it wasn’t all bad. Competing jealousies were a good counter for smug indolence.
“All right,” the Chief said, “you want us to get you assigned full time to this analysis and you want us to get the ME’s office to cooperate. Correct?”
Dr. Patrick Ho bent forward from the waist, put a soft hand on Delaney’s arm.
“You are a very sympathetic man,” he said gratefully.
The Chief, who hated to be touched by strangers, or even by friends, jerked his arm away. He rose swiftly to his feet.
“We’ll let you know, doctor. As soon as possible.”
There was a round of half-bows and handshaking. They watched Dr. Ho dance from the room.
“A whacko,” Sergeant Boone said.
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