It was a moment torn from Time. And we were on the bed, and her head was tossed back and her eyes were tightly shut, and her big beautiful body was a Stradivarius and I was Fritz Kreisler and Menuhin and Oistrakh and everybody else, stroking the world’s sweetest music out of her.
“Oh, Ed. Oh, yes!”
She was a life-size doll who cried real tears. The room rocked. Someone took the earth out from under us and we took a Cook’s tour through a brand-new world. At the end there was a monumental crescendo, and the finale came with a shake and a shudder and a sob.
HER VOICE CAME THROUGH A FILTER. “I’ll call you later, Ed. I’ve got to go now. The blackmailer said he would call me late this afternoon and make the arrangements for the meeting. I’ll tell him you’ll be coming as my agent, then call you and give you the details. You can meet him tonight, can’t you?”
I grunted something. She leaned over the bed and her lips brushed my face. I didn’t move. She left, and I could hear her feet on the stairs. A door closed. I still didn’t move.
Later, I got up and showered. I washed the sweet taste of her body from my skin and told myself it didn’t mean a damned thing. She was playing Lady of Mystery, and in that department she could give the Mona Lisa cards and spades and chuck in Little Casino. The interlude in bed was no love affair, no meeting of soul mates. It was a way to seal a bargain, a quick little roll in the hay to ensure my cooperation, an added bonus tacked onto the 200-buck retainer.
I could tell myself this. It was hard to believe it.
So I showered and got dressed and went into the living room to build myself a drink. Later she would call me. Then I would run out to Brooklyn to do the job for her.
I poured more cognac. There was a girl I was supposed to meet that night, a dark-eyed brunette named Sharon Ross. A publisher’s Gal Friday, a warm and clever thing. I picked up the phone and tried to find the right way to explain why I couldn’t take her to the theater that night.
“You’ve got a nerve,” she told me. “We made that date two weeks ago. What’s the matter, Ed?”
“Business,” I said. “How’s tomorrow night?”
“It’s out.” She clicked the receiver in my ear.
So I drank the drink and crossed another Sweet Young Thing off my mental list of Things to Be Physical With. I was already giving up a lot for Rhona Blake.
She called around six. “This is Rhona,” she said. “I talked to…to the man. He wanted me to come personally but agreed to meet with you.”
“Sweet of him.”
“Don’t growl. You’re supposed to meet him at nine-thirty at a place called Johnny’s. It’s out in Canarsie on Remsen Avenue near Avenue M. Give him the money and get the goods, Ed.”
“Maybe I could get the goods without giving him the money.”
“No. The money doesn’t matter. Don’t do anything silly, like getting rough with him. Just…just follow orders.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Ed—”
“What?”
A long pause. “Nothing,” she said, finally. “I’ll…I’ll call you tonight, Ed.”
THREE
My cabby came off the Manhattan Bridge at Canal Street, then found the East Side Drive and headed uptown. It was close to eleven and the traffic was thin. We made good time. The meter was a few ticks past $5 when he pulled up in front of my brownstone. I gave him a five and two singles and waved him away.
It was still too damned hot out. I went inside, took the stairs two at a time, unlocked my door, and pulled it shut after me. I poured a stiff drink and drank it.
It was getting cute now. My client had given me five grand, and I still had that. But the little blackmailer was dead and gone, and the stuff he had on her was nowhere to be found. It was time for me to call my client, of course. Time to fill her in on all the novel developments. But I couldn’t get in touch with her. She was willing to sleep with me but she wouldn’t let me know where she lived.
A few minutes after twelve, the phone rang.
“Rhona, Ed. Everything go all right?”
“No,” I said.
“What happened?”
I gave it to her in capsule form, telling her how I met the little man, how they waylaid us, how they killed him and tried to kill me. She let me talk without an interruption, and when I stopped she was silent for almost a minute.
Then: “What now, Ed?”
“I don’t know, Rhona. I’ve got five thousand bucks you can have back. I guess that’s about all.”
“But I’m in trouble, Ed.”
“What kind of trouble?”
A pause. “I can’t tell you over the phone.”
“Then come over here.”
“I can’t, Ed. I have to stay where I am.”
“Then I’ll come over there.”
“No.”
I was getting sick of the whole routine. “Then give me a post office box and I’ll mail you five grand, Rhona. And we can forget the whole thing. Okay?”
It wasn’t okay. She got nervous and stuttered awhile, then told me she would call me in the morning. I told her I was sick of phone calls.
“Then meet me,” she said.
“Where?”
She thought it over. “Do you know a place called Mandrake’s?”
“In the Village? I know it.”
“I’ll meet you there at two in the afternoon.”
“Are they open then?”
“They’re open. Will you meet me?”
I thought about that red mouth, those green eyes. I remembered the poetry of her body. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll meet you.”
Hanging up, I hauled the .38 out of its resting place and broke it open. I wanted a full gun handy. It looked as though it was going to be that kind of a deal.
It was too early for sleep. I thought about the girl I’d broken my date with: dark hair, soft curves, a sulky mouth. Right now we’d have been out of the theater. We’d be sitting in a cozy club somewhere on the East Side, listening to atonal jazz and drinking a little too much. And then homeward, for a nightcap and maybe a cup of kindness. But a date with a blackmailer had made me break my date with Sharon Ross. And now she was mad at me.
For the hell of it, I called her. The phone rang and rang and rang and nobody answered it.
I went into the kitchen and made instant coffee and thought about Canarsie. A tommy-gun—that was something to mull over. Only prison guards have them. They’ve been illegal in the States since the Dillinger era, and a hood who wants one has to shell out two or three grand for the thing. And needs good connections.
It sounded pretty complex for an ordinary blackmail dodge, and made me wonder what kind of league Rhona Blake was playing in. Triple-A, anyway. They don’t use choppers in the bush leagues.
It was late by the time I got into bed. I wedged a stack of records on the hi-fi and crawled under the covers. They played and I thought about things, and I fell asleep before the stack was finished.
THE MORNING WAS RAW AND RAGGED. I’d gone to sleep without flipping on the air-conditioner, and when I woke up the blankets were sticking to my skin. I pried them loose and took a long shower.
I was through with breakfast by 10:30. I wasn’t supposed to meet Rhona until two, but my apartment was beginning to feel like a jail cell. I looked through the bookcases for something to read and didn’t come up with anything. I plucked the Times off my doormat, glanced through it, and tossed it into the wastebasket.
I left the apartment wearing slacks, a sport jacket, and a gun. I locked my door and headed down the stairs, and was on my way through the vestibule just as a man was leaning on my bell. I saw his index finger pressing a button next to a strip of plexiglas with E. London inscribed thereon. He didn’t look like anyone I wanted to meet, but it was a hot day and I had a few hours to kill. I tapped him on the shoulder.
“You won’t get an answer,” I said.
“No?”
“No. I’m E. London, and there was nobody home when I left.”
He didn’t smile. “Carr,” he said. “Phillip Carr, attorney at law.” He handed me a card. “I want to talk to you, London.”
I didn’t really want to talk to him. We went upstairs anyway, and I unlocked my door again and led him inside. We sat down in the living room. He offered me a cigar and I shook my head. He made a hole in the end with an elaborate cigar cutter, wedged it in his mouth, lit it, blew foul smoke all over my apartment. I hoped it wouldn’t clog the air-conditioner.
“I’ll come to the point,” he said.
“Fine.”
“I’m here representing a client,” Carr said, “who wants to remain nameless. He’s a wealthy man, a prominent man.”
“Go on.”
“His daughter’s missing. He wants her located.”
“That’s interesting,” I told him. “The Missing Persons Bureau is at Headquarters, on Centre Street. They have a lot of personnel and they don’t charge anything. You go down there, make out a report, and they’ll find your man’s daughter a damn sight faster than I will.”
He chewed his cigar thoughtfully. “This isn’t a police matter,” he said.
“No?”
“No. We…my client needs special talents. He’s prepared to pay ten thousand dollars as a reward for his daughter’s return.”
“Ten grand?”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t work that way,” I said. “I’m not a bounty hunter, Carr. I don’t chase rewards any more than a decent lawyer chases ambulances to nail negligence cases. I get a hundred a day plus expenses. The price is the same whether I find your missing person or not.”
“That’s not how my client wants it.”
“Then your client can find himself another boy.”
“You’re not a patient man,” Phillip Carr said.
“Maybe not.”
“You should be. Can’t you use ten grand, London?”
“Anybody can.”
“Then be patient. Let me show you a picture of my client’s errant daughter; then you can decide whether or not you want to work for a reward. For ten grand, I’d be willing to chase an ambulance, London.”
It was early in the day and it was hot as hell and my head wasn’t working too well. I let him dig a thin wallet from his hip pocket. He pulled a picture from it and passed it to me.
Well, you guessed it. And I should have, but it was that kind of a day. The daughter-reward bit was as nutty as a male Hershey bar and the picture told me everything I had to know. Just a head-and-shoulder shot, the kind that made you want to see what the body looked like. A beautiful girl. A familiar face.
Rhona Blake, of course.
Carr was looking at me, a supercilious smile on his lips. I wanted to turn it inside out. But I could be as cute as he. I handed the picture back to him and waited.
“A familiar face?”
“No.”
“Really?”
I stepped closer to him. “I’ve never seen the girl,” I lied. “And the reward couldn’t interest me less. I think you ought to go home, Carr.”