The John Maclay

by John Maclay

  He didn’t know what to do. He wanted to run from her apartment, drive home, and forget this weirdness forever. God knew, he’d been through enough since Martha’s death.

  But Lenore, keeping him honest as it were, did something that prevented him. She let her black robe fall open, revealing her opulent breasts.

  Don was repelled, and yet he was almost morbidly attracted. He moved toward her, but she took his hand and led him to the bedroom. There, she cast off her robe and had him undress, as if they should be naked for what even more should be revealed.

  He entered her again, but now he knew beyond all doubt what the attraction was. He didn’t want to name it in is mind, but as he completed the act, he did.

  It was necrophilia, pure and simple. He was virtually making love to a dead woman, as she no doubt was doing so to a dead man.

  What was more, he was making love to Martha, and she to Mark. They were going to them in the netherworld, where quite possibly the two of them were sharing it.

  And when the climax came, he was struck by the horror, and yet the appropriateness of it in the scheme of things.

  Two dead, two half-alive. Together, as they’d been inseparable in life, forever.

  He and Lenore lay clutching each other, as if trying once more for life. But he knew it wasn’t to be.

  “Can you deal with it?” she asked him, after a long time.

  “Have you ever thought of killing yourself to really be with them, since they can’t come back?” he asked sadly in return.

  “Oh, yes,” she replied. “But I think we’re supposed to play it out.”

  Then he fell into a death-like sleep in her arms.

  In the morning Don awoke, dressed, and left, without waking Lenore. He drove back to the city, the bright day seeming to revive his rational mind and push back to the depths what surely belonged there.

  A kid on a bicycle, a workman in a truck that he passed, the houses and shops with people going about their daily lives. These, and his newly-furnished condo when he reached it, should be reality.

  “You were right,” he told Bill, as they played a round of golf that same afternoon. “There are problems with my new lady friend. Let’s just leave it at that.”

  “I’m sorry,” his buddy replied. “You thought you’d found the right gal. But older women do have problems. And I know just the thing to get you over it.”

  So the next night, Bill fixed him up with another of his female acquaintances. It was understood, too, that everything would happen on the first date.

  She was very young, in her early twenties, blonde, tanned, and full of life. After dinner in a fine restaurant, Don took her up to his place, where they readily had sex. During it, he felt nothing coming from her mind, and had no morbid visions in his.

  It was a relief. But somehow, it didn’t feel complete.

  And the next time he went to bed with her, he couldn’t perform. As he couldn’t, though he bought her an expensive negligee by way of apology to her and stimulus to himself, the next.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she asked, her youth not letting her make allowances.

  “I don’t know,” he replied, before she got dressed and left, surely forever. “Or maybe it’s something that’s right, for me.”

  He needed Lenore, Don knew. Lenore, in her black robe, and then exhibiting her sun-deprived flesh, in contrast to the young woman’s tan and, symbolically, to the daylight world he’d tried in vain to recapture. Lenore, now not just because she was a congenial older woman, but due to the horrid yet fascinating experience they’d shared.

  He needed the darkness, he needed the depth. He knew he could live only, in death.

  “Whatever you say, buddy,” Bill told him, when he simply announced he was selling his condo and moving to a small town. “I hope you’ll find what you’re looking for.”

  “Maybe I already have,” Don replied. “You’ve been great, and thanks for everything. But I must say, you don’t know.”

  She was waiting for him at the door. She pulled him in, with a hand he hadn’t noticed before was cold.

  “I knew you’d come back,” she said. “I’ve been starved for you. It isn’t complete, without.”

  “Take me there,” he said.

  And she did, all over the bed that might now be a silk-sheeted coffin. As he responded more fully than ever before, and as the dance of death, including their spouses, was even more vivid in his soul.

  Afterwards, as he stroked Lenore’s naked flesh, he found it the same temperature as his hand. But he knew it wasn’t because she had warmed, the sex notwithstanding.

  Instead, he was as cold and dead as she was, at last.

  “So what do we do now?” he asked.

  “Well, I guess we keep on doing it,” she replied, coming into his arms.

  “Until the time,” she concluded.

  “Until the time when we’re really there.”

  TOM RUDOLPH’S LAST TAPE

  My name’s Tom Rudolph, and I’m a private eye. That’s how I usually begin the stories I tell. Then I fill in in my background: pushing forty, thinning dark hair, cheap suit, and a hat. A stint in the Marines, office in an old building downtown, oak desk, worn leather couch that doubles as my bed. Partiality to bourbon, .38 in a shoulder holster. My world, a two-block stretch of cheap hotels, pool halls, pinball arcades, lunch counters, and nude bars. A part of town that’s a throwback to the 1950s: as, of course, am I.

  Next, on the reel-to-reel tape deck I use, I go into the case. Like the one about the slasher I caught, and the brave young woman who decoyed for me. Or the work I did for a guy who had mob ties but a heart of gold. Or how I caught the book thief, or crashed a car on purpose to kill a crook as a favor for my girl. Or the one about Monique, the woman in blue.…

  Yeah, that’s how I begin. But, though the reels are turning, the wheels in my head aren’t, not tonight. Because there’s something wrong with old Tom, and it’s not too much bourbon. You ever have a time, maybe in February, when you go on day after gray day, not realizing that you’re not yourself? Then something wakes you up, and your real life seems like a history that belongs to somebody else? “In a real dark night of the soul, it’s always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.” Yeah, I had some college, too. But this time, maybe you won’t come out of it, and…

  I get up from my desk, out from under the circle of light from the forty-watt bulb, and walk to my fifth-floor window. The city’s still there, cold rain, lights reflected by the slick asphalt. That’s a start. And I must still be here to see it: a start, as well. I stretch, flop down on the worn leather cushions. What you do, then, is trace it back. Yeah, you trace it back.…

  Monique was a nude dancer—okay, a hooker—who made good. Long blond hair, beautiful face, smooth creamy skin, body more like a model’s than a B-girl’s. Wore blue dresses all the time, cut low above, high below. I’d had her twice, and both were milestones in my life; she made love with a expertness I still could hardly believe. What do you say about breasts like hers, legs like hers, a place like hers…damn.

  Anyway, Monique hooked up with a guy named Kelty, a rich contractor in his fifties. Even stole him away from his wife, married him; I was a party to that. Saw her ride off into the sunset, wished her all the best, thought I’d never see her again. And didn’t…until a week ago.

  When it all started—yes. When Kelty turned up killed.

  My old friend Sergeant Crandall called me over. He was a throwback like me: trench coat, hat, even a little cigar. Met him standing in a puddle of water at one of Kelty’s building sites. Nodded a greeting, followed his stare to the bottom of the excavation. Where a guy a lot like us was lying. Except he was dead.

  But it was the way he was dead; I saw it right off. Face and hands white as fish, even the eyes sort of drained. It wasn’t that cold out, either. Something was wr
ong.

  “You did some work for this stiff, didn’t you, Tom,” Crandall stated.

  “Nope, for his bride. He almost killed me for boffing her in the process, but since I helped her into his arms, he let it go.”

  “Whatever. But what we’ve got here, Rudolph, is motive—his dough, for Chrissake—opportunity—his wife—all of it, but no cause of death.” Crandall shrugged. “Or I oughta say, a cause so weird it makes me want to retire at last.”

  I shifted my feet out of the puddle; the police department wouldn’t buy me new shoes. And I let it ride that he thought Monique did it. “So tell me,” I said.

  He rattled it off. “No heart attack. No fall into this big hole. No gunshot wound. No knife. Doc says no poison.

  “Nope, this Kelty had every drop of blood drained out of him instead. And we still can’t figure how.”

  The coroner’s men were bringing the body up now, slipping in the mud, and I couldn’t see how, either. Nothing visible on the neck, like with a stuck pig. Nothing on the backs of the wrists; only fools thought you cut the fronts. And no blood, anywhere: he must have been dumped, or staggered in.

  I looked at Crandall. “So what the hell do you want me to do about it, Sarge?”

  He put a hand on my shoulder. “Simple, Tom. You know the merry widow. Get close to her again. See what you can find.”

  Without mentioning money, he walked away. But he must have known Monique well enough to figure I’d be drawn into the web.

  I found her early that evening, in a big house in the suburbs. Red brick Colonial, circular driveway, old trees, the whole ball of wax. My ’83 import sputtered to a stop, eyed condescendingly by the butler at the door. Monique was in a huge room with a fireplace, sheets of rain hitting the leaded windows. She wasn’t wearing black, but her dress was a darker shade of blue.

  “You’ve done pretty well for yourself,” I said, settling into a chair. I took a pull on the straight Wild Turkey she poured me.

  “Yes, Tom,” her low voice answered. And that voice, plus the way she looked, hit me right between the legs.

  If Monique had been eighteen or so when I first saw her, and the best-looking B-girl in the world, now her twenty-three and her new life made her the best in the world, period. She was centerfold, movie star, Society woman, all in one. Her classy yet sensual face, breasts, rear, those long legs…oh, hell.

  “They think I did it, don’t they?” she sighed, arranging herself across from me.

  “You always were up front,” I said. “Yeah, they do.”

  She fixed me with her blue eyes. “Well, then it’s up to me to put you right. I’ve been thinking about it myself.” She paused. “Maybe if we think like the killer, if I can get you thinking like the killer…isn’t that how it’s done?”

  I didn’t really know what she meant, not then. But I didn’t care.

  Because she was rising like a goddess, pulling me up…leading my hard-used body to the hallway, to some wide, winding stairs. To a room that was all blue ruffles, and a bed the size of a football field.

  Where, with a smile, she got naked as the day I’d first seen her dancing, and took me to heaven again.

  “Damn, your husband just died this morning,” I said, waking afterward, stroking her spun-gold mound.

  Monique shrugged, playing with her long blond hair. “You know me well enough, Tom. I hooked. I even had a guy or two die in the saddle. No point not letting life go on.”

  “Right,” I answered. When I was lying with her, everything was all right with me.

  We got dressed, and she saw me downstairs to the door. We hadn’t done much “thinking” together, just boffing, but already I was feeling sort of different. If Monique had killed Kelty, if I could find out the all-important “how,” I wasn’t in as big a hurry to do it now. Hell, I wasn’t in much of a hurry to do anything; I drove back to the city feeling a bit drowsy, drained. That was when I should have known what was happening; thinking back on it, that was when the change began.

  When I got to my office, Sergeant Crandall was waiting. He was sprawled in my swivel chair, muddy feet propped up on my oak desk.

  “How the hell did you get in here?” I grunted.

  “Credit card. You really oughta get a better lock, Rudolph.”

  I poured us both an Early Times, sat down on the couch across from him. “You find out anything more from the body?”

  “New. Not a mark on him. ’Cept for a couple of shaving cuts, guy was clean as a whistle.” He took a sip. “You?”

  “Nope. If the merry widow did it, she’s cool as ice.” I paused. “Like she was our age or older, not a creamy-skinned twenty-three.”

  Crandall eyed me, got up to go. “You be careful, Tom. Wouldn’t want it said I got you back into something, if you know what I mean.”

  I smiled weakly. “Yeah. Okay.”

  I went down and got a bite at one of the lunch counters, then shot a little pool. But I felt tireder than I had in years, so I hit the couch at ten p.m. Must have slept like a baby, too, because the next thing I knew it was daylight, at least nine. There was traffic in the street, and my phone was ringing.

  I stumbled over. “Thomas Rudolph Investigations.”

  “Hello, Tom? It’s Monique. I wondered if we might get together for some more thinking tonight.”

  Even over the phone, that low voice had me. But I knew I literally wouldn’t be up for her again, not that soon. I felt half unconscious already, without her making me that way in her arms.

  “Listen,” I wheezed. “Give me a couple of days. Got some work to do.”

  “Well, all right, Tom. I want you, but with Kelty gone, I do have all the time in the world.”

  So I spent those days around the office, clearing up some paperwork on other cases. But I still felt a little detached. It was small things: dropping a pencil, apparently nicking myself while shaving and not even noticing it until later. When the night rolled around, though, I went to the woman in blue.

  This time the butler was gone, and she opened the door in her underwear. I couldn’t believe how great she looked: blond hair over one eye like Veronica Lake, the tiniest powder-blue bra and panties. Her high round breasts, flat belly, exposed behind, barely hidden mound made me rise like gangbusters, despite my tiredness.

  We did it on a soft couch in the paneled library. I was aware of some ancient leather books, but not much else. She seemed to carry me far off into space and time; like they said in the 1960s, to put me through changes. I didn’t even know when it was over; I must have gone on to sleep. Woke up with a stiff neck, still lying there, and Monique sitting nude in a chair opposite.

  “I think you’re beginning to know something, Tom,” she said mysteriously.

  She was right. If I didn’t know it, I sensed it, and that was good enough for me. Maybe later I’d have doubts, but then.…

  So I spent the rest of the night with her, then ran the car back downtown. And, in the predawn weirdness, the patches of gray fog I met on the road, I decided a couple of things. One, that I’d tell Crandall I couldn’t find out anything; get him once and for all off Monique’s case.

  And two, that I’d see her, like a charm, for another, a third time.

  I slept the next day away. Didn’t feel hungry somehow, not even thirsty for bourbon. Did go out about twilight for a game of pinball, a rare steak and some fries. Wandered down to a nude bar, sat and nursed a red wine, unusual for me. Watched the naked flesh onstage, was surprised to find my mouth was watering. Thought I was too old, too hardened for that.

  Then I walked wearily back to the office, pulled my swivel chair over to the window, turned out the lights and sat watching the city. It was raining, and the gray soup matched the inside of my mind.

  But I wasn’t sleepy. No, all night, I wasn’t sleepy.

  A couple of days passed that way. Crandall did p
hone, and I got rid of him. Then Monique called, and, like a lamb to the slaughter, I went out there once more.

  She met me wearing a long, flowing robe, so dark blue it at first looked black. Her creamy skin, what I could see of it, had an unaccustomed pallor. I reached out, thinking to lead her up to the bedroom or at least to the library couch. But she shook her blond head no. With a mysterious smile, an upraised finger, she had me follow her someplace else.

  To a plain door beneath the winding main staircase, and down some plain wooden steps. To the cool, stone basement, lit by a few hanging bulbs.

  To the corner where it was hidden, behind some old trunks. The coffin, that looked as old as time itself.

  I must have shrunk back; I even reached for my .38. But Monique took it out of my hand, flipped open the cylinder, let the bullets fall to the packed-earth floor. Then, with a graceful motion to her throat, she cast aside her robe and stood before me in all her beautiful, unabashed nudity. And smiled again, wider than I’d ever seen her smile before.

  Though I’d try to deny it later, that was when I really knew. Knew that Kelty must have known eventually, too. No wonder she’d been working in a nude bar, where there were endless men to almost casually…kiss. No wonder, in the cold, modern city, she’d soon hooked up with one who’d been able to support her in the style to which she’d been long accustomed.

  “But why…?” I gasped. My bowels were loose, knees weakening, yet not from desire.

  Now Monique did put her hands on my shoulder; I inhaled a strange perfume. “It’s simple, Tom,” she replied. “He was no good, only a means to an end. When he found out after a while, I made his second time…his last.” She paused. “My, did I have a feast that night; I was sick all the next day, before you came to me! Then I just had the butler—one like me—help me put the body in the Rolls and dump it where it was found.”

  She threw back her classy head, laughed. There they were, fully revealed in all their sharp, twin, enameled glory, and any doubt was gone.

  “But don’t worry, Mr. Tom Rudolph,” Monique concluded, her low voice full of the allure of a thousand years. “You see, I’ve always liked you. Maybe it’s because you’re a throwback to the past; I know a lot about that. So when I saw you were on my case, I decided to give you something, something precious. To let you live, instead. To get you to think like me, and then…”