Night Kills

by Ed Gorman

  From his office he answered Foster's third phone call. "How's it going, pally?"

  "Better than I would have expected, I guess."

  "I wish I could get out of my lunch plans."

  "You've got to see Fenwick. No doubt about it."

  "What're you going to do?"

  "For lunch?"

  "Yeah."

  "Dunno yet." Pause. "Have you seen Kathleen yet this morning?"

  Foster paused, too. Foster and his wife, Dana, were always trying to line Brolan up with somebody. Somebody who was-in Dana's inelegant phrase-marriage material. To the Fosters, Kathleen Logan did not qualify. They saw her as the femme fatale of Twin Cities advertising. At thirty-five, ambitious in an almost chilling way, she'd already caused two legendary marital splits on her way to her vice presidency at Brolan-Foster. Foster said, "Can I be honest, pally?"

  "Okay."

  "With all the troubles you've got right now, do you really need to be worrying about Kathleen?"

  "Isn't that sort of my business?"

  "You getting pissed?"

  "Yeah. Sort of."

  Foster sighed. "It's your life, pally." Irritation sounded clearly in his carefully selected words. Then he softened his tone. "Hang in there."

  Brolan's tone changed, too. "I appreciate everything, Foster. I really do."

  "I know, pally. I know."

  ***

  Around eleven-thirty there was a knock on his door. He looked up from the storyboards he had on his desk. The boards depicted a new blue snowblower sucking up all the snow on an entire block and changing a winter scene to deep summer. It was a great visual idea if the right special effects man could be found on the West Coast "Yes?"

  "It's Kathleen."

  "Oh."

  It was strange, he thought. Here he was, ass-deep in the worst trouble of his life-a dead woman in a freezer in his basement, for God's sake-yet he still brooded over his love life. In St. Cloud prison you didn't have a love life. Or not the kind Brolan preferred, anyway.

  She came in. That morning she wore a dark blue suede shirtdress with matching belt, white nylons, and pumps that matched the tint of the dress. Her ash-blonde hair was glossily arranged in a pageboy, her gorgeous blue eyes showed no hint of sleep lines, and her eminently kissable mouth was neatly stained the colour of blood. When she parted her lips to smile, he looked at teeth so white, they would have made a dentist weep with joy. She said, "You seem to have left about ten notes on my desk."

  "I wanted to talk to you."

  "You know how Shirley loves drama." Shirley was Kathleen's tirelessly gossipy secretary. "Maybe you don't care about your reputation among the employees, but I do." She stared straight at him. "I really tried to be nice last night."

  "I just want you to be honest, Kathleen."

  Closing the door behind her, she came a little farther into his office.

  She said, "You look pretty bad."

  "Thank you."

  "I meant that in a friendly way."

  He sighed. "I know you did. I'm sorry for my mood."

  She came over and leaned down and kissed him. He couldn't tell at that rushing moment which made him dizzier-the intoxicating aroma of her perfume or the touch of her soft lips on his.

  "I'm not trying to be a bitch about this," she said. "I really do need some space to think."

  "You have any plans for lunch?"

  "That's why I got in late this morning. I'm working out Kilgore's next ad budget with him personally. We met for breakfast. He wants me to meet him for lunch, too."

  She turned and faced him, once again, as if to say: Go ahead, Brolan, accuse me of sleeping with my clients. I dare you. He thought of well-tanned, fleshy, white-haired Harry Kilgore. He looked like a TV minister. Actually he owned a chain of eighty computer stores. He'd been one of the few people to survive the computer boom and bust of the mid-eighties. Many ad agencies had overextended credit to computer hotshots and had been forced out of business when the hotshots took bankruptcy. But not Kilgore. Kilgore became a millionaire many times over.

  Brolan did wonder if she was sleeping with him, of course. "And to get back to my office," she said. "I'm only here for a few minutes."

  He stood up and walked over and took her by the elbows and drew her to him. He started to say something-something that would partly be rage and partly be the tenderness he felt for her despite everything-yet when his mouth opened, no words came out.

  She leaned over and kissed him on the mouth again. He felt an exhilaration he could scarcely contain. He wanted to grab her and make love to her right there in the office. He wanted to shake her till she came to her senses and agreed that they should plan a life together.

  But he said nothing; nothing.

  "Kilgore says to say hello," she said as she walked back to the door. She gave him a cute little wave. And was gone; gone.

  6

  TWO YEARS BEFORE, for Christmas, he'd bought them both computers complete with modems. He used his for all sorts of purposes, but mostly she used hers to write her 'novel.' Actually it was more of a diary than anything else. All about how a young girl came from a Minnesota farm town and worked for a time at a law office and then met some rich young men and then changed her life considerably by becoming a special kind of prostitute. She never worked the streets; she never worked the bars. Taxi drivers couldn't tell you anything about her, and homy salesman in town for a convention would never set eyes on her. But she was a prostitute nonetheless.

  There was a man Greg Wagner hated a great deal, and it was the man who made all of Emma's appointments for her. He specialized in rich men, and to his credit, he was careful never to allow anybody very kinky to be with Emma. About the worst it ever got-according to Emma's computer diary-was a man who wanted to wear Emma's silk underwear while they were doing it. In her diary Emma noted that the whole incident had struck her as being one-half funny and one-half sad, one of those confounding things in life that you can't quite figure out. There were a lot of things in her diary about the men she was with. In her sweet way Emma had liked most of them. Particularly Mr. Pinkham. Emma always included Mrs. Pinkham in her nightly prayers, though she sensed from Mr. Pinkham's drab mood that chances for Mrs. Pinkham's survival were pretty slim.

  Greg Wagner always read her diary. This required no great skill on his part. Because both computers had modems, he could simply link up and read away. Emma not only knew about this but encouraged it as well. One of the reasons she'd wanted a computer (she'd wanted to pay for it, but Greg insisted it was a gift) was so that she could learn to write. She was a great fan of horror fiction, and someday she wanted to write a novel that would "scare the willies" out of everybody. She especially liked strong female protagonists, the way they could be both tender and tough when need be. This was how she saw herself, she'd often confided to Greg. In truth, of course, she wasn't tough at all. She let her pimp, Kellogg, run her life completely.

  Three times Greg had offered to loan her the money to start life anew (life had been both malicious and charitable to Greg; true, he'd been born with spina bifida, but he'd also inherited about 3.2 million in real estate). And she'd almost made it, once especially. But Kellogg was a charmer-not only handsome but cunning and pleasing in the way of many sociopaths. And so, again she would fall back-"Just a few more appointments, Greg, I promise, and then I'll quit for sure." But she never did. She wrote at her novel every day-she'd read an old John Steinbeck interview wherein Steinbeck recommended three pages a day for those "serious about writing," and so, virtually without fail, she did three pages a day in the saga of her life.

  And once a week or so Greg, finished buying new movie icons and viewing shipments of videotapes (he'd recently finished a run of serials set in the jungle, Jungle Jim and Nyoka the Jungle Girl being especially good), would tap into her computer and read what she'd written. Then he'd write her a page or two of criticism. Gentle, constructive criticism as to how she might improve this sentence or better begin that paragra
ph. How appreciative she was-soft, moist, grateful kisses on his cheeks and forehead, as if she were trying to prove to him that she found him perfectly acceptable the way he was…

  In fact women did find Greg quite handsome, whatever the rest of the world might think about him. He was, of course, desperately and painfully in love with her. This was an affliction suffered by many men, men with spina bifida included-invariably falling in love with perfectly formed women who could be theirs only in fantasy. There was a ludicrous side to this-in none of the various versions did the Hunchback of Notre Dame ever win the woman-but there was also a tragic side. Greg had seen other men in wheelchairs like his become suicidal over the fact that they could never possess the beautiful woman they'd fallen in love with. During his therapy sessions with Dr. Stephenson Greg had learned that he was attracted to gorgeous normal women so he could punish himself. ("Couldn't it be that I just like good-looking women?" Greg had said laughingly to the doctor.) But this was before he'd met Emma, before he'd rented her the other side of his duplex, before he'd fallen so helplessly in love with her. After that it was to hell with Dr Stephenson's maxims. It was better to love somebody unobtainable than to love nobody at all. For all the grief there was a commensurate joy-having her stop over a few times a day, always calling before she went out in the evening, many times getting home early and sitting up with him and watching some old movie with Alice Faye or John Hodiak. Yes, it was better to love somebody unobtainable than to love nobody at all. This was Greg's deepest truth.

  In the morning Greg had sweet rolls for breakfast Two of them and with large wipes of butter. The doctors at the therapy centre were already grousing about his weight You've got to exercise more, Greg. But that morning he was so tired, he needed a sugar high to get going. In addition to a caffeine high, that is. He also had a Diet Pepsi and two cups of coffee.

  He was ready.

  Sometime during the night-half-awake, listening for her familiar footsteps next door but realizing, too, that she was gone from him forever-sometime during the night he'd suddenly recalled something she'd said to him about a very strange thing that Kellogg had wanted her to do. She'd pleaded with Kellogg that she didn't want to do it, but he'd said it was important, and that she'd damned well better do it

  But Greg couldn't remember what it was.

  Something…

  His only real hope was the computer. Perhaps she'd written about this, and he could tap into it

  After being properly charged by all the sweets, he rolled into his book-lined den. Indian summer had spoiled him. He was used to a flood of warm sunlight splashing across the hardwood floor. But not that day. Grey sky and chill temperature boded snow.

  He moved over to the computer, turned on the power, and proceeded, over the next forty-five minutes, to tap into her diary.

  It was almost shamefully easy, the way he found what he was looking for so quickly.

  Around three-thirty that afternoon, after a lunch of sliced-ham sandwiches and a piece of pumpkin pie, and a good crime movie called The Falcon Goes to Hollywood, he phoned the guy.

  He did it right, too. He put a handkerchief over the receiver, and he lowered his voice.

  And he scared the hell out of the guy.

  That was the one thing Greg could tell for sure. How scared the guy was.

  Then, when he was finished, he lay back in his wheelchair and closed his eyes and thought of Emma, her face and her soft skin and the gentle way she'd always treated him. He knew he'd never see her again.

  ***

  In the afternoon Brolan looked at girls. Ordinarily this was the favourite part of his job. And why wouldn't it be? You sit in a fashionably appointed screening room and look at videotapes of women of every description looking their best. The object was to find a new Stolda's ice cream TV pitchwoman, the former one having landed a part in a cable-system sitcom. You look at films of women, videotapes of women, glossies of women-and sometimes the local talent agencies even send women over live. Today, however, they were all on tape.

  Sometime after lunch he had started smoking again. At first it had been a few puffs on a mooched cigarette. Soon enough he'd asked one of the couriers to go get him a pack of cigarettes. His plans were to put in a reasonably full day-be no more or no less cheery than he ever was-and then to start backtracking the dead woman by going to the bar where he'd met her. Maybe the bartender there could at least give him a name and therefore a starting point. ‹

  "She's gorgeous," Tim Culhane, the production manager said.

  Brolan's attention returned to the screen. "She is gorgeous. Too gorgeous."

  "You want frumpy?"

  "Not frumpy. Just somebody who won't put other women off."

  Actually the woman on the screen reminded him in some dark way of Kathleen. Desire and anger worked through him as he recognized the similarity between the women. He still couldn't believe that even when he was so deeply in trouble, Kathleen could have this effect on him.

  "Why don't we look at the next one?" Brolan said.

  Brolan sat at the front of the sloping screening room. There were twenty movie theatre seats. In front of the large movie screen was a forty-five-inch video screen. This was what they'd been using the past hour.

  The next one up was cute and perky. Brolan did not usually like cute-and-perky, but since it was the polar opposite of Kathleen, cute-and-perky looked great.

  "How about her?" Brolan said.

  "Her?" Culhane sounded surprised. Tall, muscular, thanks to weight training and running, Culhane still wore his blonde hair shoulder-length-but it was sculpted hair, Hollywood hair, and bore no kinship to the sixties or flower power or any of that. He was handsome in a somewhat overly dramatic way, always posing, and given to the sort of loose-fitting, expensive sports clothes you found on the West Coast. Brolan and Culhane had never gotten along, but the past six months had been especially bad. Brolan, who was solely in charge of promoting creative people, had passed Culhane over in favour of someone else for an executive job. Culhane was neither a forgiving nor understanding man. "She looks like the girl next door."

  "She's cute."

  "Last time I checked, you hated cute."

  Brolan sighed. "All right. Next one, then."

  The next one was redheaded and had the sort of reckless beauty that always got to Brolan. The most beautiful woman he'd ever seen in films was the young Rita Hayworth, and anybody who remotely resembled her was welcome to come into Brolan's life at any time.

  "God," Tim said. "She's great." He looked at the sheet that identified where each actress was from. "Chicago."

  "Much acting experience?"

  Culhane read silently for a few moments. "Actually quite a bit of stage work. Lot of dinner theatre but some small-theatre stuff, too. Peer Gynt and Hedda Gabler."

  Brolan nodded. He could see her as Hedda, one of his favourite creations. The remote beauty, the inscrutable motives. Not until then did he realize that Kathleen reminded him of Hedda, too.

  "Can you see her in a nice suburban dress, with a nice suburban manner, hawking ice cream?"

  "Absolutely," Culhane said.

  "Good. Then let's get her in here for an audition sometime soon."

  Moments after Tim flipped the switch on the VCR, the screen went dead. The screening room, which had a ceiling covered with acoustic tile, was quiet in an almost eerie way. That was why the door's creaking open at the rear of the room made such an unearthly noise, like fate announcing itself.

  Culhane looked up and said, "Oh, hi, Kathleen."

  Hearing her name, Brolan felt as if he were back in seventh grade. When the other boys knew you 'liked' a certain girl, but you were afraid to show them that you did. Brolan stared straight ahead, as if he found the empty screen fascinating.

  Culhane, obviously sensing the mood, took the videotape from the VCR put it back in its box, and said, "Well, I'd better be going. Think we made a good choice." He nodded goodbye.

  "Thanks, Tim," Brolan said. He had sti
ll not turned around.

  The closer she came, the more erotic her perfume got. He felt tense, angry, yet desperate to see her.

  She walked down the sloping aisle until she was two rows of seats past him. She looked so trim, her calves perfect, her ankles a dream. She turned around and faced him.

  "Kilgore has added thirty percent to his next year's advertising budget," she said.

  "Great."

  "That's pretty big news, isn't it?"

  Kathleen always liked to be complimented.

  "It's very big news," he said. "Good work." He had to remember that he was her boss as well as her lover. Or at least one of her lovers.

  She said, "That isn't really why I came in here."

  "No?"

  "No. I wanted to say that I'm sorry about this morning."

  "Oh." He cleared his throat, not knowing exactly what words to shape.

  "I'm still in love with you," she said.

  Seventh grade again. Or at least not adulthood. He felt embarrassed and happy beyond imagining and terrified, all at the same time. Maybe especially terrified because falling in love with Kathleen was scary stuff.

  "I love you, too," he said.

  "Maybe we can get through this."

  "I hope so."

  She had come no closer to him. Nor he to her. "I'm really trying to work through some things. I-I'd like a little more time."

  How could he say no, after she'd come to him with such an air of reconciliation?

  "All right," he said.

  She smiled. "Do I have to give you a dollar to come over here and kiss me?"

  She didn't even have to give him fifty cents.

  ***