by Ed McBain
She gasped, “You've no right. I'll report you."
"I don't think you will, and I'll tell you why.” I took my time relighting my cigarette while she lay sniffling. “You try making a complaint and I'll haul you in for prostitution."
Holly Laird gawked at me as if she couldn't believe I was real.
"Soliciting,” I said. “I came up here to question you and you wanted to do some business. Your price was twenty bucks."
"You—you wouldn't!"
"If you make me, sure I would. I don't have to make the charge stick. All I have to do is take you in and charge you, that's enough. Word would get to your home town, to your folks. People are ready to believe anything about an actress. How'll your folks feel? How'll they be able to face their friends and neighbors? You want that to happen?"
She pushed her face into the pillow. She cried some more. I stood looking down at her.
After a minute she wiped her eyes on the corner of the blanket. “Please, please let me alone."
"Sure, miss,” I said. “Glad to. All you have to do is tell me the truth."
She jumped out of the bed. The blanket trailed after her and then dropped away from her, and she was a white-and-rose form dashing toward the bathroom where she could lock herself in.
I lunged and caught her by her loose golden hair that was like Martha's.
Her head jerked back and she uttered a shrill cry, and she stood there with her head way back, held back by her hair bunched in my hand. “Talk!” I said. She started to whimper like something small and hurt and helpless, and with her head back like that I could see her eyes bulging not so much with pain as with terror.
I don't know why I let her go. Maybe she was at the breaking point and just a little more and she would have broken. Like a slap across the face. I'd learned that a slap, almost more than anything else, makes even the tough ones go to pieces. But my hand fell away from that golden hair.
Outside in the street there were traffic noises, but it was very quiet in the room. That tiredness was in me, going deeper than bone and muscle.
Holly was across the room at the closet. The nightgown clung to her back. She reached in and pulled out a robe. As she was putting it on, the doorbell rang.
She turned then, tying the cord of the robe. Her eyes were dead.
"Remember,” I said, “you don't want me to pull you in for soliciting."
She just looked at me.
3.
The bell rang again. She went to the door and opened it.
In the hall a cheerful voice said, “Morning, sweetheart. Hope we didn't drag you out of bed."
"No. Come in."
Bill Burnett stepped into the apartment. He was what they call the juvenile lead, the love interest in the plays. He had wavy hair and good shoulders and a pretty face.
He wasn't alone. Behind him came George Hoge, the director. He was one of those slim, intense, nervous guys who always had a cigarette on his lip.
They stopped when they saw me. I'd had both of them on the grill yesterday; everybody connected with the theater had been questioned. I nodded to them and they nodded to me.
"Anything up?” Burnett asked.
"A man was murdered the other night,” I said. “Remember?"
"Very funny,” Hoge said sourly.
I rolled the cigarette in my mouth.
They were looking at Holly. She stood barefooted, holding her robe together. She wet her lips and said, “Detective Taylor has been asking me questions.” She turned her face to me without looking at me. “Is there anything else you want of me?"
"Yeah. One thing. You know what it is."
"I told you all I know."
I grinned at her and she cringed. Then I said to the two men, “What's this, a conference or something?"
Hoge answered, the cigarette bobbing in the corner of his mouth. “I brought the script of our next play.” He tapped the briefcase under his arm. “I want to go over it with Holly and Bill, who will have the leads. A repertory company like ours must always be preparing one play ahead."
"That all you folks have on your mind?” I sneered.
"Of course, it's been rough, losing Mr. Ambler, who has done so much for us, and on top of that you policemen disrupting everything. But the show must go on, you know."
"That so?” I started toward the door and stopped. Burnett had his arm around Holly's waist and she was leaning against him. I said, “I didn't annoy you too much, did I, miss?"
She hesitated, but not long enough for anybody but me to notice it. “No,” she said.
I struck a match. They watched me silently, all three of them. I rolled the flame around the tip of the cigarette and blew out the match and left the apartment.
4.
Five minutes after I was at my desk the Skipper called me on the phone from his office down the hall.
"Why didn't you report in this morning, Gus?"
"I've been out trying to catch me a killer,” I said.
"None of your lip, Gus. I'm having a tough enough time with the Mayor and the Commissioner. Seems they think it's against the law for big-shots like John Ambler to be murdered and want me to do something about it. As if I haven't got the whole department looking for knives and witnesses. Who'd you see?"
"The killer,” I said. “The girl."
"How'd you make out?"
"Not so good. But I will."
"Look, Gus. You may be a bit too—uh—single-minded. We don't know enough at this time to be able to concentrate on one suspect."
"You call her the suspect. I'll call her the killer."
There was a silence on the line. Then the Skipper said, “All right, Gus, keep at it,” and hung up.
I went through the reports of the half a dozen other detectives working along with me on the case. Nothing.
I sat back in the chair and lit a cigarette. When I'd had her by the hair in her apartment, I should have kept the pressure up. A little more pain, a couple of slaps across her damned pretty face, and she might have broken before Burnett and Hoge had arrived. But I'd let her go. I'd let her walk to the closet with that clinging rose nightgown molding every curve of the back of her.
I closed my eyes, remembering how sometimes I would come home from lunch and find Martha not yet dressed, puttering around the house in nothing but a sheer nightgown, with her golden hair unpinned and loose down her back. I would pull her down on my lap and stroke that hair and bury my face in it, and I would push down her nightgown and spread her hair over the fullness of her breasts, making a golden, transparent net over the white, richly curving flesh. But then she would smile and she would say, “Not in the daytime,” and I would say, “What's wrong with the daytime?” and she would say, “I've got to get your lunch,” and wriggle off me, tugging up the straps, and head for the bedroom, her nightgown clinging, her hair flowing, and come out wearing a housecoat. Not in the daytime, and toward the end seldom at night either. Because by then there must have been the accountant, the skinny guy I never suspected, and one evening there had been that note from her saying she would never be back. She never was.
Something snapped. It was a pencil I had been holding between my fingers. I stared at the two pieces and then dropped them into the wastebasket. After a while I went out to lunch.
When I returned, Bill Burnett was waiting for me outside the headquarters building.
He stood against the wall, and when he saw me he came out on the sidewalk to meet me. Both his hands were sunk deep in the pockets of his jacket and there was a fever in his eyes. I could guess what had happened.
"If you ever go near her again,” he said, “I'll kill you."
Burnett's right pocket bulged more than his left, which meant that was where he had it. “What are you talking about?” I said, watching his right hand.
"You beat Holly up, you bastard!"
"She told you I did?"
"I made her. After George Hoge left. I knew something had happened. She'd been crying. She didn't want to te
ll me. You'd threatened her, frightened her, I don't know how. But I made her tell me,” He took his left hand out of his pocket and put it on my arm. “I'm warning you, I'll kill you!"
Imagine a pretty-faced actor punk trying to throw his weight around with me! I drove my left up to his jaw. It slammed him back against the wall where he'd been waiting for me.
That was a busy street and a couple of women seeing me hit him screamed. They didn't bother me. I leaped after him and rammed my fist into his belly.
I'll say this for the actor—he wasn't soft. Most other men would have gone down after having been socked twice by me. He stayed on his feet, swaying, and his right hand came out of his pocket. I could have beaten him to it with my own gun, but I couldn't be bothered with a punk like that. I swung at his pretty face, and that did it. He slid down along the wall.
His right hand was in sight and empty. But there was a gun in his pocket, as I'd guessed. Hardly more than a toy, a .22 automatic, but at close range it could have done damage.
Burnett wasn't out. Sobbing brokenly, he was trying to get up to his feet. I raked his face with his own gun, slashing a bloody swath down his cheek.
He wasn't so pretty any more.
By then people were all around us. A woman was shrieking, “Stop that man! Stop him!” I tried to explain that I was a cop, but I couldn't be heard. Then three harness bulls poured out of the building. They knew me, of course. I told them the punk had tried to assault me with a gun and let them take charge of him.
Burnett was sitting up, holding his bleeding face. He was able to walk hanging onto two of the harness bulls. I followed them in and had the desk sergeant book him for armed assault. After he was patched up, he was thrown into the can.
If I had any regrets, it was the one I usually felt at a time like this—that the guy I had beaten up hadn't been the accountant who had run off with Martha.
5.
Yesterday John Ambler's wife had been questioned along with a lot of other people, but since then a question or two had come up that hadn't been asked her. Especially about Holly Laird. I drove up to that big fieldstone house on the hill and found her on a side terrace with George Hoge.
She was stretched out on a chaise longue, getting the sun on her body. Since all she had on were a pair of shorts and a skimpy halter, plenty of her body got it. Hoge sat on the grass, a cigarette bobbing in the corner of his mouth as he talked to her. They both looked up when they saw me appear around the corner of the house.
"Hello, Gus,” Celia Ambler greeted me. She sounded very cheerful considering she'd become a widow so recently.
"You seem to know each other well,” Hoge said, surprised.
"Oh, but we do. Gus and I went to high school together here in Coast City.” She stretched like a kitten, her tanned skin rippling. “I imagine, Gus, you're here strictly in your professional capacity."
"Why else? What's the chance of seeing you alone for a few minutes?"
"George was just about to go.” She threw him a smile. “Weren't you, George?"
His pinched, intense face scowled. “Everywhere today I keep running into this cop. But all right, I'm dismissed.” He got to his feet. “Then it's agreed, Celia. You'll continue to support the theater as generously as John did."
"I said only for the remainder of the season. After that, we'll see.” She turned her head to me. “Poor George is worried about his job."
"That's not so,” he said indignantly. “I can make ten times as much in Hollywood. Any time. But I prefer working in a little theater. It gives one a chance to fully express oneself.” He took the cigarette out of his mouth for the first time since I'd arrived; it was less than an inch long. “How is the case going, officer?"
"We're getting there."
"I hope you do. Thanks for giving me your time, Celia.” He walked off across the terrace.
When he was gone, Celia Ambler sat up. She pulled her halter up a bit, but it didn't do any good. She continued to bulge lushly over it. She was a full-bodied fine-looking woman who, you'd think, would make a man want to stay home more than her husband had.
"More questions, Gus?” she asked.
"A few. When your husband didn't come home night before last, why didn't you report it to the police? Weren't you worried?"
"I didn't know he wasn't home until a policeman came and told me he had been found dead in his car."
"That was around nine in the morning."
"I assumed he was in his room asleep. You see, we had separate bedrooms."
"Uh-huh. There's the penalty of being rich."
"Not necessarily, but in our case that was the way we preferred it."
"You didn't get along, eh?"
"Gus, you're not suspecting me?” She seemed to be amused at the notion.
I didn't tell her I knew who'd killed him. There was no point until I could prove it. I said, “I'm merely trying to get things straight, that's all. What do you know about Holly Laird?"
"She's a competent actress."
"I mean Holly Laird and your husband."
"Oh.” Her fingers trailed along a bare, sun-baked thigh. “I really have no idea. As a matter of fact, I understand that she and Bill Burnett are very much in love with each other."
"That doesn't answer my question."
"I suppose it doesn't, if you want to be cynical. It's no secret that John had a penchant for sweet young girls. Holly would have filled the bill."
"And you didn't care?"
Her tan shoulders shrugged. “John and I had an understanding. We each lived our own life. I didn't question him and he didn't question me.” She gave me a sidelong glance. “Does that shock you, Gus?"
"What's the difference if it shocks me or doesn't? I just want the truth."
"Well, I didn't kill him. In a detached sort of way, I was rather fond of him."
"Yeah. Fond of being the wife of a rich man."
"Why, Gus, I didn't think you cared,” she said brightly. “We haven't seen each other in so many years, and even in high school we never went out together. Don't tell me you've been carrying the torch for me?"
So that was what she was, a teaser, even with a cop she had never known well. Me, I'd never had a thought for her.
I growled, “Don't flatter yourself."
"Shouldn't I?” She got off the chaise longue and ran her hands sensuously over her half-naked body. “Look at me, Gus. Don't you think I have a right to flatter myself?"
"All right, you've got a body."
She was standing close to me; she made me uneasy. “Now about your husband's other girl friends?"
"I can't answer. I told you I hadn't been interested. But you, Gus—do you know I had a crush on you in high school? You didn't give me a tumble. You were the big football hero, so strong, so virile-looking. You still are, you know, only more manly."
And she kissed me.
There under the hot sun, wearing next to nothing, and more likely than not with the servants watching from the house, she pressed herself against me and kissed me.
It was a long time since I'd been kissed like that by any woman. It felt good, to my mouth, to my body, to my hands, but at the same time it made me sick to my stomach. Her husband wasn't dead two days, and here she was. And if he had been alive, she wouldn't have acted any differently. They'd had an understanding, she'd said. And I didn't think she went for me in particular. Almost any man would have done who appealed to her at all.
The bitch! Like Martha. Like Holly Laird. Like every goddamn woman.
I tore her arms from around me and shoved her so hard she fell back against the chaise longue and sat down on it. I said, “I'd like to wring the necks of every one of you,” and strode off without a backward glance at her.
I hadn't any more questions, and those I'd asked hadn't gotten me anywhere. I was shaking all over as I climbed into my car.
6.
Back at headquarters, I learned that Detective Lou Fox had found a witness. He had been assigned to question e
verybody in Holly Laird's building, in front of which the murder had taken place, and he had come up with a teen-aged girl named Ann Danderman. He left off typing up his report to tell me about it.
"This kid lives a couple of floors below Holly Laird. Seventeen. Real pretty. She was out on a date and the guy brought her home around eleven. Her folks had told her to be home by eleven-thirty, so of course they hung around necking in the doorway for half an hour. There's a street lamp close by and she could see a car parked at the curb and Holly Laird sitting in it with a man. She knew Holly well by sight, being a fan of hers. She didn't know Ambler and didn't see him clearly, but it must have been him."
"Were they making love?"
"You mean Holly and Ambler in the car? The girl says no. Just talking. At eleven-thirty sharp Ann went upstairs. The two in the car were still talking."
"Is that all she saw?"
"It's something. We got them spotted out there from eleven to at least eleven-thirty."
"Does the Skipper know about this?"
"I told him first thing I got back,” Lou Fox said. “By the way, he said send you in as soon as you showed up. He's sore at you."
I went down the hall to the Skipper's office. A captain has an easy life. He was tilted back in his swivel-chair, cleaning his fingernails.
"This time you've gone too far,” he said as soon as I had the door closed behind me. “A dozen witnesses saw you beat up Burnett in the street."
"He had a gun in his pocket. Did you want me to give him a chance to plug me first?"
"They say you slashed him with his gun after you'd taken it away."
"So I got a little excited. Wouldn't you be if somebody was out to shoot you down?"
The Skipper leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk. He had a beak like an eagle's and small, dark eyes that could bore right through you. He said, “If somebody slapped around the girl I loved, I think maybe I'd lose my head too and grab a gun and go after the guy."
"What're you talking about?"
"He told me that's what you did this morning to Holly Laird."
"He's nuts.” I drew on my cigar. “Did you ask her?"
The Skipper lost some of his fire and I knew it was all right. “I spoke to her on the phone."
