The Spiked Heel

by Ed McBain

  Next time, use the right door, stupid, he further thought.

  She came back in about ten minutes, a sheared beaver coat slung over her arm. He could see the embroidered name “Jean Knowles” on the lining of the coat, and he knew she had borrowed it from her mother or her sister, and this somehow combined with the secondhand greeting she’d given him to put a sour taste in his mouth. He took the coat and helped her into it.

  “Will I need an umbrella?” she asked.

  “It was only drizzling when I came in,” he said.

  “Okay, we’ll skip the umbrella.” She smiled brightly. “Shall we go?”

  “Any time you say.”

  “I say now,” she said.

  She threw the snap lock on the apartment door and slammed the door behind her. When they reached the foyer of the building, they looked out at the sidewalk. It was pouring bullets, the rain coming in sharp slanting sheets.

  “Drizzle,” she said. “I’ll go back for the umbrella.”

  “I’ll come with you,” he said guiltily.

  “No, that’s all right.”

  He stood alone and looked out at the rain, waiting for her return. He was disappointed thus far, but he told himself to snap out of it, everything would work out, what the hell did he expect so soon, their first date, did he want her to greet him on the living-room couch, her skirt up over her head? The thought startled him a bit because he had not seriously considered the idea of taking Cara Knowles to bed until just now. He toyed with the idea for a moment, and then put it out of his mind, not realizing that the idea was all a part of his initial disappointment, not realizing that he had already disqualified her as any serious contender for his heart. When she returned with the umbrella, he opened it for her and stepped out into the rain first. It was a woman’s umbrella, dainty and small. She climbed under it and he found half of his body in the rain, and this annoyed the hell out of him, even though he’d willingly walked in the rain without any covering before.

  “We certainly picked a night, didn’t we?” she said.

  “It doesn’t matter much,” he told her. “We’ve got a car, and we’ll be inside most of the night anyway.”

  “I like rain, anyway,” she said. “Sometimes I just put on a raincoat and galoshes and go walking up the Concourse in the rain. It’s very soothing.”

  He had the feeling that she had said this many times, too. “Is it?” he asked.

  “If you like rain,” she answered, smiling.

  They reached the car, and he unlocked the door for her and helped her in. He went around to his side and stood in the rain for several moments before she realized his door was locked and slid over to open it for him.

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I didn’t realize—”

  “That’s all right,” he said. “Rain makes you grow.”

  “You’ve had enough tonight to make you another McQuade.”

  The reference bothered him. He told himself it was male vanity, but it still bothered him. He was not exactly a half pint, even if he were not as tall as McQuade. He started the car and swung around to the Concourse.

  “One good thing about rain,” he said, “it keeps folks at home. We’ll have a dance floor we can really dance on.”

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “I thought one of the places up on Central Avenue.”

  “Oh, fine,” she said. “This is a good night for drinking and dancing, don’t you think?”

  “Yes.” He wanted to say more but he couldn’t find words. He shut up, painfully aware of the silence that had shouldered its way into the car.

  “This is a nice car,” she said. “What is it?”

  “Oldsmobile,” he answered.

  “It’s very nice.”

  “Well, it gets me where I want to go.” The cliché rang in his ears. He almost winced.

  “That’s the important thing, I suppose.” She paused. “Did you notice I’m wearing Julien Kahn shoes?”

  “I noticed them right off. Black Magic.”

  “Is that their name?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “We make good shoes.”

  “Yes, of course.” Dammit, there it was again. Of course, of course, of course. “We’re one of the top houses,” he said lamely.

  “Have you been with the firm long?”

  “Eleven years,” he said.

  “Not really?”

  “Yes. Yes, I have. Why?”

  “No, it’s just that I don’t know anyone who’s been with anyplace for such a long time. You must really like your job.”

  “I do.”

  “I can see why it would be exciting. A fashion shoe, there’s always a little glamour that rubs off, I suppose.”

  “Don’t you like your job?”

  “Well, it’s all right. It gets a little dull sometimes, and Mr. Manelli isn’t exactly an exciting man to work for, if you know what I mean.”

  “He’s something of a clod,” Griff said. “I can see your point there.”

  “Do you like Manelli?”

  “Well …” Griff smiled. “Why don’t we forget all about Julien Kahn for a while, okay? We’ll pretend the factory doesn’t even exist.”

  “That would suit me fine,” Cara said.

  They went to a place called Skippy’s, and Griff was surprised to find it packed to the eyeballs, in spite of the rain. Their waiter took them to a table too close to the bandstand, but there was nothing else available, and they realized all the places along Central Avenue would probably be just as crowded. There was a good deal of noise in Skippy’s, and a good deal of smoke, and when the band started playing, they could barely hear each other speak. They fled to the dance floor. The floor was jampacked. Cara felt good in his arms, but it was almost impossible to dance, and he felt hot and awkward and clumsy. She was pressed tight against him, her body molded against his. He could feel the mounds of her breasts through the thin dress she was wearing, and below that the firmness of her stomach. He realized abruptly that no one on the floor was really dancing. It was a sort of vertical fornication exhibition, and the thought embarrassed him and he sensed Cara’s embarrassment at the same moment. It was as if they had been stripped naked and thrown against each other. Her body against his did not excite him; his embarrassment squashed any excitement he might have ordinarily felt, making him feel like a degenerate in a crowded subway car. He wondered if Cara thought he was enjoying this, and he wanted to say something about it, but he figured any mention of it would only aggravate the situation. For a brief moment, there was an open spot on the dance floor. He moved into it, and Cara pulled her body from his gently, and then the spot closed in upon them, shoving her against him with rude forcefulness, exaggerating their nakedness.

  “We’d better sit down,” he said.

  She nodded and smiled tremulously, but there was something of accusation in the smile. They fought their way back to the table, and he grasped for his drink anxiously.

  The trumpet player blasted away at his back.

  “It’s pretty crowded,” he shouted.

  “Yes,” she said. She seemed to want to adjust her clothes, like a prostitute after a brief tussle in bed with a stranger.

  “I had no idea—” he started, but a trombone behind him ended the sentence for him in a throaty growl which seemed never to finish. He waited until the piano chorus, and then he said, “This is a good night to get pleasantly looped, don’t you think?”

  “It might not be a bad idea,” she said, and then she sighed a curiously forlorn sigh.

  They began drinking in earnest. There was a feverishness about the way they drank. It was as if they both realized this evening was going to be a bust, and they had to do something about it, and damned fast. They had to dull their senses, they had to weave a fantasy which did not exist, they had to become a part of something they had both expected and which somehow had not materialized. They drank quickly, hardly tasting what they drank, drinking because they wanted to get as
high as possible as soon as possible. And perhaps because they drank so determinedly, their drunkenness was a long time coming, and even when it came, it produced a forced gaiety which was as strained as their earlier sobriety had been. The liquor put a high flush on Cara’s face, and it darkened the brownness of her eyes, giving her a somewhat feral expression which she had not worn at the start of the evening.

  “What’s the use?” she said to him thickly.

  “What’s what use?” he answered.

  “What’s the use?” she repeated, leaning over the table toward him. “You get a pattern, and then you got a pattern.”

  “You talking about shoes?” he asked, trying to keep her in focus.

  “People,” she said. “I’m talking about people.”

  “What about people?”

  “You’re a doll,” she said. “Mmmm, you’re a doll,” and there was something savage in her face now. Her lips were skinned back over her teeth, and her eyes held his unwaveringly. “Dance with me, doll,” she said.

  He looked at the animal expression on her face, and he told himself he was imagining the look. It was harsh and cold and in some way he could not make out it was curiously related to the expression he had noticed the first time he met her.

  “Come,” she said, “dance.” The word escaped her lips like a hiss. “Dance with me. Dance with me.”

  They went back into the churning morass of bodies on the floor, and this time they became a part of the exhibition. Where she had strained to keep her body away from his before, she did not resist now. Where he had tried to keep a loose arm around her waist earlier, he found his arm tightening now. They were naked again, but this time they had tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the evil was good, and they used their bodies together, and they enjoyed each other’s nakedness. He was excited this time, and he knew she could feel his excitement through the thinnness of her dress, and he felt her straining against him, and he pulled her closer and closer, tighter and tighter, and then all at once the shame hit both of them again, but this time it was a shame bred of guilt. The glow of the alcohol had suddenly evaporated, and with it the sham gay world they had consciously created. They pulled away from each other simultaneously, avoid each other’s eyes, not wanting to touch each other again. Their intimacy had been falsely generated. They had behaved like lovers when they were not yet even friends, and the knowledge was a little shocking—and a little disgusting.

  They left Skippy’s, and they drove down Central Avenue and then down Jerome Avenue and onto the Concourse. They did not speak much. They listened to the music on the radio, and they listened to the snickering slap of the windshield wipers and the gentle whisper of the tires against wet asphalt. They both knew the night had been a failure, and so they did not speak of it.

  Amazingly, they bore no enmity toward each other. They parted as friends who had been through something of an ordeal together. He told her he would see her on Monday, at the factory. She smiled and thanked him for a wonderful evening, and he lied back and said no, thank you. He unlocked her door for her, and she took his hand and squeezed it warmly for an instant, in perhaps the first honest display of emotion either of them had felt all evening long.

  He did not kiss her good night.

  She disappeared into the blackness of the waiting room, and then she closed the door gently.

  He walked out into the rain.

  7

  Dave Stiegman tapped the letter in his hand and then threw it across the desk to Ed Posnansky.

  “What the hell is this guy talking about?” he asked. It was a mild day for March, and from the sixteenth-floor suite of the Chrysler Building he could see New York lying at his feet.

  Posnansky extended his short thin frame and reached for the letter. He adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses and then began reading. Stiegman watched him, waiting for his reaction. In the street below, he could hear the moving stream of traffic and people. He suddenly wanted to go down there in the street, watching skirts blowing, seeing pretty legs. America has very pretty legs, he thought. Stiegman was a married man who had begun to feel the itch. The itch was very strong in Stiegman. He put the feeling aside and tried to concentrate on shoes.

  “He’s crazy,” Posnansky said, tossing the letter back to the desk.

  “He may be crazy,” Stiegman answered, “but he says we shipped him a pair of house slippers, and he says he still has them in the box to prove it.”

  “Now why in hell would we ship him a pair of house slippers?” Posnansky asked. “We don’t even make house slippers.”

  “He says they were old house slippers,” Stiegman said.

  “He’s nuts. Every week, one of our vast consuming public sends us a crank letter like this one. We had one last week from some old bag in Iowa who said the white skin on her cobra shoe was turning blue. Now, how the hell could it turn blue? These people must think we’re all idiots here.”

  Stiegman shrugged and consulted the letter again. This was not a crank letter from one of the “vast consuming public.” This was a complaint from a big account, and Titanic sure as hell wouldn’t appreciate a foul-up of this sort if it came to their attention.

  “He says he ordered thirty pair, fifteen of which were our Flare pattern, which is going very well with him.”

  “I read the letter,” Posnansky said. “He’s nuts.”

  “He says he was going through the belly sizes,” Stiegman went on, unperturbed, “when he found a pair of house slippers in place of the 7A he’d ordered.”

  “You know what he can do with his house slippers, don’t you?” Posnansky said.

  “Oh, come on, Ed, give me a little attention, will you? If the son of a bitch got house slippers, he’s got a legitimate beef.”

  “How could he get house slippers from us?” Posnansky asked. “He probably gets his slippers from another outfit, and he’s trying to stick us for a pair of shoes. Can’t you see he’s a chiseler?”

  “This is our biggest account in Philly,” Stiegman said quietly.

  “Big outfits can be crooks, too.”

  “I can’t picture the buyer of a big shop going crooked over a pair of shoes, especially when he does such a volume with us. We do thousands of dollars of business with this man each year, Ed. Even if he has fouled up someplace, we ought to send him another pair of shoes.”

  “So send them to him. What’s the problem?”

  “The problem is how do we account for the pair that supposedly went to him already?”

  “That’s Factory’s problem.”

  “Shall I call Manelli?”

  “Go ahead,” Posnansky said. “Call Manelli if you want to. I really don’t see what the hell all the noise is about. A lousy pair of twelve-dollar shoes, and you act as if—”

  “How’s your ulcer this morning, Ed?” Stiegman asked, reaching for the phone.

  “Screw you, amigo,” Posnansky said, unsmiling.

  Griff was in Manelli’s office when the call from Stiegman came.

  Manelli flicked the ash from his cigar, excused himself, clicked on the intercom, and said, “Yes?”

  “Mr. Stiegman from the Chrysler Building, sir,” Cara said. “On seven.”

  “Thank you,” Manelli said. He clicked off, excused himself again, and then picked up the phone. “Manelli speaking,” he said. “Oh, hello, Dave, how goes every little thing, eh?… Oh, so-so, you know how it is, new job, new responsibilities.” He listened for a moment and then began chuckling. “Yes, yes, I guess so. So what’s on your mind, Dave? To what do I owe the honor of this … how’s that?” He paused and listened. “Oh, I see. Well, that sounds very unlikely. Oh, it’s possible, of course, but it sounds … Yes, I understand.… Naturally, I’ll have another pair shipped, but … No invoice, of course.… Yes, well, let me get the number of that shoe, Dave … just a second.”

  He reached for a memo pad and pencil, and then he said, “All right, go ahead. Flare, yes.… Yes, I’ve got that.… And the style nu
mber?… Um-huh … case number … yes, I’ve got it … 7A … All right, I’ll take care of it.… Certainly, no trouble at all. Give my regards home, eh, Dave?… Oh yes, thank you … she’s fine, thanks … nice talking to you.” He hung up and stared sourly at the memo pad.

  “What is it?” Griff asked.

  “Oh, some stupid bastard in Philly says we shipped him a pair of house—” The intercom on his desk buzzed. He flicked it on angrily and said, “Yes?”

  “Mr. McQuade is waiting to see you, Mr. Manelli.”

  “Send him right in,” Manelli said.

  Griff said, “I’d better run along, Joe. If you two have—”

  “No, no, quite all right, stay where you are. I want you to expand on what you were telling me, anyway, and it might not be a bad idea for Mac to hear it, eh? Stay put, Griff, stay put.”

  The door opened, and McQuade stepped into the office, ducking his head slightly as he did.

  “Joe,” he said politely, “and Griff! This is a surprise. How are you, boy?”

  Griff had not seen much of McQuade since the fire hose episode last Wednesday. That had been a week ago, and he had more or less put it out of his mind. Seeing McQuade reminded him of it again, and the picture of McQuade with the hose in his hands became a very vivid thing. He smiled somewhat stiffly, and took McQuade’s proffered hand.

  “Fine, Mac,” he said. “And you?”

  “Busy as a son of a, but enjoying myself nonetheless. I didn’t break in on anything, did I?”

  “No, no,” Manelli assured him, “I was just telling Griff about this—” Manelli stopped short, as if he were debating the advisability of discussing what had just happened with McQuade.

  “What is it, Joe?” McQuade asked, smiling.

  “Oh, nothing important.” He seemed to be searching for some unimportant thing he could substitute for the phone call from Stiegman. A cleverer man might have come up with something instantly, but Manelli was not a very clever man, so he reluctantly told the truth. “One of our accounts in Philadelphia complained we sent him a pair of house slippers. Silly damn thing.”