Kimbra’s protest stuck in her pretty throat. I had to push her even though I wanted my hands on her again. I was in deep, and knew reality might careen around the next curve like a runaway beer truck. In that fix, threats and demands became my illusion of control. Still, it would work better than I’d hoped.
“Oh, don’t worry. I won’t tell Bergman about Joe,” I said, “if you won’t see him again. I’ll tell Ed you’ve left town, which you will, tomorrow. Those connections you spoke of will come sniffing around and it’s you they’ll knuckle up first. I can handle them if they get to me. So, just spill it—now—give me the whole scam.” My tough crust was so thin a batted eyelash would have shattered it. She must have relied on my being the sucker for her, saw it in my eyes as she talked.
Kimbra had her own way of telling me about herself too, like she was circling all the good stuff. I studied her face. She made up things that led nowhere, meant nothing. She wasn’t very convincing until she got to the part about suckering Ed. Her lip quivered then. The pictures of Ed in bondage didn’t include her—they were with young boys who Joe paid. Something told me she hadn’t known about that blackmail twist of Joe’s. It was obvious the dame had starry eyes for Ed—Kimbra was a puzzle and I kept putting the pieces together where they didn’t fit. I wanted her to be clean, which was me not thinking clearly, since she’d just killed a man.
Ed’s initial call when he hired me made it out to be a fling that ended in blackmail. He’d said nothing about Kimbra getting attached, or kiddie porn, or Detroit contacts. I was betting he wasn’t too sober when those photos were made. Still, Ed couldn’t hide the distress in his voice. I’d have a few pointed questions for him. He’d left too much out of the equation. My job now was to find out about those connections and find out if Kimbra was for real. A defense attorney was hitting a prosecutor over the head in my brain while a judge hammered guilty. I was only half finished.
Guilty, guilty.
Kimbra offered me some of Joe’s dough, but I wasn’t looking for that sort of payoff. Then her hands did some of the talking, then her mouth, down on me slowly bringing things to a boil. She was good, too good and too practiced. She was a high-class pro alright, and at least that aspect of her wasn’t confusing. I was mainly mixed up about her and Joe—she was way too classy for a mug like Joe. She could have walked away from him given any moment of sanity. What was his hold on her? Did it involve his infamous family? Plus, Kimbra Phillips didn’t act like a killer. But then, what stunning beauty does?
I sorted it out about as well as a man can in that position: she’d tried to close the door on her pricey professional past and Joe kept prying it open. Sure. Blackmail was his game. At least the blackmailer was dead and disposed of. I doubted Joe’s mob grandfather was still in circulation, though others might well be. Mob family trees have lots of branches, though, and roots that aren’t easy to trace.
I wanted Kimbra to be my rescued and delicious victim, but it’s the sweet ones who fool you, the charming ones who have poison in their minds. With a dame like Kimbra, just when you think you’re playing with a puppy it bites your hand off. I didn’t yet know what kind of canine Kimbra was, but I was already regretting the clean up I’d done for her.
When Kimbra put the finishing touches on her appetite, I understood the desperation in Bergman’s voice. He must have lost his equilibrium with Kimbra, done things for her maybe as stupid as what I’d done. She enjoyed paying me back some. I didn’t argue. I hoped it was only her first installment. Ditching a corpse isn’t exactly minimum wage.
Victory shone in her eyes when they finally came up to mine. Even in the dim car they were bright and wide and blue with eyelashes that could keep her feet dry in a rainstorm. If evil lived in those eyes I never saw it. I didn’t want to.
Questions didn’t matter much until I headed back to my apartment. Then I had a million questions and no dame to fling them at.
Chapter 2 – Lounging Haley
The next day was Sunday, my day to check in with Ed by phone. I decided instead to drop by his estate in Cliffside without calling. Dropping in on people can give you a lot of insights, and I needed to see his face in those pregnant pauses my questions would bring.
The maid led me into the parlor where I poured myself a scotch. Haley Bergman swayed into the room like she was modeling for some maharaja. She had tall, aristocratic beauty that hit you between the eyes so hard you were dizzy for a half hour. You slowly came around every time she opened her mouth though, her voice a cross between Eartha Kitt and Woody Woodpecker, as strange as that sounds.
“Going to the opera at eleven a.m., Haley?”
Haley smirked and stretched out on the Roman lounge chair. “You never approved of my wardrobe, did you, Mike? These are lounging clothes. Want to lounge?” Her hair rinse was two shades brighter than in college and her face was twice as hard. I’d forgotten how big and brassy her chest was, like the headlights on a ’30 Packard. On high beams.
I sank into a marshmallow chair and we eyed each other across the swanky digs: football field sized Turkish rugs with red patterns flowed under green leather furniture that belonged in the Smithsonian. A fireplace big enough to open a hot dog stand in. Gold weave curtains covered a long wall of windows and framed a white baby grand. Naked fat kids running around the ceiling, about two stories up. I half expected to see that Italian guy on scaffolds, painting ceilings on his back.
Haley Bergman was a Randolph—moldy money—so old it paid for Plymouth Rock. Ed met her his last year at Princeton, the same year I flunked out over too much booze and late-night partying. Too tall, too stunning, and too clever, Haley pushed every button Ed had, and a few she made for him. Haley saw a mind for business in Ed, the kind of guy she hoped could be what her late father was, a guy who could helm the Queen Mary. But Ed was more like a tugboat captain—not stupid but small-time. A plugger. But a good man. At least he used to be.
If Haley was disappointed in Ed, she never showed it, being one of those dames who see promise in every downturn, gold in every mineshaft and fertilizer in every dog turd on the lawn of life. Of course, she was a child of old wealth so maybe it was only the trappings of capitalism that turned her crank. I suspected the real game of business bored her.
I never cared that she dumped me for Ed in college. Flunking out didn’t prove attractive. I had no business mind whatsoever. Besides, I was about to end it with her anyway—enough connivance danced in Haley to make a dildo soft. Even tits like hers can’t carry on a good conversation.
“Ed—he decent?”
“I wouldn’t know. He slept out last night.”
Slept out. Good old Ed. I fingered the rook from an ivory chess set next to the chair. The queens were on the wrong colored squares. “I gather old Ed is straying in strange pastures again?”
She stiffened. “Cut the bullshit, Mike.” She said the word like it was a French derivative. “We both know Ed has eclectic tastes. We have an understanding as you may have guessed. Did you come to discuss our sex life? I have pictures. Or, we can make some of our own.”
Her beauty faded with each word.
“Not today. The name Kimbra Phillips mean anything?”
She didn’t hesitate. “I don’t think so,” she said a bit too firmly. “What does it mean to Mike, the great insurance dick? Or is that detective?”
She belittled the word “insurance,” but not the word “dick”; under that fake charm she slathered out, Haley betrayed something else, something like fear. I had learned over the years how to read those microsecond telegrams from suspects, clients and the rest. This hiccup meant she knew Kimbra, probably owned a dartboard with her picture on it and a lot of holes in the eyes. Kimbra’s brand of femininity was exactly the sort Haley would resent.
Insurance investigating had become stale. Tailing some cheater in a body-cast to get pictures of him changing a flat wasn’t much of a way to earn a living. So when the call came from my old college buddy, Ed Bergman, that he was being b
lackmailed, I was eager to get off the beaten path. Half of five thousand up front didn’t hurt either. Even though I was grilling my client’s wife, I was being loyal. I needed to know if Haley knew about my hire, if she knew anything about the blackmail, even though Ed had claimed he hadn’t told her.
“A dick’s what’s in my boxers; a detective’s a cop. I’m an investigator. We carry a different sort of license. I’m sure a big girl like you knows the difference. How about the name Joe Ambler?”
This time, no reaction. Maybe she had practiced enough and was tired of twenty questions. She slid open the front of the harem dress to a sort of slip affair with a low cut front. Obviously she was cold under that gauze and wanted me to turn up the heat. It could have been the four-letter word that got her. I looked her over; the years hadn’t been kind to Haley—too much old scotch and Caribbean sun. She wasn’t the college girl I’d known.
“Joseph Ambler is a business associate of Edward’s,” she gave out with a yawn.
Sure he was. Ed had at least mentioned Joe’s name, perhaps earlier than the blackmail.
From across the room the cigarette Haley lit up didn’t bother me as much as her outfit did. What she wore was so thin a congressman could see through it. Haley had never been a good actress—she had no clue why I was there, and I began to forget it myself.
I downed my drink and found my way to the hall, anxious to get away. When she followed and stood next to me at the door, I was unnerved looking up into her eyes. She put her hands behind my neck and tried to lay those red lips on me, but I held her back, telling her that Haley Randolph Bergman looked younger than ever, and just gave her one of those Hollywood kiss-pecks on the cheek. I hated lying before noon, but I wanted to leave on a good note—no telling but I might need another interview. I told her to have Ed call me when he came in from his date.
Haley was a big juicy trap but still the wife of a client: “Thou shalt not bed clients or family of clients” went Dad’s law, which I mostly upheld. At least I had that professional ethic down cold. Plus I knew that encouraging Haley would cost me the afternoon. She would be there if I ever got tired of treading water some late and lonely night—after the case was over, and after I scrubbed the tentacles of Kimbra’s siren song from my dreams. It was a nasty little thought that tripped by, until I shooed it away and left.
***
Driving back I wondered about a couple of things. Ed wasn’t the kind to pull all-nighters—too concerned with his business image, probably too afraid that Haley might yank away her trust fund from his control. No doubt he made more from managing the fund than he did from his insurance board adventures. Still, I didn’t blame him for “sleeping out” as she put it, if that was the truth.
I hadn’t kept in touch with Ed after college. Let’s just say the Bergmans traveled in different circles than I did—they each needed four forks to eat dinner. I could understand Ed being outmatched by a weasel like Joe, a stringy little sad-ass who constantly threw glances over his shoulder like he was being followed. You’d think guys like Joe would know a string moustache enhances the weasel image, but they never do. But, as much as Joe was a weasel, Ed was a duck.
I’d been following Joe around for a couple of weeks, looking into some of his slimy associates, not the sort of characters you’d want to meet in a dark alley—or even in a well-lit supermarket for that matter—small time mugs mostly, certainly none with big mob connections. Joe’s rap-sheet was cluttered with two-bit stuff—assault, petty theft, and a beef he’d beaten for blackmailing a city councilman, now deceased. Some time later he snagged Kimbra and got bigger ideas than small time larceny. Maybe she was unwilling bait for Bergman, just how unwilling I didn’t know or want to face. I didn’t want to consider that Kimbra wore the pants.
It made sense that Joe was after some of that Mayflower dough with those boy pictures, and it appeared he’d snagged some of it. What with Kimbra’s puppy eyes and expertise, it wouldn’t have been difficult to lure Ed. A man with a blonde at home is vulnerable to a brunette elsewhere, especially one with Kimbra’s talents. Haley’s laissez-faire lifestyle made it a whole lot easier.
I felt sorry for Ed if he’d fallen for Kimbra—maybe he was eventually repelled by Haley the way I was. But then, does a man’s libido ever dance to the song of logic? Hell, maybe Ed discovered attraction for normal-chested women.
Chapter 3 – A Late Night Visit
Back at my place on Eighth Avenue, I fed my cat, Sophie, a platter of sour milk and picked up the latest woodcarving piece I’d been working on—Marilyn Monroe nude to go on the hood of a ’57 Chevy I’d done the year before. I learned carving as a boy from my grandfather—it helps clears out my mind when it seems overloaded from a case. It’s one hobby that doesn’t rob the wallet or become an obsession.
I ran through it again, from Ed’s first call to the heavenly goodbye at Kimbra’s to the implied invitation at Haley’s. Mostly I kept seeing the quarry. I knew the shaft I’d chosen went to China. That’s what my boyhood gang thought when we’d throw rocks down it and never hear them hit bottom. It was probably the mud that ate whatever we tossed in. We even lowered a rope down it 200 feet and never found bottom. Nobody was going to find Ed’s body. No one had seen me ditch the body—that much I was sure of. But it was an outside chance that someone spotted me tailing Joe for two weeks. If the deceased did have powerful pals, it wouldn’t be long before snoops would sniff at my door. Or Kimbra’s.
I had to talk to Ed. He held the missing pieces, and might know about connections to the old Purples. Kimbra knew more than she was saying. I was betting she laughed at me behind those egg size peepers and slid that fun on me in the car for professional practice. Reverting to form, the racetrack railbirds call it. Yeah—I had to talk to Ed—too many maybes and what-if’s—my stomach acid was pumping out an angry ache.
I daydreamed a composite dame with Kimbra’s eyes and Haley’s chest, but the thought made me slip the blade and take half of Marilyn’s left foot off. A swear word stuck in my throat just when a faint scent of lilacs feathered by.
She stepped from behind the curtain with another one of her toy guns, pointed straight and steady at my gut. Kimbra. Even with that gun pointed at me I was glad to see her. In a way. A nasty way.
“Hello, doll. You’re pretty talented. Maybe I should get a better lock.”
“Maybe you should,” she purred as she stepped toward me. She had graduated to a .32 special. Likely Joe’s. Her hair was done back in one of those Frenchie styles, and she was obviously dressed for traveling. The red lipstick and seductive smile matched her outfit. She even wore red gloves. I thought of the red bra and panties. Fleetingly. The gun was dull black.
“I’d think you’d be cured from playing with those things,” I said, pointing at the barrel she kept on me. “What brings you by so late—want to thank me again? Red looks good on you.” I was on edge staring down the dark barrel at oblivion. She’d killed once.
“Sit down, smart man. I’ll tell you why I’m here.”
I perched on the corner of the pull down bed and crossed my legs.
“I’ve been thinking,” she began. Alarms always go off in my head when a woman says that to me. The Mack Truck about to hit me head on is always around the curve. Or curves.
“A dangerous thing to do—thinking—for a peach like you.”
“Look—I don’t want to be ungrateful, but I hate to leave any loose ends. You’re a big sloppy one.”
“Use your pretty head—why would I ditch Joe for you and then talk? I’ve got a foot in that quarry hole with you.”
“Sure you do, Mike. A big flat foot—one I can’t risk. This is Joe’s gun. His prints are all over it. The cops will think Joe got you for following him everywhere. Ed will say you threatened Joe—he’ll say what I tell him to. I’ll shed a few tears and lead them to the quarry. You forced me there, and then forced me to do other things, too.” She smirked.
Most suckers never win with insurance. They pay pr
emiums all their life and never have a loss. When they do have a bad break they discover one paragraph of coverage and twelve pages of exclusions to fit any occasion, including the one at hand. Even when they die, others benefit. This time, my policy was about to pay off.
“You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you, cupcake? Too bad. I’d hoped to feel your warm, sloppy appreciation again sometime.”
Her mouth made a hard line. “Sorry, but I have nothing to lose.”
I stood and threw some gravel in my voice. “You didn’t really think I’d be that stupid, did you? You’re pretty smooth—and you almost fooled me with that act in the car about Joe forcing you to do bad things. Now I figure it was you forcing him. You’re the kind of dame who thrives on doing bad things, then blaming others. I bet you’ve had plenty of rehearsals doing bad things. Bergman for one—what are your bad plans for him?”
She stiffened and leaned forward with nasty in her eyes. “Sit down, shamus. And shut up. You might as well know—Ed and I are catching a plane in the morning for parts south. The tropics agree with my skin. I’m using him to rub oil between my shoulder blades—that’s my plan for old Ed.”
“Caribbean? Not bad for a girl with your resume. You and Ed—yeah, I figure you’ll drain him in a year or two, then you’ll have another body to dispose of. Finding another sucker to help won’t be that difficult for you, will it? Just wear red.”
I paced the floor just close enough in front of her hoping to dive for the gun at the right moment. She wasn’t having it and kept the black barrel on me as I paced. “There’s one small detail—your Cracker Jack gun—the ones with your prints all over it—did you really think I’d flip it off the Brooklyn Bridge?”
Dark Quarry: A Mike Angel Private Eye Mystery Page 2
