“It’s easy,” I said. “I’m in the Manhattan book. If you didn’t get my name the first time, it’s Gates.”
“But if you don’t let me keep this bracelet, how can I pay your fee?”
Somebody rattled the doorknob. A man’s voice called, “Shelley? Shelley?”
“Christ!” she said. The little flares of excitement came back to her eyes. “I’ve just had the most marvelous idea! Ben—listen. That’s my boy. Do me a favor! You don’t have to say anything, just hold still and look guilty. But you’re too neat. He won’t think we’ve been playing doctor in here unless you’re a little more tousled.”
She yanked at my tie, pulling me in against her, and put some more lipstick near my mouth. I stepped back, knocking over her glass. Champagne splashed on my coat.
“That’s better,” she said.
There was a furious knocking at the door. “Shelley!” the voice shouted. “I can hear you whispering! I know you’re in there. Open this goddam door before I kick it down!”
I straightened my tie, feeling more and more like the one man at this party on the wagon. I tried to rub off some of the lipstick, but the doorknob was being rattled so furiously that there was a real danger it would be pulled off the door. I used the key. As the bolt cleared, a powerfully built young man knocked the door out of my hands. This was Richardson Pope, Jr., the bride’s brother. He had changed out of his formal clothes into a checked jacket and chinos. His face was flushed with champagne and suspicion.
“Chauffeurs, golf pros!” he shouted at the girl. “What taste!”
“Do you know Mr. Gates?” she said coolly.
He seized her shoulders. “You think you can make a fool of me at my sister’s wedding, do you? In front of my friends?”
“Friends?” she asked.
“All right, boys and girls, let’s cut it out,” I said without much conviction.
Davidson walked in. “Need me, Ben?”
Damn right I needed him. I needed any help I could get. Suddenly it was all I could do to keep my eyes open. I was riding a revolving seesaw, going slowly up and down and around, all at the same time. I was getting some peculiar reactions, considering that among all the champagne drinkers I had had nothing to drink but a single cup of coffee. And then it hit me. The coffee had been slightly bitter. I had thought the bitterness was an aftertaste from the fish-spread or the caviar. But if—
“Let go of me,” Shelley was saying reasonably.
Pope tightened his grip. “You’d do it with anybody, wouldn’t you?” he said, his face close to hers. “You’re the one needs analyzing, not me. They have a word for your trouble, and I’ll tell you what it is. Nymphomania!”
Reaching behind her, she picked a silver cream pitcher off the table and hit him with it. Pope staggered back, his hand going to his forehead.
I reached for her arm and she whirled on me. The waiting violence I had seen back of her eyes was out in the open. She struck at my face with her fingernails. I had plenty of time to get out of the way, but my responses were slow. It was like being clawed with a blueberry rake.
“With anybody!” Pope yelled again. “And when I think I was almost dumb enough to marry you!”
Shelley laughed harshly. “I thought that had been canceled.”
“It is now, by God! It is now!”
“But don’t ask me to give back the ring,” she said. “I may need to raise some money on it.”
Davidson was holding Pope from behind. The boy’s mouth worked, and I saw tears in his eyes.
“A detective!” he said. “Shell, I don’t see how you could do it.”
“Oh, you hypocrite,” she said scornfully. “If there’s one thing in the world I can’t stand, it’s hypocrisy. How about my good friend Tina Hare in the back of the Cadillac?”
“We were just—”
“You were just!” Shelley said. “I know how much you were just. And while we’re on the subject of adolescent love-play, how about last Saturday? I don’t suppose you went visiting in White Plains at one o’clock in the morning?”
Pope lowered his head, and stood absolutely still. “You followed me?”
“Oh, yes.”
“I’ll kill you,” he said, and then shouted, “I’ll kill you!”
“Why don’t you?” she cried. “Haven’t you had enough practice?”
I wasn’t getting much of this. The seesaw was doing its best to throw me. The voices cut in and out, as though they came from a TV set with a poor connection.
It takes two sober men to hold one determined drunk, and Pope broke away from Davidson. Shelley jerked her head back so his fist didn’t land solidly, but it succeeded in knocking her down.
“Dick?” a woman’s voice said from the doorway. “Is everything all right, dear?”
I couldn’t speak for anybody else, but things were definitely not all right with me. The woman’s face went out of focus. I bore down hard and brought it back. She was enormously fat and loaded with jewels, like the wife of a slum landlord in an old-fashioned radical cartoon. Her face was powdered chalk-white, with little red features painted on it. Her fingers were crowded with rings, most of them too tight, and her necklace must have been worth its weight in thousand-dollar bills. The jewelry made a very strong statement, but without it, in spite of her immense bulk, she would have seemed dazed and uncertain.
“I want to go up,” she said in a little girl’s voice. “And Dickie-bird, you did promise you wouldn’t have any more to drink.”
The boy’s tension drained away. “Oh, Jesus, mother.”
I reached for the corner of the table, but it was gone by the time my hand got there. The walls had begun to change places.
“Get them out of here, Irving,” I said.
He gave me a quick look. “What’s that, Ben?”
“Somebody slugged the goddam coffee.”
“Somebody what?”
I may have said something else, but I went to sleep before I heard what it was. Anyone who has gone to sleep driving a thruway knows the sensation—it is both agreeable and disagreeable. When I came awake I was still on my feet, but everything was in rapid sideways motion, with considerable overlap. Davidson and I were alone in the room. He was trying to get me to the couch, without actually picking me up and carrying me.
“What’s this glub-glub stuff, Ben? Have you been hitting the vino?”
I put all my strength into forming one word he would understand. “Coffee.”
“Coming right up, not that it’s going to do you a hell of a lot of good.”
I shook my head. For an instant I managed to open a path through the smog around me. I lunged at the coffee pot and knocked it off the table. Now if I went back to sleep before I got my message across, which seemed likely, Davidson wouldn’t be tempted to sample the same loaded brew. Coffee splashed on my leg, but I didn’t feel it.
“There goes your coffee,” Davidson said.
I pushed against him feebly, trying to keep him from putting me on the couch. Once I was horizontal I knew I was through.
“Mickey,” I said. “Fake it. You.”
Even to me it didn’t make sense, but at least Davidson distinguished the separate words. He peered at me. His eyes were the only fixed points in the general swirl, and they kept me from going under.
“I’m beginning to get you, Ben. They mickeyed the coffee? What do you mean, fake it? Stay inside? Pretend I’ve passed out?”
I started a nod. Before I could complete it I was asleep. He must have laid me on the couch, because that was where I was when I woke up, but I wasn’t aware of being handled. I was too busy dreaming. The only thing I remember about those dreams is that they weren’t pleasant.
Chapter 2
I heard somebody groaning. It was probably me. I opened my eyes. I was alive, and sorry about it. I had all the symptoms of the classic hangover with the one exception of remorse. I couldn’t remember anything I had done to deserve this, and it didn’t seem fair.
&n
bsp; After a long moment I decided that the noise I was hearing was not, after all, a cat being tortured, but merely somebody whistling. I didn’t want to think harshly of anyone, for my skull felt fragile enough to be shattered by that kind of thought, but in my opinion anyone who would make such a racket in a sick-room should be sprinkled with sugar and buried up to his neck in an anthill. Very slowly I turned my head.
A figure swam into view. It was nobody I wanted to see in my present condition. His name was Hamilton, and he had charge of security arrangements for a group of insurance companies that sold package policies covering homeowners against everything but acts of God. He was thin and dapper, with an ebbing hairline and a narrow, nervous mustache which seemed to have landed on his upper lip by accident. Whistling cheerfully between his teeth, in no known scale, he was checking the wedding presents against a list in a blue-bound folder.
I put my hand inside my jacket and checked to be sure the .38 was still in the rig. After that I looked at my watch. It was nearly 9:30. That was presumably 9:30 a.m. I had lost eleven hours.
I raised myself on one elbow. The change in altitude put me back on my revolving seesaw. That was as far as I was going for the time being. I could see nothing but a fine haze of whirling black dots. I tried to clear my throat; it came out as another groan.
“Nothing like a good night’s sleep,” Hamilton observed.
I liked him less and less, and I hadn’t liked him at all to start with. “What are you doing out here?”
“Running inventory. Nothing much seems to be missing, which is lucky, Ben. But that’s what I’ve noticed about you. You could fall in a garbage scow and come out in a Hart, Schaffner and Marx suit.”
I put my feet on the floor and managed to sit up. For the first time since opening my eyes I considered the possibility that I might survive.
“Where’s Davidson?”
“Around. Good man, Davidson. When you called yesterday and told me you needed a helper, you’ll remember I wasn’t too enthusiastic. I didn’t want to authorize the expense. But you knew your limitations, Ben. I’ll give you credit for that. You knew what would happen when they began passing out the free champagne.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Now don’t tell me you’re going to insist on that coffee story. I see how you’d think it was a wonderful idea late at night, but look at it in the cold light of nine o’clock in the morning.”
“Didn’t Davidson tell you what happened?”
“Oh, Davidson’s going to back you up. It doesn’t surprise me.”
I had both hands on my knees, pushing down hard to keep from pitching forward. I was still in a delicate balance with my environment. I wasn’t thinking any less favorably of Hamilton than before, but more must have showed. He took a backward step and said shrilly, “Don’t think you can threaten me, Gates. It’s a little late for that. I don’t like to gloat, because I’ve been known to take a drink or two on occasion myself, and I have a faint idea how you must be feeling right now. But I’ve got no use for a man in your profession who doesn’t know when to stop.”
My head was filled with a sudden ominous thudding. Hamilton gave a little squeak.
“I’d like to see you get rough with me,” he said. “I’d just like to see you. You think you’re in trouble now, I’ll show you real trouble. Stay here. I’ll be back. There’s a man who wants to ask you some questions.”
He went out, walking on the balls of his feet, and gave the door a slam which nearly took off the top of my skull, like someone opening a three-minute egg. Things had been coming at me a little too fast. It was now necessary to stand up and cross the room, which seemed as far as from Little America to the South Pole, over equally difficult terrain. Once there, I looked at myself in a mirror. It was a bad moment. I looked worse than I felt, which I wouldn’t have said was possible. I looked as though I had fallen out of a boxcar which had been sealed for a transcontinental trip. The scratches had bled freely, and the girl had left quite a bit of lipstick on and around my mouth. Naturally I needed a shave, and my clothes looked as though they had been slept in, which was true. I straightened my tie and combed my hair with my fingers. Moistening my fingertips, I scrubbed at the lipstick, spreading it over a wider area. I needed soap and hot water. I needed a clean shirt. I needed three weeks in a rest home.
The door opened and Hamilton came back with Davidson and a man I hadn’t seen before. He was well over six feet, and didn’t have much fat on him except around the mouth. He had an abundant crop of irongray hair, and I diagnosed him at once as the kind of extremist who gets a weekly haircut. The fat lips smiled at me, showing teeth that were too beautiful to be his own.
“The Sleeping Beauty,” he said. He made a big point of looking at the lipstick. “Awakened by a kiss.”
Here was somebody else I could hate. “Who is this, Irving?”
Davidson had clearly been up all night. There were heavy shadows beneath his eyes.
“This is Lieutenant Minturn of the State cops,” he said. “And you might as well know right now that he doesn’t believe anybody served you a bad cup of coffee.”
“I don’t believe in Friday the thirteenth either,” Minturn said heartily. “Haven’t for years. But I can’t blame you for trying.”
He kicked against something. Stooping, he picked up a champagne bottle and set it on the table beside the girl’s overturned glass.
I went back to work on the smeared lipstick. “There must be some coffee left in the pot. Have it analyzed.”
“The pot has been removed,” Davidson said, “by person or persons unknown. Also the cup and saucer. Here, for God’s sake.” He gave me a folded handkerchief. “Maybe I should have carried the goddam pot around with me all night, but I had other things on my mind. A doctor looked at you at one point, and he said to let you sleep it off.”
I looked around and he said angrily, “Why should I take you to a hospital and pump you out? It was all over by then.”
“What was all over?”
Minturn said quickly, “Now just a minute, Gates. I want to get your story first, if you don’t mind.”
Of course I minded, but he seemed to outrank me. I finished at the mirror, refolded Davidson’s handkerchief with the smears inside and returned it to him. By keeping my mind on what I was doing, I got back to the couch without falling down. I lowered myself carefully.
“What would make you feel better, Ben?” Davidson asked. “Coffee?” Then he said hastily, “Excuse me. No coffee.”
He lit a cigarette and gave it to me. After dragging on it once, I gave it back.
Minturn pulled a chair out from the wall and reversed it before sitting down, closer to me than I liked. “Take it from the top, Gates. When did you start drinking?”
“I had my first beer when Repeal came in,” I said. “I was nine at the time. But I know that’s not what you mean. I didn’t do any drinking last night at all.”
“Now, Gates,” he said, “we’re grown-up people, so talk grown-up. If somebody went to the trouble of drugging your coffee, why wouldn’t they make sure Davidson got some of the same?”
“He was out in the parking area,” I said. “I called him in because I was having trouble with one of the bridesmaids. That was an accident. For another thing, he didn’t get out here from New York till five-thirty or six. They may have thought I was working alone.”
He shook his head. “Sorry. Now I’ll tell you what I think happened. That glass over there has lipstick on it. I think a girl came in with a bottle and called you chicken until you had a drink with her. After that you had a few more drinks. Then you had sense enough to start to worry. You called New York and asked for Davidson. Hamilton says you already sounded a little high.”
I cut my eyes at my ex-associate, who said hurriedly, “I didn’t say that, Lieutenant. I said it was possible. There was so much noise in the background—”
Minturn went on, “And when you felt the room beginning to spin, you calle
d Davidson in and told him what to say in case anything happened. He’s no amateur. He knows enough to rinse out a coffee pot, if there was any coffee pot.”
“Lieutenant—” Davidson said in a soft voice.
“Hold it, Irving,” I said. “Maybe if we’re patient we’ll find out what he has in mind.”
Minturn puffed his lips in and out, getting up a head of steam. Hamilton put in, “I’d better warn you, Lieutenant. Gates has quite a reputation for brawling with cops.”
“But not this morning,” I said wearily. “I have a headache. His dentures are safe.”
“You’ll have more than a headache before I’m done with you,” Minturn said. “Private detectives are one species of louse I can’t feel tolerant about. We don’t get many out here, which is just as well. When I saw you lying there crocked to the gills, lipstick on your face, two people dead in the house—”
My head snapped forward. “What two people?”
“And merely because you hadn’t ever learned the meaning of the word responsibility—”
“Now wait,” Hamilton said. “I hold no brief for Ben, I think his conduct has been atrocious, but I don’t consider him entirely accountable for what happened upstairs. To a certain extent that was separate.”
“I can’t agree with you,” Minturn snapped. “If he’d been on the ball it wouldn’t have happened. He’s the precipitating factor. The guy came in, saw Gates lying on the sofa in a goddam drunken stupor, and thought he’d help himself. While he was about it, why not go upstairs first and try for two?”
I was drumming my fingers on my knee. “I think you mentioned a couple of deaths.”
“Just a couple,” Minturn said, giving me the same cold eye a teenage delinquent gets from Judge Leibowitz, “and it’s God’s mercy there weren’t more. Quite a few shots were fired. I still haven’t decided if I’m going to file formal charges of misconduct with the Secretary of State or not. I want to sleep on it first. It’s not as bad as it might be. The jewelry’s all been recovered—”
“Except for the one bracelet,” Hamilton said. “And that we can take out of Ben’s bond. I doubt if he’ll ever get a surety company to write him another.”
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