Dressed to Kill

by Campbell Black

  But then she remembered the dying woman in the elevator, she remembered the blonde with the hideous black glasses, and her sorrow disintegrated. He’s protecting a killer. I’m supposed to feel bad on his account?

  “I got it,” she said. “You’re shy. Is that it?”

  With his eyes shut, he nodded his head. He spoke and his voice was hoarse. “Yes. I’m shy.”

  “You’re shy and I’m understanding. So I’ll give you a break.”

  He opened his eyes and looked at her curiously.

  “I’ll wait in the other room. I’ll come back in a few minutes and if your clothes aren’t lying beside mine on the floor, we’ll forget the whole deal. Okay?”

  For a second she thought he was going to pick up her discarded clothing and throw it at her, because what flashed across his face was a confused look of anger and distaste. She turned, opened the door, stepped inside the reception room. She closed the door behind her.

  She went to the desk.

  She opened a drawer.

  Papers, paper clips, a shrivelled apple. Typewriter cartridges, a box of Kleenex, a hair ribbon. Some windowed envelopes, invoices.

  Where is the goddamn appointments book?

  Where?

  Peter couldn’t feel the numbing rain any more. His clothes were stuck to his body, but he was beyond feeling the chill. He didn’t like the idea of Liz being in there on her own, but it had been her idea. I get the appointment book, the names, and I save my ass with our old pal Marino.

  He had tried to think of a better way. But nothing came, no idea, no plan. And Liz had said, You stay out of this, okay? I don’t want you involved in the rest of it.

  How could he have done that, Christ?

  He’d gone home, found his binoculars; sneaking in and out of the apartment, noticing the open door of his mother’s bedroom and the sight of Mike lying on top of the bed, fully dressed, asleep. A half-empty scotch bottle sat on the bedside table. Poor goddamn Mike; he has to drink his grief away.

  Now, across the street from Elliott’s office, he saw Liz take her clothes off. He couldn’t figure it for a moment, thinking only that she had a real terrific body, like the kind he sometimes sneaked a look at it in Playboy or Gallery. But what the hell was she doing? He wiped smears of rain from the lenses of the binoculars. Liz had gone out of the room and now he couldn’t see her any more, but he could see Elliott, he could see Elliott standing in the middle of his office, motionless, not doing anything, just standing there like he was waiting for something to happen. Then he moved, opening a closet door.

  Opening a closet door and—

  But rain streamed in oleaginous streaks across the lenses and he had to wipe them dry again. Then he trained the glasses on the window once more, watching the figure of Elliott sliced by the open slats of the blinds.

  What the hell is he doing?

  What is he doing in that closet?

  He screwed his eyes up, trying hard to see. Trying so hard he didn’t notice a dark car draw up a little way down the block and a blonde woman step out.

  Liz found the appointments book in the bottom drawer of the desk. Yesterday, she thought. Peter took the photographs yesterday. Okay, find the names, find the names, and one of those names belongs to the killer. She flipped the pages hastily, suddenly cold in the room, trembling as she turned the pages over. Her mind went blank abruptly. What the hell was yesterday’s date? Jesus Christ. Can’t think. What day was it? Wednesday? Thursday? She kept flipping, expecting at any moment the door to the inner office to be opened from inside, expecting to turn and see Elliott standing there and watching her.

  I have to kill her. I have no choice. She has to die. She should have died before.

  Peter slung the binoculars over his shoulder, the strap dangling loosely. He felt a strange uneasiness. Liz had gone out of the room and she hadn’t returned. Why? Where was she? What was keeping her? Maybe she’s hurt. Maybe she needs help. He hesitated only a moment longer, then moved across the street.

  Elliott had laid his clothes down beside Liz’s. He had folded them neatly. Then he’d opened the closet and stared at the hangers inside. He listened to her in the reception room. She was doing something, turning pages, maybe passing time by reading a magazine. He inclined his head, listening, then he reached inside the closet.

  She’s in there. She has to die. Her death is necessary. This time I won’t fail. The pearl-handled razor will do it this time.

  Peter reached the door.

  Too late.

  A fraction too late.

  He felt a hand clamped around his mouth from behind and, trying to twist, to bite, saw a tall blonde woman from the corner of his eye. She swung him around, her palm still pressed against his lips; he felt a roar of blood in his head, a rush of his pulses, a sense of darkness falling over him. The blonde drew him towards the door and pushed it open quietly. He was aware of being in a lobby now. It was hard to breath, hard to draw air, so tight was her hand against his mouth. Please, he thought. Please. I don’t need to die.

  She pushed the door softly shut behind her, gripping him harder as he tried to struggle.

  Liz found the page, looked down the list of names. There were only a half dozen or so: and one of them was the killer. All she had to do was tear the page from the book, get it to Marino, and he could do the rest. She began to rip it quietly from the binding. As she did so, the door of the inner office opened.

  She pulled her hand away from the book, thinking of something to say, thinking of how she could pass her curiosity off as a joke.

  Just nosey, ha ha. Never could resist prying. Some people are like that, Doc, and I guess I’m one of them, ha ha—

  She turned, trying not to look guilty.

  She turned, expecting to see Elliott come out of the inner office.

  Expecting to see . . .

  The razor rose in the air, gleaming, seeming to hang there like time had ceased, like all the clocks of the world had stopped. She watched it, saw the brilliant mirror of the metal blade as it was suspended in the air, saw the blonde hair curiously askew on the skull, saw the dress, the hairless legs under the dress, the bare feet, the strange misshapen slash of lipstick across the mouth.

  Oh dear Christ—

  She swung her head to the side as the razor came down. She struck her spine against the corner of the desk, moaned in pain, and then tried to crawl away from the descent of the razor. It swung so close to the side of her neck that she could hear its dreadful whisper. She rolled over, still moaning, seeing the bare feet come forward; and then, looking up, seeing the light of hatred and madness in the eyes, and the razor came swinging down again, catching the strap of her bra and slicing it, paring the surface of her flesh.

  You have to die. Bobbi has to kill you. You saw too much.

  She tried to rise up, hauling herself against the edge of the desk. She heard the feet brushing the rug behind her. Scream, scream, scream—goddamnit, why can’t you fucking scream? She felt a hand grab the elastic of her pants, tugging at it, and she pulled herself free as the flimsy material ripped. She moved around the side of the desk, watching the razor again, watching as it created a blinding arc on its downswing, as it whistled just past her wrist and slashed the wooden edge of the desk, creating a flying splinter. Fight, fight, find something to fight with, anything, any weapon you can grab, anything. She stared at the face as it came closer to her and the razor rose again—that deranged face, the wild blonde hair, the lipstick that looked like a bloodstain. The razor rose and fell, slashing close to her arm, so close she could feel a wave of air parting. She twisted away, reaching for a potted fern that stood on a table beside the desk, lifting the plant up and throwing it haphazardly at the blonde, seeing it strike the woman’s shoulder in an explosion of dirt and leaf. The blonde moaned, rubbed her shoulder, momentarily let the hand that held the razor fall to her side. Liz rushed round the side of the desk, heading for the door—but too slow, too goddamn slow, because the blonde stuck a leg o
ut and tripped her and she fell forward, rolling on her back, staring up as the razor came swinging downward again. It missed the side of her neck, striking the rug beneath her, slicing the pile of the rug viciously. Liz tried to rise but the blonde pressed her knee directly into her stomach, pinning her to the rug, raising the blade again. Something. Anything. She twisted to the side, raising her face, sinking her teeth into the blonde’s thigh, hearing the sound of the woman’s pain. The face—the face of pain and hatred, she had to get away from that face as much as the razor, but even as she turned over and began to crawl closer to the door she could hear the woman’s heavy breathing, the breathing of labor; she could feel the heat of it upon her bare spine and she knew, she knew without looking, that the razor was going up in the air again, rising, rising only to fall, and this time when it fell it would slip through the back of her neck, through thin veins, flimsy muscles, through the surfaces of bone and deep into the hollow of the nape. She opened her mouth to scream, conscious of herself clawing at the tuft of the rug, aware of that terrible blade flashing through the air, aware even before it happened of her own blood rushing through the opening in her neck, her life bleeding out of her, red turning to darkness, and darkness a place beyond pain.

  No!

  She twisted again, tried to turn away, but the blonde was straddling her; she was too strong, too hard to fight, holding her against the rug with one hand while the other raised the blade for its final descent.

  You die like this—bleeding—your last sight that of the lipsticked mouth twisted and open, the hair unruly and strange, the eyes bright with insanity, you die like this, dear Christ, watching the falling blade seek an artery—

  You don’t look.

  Close your eyes.

  There was a sudden noise, something she couldn’t comprehend at first. There was no pain, no piercing of her throat, no blood, no sense of dying. She heard Peter’s voice, but it was like a dream voice floating out of an unlit place. She felt dizzy, rolling her head backwards, seeing Peter standing over her, seeing a woman crossing the room with a pistol in her hand, seeing the woman—her blonde hair made shapeless by rain—stand over Elliott, who was clutching his shoulder and groaning in pain.

  Liz closed her eyes.

  The scream died somewhere in her lungs and all she was conscious of was Elliott’s moaning, of his blonde wig lying some feet from where he lay—an absurd thing now, shapeless, useless, reminiscent of some extinct grotesque bird.

  Peter was bending over her.

  “You okay?”

  She nodded.

  “Just take it easy.” He covered her with his wet jacket and she shivered. All she could think to do was laugh, but the laughter, like the scream before it, wouldn’t come.

  “It’s okay,” Peter was saying. “It’s over.”

  It’s okay, she thought. It’s over.

  Over.

  FOUR

  1

  “I apologize for the coffee,” Marino was saying. “I know it’s pretty foul. Department funds don’t run to a decent brand.”

  Liz stared at him across the desk. “I think you want to apologize for more than the goddamn coffee, Marino.”

  He waved a hand in an indeterminate gesture. “Okay. So I’m sorry. I said it.”

  “Sorry? Jesus Christ, Marino, I almost got myself killed!”

  He looked at her as if he wanted to say, These things happen.

  Liz raised her coffee, sipped, made a face. “I need a cigarette. Anybody got one?”

  Marino pushed a pack across his desk.

  “You don’t have anything with a filter?” Liz asked.

  “Once a Camel smoker, always a Camel smoker.”

  Liz lit the cigarette and coughed. She stared at the black window, startled a little when a broken flash of lightning slashed the sky over the city. She closed her eyes a moment. When she opened them again she saw Marino was smiling. How can that sonofabitch just sit there and smile, for God’s sake?

  She took another drag of the cigarette, trying to still the shaking of her hand, conscious of Marino staring at it. She looked away from the cop a moment, gazing at the face of the tall blonde woman who had shot Elliott. Seated at the other end of the desk was a short plump man who had been introduced as Dr. Levy. She had the odd feeling that they were gathered together for a seance, that at any moment a Ouija board would be dragged out of Marino’s desk and an attempt made to contact the spirit world. She wanted to laugh.

  Marino indicated the blonde woman. “This is Betty Luce. She’s one of our best young policewomen.”

  Liz looked at the woman for a moment. “I ought to thank you,” she said. “The funny thing is, I don’t feel very much like thanking anybody right now.”

  “I had Betty Luce follow you, Liz,” Marino said. He yawned, but didn’t bother to cover it with his hand. Liz could see his upper metal fillings shining in a moist way. “She informed me that she lost you in the vicinity of Columbus Circle.”

  Liz shook her head. “So when I told you I was damn near killed in the subway you thought I wasn’t playing with a full deck, is that it?”

  “Something like that,” Marino said. “How the hell was I supposed to know there was another blonde following you?”

  “So you thought—well, here’s a chick with a hyperactive imagination, is that it?”

  Marino shrugged, sipped some more coffee. He was smiling again. Christ, she thought: He’s all smiles tonight. The bastard, the ruthless bastard. His telephone rang, he picked it up, addressed a few terse words to somebody called Mary, then he hung up. “The wife,” he explained. “She thinks I keep stinking hours. Maybe she’s right.”

  Liz put down her cardboard container of coffee, then stubbed her cigarette out. Marino sighed, doodled something on his desk blotter, then wearily dropped his ballpoint pen.

  “What the hell is wrong with that guy Elliott anyway?” Liz asked.

  Dr. Levy, thumbs tucked inside the pockets of his vest, became suddenly animated. “It’s both simple and complicated,” he said.

  “Just give me the simple,” she said.

  “In a proverbial nutshell, he was a transsexual about to make the final step. But his male side wouldn’t allow it.”

  Marino looked bored. He began to pick his teeth.

  “Explain a little more,” Liz said.

  Levy took an unlit pipe from his pocket and tapped it on the desk, scattering ashes that Marino regarded with disapproval.

  “See if this makes sense to you,” he said.

  He had a patronizing manner that Liz found irritating.

  “I’ll try to get my little brain to work it over,” she said.

  The doctor either didn’t catch her sarcasm or chose instead to ignore it. “Two distinct personalities. Bobbi on the one hand, Elliott on the other. Bobbi came to me for my approval for a sex change operation. I thought she—he—was unstable. A schizophrenic with a male personality within her. Make sense so far?”

  Liz nodded. She felt a sudden wave of fatigue. Her eyelids were becoming heavy.

  “Elliott came to see me. That was the first time I’d seen Bobbi’s male self. And it was perfectly clear to me that he had no idea Bobbi existed inside him. Both selves, if you like, were unaware of each other. When Elliott told me he thought Bobbi had killed Kate Myers, he was confessing, so to speak, that he himself had killed her. It was then that I tried to get in touch with Detective Marino.”

  Liz stared at Marino angrily. “You knew? You knew this? And you let me go to that office anyhow? You really take the goddamn cake, Marino, you know that?”

  “Hold, hold,” Marino said. “I happened to be at a ball game with my kids. By the time Dr. Levy finally got in touch with me, you’d already gone to the office. So I dispatched Betty Luce. You can thank whatever good fortune smiles on you that I did send her—”

  Liz slumped back in her chair. “Yeah. I’ll pray tonight.”

  There was silence in the room for a moment.

  “Why w
as Kate Myers killed anyhow?” Liz asked.

  Levy opened an old-fashioned watch, clicking the lid back, checking the time. “Primarily because Bobbi wanted to hurt Elliott for what she perceived as his refusal to allow the sex change. A secondary reason, of course, is that Elliott found himself aroused by the poor woman—and the erection of his penis reminded Bobbi of the existence of a male self, of an unwanted organ.”

  Liz stared at Marino, who was sitting back with his eyes closed, looking bored. The toothpick dangled from his lower lip.

  “Which leaves me with one last question, Marino. If you’re still awake, that is.”

  The cop lazily opened his eyes. “Shoot.”

  “How did Bobbi, Elliott, whoever the hell he is, get my address? I mean, how come she was waiting for me outside my apartment building?”

  Marino didn’t move for a moment. Then he opened a drawer in his desk and took out a folder, which he passed to Liz. “Your history, Liz. Your record sheet.”

  “I don’t get it,” she said.

  “The night of the killing I interviewed him here in this office. Somewhat carelessly, I left your folder on my desk. I guess he looked. I guess he saw your name and address there.”

  “Simple, huh? And there I was imagining he was clairvoyant.”

  Liz sat back in silence. “You know, Marino, you could have had me killed. Twice over.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t.”

  Liz got to her feet. A weakness now, a failure of bone and muscle, a yielding of volition. She placed her hands on the surface of Marino’s desk and leaned forward towards him.

  “Tell me something, Marino.”

  “Anything you like.”

  “Did you really ever think I killed Kate Myers?”

  A mysterious expression crossed his face. “I like to keep that kind of speculation to myself, Liz. Call it a trade secret.”