“I wasn’t criticizing,” Tom said quietly. “I only wondered if he means to get rough. Maybe he just wants to buy his information.”
“Maybe. The man who posed as a detective to Jean, yesterday, didn’t answer the description of this man. So there must be more than one man looking for you.” He lifted his head to meet Tom’s gaze. “Try and forget what I said a few minutes ago. It isn’t only that the man might be armed. It’s also my precarious position in this case. If the police should learn I harbored a fugitive, all the years of my training would be wasted. I’d be out of business.”
Tom smiled at him. “Leonard, I don’t need any lengthy explanations. You’ve stuck your neck out too far, already. And I appreciate it. And you’ll never be involved through any words of mine.”
Delavan walked over to the window and looked out into the side yard. He kept his back to Tom as he said, “That Jean gets a man all hopped up on the intangibles like justice and fighting evil and a million things a sensible man should realize is juvenile. It was different, working for her dad. He was a realist. And he was a businessman.” Delavan turned, “And so am I.”
“I know,” Tom said. “But nobody’s twisting your arm, Leonard.”
“That’s right. Nobody is. Okay; maybe the man in the Chev is gone, now. I’ll get in touch with you. Stay here; that gun’s for self-protection, only.” He nodded and went out.
Naval Intelligence and the FBI … Well, maybe the man thought he’d earned a chance at the quieter life, the safe life of divorce cases and missing persons, of go-between and watching warehouses.
And, Tom reflected, it wasn’t Delavan’s life the man was working to save. That would make a big difference. It was his neck, and what was he doing? He was hiding, waiting, hoping.
He tried the .38 in his jacket pocket, but it sagged too much. He wedged it between the waistband of his trousers and his shirt and then buttoned his coat. He walked a few steps and the gun seemed secure enough.
He flexed the knee, which now had almost complete articulation, despite its tenderness. He was no hero; he stared at the door for seconds, a queasiness in his stomach, before turning the knob and going out into the hall.
There, again, he paused before walking along the narrow passage toward the bright, late afternoon showing through the glass of the front door.
• • •
From a drugstore on Sunset, he phoned Jud Shallock, but nobody answered. He turned back to the “P’s” in the phone book and found Prentice, Lisa Prentice. He’d expected her to have an unlisted number; maybe she wasn’t Nannie’s favorite any more.
The address was on Sunset and not too far; he took a cab.
It was a luxury apartment, with a view of the city behind it, and a view of the hills to the front. In the carpeted lobby, Tom pressed the button next to Lisa Prentice’s card.
Her voice sounding raspy through the speaker. “Ames — ?”
“No,” Tom said. “Is this Lisa?”
“Yes. Who is it?”
“A former employee of Nannie’s. I don’t want to come up if there’s a chance — ”
“Tom — ? Tom Spears?”
“Right.”
“Come on up. Nobody’s here.”
Two steps above him, the door buzzed and he went up and through it. The self-service elevator was here, its door open. He stepped in and pressed the button for the sixth floor.
Ames? she’d asked. Was it Ames Gilchrist she’d been expecting, the doorknob tryer, the one Jean had suspected of carrying pornographic postcards?
Lisa Prentice was standing in the doorway of her apartment when Tom got off the elevator. She was a small and exquisitely boned female with jet black hair and high coloring. Except for an overabundance of bust, her slight figure was beautifully proportioned. She was dressed in a candy-striped silk.
Her brown eyes considered him gravely as he walked along the carpeted hallway toward her. “This is some surprise,” she said. “Remembered me, did you?”
“Nobody’s likely to forget you, Lisa. Did you expect me to?” He paused a few feet from her, smiling down at her.
Her oval face held a tinge of mockery. “I see you didn’t lose any of your charm in prison. What honestly brought you here, Tom?”
He said nothing for seconds, holding her gaze. Then he said, “I thought you might know something that would help. I’ll go, if you want, Lisa.”
She shook her head, and stood to one side. “Come in, Tom.”
He came into a small, circular entrance hall, through an archway from that into a living room with full length windows flanking an ebony, high-hearth fireplace. Through the windows he could see the city for miles.
Lisa gestured toward a ten foot, circular davenport upholstered in a nubby, lime-colored fabric. “Make yourself comfortable. Drink?”
Tom sat rigidly on the edge of the davenport. “Not now, thanks. You were expecting someone, were you?”
“Ames Gilchrist. Know him?” She was mixing herself a drink at a quilted, leatherette bar near the archway.
“Never heard of him,” Tom lied. “A friend of Nannie’s, is he?”
She turned from the bar, a drink in her hand. “Why should he be?”
“I only asked. I hoped he wasn’t. I’ve a feeling Nannie might be a man to stay away from. Am I right?”
Her gaze dropped to the drink in her hand and then back to meet Tom’s. “He could be.” She came over to sit some distance away on the davenport. “Yes, he very well could be. He — was out of town the night your wife was killed.”
A few seconds and then Tom said, “Which proves nothing, of course. Nannie goes out of town quite often.”
“Not too often. He hired Joe Hubbard, too, to defend you. Joe was a friend of yours, wasn’t he?”
Tom nodded.
Lisa sipped her drink. “Some friend! Though he did save you from the gas chamber, didn’t he?” Tom said nothing.
Lisa tried to sound casual, and missed it. “Where have you been hiding, Tom?”
He looked at her blankly. “A — hotel in a bad part of town. Lisa, do you think Nannie killed my wife?”
“I don’t know. He was sleeping with her, I know, and he was out of town the time she was killed.” She pulled her legs up under her. “You were true to your wife, weren’t you, Tom?”
“I was. I guess I was a sucker. Aren’t you and Nannie still — well — ”
“He still likes me, yes. I can’t be sure I’m first in his affections any more, but we’re still friends. Why, Tom?”
“Because the way you accused him, well — it doesn’t add, if you’re his girl.”
“I’m not his girl. I’m nobody’s girl, and especially a has-been like Nannie. The Eastern boys are taking him over, Tom. He’s fighting, but — ” She shrugged.
“They’ve tried it before. Nannie’s Mr. Big in this end of the state. He’s run the Eastern trash out before.”
“He’s bought them off, before. These new boys don’t buy.”
“Who are they?”
She shrugged. “All I know is how he’s whining about the competition. I’m sick of listening to it.” She finished her drink. “Can’t I mix you a little something? You look like you could use it.”
“All right. Bourbon and water will do it.”
She was mixing it when the phone rang. She picked up the instrument and said, “Hello.” A pause and then, “I’ll manage to keep busy. Phone before you come over. I might go to a show with one of the girls.” A chuckle. “One of the girls, I said. Bye.”
She replaced the phone and said to Tom, “That was Ames. He won’t be over.” She was smiling as she turned back to mix the drinks.
It was the kind of smile a strip-teaser learns early and probably meant nothing, Tom thought.
When she came back with the drinks, she said, “If you should clear your name, you’d be rich, wouldn’t you, Tom? Your wife’s money would be yours.”
“I guess it would.”
She chuckled. “Yo
u’d be quite a prize.” She went back to her former seat. “Any girl would consider you a good catch.” She wasn’t looking at him. “Any girl. You’d need to be careful.”
He sipped his drink. “Honey, are you trying to tell me something?”
“Just to be careful.”
“You’d hardly need to tell me that. The police all over the country are keeping an eye cocked for me this minute. If you can help clear me, Lisa, you won’t regret it. It would be worth a lot to me.”
She reached over and took a cigarette from a box on the cocktail table in front of them. “What could I do? What could either of us do against Nannie Koronas?”
“You mean you’d work against him, if you thought it would help?”
“Not for anybody. I would for you, Tom. Aren’t you going to light my cigarette?”
He picked up the table lighter and flicked it into flame, and reached over to light her cigarette. Her eyes searched his. “You used to be such a gentleman.”
“A lot of good it did me. Doesn’t Nannie scare you? You must know him as well as anybody?”
“I know him, and he doesn’t scare me too much. Because some of the things I know are in a safe deposit box, to be opened by my lawyer in case I die. Not that Nannie would kill me. He never had it so good.”
“You’re kidding,” Tom said, “aren’t you? About the safety deposit box, I mean. You saw that in a movie or in a magazine story, didn’t you? It’s an old gag.”
“It’s an old gag and a good one. You’re not drinking your drink. Is there something wrong with it?”
Last time, she’d been half-drunk. Last time, she’d been half-drunk and had wanted to climb into the hay. Last time, he’d avoided the hay.
He took a deep swallow. “There isn’t a thing wrong with it. It’s just the way I like it.” He looked at her. “I don’t want to get too drunk. You told me to be careful.”
“Not around me, Tommy boy. Everybody knows I’m out for money. It’s the deceitful ones you have to watch out for.”
They worked toward the inevitable, drink by drink. The candy striped dress grew hazier in his vision, her perfume stronger in his nostrils.
Some time during the creeping dusk, he said, “I’d be in great shape if a cop should walk in.”
Her voice was soft. “Nobody’s going to walk in. Nobody has a key.”
They were on the davenport, still sitting erectly, but closer, now. The radio was on, softly, and there was a commercial chanting the merits of Litter-MacCann, funerals with no hidden charges. Tom thought of Forest Lawn, and Lois. Joe, too, was buried at Forest Lawn.
“They should have been buried together,” Tom said.
“Who? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Nothing. That dress hurts my eyes. It’s too bright.”
“So? I’ll take it off.”
Her bed was square, seven feet each way. She looked like a doll in it. A squirming doll, a murmuring doll, an active, elastic, demanding, pulsating, rewarding — and finally quiescent doll.
In the perfumed room, she said quietly, “I sure waited long enough for that. How long, Tom?”
“I’m not following you.” Spent, he was, emotionally drained.
“Since we first met, since I first lusted for you.”
“You were drunk; you didn’t lust for me.”
“Hmmmmm.” She laid a limp hand on his chest. “Don’t tell me how I felt; I was there.”
In the big bed, on the silk sheets, his body in complete exhaustion, but his mind working, seeking a mental penetration after the physical.
Perhaps, above her lovely neck, there was nothing to penetrate. But who’d been closer to Nannie?
The phone rang, and she reached out to pick up the instrument off one of the shelves of the headboard. “Hello? Oh — watching TV. Watching what? The wrestling, of course. You know I love wrestling. It isn’t on? Well, it certainly looked like wrestling to me.” She ran a fingernail along Tom’s chest. “Ames, don’t be tiresome. Are you checking on me? All right, honey; if you get a free minute, phone me.”
She sighed as she replaced the phone in its cradle. “Why is it the least faithful men are the most suspicious?”
“I guess it’s called projection. If I had you, I’d be jealous, too.”
“Darling, you’ve just had me.”
“You know what I mean. If you were mine for good.”
“For good? You wouldn’t like that. Forever, you mean, and if you were clear, this could be arranged. Because you’d be rich. I need a rich man for the long haul, Tom baby.”
“You deserve one. Is this Ames Gilchrist talking wedding bells?”
Her laugh was short and cynical. “It’s the furthest thing from his mind.” She paused. “Right now.”
“Theatrical man? A producer, maybe? A director?”
A longer pause, the kind of pause that precedes a lie. “He’s got some influence in the industry. I don’t know how much. With men like Ames, it’s hard to tell.”
Silence growing in the room. Something under the silence, something unvoiced, something important, pounding at the silence.
Tom thought of Lois’ words, and paraphrased them. “Is our only communication the physical, Lisa?”
“I’m not with you, baby. Put it in English.”
“I’m a convicted murderer. Don’t you know anything about that, anything that would help?”
The silence seemed to deepen; the room was a tomb. And then, quietly, hesitatingly, “I can’t think of anything. I’d be glad to help, though. There are — there could be things I know that don’t seem to be important, now, but — ” She took a breath. “It’s Nannie, you do mean, isn’t it, Tom? It’s Nannie you suspect?”
“Who else?”
She rose to a sitting position. “Yes, I guess there isn’t anyone else. Are you hungry?”
“I could eat.”
She sat there a moment, looking down at him. Then, “I lied about Ames Gilchrist, Tom. He’s not in the industry. He’s one of the boys from the East, one of the boys Nannie is fighting.”
“I see. He gets around a lot, doesn’t he?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“He — was at another place where I was hiding, a place that has no connection with you or Nannie or my wife. He tried a door that was locked, in his nosy way. I’d locked it, for my protection.”
“Where was this, Tom?”
“I don’t want to name the place. I don’t want the — person involved.”
“A girl?”
“Don’t pry, Lisa.”
“I don’t need to, and I’ll tell you this, it wasn’t just an accident that Ames knows the girl. He looked her up just as he looked me up, though he’d never admit it. He’s looking for all the ammunition he can get against Nannie.”
Tom said nothing, studying Lisa.
She said, “All right, I’ve given you that about Ames. Now tell me what you know about Ames.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to know if he’s using me for a patsy against Nannie. I sure as hell don’t mean to be the girl in the middle in this kind of war, Tom.”
He smiled. “You want to be the girl on top, don’t you? You’re going to play along with both of them until you see which one is winning.”
She climbed out of bed and started to dress. Then, suddenly, she stopped dressing and stared at the chair nearby. Tom knew what she was staring at. His clothes were on the chair and the .38 on top of them.
Her face was cold as she turned toward him. “You son-of-a-bitch, you certainly came prepared didn’t you?”
Chapter 8
HE SAT up in the big bed. “What the hell would you want me to carry, a slingshot? I’m not going back to Missouri, Lisa. Not alive.”
She watched him rigidly, the candy-striped dress in her hand. Finally, she said, “You — scared me, for a second. The gun scared me. You don’t look — natural, carrying a gun.”
He didn’t answer. He slid out of bed a
nd started to dress.
His back was to her, when she asked, “Did you always carry a gun, Tom? When you were working for Nannie, did you — I mean, you and the others — ”
“None of us. You know we didn’t. Nannie didn’t believe in the heavy stuff.”
“As far as you know.”
He turned to face her. She had the dress on, and was running a comb through her hair. He asked, “What do you mean? Do you know something different about him?”
Lisa looked at him challengingly. “I know he’s got a big, fat-faced thug working for him right this minute. I wouldn’t be surprised if the man is looking for you.”
“A man in a ‘51 Chev Club?”
“I don’t know the year, but it’s a Chev Club.”
“Sand gray?”
She nodded. “You’ve seen him? You know him?”
“I’ve seen him. What’s his name?”
“Neilson, Luke Neilson. A Chicago import of Nannie’s.”
“He didn’t look like much to me, big and stupid.”
“Of course. Men are so bright about things like that. But I spent too much time in burlesque to judge by looks. And if this Neilson’s stupid, it would be the first stupid man Nannie Koronas ever hired.”
Tom sighed, and sat on the edge of the bed to put on his shoes. “All right. Yes. What do you like about me, Lisa? I’m not rich.”
“You were, and you could be, again. Who says I like you?”
“I’ve been hiding behind a lot of skirts,” Tom went on. “I married money, though I loved her. But when I look in the mirror, it doesn’t figure.”
“Maybe you’re just lucky,” Lisa said. “Let’s not get studious; this isn’t the room for it. I’ve a pair of fine filets in the refrigerator, lover.”
• • •
Lisa was quiet, at dinner, subdued. Three dinners, Tom thought, in three evenings and each one with a different girl, each girl attractive in her way. Stud Spears.
He thought of Jean Revolt, and the images of the other two faded.
Tom said, “Did you know Joe Hubbard?”
Lisa looked up from her coffee. “Not well. I’ve met him.”
“Through Nannie?”
“Naturally. He did some work for Nannie. I don’t travel in the Joe Hubbard circles, Tom.” She reached for a cigarette from a pack on the table. “Not yet. Maybe never. If you’re wondering, was I one of his women, the answer is ‘no.’ Though I think he tried, one night at a party.”
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