“I have to get back to work, son.” He rested a palm on my shoulder as he walked me out of the library and back into the entry area.
I was outside and almost to the car when I felt another, smaller hand touch my shoulder.
I turned and there was the maid or housekeeper or whatever-the-hell-she-was, all blue-eyed and pretty but too damn hefty for me to care.
“Yes?” I said. “Did I forget something?”
“No, Mr. Hammer.” Her voice was high-pitched and breathy in a nicely feminine way. “I just wanted to make sure I hadn’t been rude.”
“Rude?”
“Not speaking to you. My father-in-law is a good man, and kind, but sometimes where women are concerned, he can be, well… provincial, and a tad thoughtless. He should have made an introduction.”
I lifted a pointing finger. “You’re… Eva?”
She smiled. That really was a beautiful face. She extended a gentle hand, its nails bright red. I took it, held it a few moments rather than shake it, and its softness was nice.
“Yes, you met my husband, earlier. I’m the little woman.”
No comment.
“We live here with the Senator, Lawrence and the two boys and I,” she said, bright-eyed. “You know, Lawrence was favorably impressed with you, and he isn’t always.”
That sounded like I’d done well at an interview.
“I just wanted you to know,” she continued, “that I’m really thrilled for you and Mel… really thrilled!”
“Well, thanks.”
Eva clasped her hands to her generous bosom. “She’s a lovely girl, but never had much luck with men… till now, I mean. I’m so happy for her. You’ll make a really lovely couple.”
We did sound… lovely… didn’t we?
“Eva… may I call you Eva?”
“Please. And I’ll call you Mike.”
“Yeah, that’ll work. May I ask you something? Why is this family so damn welcoming? I’m nobody special. I was sitting in stir facing rape and murder charges a couple of eye blinks ago.”
Her expression took on a disturbing blankness that robbed it of much of its beauty. She looked over her shoulder, perhaps making sure her occasionally thoughtless father-in-law wasn’t spying.
Then she moved close and whispered, so hard to make out I had to lower my head to her moving lips.
“There’s something you need to know,” she said.
“What would that be, Eva?”
“I was with Lawrence that night.”
“What night?”
Her eyes widened. “Why, the night the Warburton bitch got what she deserved. Lawrence was with me the whole time! How’s that for an alibi?”
Then she gave me a kiss on the cheek and ran back to the porch and into the house.
CHAPTER NINE
I got to the cottage just as dusk was settling in, the overcast sky a threat as yet unfulfilled. The threat of the Two Tonys also remained, my rearview mirror giving no sign of anyone on my tail through the afternoon. That dropped me into an uncomfortable limbo—how could I contact Bob Lewis’s widow without risking exposing her to the wrath of the New York mobsters?
But after one more day here in Killington, I would be expected to head back to the courthouse with my blushing bride and fulfil our bizarre bargain. Otherwise all the goodwill being showered on me by the Charles family—not to mention the benign neglect of the Chief of Police and the D.A.—would come to an abrupt end.
Part of me wanted to trust Belden not to let that happen, but with men like Sykes on the force, I could wind up resisting arrest and arriving D.O.A. before any rare honest cop in this cesspool of a city might clear things up. And when you’re dead, being exonerated falls a little short.
She met me at the door with that white-blonde hair brushing her shoulders and her mouth as red as a new wound, and I’ll be damned if she wasn’t wearing a frilly white apron. Beneath it was a light-blue blouse, a string of pearls against pale skin, and a darker blue skirt dotted white. She was that picture of a happy housewife you saw all the time in the slick mags and never once in real life.
“I’ve been grilling,” she said.
“That’s a coincidence,” I said, stepping inside as she made room for me. “I’ve been getting grilled.”
She didn’t ask what I meant, instead just told me to join her on the little patio in back. Along the way I shed my raincoat, suitcoat, tie, shoulder- and ankle-holstered rods, putting the hardware at the bottom of the stack, as Melba didn’t know about them yet.
Outside, she sat me down at a small slatted wooden table and served me up a filet mignon from the grill. There was also corn on the cob and a baked potato, both wrapped in foil. Butter and salt- and-pepper shakers were already waiting, and a small salad with Thousand Island dressing. A sweating bottle of Knickerbocker beer was placed before me like an offering to the gods. Or one god, anyway.
Melba had a smaller filet for herself and corn on the cob, too, but no potato. Her salad had just a dollop of dressing. A homemaker had to watch her figure or else she might wind up like Eva Charles.
It was perfect—the steak bloody, the salad dressing tart, the potato and corn cooked long and slow. I ate like the king of the castle, or of the shingled cottage anyway.
She watched me, pleased to see me enjoying myself. All that was lacking was her asking me how work had gone, and had I asked the boss for that raise?
Apple pie à la mode was the coup de grâce.
“I got it at a bakery,” she said, looking a little embarrassed and even guilty.
“You’re forgiven,” I said, as I put away a second slice.
My flitting little socialite could cook. Maybe marriage wasn’t a fate worse than death. I didn’t even mind helping her with the dishes. Hell, I volunteered. But I didn’t wear a damn apron.
Neither did she, by the time we were sitting together on the couch, Melba tucking her bare legs under her again. Out the windows, night had fallen, but no raindrops yet. I was smoking a Lucky. She was having one of her own, a Marlboro, one of those brands aimed at women.
She said, “It’s starting to feel like fall.”
“Yeah. Getting nice and crisp out there. You want a fire in the fireplace?”
“That would be nice.”
I built one, got it going.
When I returned, she had maybe moved a little closer to where I’d been sitting. Maybe. That meal was the nicest bribe a man could imagine. Well, the second nicest.
In the orange glow of the flames, she looked impossibly beautiful and vaguely sad. I didn’t help that any when I said, “I saw your father today.”
Her sharp head-turn toward me said something, but I wasn’t sure what. Her actual words were, “Didn’t you see that woman? Your army friend’s wife?”
“No. There’s a hitch to that. I kind of fibbed earlier. Your brother told me your daddy wanted a word with me, and seemed not to want you to know about it.”
She was looking into the fire. The flickery reflection turned her into an old-time movie actress. “Oh,” was all she said.
“Don’t you want to know what he wanted with me?”
“Is it… my business?”
“Who else’s business would it be?”
“Well… yours.”
“I’m your fiancé, remember. It’s our business. Anyway, it was just more of the same.”
“More of the same what?”
“More of the same soft soap your brother lathered up this morning. How happy the Senator is to have a real man as a son-in-law. How pleased he is that you’re settling down with a bum who rides the rails.”
“That’s not what you are.”
“No. I guess, in fairness, he did check up on me. Knows I’m an ex-cop with a private operator’s license and an office in Manhattan. That didn’t stop him from trying to make a fish cannery executive out of me.”
She frowned at the fire. “That isn’t part of the deal.”
“What is the deal, Melba?”
<
br /> “You know what it is. Ten thousand dollars, when the time comes.”
“When will that be?”
“We’ll know. When the death of that girl has either been resolved or forgotten.”
“That could take a while.”
“Would it be so bad?” she asked. “Being married to me?”
“Being married to you would be lousy.”
That shocked her and she turned to look at me, hurt in her expression, the half of her face near the fire shimmering, the rest in darkness. “Am I so… awful?”
I held my hand out as if to touch her face, but let the fingers float there, inches away. “No. You’re wonderful. That’s the problem. Being married to you… forbidden to touch my own wife… honey, that’s hell on earth.”
She looked away, hugged herself, as if fighting off a chill, though the warmth of the fire contradicted that.
“Why don’t you tell me, doll?”
“…Tell you what?”
“What this is really about. You’re caught up in some kind of cover-up for your family. For your father, for your brother. I met your plump little sister-in-law, and she seemed intent on telling me where your brother was the night of the murder.”
“Did she.”
“Honey, how do I figure in? What the hell kind of role could I be playing?”
Staring at the fire, she said nothing for a long while. Maybe a minute, and that’s longer than it sounds. But her eyes were moving. She was thinking. She was considering.
Then she turned to me and did something startling—she touched my hand, which was resting on the couch between us. The time she’d slapped me had been much less of a surprise.
Her eyes pleaded and, like the overcast sky out there, threatened rain. “Mike, could you please trust me? I think… am I imagining things, or do we like each other? Are we friends? Could you do me a favor and just go along? I mean, there’s money in it for you, and—”
My hand went to her face and she flinched a little, as if I might strike her, and maybe the thought of me touching her was just as bad. But my fingertips rested gently on her full lips, touching their red stickiness.
“It’s not money,” I said. “Not now. I don’t really know what it is, baby, but money it ain’t.”
And I kissed her.
Softly, gently, and it lasted a while. She didn’t resist but she didn’t help out, either.
When our faces parted, she didn’t slap me. She was giving me a look of… alarm, I guess.
I said, “That was just my way of telling you how I feel. I won’t do it again unless you ask. Or you do it yourself.”
Now she gave me another endless minute of a stare. Wheels turning.
Finally, her lovely face again half in flicker, half in shadow, she said, “Mike… you remember that first day, when you… you shoved me. You got rough with me. Twice.”
“Yeah. I’m not proud of it, but I remember.”
“You have to promise me something. Really promise me.”
“Okay, sugar.”
“No roughhouse. I can’t abide that. If you hit me I might… I might kill you.”
“Well, we can’t have that.”
She grabbed my hand and squeezed. “Promise me, Mike. Gentle. Only be gentle. I can’t have it any other way. Promise me.”
This she said as her hand gripped mine hard, then finally released.
I touched her cheek, the one in darkness. Stroked it gently, ever so gently.
“I promise,” I said.
She began to unbutton the blouse.
She took her time, then let it hang open for a while, the twin globes of her high, full breasts only partially revealed. Then she gave a shrug and the garment slid to her waist, where she flicked it to the floor. The creamy flesh danced with flames, the smoothness of her a living canvas for a tapestry of dancing orange and blue and red and yellow, the erect centers of those lovely mounds unmoving amid the swaying reflections, yet demanding attention just the same. I gave it to them, but gently, kissing the tips and they seemed almost to kiss back, then the fullness of her breasts filled my hands to overflowing and my body demanded attention, too, a physical change in me not lost on her. With a surprisingly wicked little smile, she started unbuttoning my shirt for me. I let her do that, but then took over, getting out of the rest of my things. She sat there with quiet pride, waiting patiently, watching with hooded eyes, her knees spread beneath the skirt. Naked now, I leaned over and my right hand traveled up a silky thigh.
With the dress hiked to her waist, a bulky belt now, a clump of cloth between so many smooth surfaces, she leaned back, head against the arm rest, and I did some exploring, with my hands, with my mouth, flicks of the tongue, fingertip caresses, always gentle, always tender, because this girl would recoil at anything suggesting roughness, and when the time came, and the tapestry played its devil dance on the flesh of us both, the lust that built to a frenzied climax was shared by both of us, savage in its way, though anything but violent.
We lay quietly for a while, breathing hard but together, having run the same race. Then she slipped from under me and left me for a while, and I sat there stunned, managing only to think, Well, nobody can say it wasn’t consummated, can they?
When she returned, she was in a pink satin robe with a rope sash and kitten-heel slippers. I’d managed to crawl back into my shorts, which took all I had left. She’d brought along a fluffy white blanket to spread down on the floor before the fire, which had settled into a subdued murmuring crackle, the once leaping flames now licking lazily. She sat on the blanket and lifted a feminine hand and bid me join her.
I did.
We nestled, her back to me, her lovely bottom pressed against me, a promise or perhaps a dare, as she held the hand of the arm I looped around her waist, and we slept.
* * *
I woke deep into the night.
She had rolled away a little, though was still on the white blanket, sleeping on her other side, breathing deep and gentle. I lifted her up and carried her in my arms, like a bride over a threshold, or maybe a monster lugging a distressed damsel. Either way, she didn’t stir, wearing something like a smile on a mouth whose lipstick had all been used up.
In the bedroom, I tucked her in and she never roused. I thought about joining her but, oddly, that seemed a liberty I shouldn’t yet take. I found my way to the john and got rid of some used beer, then trudged to the refrigerator for the fresh variety.
The fire had dwindled to glowing orange bits and pieces, but the warmth of the room remained. I sat in my boxers and sipped my Knickerbocker beer and reflected. Had I been bribed again? Paid off ? I wasn’t sure, and wasn’t sure I cared. But I was an investigator by trade and inclination, and it didn’t rub me right having so many questions still out there, unanswered.
Especially when among them was, Who framed me for rape and murder? As well as, Who really did those crimes? And, Was I was looking for just one person?
On the other hand, the answer to the first of those seemed obvious, just in case you think you’re ahead of me.
That folksy benevolent monarch ruling from the Bluff, that smiling fish-cannery magnate who hated the smell of his own wares, that welcoming future father-in-law so eagerly looking for a nobody like me to join the family business, was the only person with the kind of power in Killing Town to pull the various strings I was tangled up in.
The crunch of wheels on gravel, faint but easily discerned , caught my attention. I rose and moved through a room lit only by the meager glow of the moribund fire. At the front windows, I drew back a filmy curtain ever so slightly.
A car had pulled up.
Not right out front, down the road a ways, stopping in front of nowhere at all. With the night sky overcast and hiding any stars and moon, all I could make out was the vehicle’s general dark hue—might be black or dark blue or a deep green. Nothing special, just a Chevy sedan with a New York license plate. Nothing special except for the guy who got out on the driver’s side, and
the other guy who climbed out on the rider’s side.
The driver had the build of a heavyweight boxer, which he had once been. Even in the dim light, the oval of his face and its flat nose and thick lips were easy to make out, as was the sideways scar on his right cheek. Thick black eyebrows met in the middle and thinning widow’s-peaked black hair was greased back, leaving bald streaks. He was in a dark suit with a dark tie and might have been a plainclothes dick or an insurance salesman. But he wasn’t.
He was Tony Pigozzi.
The rider was short and fat with the same kind of dark suit and dark tie as his partner, but he wore a porkpie fedora, very sharp, which didn’t help since he had the face of a pig with a mustache. No one would mistake him for a plainclothes dick or an insurance salesman.
He was Tony Scarnetti.
Those who enjoy irony might get a kick out of the Tony named Pigozzi having the scar, and the Tony named Scarnetti bearing the pig’s puss. The hilarity of that, however, was lost on me at the moment.
The Two Tonys were heading toward the cottage, in no apparent rush. They might have been mailmen, though this was a peculiar time to make a delivery. Each had an automatic in his right hand, fairly good-size—.45s or nine millimeters, most likely. These were already raised and ready.
I went to the chair where my clothes and my hardware were stacked, got the .45 from its sling and the .38 from the ankle holster. Then I hustled to the bedroom, shook Melba awake, and told her wide-eyed face, “Get under the bed. Men with guns. Do it!”
I had to give her credit—she did that without a qualm or question.
But I had a question as she scooted under the log-wood bed: “You ever use a gun?”
She nodded.
I held out the .38 and she reached out and took it.
I said, “Anybody who isn’t me or somebody you trust, use that on them.”
I had a pair of slip-on sneakers in my suitcase and I got those on. Otherwise, I was just in my boxers, looking like some ring opponent of Pigozzi’s back in his prime. Mismatched a little—I was more a light heavyweight.
Returning to the window, I found them pausing in the road, just beyond the Ford parked out front. Pigozzi, said to be the brains of the duo, was pointing toward the cottage. Then he nodded toward the back and headed that way at an easy lope.
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