by Dale Bogard
“He was a stubborn old soldier,” she said. “I had to overcome that obstacle. The night he asked me to go out to his place was the chance I wanted. It wasn’t true that Lee Wesley, the driver, was ill. I made that up. I didn’t want any chaperone around on the night Banningham was to be alone in the house. I did the work he wanted and mixed him a stiff nightcap of barbiturates and Scotch. He always took a drink straight down, so it was easy.”
She paused a moment and went on without a change of tone. “He knew what had happened all right as soon as he drank. I threw a gun on him and stood there watching him go to sleep. The Big Sleep. The one you don’t come out of. I undressed him. Got him into his silk pajamas and tucked him up. He still wasn’t dead. But he was going to be pretty damn quick.
“I had everything fixed the way I wanted it. Then things started to happen. I guess that’s the way it always is. I was on my way back from Banningham’s place when I saw Grierson’s car parked on the roadside ahead. I could begin to imagine what it was there for. I nearly went into a panic—but not quite. If I kept driving the chances were he would spot me and get to wondering about it after they found Banningham dead. So I pulled into the side myself.
“I found out how wrong that was when I saw those two hoodlums with him. I couldn’t see their faces and they didn’t let me see them. Everything else happened like I told you. They slashed my tires and one of them drove me down the road a couple of miles and ditched me. Then he swung round and headed back.
“The funny thing was I never spotted Grierson when we went into the inn. Maybe he saw me, maybe not. If he did he wouldn’t be allowed to say anything by the killer who was with him—Canting’s hired hoodlum.” She mouthed the three last words with ice-cold hate.
“That was the end of it for you,” I said.
“Yes,” she said in a low toneless voice. “Everything I had planned—money, power, position. All gone. And I had just killed a man to get all of it. A cheap killer had made an end of it for me. A tiny smile crossed her face. “I gave him his,” she said. Now there was tone to her voice. A horrible dry little tone.
“It was luck. Just as you dropped me off here that night an old Packard went by. I caught a glimpse of a fair-haired guy with a scar. It was uncanny. I never saw him at the inn, but he looked a ringer for the man you described. The car rumbled to a stop down the street. He seemed to be having engine trouble. I walked along the street and talked to him. I told him I was flat and was looking for a guy to go to bed with. He liked that. He was the kind who would always like that.
“I went with him to that cheap little saloon Mike Hannigan runs. He got the room keys and sent me up when Hannigan went in the back for something. He had a suitcase and when he opened it the first thing I saw were a set of three daggers like the one he knifed Grierson with. I knew then that he was the man. It was a million-to-one chance. He bragged about those daggers—but not enough to say he had used one on anybody.” She paused again and her little teeth glistened. They were very wet now. “I let my dress fall down round my ankles. I bent down and came up with one of the daggers. He was lying propped up on the bed with a drink in his hand. I got onto the bed with him. Then I put the dagger straight into his heart…the dirty little cheapskate.”
“And then?” I just managed to get the words out.
“It wasn’t luck after that. I had to find out who had paid him to kill Grierson. You found that out for me, Dale. I didn’t have any trouble getting close to Canting. He liked women, too. I was there a half-hour before you found me in my negligee at Cornel Banningham’s apartment. I didn’t know it was you…”
“Somehow,” I said, “that was the give-away. I knew you didn’t love Banningham. I realized then that you wanted nothing but his money.”
“That’s right,” she said. “He was the next biggest thing.”
“He wouldn’t have lived too long, would he?”
She didn’t answer that. Instead, she asked in an odd little voice, “Why should you know I didn’t love him?”
“I won’t answer that,” I told her.
Suddenly, her calm went. “You great big goddamned fool—why did you have to push your way into this? Why couldn’t you leave things alone? Why, why, why? when it’s you I want. I’ve wanted you ever since you picked me up off the roadway that night—wanted you every waking minute. Oh! Dale, Dale—why did you have to do it? Now it’s all gone. Oh Christ, why did you have to do it?”
I said, “Save it, pretty baby—save it for the Grand Jury.” I hadn’t meant to say that, I hadn’t meant to say anything. I didn’t know anymore what I was saying.
She sat motionless for a minute. Except that she was chewing her bottom lip. A trickle of blood spilled on to her softly rounded chin. A long shudder ran through her. Then she was calm again.
“Now I don’t get anything. I don’t even have you in bed. Nobody has you now….”
My shirt was wet and my mouth was hard and dry and there was a noise in my ears. Like the noise of guns heard a long way off. They might be .44 Colts fired without a silencer. This one would only make a thudding sound if the silencer was as special as it looked.
All the beauty had gone from her face. It was a face suddenly grown old and bitter and not quite sane. She raised the gun barrel another fraction of an inch.
“Shut your eyes, Dale, please,” she whispered.
I went on keeping them open. Only now they were looking past her. They were looking at a slowly opening door. Then they were looking at Detective-lieutenant Desmond O’Cassidy. He stood there framed in the doorway, his hat pushed back on his pale forehead, his gun held towards her back.
“Don’t shoot, sister,” he said.
In the silence of that room his voice was more violent than a bursting gun shell.
She cried out indescribably and spun round. There was a rapid explosion, a spurt of flame. Her fantastic Colt fell to the carpet. She stood still for a moment. Then she put both hands to her breasts and coughed. Just the once. A funny little cough. Her body bent, straightened up and collapsed sideways into my arms. I held her for a second. Her lovely eyes were wide open but they weren’t seeing me. She was never going to see anything again.
I went down with her onto one knee. The way I had once before. I remembered it. I would always remember it. That was why I was crying.
Cass sat on his heels beside us, his long arms dangling over his knees.
“I followed you,” he said. “I didn’t know…until I heard what she said. I was outside.”
“She was going to kill you,” I said. “Just like she meant to kill me.”
His voice was very soft. “I know,” he said. “I could of winged her. You know that?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know. Thanks for not doing that.”
“At the very least she would have got life in a women’s jail. Better this way out. Now it’s all over. You don’t have to spend the long nights thinking about her dying by inches in a lifer pen.”
I nodded.
But I didn’t think sleep was going to come easy for a little while.
My head didn’t ache any more. I didn’t seem to feel anything anymore. For once I didn’t want to drink. Not whisky. I wanted black coffee and cigarettes. I put the percolator on in my kitchenette and dragged on a Lucky.
It was 3:00 a.m. and I didn’t think the telephone would ring. It did. I turned the gas to a low flame under the coffee and walked back into my lounge.
“Hallo, Dale.” It was deep and rounded yet soft and sultry and it made you think of bedroom eyes if that was the way you thought. I didn’t have those thoughts. To hell with women.
“Hallo…Louella,” I said.
“I’ve left Long Island. I don’t want to see it again. That chapter is ended. I’ve taken an apartment.”
I hadn’t meant to ask her where it was because I had thought to hell with women but I did and she told me. It was a ten-minute walk.
She said, “I called up a few oldtime theater friends and threw
a party tonight. But it wasn’t the same. You can’t reopen chapters, either. I’ve sent them all home. I’m…I’m lonely.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m lonely, too. I’m going to be very lonely for a long time.”
Her voice quickened a little. “Come over, Dale. We can be lonely together.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Two lonely people.”
“Well?” The way she said that word is something I can’t tell you.
“Make some black coffee,” I said.
I went back into the kitchenette and turned off the gas. I got my hat and coat and rode down in the elevator. It was a lovely clear night. All the rain had gone and a million stars shone down on Manhattan. The air was fresh and clean.
Somehow I didn’t feel troubled about what I was doing. I knew she would understand.
ISBN: 978 1 472 05193 6
PARDON MY BODY
© 2009 Dale Bogard
Published in Great Britain 2009
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited
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