Naked and Alone

by Lawrence Lariar

  And now—this. A long ride home through the fog with a girl who insisted on keeping her hand on my knee so that I had to shove her back against the door of the Caddy.

  We moved ahead slowly, edging through the great surging veil of gray like a steamer caught without fog horns or whistles. The tires hummed and hissed on the damp concrete, setting up a sad and lonely fugue that added nothing to my spirits. My mind was blinded by the fog. My brain sought an out, a reason for this hayride, a clue to the events that had brought me here. The memory of Kay Randall’s figure on the bed still burned brightly inside me, sending me off into bypaths of theory that might lead to her killer. And when I thought of Kay, the missing pieces of the puzzle began to irritate me, so that I forced my mind to think deep and think hard. Where was I going now? What could I get from Serena? How could I get it? And when …

  The scream woke me up.

  Serena had grabbed for the wheel and pulled the car to the left.

  “Better let me drive, cutie,” she said. “That tree wouldn’t have made a very smooth ramp.”

  “I’m all right now. Relax.”

  “How can I relax when you try to climb trees with my Caddy?”

  “Forget it. I’m wide awake now. I won’t ruin your pretty little machine.”

  “I’m not worried about the machine. What’s under my coat is a lot more valuable to me. And to you, too.”

  “I can live without it.”

  “The same tough boy.” She laughed. “I like you when you talk like that. Talk some more.” She threw her left arm across my neck and started to work me over with her fingers again. “We sure had a lot of fun tonight, didn’t we?”

  “Take your hand away.”

  “I only want to be near you, Johnny.”

  “Save it for one of your queer pals,” I said. “I’m driving. And I’ve got plenty of work to do tonight. Sit over in your corner and clam up and behave.”

  She paused only long enough to appraise me with her green eyes. Then, half apologetically, she slid her hand away and moved to the door and lit a cigarette. We were moving out of the fog belt now and in a little while we hit a broad, damp highway. I clicked on the wipers and they slashed away at what was left of the mist. Ahead lay only the bright and shining darkness. I could concentrate on speed exclusively now, and the big car responded to my foot. Ten miles to New York. I made it in ten minutes.

  And in eleven minutes, I was rolling to a stop in front of McKegnie’s precinct. I took Serena’s hand and jerked her out of the car. She was a bundle of fright and trembling as her eyes found the word POLICE above the wide doorway.

  “No,” she begged, her mouth moving fast and loose. “Please, Johnny, please. Don’t take me inside. I’ve told you how they affect me—the police, I mean. I can’t go in with you. Take the car keys. I won’t run away. I promise I won’t. But don’t take me through that door.” She was on the thin edge of panic, her eyes bunged and begging, her whole body a shivering, palsied throb of horror. “I’ll do anything you ask me. Anything, Johnny. But not that. I can’t go in there with you.”

  It was no act. And she could do me no good inside, especially if she blew her wig before one of McKegnie’s boys. I pushed her back into the Caddy and she crouched against the seat like a sick animal.

  “I’ll love you forever for this, Johnny.”

  “Don’t try to run. This is a dangerous neighborhood. You’re liable to be raped before you reach a cab.”

  She tried to cover her terror with a giggling laugh. “It’s no fun being raped by strangers, cutie. I’ll wait for you.”

  McKegnie’s precinct was busy as an Automat at lunch time. The huge anteroom bustled with activity. Two street-walkers were trying to bribe their way out of a night-court rap by making passes at the cop who held them. A drunk gurgled his protests to a corner of the wall, slapping feebly at his own shadow. A pickpocket sat dangerously close to the drunk, maneuvering for a quick dip into an open pocket. I threaded through the flotsam and approached the horse-faced desk man. He was fathoms deep in a fresh copy of the Bugs Bunny Comic Book. When I tapped his desk, he lifted his sleepy eyes and turned on one brain cell, half power. I gave him my name and something clicked behind his eyes. I asked for McKegnie. He snapped to sitting attention at the mention of the great man’s name. Finally my galvanized desk man let the comic book fall and shook his head energetically.

  “Sorry, Amsterdam,” he boomed. “The chief ain’t in. He went home to bed.”

  He said it loud enough for them to hear him in Times Square. He made it as huskily hearty as a Lionel Barrymore stage whisper, and I knew what his train-announcing delivery meant. McKegnie had left instructions for this occasion. McKegnie had ordered a tail to stand by for my arrival. I walked down the stairs slowly. Serena still sat in the front seat, curled into a soft ball of femininity her face arched away. When she saw me come out alone, she seemed to sigh in relief.

  “Bad news, cutie?”

  “No news is bad news.”

  I paused to light a cigarette at the other end of the car. I didn’t really care who McKegnie assigned to tail me. But I was curious; an unknown pursuer always inspires curiosity. Beyond the rim of the broad door, a man stood in the shadows. He was on the inside looking out. The silhouette was familiar, as short and square as a fireplug. It belonged to Robley. I sighed. Robley was a stubborn little dick, a man who must have been weaned on Les Miserables. He turned every target into a Jean Valjean and it was easier snaking yourself loose from a Georgia chain gang. It would be futile to start away from him fast. Not yet. To outwit Robley, I would have to outthink Robley. I got into the Caddy and started away slowly, heading uptown at a normal pace. Ten minutes later we arrived at Serena’s place on Eighty-Third Street. Robley’s sedan slid to the curb a respectable distance up the street and sat there, black and ornery.

  Serena said, “I think we’re being followed, Johnny.”

  “Not you,” I said. “Me.”

  “Cops?”

  “Forget it. That man’s tailing me.” I patted her out of the car. “Robley’s a gent. He’ll wait until I come out.”

  Serena’s place was a freshly scrubbed brownstone. I looked down at the slim blonde bim next to me and then up at her dwelling. They didn’t fit. Serena should have owned a sleek little shop done in violet pastels, with a chichi front sporting modern angled windows and displays done in swaths of bright material and small decorative flowers.

  “Where’s your shop?” I asked.

  She took my hand and led me up the stone steps. A silver tablet hardly bigger than an airmail stamp was screwed into the brick with black ornamental screwheads. The tablet screamed this message to the nearsighted:

  NAKED AND ALONE

  SERENA HARPER

  Gowns

  “You didn’t hit me as the conservative type,” I said.

  “In business, I am.” She smiled. “Let Bergdorf’s advertise. I get the word-of-mouth trade.”

  She opened the door. We walked through a dimly lit hall, through another door of modern design, and again through a door that led into a cave of delight. It was something out of an old set designed for the Music Hall stage. The furnishings were sparse, but done in the lush and vivid shades that stank of theatricals and fancy customers. The walls were brightly festooned in a giant drapery, a masterpiece of maroon and macaroni filigreed traceries. The carpets were soft as a bowl of cotton candy. Across the room from the door, a marble staircase rose up to a second storey, a kind of balcony that surrounded the room.

  Serena followed my eyes. “You like the stairway, cutie? I had it built especially. I’m really quite a psychologist in selling, you see. My customers like to model their gowns by walking down those beautiful, beautiful steps. If they feel like royalty, they buy. And you can bet your right arm little Serena makes them feel like royalty.”

  “Where are your racks?”


  “Stop being so commercial. You don’t think I keep racks where the customers can see them? What do you imagine this is—Ohrbachs?”

  “The racks,” I said. “Let’s take a look at them.”

  Serena shrugged and pressed a button on the far wall. A mirror suddenly began to float away from us. When it was gone, a big closet full of dresses took its place. Hundreds of dresses and gowns, on little green velvet hangers, exciting and colorful.

  “Where’s Kay’s gown?” I asked.

  “Not here, cutie. Upstairs.”

  “Why up there?”

  “All my unfinished stuff is up there.”

  “And your books? Are they up there, too?”

  “You want to see my books?” she asked incredulously. “What in the world for?”

  “My mother always wanted me to be a CPA,” I said. “The books first, please.”

  “But they’re not here.” Serena sighed. “My accountant happens to have them. I can get them for you tomorrow, Johnny.”

  “Make a note of it,” I told her. But I was already searching through a Louis XIV desk that sat in the corner of the room. Serena didn’t seem to mind. She watched me quietly, and when I snaked my hand into a lower drawer and came up with an unmentionable object, she giggled and enjoyed my confusion. I said, “Crazy things in crazy places. You’re a bit of a wack, Serena.”

  “A girl never knows when she needs things,” Serena said. “If you’re looking for a reference to Kay Randall’s dress, you won’t find it in that desk. Why don’t you come upstairs with me? Then I’ll show you her gown. It has a tag with her name and her specifications on it. Want me to bring it down, or will you come up with poor little me?”

  “I’m right behind you.”

  We walked up the phony staircase. At the top of the landing, a red door led into another fantastic room, a combination of bedroom, studio and bowling alley. In the dead center there bulked a huge bed, big enough to sleep two elephants. The rest of the room reflected Serena’s zany personality. Reflected it maybe a hundred times. Because, lining the floor on one side of the barn, up from the floor to the ceiling and including the entire ceiling over the bed, there were mirrors—hundreds of mirrors, slapped on like wall paper. I saw myself coming and going from every angle. I saw Serena in quadruplicate, crossing the carpet and standing before a mirrored door and finally disappearing from me.

  “Make yourself comfortable, Johnny. I’ll be right out.”

  “Is this the whole apartment?” I asked.

  “The works, cutie. You like?”

  “Where’s the kitchen?”

  “Press the button near the light switch.”

  I did. The mirrors on the wall beyond the switch began to move. They slid and slipped away and in the next moment a small and tidy kitchenette hove into view. Serena had done it with mirrors again! There was a small refrigerator and a sink unit, together with a good-sized cupboard. Everything was built-in and of good design. But obviously this doll didn’t care much about food. Not with that bed and those mirrors above it and beyond it. There was little else in the room, yet it came through as a tastefully designed place, if you could accept the fact that the bed alone ruled the roost.

  I was admiring the delicately carved headboard and the tufted quilting, when Serena’s voice hit me.

  “How do you like it, Johnny?”

  She was standing near the wall, wearing a black and nebulous wisp of cloud around her body. She was something out of a fairy tale, a woodland sprite on the prowl for fun and foolishness.

  I said, “I thought you were working on a dress for Kay Randall.”

  “A dress and this negligee. We’re the same size.”

  “I see.”

  “What do you see, Johnny?” She licked her lips on the words. Serena could read a cook book and make it sound like pornography. “Do you see what I wanted you to see?”

  “The dress,” I barked at her. “Stop making with the body beautiful and get me Kay Randall’s dress.”

  “Don’t get mad, cutie. I’ll bring out the dress next.”

  And she did. It was a theatrical number, something cut low enough to make any woman with enough mammary padding look good to the boys in the front row. But on Serena, the bumps were real and provocative. She showed me her creation with pride, swirling and preening before the many mirrors until I told her to put it away. I had examined it carefully and found the tag believable. The dress was almost finished, but needed more sewing on the upper section. I was convinced that Serena had told me the truth about Kay Randall.

  But the decision to believe Serena didn’t help my state of mind. I watched her leave the room and still wondered about her. I let myself sag on the bed and closed my eyes and tried to find a bud of reason in the jungle of madness that seemed to blossom whenever Serena appeared near me. What was she? Why was she a dressmaker? I couldn’t shake her loose from the murder of Kay Randall. I couldn’t move her away from my problem.

  Nor did she choose to stay away.

  When I opened my eyes, she was standing over me. Then she sank down beside me on the couch. And she was wearing the black masterpiece again. She snuggled close to me. She murmured sweetly in my ear:

  “Tell me about your friend Kay Randall.”

  “I thought you knew her.”

  “Only as a customer. But you knew her well, didn’t you?”

  “Well enough to keep me out late looking for her murderer.”

  Serena shivered. “How awful. She must have been a really fine girl to keep you interested, Johnny.”

  “She was a friend of mine. I don’t like to see my friends killed off.”

  “You loved her, I’ll bet.”

  She was pushing her lines a little, trying for an inside track to my background with Kay. She wasn’t kidding a little while ago when she said she knew sales psychology. She was selling me now. Selling me confidence in her, selling me forgetfulness by playing the scene with deep sympathy.

  Also, she was selling me herself.

  “Look at me, Johnny,” she whispered suddenly.

  “Skip it,” I said. “I’m not in the mood.”

  “I can fix that, cutie.”

  “I’m too old to be seduced. Now let go before I rip your pretty underthings.”

  Her eyes lit up expectantly. “Rip it, Johnny.” Her whisper became a hoarse pleading throb. “Tear it to pieces.”

  The dame belonged on an analyst’s couch. I slapped her away from me. She grabbed for her cheek in a paroxysm of pain and pleasure. I got up and she came after me. She was making another grab at me when the phone rang and jolted her out of her erotic hysteria. She hesitated and slid to the small night table and picked up the phone.

  “Hello,” she said angrily. “No, I can’t, George. Not now. I’m busy, do you understand?” She hung up. “You see what I did for you, Johnny?”

  “Who’s George?” I asked.

  “That,” said Serena, “is none of your business.”

  “I could slap the information out of you.”

  “Maybe that’s what I want.” She smiled. She was letting herself down on the bed, her long slim legs flashing white beneath the negligee.

  The dame had a one-slap mind. I put my hat on and started for the door, watching her in the mirror, seeing her get out of the bed in a last desperate effort to make me stay. She skipped across the room, caught me on the stair landing and tried to pull me back.

  “You’re a big tease,” she said.

  “You’re wasting your time.”

  “When will I see you?”

  “Maybe sooner than you expect,” I said.

  I walked down the marble staircase. Poor George, I thought.

  Hell, poor me.

  CHAPTER 10

  I clomped wearily down the stone steps, alone with the night wind and the
dark silences. And Robley. He leaned against his sedan up near the corner, studying the sky with the careless abandon of a bird hunter observing an English sparrow. He was watching me and waiting for my next move.

  I moved. Down the street slowly, going away from him but in no hurry to show my hand. My watch read 3 A.M. My body felt like the end of ten sets of tennis. I was beaten and tired and anxious for some sleep. All around me, the canyoned cliffs housed sleeping New Yorkers, long ago bedded down and now slumbering into the last deep snores before the morning alarms would wake them for their daily grind. The street snoozed peacefully. And somewhere a murderer slept confidently, too. He would be laughing at me in his dreams, as he lay in one of these dim and darkened apartments, or out in the suburbs in another type of dwelling. But there was little energy left in me. I wanted out—at least for a deep and restful spell with Morpheus. I started toward the far corner, where I could catch a cruising cab.

  Halfway there, I broke stride.

  Behind me, a car squealed to a noisy stop before Serena’s shop. A shadow ran out and snaked up the steps to the brownstone. The shadow disappeared through her front door. It was all over in a matter of minutes, too quick for me to see the man’s face. But from where I stood, the street lamp told me that the crate he had arrived in was a Ford, vintage 1938. It was Hank Foley’s car!

  I made a detour, across the street and into the deep and sheltering pit of gloom behind the stoop of a convenient brownstone. Robley’s car was still in view. He wasn’t moving away. He must have either lost me in the quick burst of action under his nose, or he had seen me and was waiting once more, to see which way I would jump. I didn’t jump. I remained crouched across from Serena’s, staring up at the second floor.

  The upper floor was dark as the inside of my hat. But suddenly the lights went on and I saw her silhouette walk to the window and yank down the shade. What in hell was Foley doing up there at this hour? And why had he boiled his Ford in from Merrick to visit Serena? He must have left the brawl at Norma’s immediately after us. He must have assumed that Serena would come right home. Or did she tell him to follow and barge in? Could that be her reason for trying to hold me in her big bed for an indecent interval—to give Foley time enough to enter and bat me around? Ideas! I had a million of them, most of them fogged and blurred and incompetent because of my half-dead mind.