by P. N. Elrod
“Nah, Big Al must be back an’ havin’ a party.”
“Musta been a gun—Johnny said someone got shot.”
“Goddamned drunks, screwing up the show.”
I ignored their speculations and punched at the elevator button. This time I couldn’t sink through the floors without getting unwanted attention, besides, the operator might have seen something.
He had, and told me about it on the way down.
“Yeah, the blond, a real bombshell—she stood out from that group like fireworks.”
“What floor?”
“They got off on ground a few minutes ago.”
“They?”
“She had some harpy with her. Seemed anxious to leave, and a couple of others, too. What’s goin’ on? What happened to you?”
We made the ground floor and I left him guessing. The back hall was empty, so I went around front. There was a cop in the lobby by now, asking questions. I waited until he was in the elevator then checked faces. No Bobbi, but the doorman was still there.
“Hey, did a blond in a red dress go out? She was with a black-haired woman in green.”
“Haven’t seen ’em.”
“If you do, ask ’em to wait.”
“Cops say everyone has to wait, nobody gets out now.”
I went through the ground floor, again calling into washrooms, but with no luck. They should have left by way of the front; it was a busier street and more likely to have cabs, but then they shouldn’t have gone at all. If she’d heard a man had been shot, Bobbi would have been on the scene to make sure it wasn’t me. Marza must have dragged her out to protect her. Damn Marza, anyway.
The rear exit was ajar and unguarded—so much for the cops’ instructions. It opened to another street busy with cars and nothing else. I called her name, but no one answered.
After wasting a lot of time, I finally wised up and drove back to Bobbi’s hotel. It would be the place for them to go since it was closer than Marza’s. Before I reached the elevator, Phil flagged me down.
“What happened to you?” he asked, staring at the hole in my clothes where the shell had gone through.
“Fight.” I was in a hurry to get past him.
“Some kid brought this in a minute ago.” He gave me a large envelope with my name printed on it.
“Has Miss Smythe come in?”
“Her friend did, she’s—”
I broke away. The elevator crawled up to the fourth floor. Without knocking I went in. Marza was on the sofa and jerked to her feet. Her lacquered hair was messed up and her eyes were blazing fire.
“Who were they?” she demanded.
“Where’s Bobbi?”
Her body was shaking inside the green frame of her dress. “Who were they?” If looks could kill, I’d be on a slab next to Braxton. She started for me, her hands reaching. One of her inch-long talons had broken, but there were still nine more left and aimed at my face. I dropped the envelope, caught her arms in time, and held her at a safe distance. She kicked and struggled until she ran out of breath, then her knees gave out and she sank to the floor, trying not to sob from frustration.
“What happened?” I asked. Somehow her raw display kept me cold and thinking.
“They took her,” she spat. “Who were they?”
“When?”
“When we left the studio. He said to come here and wait for you.”
Oh, God. “A blond man, long coat?”
“Who was he? He had a gun—”
“Anyone else? Was he alone?”
“The woman with the knife.” She gulped air, still shaking and her head sagged. Near her was the dropped envelope and its meaning suddenly blossomed in my mind. I grabbed it up.
It was flat on the edges and slightly thicker in the middle and whatever was inside rustled against the paper. I tore one end off with stiff, clumsy fingers and the contents spilled out.
Marza went dead silent, not even breathing. Her hand shot out and caught a last tendril of the cascade of platinum silk before it sifted to the floor.
Neither of us could move, each staring with numb shock at the bright, soft nest between us. Marza swayed, her eyes flat from the faint coming on. I got her to the sofa, then went to the liquor cabinet and poured a straight triple from the first bottle I grabbed and made her drink it. She choked and pawed me away, but I made her drink it all.
“God, I hate that stuff.” Her breath smelled of rum.
The dullness had left her eyes and she looked as though she might be useful again. I felt the shock hitting me now as I looked again at the pile of shining hair. A small piece of paper was lodged in the tangle. My guts were ice as I fished it out.
SIT TIGHT OR WE’LL GIVE THE WHORE MORE THAN JUST A HAIRCUT.
That was all. Marza whipped it from me and read. She was trembling, but trying to hold in the panic.
“Why? What do they want?”
There was nothing sane I could tell her. The fragments of Braxton’s last words gave me an answer, but I was repelled by it.
Ring.
Marza flinched and stared at the phone as if it were a bomb.
I picked it up and waited.
“Jack? Marza?” It was her voice, breathless, strained.
“Bobbi!”
Marza stiffened and rushed in, trying to pull the phone from me.
“Oh, Jack, they’re—”
And that was all, except for a muffled noise in the background and the final click of disconnection. Marza glared at me, for all the good it did her. I felt just as angry and helpless. We waited, but the thing didn’t ring again.
“What do they want?” she repeated.
I shook my head and went to the bedroom to get away from her questions. Bobbi’s rose scent hung lightly in the air. A couple of dresses tried on for the broadcast and then rejected were flung on the bed. The closet was open. I fumbled out of my tattered coat and shirt. Since I started coming over so often, she insisted I leave some spare clothes in with hers. I pulled on a fresh shirt, my fingers working mechanically, as I tried not to think.
Marza was where I left her on the sofa, head in hands. “Why won’t you tell me anything?”
“You know as much as I do, even more. I’ve seen the man in the coat, his name is Malcolm, said he was a private eye. He shot and killed Braxton tonight.”
She swallowed. “And the other? That woman?”
“What’d she look like?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do, you said she had a knife. What else?”
“About my age, bony all over, and hungry. Her eyes . . . she looked crazy. The man grabbed Bobbi and the woman put that knife to her throat, and they went out. He said to come here and wait for you.”
“Was that all he said?”
She nodded.
Someone knocked at the door. Our heads swiveled and she went bolt upright. They knocked again. I signaled to her to stay put and looked out the peephole. It was Madison Pruitt. He saw my eye and waved and I opened the door a crack.
“Oh, Fleming, hello.” He moved to come in, but I didn’t stand aside. “Something wrong? Is the party still on? The broadcast stopped in the middle of—”
“Sorry, the party’s off, Bobbi got sick at the last minute—”
Marza was at my shoulder. “No, let him in. Please.”
I didn’t exactly want to, but she looked like she needed him and pulled him inside. She wrapped her arms around him. He didn’t understand what was going on, but instinctively offered what comfort he could.
“What’s happened? Was there an accident?”
“Come on, I’ll explain.” I shut the door and made explanations.
“There’s going to be more people coming over soon, you’ll have to get rid of them.”
“But what can we do?” Marza asked.
“Just what I said. This guy’s trying to make us nervous so we lose our heads. We do that and we lose Bobbi.”
“And the police?”
“
No. We don’t dare.”
The phone rang again. I picked it up before the bell had died.
“It’s me, Jackie boy. Malcolm—you remember.”
He got no answer.
“You gotta behave or I might get mad. Did you read my note?”
“Yes.”
“And you heard her on the phone?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now you know we mean business. Your girlfriend got her ears lowered a little this time, but that’s all—no real harm done. You do what we want and she gets to keep ’em.”
“What do you want?”
“Nothing you can’t handle, Jackie.”
“What?”
“You gotta pencil?”
I wrote out the address he gave me.
“You come straight here and no cops. Just you or you’ll never be able to find her again. Leave the other bitch where she is, out of trouble.”
“I’ll come.”
“No smart ideas, either. We know all about you. That’s why I aced the squirt, just to let you know. You see, I can’t really hurt you, but the people around you is something else. No tricks. When you walk to the door you make noise and stay in sight, ’cause if you don’t, your girl won’t be using mirrors, either, but for a different reason. You got ten minutes to get here before she goes into surgery.” He laughed, the line clicked, and my ear was pressed to dead air.
Marza’s nails dug into my arm. “What do they mean? Where is she?”
“They want me, not her.”
“But why?”
I memorized the address and tore the sheet from my notebook, folding it around Malcolm’s business card. I scribbled Escott’s name and the name of his hotel on the outside and gave it to her.
“This is a friend who can help us, but he’s in New York. Call this hotel, they might be able to locate him. Say it’s an emergency, life and death, but don’t tell the truth to anyone but him. If he calls, give him the story, but no cops or Bobbi’s dead. You got that?”
She nodded.
“He’s got an English accent. In the meantime stay off the phone and keep the door shut.”
“Yes, but—”
But I had bolted out the door, car key in hand and murder on my mind.
The address led to a warehouse that was a mountain of dingy red bricks and old wood held together by crumbling mortar and rusty nails. The street was deserted, the other nearby structures hollow and silent except for the rats. It was a good spot to kill someone. The river was only ten feet from the back entrance, and a body could easily be slipped unnoticed into the oily water on a black night.
The building was three stories tall, and a faint light shone in one of the top windows, outlining Malcolm’s head and shoulders. He took his hat off and waved it. There was nothing else to do but go inside and see the setup. They knew what I was and what my capabilities were, but Malcolm was supremely confident, and that meant a bad situation for Bobbi. I glared at the grinning, waving figure, then tore open the warehouse door and left it on the walk.
The stink of wet rotted wood, oil, and exhaust filled the place. The exhaust was new and had come from Malcolm’s Ford, the engine was still hot and ticking. Next to it was a paneled truck backed up against a loading bay, and beyond that, a freight elevator. Somewhere a motor whined into reluctant life, and the elevator descended from the top floor. It leveled and stopped. The doors opened horizontally like a set of teeth.
“Hey, it’s the death of the party,” said Malcolm, still grinning.
“Where is she?”
“I’ll take you to her, Jackie boy.” He gestured and I stepped onto the split, cracked boards, and he sent us grinding upward, to the top floor. He wrenched the doors open and motioned me to follow, feeling safe enough to turn his back on me as we crossed a hundred feet of empty storeroom. The dirty windows overlooking the street and river had been tilted open in an attempt to make a cross breeze, but the place was still stuffy. We approached a line of doors against the far wall; three on the right, four on the left, in the center an arched opening to a stairwell. Light seeped from under two closed doors in the line. He went to the one next to the outside wall and opened it.
A bare bulb hanging from a plain wire and socket disclosed a small bare room. Broken glass was all over the floor, and empty panes framed the sky and some buildings across the river. In years long past, someone had had a nice view. Malcolm followed me in to stand by the windows. He looked out and down, waved once, then turned to me.
“Where is she?”
“One thing at a time.” He pointed at something on the floor. It was a flat parcel of folded brown paper. “You check that out first.”
There was no reason to refuse; he had a purpose to his games and I had to play. I picked it up. It was very light and the paper came apart easily. Bobbi’s red silk dress slithered into my hands.
I started for him and he took an involuntary step back, then recovered. “Don’t do it, not ’til you see—”
My hands closed on his throat.
“See what, you shit?”
His eyes rolled toward the window and I followed their path.
The river was night black and smooth, stray lights caught in the surface barely moving. Below the window was a concrete loading pier with metal rings set in it. A length of rope was tied to one, and the other end went to an old flat-bottomed boat floating some thirty feet out. The woman Marza described crouched in the boat, leaning over its near side with her hand in the water. She was looking anxiously up at us.
“Let . . . go . . . now,” he gasped out urgently, and his distorted tone suddenly convinced me. I released him and backed away so that we were clearly separated.
The woman in the boat took her hand out of the water and pulled on another piece of rope as though for an anchor, but instead a head broke the surface. It shook and shuddered, water streaming only from the nose, because the mouth was taped shut. Her eyes were bulging with utter terror.
Oh, my God.
Malcolm coughed, recovering. “And don’t run down for her. She’s tied like a mummy and weighted. The second you walk away from this window Norma lets the rope go, and down she sinks. You’d never get to her in time, not with your problem about crossing water.”
I could cross water if I had to, but it was slow going. I’d never get to her in time. Never. I swung back on him, but he read my purpose and didn’t look directly at me.
“No fish-eye, Jackie, I gotta stay in sight from now on. Norma has her orders, and if she thinks something’s wrong with me, the girl is dead. You understand that? I gotta stay in her sight.”
Numbly, I looked down, straight into Bobbi’s eyes. They locked helplessly on mine, pleading. I called to her, not sure she could hear me. Her expression didn’t change.
“Good,” he murmured. “Real good.” He took the dress from me, folding and rolling it into a ball. “I don’t blame you. She’s a classy twist. Nice, like I always wanted to get for myself. She needed a lot of help getting out of this. I had to hold her down while Norma did the honors. I like ’em to fight, y’know? That always gets me going. A body like that must feel good under you, huh?”
“Shut up!”
He abruptly stepped away from the window. Norma pushed Bobbi under. I grabbed for him, but he dodged.
“Say you’re sorry.”
“I’m sorry! Damn it, come back! I’m sorry!”
He eased back. Norma brought her up again. Bobbi’s eyes flickered groggily, and her head lolled.
“Again, like you mean it.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered sincerely, but it was to Bobbi.
“You promise to behave?”
I nodded. Tried to swallow. Couldn’t.
His smile returned. “That’s real good.”
“What do you want?”
“Like I said, nothing you can’t handle.” In a louder voice aimed at the next room over he called, “It’s all right, you can come now.”
A door scraped open, a rubbing, gr
ating sound crawled over the floor, and she rolled into sight. The harsh yellow light did funny things to colors and Gaylen’s blue eyes had faded to a pale, cold gray. She was in her wheelchair with the rubber-tipped cane across her knees. She looked up, frowning. Malcolm turned to face the window, giving us a kind of privacy. Neither of us spoke, each holding still like actors at the end of a play before the lights go out and the curtain falls.
At last she drew in a breath and spoke. “I didn’t want to do it this way. I really didn’t, but you wouldn’t understand, you—”
“You asked this of Maureen?”
Her answer was plain. There’d been fire in Marza’s eyes, but Gaylen’s held acid. Sometime long ago they had argued it all out, and Maureen had realized the truth and run. Her note said, Some people are after me because of what I am. . . . Turned another way, the meaning changed. It was not Braxton she had feared with his cross and silver bullets, it was her sister. Five years ago she’d left to protect me. Had she stayed it would have been me down there with Norma, and Maureen standing where I was now.
“I begged her. It was just one little thing, and I would have left her alone forever had she wished. I asked you, and is it so much? All you can tell me are the shortcomings. They’re nothing to what I’m going through now. This body is old and crippled and I hate it! I want to live!”
“You have to die for that—if it works.”
“What’s death compared to the pain I feel whenever I move? And as for it working, it must! Maureen changed and I’m her sister, I know it would change me.”
“What about Braxton?”
“I tried to explain to him and he was too pigheaded with his talk of contamination and souls to listen.”
“He was never a danger to either of us.”
“Never?”
“I was taking care of the problem when this . . . Braxton was a nuisance, but he didn’t deserve to die.”
“He did if I wanted to make you understand how serious I am. It could have been anyone else—someone walking next to you on the street, your detective friend—anyone. Time and circumstances made him a convenient target.” She let that sink in.
My hands clenched and I longed for the luxury of closing them around her neck.
“But that’s past and finished. I want you to think about the girl. You’ve seen her and you know there are no safe alternatives but one, and what I’m asking for is not so terrible.”
