“I was thinking of Carter. He wouldn’t understand a syllable of this.”
“Well, he’s a different kind of honest.”
“He certainly is. Bernard, I think I can have one more drink without harming myself any. Can I get you one?”
“No thanks.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“More coffee, then?”
I shook my head. She went back to the kitchen and returned with drink in hand. She sat down on the sofa, sipped her drink, set it down on the coffee table and noticed the pair of hundred-dollar bills I’d convinced Ray to leave behind. “I guess these are yours,” she said.
“Well, one of us counted wrong, Mrs. Sandoval.”
“Darla.”
“Darla. Why don’t we each take one of them?”
That struck her as fair. She kept a bill and passed its brother to me. Then she said, “You said he was honest. That policeman. But he would have kept the extra two hundred dollars.”
“Oh, sure. He was steamed when I called him on it.”
“There really are all kinds of honesty, aren’t there?”
“There really are.”
It was time to change back into mufti, time to pack up the uniform and cart it downtown. But for the moment I didn’t feel much like moving. I sat in a chair across from Darla and watched her nibble at her drink.
“Bernard? I was thinking that it’s a waste of time for you to chase downtown and back. And it’s an added risk, isn’t it? Being out on the street that much?”
“I’ll take cabs both ways.”
“Even so.”
“A small risk, I suppose.”
“You could stay here, you know.”
“I’d like to drop my suitcase at the place where I’m staying.”
“Oh?”
“And there’s someone I’ll want to see before I meet Ray this evening. And a stop or two I’ll want to make.”
“I see.”
Our eyes met. She had a lot of presence, this lady did. And something more than that.
“You really look effective in that uniform,” she said.
“Effective?”
“Very effective. I’m just sorry I won’t be able to be here tonight when you have all the accessories. The nightstick and the handcuffs and the badge and the gun.”
“Well, you can imagine how I’ll look with the props.”
“Yes, I certainly can.” She ran the tip of her tongue very purposefully over her lips. “Costumes can be very useful, you know. I sometimes think that’s what I like most about theater. Not that the actors wear costumes physically, although they often do, but that the whole character which an actor puts on is a sort of costume.”
“Do you do any acting yourself, Darla?”
“Oh, no, I’m just a dabbler. I told you that, didn’t I? Why should you think I might have acted?”
“The way you were using your voice just then.”
She licked her lips again. “Costumes,” she said, and ran her eyes over my uniform. “I think I told you that I used to consider myself a very conventional person.”
“I think you did.”
“Yes, I’m quite sure I said that.”
“Yes.”
“Conventional in sexual matters.”
“Yes.”
“But in recent years I’ve found out otherwise. I may have told you that.”
“Uh, yes, I think you did.”
“In fact I’m positive I did.”
“Yes.”
She got to her feet and stood in such a way as to make me very much aware of the shape of her body. “If you were to wear that uniform,” she said, “or one rather like it, and if you were to have handcuffs and a nightstick, I think I would find you quite irresistible.”
“Uh.”
“And we might do the most extraordinary things. Imaginative persons could probably find interesting things to do with handcuffs and a nightstick.”
“Probably.”
“And with each other.”
“Very probably.”
“Of course you might be too conventional for that sort of thing.”
“I’m not all that conventional.”
“No, I didn’t really think you were. Do you find me attractive?”
“Yes.”
“I hope you’re not saying that out of politeness.”
“I’m not.”
“That’s good. I’m older than you, of course. That wouldn’t bother you?”
“Why should it?”
“I’ve no idea. It wouldn’t?”
“No.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “This is not the right time for us,” she said.
“And I don’t have the cuffs or the stick.”
“No, you don’t. But as an experiment, why don’t you come kiss me?”
It was a stirring kiss. We were standing, her arms around my neck, and midway through the kiss I dropped my hands to her buttocks and took hold of them and squeezed with all my strength, whereupon she made some extraordinary sounds and quivered a bit. Eventually we let go of each other and she stepped backward.
“After all of this is over, Bernard-”
“Yes. Definitely.”
“The uniform wouldn’t even be all that important. Or the other paraphernalia.”
“No, but it might be fun.”
“Oh, it would definitely be fun.” She licked her lips again. “I want to wash up. And you’ll want to change, or do you plan to wear the uniform downtown?”
“No, I’ll change.”
I was in my own clothes by the time she returned from the bathroom, the heat flush gone from her face, the lipstick replenished on her mouth. I put on my silly yellow wig and fixed my cap in place over it. She gave me keys for the front door and the door to the apartment so that I would be able to let myself in when I returned. I didn’t remind her that I could manage without them.
She said, “Bernard? That two hundred dollars the policeman was going to keep?”
“What about it?”
“Would he have divided it with his partner?”
I had to think about it, and finally I told her I just didn’t know.
She smiled. “It’s a good question, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s a very good question.”
I got back to Rod’s place before Ellie did. While I waited for her I tried my cop suit on again and frowned at my shoes. Did cops wear scotch-grain loafers? It seemed to me that they always wore square-toed black oxfords, occasionally switching to black wing tips. But did they ever wear loafers?
I decided it didn’t matter. Nobody was going to be staring at my feet.
When Ellie walked in my outfit gave her a giggling fit. This didn’t do wonders for my self-confidence. “But you can’t be a cop,” she said. “You’re a crook!”
“The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“You just don’t look like a cop, Bernie.”
“Cops don’t look like cops anymore,” I pointed out. “Oh, older bulls like Ray still look the part, but the younger generation’s gone to hell. Ray’s partner’s a good example. Bumping his nightstick into his knee, asking me what my sign was, then collapsing in a dead faint. I look as much like a cop as he does. Anyway, the only person I have to convince is a doorman. And I’ll be with Ray and he’ll do all the talking.”
“I guess,” she said.
“Don’t you think it’s a good idea?”
“I suppose so. You really think it’s still there? The blue box?”
“If it was there in the first place it’s there now. I think I know who turned my apartment inside out. I think it was a couple of people from Michael Debus’s office.” Probably the two men I’d seen going into my building two nights ago, I thought. While I’d stood on the corner looking up at my lighted windows they’d been busy turning order into chaos. “He’s a D.A. in Brooklyn or Queens and he was connected to Flaxford.”
“Flaxford was blackmailing him, too?”
“I don’t think so, I think he was Debus’s fixer. Carter Sandoval was making things hot for Debus, and Flaxford was putting pressure on Mrs. Sandoval to call her husband off. Debus must have been worried that something incriminating was left on the premises. But he probably didn’t know it was in a blue box or anything like that, just that Flaxford had it and he couldn’t let it fall into the wrong hands. At any rate, he sent over a pair of oafs to toss my place. If he did that, then he didn’t get the box himself. And that means no one did.”