The lustrous dark-blond hair swished about the fine wide shoulders. “I can give you much, Ed. You’ve only to name it. But I’m not able to give you anything in the realm of your work.”
“You knew them,” I said, “all the people around the old lady. One of them, back there at the party tonight, is a murderer.”
“Ben McJunkin...”
“The tool,” I said. “Nothing less, nothing more.”
I pressed the brake pedal and we became one of the cars massing at a row of traffic signals. “You see how it is,” I said. “Ben McJunkin is operating on his own terms. If he comes to me again, I may not live to get to the person behind him. If I reach the person behind McJunkin first, then I can go to McJunkin. The odds would be a little better that way.”
“My God, Ed! Do you have to keep talking about it?”
“Want to go back to the party?”
“Oh, you...” She seethed. She jerked herself to the far side of the seat. Her huff didn’t last long. She sighed almost wearily. “I’m no detective, Ed. I don’t know how to play detective.”
“You knew the people. You’re no fool. You’ve dealt with people a long time in extreme circumstances. You know what to look for.”
“In a murderer?” she demanded. “How was I to suspect that one of them was planning to silence Jean Putnam and Lura Thackery?”
“Okay,” I said. “I guess I was just trying to strike my last match in a high wind.”
“What am I supposed to say?” she cried. “Keith and Elena Sigmon? I hardly know them. Van Clavery? A nervous wreck on two legs who probably wakes up with ants in his pants and goes to bed seething from all the real and fancied mistakes of the day. He burned with envy for the old señora’s wealth and position. But he liked Jean Putnam.
“Ditto for Fred Eppling. Cold fish of a lawyer. Got a high yearly retainer from the old lady, although his tasks were mostly routine. Untangled one minor legal snarl for her in Caracas, but mostly never had to leave his office except to come to her home. He got Jean Putnam her job with Señora Isabella, remember — but if he had any wish to see Jean dead, it’s beyond my imagination.
“Natalie Clavery? A glistening object of art made out of alabaster. But plenty of hot blood under the cool surface. Deep down, she’s a tigress, the kind that takes a mate without reservation — and who knows what sort of specimen the chemistry of a woman will react to?”
“Part of the wondrous mystery of women,” I said.
“Sure.” She looked at me obliquely. “Take my own case. Here I am — with a big, sweaty hulk who borrowed the shoulders from a gorilla, got his daintiness from a bull, and dredged up the face from the left-overs when Mother Nature put a wrestler together. Here I am — of my own free will. Maybe I really should have my head examined!”
“Don’t start thinking objectively about me,” I said, “just about those other people.”
“I’ve given you everything I can, Ed, and I’m sure it’s nothing you didn’t already know. So why not forget it for a little while? Give yourself a chance to simmer down, relax. Buy me a drink.”
“The bars are awfully crowded.”
“Who said anything about a bar?” she asked.
While we were going up the stairs to my apartment, I heard the phone ringing. I murmured “Pardon” to Myrtle, hurried up the remainder of the stairway, and keyed the door open. Even if the phone was demanding attention, I reached around the door frame and clicked on a light before I took the final steps into the bed-sitting room.
The phone lapsed to silence as I reached it. I said, “Hello?” to a humming dial tone.
I dropped the phone slowly back in its hooks. When I turned, Myrtle was standing in the doorway.
“The caller get tired and hang up, Ed?”
I nodded. “If it’s important, maybe they’ll call back.”
She crossed the room, touched my arm with her hand, urged me to one side as I started into the kitchenette.
“I know where the makings are,” she said. “Unbutton your collar and sit down. Beer chaser?”
“Just beer,” I said.
She raised her brows slightly and went on into the kitchenette.
I wandered back to the phone, picked it up, and tried the answering service. There had been no calls downtown. Just here, on the line into my domestic domain.
I was standing there frowning at the phone when Myrtle crossed the room, set beer and whisky on the table, and slipped her arms loosely about my neck.
“You’re still not with me, Ed. Forget the call. Probably some anemic chick who’d stack up against me like a sack of sticks.”
I pulled her closer to me. The warm pressure of her breasts and thighs against me was firm, but imbued with a heady female plasticity.
“You know,” I said, “that if you’d ever entered a Miss Universe contest the nursing profession would have lost a member.”
“Your beer’s getting warm.”
“Not only the beer.”
She laughed, cupped my face in her hands, tilted her head, and gave me a warmly moist kiss.
I slid my fingers up through the silken wealth of dark-tan hair, and returned the gesture.
We stood there with our lips and bodies welding together and soft little sounds forming in her throat. Anything beyond this building, this room, this one spot began not to matter.
The phone rang.
We drew apart slowly. The phone started its second shrill peal for attention. “Don’t answer it, Ed.”
“You know I have to. Anyway, it’s barely past dinnertime. The evening’s young.”
In irritation, she jerked away and walked halfway across the room.
I picked up the phone. “Hello?” I said.
“Ed Rivers?” The accent was Spanish.
“Yes.”
“Where do you keep yourself? I have been calling again and again.”
“Who is this?”
“Pepe Tortugas, who runs the bar.”
“Long time no see.”
“Sí, Señor Ed, not since you cleared my brother of the armed-robbery charge more than a year ago.”
“You paid me for the chore, Pepe.”
“But I have long felt that money was very cold payment, señor. My brother... he works now every day. The prospect of prison worked a change in him. Now I have the chance to do something for you.” He paused, took a breath, called on his courage. “I understand you have been seeking an individual.”
“Yes,” I said, a tightness crawling into my throat. “Yes, I have.”
“You try the San Salvador Hotel, room four-oh-four.”
“I will.”
“You must not ask me how I know this, Señor Ed. I would have to lie to you. I have no wish to do that.”
“No questions, Pepe.”
“We in bars overhear many things. We are told things by lips loose from alcohol.”
“I understand, Pepe. You have no need to worry. No one will ever know where my information came from.”
“Gracias, señor. One more thing, he has watchful friends who will warn him of activity, of the police. He will not return to the room, if warned. You will fail — and perhaps not again have the chance to locate him.”
“I see,” I said, a brief pulse moving through my gut.
“I wish it could be different for you, Señor Ed. But tasks do not always arrange themselves most conveniently. When it is all over, stop by my bar. A drink on the house will be waiting.”
Fifteen
When I turned from the phone, Myrtle was studying me carefully. Her eyes went a shade darker. Her lips became redder and heavier as the background skin turned whiter. She shook her head from side to side, the dark-blond hair splashing across her cheeks. “No,” she said softly. “No, no, no!”
I slid the .38 from under the waistband of my pants and started checking it. I had a replacement blade for the one McJunkin had carried out of here the other night in his tissues, but I wasn’t counting on the knife at all now. McJunkin had already had experience with it.