He was inclined to planning and carrying out his plans in cut-and-dried fashion, the Unknown Party. He didn’t like to improvise. Both times, when he’d had to improvise, he’d made his exit.
As I stepped off the chair, somebody punched the buzzer button in the vestibule. I went to the top of the stairs and looked down. I saw the bold, voluptuous lines of Myrtle Higgins in the vestibule.
She came up the stairs slowly. The dim lighting in the hallway lent her a touch of mystery that for a moment deepened all those surface qualities into near loveliness.
“You didn’t keep your promise and call information,” she said.
“Come in, and I’ll give you my excuses.”
“During Gasparilla, there are excuses for dashing a poor girl’s hopes?”
I took her arm and steered her into the apartment. “Don’t touch the doorknob,” I said. “A man had to grab it and I’m curious to see what he left.”
She gave me a sharp look. “What are you talking about, Ed? What’s wrong with you? Aren’t you glad to see me?”
“Very glad.” I meant it. Myrtle Higgins was a smooth, ivory candle with a wick that needed a flame to transform it. I’m male, and human. I sensed what it would be like, and I wondered if I was the man who could spark the flame.
She crinkled her nose. “What’s that smell?”
“I’m afraid it’s burned gunpowder.”
She looked at me quickly. “You mean the kind that makes bullets?”
“It wasn’t popcorn.”
“Ed, I don’t know if I should be fooling around with you. I thought the murderer was after Jean Putnam, not you. What are you, a walking time bomb?”
Homicide Lieutenant Steve Ivey had phrased it differently. But “rat bait” or “time bomb,” it added to the same, and I decided not to talk Myrtle into sticking around against her will.
She seemed to sense my attitude. She thought the whole thing over for a full minute. Then a challenging smile touched her lips. “Maybe I like excitement — and you’re prepared if he tries to come back, aren’t you?”
“I won’t make any rash promises,” I said.
“Okay, so the decision is mine alone.” She looked me over slowly from head to foot. “I think I’ll stick around.”
We both turned as heavy footsteps clumped up the stairs. Lieutenant Steve Ivey had been called from his dinner. He headed a small phalanx of people from headquarters.
There was grave concern on Ivey’s full, bulldoggish face, and not for having missed his meal. “Are you okay, Ed?”
“Thanks to nobody but myself,” I said. “The bait was here. The rat came. The trap didn’t spring.”
“You get a look at him?”
“Even less than the last time. Do you know Miss Higgins?”
Ivey took off his coconut straw, exposing the creamy globe of his bald pate. “Hello there,” he said.
“Hi,” Myrtle said. She seated herself on the edge of the daybed that also served as a couch here in the bed-sitting room.
To me, she added, “I met the lieutenant this afternoon.”
“We’re trying hard for leads, Ed,” Steve said. “Talking with everybody connected with Jean Putnam. She, and Miss Higgins here, both worked for Señora Isabella Sorolla y Batione, who died just a—”
“I know,” I said. “I’m not Samson — and I was hoping for more action and less jawbone of the ass.”
A young plainclothes dick named Gonzales crowded behind Ivey. “You know our problems, Ed.”
I let out a sigh. “Sure,” I said. “And recriminations won’t catch the punk.”
I looked past Gonzales’ wiry stature to Carruthers. “You bring your pinky powder?”
“Ed, you know I’m addicted to the stuff.” Carruthers had an accent as thick as boiled sorghum. He and Gonzales as kids had gone to the same public schools, but you’d never believe it, listening to the contrast in the way they talked.
I walked to the hallway door.
“The punk had to take a good, firm grip on the doorknob,” I told Carruthers. “You keep the thought in mind that I damn near paid with my life for the fingerprints on that knob.”
Renewed interest jolted through the room like an electric current.
“Good going, Ed,” Ivey said. “If a yegg handles air, Carruthers is the guy to lift the prints.”
“Fine,” I said. “If the prints are on file. If the punk has ever been printed.”
The Rivers-apartment phase of the investigation fanned through the bed-sitting room and bathroom while Carruthers knelt almost reverently at the doorknob. He opened his black bag, started taking out phials and liquids and powders, squares of paper and camel’s hair brushes. He carried more junk than an old-time peddler.
Myrtle watched as I recounted my experience to Ivey. It was all taken down by Perone, while Morgan carefully extracted the slug from the framing of the John door.
As Ivey departed with his crew, I followed him to the door.
“You may have given us something concrete,” Steve said. “Carruthers is wallowing in prints off the doorknob. Yours are on file, along with your gun permit and license. Needless to say, I’ll phone the minute we know anything.” He moved to the top of the stairs, paused with his hand on the bannister.
“Ed... I’m thankful you were carrying the knife.”
“I’m a little happy about it myself. Good night, Steve.”
I closed the door behind officialdom and moved toward the daybed.
Myrtle sighed. “You’re having a lousy Gasparilla, Ed.”
“Let’s brighten it up.”
“Why not? You look like you need a drink. I know I do.”
“I’m a beer man,” I said, “but I sometimes have a bottle around.”
I went in the kitchenette, scrounged up a nearly full fifth. I poured tall ones. Myrtle and I drank. The smell of gunpowder faded from the apartment. Myrtle wore a musty kind of perfume.
She turned on the clock radio, tuning in soft music.
“Much better than the crowds, Ed,” she said, settling herself on the couch.
“I think so.”
“Why don’t you get out of this Putnam thing?”
“Not a chance. I’m in too deep.”
She took my hand, pulled me down beside her. “You could take a little trip.”
“And start looking for another job?”
“All right, then,” she said almost angrily. “Pour me another drink.”
We lowered the level of the fifth considerably. Humming softly, she began unbuttoning my shirt. I didn’t protest.
With the shirt peeled off, she seemed to like the sight of sloping shoulders. She tickled the brown mat on my chest. Then she stood up.
“Stretch out,” she said, “on your stomach.”
“Yes, nurse.”
I obeyed the order. Her fingers came down as light as feathers, trailing across my back. She knew how to soothe away the kinks from a long, hard day. I grunted in pure comfort as she began kneading the muscles on my upper arms, across my shoulders. Her fingers got stronger, becoming urgent. As a masseuse, she became less professional, but much more interesting.
I rolled onto my back, looking at her. The dark-blond hair was loose about her cheeks. The component parts of her hadn’t fused. There was still something missing. But she was beautiful enough.
I slid my fingers into the light coppery hair and pulled her face down toward me. With my other hand I tipped her full-featured face so that the light knocked the shadows from it. The surface, physical perfection remained a shell.
“Why do you look at me like that, Ed?”
“It bugs me,” I said.
“What does?”
“Something we needn’t talk about.” I pulled her face down to mine to make contact. “We needn’t talk at all.” And we didn’t. Her lips were too hot for words.