She had gotten a little hysterical, and Fern grabbed her by the shoulders. The towel fell away and for a second Dana’s eyes darted nervously, but she caught hold of herself. She gulped in air, holding it.
“Come on, there,” Fern said. “Everyone goes through this kind of thing one way or another, you know that—”
Dana let her chin collapse on her chest. “It’s my night to play the fool. Forgive me, Fern, will you, I’m just—”
“Don’t be silly—”
She made a half-hearted attempt to knot the towel back into place. “Aphrodite’s fig leaf. Did Aphrodite have a fig leaf? I don’t even know who Aphrodite was.” She got to her feet, holding it where it had slipped around her hips again. “Cheap theatrics and a thirty-cent striptease to boot, to keep your mind off the bum acting. I better get to bed before I wind up howling Thomas Wolfe from the window ledge. Or aren’t we supposed to like Wolfe anymore? That’s one other damned thing — I keep forgetting who’s hip and who isn’t.” She laughed a hollow, strained laugh. “Oh, good heavens, thanks, Fern, really — I’m sorry I’m such a pathological mess.”
She headed toward the room which had belonged to Josie, moving stiffly. Fern glanced at me and then followed her. They spoke quietly, then Fern closed the door after her, turning back. She looked like a delicate mechanical doll that nobody’d remembered to wind.
“I meant to ask her where Klobb’s studio is,” I said.
“It’s on Downing Street, but — Harry, you’re not going over there with all this—”
“Just to look around, talk to him maybe—”
She had come toward me. “I’m sorry if I seemed cold before.’’ Her voice was husky. “It was just so rotten Tuesday — not us together, you know that, but the way I sort of used you—”
“I’ll call you, Fern.”
“Do, Harry, please. I—” She trembled suddenly, then fell against me. I held her until the shivering stopped. Then I kissed her tightly once and went out.
It was still easy, like walking off a building. But I hadn’t had too many dates in any prearranged sense myself lately. Maybe when this was over I’d have a few with a girl who’d be vulnerable until it was, and whose cheeks had been wet against my neck after I’d let her tell me she wasn’t vulnerable three nights before.
The Chevy was on Seventh. I went down the few blocks with no other moving cars in sight. The number she’d given me was a warehouse, with a small private entrance at one side. A hand-lettered sign said, Klobb-Penthouse, which would mean a shed on the roof, nothing more. The door was not locked.
I went in, not being particularly quiet, not quite knowing what I had in mind. The stairwell was as empty as a tilted tomb, but if the police had only Klobb’s home address and not this one he could still be around. There were six flights of reinforced concrete and then one last section of slatted metal, rising into a gable-like structure which would lead onto the roof. The door up there was open.
The studio sat thirty feet away, beyond a dozen or more random-shaped chimneys and flue pipes. It was built like a greenhouse. There were lights on, either a lot of them or just the brights a painter would use, but the glass panes were smeared and barely translucent. The roof of the warehouse itself was extremely still.
“Klobb?” I said.
A rag on a line flapped once. Maybe he was busy being creative over there, oiling that leather strap. There was a high sill to be stepped over in the doorway where I was, and I stepped over it.
That was when it came to me that I was never going to learn, not ever. This time it wasn’t any slumbering Beatnik with a malfunctioning weapon some old uncle had brought home as a souvenir of the Meuse-Argonne. I was at least a foil second too late reaching for the Magnum I’d concluded I would not need for Klobb alone. Something that could have been a fist lifted out of the shadows and slammed into the back of my neck. Something else that could have been a foot extended itself from nowhere and cracked across my shin. I went down like a defunct sputnik. I chewed tar.
“I used to think about it sometimes,” a familiar voice said then. “No kidding, I really used to wonder — whatever became of that great soph halfback, Harry Fannin? I asked you to leave my name out of it with the cops, fellow. I asked you politely as hell.”
“Do you intend to chat all night, darling,” said another voice I knew, “or are you going to get busy and dump him over the side?”
CHAPTER 24
I got up onto my elbows and knees, then hung there as limply as a sweaty leotard. Someone in rubber-soled desert boots stepped near me noiselessly. It was a task, but I lifted my head high enough to see the grain-colored beard that identified him as Ivan Klobb. I also saw the boxy black Colt.45 automatic in his right hand.
His other hand lifted the Magnum off my hip. “On your feet, fellow,” I was told.
I managed it, a little shakily, watching Klobb pass the Colt to Constantine. That made a total of three pieces I was facing, since lovely Margaret was getting her kicks from the Beretta again. It made me feel dangerous, like Dan McGrew.
Constantine had shed his dressing gown for a dark blue serge suit. He had on a figured gray silk tie, and his collar looked too tight. It probably always did, around that tree stump he had for a neck.
“Damned glad you dropped in, fellow,” he told me. “We would have looked you up one of these days, of course, but this saves trouble all around.”
“I’m glad too,” I said, but I was just making sounds. I’d wanted to find out if I could. Td hate to put anybody out on my account.”
“Sure. That’s why you forgot to mention my name with the bulls, isn’t it? My old buddy.”
“You were in it before I saw them,” I said.
“You won’t write to the alumni magazine if I call you a liar, will you, fellow? The name Connie came up last Tuesday, yeah — I know because my Vice Squad connection tipped me. They played it dumb, and so far as they knew there was no Connie on the books. What did you think this was, Fannin? You think I’m playing sandlot ball?”
“Get to the point, Connie. You don’t much care what I think.”
“Sure, sure — I’ll get to it. The point is that Vice Squad got another call a couple of hours ago — not about Connie this time, but Constantine. That much they couldn’t fake. I might have spent my time in courses like outdoor cookery at Ann Arbor, fellow, but there’s a little something besides oleomargarine between my ears. My old pal Fannin fixed things for me, didn’t you, pal?”
“Let him send you a letter about it,” Margaret said. “From the hospital.” She was off to my right, leaning almost jauntily against a chimney. The glow from the studio left her half in shadow, and there was enough breeze to have flung some of that rampant hair into her face. Except for the Beretta she could have been soliciting over there.
Except for the Beretta. Constantine was still waiting for some sort of answer, and Klobb had moved behind me. I didn’t like not seeing the third gun. I was fairly sure there was not going to be any shooting, not since they knew they were already tied into the case, but I still did not like it.