Her voice at his elbow was as much a part of him as his memories of childhood. “Bren,” she said. “Bren, darling.”
He turned slowly. The tinyness of her was always a new shock. Great gray eyes under the dark brows, face so delicate as to almost be too thin, framed by the lush and silky mass of the white-gold hair. She wore a black evening dress, the bodice supported only by two thin black cords attached to the black collar that encircled her slender throat.
The bulge of the gun was hard against his flat stomach. He could hold the muzzle against the front of the dress. Two shots would forever smash the dancer’s body. She read his eyes and he saw the shadow of fear, the tiny compression of lips.
“We can’t talk here, Bren. Come to a table. That one.”
She walked in front of him, her bare shoulders straight, her chin high. He was so much taller that he could look down onto the part in the white-gold hair, its clean white scalp.
He held the chair for her, then sat opposite her.
“Why did you come here, Bren?”
“It’s a very trite story, Laena. Sure you want to hear it?”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“No doubt. Maybe seeing me makes you remember how easy it was for you to put so many stars in my eyes that I couldn’t see what was going on. Or maybe you’ve done that job so many times that you can’t even remember the names and faces. Who are you working on here? Another sucker like good old Bren Harris?”
“I have to know what you want, Bren,” she said tightly.
“She has to know what I want! Honey, you left before the fireworks started. But you know what happened.”
He held the gun in his hand, leveled it under the table. He wondered how her eyes would look — if he shot her in the stomach.
“Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do, Bren.”
“Poor, abused little girl, forced to do nasty things by nasty men.”
Her voice had a small quaver in it. “You were a good memory, Bren. Don’t spoil it for me. There aren’t many... memories that are good.”
“Turn it on like a faucet, honey.”
“You hate me, don’t you, Bren?”
“Hate is a flavorless and colorless word for what I feel about you and your two partners.”
“Your eyes look... funny, Bren.”
“Maybe I’ve grown up too fast. That could be it. My brother Tommy and I had such big fat plans. And we had the seventy-thousand bucks my father left us. We talked about our plans in the barracks at night. You wouldn’t understand about that. And we walked in where angels fear to tread. We went into partnership with your two pals, Brikel and Gowan Teed.
“They convinced us they knew the ropes. Boy, they knew them all right! The Corner Club was going to be a combination of everything Tommy and I liked. When Brikel brought you in to dance for the people, Tommy and I loved it. I even thought I loved you. That’s silly to think of now, isn’t it?”
“If you say so, Bren.”
“You put the big stars in my eyes, honey, while your pals used the Corner Club as a front for peddling the shakes to a lot of miserable hopheads.” He dropped his napkin over the gun.
“There are things you don’t understand.”
“That I’m willing to admit, Laena. I didn’t understand why Brikel and Gowan Teed got jittery. I didn’t understand why those quiet little government men in dark suits were hanging around the club. I was too busy adoring you. It all went to hell when you pulled out without a note or a word to me.
“Tommy was the one who got the evidence on your friends. He wanted to save our investment. So like a damn fool he tried to bargain with your pals right after you left. They were to turn the place over to us and clear out. This is only a guess, you understand.”
“A guess? What does Tommy say?”
Harris stared at her for a long incredulous moment. Then he laughed harshly.
“For a minute, honey, you had me going. Brikel and Teed cleaned out the account. I was drinking too much because you had left. I was easy to manage. I woke up in Police Headquarters. They had had to use a stomach pump on me to drain out the liquor that your pals poured down my throat. It took me a long time to realize that they had found me in my apartment, dead to the world, with a gun in my hand and Tommy on the floor. Only he was really dead to the world. Did you get a big bang out of it when Brikel told you how he’d worked it?”
Her eyes widened. She held her clenched hand against the side of her mouth and said faintly, “No, Bren. Oh, no!”
“Oh, yes. And don’t get theatrical. Amateur acting turns my stomach.”
“But how did you...”
“Get out of it? They horsed around with me long enough to give Brikel and Teed a chance to use their plane reservations. They weren’t even citizens. You knew that. They’d been chased out of the country years before and had established citizenship in a nice understanding South American country and had smuggled themselves back in to set up a drop-off for their dope shipments, with me as the stooge.
“They took a wax test of my hand and proved that I hadn’t fired the gun. The war record helped me. They got me unraveled from the frame that Briket and Teed had set up. The property reverted to me. It just happened to be on a corner that a chain wanted. I still own the corner and I have a fat lease which pays me twenty-one thousand a year.”
“Why do you tell me that?”
“Because I want to brag a little. It cost me three thousand dollars for complete reports on you and August Brikel and Gowan Teed. Honey, I know when and where you drew your first breath. And two weeks ago the agency told me that all three of you are in Mexico City for an extended stay. Brikel and Teed are up here on visas. You are here on an immigrante basis. So I’m paying a friendly visit. For Tommy. He couldn’t come, you understand.”
“Bren, don’t talk like that. You don’t sound... well.”
“If you’re well, do you just forget it? Do you just talk about good ole Tommy and say that it’s too bad that they can’t extradite the killers? Do you just say that it’s a big rotten shame, or do you come down here and do something about it yourself?”
Her eyes narrowed. “What are you trying to say?”
“I’m trying to say that big jovial Brikel and birdy little Teed and Laena, the lush angel, have lived too long already. Don’t you think you’ve lived too long, darling?”
Her gray eyes were steady on his. “Yes, Bren. I do.”
“For what you helped do to Tommy?”
“You won’t believe me, so there’s no point in telling you that this is the first I’ve heard about him. You won’t believe me if I tell you that there is no personal or business relationship between me and Mr. Brikel and Mr. Teed. I ran out on you, Bren. I ran fast, because I hated myself and what I was doing to you. I tried to run away from you, Bren. But I brought you with me. In my heart.”
“Poetic, angel. Very, very poetic.”
She stood up quickly. Her lip curled. She said, “I go on again, soon. If you have a gun, Bren, I’ll walk away slowly. Make it quick, Bren. Very quick.”
She turned. She walked slowly. At the end of the dance floor, she turned and gave him one quick bitter stare. He was surprised to see the glint of tears.
Bren put the gun back in his waistband. The waiter brought a fresh drink. He remained at the table and watched her as he sipped the drink. In the middle of her second number, he shook his head slowly. The bright spotlight on her seemed to retreat to a vast distance as though he held a telescope reversed. The sound of the music set up counter-echoes in his head, fuzzing the rhythm, blurring the tempo.
He was conscious of faces turned toward him, of wise smiles. He tried to stand up but slumped back on the chair. His head was a stone, a weight too heavy to support. His forehead rested on the white tablecloth. A careless movement of his hand tipped over the dregs of the drink. He felt the coolness of it against his cheek...