Sidewalks that were just damp a moment before took on a black sheen of water and drained it off into the gutter. Even with the wipers swatting furiously like a batter gone mad I could hardly see out. The car in front of me was a wavering shadow with one sick red eye, the neon signs and window fronts on either side just a ghostly parade of colors.
It was another night like that first one. The kind that made you run anywhere just to get away from it. You could see the vague shapes that were people huddled under marquees and jammed into doorways, the braver making the short dash to waiting cabs and wishing they hadn't.
By the time we reached Ellen's apartment it had slacked off into a steady downpour without the electrical fury that turned the night into a noisy, deafening day.
A doorman with an oversize umbrella led Ellen into the foyer and came back for me. Once we were out of it we could laugh. I was only making sloshing noises with my shoes but Ellen had gotten rained on down the back and her dress was plastered against her skin like a postage stamp. Going up in the elevator she stood with her back against the wall and edged sidewise after making me walk ahead of her.
I was going to knock first, but she poked her key in the lock and waved me inside.
"Nobody home?"
"Don't be silly. Tonight's date night... or haven't you noticed the couples arm in arm dashing for shelter."
"Yeah." I kicked my shoes off and carried them out to the kitchen. Ellen dumped the beer on the table and showed me where the glasses were.
"Pour me, Mike. I'll be back as soon as I get these wet things off."
"Hurry up."
She grinned at me and waltzed out while I was uncorking the bottles. I just finished topping the glasses off when she waltzed right back in again wrapped up in a huge terrycloth bathrobe, rubbing the rain out of her hair with a towel.
I handed her a glass and we clinked them in a toast we didn't speak. I drank without taking my eyes from hers, watching the deep blue swirl into a smoky gray that seemed to come up from the depths of a fire.
It got to be a little more than I could take. She knew it when I said, "Let's look at the files, Ellen."
"All right." She tucked the bottle under her arm and I trailed after her into the living room. A large console set took up a corner of the room and she pulled it away from the wall and worked her hand into the opening.
"Your private safe?"
"For intimate letters, precious nylons and anything else a nosy cleaning woman might take home with her."
She pulled out another of those Manila folders held together with a thick rubber band and handed it to me. My hand started to shake when I worked the band off it. The thing snapped and flew across the room.
I took it sitting down. I reached in and pulled out a stack of official reports, four photographs and more affidavits than I could count. I spread them out across the coffee table and scanned them to see what I could pick up, laying the discards on top of the empty folder. When I tried to do it carefully I got impatient, and when I went faster I got clumsy and knocked the whole batch on the floor. Ellen picked them up and sorted them out again and I went on from there.
I was cursing myself and the whole damn mess long before I was finished because it was ending in a blank, a goddamn stone wall with nothing there but a fat ha-ha and to hell with you, bub. My hand went out of its own accord and spilled everything all across the room while Ellen let out a little scream and stepped back with her hand to her mouth.
"Mike!"
"I'm sorry, kid. It's a dud. Goddamn it, there's not a thing in there!"
"Oh, Mike... it can't be! The D.A. has been working on that a month!"
"Sure, trying to tangle Link up in that lousy gambling probe of his. So he proves he's a bookie. Hell, anybody can tell you that. All he had to do was go in and lay a bet with the guy himself. I'll say he's worked a month on it. Link doesn't stand a chance of getting out of this little web, but for all the time he'll draw for it, it will be worth it."
I scooped up a couple of the reports and slammed them with my fingers. "Look at this stuff. Two official reports that give any kind of background on the guy at all and those were turned in while Roberts was the D.A. What was going on in all the years until a month ago?"
Ellen glanced at the reports curiously and took them out of my hand, tapping the rubber-stamped number in the upper right-hand corner with her finger. "This is a code number, Mike. These reports are part of a series."
"Where are the rest of them then?"
"Either in the archives or destroyed. I won't say so for certain, but it's more likely that they were discarded. I've been with the department long enough to have seen more than one new office holder make a clean sweep of everything including what was in the files."
"Damn!"
"I'll check on it the first thing in the morning, Mike. There's a possibility that they're stored away someplace."
"Nuts on tomorrow morning. There isn't that much time to waste. There has to be another way.
She folded the sheets up carefully, running her nail along the edges. "I can't think of anything else unless you want to contact Roberts. He might remember something about the man."
"That's an idea. Where does he live?"
"I don't know... but I can find out." She looked at me pensively. "Does it have to be tonight?"
"Tonight."
I caught up with her before she reached the phone. I put my arms around her and breathed the fragrance that was her hair. "I'm sorry, Kitten."
Ellen let her head fall back on my shoulder and looked up at me. "It's all right, Mike, I understand."
She had to make three separate calls to locate Roberts' number. It was an address in Flushing and when she had it she handed me the phone to do the calling. It was a toll call, so I put it through the operator and listened to it ring on the other end. When I was about ready to hang up a woman came on and said, "Hello, this is Mrs. Roberts."
"Can I speak to Mr. Roberts, please?"
"I'm sorry, but he isn't home right now. Can I take a message?"
Somebody had bottled up all my luck and thrown it down the drain. I said, "No, but can you tell me when he'll be back?"
"Not until tomorrow sometime. I expect him about noon."
"Well, thanks. I'll call him then. 'By."
I tried not to slam the receiver back in its cradle. I tried to sit on myself to keep from exploding and if it hadn't been for Ellen chuckling to herself from the depths of the couch I would have kicked something across the room. I spun around to tell her to shut up, but when a woman looks at you the way she was doing you don't say anything at all. You just stand there and look back because a toast-colored body that is all soft, molded curves and smooth hollows makes a picture to take your breath away, especially when it is framed against the thick texture of white terrycloth.
She laughed again and said, "You're trapped, Mike."
I wanted to tell her that I wasn't trapped at all, but there wasn't any room for words in my throat. I walked across the room and stood there staring at her, watching her come up off the couch into my arms to prove that she was real and not just a picture after all.
The cup was full this time, the wine mellow and sweet, and she was writhing in my arms fighting to breathe, yet not wanting me to stop holding her. I heard her say, "Mike... I'm sorry you're trapped, but I'm glad... glad." And I kissed her mouth shut again letting the rain slashing against the window pitch the tempo, hearing it rise and rise in a crescendo of fury, shrieking at me because the minutes were things not to be wasted.
It took all I had to shove her away. "Texas gal, don't make it rough for me. Not now."
She opened her eyes slowly, her fingers kneading my back. "I can't even buy you, can I?"
"You know better than that, sugar. Let me finish what I have to do first."
"If I let you get away you'll never come back, Mike. There are too many others waiting for you. Every week, every month there will be someone new."