I slammed the phone back the same time he did and walked over to Marsha who was still laughing crazily. The kid with his arm in a sling was trying to comfort her and shake the gun loose at the same time. I picked it out of her fingers, put it back where it belonged and shook her until she snapped out of it.
The laughing left her and she leaned against my shoulder. "I... I'm sorry, Mike. I thought..."
The kid said, "Gee, Marsha..."
"Come on in, Jerry." He stepped inside and shut the door. "This is Mr. Hammer... Jerry O'Neill."
Jerry said "Hi," but didn't make any effort to shake hands. Jerry didn't like me very much. It was easy to see why.
Marsha gave my hand a little squeeze. "Mike, I need a drink. Do you mind?"
"Not a bit, kitten. How about you, Jerry?"
"No. No, thanks. I gotta go right away. I..." he looked at Marsha hoping for some sign of jealousy, "... gotta date tonight."
She disappointed him. The stars in his eyes blinked out when she said, "Why, that's fine, Jerry. Is there something you wanted to see me about?"
"Well," he hesitated and shot me a look that was pure disgust, "we were all kind of worried when you didn't show up today. We called and all that and I kinda thought, well, they didn't want me to, but I came up anyway. To make sure. Nobody was home then."
"Oh, Jerry, I'm sorry. I was with Mr. Hammer all day."
"I see."
"You tell them they can stop worrying."
"I'll do that." He reached for the knob. "By, Marsha."
"Good-by, Jerry."
He didn't say anything to me. I handed Marsha the drink. "You shouldn't have done that. He's crazy mad in love with you."
She sipped and stared at the amber liquid thoughtfully. "That's why I have to do it, Mike. He's got to learn sometime."
I raised my glass and toasted her. "Well, I don't blame the kid much at that."
"I wish you felt the same way," she said.
It was a statement that needed an answer, but she didn't let me give it. She smiled, her face reflecting the fatigue of her body, finished her drink in a long draught and walked away to the bedroom. I sat down on the arm of the chair swirling the ice around in the glass. I was thinking of the kid with the busted wing, knowing how he must have felt. Some guys got everything, I thought. Others have nothing at all. I was one of the lucky ones.
Then I knew how lucky I was because she was standing in the doorway bathed in the last of the light as the sun went down into the river outside. The soft pink tones of her body softened the metallic glitter of the nylon gown that outlined her in bronze, flowing smoothly up the roundness of her thighs, melting into the curve of her stomach, then rising higher into rich contours to meet the dagger point of the neckline that dropped into the softly shaded well between her breasts.
She said simply, "Good night, Mike," and smiled at me because she knew she was being kissed right then better than she had ever been kissed before. The sun said good night too and drowned in the river, leaving just indistinct shadows in the room and the sound of a door closing.
I waited to hear a lock click into place.
There wasn't any.
Chapter Eleven
I thought it would be easy to sit there with a drink in my hand and think, staring into the darkness that was a barrier against any intrusion. It wasn't easy at all. It was comfortable and restful, but it wasn't easy. I tried to tell myself that it was dark like this when Decker had come through the window and gone to the wall directly opposite me and opened the safe. I tried like hell to picture the way it started and see it through to the way it ended, but my mind wouldn't accept the continuity and kept throwing it back in jumbled heaps that made no sense. The ice in my glass clinked against the bottom four times and that didn't help either.
Someplace, and I knew it was there, was an error in the thought picture. It was a key that could unlock the whole thing and I couldn't pick it out. It was the probing finger in my brain and the voice that nagged at me constantly. It made me light one butt after another and throw them away after one drag. It got to me until I couldn't think or sit still. It made my hands want to grab something and break it into a million fragments and I would have let myself go ahead and do it if it weren't for Marsha asleep in the room, her breathing a gentle monotone coming through the door.
I wasn't the kind of guy who could sit still and wait for something to happen. I had enough of the darkness and myself. Maybe later I'd want it that way, but not now.
I snapped the latch on the lock that kept it open and closed the door after me as quietly as I could. Rather than go through another routine with the elevator operator I took the stairs down and got out to the street to my car without scaring anybody. I rolled down the window and let the breeze blow in my face, feeling better for it. I sat there watching the people and the cars go by, then remembered that Pat had told me Ellen had wanted me to call her.
Hell, I could do better than that. I shoved the key in the lock and hit the starter.
My finger found the bell sunk in the framework of the door and pushed. Inside a chair scraped faintly and heels clicked on the woodwork. A chain rattled on metal and the door opened.
"Hello, Texas."
She was all bundled up in that white terrycloth robe again and she couldn't have been lovelier. Her mouth was a ripe red apple waiting to be bitten, a luscious curve of surprise over the edges of her teeth. "I... didn't expect you, Mike."
"Aren't you glad to see me?"
It was supposed to be a joke. It went flat on its face because those eyes that seemed to run through the full colors of the spectrum at times suddenly got cloudy with tears and she shook her head.
"Please come in."
I didn't get it at all. She walked ahead of me into the living room and nodded to a chair. I sat down. She sat down in another chair, but not close. She wouldn't look directly at me either.
I said, "What's the matter, Ellen?"
"Let's not talk about it, Mike."
"Wait a minute... you did tell Pat that you wanted me to call, didn't you?"
"Yes, but I meant... oh, never mind. Please, don't say anything more about it." Her mouth worked and she turned her head away.
That made me feel great. Like I kicked her cat or something.
"Okay, let's hear about it," I said.
She twisted out of the chair and walked over to the radio. It was already pulled out so she didn't have to fool with it. Then she handed me another one of those Manila folders.
This one had seen a lot of years. It was dirty and crisp with years. The string that held it together had rotted off leaving two stringy ends dangling from a staple. Ellen went back to her chair and sat down again. "It's the file on Toady Link. I found it buried under tons of other stuff in the archives."
I looked at her blankly. "Does the D.A. know you have this?"
"No."
"Ellen..."
"See if it's what you want, Mike." Her voice held no emotion at all.
I turned up the flap only to have it come off in my hand, then reached in for the sheets of paper that were clipped together. I leaned back and took my time with these. There wasn't any hurry now. Toady was dead and his file was dead with him, but I could look in and see what his life had been like.
It was quite a life.
Toady Link had been a photographer. Apparently he had been a good one because most of the professional actresses had come to him to have their publicity pictures made. Roberts hadn't missed a trick. His reports were full of marginal notes speculating on each and every possibility and it was there that the real story came out.
Because of Toady's professional contacts he had been contacted by Charlie Fallon. The guy was a bug on good-looking female celebrities and had paid well for pictures of them and paid better when an introduction accompanied the photographs.