Death Pulls a Doublecross [= Cowards Kiss]

Fourteen

I gave my car back to the garage. The same kid was still on duty and he had something suitably inane to say. But I didn’t hear it. I wasn’t listening.

The air smelled of a storm on the way. It had begun that way and it was ending the same way, with the city crouching under rain clouds. I walked home with the briefcase under my arm. I climbed the stairs and nobody shot at me from behind. I unlocked my door and went inside. There were no surprises — no dark little men with guns, no briefcases, no disorder. Just my apartment, just as I had left it.

I filled a glass with cognac and worked on it. I thought about love and death. I thought about Alicia Arden, about the kind of girl she must have been, about the girl she had been to the men who had known her. I thought about a girl of my own and found myself smiling. I picked up the phone and dialed Maddy’s number.

“Hi,” I said. “How was the audition?”

“Ed,” she chirped. “Oh, it was fine, it was great, I’ll tell you about it later. But what happened? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“How... how did everything go?”

“All right. Lots of things happened.”

“Tell me. You didn’t get hurt, did you? You’re all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said again. “I’ll tell you when I see you.”

“Can you come right down? Or should I come up?”

“Neither,” I said. “I’ll be down in an hour or so. We can grab a late dinner. I’ll take you out and feed you.”

“I’ll cook, Ed. I feel like cooking tonight. Why don’t you come down right away? I thought you were all finished.”

“Almost,” I said. “I’ll see you in two hours at the outside. And cook a big dinner. I’ll need it.”

I stood there a moment, thought about her, remembered how her voice sounded. I wondered what was coming up next for us, what she would be to me and what I would be to her. I thought about love, about its effect on some people I knew. It was either the most essential single thing in the world or the one thing a man had to learn to get by without, and I couldn’t make up my mind which way it worked. You could argue either side.

I lit a pipe, poured more cognac. And made another phone call.

Kaye answered. When she recognized my voice she started talking very fast and very shakily.

“Oh, Ed,” she said. “Ed, I’ve been worrying about you. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter,” I told her. “What do you mean?”

She hesitated. “Oh, I don’t know. But you’ve been calling Jack and seeing Jack and I was all worried.”

“What about?”

“About you.”

“Me?”

A pause. “Ed, if you’re... sick... you can tell me, Ed. I have a right to know. I—”

I laughed, as much out of relief as anything else. “It’s not for me,” I improvised. “It’s for Jack. He needed a detective and wanted to keep the business in the family. A few clients did a skip and he wanted me to run a tracer on them, get them to pay their bills. I don’t think you should worry yourself sick over it.”

She sounded very happy. “But I worry,” she said. “I mean, you’re all alone in the world, Ed.”

“I’ve got a pretty sweet sister—”

“You know what I mean. If you had a wife to take care of you I wouldn’t worry.”

I laughed again. “Maybe I will,” I said. “Soon.”

“You’ve got a girl?”

“Dozens of them. But there’s one who’s been getting important. I’ll tell you all about it one of these days. Look, put your husband on, will you?”

She said something sweet, and I said something sweet, and then she put her husband on.

And I talked to him.

After that I took a fast shower and a faster shave. The shave was a little too fast — I wound up slicing off part of my face. I couldn’t stop the bleeding with a styptic pencil so I slapped a Band-Aid on the gash and grinned at myself in the mirror. Just everybody in New York had swung at me or shoved a gun in my face in the past few days, and the only way I could get hurt was by cutting myself with my own razor. Hell, maybe it would leave an interesting scar.

I went back to the living room. Then I sat down in one of the leather chairs and waited for him.

He knocked at the door. When I told him it was open he came in, a little out of breath, his hair poorly combed and his face redder than usual. His tie was loose and his face was weak with the same fear I’d seen there before.

“I got here as soon as I could,” he said. “Hope I didn’t keep you waiting, Ed. Something the matter?”

I took a step toward him. I threw the briefcase at him and he raised his hands instinctively to block it. It bounced off his hands and landed on the floor.

“This is yours,” I said. “You forgot it last time you were here.”

“For God’s sake, Ed!”

“You son of a bitch,” I said. “You rotten bastard.”

I hit him in the face. He backed off, his hands up to cover his face, and I belted him in the middle. When he folded up I hit him in the face and he went to the floor. He started to get up.

I said: “Stay there, Jack. If you get up I’ll knock the crap out of you.”

He stayed there.

“I never suspected you,” I told him. “Never. Hell, I didn’t want to suspect you. You were Kaye’s husband, I was doing you a favor to begin with. And you played me for a sucker from the word go. You’re a rotten son of a bitch, Jack.”

He opened his mouth. I waited for him to say something but he changed his mind. He bit his lip, closed his mouth. He looked away from me.

“How did you meet Alicia?”

“I told you. She came to my office.”

“Was that part true?”

He nodded.

“Then that’s where the truth stopped. You met her and the two of you wound up in the hay. You were mannered and polished and socially acceptable and she was warm and blonde and good in bed. So the two of you hit it off fine.

“She was also talkative. She told you all about Wallstein and Bannister and a half-million bucks worth of stolen jewels.”

“Ed—”

“Shut up. This didn’t happen on East Fifty-first Street. It happened in her apartment in the Village. Because the apartment and the alias came later. She never thought of them. They were your ideas. The whole double-cross gimmick was your idea all the way, wasn’t it?”

“It just happened,” he said.

“Happened?”

“You know what I mean. We were talking about... the jewels. And we both thought—”

“I think it was your idea, Jack.”

He didn’t say anything.

I said: “She was a floater all the way, took things as they came. Her life wasn’t easy but she knew how to get by. She was Wallstein’s mistress and he idolized her. And he was going to have enough money to keep her happy as soon as his deal went through. No, I don’t think she could have thought of the double cross. That had to be your idea.”

I looked at him and saw how weak and gutless he was. I was hoping he would get up so I could knock him down again. I remembered Wallstein telling me I wasn’t a violent man. But now I felt violent.

“So you rented an apartment for her,” I went on. “And gave her a phony name. And just to be safe you took the briefcase away from her. Why? Didn’t you trust her?”

“Of course I did. Damn it, I loved her!”

“Then why did you take the briefcase? Why not let her hold onto it? Because you had the case all along, Jack. That’s why Wallstein didn’t find it when he killed her. It wasn’t there. Why take it if you trusted her?”

“I thought it would be safer with me.”

“Safer from whom?”

“Wallstein, Bannister. Everybody.”

“Then you didn’t think she was very safe, did you?” He looked up, puzzled. “Even with the new apartment and the alias, you knew somebody might get to her. And if they did, you wanted to make sure you had the briefcase. She wasn’t so important. But the jewels were.”

“That’s a lie!”

“Is it?”

He looked at the floor again. “She was all that mattered,” he said brokenly. “I didn’t care about the jewels. I didn’t give a damn about them. I was in love with her.”

I let it go. “You had it all set up with her,” I said. “You doped out a way to cross Wallstein and Bannister both at once. Then you and Alicia would lie low for a while. I suppose after that you were going to skip the country. Where were you going to go?”

“Brazil. I don’t know.”

“And live happily ever after. But Wallstein got to her first. He loved her, too — everybody loved that girl, Jack. He loved her enough to kill her after she crossed him up. And Wallstein wasn’t the sort of man who killed if he could avoid it.”

“He was a crook.” His eyes flared. “He was a rotten Nazi.”

“He was also a better man than you are. He killed her and he went through that apartment from floor to ceiling looking for a briefcase that wasn’t there. Because you had it.

“She was already dead when you got there. And you fell apart, Jack. Suddenly the whole world was falling in on you. Hell, you were scared green. That’s when you stripped her.”

His mouth fell open.

“Yeah, you stripped her. That’s the only way it adds up. She was wearing something that could be traced to you. Or you thought it could. I can even guess what it was. You told me once how she liked to sit around the house in that man’s bathrobe you bought her. Was that what she was wearing?”

He nodded slowly.

“Maybe the stockings and garter belt were underneath the robe. Maybe she was nude and you started to dress her, got as far as the belt and the stockings and panicked. It doesn’t make a hell of a lot of difference. Either way, this girl you loved so much was dead as a lox and you were busy staying in the clear. You were noble as hell, Jack.”

He closed his eyes. “I couldn’t think straight,” he mumbled. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“That’s an understatement. You were blundering around like a kid in a cathouse. By the time you got out of there you realized that you could burn all the bathrobes in the world without getting clear. You had to get the body out of that apartment or it would be traced to you. But you didn’t have the guts to do your own dirty work. You came running to me with a scrambled story, confessed to cheating on Kaye in order to cover up all the rest of it. And you fooled me, damn it. I moved the girl’s body and got you out of it.”

I lit my pipe. “Remember what you told me a few minutes ago? The briefcase wasn’t important to you. The girl was all that mattered. You said so, right?”

He nodded.

“And you lied. You had that briefcase and you weren’t going to give it up no matter how dead Alicia was. You never thought of telling me about it.”

“I didn’t want to... complicate things.”

“You didn’t want to pass up a fortune. That’s more like it. By the time I moved the body you were making a deal of your own with Bannister. You called him up, ready to sell him the briefcase and make a quick profit for yourself. With Alicia dead there wasn’t any point to running for Brazil. But you could still use a hundred grand tax free. You called Bannister and tried to work a deal. He wanted to know who you were. And you got scared.”

“I thought he would kill me.”

“So you threw him a bone,” I said. “You gave him my name.”

“I wasn’t thinking.”

“That’s a good excuse, isn’t it? You use it every other sentence. It’s a little worn out now. Anyway, Bannister wasn’t as stupid as you were. The minute he had me on the phone he knew I wasn’t the guy who called him in the first place. But you gave him a place to start. I was the only name he knew and he decided to work me over for all I was worth. He put a pair of thugs on my neck and they gave me a hard time. And that was your fault.”

“I didn’t know—”

“You never knew anything.” I was disgusted with him. “You loused up everything you touched. You were the clumsiest clod in history. Your lies were so clumsy I believed them and your actions were so stupid they were impossible to analyze. First you were going to skip the country with Alicia and the jewels. Then she was dead and you were set to sell the jewels on your own. Finally things got so shaky you were scared to breathe. The money didn’t look so big any more. My phone call this morning had you jumping out of your skin, didn’t it?”

“Yes. I was afraid.”

I nodded. “So you wanted to get rid of the briefcase. It was simple once you found out I wasn’t home. While I waited for your call, you came over here. Maybe you were going to stick the briefcase under my mat, then found the key and came inside. You dropped the case on the coffee table and called me from my own phone. That was a cute touch. So you must have figured you were lucky to be out of it. You still had Kaye and the kids, even if you didn’t care about them—”

“I—”

“Don’t tell me how much you love them,” I said. “I’m sick of all your passionate attachments. You had your wife and your daughters and your position and your practice. The romantic life just wasn’t worth it any more; you were happy to be in the clear. That’s why you were so glad to switch that line of yours about how Alicia and the apartment looked when you found her. Anything to let yourself off the hook.”

He was silent now. I turned my back on him and poured a drink, half-hoping he’d make a break for it so I could have an excuse to take him apart again. But hitting him wouldn’t be much of a kick now. The hatred and anger were slipping away and contempt was taking their place. He wasn’t worth hitting.

“Get up,” I said.

He looked worried. “Go on,” I said. “Get up. I’m not going to hit you. I’m sick of looking at you — you look pretty damned silly on the floor.”

He stood up shakily. His eyes were wary.

“Jack, why?”

I watched him while he thought about it. He took his time getting his answers ready, and when he got going I had the feeling that he was talking as much to himself as to me.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I... Kaye and I haven’t loved each other in years. A marriage can get very stale without going completely dead. We went stale.”

“Just like that?”

“A little at a time. I don’t know. I sat around in a rut and didn’t know it. Maybe I made a mistake going into medicine. I was never that crazy to be a doctor. Money and respect and security — they motivated me more than any real interest in medicine. And then I met Alicia.”

He paused for breath. “Each of us was just right for the other, Ed. It was almost chemical. A chemical reaction. She was a footloose thing who never knew what was going to happen next to her. She’d been a prostitute and a marijuana smoker and a con-man’s partner and everything else under the sun. She told me stories that made my hair curl. She was excitement for me; I wasn’t in a rut any more.”

“Go on.”

“I don’t know. I had to make one big break, one stab in the right direction. With the money from the jewels we could make a whole new life for ourselves. It looked too good to be true.”

“How long before the new life turned into a rut?”

“It wouldn’t have happened,” he said doggedly.

“Sure.”

“Ed, we loved each other.”

“Sure. You loved Kaye once, didn’t you?”

He sighed. “That was different. I was a different man, a younger man. It was a different sort of love. I loved Alicia very much.”

“So you killed her.”

He stared at me. He started to say something but I didn’t give him a chance. I held up a hand to shut him up.

I said: “You killed her. You and Wallstein both loved her and both of you killed her. You set her up for him. If you weren’t in the picture, she and Wallstein would have pulled off their swindle. They’d have wound up safe in Canada. You made her cross him and he killed her. He was a braver man than you, Jack. He killed her with a sword. You killed her with a kiss.”

After a very long moment he gave me a slow nod. I waited for him to say something.

“You ought to kill me,” he said finally.

“Probably.”

“You should.”

I shook my head. “I’ve killed too many men today,” I told him. “Four of them. Can you believe it? Four men, and you’re worse than any of them. But I’m sick of killing and sicker of playing God. I couldn’t kill you.”

“What... what are you going to do with me?”

“I can’t turn you over to the cops,” I said. “And it would be silly as hell even if I could. I’d be hurting Kaye and the girls more than you. And I can’t even beat you up — I haven’t got the stomach for it. You’re a rotten son of a bitch and I can’t do a thing to you.”

He stood there and didn’t say a word.

I said: “Get out of here. Get out, get away from me, stay away from me. I don’t want to see you again or speak to you again. Go home to Kaye and pretend you’re a husband. She needs you. I don’t know how in hell anybody could need somebody like you, but she needs you. She can have you.”

He didn’t move.

“Damn you, get out!”

He turned and walked to the door. He opened it and left, closed it behind him. I heard him go down the stairs and leave the building.

I went over to the window. It was raining now, big heavy drops that soaked the pavement. I opened the window to let some fresh air into the place.