Kiss Her Goodbye

Chapter 14

MIDAFTERNOON, VELDA and I sat in a booth at Cohen's Deli. I had my namesake corned beef and pastrami sandwich, having worked up an appetite, and my secretary behaved herself with a little bowl of chicken soup. What a beautiful woman puts up with to stay that way.

I dabbed my mouth with a paper napkin, then reached over and dug in the left-hand pocket of my trench coat, which was wadded up next to me.

I held the marble-size stone up to the light. It didn't look like much of anything. Basil had died for this and other stones, and they had funded new lives for inhuman beasts and franchised human weakness into even more wealth.

"That," she said, "might make a nice engagement ring."

"Here's what we're going to do with it," I said, and handed it to her. "You're going to take it to David Gross at the diamond exchange."

"I am?"

"Yeah. I have my own last errand to run. But I want you to get copies made of every photograph you have of those south-of-the-border Nazi bastards, and all the evidence that you've gathered with the feds in mind."

"Okay. What for?"

"You give the stone to David, and the packet of evidence and photos. You tell him to quietly sell the diamond, and to keep a finder's fee according to his own conscience. But the proceeds—like the packet—are to go to some people he knows."

"What kind of...? Oh. Nazi hunters?"

"Yeah."

"To bring these monsters to trial?"

"No."

Took her half a second to process that, then she just sat there staring at the innocent pebble in her palm. Finally she said, "Fine. What's your errand?"

"Some things you're better off not knowing about."

"In case I'm questioned? Or because it involves a beautiful woman?"

I grinned at her. "Right. We'll meet back at my room at the Commodore."

"The Honeymoon Suite, you mean."

"Yup. Then we'll paint the town red."

"Haven't you done enough of that already?"

That made me laugh. "Well, I am back in a New York state of mind. But tomorrow, we'll catch a plane down to Florida. I'll teach you how to catch snook."

"Do I want to know how to catch snook?"

"It's not optional."

"Are we moving there? If we're going to retire while we're still young, maybe we should hang on to half of what this diamond's worth."

"No, it's a vacation. I got a car down there. We'll drive it home."

"Home?"

"Yeah. I'm not kidding anybody."

I glanced out the window at a street where people were moving, staying out of each other's way without acknowledging each other's existence. A gray sky loomed, threatening rain but not doing anything about it. The buildings had a terrible interchangeable blankness. Cabs were honking at cars whose drivers were screaming at the cabbies. A Puerto Rican hooker in a miniskirt and black mesh stockings and a cheap blonde wig was watching out for potential johns with one eye and the beat cop with the other. A leg-less beggar on a wheeled board was having success with the occasional tourist and nobody else.

I shrugged. "This is where I live."

The towering apartment building on Park Avenue had been there forever, exuding a quiet splendor that passersby were welcome to glimpse but only the wealthy could afford. The intimidating doorman in gold-braided blue moved to cut off my entry, then recognized me.

"Mr. Hammer," he said, and nodded.

We'd never met. He just read the papers.

"You happen to know if Miss Chrome is in?" I grinned at him, shoved the hat back on my head. "Hey, I know that sounds dumb—I never got her last name."

"She's never shared it with us, either," he said, in a good-natured growl. "But, yeah, I believe she's in. Guy in the lobby will call up for you. That's a lot of woman, Mr. Hammer."

"I met women before."

He laughed, tipped his braided hat. "That's what I hear."

Getting past the lobby was easy. The guy there confirmed "Miss Chrome" was in, and called up to see if she'd receive me, and she would.

So when I knocked on the door in a gold-scrolled marble vestibule about the size of your average SoHo flat, I half expected a butler to respond. But all I got was the platinum blonde disco doll her own self, in a fluid silver silken dressing gown with a rope belt. White open-toed shoes revealed red nails against tan flesh. The contrast between the stark white hair and the very brown flesh was ever startling.

The hand she extended for me to take was similarly scarlet nailed.

"So nice, Mike, that you accept my invitation," she said, the Latin accent a sensual purr. Nothing showed of last night's sorrow, not even in her eyes, which were bereft of spidery red.

I took my hat off—I'd left the trench coat with Velda. "I know I should have called. Forgive me?"

"There is nothing to forgive," she said, gesturing me inside. "The invitation, it was open. I was in a bad place last night. I am embarrassed for you to see me so."

"You lost somebody dear to you."

I had figured on brilliant splashes of primary color in the pad, the fiesta rainbow cliché gringos always expect. This was more like old Hollywood, a snowstorm of a living room with the kind of modern white furnishings and carpet you might expect from Jean Harlow or Marilyn Monroe, with walls and ceiling to match. Still, many tones were on display—ivory, cream, off-white, interrupted by a handful of large black-and-white glamour photographs of herself. Well, she knew what she liked.

The blizzard was relieved by a big picture window with a view all the way to Central Park, a postcard-worthy vista. The sun had finally cut through the clouds and smog, and the sky over the geometric shapes of the city wore the bright blues and whites of a perfect spring afternoon.

Strangely, her first move was to go to that window and close the cream-color curtain, blotting out that lovely view, as if Act One was over and this was intermission.

"Too bright for a night person," she said, with a little laugh. The only light now came from a single lamp on a white-lacquer end table. "Something to drink?"

"Maybe later. I want to talk first."

"Then we will talk. Suddenly you sound so serious, Mike. Is it about Tony's death? Are you investigating it? You are a detective."

She settled in an overstuffed white leather club chair, tan arms slipping from loose silk sleeves to rest regally along the chair's elevated sides as she crossed her long, lush legs.

I sat opposite her on a low-slung couch assembled from intersecting rectangles, as hard and uncomfortable as a doctor's examination table and about the same color. Between us squatted a glass-and-metal coffee table, not unlike the one at Club 52 with the coke mirror. I tossed my hat there.

"I've been working on something complicated," I said. "But I couldn't get anywhere, because I was operating from a faulty premise."

She frowned, as if my English was too dense for her to wade through, though she didn't ask for clarification.

"I was looking at four murders—Bill Doolan, Ginnie Mathes, Dulcie Thorpe, and Joseph Fidello—and then last night, a fifth, Anthony Tretriano. This is further complicated by the Mathes girl's murder rising out of a mugging, which involved the theft of a valuable gemstone."

The widening of her eyes was almost imperceptible. Her chin went up a little, too.

"Wrongly, I assumed one killer was behind it all," I said. "I didn't stop to think that in a criminal enterprise, motives for murder are cheap, and motivations among those involved often run counter."

She cocked her head and one side of her hair fell like a silver curtain. "You are saying ... there were two murderers?"

"Three." I sat forward. "Alex Jaynor, the politician, staged the suicide of Bill Doolan. He also tried to run me down in a car, which makes the death of Dulcie Thorpe a homicide, too. And the police are running ballistics on Jaynor's rifle, which should tie him to the sniper shooting of Anthony Tretriano."

"They will arrest him?"

"No. Jaynor was found dead about an hour ago on the sidewalk outside the old apartment building where Doolan lived."

She frowned. "How did he die?"

"Slow and painfully. That bother you? He did kill your friend Anthony."

"He was more than a friend—my Anthony." She swallowed. Rose slowly, a queen from her throne, those legs seemingly endless, only one hidden by the glistening silver fabric. "I would like a drink. May I serve you?"

"Sure. Rye and ginger. Rocks."

Chrome moved to the padded white leather bar off to the right. She got behind it and poured herself a martini from an already made pitcher.

I leaned against the other side of the bar as she built my drink.

"If you're wondering why I'm here," I said, "it's as a sort of courtesy."

"I had hoped you were here, Mike, because there was a ... spark? A spark between us, that first night at 52?"

"You're a handsome woman. And you've done nothing to cause me harm that I'm aware of. So I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt."

With the bar still between us, I could see my reflection in the mirrors over the row of bottles.

Her expression was quizzical. "Benefit of the doubt, Mike—the benefit of the doubt for what?"

"I don't have any hard proof that you are anything but a pawn in this. I think it's likely that you were directly involved, but the police—and the D.E.A. and the I.R.S., not to mention Immigration—will be moving in soon enough to sort it out. So my opinion is beside the point."

Her forehead tensed, her dark eyes bore into me. "I assure you, Mike, I knew nothing of Jaynor and Anthony's scheme...."

"I don't remember mentioning their scheme. Whether you know it or not, you touring your act, opening all the new Club 52 locations, was the conduit through which Little Tony and the Colombian cartel planned to move their coke and other fun powders. You have your own Lear jet, and you go back home between gigs—meaning separate shipments for each club opening. You travel with a band that isn't a band at all—they are drug mules and bodyguards who mime playing instruments while you sing to a canned track. Yet you travel with all sorts of gear, instruments in flight cases, hard-shell drum cases, trunks of electrical this and electronic that—none of it needed. And probably not functional, gutted, to make room for packing fat packets of what the D.E.A. likes to call controlled substances."

She had been holding the cocktail glass, without taking a single sip, and now she set it down, hard. It sloshed and spilled a little.

"Mike, just because the new Club 52 locales will not come to pass, that does not mean I cannot still tour your America—I am the number-one star in South America and have a big record contract here, and I do the TV and..." She leaned across and her mouth was a moist red invitation. "...and if you keep your suspicions to yourself, you could take Anthony's place, in my business ... and in my heart."

"Yeah, well, tempting as that is, and I do dig those long legs of yours, I have to say any tour you mount is gonna get looked at very hard by that alphabet soup of government agencies I mentioned."

I finished the rye and ginger and thanked her for it. She was still behind the bar when I walked back toward the coffee table where my hat waited. I glanced back and saw her reach under the bar for something, something she tucked behind her, and the mirror gave me just enough of a silver metallic flash to know it was a nickel revolver.

She came around from behind the bar slowly, smiling just a little, almost as catlike as Velda, and said, "What can I do to convince you not to make trouble for Chrome, Mike?"

I shook my head. "This is all you get. Just a little head start. See, I do kind of blame you, in part anyway, for the Mathes kid's death. She admired you, trusted you, and you got her involved in playing messenger in a very dangerous game."

She took two measured steps my way. Her red-nailed toes in the white shoes were all but buried in the plush ivory carpeting. Her eyes were wide and a weird excitement glittered there. Something about our confrontation had excited her—sexually. Or was that just an act?

"I do not mean, ever, to do Ginnie no harm," she said. The double negative was unintentionally telling. "...In fact I mean only to do very good by her."

"How about Joseph Fidello?" I asked. "Him I know you meant to do harm. In fact, he's the odd murder out, isn't he? You're the third murderer. You killed Fidello, Chrome, trying to find that uncut stone. Well, that stone is on its way now to help bring your Nazi cohorts some good old-fashioned Old Testament justice. About time Basil's gems funded something positive."

Her expression was of astonished confusion. "Why should you care about Fidello? He is the one who kill that stupid girl. You might have kill him yourself, had you the chance!"

"Yeah, probably. It's a matter of motivation. I would have taken him out for the low-life murderer he was. You were just removing somebody who might cause you trouble. Somebody who knew just a little too much about you and Ginnie ... and that uncut gem."

Her mouth and eyes promised unknown pleasures. The sexual heat was damn near shimmering off her—she liked this.

"I am a very famous woman in my country, Mike. I can return to my home, where I am a very, very rich woman. We can go there together and leave your ugly city and your so very stupid and selfish country behind. There would be nothing bad, nothing criminal in our life together, the whole foolish scheme of Alex and Tony, it would be as if it never happen."

"It did happen. And an old man with a great heart was murdered because of it."

"Not by me ... not by me. ..."

"But maybe you're not just a pawn," I said. "Maybe you're the top man in the Colombian cartel."

She overplayed her quizzical expression.

You'd have to call my smile a sneer. "Tell me, Chrome—how was it two gay men were so attracted to you? Is there something under that gown you're hiding from me?"

Her smile held no sneer at all; it was the whitest thing in this white room, radiant and self-possessed. "Was I born a man, Mike? Or maybe... both the man and the woman? An extra chromosome—is that the little joke of my name, Mike?"

"I was thinking maybe a surgeon had more to do with you than God."

"Or the devil? So old-fashioned are you, Mike. Such ancient notions of sexuality."

"I get by."

"You cannot deny you enjoyed me, Mike. I was on my knees before you—remember?" A graceful hand with tapering fingers gestured toward the lovely body. "All of us, Mike, even you, we have our female side, and our male. Men like Tony ... like Sal ... you killed Sal, did you not, Mike?"

"I killed him."

Something nasty flashed through her dark eyes. "Chrome, she was one woman they could accept. And I could accept their love like a man ... you understand?"

"Spare me the diagrams."

She prowled toward me, one hand still casually behind her, and with the other she undid the rope at her waist and the dressing gown dropped in a silken puddle at her red-nailed feet and exposed her golden goddess form with thrusting breasts and narrow waist and flaring hips that flowed into the long, long legs, as muscular as a man's. But nothing else about her suggested anything but woman, as beautiful a specimen of the sex as I had ever seen.

The mouth was as wet and red and lush as ever, the dark eyes hooded, chin up, a red-nailed hand cupping a perfect breast—too perfect.

"Mike ... Mike. I am a sexual being—you said it yourself."

She was almost in my arms and that hand was coming ever so surreptitiously from behind her back to blow me a .38-caliber kiss....

"No, Mike, I am all woman. I was born a woman."

My .45 came up and the tongue of flame from its muzzle licked her belly where the bullet had punched a new hole.

As she staggered on those magnificent legs, Chrome's eyes were wide and wild, and before they filmed over, and she could go down in an ungainly pile to stain that soft, thick white carpet scarlet, I got one last shot in, not from the .45.

"Die any way you like," I said.