Lady Killer

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Nathan Hale Square divided the island of Isola almost exactly in two. Dominated by the huge statue of the patriot, it was the hub of a bigger square of city commerce. Swank shops, bookshops, drugstores, automobile showrooms, hotels, and the new giant sports arena surrounded the square with their bustling activity. The heat had in no way diminished the bustle, or the hustle accompanying it. The heat very rarely affects pursuit of the long green.

And yet, seeming to typify a more gracious bygone time when the only thing people had to worry about was revolutions, Nathan Hale complacently looked out at the commercialism surrounding him, seemed in fact to look above and beyond it. And like dutiful subjects, a smattering of citizens sat on the benches circling the statue, feeding the pigeons, or reading newspapers, or just watching the girls in their thin summer frocks go by. Watching the girls in their summer frocks was a favourite city pastime, and another thing the heat could not affect.

Stopped for a moment by the maze of traffic in the square, Hawes watched the girls in their thin dresses. The traffic broke, the siren erupted, the car gunned forward, the girls were behind him. He swung around the square, heard a motorist curse behind him, and then headed east, taking the corner into Felicia Pannet's block on two wheels. He pulled the sedan to the curb, yanked the keys from the ignition, slammed out of the car, and took the front-stoop steps two at a time to the entrance lobby.

Felicia Pannet, the card in the bell panel read. Hawes pushed the button. He waited, his hand on the knob of the inner door. The door clicked, the lock sprang. Hawes pushed open the door and stepped into the ground-floor lobby. An elevator was at the rear of the lobby. He started for it, then remembered he hadn't looked at Felicia's apartment number. Cursing, muttering proverbs about haste making waste, he went back to the entrance door, opened it, braced it with one foot, and leaned into the lobby to read the apartment number in the bell panel. Sixty-three.

He went back inside to the elevator, pushed the down button, and waited. The indicator told him the elevator was on the seventh floor. He waited. Either the indicator was broken, or the elevator was not moving. He pushed the button again. The elevator stayed on the seventh floor.

He could visualize two fat matrons discussing their arthritis, one of them holding the elevator door open while the second fumbled for her apartment keys in her purse. Or perhaps a delivery boy shuttling a month's supply of groceries from the elevator to some apartment, having wedged the door open with the shopping cart. He pushed the button again. Adamantly the damned elevator refused to move. Hawes looked at his watch, and then took the steps.

He was winded and dripping wet when he reached the sixth floor. He looked for Apartment Sixty-three, found it, and pushed the black buzzer button in the doorjamb. No one answered. He pushed it again. As he was pushing it, he heard the hum of the elevator, saw the lighted car pass on its way downward to the street.

'Who is it?' a voice from within the apartment asked. The voice was low and cool, a woman's voice.

'Police,' Hawes said.

Footsteps padded toward the door. The peephole flap grated metal against metal when it swung back. The peephole presented only a mirrored surface to whoever was standing outside the doorway. The woman inside could see out, but Hawes could not see in.

'I'm not dressed,' the voice said. 'You'll have to wait.'

'Please hurry,' Hawes said.

'I'll dress as quickly as I know how,' the voice said, and Hawes felt he had been reprimanded. The peephole flap grated shut again. Hawes leaned against the wall opposite the doorway, waiting. It was hot in the corridor. The collected smells of the day had merged with the cooking smells of the evening, and these in turn had merged with the heat to form an assault wave on the nostrils. He pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose. It didn't help.

He realized all at once that he was hungry. He had not eaten since noontime, and he'd done a lot of chasing around since then, and his stomach was beginning to growl.

It'll soon be over, he thought, one way or the, other. Then you can go home and shave and put on a clean white shirt and a tie and the grey tropical, and you can pick up Christine Maxwell. You didn't promise her dinner, but you'll buy her dinner, anyway. You'll have some long, tall drinks rammed full with ice. You'll dance to the air-conditioned rhythms of Felix Iceberg and his Twelve Icicles, and then you'll escort Miss Maxwell home and discuss Antarctica over a nightcap.

It sounded delightful.

I wish I worked for an advertising agency, Hawes thought. I'd leave the office at five and by this time I'd be immersed in a tub of marti—

Time.

He looked at his watch.

Good God, what the hell was taking her so long? Impatiently he reached for the buzzer again. He was about to press it when the door opened.

Felicia Pannet was easily the coolest-looking person he had seen all day. All week. All year. There was no other word for her. She was cool. She was, as a few junkies he knew might put it, the coolest, man.

She had straight black hair clipped in what he supposed the coiffure con men called a Spider Cut or a Bedbug Cut or some sort of an insect cut. Whatever they called it, it was extremely short except for the tendrils, which, insect-like, swept over her forehead.

Her eyes were blue. They were not a warm blue. They were the blue you sometimes find on a very fair-skinned blonde or an Irish redhead. But fair hair softens the harshness of the blue in those cases; Felicia Pannet's hair had been poured from an inkwell, and it dropped the temperature of the blue eyes to somewhere far below zero.

Her nose, like her hair, had been bobbed. The job was an excellent one, but Hawes could spot a nose bob at a hundred paces. Felicia's nose was a properly American, properly supper-club, properly martini-glass-in-hand-spouting-latest- best-seller-talk nose. A cool nose for a cool woman. And her mouth, without lipstick, was thin and bloodless. For a moment, Hawes thought of Charles Addams. The moment passed.

'I'm sorry I kept you waiting,' Felicia said. Her voice expressed no regret whatever.

'That's quite all right,' Hawes said. 'May I come in?'

'Please.'

She did not ask for identification. He followed her into the apartment. She was wearing an ice-blue sweater and a black skirt. The thongs of pale-blue sandals passed through the spaces alongside her big toes. Her toe-nails were painted a bright red, as were her long, carefully manicured finger-nails.

The apartment was as cool as the woman. Hawes was not an expert on modern furniture, but he knew the stuff in this apartment had not been purchased on Crichton Avenue. This was nine-months-wait, special-order furniture. It had the look and the feel of luxury.

Felicia sat.

'What's your name?' she said.

Her voice had the peculiarly aloof nasal twang Hawes had always identified with Harvard men. He had always assumed that the speech instructor at Harvard was a man who spoke through his nose and, emulated by his students, produced a generation of young men whose voices emerged through their nostrils rather than their mouths. He was surprised to hear the affected speech pattern and tone in a woman. He was half tempted to ask her if she was a Harvard graduate.

'My name's Hawes,' he said. 'Detective Hawes.'

'Do I call you Detective Hawes or Mr Hawes? Which?'

'Whichever you like. Just don't—'

'Just don't call me late for dinner,' she completed un-smilingly.

'I was just going to say,' Hawes said flatly, annoyed that she thought he'd been about to use the old saw, 'just don't waste any more of my time.'

The rebuff produced nothing more on the face of Felicia Pannet than a slight lifting of her left eyebrow. 'I had no idea your time was so valuable,' she said. 'What do you want here?'

'I've just come from the Jo-George Diner,' Hawes said. 'Do you know George?'

'I've met him, yes.'

'He told me that you're his partner's girl-friend. Is that right?'

'Are you referring to Jo?'

'Yes.'

'I suppose you might say I'm his girl-friend.'

'Do you know where I can locate him, Miss Pannet?'

'Yes. He's out of town.'

'Where?'

'He went upstate to do some fishing.'

'When did he leave?'

'Early this morning.'

'What time this morning?'

'About one o'clock.'

'You mean this afternoon, then, don't you?'

'No, I mean this morning. I rarely say anything I don't mean, Detective Hawes. I mean this morning. One o'clock this morning. He worked late at the diner last night. He stopped by here to have a nightcap, and then he left for upstate. It must have been about one o'clock.' She paused. Emphatically she added, 'In the morning.'

'I see. Where did he go upstate?'

'I don't know. He didn't say.'

'When will he be back?'

'Either late tonight or early tomorrow morning. He's due back at the diner tomorrow.'

'Will he call you when he gets back?'

'He said he would.'

'Are you engaged to him, Miss Pannet?'

'In a sense, yes.'

'What does that mean?'

'It means I don't date any other men. But I haven't got his ring. I don't want it yet.'

'Why not?'

'I'm not ready to marry him yet.'

'Why not?'

'When I get married, I want to stop working. But I want to live the way I live now. Jo makes a decent amount of money. The diner's a going business, and he splits everything fifty-fifty with George. But he still doesn't make as much money as I do.'

'Where do you work, Miss Pannet?'

'For a television packaging outfit. Trio Productions. Have you heard of it?'

'No.'

Felicia Pannet shrugged. 'Three people,' she said. 'A writer, a director, and a producer. They banded together and formed their own producing company. We package shows for a good deal of the industry. The "Pennsylvania Coal Hour" is one of our shows. Surely you've seen that.'

'I don't own a television set,' Hawes said.

'Don't you believe in art?' she asked. 'Or can't you afford one?'

Hawes let the remark pass. 'And what do you do with Trio Productions?' he asked.

'I'm one of the original three, one of the trio. I'm the producer.'

'I see. And this pays well, does it?'

'It pays extremely well.'

'And Jo's cut of the business doesn't pay as well?'

'No.'

'And you're not going to marry him until you can stay home and knit booties and raise a family on his earnings, is that—?'

'Until I can live the way I'm living now, yes,' Felicia said.

'I see.' Hawes took the folded picture from his pocket. Slowly he unfolded it and handed it to Felicia. 'Ever see this man before?' he asked.

Felicia took the picture. 'Is this your subtle way of getting my fingerprints?' she asked.

'Huh?'

'By handing me this picture?'

'Oh.' Hawes smiled, beginning to dislike Miss Pannet intensely now, beginning to dislike Trio Productions, and beginning to dislike the 'Pennsylvania Coal Hour' even though he had never seen the damned show. 'No. I'm not trying to get your fingerprints. Would I have reason to want them?'

'How would I know?' she said. 'I still don't know why you're here.'

'I'm here to identify this man,' Hawes said. 'Do you know him?'

She looked at the picture. 'No,' she said. She handed it back to Hawes.

'Never saw him before?'

'Never.'

'Possibly with Jo? Would he be one of Jo's friends?'

'All of Jo's friends are my friends. I never saw him with that man. Unless it's a bad likeness.'

'It's a pretty good likeness,' Hawes said. He folded the picture and put it in his pocket. His last chance seemed to have evaporated. If Jo Cort was on a fishing trip, there was no way to reach him before eight o'clock tonight. There was no way to show him the picture. There was no way to identify the potential killer. Hawes sighed. 'A fishing trip,' he said disgustedly.

'He likes fishing.'

'What else does he like?'

For the first time since he'd been in the apartment, Hawes saw Felicia smile. 'Me,' she said.

'Mmm,' Hawes answered, refusing to comment on the taste that makes horse races and ball games. 'Where'd you meet him?' he asked.

'He picked me up,' she said.

'Where?'

'On the street. Does that shock you?'

'Not. particularly.'

'Well, that's the way it happened. Are you familiar with The Quarter?'

'Downtown? Yes.'

'I was walking there one Wednesday. Our big show is Tuesday night, the "Coal Hour". It's our only live show. We sort of relax right after it, generally take Wednesdays off unless there's a crisis in the office. I went down there that Wednesday to buy some jewellery. They have these unusual jewellery shops down there, as you may know.'

'Yes,' Hawes said. He looked at his watch. Why was he wasting time here? Why didn't he get back to the squad-room, where the company was congenial and pleasant?

'I was looking in one of the shop windows at a beautiful gold bracelet when I heard a voice behind me. It said, "Would you like me to buy that for you?" I turned. A rather pleasant-looking man with a moustache and chin whiskers was standing behind me.'

'Jo Cort?' Hawes asked.

'Yes. At first, I thought he was a Quarter artist. Because of the moustache and beard, you know. I said to him, "Can you afford it?" He went into the shop and bought it for me. It cost three hundred dollars. That was the beginning of our relationship.'

It figured, Hawes thought, and he began to form his own impressions of Jo Cort, a bearded jerk who'd spend three hundred dollars to pick up a girl like Felicia Pannet.

'He always wear this beard?' he asked, thinking of bearded men he had known in the past. One had grown the chin brush to hide the lack of a jaw. Another—

'Always,' Felicia said. 'He grew it when he was eighteen, and he's kept it ever since. I imagine he grew it because he was 4-F. A punctured eardrum. The beard made him feel more manly, I supposed. At a time when all of his friends were pretending to be men because of their uniforms. It's really quite attractive.' She paused. 'Have you ever been kissed by a man with a beard?'

'No,' Hawes said. 'I prefer my men with long sideburns instead.' He rose. 'Well, thanks a lot, Miss Pannet,' he said.

'Is there anything you want me to tell Jo when I see him again?'

'By the time you see him again,' Hawes said, 'it'll be all over.'

'What will be all over?'

'It,' he said. 'You might tell him that he picked an inconvenient time to go fishing. He might have been able to help us.'

'I'm sorry,' Felicia said, and again her voice indicated no regret.

'Yeah, well, don't lose any sleep over it.'

'I shan't.'

'I didn't think you would.'

'May I ask a personal question?' Felicia said.

'Sure. Go ahead.'

'That white streak in your hair. Where did you get it?'

'Why do you want to know?'

'I'm attracted by oddities.'

'Like Jo Cort's beard and moustache?'

'I'll admit his beard attracted me.'

'That and the three-hundred-dollar bracelet,' Hawes said.

'It was a very unusual approach,' Felicia said. 'I don't usually allow myself to be picked up on the street.' She paused. 'You still haven't answered me.'

'I got stabbed once,' Hawes said. 'They shaved the hair to get at the wound. When it grew back, it was white.'

'I wonder why,' she said, expressing real interest.

'It probably turned white from fright,' Hawes said. 'I've got to be going.'

'If you ever want television work -' she started.

'Yes?'

'You'd make a good menace. In a spy story. The streak in your hair is loaded with intrigue.'

'Thanks,' Hawes said. At the door, he paused. 'I hope you, and Mr Cort, and the beard are very happy together.'

'I'm sure we will be,' Felicia Pannet said.

From the way she said it, he didn't doubt a word of it.