Poison

CHAPTER 6

She was in tears when Willis telephoned.

"I just read about poor Baz," she said.

"When can I see you?" he asked.

"Come right over," she said.

She buzzed him in the minute he rang the front doorbell. Didn't even ask who it was. He had no sooner let himself into the entrance foyer when the buzzer on the inner door sounded. He let himself into the living room. Empty.

"Miss Hollis?" he said, and then remembered that she'd asked him to call her Marilyn. "Marilyn?" he said, and felt stupid.

Her voice came from upstairs someplace.

"Come up, please," she said.

A wide stairway led to the upper stories of the house. Carpeted steps, polished walnut bannister, smooth to the touch. On the first level, a mirrored dining room with a table that could seat twelve comfortably, a kitchen with stainless steel ovens, refrigerator and range, and a room—the door slightly ajar—that seemed to be a study of sorts, with a rolltop desk, bookshelves, and an easy chair with a Tiffany lamp behind it.

"Marilyn?" he said again.

"Up here," she said.

Up here was a bedroom. Wood-paneled as was the rest of the house. A canopied bed. Antique dressers on two of the walls. An ornate, brass-framed, full-length mirror opposite the bed. Another Tiffany lamp. Persian rugs on the parqueted floor. A love seat upholstered in royal-blue crushed velvet. On the window wall facing the street, velvet drapes that matched the love seat. On the love seat… Marilyn.

Wearing blue jeans and a man's shirt, the sleeves rolled up on her forearms, the tails hanging out. She was barefoot. Little Girl Lost. Her eyes, testifying to the validity of her telephone tears, were puffy and red.

"I didn't kill him," she said at once.

"Who said you did?"

He realized she had immediately placed him on the defensive. Big, bad police officer coming in making accusations.

"Why else are you here?" she said. "I asked you to call me, and you promised you would. But you didn't. Now Baz is dead…"

"That's one of the reasons I'm here, yes," he'said.

"What's the other reason?"

"I wanted to see you again," he said, and wondered if he was lying.

She looked up at him. He was standing not four feet from where she sat on the love seat. Her pale blue penetrating gaze searched his face, seemed trying to pierce his skull to search the corners of his mind for the truth. Honesty, she had said. Maybe that's what she really wanted, after all. But then why lie about Mickey in the raccoon coat?

"Let's start with poor Baz, okay?" he said.

Bit of sarcasm in his voice, he'd have to watch that. No sense putting her on the defensive.

"The newspaper said he was stabbed," Marilyn said. "Is that true?"

Which, if she was the one who'd stabbed him, was a very smart question.

"Yes," he said.

The appropriate answer, whether she'd stabbed him or not. But somehow, he didn't like playing detective with her. He wondered why.

"With a knife?"

Another smart question. The M.E. had said only "a sharp instrument." Could have been a knife, of course, but it could just as easily have been anything capable of tearing flesh and tissue. Most citizens, as opposed to law enforcement officers, automatically assumed "stabbed" meant with a knife. So why had she asked him if the weapon had been a knife? Had she been the stabber? With something other than a knife?

He decided to get tricky.

"Yes," he said, "a knife," and watched her eyes.

Nothing showed in them.

She nodded.

That was all.

Said nothing.

"Where were you on Easter Sunday?" he asked.

"Here we go again," she said.

"I'm sorry. I have to ask."

"I was with Chip."

"Endicott?"

"Yes."

The lawyer who'd given Willis a lecture on male-female friendship.

"From what time to what time?" he said.

"You do think I killed Baz."

"I'm a cop doing his job," Willis said.

"I thought we were about to become friends," she said. "You told me you came here because you wanted to see me again."

"I said that was one of the reasons."

She sighed heavily.

"All right," she said, "fine. He picked me up here at seven."

"Where were you at seven-thirty?"

The time a neighbor had seen Basil Hollander in the elevator of his building on Addison Street.

"Eating," she said.

"Where?"

"A steak house called Fat City."

"Where?"

"On King and Melbourne."

All the way uptown. The Eight-Six? He was pretty sure King and Melbourne was in the Eight-Six, a hell of a long way from the Twelfth.

"What time did you leave the restaurant?"

"About nine."

"And went where?"

"To Chip's apartment."

"What time did you leave the apartment?"

"Around eight Monday morning."

"You spent the night with Mr. Endicott?"

"Yes."

Somehow that annoyed him.

"I'm sure he'll corroborate all this," he said.

"I'm sure he will," Marilyn said.

The M.E. had said Hollander was killed sometime late Sunday night or early Monday morning. According to Marilyn now (and surely according to Endicott when he got around to questioning him) they'd been in his apartment together from nine Sunday night to eight Monday morning. That was very nice. Unless one of them had gone out to skewer poor Baz.

"Is there a doorman at Endicott's apartment building?" he asked.

"Yes," she said.

"He see you go in?"

"I assume so."

"Same doorman at eight in the morning?"

"No."

"A different doorman saw you go out, right?"

"He hailed taxis for us, yes."

"Two taxis?"

"Yes. Chip was going to his office, I was coming back here."

"I'll be talking to both those doormen, you realize."

"I would hope so," she said. "You're a cop doing his job."

"What's your father's name?" he asked abruptly.

"What?" she said.

"Is it Jesse Hollis? Joshua? Jason?"

"Jesse. And it's Stewart. He's my stepfather."

"How does he spell it?"

"S-T-E-W. Why? Do you think he killed Baz?"

"Somebody did," Willis said. "Where does he live?"

"Houston," she said. "Are we finished with the third degree?"

"Not a third degree," he said. "Just…"

"Just a cop doing his job, yes, you told me."

"Yes," he said. "And no, I'm not finished yet."

"Well, hurry up and finish so we can have a drink."

He looked at her.

"Because I like it much better when you're not a cop doing his job."

"Who's Mickey?" Willis asked.

"Mickey? Oh. You have a very good memory. Mickey's a girlfriend."

"What's her last name?"

"Terrill."

"Does she weigh two hundred and twenty pounds and wear a raccoon coat?"

Marilyn's eyes opened wide.

"Does she drive a stolen Mercedes-Benz?"

Marilyn smiled.

"My, my," she said, "we've been very busy, haven't we?"

"Why'd you lie about Mickey?"

"Because I didn't see any sense in adding to your lists of suspects. Which, incidentally, I seem to be at the top of."

"Tell me what you know about him."

"Not much."

"Is he a car thief?"

"I have no idea."

"He came here, didn't he? What do you mean, you have no…"

"That was the first time I ever saw him. And the last. Look, would you mind very much if I made us some drinks? I really need one. Believe it or not, Baz's death came as quite a shock to me."

"Make yourself at home," he said.

She rose from the love seat and walked to one of the antique dressers. She opened a door. Rows of bottles and glasses inside there. She took out a bottle of gin, opened another door. A small refrigerator.

"Are you still drinking scotch?" she asked.

"Not at three o'clock in the afternoon."

"I hate scotch," she said. "What time are you off duty? I'll set the clock ahead."

"Four. Well, I'm relieved at a quarter to four."

"Break the rules," she said.

"No," he said. "Thanks."

She shrugged, cracked open an ice cube tray, dropped three cubes into a glass, and poured a healthy shot of gin over them.

"Here's to golden days and purple nights," she said, and drank.

"Tell me about Mickey," he said.

Marilyn walked to the bed and sat on the edge of it. "He was in the city for a few days," she said. "My girlfriend Didi asked him to call me. Period."

"Do you always go out with men you don't know? Strangers who may turn out to be car thieves?"

"I didn't know he was a car thief. If, in fact, he is. And I didn't go out with him. We had a…"

"You were dressed to go out. Fancy blue dress, sapphire earrings, high-heeled shoes…"

"You noticed," she said, and sipped at the gin. "How do you know I didn't get all dressed up for you?"

"Come on," Willis said.

"You have a very low opinion of yourself, don't you?"

"No, in fact I think I'm the cat's ass. And let's not start the psychotherapy again, okay? If you didn't go out with this Mickey Terrill punk…"

"We had a few drinks here, and he went his merry way," Marilyn said. "Why does he make you so angry?"

"Thieves make me angry," Willis said. "And let's not get off the track. You told me you were going out with a girlfriend. You said you were going to dinner with her."

"Yes," Marilyn said, and sipped at the gin again. "I guess I lied."

"Why?"

"Because if I told you Mickey was a man, you'd have started asking me the same questions you're asking me now, and I didn't want you to think I was the kind of girl who went out with men I don't even know, which only would have made you angry, the way you're angry now."

"I'm not angry!" Willis said.

"Oh boy, listen to who's not angry," Marilyn said, and rolled her eyes.

He didn't say anything for several seconds.

Then he said, "You're a pain in the ass, do you know that?"

"Thank you," she said, and lifted her glass to him in acknowledgment. "It's getting closer to four o'clock, you know."

He looked at his watch.

"Would you like that scotch now?"

"No," he said.

"Or would you like to come here and kiss me?" she said.

He looked at her. His heart was suddenly pounding.

"If you'd like to, then just say so," she said.

"I'd like to," he said.

"Then come do it," she said.

He went to her where she sat on the bed. He sat beside her.

"I didn't kill either of them," she whispered, and kissed him.

Their lips parted, heads tilting, tongues insinuating. He took his mouth from hers and looked into her face.

Her blue eyes flashed in the glow of the Tiffany lamp in the corner near the bed. Wordlessly, she unbuttoned her blouse. No bra beneath it, adequate breasts with good nipples. He touched her, kissed her again. She unzipped the blue jeans and took them off. His hand moved to her panties, cupped her there. She responded with an exhalation of breath that sounded like a serpent's hiss, her back arching as he lowered the panties, her hand finding his zipper, and lowering it, and reaching into his pants to free him, her eyes averted like a nun's.

The clock on one of the antique dressers ticked loudly, urging a hurried coupling, setting a tempo like a metronome, ticking into the silence as he probed her, springs jangling in accompaniment, their bodies finding at last a rhythm faster than the clock's, a bone-rattling, jarring, steady, fierce rhythm that initially forced grunts from her, and then moans, and then a high shrill keening that sounded like an Irish wake, something primitive and animal and frightening.

Their position was absurd, they were locked in intimate embrace, enclosing and enclosed, grinding, gasping, moaning, writhing—but they didn't even know each other. Drunk on the whiskey scent of her breath, dizzied by her wild keening, lost in a frantic rhythm that outraced time, Willis passionately acknowledged this ridiculous secret they were sharing as strangers, and with each animal lunge forgot more and more completely that he was a cop investigating a double homicide.

"Give it to me!" she screamed. "Oh, Christ, give it to me!"

Secrets.

She told Willis later all about her father—her natural father, he of the golden days and purple nights. The man was a drunk who used to beat her mother black and blue every time he got loaded. He tried to do the same thing to Marilyn one night, came home pissed to the gills and burst into her room while she was getting ready for bed, standing there putting on her nightgown, came in with his belt strap in his hand, and began chasing her through the house, swearing at her. She left home the next day.

"I went to the Coolidge Avenue bus terminal," she said, "in my school uniform, St. Ignatius, I used to go to St. Ignatius in Majesta, little plaid skirt and blue blazer with the school crest embroidered in gold right here," she said, and touched her left breast. "A beautiful day in May, three months before my sixteenth birthday, I took a bus clear to California. He was one son of a bitch, I'll tell you. The Irish are supposed to be the big drinkers, am I right? Well, my father was the champion booze hound in all Majesta, and his parents were born in London."

Willis listened intently to every syllable she uttered, feeling a closeness that transcended the love they'd earlier made; no woman on earth had ever talked to him this way before. He held her in his arms and listened.

"I went out there, you know, to California," she said, "so I could get away from my father, I mean who the hell wanted to get batted around every time he had a few drinks? So I got involved out there with this beach boy who used to be a weight lifter. He had muscles like an ape, hair all over his back, too, I hate men with hair on their backs, don't you? And tattoos. You should always watch out for men who have tattoos, they're the craziest bastards in the world. It's a fact that most armed robbers have tattoos, did you know that?"

"Yes," Willis said.

"Well, sure," she said, "you're a cop. This guy didn't happen to be an armed robber, but he used to beat me up regularly, just the way my father would've if I'd stayed home in Majesta. That's something, don't you think? The irony of it? He told me he used to be a skinny runt till he started lifting weights, and that lifting weights made all the difference in the world, gave him the self-confidence he needed, you know, and the assurance, and made him feel like a whole new individual. This was after he almost sent me to the hospital one night.

"I finally called the cops, they're so polite, the cops out there, not like here, oops, excuse me. They tip their hats, they say, 'Yes, Miss, what's the problem, Miss?' I'm standing there with a black eye and a swollen lip, and Mr. America is flexing his muscles all over the place, and they ask me if I'm sure I want to press charges. I told them forget it. I mean, what was the sense? But the next time he raised his hand to me, I split open his forehead with a wine bottle. I told him this time you call the cops, you bum! He didn't call the cops, but he didn't hit me anymore, either. In fact, we broke up the very next week. I guess he couldn't stand being around somebody he couldn't smack from wall to wall. Some guys just like to beat up girls, I guess, don't ask me why. You don't, do you?"

"No," Willis said.

"I didn't think so," Marilyn said. "Anyway, I was out there for a bit over a year when my mother found me, a few months before my seventeenth birthday. Told me she'd married this big Texas oil millionaire… well, Jesse, my stepfather… and I went to live with them in Houston. A happy ending, right? I love happy endings, don't you?"

The afternoon lengthened imperceptibly into the night. And because she'd been so honest with him, had given to him so unreservedly of her body and her mind, he started to tell her about what he'd felt that afternoon long ago when he'd shot the twelve-year-old boy, but her mind was elsewhere now, her mind was where her hand had gone, her mind was on what her hand was doing to him.

"You never know how life is going to turn out, do you," she said, "come on, I want you hard again. This girl I know, she used to pose for Nelson, you met Nelson Riley, the artist, come on, baby, she was a dancer who couldn't get a job but she refused to get discouraged, and finally she had an audition with this choreographer, there we go, that's better, I forget his name, a very important choreographer, and that's how she ended up with the Isola Ballet, uh-uh, not till you're enormous," until finally he rolled onto her and into her again and she screamed again in orgasm that must have shattered every window in the city.

Now she listened.

Now that the urgency had passed, now that their secret had been reaffirmed and lay divulged between them, their bodies covered with perspiration, the sheet tangled at their feet, the nighttime sounds of the city pulsatingly alive beyond the bedroom windows—now she really listened.

They pulled the blanket over them, and she lay in his arms, and he whispered to her in the night, trying to reveal the other secret, the darker secret, told her again about the two dead women and the liquor store owner on the floor, and the gun in the twelve-year-old's hand, the glazed look in his eyes, " 'Put it down,' I said, and he came at me. I fired twice, two to the chest, but he kept coming at me, and I put the last one in his head, between the eyes. I think he was already dead, though, I think his coming at me was a reflex, the body just moving, like a chicken when you cut off his head. The last shot wasn't necessary. I'm sure one of the other shots took him in the heart."

He paused.

"His brains spattered all over me," he said.

There was a long silence. He could hear her breathing heavily beside him.

"You poor thing," she said at last. "But you mustn't let it get to you, really. You were doing your job, the man had already killed three people…"

"Yes, but…"

"He would've killed you, too, if you'd let him. You were only doing your job."

"You don't understand," he said.

"Sure, I do. You…"

"I enjoyed it," Willis said.

She fell silent again. He wondered what she was thinking. Then she said, "Well, don't worry about it," and drifted off to sleep, her legs scissored around his thigh, one arm across his waist. He did not fall asleep for a very long time. He kept thinking of what he'd told her: I enjoyed it.

They woke up at eleven in the morning. She yawned and said, "Hi, sweetie, how's the big killer?" and then stretched and sat up, and glanced idly at the clock on the dresser, and jumped out of bed at once.

"Jesus," she said, "I've got a twelve o'clock doctor's appointment!" and started across the room toward the adjoining bathroom. "Put up some coffee, will you?" she said. "Jesus, we should have set the alarm," and ran into the bathroom.

He went downstairs to the kitchen, took a container of orange juice from the refrigerator and set a pot of coffee on the stove. She came downstairs ten minutes later, wearing what looked like a designer suit, blue to match her eyes, white blouse under it, low-heeled walking shoes. Sitting opposite him at the kitchen table, she said, "Do you remember what you said last night? Would you pour me some more coffee, please? About enjoying it, do you remember? Killing him?"

He carried the coffee pot from the stove and began pouring into her cup. Their eyes met. "Well, that's okay, your enjoying it. I mean, there are plenty of things I've done in my life, kind of awful things, and I had to admit to myself later that I enjoyed them. Also, man, this is the city, you know what I mean? I mean, all kinds of terrible things happen here… well, you know that, you're a cop. But you either let them get you down or you put them out of your mind and you survive. What time is it?"

"Half past," he said.

"I think I'll be okay. It's just that he takes a fit if a patient is even a minute late. What I'm saying is you can let this city poison you or you can drink it down like honey from a cup. So you killed a man and you enjoyed it. So what? Forget about it." She swallowed what was left in her cup, reached into her handbag, and took out a lipstick and mirror.

Secrets.

Mysteries.

Lips puckered to accept the bright red paint. Tissue pressed between her lips, imprint of her mouth coming away on the tissue. She crumpled the tissue, tossed it into the wastebasket under the sink. Pale horse, pale rider, pale good looks.

"Well, at least I'm not a total wreck," she said.

"You look beautiful," he said.

"Ah, sweet," she said, and touched his face. "I've got to run," she said, and put the coffee cup in the sink.

"Will you be back?" he asked. "I don't have to be in till four this afternoon."

"Oooo, I wish I could, sweetie," she said, "but I'm busy all day. Save it for tomorrow, okay? Can you save it for me?"

"I'll save it," he said.

"Mmm, yes," she said, and glanced at his groin, and smiled. She kissed him on the cheek, gave his cock a friendly little squeeze, backed away from him, and said, "Tomorrow morning, okay? Ten o'clock."

"Ten o'clock," he said.

"Don't be late," she said, and started out of the kitchen, and then stopped and turned to him again. "Just let yourself out when you're ready to go, okay? I'll set the answering machine, you don't have to answer the phone. Pull the doors shut behind you, the inner one and the outer one, they lock automatically."

"I won't be long," he said. "I just want to shower and…"

"Take as long as you like."

She looked at him tenderly and then came to him again and kissed him fiercely. "Mmmm," she said, "this is going to be good, isn't it?" and then released him abruptly and went out.

He heard her going down the stairs. He heard her setting the answering machine in the living room. He heard the front door closing behind her.

He went to the upstairs bathroom, showered, and then dressed.

He left the apartment at a little after twelve.

And although he wasn't due in till a quarter to four, he went immediately to the squadroom.