Lawrence Block - Time to Murder and Create

“Okay,” she said.

I looked at her.

“You’d better lay it out for me, Mr. Scudder.” The well-bred voice now, and the face returning to its earlier planes. “I gather this is going to cost me something.”

“A man has to eat, Mrs. Ethridge.”

She smiled suddenly, whether spontaneously or not. Her whole face brightened with it. “I think you really ought to call me Beverly,” she said. “It strikes me as odd to be addressed formally by a man who’s seen me with a cock in my mouth. And what do they call you — Matt?”

“Generally.”

“Put a price on it, Matt. What’s it going to cost?”

“I’m not greedy.”

“I bet you tell that to all the girls. How greedy aren’t you?”

“I’ll settle for the same arrangement you had with Spinner. What’s good enough for him is good enough for me.”

She nodded thoughfully, a trace of a smile playing on her lips. She put the tip of one dainty finger to her mouth and gnawed it.

“Interesting.”

“Oh?”

“The Spinner didn’t tell you much. We didn’t have an arrangement.”

“Oh?”

“We were trying to work one out. I didn’t want him to nickel me to death a week at a time. I did give him some money. I suppose it came to a total of five thousand dollars over the past six months.”

“Not very much.”

“I also went to bed with him. I would have preferred giving him more money and less sex, but I don’t have much money of my own. My husband is a rich man, but that’s not the same thing, you see, and I don’t have very much money.”

“But you’ve got a lot of sex.”

She licked her lip in a very obvious way. That didn’t make it any less provocative. “I didn’t think you noticed,” she said.

“I noticed.”

“I’m glad.”

I had some of my coffee. I looked around the room. Everybody was poised and well dressed, and I felt out of place. I was wearing my best suit, and I looked like a cop in his best suit. The woman across from me had made pornographic movies, prostituted herself, worked a confidence game. And she was completely at ease here, while I knew I looked out of place.

I said, “I think I’d rather have money, Mrs. Ethridge.”

“Beverly.”

“Beverly,” I agreed.

“Or Bev, if you prefer. I’m very good, you know.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“I’m told I combine a professional’s skill and an amateur’s zeal.”

“And I’m sure you do.”

“After all, you’ve seen photographic proof.”

“That’s right. But I’m afraid I have a greater need for money than for sex.”

She nodded slowly. “With Spinner,” she said, “I was trying to arrange something. I don’t have much cash available now. I sold some jewelry, things of that sort, but just to buy time. I could probably raise some money if I had a little time. I mean some substantial money.”

“How substantial?”

She ignored the question. “Here’s the problem. Look, I was on the game, you know that. It was temporary, it was what my psychiatrist calls a radical means of acting out inner anxieties and hostilities. I don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about, and I’m not sure he does either. I’m clean now, I’m a respectable woman, I’m a fucking jet-setter in a teensy way, but I know how the game works. Once you start paying, you wind up paying for the rest of your life.”

“That’s the usual pattern, all right.”

“I don’t want that pattern. I want to make one big buy and come up with everything. But it’s hard to work out the mechanics of it.”

“Because I could always have copies of the pictures.”

“You could have copies. You could also just hold the information in your head, because the information is enough to wreck me.”

“So you’d need a guarantee that one payment was all you’d ever have to make.”

“That’s right. I’d need to have a hook stuck in you so that you wouldn’t even think about keeping any pictures. Or about coming back for another shot at me.”

“It’s a problem,” I agreed. “You were trying to work it that way with Spinner?”

“That’s right. Neither of us could come up with an idea that the other liked, and in the meantime I stalled him with sex and small change.” She licked her lip. “It was rather interesting sex. His perceptions of me and all. I don’t suppose a little man like that got much experience with young attractive women. And of course the social thing, the Park Avenue goddess, and at the same time he had those pictures and he knew things about me, so I became a special person for him. I didn’t find him attractive. And I didn’t like him, I didn’t like his manner and I hated the hold he had over me. All the same, we did interesting things together. He was surprisingly inventive. I didn’t like having to do things with him, but I liked doing them, if you know what I mean.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I could tell you some of the things we did.”

“Don’t bother.”

“It might turn you on, listening.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t like me much, do you?”

“Not too much, no. I can’t really afford to like you, can I?”

She drank some of her drink, then licked her lips again. “You wouldn’t be the first cop I ever took to bed,” she said. “When you’re in the game, that’s a part of it. I don’t think I ever met a cop who wasn’t worried about his cock. That it was too small, that he wasn’t good at using it. I suppose that’s part of carrying a gun and a nightstick and all the rest of it, don’t you think?”

“Could be.”

“Personally, I always found cops to be built the same as anyone else.”

“I think we’re getting off the subject, Mrs. Ethridge.”

“Bev.”

“I think we ought to talk about money. One large sum of money, say, and then you can get off the hook and I can let go of the fishing rod.”

“How much money are we talking about?”

“Fifty thousand dollars.”

I don’t know what sort of figure she was expecting. I don’t know if she and Spinner had talked price while they rolled around on expensive sheets. She pursed her lips and gave a silent whistle, indicating that the sum I’d mentioned was a very large sum indeed.

She said, “You have expensive ideas.”

“You pay it once and it’s over.”

“Back on Square A. How do I know that?”

“Because when you pay over the money, I give you a handle on me. I did something a few years ago. I could go to jail for it for a long time. I can write out a confession giving all the details. I’ll give it to you when you pay the fifty thou, along with the stuff Spinner has on you. That locks me in, keeps me from doing a thing.”

“It wasn’t just something like police corruption.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“You made somebody dead.”

I didn’t say anything.

She took her time thinking it over. She took out a cigarette, tapped its end on a well-manicured nail. I guess she was waiting for me to light it for her. I remained in character and let her light it for herself.

Finally she said, “It might work.”

“I’d be putting my neck in a noose. You wouldn’t have to worry about me running out and yanking on the rope.”

She nodded. “There’s only one problem.”

“The money?”

“That’s the problem. Couldn’t we lower the price a little?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I just don’t have that kind of money.”

“Your husband does.”

“That doesn’t put it in my handbag, Matt.”

“I could always eliminate the middleman,” I said. “Sell the goods directly to him. He’d pay.”

“You bastard.”