Хал Эллсон - Masters of Noir - Volume 3

I followed her into the house, into the bedroom. “I want you,” she said. “I want you.” She slipped out of the housecoat and tossed it over a chair.

“Come on,” she said. “I know you want me. I could tell from the way you looked at me. Come here.”

She set the gun on the dresser and motioned for me to step closer. “I want you to make love to me,” she said.

I walked over to her, and she threw her arms around me. “Take me,” she moaned.

I pushed her away. “No,” I said. “I don’t want that. I just wanted to watch you. I wouldn’t do that.”

She pressed against me again. “I want you,” she insisted. She opened her arms and I felt her hot breath on my face.

There was only one way to stop her. I picked up the gun from the dresser. “Don’t come any closer,” I warned. “Leave me alone.”

“Don’t be silly.” She smiled. “You want me and I want you.” She kept coming closer as I retreated.

That’s when it happened — when the gun went off. The noise resounded in the small bedroom, and she crumpled and fell. “Why?” she moaned. Then she died.

The police beat me. They beat me harder than last time, and they called me a pervert. They think I tried to rape her, but that’s not true. I wouldn’t do a thing like that.

When you’re alone in a graveyard, you have many thoughts. When you’re alone in a graveyard, that is, and you’re not dead.

And I was not dead.

I was, in fact — if one can be said to be — too much alive. Nervous. Jumpy. Prickles ridged along the back of my neck like the risen hackles of a fighting cock. Nerve-ends jagged, and every fibre taut. And why not, at one o’clock in the morning of a silent fog-wisped night, alone in a stone-infested graveyard out at the eerie edge of Long Island?

And what was I doing there?

Have a laugh.

I was there on business.

I had a flashlight in my left hand, and a brown-paper package in my right, and I was glued, like a peeping-Tom at an inviting aperture, to a flavorsome tombstone, enticingly inscribed, in curlicues yet: J. J. J. Tompkins, Rest In Peace.

Tompkins, I hoped, was resting more peacefully than I.

I shrugged, scratched, grimaced and clicked the flashlight again. It was five after one. I had been there, at Mr. Tompkins’ tombstone — as directed — since twelve-thirty. I stiffened, stretched and returned to the whirligig of random thinking; but my unconscious mind must have sought succor, because it presented a picture of Trina Greco.

Ah, that Trina Greco. Tall, dark, lithe and graceful, she had the longest, shapeliest legs in New York, and they were legs that stood up against the staunchest of competition — Trina was a ballet dancer. This very afternoon — before I had returned to the office, and before the call from Mrs. Florence Fleetwood Reed — I had attended a rehearsal with Trina. Legs, legs, legs... legs and leotards... but my Trina won hands down (or is it legs down?). Afterward, we had sat about sipping peaceful afternoon cocktails in a peaceful afternoon tavern, and she had looked off wistfully — Trina, the unusual: with a brain to match the legs — and she had said, apropos of nothing:

“A fragment of time in connection with a fragment of space... creates the precise moment.”

“Wow,” I had said. “In the middle of the afternoon. Just like that.”

“It’s from the Greek philosophers.”

“Trina, my Greek.”

“I am of Greek extraction. You know that, Pete.”

“Sure. Sure.” I had pondered it. “Fragment of time... fragment of space... precise moment.”

“And that precise moment... can be ecstatic or catastrophic.”

“Wow. Again with the words. Slow down, my lady love. I’m only a detective taking off part of an afternoon.”

“Even here...” Her dark eyes crinkled in a grin. “You and I... this might be... a precise moment.”

My grin had answered hers. “No, ma’am, and that’s for sure. I can think of a better time and a more appropriate space for our precise moment. But I do believe I know what you mean, big words or little words.”

“Do you, Peter?”

“Sure. Something like this, let’s say. Deciding game of the World Series. Last half of the ninth, home team at bat, one run behind. Bases full, two out. Third baseman moves a little to his left for some reason, just as the batter hits a screaming line drive. Third baseman lifts his glove, practically to protect himself... and he’s made a sensational catch. At the right fragment of time he was in the right fragment of space... and for him, it was the precise moment. Ecstatic for his team, catastrophic for the other.”

“Very good, Peter. Very good, indeed.”

The way she had said it, the way her dark eyes had narrowed down, the promise in the soft-sweet smile — right here in the fog-tipped graveyard, a pleasant little shiver ran through me. Everything else was forgotten — even Johnny Hays, small-time hood with big-ideas, good-looking lad with a smooth blue jaw — Johnny Hays, who had come up to me just after I had put Trina into her cab — Johnny Hays, talking through stiff lips:

“You just beg for trouble, don’t you, Mr. Chambers?”

“Like how, little man?”

“Like making with the pitch for this Trina Greco.”

“That have any effect on you, little man?”

“It figures to have an effect on you, big man.”

“Like how?”

“Like Nick Darrow.”

“Darrow, huh?”

“Friendly warning, big man. When Nick don’t like, Nick cuts you down to size. Then you’re a little man, very little, and very dead. So smarten up. There’s a million dames. Skip this one.”

I forgot about Johnny Hays, thinking of the expression on Trina’s face, of her dark eyes, of that secret little smile, and, as I clicked the flashlight, the pleasant little shiver went through me again — but then the shiver remained and all the pleasantness went out of it.

A quiet voice said, “Put that light out.”

I put the light out. I was back in the graveyard working at my trade. I stood still and I said nothing. I saw nobody.

The quiet voice said, “You Peter Chambers?”

“I ain’t J. J. J. Tompkins.”

“Never mind the jokes. Turn around, and stay turned around.”

“Yes, sir.” I turned and stayed turned.

“Now reach your arm back and hand me that package.”

“You’re a little premature, pal.”

“What?”

“You’re supposed to give me the word, pal. This is a real eccentric bit, but my client is a real eccentric lady, and she’s rich enough to afford her eccentricities. You’re supposed to say a name. So, say it.”

“Abner Reed.”

“That’s the jackpot answer. Reach, and grab your prize.”

There were soft footsteps, then somebody reached, and somebody grabbed.

“Very good,” somebody said. “Now stay the way you are. Stay like that for the next five minutes.”

But I didn’t “stay the way you are” for the next five minutes. Fast count, I’d say there were two reasons for that. First, five minutes in a graveyard, in the middle of the night, after your business is finished, is like, say, five years on the French Riviera. And second, I’m blessed, or is it cursed, with a large lump of curiosity. I turned, and I didn’t turn a second too soon, because I ran right smack up against Trina’s “precise moment.” Somewhere through the faint fog there was enough light to put a glint on metal — and I dropped — as five shots poured over me, and then... nothing.

Running feet... and nothing.

I got up, but I didn’t even try going after him. The guy was gone. Go search for a needle in a haystack. You go — but at least you’ve got a chance. The needle is inanimate, and it is in the haystack. But searching for a gunman in a graveyard... no, sir. I’ll take the needle-in-the-haystack deal.