Ричард Деминг: Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 6, June, 1953

It’s a far cry from a beach chair to an operating table, but I made it — in one day. It’s a far cry from sunshine, the peaceful blue of a swimming pool, a lovely girl poised on a diving board — to two bullets in my body, the white glare of surgery, and the antiseptic walls of a hospital room. But I made it. Same day. It’s a far cry from lush pulchritude to plush hoodlumism... or is it?

It isn’t.

The party the night before had been the best kind of party that happens in New York. It had been the after-opening-night affair of a brand new musical given by the producer (and assorted angels) in a high-ceilinged sixteen room duplex on Central Park West. The musical was a smash, and it was a nice, happy party.

Happy, that is, for everybody but me.

Because me: it was a girl again.

She was brown, deeply tanned. She was blonde, with glistening lips. She was tall, shapely tall. Her eyes were blue and shining, her mouth red and shining, her hair gold and shining. Her gown was black nakedness, glistening satin, simple without whirls, and firm to her figure. It started at the rise of her breasts and descended, tightly, to the calf. She wore black high-heeled pumps and black nylons. If you can get away with black nylons, you’re something. She was something. When she walked, she swayed, her head up and her shoulders back as though she were pushing against a high wind. If you watched her going away, you saw the thrust-back shimmering shoulders, a pinched-in waist, and then a number of curves. I watched her, coming and going. She wore no spot of jewelry except one, a brilliant engagement ring, at least three carats.

The engagement ring, of course, spoiled the party for me.

I caught my first glimpse of her late, it must have been two o’clock in the morning. Maybe she’d arrived late or maybe she’d been swallowed up by the four hundred people present, the sixteen rooms, the upstairs and the downstairs. There was a crap game going, a raucous man-and-lady crap game, and I had the dice, it was my turn to shoot. I was getting down to one knee and my glance flicked up — when I saw her, at the far end of the room. My lust for gambling instantly died. I passed the dice, straightened up, and went to her — but now she was going away. I lost her at the stairs. I was captured by twin fat ladies in horn-rimmed glasses and identical green dresses who wanted to talk about the rumbles of revolution in Africa. I got out of that by the judicious injection of a few inoffensive items of profanity, and I left them, slightly aghast and clucking.

Downstairs, after a rambling search, I found her, surrounded by men in tuxedoes, none of whom I knew. But then the producer came by, not sober, but in a reasonable state of comprehension. I talked fast, nudged a little, winked a lot and held on to his elbow until a light came into his fast-going-opaque eyes, and he said, “Okay, okay, I get it.”

He broke through the phalanx of black ties, and brought forth the lady. He maneuvered us to relatively isolated propinquity, glared at her, glared at me, and then, brilliantly, he said, “You two ought to meet, you two certainly ought to meet. Lola Southern, Peter Chambers.”

“How do you do?” I said.

“Why?” she said.

I said: “Pardon?”

She said: “Why?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Why,” she said, “must we two meet?”

“Oh. I don’t know, really don’t know, but he’s been saying that to me all night, pointing you out to me, and saying it, over and over.”

“Has he?”

“He has.”

“All night?”

“All the livelong night.”

“I only got here ten minutes ago.”

What do you answer to that? You don’t answer.

But she was kind. Her blue eyes moved over me, slowly, and then she smiled, and brother, that tore it. When she smiled it was two rows of perfectly white teeth ringed by the glistening red of her lips, but that wasn’t it. The lips came out from the teeth in a shining pout, and the eyes narrowed, and there was the faintest flutter of the nostrils of her small nose. Even that wasn’t it. It was the expression that the smile put on her face. It was as though she had just heard the most wildly salacious story, and had loved every syllable of it, and had smiled despite herself, smiled holding back, smiled trying to restrain a manifestation of reaction. It put prickles on your scalp.

She said, “Are you in the show?”

“No. I’m not in the show.”

“You certainly look theatrical enough. You’re handsome. I never make bones about that. I tell them right to their faces. Better that way. Man shaves and fixes and primps and things, and then he runs up against a doll and wonders how he’s coming over. Doll says nothing, enigmatic. Poor guy keeps wondering. Thinks he’s lost his sex appeal. Well... you haven’t. I love a good-looker. What’d you say your name was?”

“Chambers. Peter Chambers.”

“Not with the show, huh?”

“No. Nor are you.”

Now she frowned. Beautifully. “How would you know that?”

“Two plus two. If you were in the show — you’d know I wasn’t.”

“Pretty good.”

“That’s my business.”

“What?”

“Two plus two.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I’m a cop.”

“Cop? No. You’re not a policeman. You couldn’t be...”

“Sort of. Private. I’m a private detective.”

“Not really.”

“Yep.”

“You know, it’s hard for me to take that, I mean, well, private detectives, I just didn’t think they existed, I thought they were something, well, that the movies created for their own sinister purposes. What did you say your name was?”

“Peter Chambers.”

“You know,” she said, the smile going away, a reflective light coming into her eyes, “I’ve heard of you.”

“Thanks.”

“Vaguely, but I’m sure I have. How about a vodka martini, Mr. Peter Chambers?”

“Will you stay put if I get a couple?” I asked.

“I’ll try.”

I went away, and I came back perilously balancing two brimful martinis. Miss Lola Southern was surrounded by five speculative males, three in tails and two in black ties, and somebody had moved fast — Miss Southern had a vodka martini in each fist. Just between you and me, Miss Southern was tighter than a jammed-down hat in a sleet storm. Had been, from the first moment we’d spoken. She laughed loud and tinklingly, and raised the left martini high. That’s when I saw the engagement ring.

I mumbled a sneaky toast, clinked glasses, and drank both martinis, gulpingly. I couldn’t crash the glasses into a fireplace, because there was no fireplace, so I slid them on the first tray that went by. Then I went back to the crap game and saw no more of Lola Southern that night. Worse, I dropped two hundred and sixty-nine dollars betting, waiting for somebody to make a roll.

Nobody did.

Next morning I awoke to the urgings of small explosions inside of me. I crawled out of bed and transported a large head to the cold water faucet, precariously placed it beneath, and let it shrink to size. Then I showered, shaved, drank tomato juice from the can, and went to the office. A rainy day would have suited my mood, but when your luck runs bad, it runs, as you know, all bad. The day was fine, warm, clear and bright. Sun shone thick and yellow.