Джордж Хиггинс - The New Black Mask (No 4)

“One thing more,” I said. “I’ve noticed that we’re always running out of shopping money. No matter how much I leave for you, you use it. It’s going to have to stop, Mrs. Olmstead.”

“Now you listen to me,” she said, shaking a belligerent finger at me: “I can’t help it that groceries is high! I don’t spend a nickel more for ’em than I have to.”

I said I knew groceries were high. I also knew that Jack Daniels was high, and I’d noticed several bottles of it stowed in the bottom cupboard.

“You’ll have to start drinking something cheaper,” I said. “You apparently do a great deal of drinking in bars when you’re supposedly out shopping, so I can’t supply you with Jack Daniels for your home consumption.”

She looked pretty woebegone at that, so I told her not to worry about it, for God’s sake, and to go to bed and get a good night’s sleep. And watching her trudge away, shoulders slumped, in her dirty old robe, I felt like nine kinds of a heel. Because, really, why fuss about a little booze if it made her feel good? At her age, with all passion spent and the capacity for all other good things gone, she surely was entitled to good booze. Drinking was probably all that made life-become-existence tolerable for her, as it probably is for all who drink.

I went to bed and to sleep. Thinking that the reason I hated getting tough with people was that it was too tough on me.

The next day went fairly well for me. There was practically no trouble from Mrs. Olmstead. I avoided any with Kay by simply submitting to her ministrations.

I got in a good day’s work and continued to work until after nine that night.

Around ten, while I was toweling myself off after a shower, Kay came into the bathroom bearing a thermometer.

I took her by the shoulders, pushed her outside, and locked the door.

When I had finished drying myself, I put on my pajamas, came out of the bathroom, and climbed into bed, nodding at Kay, who stood waiting for me, prim-faced.

“Does that mean,” she said icily, “that I now have your permission to take your temperature?”

“If you like,” I said.

“Well, thank you so much!” she said.

She took my temperature. I held up my wrist, and she took my pulse, almost hurling my hand away from her when she had finished.

She left then, turning the light off and closing the door very gently. Some twenty minutes later, she tapped on the door with her fingernails, pushed it open, and came in. Through slitted eyes, I watched her approach my bed. A soft, sweet-smelling shadow in the dim glow of the hall light.

She stood looking down at me. Then her hands came out from behind her and went up over her head. And they were holding a long sharp knife.

I let out a wild yell, but the knife was already plunging downward.

It stabbed against my chest, then folded over as cardboard will. And Kay fell across me, shaking with laughter.

After a time, she crawled over into bed next to me, shedding her shorty nightgown en route. She nuzzled me and whispered naughtily in my ear. I told her she wasn’t funny, dammit; she’d damned near scared me to death. She said she was terribly sorry, but she’d just had to snap me out of my stiffishness some way. And I said oh, well.

We were about to take it from there when I remembered something and sat up abruptly.

“My God!” I said. “You’ve got to get out of here! This place is going to be full of cops in about a minute!”

“What? What the heck are you talking about?”

“The walls are bugged! Any loud cry for help will bring the police.”

“Britt, darling,” she said soothingly, “you just lie right back down here by mama. You just shut your mouth so mama can kiss it.”

“But you don’t understand, dammit! Jeff Claggett couldn’t stake the place out, but I was afraid to come back here without plenty of protection. So—”

“So he told you that story,” said Kay, and determinedly pulled me back down at her side. “And he gave you me. It’s all the protection he could give you, and it’s all you need. Take it from Officer Nolton, Britt. Soon-to-be-resigned Officer Nolton, thanks to your dear friend, the sergeant.”

“Knock it off,” I said crossly. “I had an idea all along that I was being kidded.”

“Why, of course, you did,” Kay said smoothly. “And, now, you’re sure.”

And now, of course, I was, since my yell for help had brought no response. Jeff had deceived me about the house being bugged, just as he had about Kay’s status. He had done it in my own best interests, and I was hardly inclined to chide or reproach him.

Still, I couldn’t help feeling that uneasiness which comes to one whose welfare is almost totally dependent upon another person, no matter how well intentioned that person may be. Nor could I help wondering whether there were other deceptions I didn’t yet know about. Or whether something meant for my own good might turn out just the opposite.

My sense of uneasiness increased rather than diminished. It became so aggravated under Kay’s incessant inquiries as to what was bothering me that I blew up and told her she was.

“Everything about you is getting to me,” I said. “That blushing trick, the prudish-sweet manner, the cute-kiddy way you talk, like you wouldn’t say crap if you were up to your collar in it, the — oh, crud to it!” I said. “You’ve got me so bollixed up I don’t know what I’m saying anymore.”

We were in my bedroom at the time — where else? — and I was fully prepared to go to bed — by myself.

Kay said she was sorry she got on my nerves, but I’d feel a lot better after I had something she had for me. She started to climb into bed with me. I put a leg up in the air, warding her off. She tried to come by the other way, and I stuck up an arm.

She frowned at me, hands on her hips. “Now, you see here, I have as much right to that bed as you have.”

“Right to it?” I said. “You talk like a girl in a wooden hat, baby.”

“You said you didn’t think I was awful. Because I did it, I mean. You said you’d marry me if you weren’t already married.”

“Which I am,” I said. “Don’t forget that.”

Kay said that part didn’t matter. What was important was that I wanted to marry her, and that kind of made her my wife, and this was a community-property state, so half of the bed was hers. And while I was unraveling that one, she hopped over me and into bed.

I let her stay. For one thing, it is very hard to push a beautiful, well-built girl out of your bed. For another, while I knew she had skunked me again, that I had fallen for her act, it was a very good act. And what did one more fall matter to an incurable fall guy?

By the following day, Wednesday, my feelings of uneasiness had blossomed into a sense of foreboding. The feeling grew in me that things had gotten completely out of hand and were about to become worse and that there was nothing I could do about it.

It wasn’t helped much by the bitter look Mrs. Olmstead gave me as she departed to do her shopping or drinking or whatever she did with my money. Nor was I cheered by a brief bit of sharpness that I had with Manny when she called to make an appointment with me. We finally made one for that afternoon, but I was still feeling quite down and more than a little irritated when Kay showed her into my office around four o’clock.

As it turned out, she also was not feeling her best, a fact she admitted as soon as our opening pleasantries were over.

“I don’t want to argue with you, Britt,” she said, “but you look quite well. I think you’re probably in a lot better condition than I am. And as long as you’ve been going out, anyway — it isn’t as if you were bedridden — I don’t see why you couldn’t have come to the office.”