Lawrence Block - Masters of Noir - Volume 1

“Don’t throw me to Arms, Liddell.” The pink bubbles formed and burst between his lips. “Get me a pen. I’ll make a statement. Get me a pen.”

“You’re damned right you’ll make a statement,” Liddell growled. “Get on your feet.”

Murphy looked up at him, licked his lips, stumbled to his feet. He stood there swaying.

“This is for the kid, Murph.” He slammed his fist against the big man’s mouth. There was the sound of crunching teeth. The big man went staggering backward and fell across a table.

“You won’t be needing teeth where you’re going.”

The girl woke up gradually. I didn’t shake her or say her name. I just stood at the side of the bed looking down at her.

Holly Laird, a smalltime actress, but she could have been Martha seven years ago. That stubborn little chin and that trick of a nose, but mostly the hair.

Hair that lay spread like gold on the pillow.

Actresses slept late. It was close to ten in the morning and the sun was high, streaming in through the east window and touching her face. She brought up an arm as if trying to brush the sunlight away; her other hand pushed down the blanket to her waist. Her breasts were beautiful, and the rose-colored nightgown did hardly anything to cover them.

Martha used to go in for nightgowns like that, fragile and transparent. I remembered how I used to watch Martha asleep beside me — how mornings I would prop myself up on one elbow and never take my eyes off her.

‘Three years of marriage and being crazy in love with her, and then Martha had run off with another man — a public accountant, of all things, a skinny guy I could have broken in two with one hand but never got a chance to. And now it was as if I’d gone back through all the years and I was looking at her in bed, and the bitterness seized me, welling up in my throat so I almost choked.

Holly Laird’s eyelids fluttered. I’d made no sound; in sleep she must have sensed me standing there. I took a step back from the bed, and suddenly she was staring at me. Her eyes went wider and wider.

I didn’t tell her there was no reason to be scared. I wanted her to be scared, to start her off with a taste of shock that would make her plenty jittery.

Then she came all the way awake and her breasts stirred as she let out her breath. “You’re the detective,” she said. “The one who asked me most of the questions at the police station yesterday.”

“That’s right, miss. Gus Taylor. I’m in charge of the case.”

I sat down. It was a small apartment — one cramped room and bath and kitchenette. She rented it furnished. I had found out a lot about her.

“But how did you get in?” she said. “I’m sure I locked the door.”

“I got in.”

She sat up. “Picked the lock or used a passkey, I suppose. You...! Even though you’re a policeman, you have no right...”

In the dresser mirror I could see myself sitting with my hands curved over my knees. They were big hands, strong hands. I was proud of their strength. I was a big, hard guy who didn’t take anything from anybody, and I was proud of that, too.

“I don’t stand on ceremony with murderers,” I said.

“But I told you and told you I didn’t kill him.”

“Yeah, you told me.”

I smiled at her. She glanced down at herself sitting up in bed and she saw how little of her the bodice covered and how the rest of her from the waist up shimmered rosy through the rose-colored nylon. She snatched up the blanket to her throat.

“What do you want?” she demanded.

“You know damn well, miss. The truth. Night before last you pushed a knife into John Ambler’s heart.”

“No!”

I took out a cigarette and slowly turned it in my fingers. She watched me with blue eyes — the same shade as Martha’s. Or Martha’s had been a bit lighter. It was hard to remember exactly after so long.

After a silence Holly Laird said tartly, “I’d like to get dressed.”

I put a light to my cigarette and didn’t move from the chair facing the bed and didn’t say anything.

“So it’s a form of third degree?” she said. “You’re going to sit there and sit there.”

“Only till you tell me you killed him.”

“You’re so sure, aren’t you?”

I said, “It figures, miss. Let me tell you how close it figures so you’ll know you can’t hold out. You’re a smalltown girl who got the acting bug. Like thousands of others. You went to New York to set Broadway on its ear. The nearest you got to a stage was when you bought a ticket to a show. But in New York you met John Ambler, who spent a lot of time there because he was backing a play. What they call an angel. You got chummy with him.”

“Acquainted, that was all.”

“I know how girls who want to get on the stage get acquainted with rich angels. And I know a thing or two about the late John Ambler. He has a good-looking wife, but I hear he likes to play outside the homestead, especially with young actresses. That was why he went in for backing plays on Broadway, and here in his home town he’s the big money behind the repertory theater. So he brought you here to Coast City and told the director to give you big parts in the different plays they put on every few weeks.”

“I earned every role. I can act.”

“Maybe. But there are lots of others can act and don’t get leading parts right off, not even in a small-city theater like ours. George Hoge, the director, says Ambler ordered him to use you no matter what. Ambler’s the angel, so Hoge had to do it. And if I knew Ambler he kept wanting payment from you. He was that kind of a guy.”

“But I’m not that kind of girl.”

I laughed harshly in my throat. Nobody could tell me anything about women. I’d been through it; I knew. They were every last one of them like Martha.

“Besides,” Holly said, “everybody in the theater can tell you I’m in love with Bill Burnett. Doesn’t that prove I wasn’t carrying on an affair with Mr. Ambler?”

“All it proves is you’re like the rest of ’em.”

“The rest of who?”

“Two-timing bitches,” I said, and took a drag at the cigarette. “All right, let’s see about Burnett. Mostly he took you home after the show. But not the night before last. He’s on the stage till the final curtain, but you’re through before the last scene. You left with Ambler. Witnesses saw you go.”

“I never denied I went with him. I told you yesterday I had a headache. It was killing me; I could hardly remember my lines. I asked George Hoge if I could leave before the curtain call. Mr. Ambler happened to be backstage and heard me and offered to drive me home.”

“Neat. Ambler happened to be backstage. Happened to drive you home. Happened to get himself murdered while you were in the car with him. How dumb do you think cops are?”

She cowered against the headboard of the bed, but she wasn’t anywhere near breaking. Those blue eyes of hers were defiant. She said, “He dropped me off at the house and drove away.”

“Drove away?” I caught her up on that. “Then how come in the morning his car was still down there in the street in front of the building and he was slumped over the wheel with a knife wound in his heart? Answer me: how come?”

“I don’t know.”

“You said he drove away.”

“Well, I didn’t actually see his car move off. I assumed he left after I got out.”

“You assumed!” I pointed the cigarette at her. “He never drove away because he couldn’t. The medical examiner says he was stabbed by somebody sitting on his right, beside him in the front seat of his car. No sign of a struggle. It had to be somebody he knew, somebody he was talking to or necking with. Maybe somebody he was kissing when the knife was slipped into his heart. In other words, you.”