Lawrence Block - Masters of Noir - Volume 1

Her head jerked as if I’d hit her. “But what reason would I have had? You can’t find any.”

“That’s another thing you’ll tell me before I’m through with you. Let’s try it like this. You really love this pretty-boy actor, Bill Burnett, and you tried to call it quits with Ambler. But Ambler wouldn’t play. You’re something special in looks; I can say that much for you. He said he’d tell Burnett you’d been sleeping with him. You had to stop him. You stopped him with a knife.” I flicked ashes on the floor. “Yeah, the more I think of that motive, the better I like it.”

She stared at me. “You sound as if you’re anxious for me to be guilty.”

I stopped looking at her. I muttered, “I’m doing my job, that’s all,” and rubbed my sweaty hands on my thighs.

This was one of these cases where you had nothing to go on but what you figured out in your head. No clues you could take to the laboratory. Fingerprints in the car were mostly smudges or belonged to people who’d had an excuse for having been in the car — Ambler’s, of course, and Mrs. Ambler’s and Holly Laird’s. As for the knife, the killer had pulled it out and disposed of it where probably we’d never find it. There had been no blood spattered because heart wounds that kill instantly don’t bleed to amount to anything.

Nothing but circumstantial evidence, and how did you make it stick without a confession?

“At least,” she said, “let me put on my robe.”

Damn her, sitting there so calmly with her golden hair like Martha’s rippling down to her shoulders! Calmer than I was.

I stood up. My hands were sweating more and more and I felt them shake.

“You killed him!” I yelled at her. “Admit it, you killed him!”

Holly looked me in the eye. She said quietly, “You’ve been wrong about everything.”

I could make her talk. I’d done it with others. I’d taken tough guys down to the basement room in headquarters and after a while they talked their hearts out. I couldn’t do it with her because she was a dame. The Skipper didn’t approve much of rough stuff anyway — and she was a dame.

This was my case. I was the detective of record. I’d be goddamned if I’d let a dame get away with murder just because she was a dame.

“You killed him!”

“No.”.

My hands went to her. I didn’t reach out for her; my hands just went to her. She tried to jerk away and the blanket slipped down a little way and my hand was on a bare shoulder. I felt the smooth, warm skin, and my fingers contracted.

“Say it, bitch! You killed him!”

Sounds trickled past her lips, but she wasn’t trying to utter the words I wanted to hear, or any words at all. A scream of pain was building up in her throat. I clamped my other hand over her mouth and kept grinding her shoulder. I have very strong hands; it must have hurt like hell. She clawed at my arms and writhed on the bed and her eyes rolled in their sockets.

“You sat in the car with him and put the knife in him. By God, you’ll say it!”

Her heaving torso and her wildly kicking legs pushed the blanket down about her knees. A blur of white skin and rose-colored nightgown thrashed on the bed and I could feel her screaming soundlessly against my hand.

Suddenly I let go of her. I stepped back from the side of the bed, and I was very tired. It didn’t make sense. Me, strong as an ox, and this little effort had pooped me.

She was crying. The blanket was over her again and I could see the outlines of her body curled up in a ball and her hand massaging her shoulder.

Tears never bothered me. “Talk,” I said, “if you don’t want more of the same.”

She gasped, “You’ve no right. I’ll report you.”

“I don’t think you will, and I’ll tell you why.” I took my time relighting my cigarette while she lay sniffling. “You try making a complaint and I’ll haul you in for prostitution.”

Holly Laird gawked at me as if she couldn’t believe I was real.

“Soliciting,” I said. “I came up here to question you and you wanted to do some business. Your price was twenty bucks.”

“You — you wouldn’t!”

“If you make me, sure I would. I don’t have to make the charge stick. All I have to do is take you in and charge you, that’s enough. Word would get to your home town, to your folks. People are ready to believe anything about an actress. How’ll your folks feel? How’ll they be able to face their friends and neighbors? You want that to happen?”

She pushed her face into the pillow. She cried some more. I stood looking down at her.

After a minute she wiped her eyes on the corner of the blanket. “Please, please let me alone.”

“Sure, miss,” I said. “Glad to. All you have to do is tell me the truth.”

She jumped out of the bed. The blanket trailed after her and then dropped away from her, and she was a white-and-rose form dashing toward the bathroom where she could lock herself in.

I lunged and caught her by her loose golden hair that was like Martha’s.

Her head jerked back and she uttered a shrill cry, and she stood there with her head way back, held back by her hair bunched in my hand. “Talk!” I said. She started to whimper like something small and hurt and helpless, and with her head back like that I could see her eyes bulging not so much with pain as with terror.

I don’t know why I let her go. Maybe she was at the breaking point and just a little more and she would have broken. Like a slap across the face. I’d learned that a slap, almost more than anything else, makes even the tough ones go to pieces. But my hand fell away from that golden hair.

Outside in the street there were traffic noises, but it was very quiet in the room. That tiredness was in me, going deeper than bone and muscle.

Holly was across the room at the closet. The nightgown clung to her back. She reached in and pulled out a robe. As she was putting it on, the doorbell rang.

She turned then, tying the cord of the robe. Her eyes were dead.

“Remember,” I said, “you don’t want me to pull you in for soliciting.”

She just looked at me.

The bell rang again. She went to the door and opened it.

In the hall a cheerful voice said, “Morning, sweetheart. Hope we didn’t drag you out of bed.”

“No. Come in.”

Bill Burnett stepped into the apartment. He was what they call the juvenile lead, the love interest in the plays. He had wavy hair and good shoulders and a pretty face.

He wasn’t alone. Behind him came George Hoge, the director. He was one of those slim, intense, nervous guys who always had a cigarette on his lip.

They stopped when they saw me. I’d had both of them on the grill yesterday; everybody connected with the theater had been questioned. I nodded to them and they nodded to me.

“Anything up?” Burnett asked.

“A man was murdered the other night,” I said. “Remember?”

“Very funny,” Hoge said sourly.

I rolled the cigarette in my mouth.

They were looking at Holly. She stood barefooted, holding her robe together. She wet her lips and said, “Detective Taylor has been asking me questions.” She turned her face to me without looking at me. “Is there anything else you want of me?”

“Yeah. One thing. You know what it is.”

“I told you all I know.”

I grinned at her and she cringed. Then I said to the two men, “What’s this, a conference or something?”

Hoge answered, the cigarette bobbing in the corner of his mouth. “I brought the script of our next play.” He tapped the briefcase under his arm. “I want to go over it with Holly and Bill, who will have the leads. A repertory company like ours must always be preparing one play ahead.”