Дональд Уэстлейк - Enough [A Travesty (novel) and Ordo (novelette)]

I would. For six months I’d been trying to set up an interview with Big John Brant, famous old-time director of such classics as Fury At Sundown, Tank Command, Fatal Lady and Smart Alex , and finally it was going to happen. Good.

The last message was from Kit: “Hello, machine. Just wondered what your master was doing tonight. I’ll be in if he feels like calling.”

Did I feel like calling? I considered the question while I dialed Tim’s number and listened to his recorded announcement: “Hello, caller, this is the number of Sogeza Kinywa and Third World Cinema . We aren’t answering the phone just now, but if you’ll leave your name and phone number on this tape well get back to you very soon. Kwaheri, and peace.”

Nobody talks to anybody any more. We just talk to each other’s machines. “Hello, Tim,” I said to the machine. “This is Carey, and the title is ‘The Influence of Eisenstein: Stairway To The Stars.’ I have an early screening tomorrow, but if there’s any problem you can reach me at home after one.”

And now Kit. After the day I’d had I wasn’t sure I could handle the warm-human-being role tonight, but I ought to call her back anyway and see if anything developed. So I dialed, and damn if I didn’t get her machine: “Kit Markowitz here, on tape. I’m really sorry not to answer in person, but if you’ll leave a message right after the little beep, I’ll call you back just as soon as I can. Wait for it now, wait for it. Here it comes.”

She’d changed her announcement; the previous one had been more standard. After the little beep I said, “Too cute, Kit. This is Carey, and I’m home for the evening.”

After that, I settled down for a little work. A new New York -type magazine called The Loop had started in Chicago, and I’d promised them a piece called “Bogdanovitch: The Kid Brother As Leader Of The Pack.” Linking Bogdanovitch and Ryan O’Neal through the seminal figure of Lee Tracy was turning out to be more complicated than I’d anticipated.

Kit phoned half an hour later to say, “ I don’t think it’s too cute.”

“It’s the wait for it that gets me.”

“But that’s the whole idea.”

“I know.”

“You’re too linear,” she said; one of her au courant but meaningless insults, the result of reading too many trade paperbacks. “You doing anything tonight?”

I’d decided by now how to handle my news. “The fact is,” I said, “I’m mostly getting over a shock. You remember Laura Penney?”

“The girl with the mouse-brown hair? The one you’ve been seeing so much of lately?”

Ah. Maybe I hadn’t been covering my tracks quite so well as I’d thought. “Well, I won’t see much of her any more,” I said. “She’s dead.”

“Good God!”

“Killed, in fact.”

“Oh, Jesus. One of those rape things?”

“I don’t think so. It happened in her apartment. I was suppose to take her to dinner tonight, I went over th—”

“You found her! Oh, my God! ”

“Not quite that bad. The police were there.”

“Oh, baby, what an experience. Do they suspect you? ”

I was shocked — truly shocked — at the suggestion. “Why would they do that?”

“I thought the police were supposed to suspect everybody.”

“Oh. Then maybe they do suspect me, I don’t know. They didn’t act that way.”

“You sound very jittery. Want me to come over?”

Did I? The half-finished page in the typewriter grayed before my eyes. “I’d love it,” I said.

“I love your pubic hair,” I said.

She came over to the bed, carrying the two drinks. “What kind of compliment is that? ”

“A sincere one.” I took my drink and made room for her beside me in the bed. Looking at the feature in question, I said, “It’s furry, but not too much. It has a friendly quality.”

“I bet you say that to all your girls.”

I did, as a matter of fact, so I remained silent while she arranged the covers over herself. On the TV facing the bed the fifty all-time greatest hits of some obsolescent teenage castrati were being peddled in an extremely hard sell. “As somebody once said about Marion Davies,” I said, nodding at the screen, “‘Forgotten, but not gone.’”

It was nearly midnight, and if that Kallikak on the tube would ever stop yowling we would go on watching The Thin Man , a film I was enjoying this evening in a very new and different way. The day was ending far better than it had begun. Kit had come over around nine-thirty, we’d gone at once to bed, and then I’d been subjected to an hour’s conversation on the general subject What Happened To Laura Penney And Why? Kit, like Detective Staples, believed that Laura had a secret boy friend and that he was the killer. I couldn’t tell her she was absolutely right, of course, but on the other hand I didn’t want to be suspiciously negative, so I maintained a thoughtful neutrality on the subject and let Kit do most of the talking.

A good girl, Kit, all in all, about the best of my recent women. An acquisitions editor for a reprint publisher, she was attractive, divorced, childless, bright, funny and self-supporting; what more could a liberated male want?

William Powell returned, with Asta. They put Myrna Loy in a cab headed for Grant’s Tomb and went off hunting the murderer by themselves. Kit said, “Could it be Jay English?”

I looked at her. “Could what be Jay English?”

“The secret lover.”

“He’s a fag,” I pointed out.

“Well, maybe he’s trying to go straight.” She squinted at the TV, but it was Laura’s murder she was trying to solve, not Julia Wolfe’s. “That’s why they kept it secret, because they weren’t sure it would work out.”

“In the first place,” I said, “Jay English doesn’t want to go straight. And in the second place, he’s still living with that fellow whatsisname.”

“Dave Something.”

“That’s the one.”

“Ah!” Sitting up straighter in the bed, she said, “ He’s the killer!”

“Who?”

“Dave. Because he found out about Jay and Laura!”

“You’re a madwoman,” I told her.

“Then who do you think it is?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

She studied me, as though trying to guess my weight. “ You were hanging around her a lot lately,” she said. “Maybe you’re the one.”

“If I am,” I said, “you’re in a lot of trouble right now.”

There was no way to tell from her expression whether she was serious or joking. “You took her to that press screening yesterday.”

“Only because you couldn’t go.”

“What did you do after?”

“We went to dinner, I took her home, I came back here.”

“You weren’t here at ten o’clock.”

“Of course I was.”

“I called at ten and got your machine.”

I put my drink on the bedside table and half-turned to face her. “Are you serious?”

“I called at ten,” she repeated, “and I got your machine.” Yet she didn’t look or act as though she thought of herself as being in bed with a murderer.

I said, “I was running a film, for a piece I’m doing. Top Hat . You know I turn the machine on when I do that.”

“I bet the police suspect you,” she said.

“Do you?”

“What?” She stared at me, startled, and said, “Hey! You’re really upset.”

“Of course I am.”

“I don’t really think it’s you, silly,” she said, thumping me on the belly. “I think it’s Jay’s boy friend Dave.”

“So do I,” I said. “But the big question is, who do you think killed Julia Wolf?”