A. Fair - Owls Don't Blink

Bertha hung up the telephone, jiggled the receiver, said, “Hello, hello. Hello, Operator. This is Mrs. Cool in Mr. Lam’s room... Yes, that’s right, Mr. Lam’s room... No, I checked out and have my baggage in Mr. Lam’s room. That’s right. I had a call in for Mr. Hale at New York. Cancel it. That’s right. Cancel it... No, I just talked with him... Well, it was on his call ... Oh, hell, cancel it and don’t go prying into — just cancel it!”

Bertha slammed up the receiver, turned to me, and said, “My God, the telephone company must ride these girls every time a call gets canceled. You’d think I was jerking the food out of their mouths. His plane was grounded somewhere. I didn’t get the name of the place. Where the hell do you suppose our food is? I—”

The waiter tapped discreetly on the door.

“Come in,” I said.

Bertha doesn’t like to talk when she’s eating. I let her go ahead and eat.

“What time do you want to try Roberta Fenn?” I asked when she pushed her plate back.

Bertha said, “I’ll get up and come to the hotel. I’ll be here at seven o’clock. You be in the lobby all ready to go. Now be certain you’re there. I don’t want to do any waiting around, with a taxicab meter clicking. The minute you see me drive up, hop out, and get in the car . Seven o’clock. Understand?”

“On the dot,” I told her.

Bertha sat back with a smile of calm contentment, and blew smoke up at the ceiling.

The waiter appeared with a menu. Bertha didn’t even bother to look at it. “Bring me a double chocolate sundae,” she ordered.

Bertha seemed surprised when she saw me coming out to meet her cab as it pulled in at the curb, promptly at seven o’clock. Her diamond-hard eyes were glittering angrily at the world.

“Did you sleep well?”

“Sleep!” she said and made it sound like an expletive.

I gave the cab driver the address out on St. Charles Avenue. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Was it noisy?”

She said, “When I was a girl, women used to let their seductions be carried on usually with secrecy, and all — in silence.”

“Why? What’s the matter? Did you hear a seduction last night?”

“Did I hear a seduction!” Bertha exclaimed. “I heard a whole damn medley of seductions. I realize now why they talk about the young man of today tomcatting around. When they say that they don’t mean a guy’s prowling around so much as that he’s getting out in some public place and yowling about it.”

“I gather that you didn’t sleep well.”

Bertha said, “I didn’t. I can assure you of one thing, though.”

“What?”

“I gave a group of young women a lungful of advice from that balcony.”

“How did they react?”

Bertha said, “One of them got mad. One of them looked ashamed and went home, and the others stood there and laughed at me — starting to pass wisecracks right back at me.”

“What did you do then?” I asked.

“I blasted ‘em,” Bertha said with a vicious snap of her words.

“Did they stay blasted?”

“No.”

I said, “No wonder you didn’t sleep.”

Bertha said, “It wasn’t the noise. I was just too damned mad to sleep. The idea of little hussies prowling around the street with no sense of shame. Oh, well, we live and learn.”

“Are you going to check, out of that apartment?” I asked.

“Check out of it!” Bertha exclaimed. “Don’t be a fool! The rent’s paid! ”

“I know, but after all there’s no use staying in an apartment where you can’t sleep.”

Bertha’s lips came together in a firm, straight line. “Sometimes I could grab you and shake the teeth out of you. One of these days your damned extravagance will bust this partnership.”

“Are we going broke?” I asked.

“We won’t go into all that again,” Bertha said hastily. “You’ve been lucky. Some day you’ll quit being lucky, then you’ll come whining to me, asking me to put up cash to finance the partnership over a tough spot. Right then’s when you’ll learn something about Bertha Louise Cool, and don’t you ever forget it.”

I said, “It’s an intriguing thought. It makes the possibility of bankruptcy sound almost alluring.”

She deliberately averted her head, pretending to stare out at the scenery along St. Charles Avenue. After a moment she said, “Got a match?”

I handed her a match and she lit a cigarette. We rode in silence until we came to the Gulfpride Apartments.

“Better have the cab wait,” I told Bertha. “It’s hard to get a cab here. We may not be long.”

“We’re going to be quite a while,” Bertha said, “a lot longer than you think. We aren’t going to have any taxi meter playing tunes while we’re talking.”

Bertha opened her purse, paid off the cab driver, and said, “Wait here until after we’ve rung the bell. If we get a buzz to go on up, don’t wait. Otherwise, we’ll go back with you.”

The cab driver looked at the ten-cent tip Bertha had given him, said, “Yes, ma’am,” and sat there, waiting.

Bertha found the button opposite the name of Roberta Fenn and jabbed her thumb against it with sufficient force to make it seem she was trying to flatten the bell button.

“Probably isn’t up yet,” Bertha snorted. “Particularly if she was out last night. I wouldn’t doubt if she was one of them that was making that whoopee under my window. Apparently things don’t really get going in this town until around three o’clock in the morning.”

She speared the button with another vicious thumb jab.

Abruptly the buzzer on the door made noise. I pushed against the door, and the door moved inward. Bertha turned and waved dismissal at the taxicab driver.

We started up the stairs. Bertha pushing her chunky hundred and sixty-five pounds with slow deliberation up the steep flight, I moving along behind her, letting her set the pace.

Bertha said, “When we get up there, lover, you leave the talking to me.”

“Know what you’re going to talk about?” I asked.

“Yes. I know what he wants me to find out. Think they have the steepest stairs in the world in New Orleans — damned outrage!”

I said, “It’s the second one on the left.”

Bertha wheezed up the last few stairs, marched down the corridor, raised her knuckles to tap on the door, and stopped, holding her hand motionless for a half second as she noticed that the door was open about a half inch.

She said, “Evidently she wants us to walk right in,” and pushed the door open.

“Wait a minute,” I said, and grabbed her arm.

The door swung open under the impetus of the push Bertha had given it. I saw a man’s feet propped at a peculiar angle. The swinging door gradually brought the body into view, a body that was sprawled half on and half off a chair, the head down on the floor, one foot hooked up under the arm, the other leg bent around the arm support. A sinister red stream had flowed from a hole in his left breast down across the unbuttoned vest, down through the cloth of the coat, to spread out in a pool on the floor. A singed soft cushion showed how the shot had been muffled.

Bertha said under her breath, “Fry me for an oyster!” and took a quick step forward.

I still had hold of her arm. I used all my strength to pull her back.

“What’s the idea?” Bertha said.

I didn’t say anything, just kept pulling.

For a moment she was angry; then she caught a glimpse of the expression on my face and I saw her eyes widen.

I said, in a rather loud tone of voice, “Well, I guess there’s no one home, after all.” All the time I was tugging at her arm, dragging her toward the stairs.