A. Fair - Owls Don't Blink

I kissed her.

For a moment her lips were against mine, a warm oval hungry for a caress; then suddenly her hazel eyes were looking steadily at me. She was holding her head back and smiling a little. “I wondered when that was coming,” she said.

“What?”

“The pass.”

I eased her gently to the floor. “It wasn’t a pass. It was a kiss.”

“Oh.”

She sat there for a moment, looking up at me, and then laughed again. “You are funny.”

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Just lots of things. Do you like me, Donald.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think I — committed a murder?”

“I don’t know.”

“You think I may have?”

“Yes.”

“Is that what’s holding you back?”

“Is something holding me back?”

“Donald, I wish you wouldn’t do this for me.”

She was sitting at my feet now, her fingers interlaced across my knee. “I think you’re a very wonderful person.”

“I’m not.”

“And you’ve certainly been wonderful to me. I don’t know whether I can ever tell you what it’s meant to me to have someone act — well, decent. You’ve given me back a lot of faith in human nature. The reason I disappeared that first time was — oh, it was mixed up in something sordid and brutal and frightful. I can’t even tell you about it. I don’t want you to know what it was, but it ruined my faith in human nature. I came to the conclusion that people, particularly men, were—” The doorknob rattled into a quick turn. Someone lunged against the door.

Roberta looked at me in startled surprise. “Police?” she whispered.

I motioned toward the connecting room.

She took two steps toward the door of her room, then glided back. I felt her hand on my cheek, under my chin, lifting my head. Before I realized what she was doing, her lips were clinging to mine.

Knuckles banged angrily on the door.

Roberta whispered, “If this should be it — that’s thanks, and good-by.”

She moved across the room like the shadow of a bird floating across a meadow. The door gently closed.

Knuckles banging again at my door, and then Bertha Cool’s angry voice, “Donald, open that door!”

I crossed the room and opened the door. “What the hell do you think you’re trying to do?”

“Sit down, Bertha. Take this chair. You’ve seen the papers, I take it? You must have done a nice job tracing my call to this hotel. Probably cost you a good tip.”

Bertha said, “You’re a hell of a partner, disappearing like that without letting anyone know where you are! Hale has telephoned from New Orleans. He’s sore. He says he thinks you’ve given him a double-cross, says he isn’t going to pay any bonus or anything else. He’s going to hold us responsible for breach of contract.”

“Have a cigarette. Bertha?”

She took a deep breath, started to say something, then changed her mind; and her lips clamped together in a hard, thin line.

I lit a cigarette.

Bertha said, “That’s the trouble with making you a partner, you little runt. I pick you up off the streets when you are so hungry your belt buckle is carving its initials in your backbone. I stake you to a meal and give you a job, and within a couple of years you’ve muscled your way into the partnership. Now you’re running the business with a high hand. I suppose next thing I know, I’ll be working for you. ”

I said, “You may as well sit down. It sounds as though you’re going to be here for a while.”

She made no move to sit down. I walked over, stretched myself out on the bed once more, moved up an ash tray. Apparently Bertha had no slightest idea that Roberta Fenn was in the next room.

“You’re damn right I’m going to be here for a while,” Bertha said. “I’m going to stay right with you from now on — until we get this thing cleaned up. If I have to, I’ll handcuff you to me. Now you put through a call to Mr. Hale in New Orleans and tell him where you are, tell him you came on here for a conference, that you didn’t have time to notify him because it was too important, that you just got in. Try and square yourself and the agency the best way you can.”

I continued to smoke without making any move toward the telephone.

“Did you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to do it?”

“No.”

Bertha walked over to the telephone, jerked the receiver up, said to the operator, “Mr. Lam wants to talk with Emory G. Hale in New Orleans. You’ll find him at the Monteleone Hotel. It’s a person-to-person call. He’ll talk with no one else... What’s that?... Yes, I’m — yes, I know. It’s Mr. Lam’s room. He wants to talk... Yes, of course he’s here.”

She held the phone so tight I could see the skin stretched white across her knuckles. She said, “Very well,” and turned to me.

I said, “What is it?”

“They want you to okay the call.”

I made no move toward the telephone.

She shoved the instrument at me. “Okay that call”

I continued to smoke.

“You mean you aren’t going to?”

“That’s right.”

She slammed the receiver back into its cradle so hard that I looked for the instrument to fly to pieces. “Of all the damned exasperating bastards! Of all the ill-mannered, impudent—” Her voice rose almost to a scream, then choked in her throat.

“May as well sit down. Bertha.”

She stood looking down at me for a moment, then said abruptly, “Now listen, lover, don’t be like that. Bertha gets excited, but it’s because she’s been worried about you. Bertha thought something had happened and someone had put a bullet in you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry! You never even bothered to send me a wire. You — now listen, lover, Bertha doesn’t like to get like this. You’ve got me terribly nervous.”

“Sit down and you’ll get over being so nervous.”

She walked over to the chair and sat down.

“Help yourself to a cigarette,” I said. “It will steady your nerves.”

“Why did you leave New Orleans?” she asked after a minute or two.

“I thought we should have a conference.”

“What about?”

“I’ll tell you when you’ve quieted down.”

“Tell me now, Donald.”

“No, not now.”

“Why?”

“You’re too excited.”

“I’m not excited.”

“Wait until I can see that you’re really enjoying your cigarette, and then we’ll talk.”

She settled back in the chair and went through the motions of relaxing. But her eyes were still hard and angry.

I waited until she had puffed her way to the end of the cigarette.

“Going to tell me now?”

“Have another cigarette.”

She sat there, glowering at me. “I suppose it all gets back to the fact that money doesn’t man a damn thing to you. You’ve never had the responsibilities of running a business. Just because we’ve been lucky with the first few partnership cases doesn’t mean that—”

“Haven’t we been all over that before?” I interrupted.

She started to get up out of the chair, then, halfway up, dropped back again.

She didn’t say anything, and neither did I. We sat there in silence for nearly fifteen minutes. Finally Bertha took another cigarette. She started it off with a deep drag.

“All right, lover,” she said, “let’s talk.”

“What did you find out about that old murder case?” I asked.

“Donald, why did you want to know about that?”

I said, “I think it has something to do with what happened in New Orleans.”

“Well, I haven’t been able to get anything on it yet. I’ve got some people working on it. I should know by tomorrow afternoon.”