Max Collins - Angel in black

She nodded, and padded down the hall, and I followed her into a small dressing room, a cubicle with a couple chairs and barely enough room for both of us. I leaned against the wall, arms folded, as she took her clothes from the wall hooks and got into her bra and panties and a yellow blouse and tan slacks and brown sandals.

“How’s the period going?” I asked. “Any cramps?”

“I know I lied to you,” she said, dressing, voice trembling with emotion, some defensiveness mixed in, “but you had no right to make this decision for me. I wasn’t ready to have a child. You-”

“You’re just lucky an abortion was what I did interrupt.”

She was dancing on one foot, getting a sandal on. “What?”

I beamed at her; I had never loved her more, or hated anyone so much. “Do you know who was about to jam a surgical instrument into you, my darling? His name is Lloyd Watterson. Lloyd’s the guy I’ve been looking for lately-you know… The maniac who killed the Black Dahlia.”

“What?” She was fully dressed, and stood with hands on hips, facing me, looking at me through narrowed eyes, challenging me. “You’re insane.”

“Possibly, but I’m well balanced compared to that ‘doctor’ of yours-oh, not the woman, she’s probably competent enough. Again I refer to Lloyd Watterson-that tennis-anyone blond fella? He is in fact, no kidding, the maniac who butchered Elizabeth Short.”

Hands still on her hips, Superman-style, she coughed a laugh. “You can’t be serious…”

I pawed the air like a bored lion. “You’re right. I’m just kidding around. But you know, dear, just like before getting any medical treatment, maybe you really should seek a second opinion.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Ask Eliot about Lloyd. You do recall why Eliot came to town?”

She knew very well that Eliot was here to consult on the Dahlia investigation.

Her eyes tightened. “You’re not saying…”

“That aging boy ingenue in there is the very psychopath who butchered all those whores and bums back in Cleveland, not so very long ago. A certified, certifiable fiend who, incidentally, I tracked down, the first time around-and helped lock up in the loony bin. So he may bear me a little grudge, though, hell, why would he take that out on you?”

She waved both hands, shook her head. “You’re just trying to scare me… You’re trying to put me in my place…”

I grabbed her by the arms-as if I were going to shake her. But I didn’t, not physically, anyway.

I looked right into her sweet freckled face and said, “All right, lover. You still want this abortion? Fine. Maybe at this point, I don’t want your goddamn fucking kid, any more than you want mine. I’ll round up Fred and Eliot and we’ll take a powder, and leave you to Lloyd. It might be interesting to see what he’d prescribe for you if you got back up on that table and spread your legs.”

I let go of her, shoving her, just a little.

Staggering back, then planting herself on shaky legs, she swallowed, or tried to; her eyes began to tear up, her lips quivering with fear. “Then… then it’s true?” She pointed toward the front of the clinic. “That… that was the… I was going to be… he could have been…”

I sighed. Nodded.

With a yelping little animal squeal, she threw herself into my arms and held me tight; she began to sob, and I patted her back, saying, “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay,” loving her, hating her, feeling so damn sorry for her, and so goddamn pleased she’d got what she deserved.

“I’m sorry, Nathan, I’m so sorry,” she said, sniffling, tears and snot streaming down her pretty face. “Can you ever forgive me?”

I took her face in my hands and I held her face and looked into the violet eyes and I asked, “Are we having this baby?”

She nodded emphatically. “We’re having it. We’re having it, and we’re going to love it and it’s going to be the best baby that two people ever had.”

“It’s not an ‘it,’ I told her sternly, face still in my hands. “It’s a boy or a girl, understand? Our baby-our child. And no butcher is taking that away from us.”

She hugged me and she kissed me, a sloppy snotty weepy kiss that was the sweetest I ever had.

We were halfway down the hall when Cathy came up to us, looking sheepish.

“I’m sorry, Nate,” Cathy said.

I said, “It’s okay… You were just trying to help out a friend.”

Cathy nodded, chagrined.

“Please take Peg to the hotel,” I said, “and stay with her. I still have things to do, here.”

I handed Peggy into her friend’s care, and walked them out through the waiting room, where Fred was still holding the confused, slumping Dr. Dailey hostage in the doctor’s own waiting room. Seeing me with my arm around Peggy, Fred said, “She’s all right?”

“She’s all right,” I said.

“I’m fine,” she said.

I gave Peggy a quick kiss, stroked her cheek, and she and Cathy slipped out into the hall.

Frustrated, Dr. Dailey asked, “I demand to know what is going on here!”

“Shut up!” Fred and I said simultaneously, and the doctor jumped in his hard chair, and shut up.

I walked back to the operating room and curled a finger at Eliot, who joined me at the doorway. I told him to take Dr. Winter into Dailey’s office and wait for me. I had to talk to Lloyd-alone.

“All right,” Eliot said, taking my orders unquestioningly, “but do me a favor.”

“Don’t kill him?”

He nodded.

I shook my head. “No promises.”

After an “oh well” shrug, Eliot herded the amazon across the hall into the jade-adorned office of Dr. Dailey, and I returned to the blindingly white room with the delicate instruments and the butcher-papered table with stirrups.

Surgical mask dangling around his throat like a loose bandage, Lloyd was leaning with his back against the counter. I shut the door-the loud click was like the cocking of a gun. Speaking of which, my nine-millimeter was tucked away, under my left arm… but my sportjacket was unbuttoned.

“I didn’t know she was your wife,” Lloyd said, raising both hands, palms out. The ice-blue eyes were dancing with fright. “I wasn’t going to hurt her, I swear to God. The name she gave was ‘Smith’!”

“I believe you, Lloyd.”

“You… you do?”

I stood across from him, leaning back against the operating table. “This was a last-minute referral, wasn’t it, Lloyd? A favor you did for a friend.”

Lloyd blinked. “She was just another patient.”

“No-tell me about your friend.”

“What friend?”

“Your very good friend-your best friend… except that he’s not as good a friend as you think. Y’see, he stage-managed this so that I would come in on you, in the act, and most likely blow you to hell and gone.”

Indignation flamed in Lloyd’s face. “What? You’re crazy! He would never do that to me.”

“ ‘He’? Your friend, you mean?”

“No, I… I mean, no friend would do something like that.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Not even your old friend from Cleveland… your St. Clair Avenue ‘apprentice’-Arnold Wilson?”

He swallowed thickly. “I don’t know anybody with that name.”

“Sure you do, Lloyd.” My left hand, leaning against the operating table, reflexively clutched butcher paper and crinkled and tore and wadded it; but my voice remained calm. “After all, it would take a real pal to convince you to leave the head on a torso, like that, right? But your buddy Arnold needed the head left on-needed that smile cut into Beth Short’s face, ’cause he had a message to send. You compensated with other fun-torture, for example. And with your quaint sexual tastes, the fact that her female organs were unformed didn’t bother you, did it? You tied her up and fucked her in the ass and made her suck your dick, didn’t you, Lloyd? Oh, you wonder how I know that? She died with shit in her stomach, you sick fuck!”