George Axelrod: Blackmailer

Then, with my lips close to her ear, I began to whisper.

“Listen, listen to me,” I said. “I quit. I resign. I’ve had enough. I don’t care if you have a new Anstruther book or if you don’t. If you had an unpublished musical comedy libretto by William Shakespeare it wouldn’t be worth it.

“I saved your life twice in one week. And you probably saved mine just now. So we’re even. We’re all square. This is a good time to quit.

“I don’t want to have anything to do with this. I don’t want people wrecking my apartment. I don’t want to be beaten up. I don’t like lying on the floor while being kicked in the stomach. I don’t want to be called on the telephone by gorillas with nasty voices.

“I don’t want to be slugged twice a week.

“I don’t want to have anything to do with girls who carry guns in their purses and have friends who feed them mickeys. Even if they’re very pretty girls. I’m not interested.

“You can tell your nasty-voiced friend for me that the only thing I want is to be left alone. That goes for you, too, baby. Just leave me alone. Take your big literary bargain to somebody else.”

I kept talking. I wasn’t even really aware of what I was saying. I was letting off steam and pent-up emotion.

“O.K.,” I said. “I’m leaving. If the door is locked, I’ll go out through a window. We’re all through.”

I relaxed my grip on her arm. Then I thought of something else and tightened it again.

“No, I’m not quite through either. Give me my coat. It’s part of my gabardine suit. It’s English gabardine and custom made. It cost one hundred bucks. The way you and your friends play you might spill something on it. Like blood. Where’s my coat?”

She started to speak. I cut her off.

“Never mind,” I said. “Forget it. I make you a present of it. O.K., Jeannie. I may see you again some time. But I hope not. Goodbye.”

I let go of her arm and pulled her close to me. I leaned down and found her mouth. I kissed her very hard.

Then she was kissing me and we were standing very close together in the dark, holding each other.

Then, as suddenly as they had gone out, the lights came back on.

We separated, dazed by the light and emotion.

She looked up at me and smiled.

“This is the damnedest game I ever got mixed up in,” Janis Whitney said.

I looked at Janis Whitney for a minute or two thinking maybe I was losing my mind.

Janis Whitney smiled. “Wrong girl?” she said.

I looked helplessly around.

We were standing in the big, empty entrance hall. I couldn’t understand that either. Unless we had circled through the house in the dark and come back to the hall again.

“What are you doing here?” I said to Janis Whitney.

“I was sticking close to you,” she said. “I followed you down the stairs. Everything was fine till this other character comes along. He seemed to be giving you some kind of trouble so I bopped him on the head with a lamp. I wonder where the other dame went.”

I looked around in a bewildered fashion. That’s when I saw where the other dame went.

Jean Dahl was lying by the locked front door.

She was lying there in a crumpled heap.

They’d tried to get her once before.

This time they’d succeeded.

One look was enough. You didn’t have to examine the body. I bent down and slipped my coat off her shoulders. She didn’t need it any more. I noticed her hair was still damp.

Janis Whitney’s face was white. She caught my arm for support.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

I was afraid for a moment that I was going to be sick.

I held Janis’ arm and pulled her into the elevator. I pushed a button at random. I didn’t care particularly where we were going. I just wanted to get away from the sight of Jean Dahl’s body on the floor by the door.

In a moment the elevator began to move. Downward. I could hear voices at the top of the stairs as the hall disappeared.

“They killed her,” I said. “My God, they killed her.”

“The poor kid,” Janis Whitney whispered.

The elevator came to a stop at the basement floor, and the doors opened.

“What are we going to do?” Janis Whitney asked.

“Come on,” I said. I led her out of the elevator. “Look, there’s no reason for us to get involved in this. A thing like this could be bad for you and bad for your studio. What could we do if we stayed? We were together when it happened. We both know we didn’t do it…” I couldn’t bring myself to use the words kill her. “Let’s just stay out of it.”

“How?”

I looked around. “There must be a service entrance for deliveries down here. We just leave, that’s all. It’s as simple as that. Nobody in that madhouse upstairs can tell who was there and who wasn’t. Come on, let’s go. If anybody should happen to ask us, we left together the minute the lights went out. Let someone try to prove different. Come on. I think the service door is over this way.”

It was so easy.

The service door opened onto the side street, around the corner from Fifth Avenue. We walked east to Madison and then to Park and over to Lexington. And we walked four or five blocks down Lexington before we hailed a cab.

We walked rapidly all that time. We spoke very little.

In the cab, I reached over and took her hand. It was icy cold.

I gave the driver my address. It was force of habit. I wasn’t thinking very clearly.

Beside me Janis shivered.

I put my arm around her. We huddled together in the back of the cab.

When the cab came to a stop, I said mechanically, “Here we are.”

We got out and I paid the driver. I guided Janis into the building.

I had not been back home since the night of my visitors.

It was a shock to see the place when I unlocked the door. In addition to the damage the two men had done, the police had smudged the walls with their fingerprint powder.

Janis looked blankly around the room.

“I should have warned you,” I said. “I had a robbery a couple of days ago. The place is a little bit messed up.”

“My God,” Janis said.

I pulled two of the foam rubber cushions down to the floor and then I poured a couple of inches of whisky into two glasses and handed one to her. We sat on the rubber cushions in the middle of the debris and sipped it.

“I was pretty sure we’d meet sometime again,” Janis said. “I didn’t think it was going to be anything like this.”

“I’ve seen you in pictures a few times,” I said. “I didn’t go to many of them. I couldn’t take it.”

We were quiet for a while. We finished the whisky and I refilled the glasses.

“That poor girl,” Janis said.

“I don’t know what it’s all about,” I said. “She showed up in my office about a week ago. With a book she said she had and wanted to sell. Since I met her I’ve been beaten up once and slugged once. And now she’s been killed. What was it? What kind of mess was she mixed up in?”

“It happens,” Janis said. “A person can get in over her head.”

“Janis?”

“Yes?”

“You know something?”

“What, Dick?”

“I still love you.”

“That’s not possible, darling.”

“I didn’t think it was either.”

“Ten years.”

“Nine and a half. Ten in March.”

“Things change. People change.”

“Not so much. I love you, darling.”

I reached over and, very gently, ran my hand up the back of her neck and through her hair. She reached out and took my other hand and squeezed it. Then I kissed her.

“Things don’t change,” I said. “They get worse sometimes. Or better. But they don’t change.”