Тэлмидж Пауэлл - The Girl’s Number Doesn’t Answer

As Helen and I completed our tour in the small, gleaming kitchen, I heard a scratching on the living-room door.

I pushed her behind me and stood with the open kitchen door concealing us.

The lock was keyed open. The door swung back. A man entered the apartment.

He closed the door quickly and stood a moment on the landing.

He could have hired out to frighten little children — a hairless gorilla in imitation Brooks Brothers. His face was flat, swarthy, Oriental in cast — not the Orient of paper umbrellas or dainty painting on translucent china; the Orient that had spawned the hordes of Genghis Khan.

With his massive shoulders and short legs he looked top heavy. But he had the grace of a dancer as he stepped into the living room.

He stood for a second pause, his pear-shaped head with its sparse growth of coarse black hair tilted to one side.

Wheeling, he passed out of my range of vision. I heard him rummaging in the bedroom, opening drawers.

I felt that I should know him, but I couldn’t place him.

His search of the bedroom took two or three minutes. I eased out of the kitchen. The carpet deadened my footfalls as I slid to the bedroom door.

When he came out of the bedroom, I threw my right arm around his chin from behind. His neck was so short I couldn’t clamp the grip on his throat, but I snapped his head back, my knee in the small of his back.

His body went rigid for a second.

“Who are you?” I said. “What are you looking for here?”

There was fine sweat on the roll of thick, swarthy flesh at the base of his head, a moisture mingled with the roots of the black strands scattered on top of the pear.

He was held powerless. He seemed immobile from fright. I equaled him in weight, topped him three inches in height, had every advantage.

Then something happened.

My body was snapped so hard it felt as if all its vertebrae were hot slugs of metal crunching together. The room upended. I crashed into a cocktail table with my shoulder.

Before I could reassemble the smashed pieces of what had been me, he said, “Hah!” very gutturally in his throat. He leaped at me like a bowlegged chimpanzee.

His legs extended before him, he came down with his rump stopped by my rib cage. I heard grindings inside of myself and felt as if splinters had been jabbed into every nerve.

He bounced off me. I floundered a blow at him. He brushed it aside.

“Hah!”

He grabbed my collar, jerked me half upright. I felt the corded steel of his arms encircle my neck.

I tried to kick him, slug him, bite him. I wasn’t proud. I’d have fought in any manner to get out of that grip.

He turned on the pressure, his knees half bent, his body rocked back. It felt as if my head were being torn off by the roots.

“Hah!”

He shifted his hold faster than a flea can jump. I sensed the swivel of his hips, the snap of his body. I was weightless for a second. Then I hit a chair and carried it into the wall with me.

I was in a small boat on a very rough sea and I was seasick as hell. Somewhere off in the gray mists three indistinct pear-shaped heads floated. All were contorted with a savage, battle-hungry pleasure.

All three hazy faces swooped toward me.

Then they disappeared. I heard the dull, heavy sound of his body falling to the carpet.

I managed to turn my eyes, and there were three Helen Martins shimmering in the gray. The three had a modernistic metal statuette of a nude in their right hand. The nude had previously been on a table.

They dropped the chunk of metal and helped me to my feet. I stood with the wall supporting me and my eyes stopped playing tricks. The three Helens ran together and became one.

My gaze groped for the big bruiser. He was lying not five feet away. He’d remain there for several minutes. A lump was swelling on the crown of his head.

I fell into a chair. I thought for a moment I was going to be sick. I managed to hold onto the chair. Helen had gone somewhere. She reappeared holding a glass.

“Drink this, Ed.”

I took the glass, gulped, and let the heat flood down my throat, spread through my stomach.

I felt life begin to quiver tentatively inside of me once more.

“You’d better tap that brandy bottle yourself,” I said, handing Helen the glass.

“Are you all right now?”

“I’ll be sore in various spots for a week,” I said, “but I don’t think he broke as many parts as it felt.”

Helen took my advice, going to the bar and taking a jigger of brandy.

I was content for the moment to sprawl in the chair and pull air in as the ruptured feeling passed from my lungs.

“I’ve taken beatings,” I told Helen, “but never before from a man my own size who started at such a disadvantage. I must be slipping or getting old.”

“You should watch television more. Sure you’re all right?”

“I’m coming around. Why watch television?”

“You might have recognized him if you’d ever caught any of the big-time wrestling programs. He’s Prince Kuriacha. He was heavyweight wrestling champion of the world for a while.”

“They shouldn’t let him out without handcuffs and muzzle.”

Prince Kuriacha groaned. He rolled to his side, lifted his hand, touched the lump on his head. He groaned a second time, put his palms on the carpet, and pushed himself to a half-sitting position.

As he opened his eyes and raised his head, he found himself staring into the small end of the .38.

He was temporarily immobile, his eyes drops of black ink in yellow tallow.

“You can have that chair,” I said. “But don’t make any sudden motions.”

He went sliding across the carpet on his behind and pulled himself into the silken-covered club chair.

He took a linen handkerchief from the breast pocket of his natty tropical suit. He gingerly made a compress, holding the handkerchief on his pump knot. He squinted at Helen. “A doll,” he said. “Flattened by a doll. How do you like that!”

He added in my direction, “I’d have turned you inside out, you know.” He spoke without particular rancor or fear. No trace of accent was in his voice. It wasn’t a beautiful voice. It had a sound like dry cereal being walked on by someone in heavy boots.

“You a cop?” he asked.

“In a way.” Given the chance to look him over in detail, I decided the Prince must be very well heeled from his years of big-time wrestling showmanship. Suits like that pale-gray tropical didn’t come cheap. His shoes looked like hand-sewn Italian loafers. The diamond on his little finger was like the beacon stolen from a lighthouse. The watch on the big, oaken wrist was made of platinum and diamonds.

“What kind of answer is that?” he said. “You’re either a cop or not a cop.”

“I’m cop enough for the moment. Cop enough to ask some questions,” I said.

“Such as?”

“What brought you here?”

“A camera.”

“You’d better explain.”

“It’s simple. Ichiro Yamashita borrowed a camera from me, a really good camera. Kind of a keepsake. A movie star gave it to me when I was appearing on the coast, just before she married her fourth husband. What with the court tying up the estate and all, I figured the only way I’d ever get the camera back was to sneak up here and take it.”

“A direct, blunt course of action.”

“Well,” he said, “I’ve been accused of being that kind of man. Now it’s my turn. Who the hell are you?”

I told him, adding an explanation about Helen.

He sat thinking about it. “You’re guilty of breaking and entering, you know.”

“So are you.”

“Yeah. That leaves us kind of even, don’t it?”

“Not exactly,” I pointed out. “I have a private operator’s license, and in this case I’m working under a certain amount of police sanction.”