Лоуренс Блок - Death Pulls a Doublecross [= Cowards Kiss]

Her bed was soft and welcome, the sheets cool and clean. I let my head sink into the pillow and opened my eyes to look at darkness. Water was running in the bathroom. I pictured her washing her face, brushing her teeth, drying herself with a towel.

Pretty pictures.

The bedroom door opened inward. The light was behind her and I saw her slender body silhouetted in the door frame. She touched a switch and the light died. She came into the room, closed the door behind her. I could barely see her in the darkness.

“Ed?”

I didn’t answer her.

I heard a nightgown rustle. She lifted the covers on her side of the bed and slid under them. “Goodnight, Ed,” she whispered. “Sleep well. I’ll make breakfast for you in the morning, Ed.”

I still didn’t say anything. I heard her breathing beside me, sensed the sweet warmth of her body. I remembered that body, remembered the night before.

I reached for her.

For an instant she gasped, surprised. Then my mouth found hers and we kissed. I took her shoulders in my hands and felt her body begin to tremble.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, Ed. Ed, we can’t, not tonight, Ed. You’re all tired and all hurt and we can’t. Ed—”

I ran a hand over her body, all clean and soft and warm through the sheer nightgown.

“We can’t, Ed. Ed, darling, we can’t, I want to, I want to but we can’t.”

I put my face to her cheek and breathed the fragrance of her hair. I kissed her again and heard her sigh.

“We can’t,” she said. “We can’t we can’t we can’t we can’t—”

I drew her body very close to mine. I whispered softly into her ear.

“We can,” I said. “And we will.”

We did.

She amazed me in the morning. She scrambled eggs and fried bacon and toasted rye bread, and she didn’t even try to talk to me until I was working on my second cup of strong black coffee. I had never known a woman could behave so magnificently in the morning, or look so lovely. I told her this and she beamed at me.

“The phone,” she said. “You were going to call Enright.”

I picked up the receiver and dialed his number. A female voice found out who I was and told me to hold the line. I did. Then Jack picked up the phone.

“Ed, Jack. I’ve got to talk to you. Important.”

He said: “Oh, Christ.” Then he didn’t say anything for a minute or two. A juvenile voice wailed unhappily in the background. “I’m busy as all hell right now, Ed. You at home? I’ll call you as soon as I get a free moment.”

I told him where I was and he took down the number. “Stay there,” he said. “I may be a while. Bye, Ed.”

I told Maddy he’d be calling back. We cleared off the table. She washed the dishes and I dried them. Then we sat around waiting for the phone to ring, with the whole scene so damned domestic that I couldn’t stand it. Finally the phone came through for me and I stood up to answer it.

“It might be for me,” she said. “I’ll take it.”

I was already at the phone.

“Please,” she said. “You’ll compromise me.”

“You’ve already been compromised. And after the way you kept saying we couldn’t. You were wrong.”

“So you’re Superman. Now... hey, let go of me, you oaf! It’s the middle of the murky morning and the phone’s ringing. Let go!”

I got out of the way. She answered the phone while I stood by, waiting for her to hand it to me when Jack identified himself. This didn’t happen.

The phone was for her and I listened while she talked to somebody named Maury. She spent most of her time listening, tossing in an occasional uh-huh. Then she made scribbling motions in the air until I brought her a scrap of paper and a pencil. She took them and began jotting down mysterious information. This went on for a few minutes, until finally she said: Thanks, sweetie at least four times and kissed the telephone mouthpiece twice. Then she hung up and turned to me, her eyes bright.

“It was Maury,” she said.

“Thanks. Who’s Maury?”

“My agent. And Lon Kaspar’s auditioning for the lead in ‘The House of Bernardo Alba,’ it’s the Lorca play and they’re doing a revival over on Second Avenue and it’s this afternoon and Maury thinks I’ve got a great chance and—”

She ran out of breath before she ran out of words. I asked her when she had to be at the theater.

“Eleven-thirty, if I can. What time is it?”

“Quarter to eleven.”

“What!”

“We slept late and ate slowly and graciously. You better hurry, Maddy. But don’t you get to study the part?”

“It’s just a reading today. Oh, God, I’ve got to rush. God, I have to hurry. It’s all the way across town, dammit. You wait here for your phone call, Ed. The door locks by itself when you close it. I have to rush.”

I kissed her. She held onto me for a minute, then pulled away. “Dammit to hell,” she said. “I wanted to stay with you today. I thought we could hunt the killer together. Then this came up.”

“I wouldn’t have let you come along.”

“You couldn’t have stopped me. But one little call from Maury... damn.”

I grinned. “Is it a good part?”

“It’s a beautiful part,” she said. “Simply beautiful. And Maury thinks I can get it. He says Kaspar knows me and likes my work. I’ve got to run, Ed. One call on the old phone and away goes Maddy. I’ll be home sometime this afternoon, I think. Call me.”

She was still talking on her way out the door, still bubbling and babbling as she went down the stairs. From the front window I watched her hail a cab. My smile followed her down the street.

A sweet kid.

I poured a third cup of coffee and sweetened it with a taste of cognac. I lit a cigarette to go with it.

A hell of a sweet kid.

I thought about Jack Enright. I thought about Kaye, his wife and my sister. Evenings at their place, the three of us plus whatever girl Kaye was tying to fix me up with at the time. “You ought to get married, Ed London. It’s no life for a man, being a bachelor. You should meet a nice girl and settle down.”

And I thought about Maddy, and how sweet she was in the morning, and how sweet she was at night. And Kaye’s words made more sense than they ever had before.

Which scared me.

The phone rang half an hour after Maddy left. I answered it. It was Jack.

“Sorry I had to hang up on you,” he said. “I was up to my neck in work and I didn’t want to talk on that phone of mine. I’m on a pay phone now. Is your line safe?”

I told him it was.

“Did you see the paper. Ed? They had a bit about Sheila. That she was involved with some gangsters and they killed her.”

I wondered where they got that. “They’re right,” I said.

“Then why not let it go? You know how those men operate. Fly a killer in from the other side of the country, then fly him away when he’s done. You can’t solve a crime like that. Why knock yourself out trying? Why waste time?”

“You all worried about my time, Jack?”

A sigh. “All right,” he said. “Okay, I’m scared. If you come up with anything you’ll have to give it all to the police. Then everything’s out in the open. I’m scared, Ed. I’ve got a lot of things to be scared about. A family and a practice. I don’t want them to blow up in my face.”

“I can keep you out of it.”

“Can you?”

“Uh-huh. And I couldn’t let go even if I wanted to, Jack. Two heavies handed me a beating yesterday. Another guy was tailing me. Somebody else missed me with a bullet a while back. I’ve been on one end or the other of enough handguns to win the West ten times over. So I can’t leave it alone.”

“God,” he said. “They’re trying to scare you?”