Лоуренс Блок - One Night Stands and Lost Weekends

“I wouldn’t be in a position to know about that.”

“But I might,” she said. Her face brightened. “You know, I would have given a thousand dollars for a look at Joe Robling’s face. Was he very frightened?”

“A little.”

“I ought to be angry at you,” she said. “He was a good customer. Generally drunk, but a hundred-dollar trick who never got rough and never complained.”

“He asked for Jackie.”

“He always asked for Jackie,” she said, a wry smile breaking through her generally somber mood. “But I took him a few times, now and then, if Jackie was busy. He never knew the difference. You don’t think you scared him off for good, do you?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

She looked at me and pouted. “Oh, stop it,” she said. “For heaven’s sake, don’t go moral on me, Ed. You know what I am and I know what I am, and if we can’t relax and accept it, there’s something wrong with us.

“You don’t want to talk about my business,” she said.

“No, I don’t.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“Your sister.”

“Oh.” The somber mien returned.

“You didn’t see that apartment after our unidentified friend got through with it. Either you or Jackie had something he wanted badly. If it wasn’t you—”

“It wasn’t, Ed.”

“—then it must have been Jackie. She had something or knew something and it got dangerous for her. And now it’s dangerous for you, too.”

She frowned. “I don’t know, Ed. Suppose it was just some... well, some nut. You meet them in my business. I know you don’t want to talk about the world’s oldest profession, but that much is true. The oddballs you meet!”

She closed her eyes, reminiscing. “Why couldn’t it be like that? What if one of them, some man who was a customer, what if he got it into his head to kill us? A Jack-the-Ripper type.”

“It doesn’t add.”

“Why not?”

“Look, a psycho might have his own reasons for wanting to kill a couple of hookers, I’ll grant you that. But a psycho wouldn’t play it so cool. He might come after you with a knife, might bust down your door and try to beat your brains in or shoot you or whatever. But I doubt if he would carefully trail Jackie to Central Park and put a neat little bullet in her forehead and then methodically search the apartment.

“He might go on a destructive rampage, just trying to rip up everything he could get his hands on. But that isn’t what our boy did. He gave the place a thorough search and let it go at that. He’s got a reason, Jill.” I stopped for breath. “It looks like blackmail to me.”

“But Jackie—”

“Tell me about her, Jill.”

“She—” She stopped there, and then grimaced.

She took a deep breath, and tried again. “She liked good clothes, fancy restaurants, expensive furniture. She hated nightclubs but sometimes she had to go to them on dates. She liked the Museum of Modern Art and modern jazz—”

“Men?”

“She didn’t have a sweet man. Neither of us did. I think she was seeing someone, not business, but I don’t remember his name. I’m not sure if she ever told me his name.”

“Did you ever meet him?”

“I don’t think so. Is he important?”

“I don’t know yet. Keep talking. Was Jackie having money troubles?”

She stood up, walked across the room. Her dress was snug on her professional body. She lit a fresh cigarette, stood at the window, blew out smoke. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said, “but you’re wrong. She couldn’t be a blackmailer, she couldn’t. She was my sister. We had differences, but she was still my sister, and I can’t believe that of her—”

“Tell me about those differences, Jill.”

“What’s there to tell? The usual minor spats over nothing.”

“How about money?”

“No problem at all. We kept separate bank accounts. No community property. What was mine was mine and what was Jackie’s was Jackie’s. I don’t know what she had in the bank. I’ve got ten or fifteen thousand saved, and she certainly earned as much as I did, except...”

“Except what?”

“I don’t know. Something was bothering her. She had a weakness for horses, phoned in bets every morning from our apartment. Possibly she was a heavy player.”

“And got in deep?”

“Maybe. She didn’t talk about it, but I think she owed a little money here and there. She dressed well, I told you that, and of course we both had charge accounts and credit cards and all that. She may have run up some fairly heavy tabs around town, and owed her bookmaker.”

She paused, then said, “This is guesswork, Ed. A guess I don’t particularly like to make. My sister was no more of a saint than I am, but I hate to think...”

Her voice trailed off. She leaned over and ground out her cigarette in one of Maddy’s ashtrays. “I would have loaned her the money. I would have been glad to.”

“Did she ever ask?”

“No. Never.” She narrowed her eyes, remembering. “But there was something. She mentioned how nice it would be if a pile of money fell into her lap. We always talked like that; it was nothing special. But if I had only thought to offer her money, if I had only asked her—”

“Don’t blame yourself, Jill.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Her voice nearly broke, but she controlled it.

I stood up, took her arm. “Jackie was riding for a fall,” I told her. “If you had bailed her out this time, she would have gotten in over her head some other time. Blackmail’s an easy out in your line of work. You must have thought of it yourself once or twice.”

“Not seriously.”

“But for all you knew Jackie did think of it — seriously. She might have tried to squeeze somebody before. But this time she picked on the wrong man and he squeezed back. There was nothing you could do about it, Jill.”

She drew close to me and her perfume was heady. I felt the warmth of her before her body actually touched mine. Her head was tilted and her eyes were misty and half-closed. “You’re good for me,” she sighed. I was holding her arm, and she drew even closer to me.

“I’m cold and I’m scared and I’m shaky, but I’m no frail petunia, am I, Ed? But right now I wish I was. I wish I could make you believe I need to be treated like a frail petunia.”

I made some sort of motion toward her, and inexplicably she now backed away from me. “You know what’s worst, Ed? I feel guilty.”

“Guilty? What for?”

“Jackie’s dead, but I’m alive, and I’m glad I’m alive. I’m glad it was Jackie instead of me. That thought’s been in my mind ever since you told me she was dead. I’ve been trying to make it go away, but I can’t. Isn’t that terrible, Ed?”

“No, it isn’t,” I told her. “That’s the most normal reaction in the world.”

“My God, are you good for me. I’m cold and I’m scared and I’m a no-good prostitute. And poor Jackie’s on some cold slab someplace; and I’m — I’m — I know, I’m cold. She’s cold but she doesn’t know it, she — Ed, for the love of God, make me warm.”

I looked at her, and I told myself she was just another hooker. There were thousands of them, and none of them were worth it. That’s what I told myself. But I went over anyway and put my arms around her, and she was trembling.

“I’m a stranger here,” she whispered, with a pathetic attempt at coquettishness. Her voice trembled like her body, but she persevered. “A stranger who doesn’t know her way around. Show me where my bed is, Ed.”

I showed her...

It was very dark in the bedroom, with the barest bit of light coming in through the window from a streetlamp down the block. I got out of my clothes in the darkness and found her in the bed. Her body was naked and waiting.