Лоуренс Блок - One Night Stands and Lost Weekends

She laughed. “Ralph would do anything for me,” she said. “He didn’t need a reason.”

“Sure. Anyway, he knocked me out and gave me a good look at him in the process. I believed your story right off the bat, but this made it perfect. The whole blackmail pattern was fixed now. I had to believe in Traynor because he damn well existed and I had an aching head to prove it. I went back to Maddy’s with my head in a sling and you let me coax a little more information out of you. About Jackie being in debt, and about Jackie having a boyfriend — all of that. If you gave me all of it at once I would have tried to pick holes in it, but you were too smart for that. You made me pry it out of you and I swallowed it whole.”

“You said I was a good actress, Ed.”

She was smiling now. I had her pegged and she knew it, but she could still manage a smile. God knows how.

“I didn’t get a chance to look for holes in your story, not that night,” I said. “You kept me busy in bed. More acting, Jackie.”

“That wasn’t all acting.”

I ignored the line. “A repeat performance in the morning,” I said. “And then the safe-deposit box — hell, that was something. You let me talk you into impersonating Jackie, and what it amounted to is that you impersonated yourself. No wonder you didn’t have any trouble with the signature. It was your own signature.

“You did a good job there, you know. You had to look uncertain enough to make me think you were Jill and confident enough not to make the guard suspicious. You got the money and the pictures from the box and you were home free, or close to it.”

She moved a little on the bed, a coldly calculated but subtle and seductive maneuver that made her breasts jut out. She wanted to make me conscious of her body, but didn’t want to act whorish about it.

She could have saved herself the trouble. Her body was now about as exciting to me as Jill’s, stretched out on a slab in the morgue. She stretched like a cat and ran her tongue over her lower lip and not a single spark flew.

“We went to the bar and looked at the pictures, Jackie,” I continued. “Then you got up to make a phone call. You didn’t call your answering service. You called Traynor, told him to get to your apartment right away. I don’t know what reason you gave him, but you pulled the strings and he performed on schedule. You worked a stall act at the bar to give him time to get there, dawdled in the john, all of that. Then we got to your apartment to look for Jackie’s address book. You made me wait downstairs. What would have happened if I went up with you?”

“I knew you wouldn’t, Ed.”

“The hell you did. You hoped I wouldn’t but you had it all figured out if I did. I was lucky I stayed downstairs.”

Her eyes went innocently wide.

“Because you would have killed me. You would have used your gun on me and then you would have used my gun on Traynor to make it look as though we shot each other. That would have been a little tricky to pull off but you would have done it if necessary. Then with both of us dead you could try your story on the police.

“It might have worked too. But it wasn’t as sure a thing as it could have been, and that was why you wanted me to stay downstairs to back you up. However, you would have made your play either way.”

“Oh, no, Ed. That’s not true!” She put her heart into it. “I never could have killed you, Ed.”

“No?”

“Ed, I—”

I told her to save it. “You went upstairs and let yourself in,” I continued. “Traynor came over to kiss you and you screamed your head off. His face must have been something to see just then. You had him running around in circles anyway, and a good loud scream must have rattled the hell out of him. But he didn’t have much time to worry about it. You took out the gun and shot him. Then you gave out with another scream.

“This afternoon I thought about that part of it. The door was locked when I got upstairs. I had to shoot it off. Why would you lock the door when you were ducking into the apartment for a minute? When would you get a chance to close the door with Traynor waiting to kill you?

“You did it to stall. It gave you a few extra seconds to tear your dress and build the scene. By the time I shot my way through the door you were into your act, and from then on everything was set up. It couldn’t miss, could it?”

She didn’t answer.

“The gun checked out, the same weapon used for both killings. I backed your story every step of the way. You ran one hell of a lot of risks but things broke right for you each time. And by the time you left Headquarters you were clear. There would be a coroner’s inquest, maybe a few more questions that you could answer with your eyes closed. Then Jill’s body would be buried with your name on the headstone. You’d be Jill, with no debts and whatever money she had had, plus fifty thousand dollars worth of insurance money.”

She didn’t answer. Her hands moved down over her own naked flesh in a calculated movement that was supposed to look unconscious and automatic. I remembered making love to her, the flavor of her embrace, the touch of her body.

“You almost made it,” I said.

“What — tipped you off, Ed? The birthmark?”

“Partly. That clinched it, of course. As soon as I got the idea that it was you in the photographs, I knew you had lied to me. And that was the trouble with the whole gambit, Jackie. It was all built on a pyramid of lies. As soon as one of them broke down, the whole thing collapsed. All the little inconsistencies that I had glossed over came back in spades. Every loophole showed up bright and clear.”

“Then I should have gotten those pictures back. I could have said I wanted to burn them—”

“I would have figured it anyway.”

“How?”

I thought for a second. “It was too pat,” I said. “You timed everything so perfectly, Jackie. So damned perfectly. Traynor was always at the right place just at the right time. Somebody had to be calling his signals.

“And another thing — the powder burns on Jill’s forehead. That was too neat and cute. If she knew Traynor was after her, she wouldn’t have let him get that close. She would have run or tried to fight or something. The death scene looked as though it had been the handiwork of someone she knew, someone she wasn’t afraid of.” I frowned. “Someone like her sister.”

“I... I wanted to make it fast.”

“Uh-huh. You should have walked away and fired three or four shots into her. It would have looked better that way.”

“I wanted Jill to die quickly. I didn’t want it to hurt her.”

“Sure. You’re an angel of mercy and an angel of death all rolled into one. There was a little whore and she had a little bore right in the middle of her forehead . You should have stuck to the other nursery rhyme.”

“What rhyme?”

“The one about Jackie and Jill going over the hill,” I said. “Get dressed.”

“You’re turning me in?”

“What do you think?”

But she wasn’t through yet. Her lush body flexed and her lips curled in a sensual smile. “Look at me,” she said.

I looked.

“I’m well off now financially, Ed. I’m not good at arithmetic but I’m sure you can figure it out. I’ll bet it’s a lot of money, right?”

“It’s a lot of money.”

“And there would be more than money, Ed.” Her hands touched her breasts. “I have a good clientele.”

I stood up. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, got to her feet, and came toward me. “Get dressed,” I sneered. “I can’t stand the sight of you.”

She blinked. Maybe no one had ever told her that before. She stood still. I pushed her aside, walked past her, and picked up the phone. I started dialing. I was making more work for Jerry Gunther, but I had a hunch he wouldn’t mind.