the ice cold nude

“Why don’t you do that?” He smiled encouragingly.

“Take my advice and start with the contestants first. Try Louise Lamont for a start—she’s your kind of girl, Boyd!” “What does that mean?”

“Sexy, flamboyant—and as tough as nails!”

“I just might do that,” I said. “You have any other pearls of wisdom before I depart, Lieutenant?”

“You might get a copy of the evening paper,” he said comfortably. “There should be a nice story about how Elmo’s hired a real hot-shot private eye to recover his tiara.”

“What?” I goggled at him. “You planted a story about me in the paper?”

“Just part of our tourist service,” he said, grinning. “We aim to please.”

“All right, already!” I croaked. “So this is where you give me the mickey straight”

“You know the insurance company has refused Elmo’s claim?” Schell asked in a bland voice.

“He told me,” I said carefully.

“It was too bad,” he went on cheerfully. “Most times the insurance boys are prepared to do an undercover deal with the thief—but I don’t have to tell you that, I guess? It would have been a help in a tough case like this—by staying real close to the insurance investigator, we might have grabbed the thief as he was about to close the deal, don’t you think?”

I closed my eyes and counted up to five but it was no use—Schell’s leering face was still there when I opened my eyes again.

“Now I get it,” I said sourly. “I’m the substitute for the insurance investigator—that’s why you’ve already given me some free publicity. If the thief wants to make a deal to sell the tiara back cheap, he’ll contact me.”

“Right!” The Lieutenant smiled in mock admiration. “You’re the smart one, Boyd, just like I told Elmo! Only remember, we’re going to be right in back of you every minute from now on, and if anyone contacts you and you somehow forget to inform us right away—”

“You don’t need to fill in the detail,” I said miserably. “—I’m going to take the book,” Schell said happily, “and throw it at you—page by goddamned page!”

I went calling on one of the beauty contest finalists right after I left Lieutenant Schell’s office. I even took his advice and called on Louise Lamont first because I figured it was the strictly logical thing to do, and his description of the dame as being sexy and flamboyant didn’t influence my decision by more than 95 per cent at the most.

Her apartment building was kind of ritzy and, if it had been a cooperative on New York’s East Side, the doorman’s uniform would have cost around a hundred clams a month in maintenance alone. She lived on the sixth floor. Within a couple of seconds automation had delivered me there with a contemptuously efficient hiss. I thumbed the buzzer beside her door and waited, but not for long.

The door was suddenly jerked wide open and a kingsized character stood framed in the open space, glaring at me like I’d just insulted his sister. A guy in his middle thirties, with thick, coarse black hair that fell down almost over his eyes, and an equally coarse face to match. While I was still recovering from the sudden shock of his repulsive features at close range, his massive hands reached out, grabbed the lapels on my coat, and literally lifted me inside the apartment.

“Okay, wise guy,” he grated in a sandblasted voice. “So now I’ll find out who’s been beating Marty’s time with the broad.

16

Out of the comer of my eye I caught a glimpse of a long-haired blonde who looked worth a considerably more detailed inspection, but right then 1 had other things on my mind, like this bum ruining the coat the Brothers Brooks had labored on with such loving care.

“I hope you won’t mind me speaking frankly, even if we haven’t been introduced?” I asked politely. “So take your stinking hands off me before I get rough and pound you down into a small child.”

His shaggy eyebrows lifted, then entwined in loving disbelief above the bridge of his nose. “Listen, punk!” He shook me violently a couple more times for added emphasis. “If you want to get out of here with any teeth left in your dumb head at all, you’d better start talking real fast. You’ve been beating Marty’s time with this broad and I want to hear the whole story. You don’t leave out a thing, understand?”

“Pete!” the blonde snapped in an irritated voice from somewhere out in left field. “I never saw this guy in my whole life before. You must be out of your mind.”

“Shut up!” he snarled at her, then shook me some more. “Did you hear me, punk? I want the works!” “Sure,” I said pleasantly. “I guess you got it coming, pal. You want to hear about the days I spent with her, like on weekends, or just the nights?”

He had the correct automatic reflex like I hoped he would. His right hand let go my lapel while his arm thrust back, ready to let me have a set of bunched knuckles straight between the eyes. It obviously never occurred to him that I might not just stand there and wait for it. I swung my right leg back, then let the toe of my slioe connect just an inch above where his shinbone ended, with enough force to maybe shift his kneecap a couple of inches out of alignment.

Pete let out a ferocious yell and canted sideways as his left leg kind of crumpled. He was still yelping even after I stiff-fingered the apple in his throat, only now there was no sound coming from his wide-open mouth. Anything I hate to see is a guy real confused. I pivoted neatly on one foot, then swung my right arm down in a wide arc so the edge of my hand slammed into the side of his neck.

He sank to the floor like a torpedoed battleship and finished up in a motionless heap, giving a remarkably realistic impression of total disaster.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” the blonde said with immense perception. “Pete won’t like it.”

“Is that any way to talk to the lover-boy who’s been beating Marty’s time with you all these short days and long nights?” I snarled at her.

I smoothed down the lapels with loving care, then took my first real good look at the blonde, and she was worth it. My wild Irish old man had a theory that blondes mostly fall into three main categories, Uke dumb, dubious, and calculating. This one was strictly in the third division, from the cash register that tinkled gently in back of her eyes, defiling their lapis-lazuli innocence, to the carefully calculated, more naked than naked look of the short blue silk beach slip which was something less than a transparent veil hiding the luscious curves of her body.

She shook her head impatiently under my penetrating gaze, and the long blonde hair cascading in graceful waves from the crown of her head to well below her shoulders shone with a sudden iridescent sheen.

“Baby,” I said admiringly, “all you need is a big white horse and you'd be a smash hit as the new Lady Godiva!”

“Huh?” She stared at me blankly.

“She was some English dame from way back,” I explained wearily, “who rode a horse through the streets of Coventry just wearing her hair and nothing else.”

“What for?”

“Because—ah, never mind!” I said tersely. “You are Louise Lamont, right?”

“Sure,” she said, brightening a little now she could dig the dialogue. “Who are you?”

“Danny Boyd,” I told her. “Mr. Elmo hired me to get back his diamond tiara.”

“Oh?” The look on her face said she’d gotten me in return for a couple of cereal box tops and two bits, and right now she wondered if she’d been gypped on the whole deal.

“I wanted to ask you some questions,” I added hopefully.

“I’ve been through that routine with the police already.” Her voice was bored, but a little edgy at the same time. “Anyway, you’d better make it some other time and get out of here while you’ve got the chance. Before Pete gets up off the floor and kills you, I mean.”