Coward's Kiss (7 page)

“Probably. What if I say I don’t have the briefcase?”

“I don’t think I would believe you.”

“Why not?”

His smile spread. “It’s hardly logical. After all, Mr.

Bannister doesn’t have the briefcase. I’m certain of that. And I’m very glad of it as well. He’s an unpleasant man, Mr. Bannister is. Uncouth and uncultured. Boorish. You wouldn’t like him at all, Mr. London. You may dislike me, but you’d detest Mr. Bannister.”

I looked at the gun in his left hand. It was a Beretta. A .22-calibre gun. I wondered if he killed Sheila with it.

“Bannister doesn’t have it,” Armin went on. “He wants it but he doesn’t have it. And I doubt that he’d be willing to pay as much for it as I am. He’d probably try to take it away from you by force. A crude man. So you should sell it to me, you see.”

“Suppose I don’t have it?”

“But you must. You were at the girl’s apartment. So was the briefcase. It’s not there now because you have it. It follows.”

“Like night follows day. Suppose someone else was at her place?”

He shrugged again. His face was very sad now. “I was there,” he said. “Really, I’m in a position to know that I don’t have the thing. If I had it I wouldn’t be here, much as I enjoy your company. And Mr. Bannister was at the girl’s apartment. But he doesn’t have it either. That leaves you.”

“Eeny meeny miny moe?”

“More or less. Really, there’s no reason for you to deny that you have the case. It’s no use whatsoever to you, whereas no man lives who can’t find a use for ten thousand dollars. And I need the case very badly. Desperately, you might say. Can’t we do business?”

I relit my pipe and looked at Armin. I wondered who and what the hell he was. French or Greek or Italian or Spanish or Cuban. I couldn’t place the accent.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ve got the briefcase. So what’s in it?”

He stroked his chin. “If you have the case and know what’s inside,” he said, “it would be a waste of time to tell you. If you have the case and do not understand the significance of the contents, it would be foolish to tell you. And there must be a chance in a thousand that you are telling the truth, that you do not have the case. Why in the world should I tell you?”

“Who’s Bannister? Who are you?”

He smiled.

“Who killed the girl? Why was she killed?”

He didn’t answer.

“Who shot at me?”

He shrugged.

I let out a sigh. “You’re wasting your time,” I told him. “And mine. I don’t have the case.”

“Then it’s not for sale?”

“Take it any way you want it. I don’t have the briefcase and it’s not for sale.”

His sigh was very unhappy. He got to his feet, still holding the gun loosely in his hand. “If you want more money, I really can’t help you. Ten thousand is my top price. I erred in offering five thousand first. I’m not generally that type of businessman. I quote one price and it is a firm price.” He managed a shrug. “Perhaps you’ll reconsider while there’s still time. You may call me any hour, day or night. Let me give you my card.”

His right hand dipped into his inside jacket-pocket. We were both on our feet and the gun was pointed at the floor.

I picked that moment to hit him.

My right hand sank into his gut and my left hand closed around the gun. I hit him hard, harder than I planned, and he collapsed like a blown-out tire and folded up into the chair. The gun stayed in my hand, a light and cool piece of metal. I switched it to my right hand and pointed it at him.

His shoulders sagged and his eyes were pools of misery. He was massaging himself where I hit him. His face was a mask of infinite disappointment.

“You hit me,” he said thoughtfully. “Now why did you do that?”

I didn’t have an answer handy. “The briefcase,” I snapped. “Tell me about it. Tell me about yourself and about Bannister. Tell me who killed the girl.”

He sighed again. “You don’t seem to understand,” he said sadly. “We’re at a stalemate. We should be cooperating and we’re at odds. I didn’t threaten you with the gun, Mr. London, for the simple reason that it would have accomplished nothing. Now you have the gun and you can’t do a thing with it. Ask me all the questions you wish. I won’t answer them. What can you do? Shoot me? Beat me? Call the police? You won’t do any of those things. It’s a stalemate, Mr. London.”

The annoying thing was that he as right all the way: I stood there with the gun in my hand and felt like a clown. I was sorry I hit him. It was a waste of time, for one thing. For another, I was beginning to like the little weasel. I tried to picture myself beating him up or shooting him or calling the cops. The picture didn’t look too sensible.

“You see what I mean, Mr. London. We’re similar men, you and I. Neither of us is unnecessarily violent. In that respect Mr. Bannister has the advantage on us. He would beat us or have us beaten purely as a matter of course if we stood in his way. That’s why you and I should be allies. But perhaps you’ll come to your senses.”

He stood up stiffly, still holding himself where I slugged him. Once again his right hand dipped into his pocket. This time he came up with a pigskin pocket secretary. He flipped it open and took out a card which he handed to me. I read: Peter Armin . . . Hotel Ruskin . . . Room 1104 . . . Oxford 2-1560.

“The Ruskin,” he said. “On West Forty-fourth Street. I’ll be there for the next several days.”

I put the card in my pocket. He stood still and I realized I was still pointing the gun at him. I lowered it.

“Mr. London,” he said. He lowered his eyes. “May I have my gun back?”

“So you can shoot me with it?”

“Hardly. I just want my gun.”

“You don’t need it,” I told him. “You’re not a violent man.”

“I might have to defend myself.”

“You’re not the only one. Somebody shot at me today.”

“Mr. Bannister?”

“Maybe. I think I’ll hold onto your gun. I might need it sooner or later.” I shrugged. “I didn’t invite you here, anyway.”

His smile returned. “As you wish,” he said. “I have another at the hotel.”

“A thirty-two? The one you shot the girl with?”

He laughed now. “I didn’t kill her,” he said. “And if I had, I’d hardly hold onto the gun. No, the other is a Beretta, the mate to the one you’re holding. Good night, Mr. London.”

I didn’t move. He turned his back on me and walked past me to the door. He left the apartment quickly and closed the door after himself. I listened to his footsteps on the stairway, heard the front door slam behind him. I walked to the window and watched him cross the street and get into a maroon Ford a year or two old. He drove away.

Something kept me at the window, waiting for him to circle the block and come back for me. This didn’t happen. After ten minutes, with no sight of him or his car, I went to the door and slid the bolt into place. The lock itself wasn’t doing me a hell of a lot of good lately.

I spilled cognac into a glass and drank it. I juggled names like Peter Armin and Bannister and Alicia and Sheila and Clay and I tried to fit them into the human equation along with X, Y and Z. Nothing added up, nothing took form.

At least I knew what we were looking for now. A briefcase—but it didn’t do me a hell of a lot of good to know that. First I had to figure out what was in the case.

Which was a good question.

Anyway, it was a good thing I hadn’t given in to temptation and spent the rest of the night with Maddy. I would have missed Armin’s visit.

Or would I have? I couldn’t help smiling. The funny little guy probably would have sat in the darkness all night long, waiting for me with the little toy gun in his hand.

I looked at the gun, smelled the barrel. It hadn’t been fired recently. I stuck it in a drawer and went to bed.

SIX

I SAT in an overstuffed chair in the middle of a neat and spacious room. A healthy fire roared in the fireplace and animated figures of X, Y and Z danced in crackling flames. The man called Clay shuffled into the room with a girl on his arm. He wore a Broadway suit and a snap-brim hat. There was a cigar in the corner of his mouth and pale green smoke drifted from it to the-ceiling. He did not have any eyes.

I looked from him to the girl. I saw she was a skeleton with long blonde hair. She wore only a pair of nylon stockings and a garter belt. She did a stripper’s bump-and-grind, tossing loins of bone at me.

I turned and saw Bannister. He was built along the lines of an anthropoid ape. His arms were longer than his legs. He had a length of lead pipe in one hand and a baseball bat in the other. “The briefcase,” he rasped. “The briefcase the briefcase the briefcase the briefcase.”

I looked down. There was a briefcase on my lap. It smelled of good leather and death. I clutched it in both hands and hugged it to my chest.

When I looked up again Bannister had turned into Peter Armin. He was pointing a Beretta at the man called Clay, whose face had changed to Jack Enright’s. “Help me, Ed,” Jack was saying. And “Help me,” chorused X, Y and Z. They were still dancing in the fireplace, skipping gaily in the flames.

Armin turned, pointed the Beretta at me. “I, Mr. London, am a reasonable man,” he said. “And you, Mr. London, are a reasonable man. We are not men of violence.”

Then he shot me.

I looked up at the skeleton. Her hair was black now and her face was Maddy Parson’s face. She screamed a shrill, piercing scream. She stopped, then shrieked again.

The third scream wasn’t a scream at all. It was the telephone ringing, ringing viciously, and it brought back reality in bits and pieces. I got oriented again—I was in bed, it was early morning, and the phone was going full blast. I picked up the receiver and growled at it.

“Ed? This is Jack, Ed.”

I asked him what time it was. It was the first thing I thought of.

“Time? Eight or so, a few minutes after. Ed, I’m calling from a pay phone. Can we talk?”

“Yes,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

“They’ve identified her.”

“They?”

“The police.”

“They identified Sheila Kane?”

“That’s right.”

It didn’t seem possible. I figured they might tag her eventually if they worked on it long enough, but it would be a few weeks, even with luck—not overnight.

“Do you have a newspaper handy, Ed?”

“I’ll read it later,” I told him. “Jack, you’re in trouble. If they’ve got her labeled they’ll have you in nothing flat. You better beat them to the punch. Get in touch with Homicide, tell them you’re surrendering voluntarily, you didn’t kill her, you’re just guilty of withholding evidence. That way——”

“Ed.”

I stopped.

“Ed, do you get the
Times
?”

“Sure, but——”

“It can explain better than I can. I’ll hold the line. Get your newspaper and read the story. Check page 34—that’s the second page of the second section. Go on—read it. Then you’ll see what I mean.”

I was too foggy to argue with him. I managed to get out of bed, found a robe on a hook in the closet, slipped it on. I padded barefoot from the bedroom through the living room to the door, opened the door and picked up the paper. I carried it inside, shut the door and got rid of the first section on the way back to the phone. I ran my eyes over page 34 until I came to the right story. The headline said:

POLICE IDENTIFY CORPSE
FOUND IN CENTRAL PARK

The article ran seven paragraphs but the kicker was right there at the top in paragraph one. They had a make on the dead blonde, all right, but that was no reason for Jack to hand himself in at headquarters.

Not at all.

Because they had identified her as Alicia Arden, twenty-five, of 87 Bank Street in Greenwich Village. The identification was a pretty simple matter, too. Somebody sent her prints to the FBI’s Washington office. Her prints were on file there—Alicia Arden had a record. She’d been arrested in Santa Monica four years back on a disorderly conduct charge, had drawn a suspended sentence and had vanished from the area—at least as far as the police records show.

The story ran downhill from there on to the finish. The possible identity of the killer was unknown. Clues were conspicuously absent. Miss Arden had no friends or relatives. Her Village apartment was one room plus a bath, and nobody in her building knew the first thing about her.

The police were pursuing all angles of the case thoroughly, according to the
Times
reporter. I read between the lines and saw that they were getting ready to write the murder off as unsolvable. A detective sergeant named Leon Taubler was quoted as saying that, although the girl hadn’t been sexually molested, “It looks like a sex crime.”

All the unsolved murders in Manhattan look like sex crimes. It helps the police and the tabloids at the same time. One hand washes the other.

I picked up the phone again. Jack’s voice was hoarse. “You read the story? You see what I mean?”

I answered yes to both questions.

“I can’t believe it,” he said heavily. “They must have made a mistake.”

“No mistake.”

“But—”

“Fingerprints don’t make mistakes,” I said. “And even if they did, it’s a little too much to expect both gals to be missing at the same time. There’s no mistake, Jack.”

“It doesn’t seem possible.”

“It does to me. Sheila—Alicia—was living two lives at once. I more or less figured that much last night. A girl I know recognized her picture, met her once at a party. She was using the Alicia name at the time. So the newspaper story wasn’t as much of a shock to me as it was to you.”

“Why would she give me a wrong name?”

“She went to you because she thought she was pregnant,” I improvised. “She handed you a phony name automatically. Then she stayed with it. It was easier than admitting a lie.”

There was a long pause. “What’s disorderly conduct, Ed? What does it mean?”

“All things to all people. It’s like vagrancy—a handy catch-all for the police. The New York cops use it for prostitutes. Easier to prove. God knows what it means in Santa Monica. Anything from keeping bad company to walking the streets in a tight skirt.”