Strange Embrace (13 page)

He switched on the lights, pretty certain that he had left them on when he had gone out. Which was strange. He thought that Ito might have come home early, then decided that at that particular moment Ito was probably teaching a pretty little girl how to say “Do it again, darling” in English. Of course, Ito could have dropped in again, and could have turned off the lights on the way out. Or maybe he himself had turned them off and his mind was turned inside-out, or then again maybe…

He could not get rid of the nagging suspicion that he wasn’t alone in the apartment.

He stopped in front of a mirror to remove the remaining makeup from his face and to unputty his nose. He took off his hat and coat, removed the gun from his shoulder holster. He felt ridiculous—it is remarkably easy to feel silly when you are toting a gun in your own apartment.

Still…

He checked each room in the apartment with gun drawn. He looked into the kitchen, opened closet doors, and felt increasingly like an idiot as he inspected each empty room. He even looked into Ito’s room, something he never did, and was careful to shut the door when he left. Only his own bedroom remained, and he stood in front of the closed door for several seconds, unable to end the search by opening the damned door.

You’re a horse’s ass, he told himself angrily. Either you open the silly door or you put the gun away and have a drink.

He felt like knocking.

But he did not knock. He shrugged, annoyed as all hell with himself and he turned the knob and gave the door a shove. The room was dark, naturally enough. He reached for the light and switched it on.

For a moment he felt as though he were a character in somebody’s nightmare, probably his own. He blinked his eyes at the light and stared. His bedcovers were thrown back and there was a girl in his bed.

She was naked.

But history was repeating itself only up to a point. No pool of dark blood had flowed from the girl’s neck. No razor had slashed her throat. No killer had killed her. She was, as a matter of fact, very much alive.

She propped herself up on her elbows and grinned at him. Her hair fell over her shoulders loosely and sexily. Her eyes were disarmingly lustful.

“A gun yet,” Jan Vernon said. “Come on in, Johnny. Make yourself at home. Take off your shoes and loosen your tie and relax. It’s about time.” She yawned and stretched, magnificently. “About time,” she repeated. “I thought you’d never get here.”

It was a while before they got around to talking. By the time the initial shock had worn off something altogether different from shock had taken its place. He began by taking off his jacket, and then he removed the rest of his clothing as well.

Then he got into something more comfortable. Jan.

Later he told her about the evening. It was good to have someone to talk with, someone you could let it all out to. And she was an excellent listener.

“You should have stayed with acting,” she told him finally. “That must have been quite a performance. I wish I could have watched you.”

He laughed. “I don’t know how good I was, really. I wouldn’t have won any awards.”

“But you pleased the critics, Johnny. And they sound as though they know their business.”

“They were easily intimidated,” he told her. “One look at me and they were ready to roll over and play dead. I looked like Death walking. They were afraid of me on sight.” He sighed. “Now, it could have been different. I could have come on stage…same way, but before a big man in the rackets, a guy who wouldn’t be scared to look at me. That would have been more of a test.”

“You still should get an Oscar. For makeup.”

“You should get one yourself,” he said, “For—”

“Never mind what for. Did you get anywhere tonight, Johnny? Did you find out anything?”

“Nothing too helpful,” he admitted. “I found out who beat me up. I got even with him by knocking him around a little.” He shook his head. “Sounds pretty childish, doesn’t it?”

“Childish or manly.”

“Which?”

“Sometimes they’re about the same thing,” she said thoughtfully. “But you aren’t any further than before?”

“I suppose not.”

She sighed. “That’s what I tried to tell you,” she said. “That you were wasting your time. Let the police handle it, Johnny. Look how far you stuck your neck out. Suppose the fight with Rugger had gone the other way. He would have killed you.”

“There wasn’t anything to worry about.”

She arched her eyebrows. “The hell there wasn’t,” she said. “There was plenty to worry about. You were sticking your neck way out for nothing.”

“You’re exaggerating, Jan. I’m in greater danger here in bed with you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Only that you’re a little too exuberant,” he told her, grinning. “My ribs hurt. You should be a little more restrained.”

She laughed easily. “Sorry,” she said. “I get carried away. And it’s your fault anyway. You loosen the bonds of restraint, Johnny. That’s not very nice of you.”

They slipped into an easy silence. He lit two cigarettes and gave one of them to her. He smoked and watched the smoke trail lazily to the ceiling.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey what?”

“I was just thinking. How the hell did you get in here tonight?”

She looked at him.

“I know I locked the door,” he said. “I wasn’t too sure about the lights, but I know damn well I locked the door. Wasn’t it locked when you got here? And how did you get past the doorman?”

She fluffed her hair. “A beautiful woman has no problem getting past doormen,” she informed him. “I think he thought I was a call girl you had ordered sent up. I smiled at him and went up in the elevator. And the elevator operator never said a word.”

“He never does. How about the door?”

She pursed her lips. “Actually,” she said, “I thought you’d be home. I would have told you I was coming except I thought I could surprise you.”

“You surprised me, all right. But how the hell did you get past the door?”

“I was getting around to that, Johnny. I rang the bell. Several times. You didn’t answer.”

“Primarily because I wasn’t here.”

She ignored the interruption. “I didn’t want to go home,” she said. “And I thought maybe you were drunk or asleep or something and I could get into bed with you and surprise you.”

“That would have surprised me, all right. It would have surprised the hell out of me.”

“That’s what I thought. So I opened the door.”

“But it was locked!”

“Not very well,” she said, “because I opened it. You ought to lock that door with a key, Johnny. When you just close it, all you have is a spring lock. They’re easy to pick.”

“You—you picked the lock?”

She nodded, beaming. “With a nail file,” she said. “All you have to do is sort of pry at it for a while. A nail file works perfectly. A woman can do almost anything with a bobby pin or a nail file or a…”

Then she blushed.

“Almost anything,” he said thoughtfully.

“Johnny—”

“But not quite everything. For some things you can’t quite get along with a bobby pin or a file. So—”

“Johnny, stop that!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he told her. “You don’t want me to stop it. Besides, I’ve hardly even started.”

And he reached for her again.

When he awoke it was morning and she was gone. The telephone on the bedside table was ringing industriously and unpleasantly. He reached for it, then stopped to glance at a note she had left.

“You snore,” it read, “but I love you anyway.”

He grinned, crumpled the note into a ball and tossed it at a wastebasket. The phone was still ringing and there seemed to be only one way to stop it. He picked it up and said hello into the mouthpiece.

“Pete Galton,” a voice said. “New York
Post—”

“We don’t want any,” he said.

“Lane—”

“The show’s off for this season. No, I don’t know who the killer is. No, I don’t have a statement to make. Yes, damn you, I was sleeping. Goodbye.”

“All I want to know is—”

“To be fully informed,” Johnny cooed, “read the New York
Times.”

He put the receiver back long enough to break the connection, then decided to leave it off the hook. He left it off long enough to hear the dial tone change to that annoying squeal which indicates that your phone is off base, then he gave up and cradled it properly. At which point there was a discreet knock on the door.

“Come in.”

The door opened. Ito—a wonderful, marvelous Ito—appeared. He was pushing a small breakfast table on rollers. The tray carried a glass of orange juice, a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon, and a huge mug of black coffee.

“Breakfast in bed,” Ito said. “Sorry I couldn’t cut off that last phone call. I was busy pouring coffee.”

“There been many other calls?”

“Just newspapers. I told them the show was off and you had no statement to make.”

Johnny finished the orange juice and picked up a fork. “You took the words right out of my mouth,” he said. “That’s what I told the gentleman from the
Post.”

Ito left and Johnny went to work on breakfast, which disappeared rapidly. He carried the coffee out to the living room and sat down.

“How was last night?” he asked.

Ito spread out his hands. “So-so.”

“Is it true what they say about Japanese women?”

“I’d be the last to know,” Ito said. “Is it true what they say about Miss Vernon?”

Johnny gaped.

“She was coming out,” Ito explained, “just as I was coming in. Evidently she and I keep equally late hours. Her self-possession was magnificent. She asked me if the weather was still lousy and I assured her that it was, this being New York. Which made her laugh, for some inscrutable reason. Or is inscrutable an adjective to be applied only to Orientals?”

Johnny chuckled. “By the way,” he said, “how come the breakfast-in-bed-routine?”

“Because I am grateful for the night out.” Ito smiled reminiscently. “A sweet girl. We spoke alternately in English and in Japanese. And do you know what she told me?”

“What?”

“It seems I speak Japanese with a deplorable American accent,” Ito said. “Isn’t that something?” He frowned. “I’ve got to stop dating Japanese girls. They’re good company. But they all look alike to me.”

The day was routine. There was a call from Haig saying that nothing had come up, that they were running down leads and running out of them, that the wheels of police procedure were grinding away like the mills of the gods. Johnny wanted to continue the metaphor to a logical conclusion by pointing out that they were grinding exceedingly small, but he did not have the heart. Haig told him to mind his own business—gently—and to let the police take care of things. Johnny explained that he had no intention of interfering with police work, put the receiver down and took his tongue out of his cheek.

The rest of the day he devoted to paperwork. Correspondence—some of it vital and the bulk of it trivial—had piled up during the past several days. Johnny sat at his desk in his study and paid bills, wrote letters, canceled arrangements and scrawled memos.

Time passed.

It was two-thirty in the afternoon when Ito knocked softly on the door. Johnny let him into the study.

“I didn’t mean to bother you,” Ito said. “There’s a…a young man here. He wants to see you. I don’t think you want to see him.”

“Why?”

“I think he’s insane,” Ito confided. “He seems to have a monumental aversion to soap and water. Perhaps it’s an allergy.”

Johnny grinned.

“And his dialogue is unusual,” Ito said. “He told me I was probably a…a groove at clapping one hand. Whatever that means. His name is—”

“Lennie Schwerner,” Johnny said. “He’s not crazy exactly. He’s a Zen Buddhist.”

Johnny strode past the startled Ito. “Don’t look so alarmed,” he said. “Your country doesn’t have a monopoly on Zen Buddhists anymore. I guess I’d better see him.”

L
ENNIE SCHWERNER WAS IN
the living room. He was sitting in Johnny’s chair and smoking one of Johnny’s cigarettes. His pose indicated that he was imagining the penthouse was his own, and that the prospect pleased him.

“You shook up Ito a little,” Johnny told him. “What’s the bit about clapping one hand?”

“A
koan
,” Schwerner explained.

“Like an ice cream cone? I—”

The kid spelled the word. “A Zen question. You know, like I saw him coming on so Japanese-like and I figure it’s his country so I’ll hit him with a
koan.”
He paused. “I don’t think he was impressed.”

“He was just being inscrutable,” Johnny assured him. “Ito was impressed. How does the
koan
go?”

“We all know the sound of two hands clapping. But what is the sound of one hand clapping?”

Johnny nodded. “Uh-huh. Semantic, sort of. There an answer to go with the question?”

“There are a few,” Schwerner said. “The one I like best says the sound is that silence created by the absence of the second hand.” He paused. “It’s to find new ways of looking at things, I guess. It sharpens your mind.”

“Might make a good title,” Johnny mused.
“Clap One Hand.
Something like that.” He shrugged. “You wanted to see me,” he said. “What’s on your mind? Outside of one-handed applause, that is.”

Lennie put out his cigarette. “I read about this other murder,” he said. His voice sounded younger now. “That actor, Carter Tracy. I saw him in a lot of pictures. When I was a kid I used to groove the war movies—you know, where he was the colonel and they were having dogfights with MIG’s around the Yalu River and he was in love with this married broad.”

“I must have missed it.”

“I saw it seven times,” Lennie said. “Each time it had a different title and a different actress playing the married broad. But it was always good old Carter Tracy as the colonel. Or captain, or major, or something. And now he’s dead.”

Johnny nodded. The kid had something to say and Johnny wondered when he would get around to saying it. Johnny could not afford to listen to old movie plots all day long. At the same time, he did not want to rush Schwerner. He waited.