The Renewable Virgin (29 page)

Who said, peevishly, ‘Hold
what
right
where?
For heaven's sake, Marian, put that thing down and stand up! You look ridiculous.'

Slowly I lowered my gun and stood up straight. Kelly, for some reason, was wearing a bedsheet. ‘Why,' I asked, ‘are you wearing a bedsheet?'

‘My clothes are soaked—I'm just trying to get dry. Oh, by the way—it was Leonard Zoff who killed Richard Ormsby. I've got him locked in a closet over there.'

Oh, by the way
. Wasn't that overdoing it a bit?

At that moment Captain Michaels and Ivan Malecki erupted around the other end of the set. They too went into a crouch and they both yelled ‘Freeze!' at exactly the same moment.

‘My goodness, you folks do that a lot, don't you?' Kelly said wonderingly. ‘
And freeze?!
' She turned to me. ‘You really say that?'

‘They do,' I said. ‘I don't.'

Captain Michaels decided that was a good time to have a sneezing fit. Ivan was still in his crouch, his arms stretched out holding his gun and his eyes flickering back and forth. Finally he looked at me.

‘It's secure,' I said. ‘She has him locked in a closet.'

‘In a closet.' He stood up. ‘Where?'

‘Over there,' she flapped a hand vaguely. ‘Some sort of janitor's closet—mops and buckets and things.'

The Captain was finished sneezing. ‘You locked Leonard Zoff in a closet, you say?'

‘Well, he was going to kill me! What else could I do?'

There was this utter silence for the longest moment—and then everyone started talking at once. ‘You could have run away!' Ivan kept saying. ‘You could have called the police! You could have screamed!'

Captain Michaels finally yelled for quiet. He threw up his hands and said, ‘Wonderful. Simply wonderful. Hasn't this been just a
super
day? Not one damned thing has gone the way it was supposed to.' He glared at Kelly.
‘We
were supposed to catch Leonard Zoff, not you. Has
anything
gone right today? Anything at all? What next?'

Suddenly an unexpected weight dropped across my shoulders, causing my knees to buckle. ‘Hiya,' a familiar voice said in my ear. ‘Wha'chall doin'?'

I struggled back up to my normal standing position. ‘Nothing—we're not doing a thing, Nick,' I said, and wished Kelly Ingram would stop laughing.

CHAPTER 22

KELLY INGRAM

Leonard was laughing as he let me up, laughing and smug and a little excited—and careless.

It happened so fast I can truthfully say I didn't
think
about it; there wasn't time. It was all kind of dumb, really, more accident than anything else. Leonard stood up and he was so busy laughing and being pleased with himself that he didn't pay any particular attention to where he was putting his feet. Where he put them was right in that big puddle our dripping clothes had made—the set we were on was supposed to be a gym so there wasn't any carpet on the floor.

So when Leonard stood up he slipped on the wet place and I was half up and half down and Leonard threw one arm out for balance and held on to me with the other and there wasn't time to think, remember, that's important, and from my half-and-half position I kicked out one leg and caught him right behind the knees and Leonard went down and cracked his head an
awful
thump against the floor.

I mean, it was a dreadful sound, I thought I'd killed him. I'm ashamed to say it, but that thought gave me a moment of absolutely exquisite pleasure. I got over that, though, and started worrying about what next. I poked him in the chest a couple of times and he didn't even moan. I felt his wrist for a pulse and found one, so he was just knocked out and not dead. Tie him up! Gag him! Handcuff him to the radiator! All these silly things ran through my head. I didn't have handcuffs
or
a radiator, I couldn't even see anything to tie him up with—it was only a make-believe gym, remember.

I knew there was a place nearby where the janitor kept his cleaning supplies and went looking for it, not easy to do in that dim light. I found it, and it had an old lock with a key in it that nobody ever used anymore, I bet. But when I went back to get Leonard I found I couldn't drag him, he was too heavy. So I thought about it a minute and ended up
rolling
him to the closet. He'd wake up with quite a few bumps and bruises from
that
little journey, heh heh heh. The closet was crowded with buckets and things, and when I got Leonard pushed in his head was turned at what looked like a very uncomfortable angle. He'd have a
terribly
stiff neck when he came to. I hoped.

But what if he woke up with some sort of serious injury? Oh wow, guess who'd be in trouble for that! I remember reading about some mugger who was suing because his victim had fought back and permanently damaged some part of his body, the mugger's body, I don't remember what part. What did the law expect me to do when I came up against somebody who wanted to kill me—scream, faint? I decided I'd better tell the police Leonard just slipped and fell. And he did—that was the truth. I just helped him along a little.

I was shivering—from cold, wet, fear, probably all three. The source of the fear was safely locked away, so now I could do something about the cold and the wet. There were no towels in that make-believe gym, I had to find something else. The sheets on LeFever's bed. I'd just gotten my clothes off and wrapped myself up in a sheet when Marian Larch came flying around the corner of the set and scared me out of my wits all over again.

They'd been following all the time, Marian and Ivan Malecki and Captain Michaels. It was the
police
who were Leonard's blackmailers, of all things, and they'd set something up at the Eastside Terminal that I'd spoiled by waltzing in on, at, around, the middle of, whatever,
hate
sentences like that. But when they all came roaring in to save me and I told them I had Leonard locked in a closet, they didn't exactly act as grateful as I thought they should. Ivan Malecki's eyes sort of glazed over and he stood there like a disconnected robot. Marian and Captain Michaels exchanged a quick glance and then looked away. Marian studied the ceiling while the Captain inspected the floor. Then they turned their backs to each other and stared off in opposite directions for a while. Then they looked at each other again—and suddenly everybody started yelling at
me
.

It was easy for Ivan to say I should have done this, that, the other. He wasn't there, he didn't know what it was like. Good thing I didn't tell them I had assisted Leonard in his fall, then they would
really
have let me have it. Nothing I tried on my own had worked—so when Leonard hits the floor with his head I'm just going to walk away and
leave
him there? Hah, yeah, sure I am, don't hold your breath. I was trying to tell them that when Nick Quinlan wandered on to the set and almost drove poor Marian through the floor with that heavy-armed embrace of his.

Seems he'd been there all along. When his lady heard the noise I was making to attract their attention, she got spooked and ran out on him. So Nick just decided to sack out on the set, on the sofa in the living room part of LeFever's apartment. He'd slept through the whole thing.

Anyhow, we eventually got it all straightened out, even though Ivan kept saying
He fell down and bumped his head?
over and over again in this tone of utter disbelief. Marian gave me an
uh-huh
sort of look but just smiled and didn't say anything. Poor Nick—when Marian told him Leonard had tried to kill me, he didn't believe her.

‘Naw, he dint,' he said. ‘Y'got it wrong summow. 'S bad enough about Nathan.' As if the rules said there could be no more than one rotter among your acquaintances.

‘Where's his gun?' Captain Michaels asked me.

‘Oh—I guess it's still on the gym set. He had it in his hand when he fell.'

‘I'll get it,' Ivan said and left.

‘If it's the same gun that killed Ormsby,' the Captain said, ‘then we've got our case.'

Nick was shaking his head, still having trouble taking it all in. He went off with Captain Michaels to get Leonard out of the closet, no doubt hoping Leonard would have some explanation that would make everything all right again.

Really peculiar thing, I can't explain it, but I was feeling pretty damned good. Yeah, I can too explain it: it was just knowing all that nastiness was over. And there had been a hell of a lot of nastiness, and it had been going on for a long time, ever since Rudy Benedict decided blackmail would help him magically turn into a World-Famous Playwright. No—it started even earlier than that. It started with a young girl named Mary Rendell who had trusted Ted Cameron.

My grandmother had always told me to be careful of the company I kept, and look at the choice specimens I'd ended up with. My lover was a killer. My producer was a blackmailer. My agent was a killer. A friend had tried to be a blackmailer but got himself murdered instead. His mother had tried to be a killer but managed to mess it up royally. The Benedicts weren't cut out to be criminals—but they sure had tried. Nice crowd I'd been running with. But I was through with them now, I was through with all of them.

There were still loose ends dangling that could trip me up. The network would have to find a new producer for my series—as well as for
LeFever
and the other shows Leonard Zoff had ‘inherited' from Nathan Pinking. That meant a delay that would screw up the shooting schedule. It also meant a lot of publicity, publicity of the kind that could so easily turn sour on us this time. There were still hurdles to get over.

But they were all
do
-able things, they weren't the kind of difficulties that made you lie down and pull the covers over your head and not even
try
. The killing and the blackmail and the hatred and the fear and the sheer ugliness of what had happened—
that
was over. It was over, and I felt good that it was over.

And I felt good because now I could think about Ted Cameron without getting a sharp pain in my side and without starting to sweat all over. The Ted Cameron I'd been so hooked on had never really existed; I'd made him up. So I had awakened from my pretty dream to find the real Ted Cameron was only a blank-eyed shadow man who killed people to get what he wanted. His absence would not leave a gaping hole in my life.

Besides, he never danced.

I could hear the men taking Leonard out of the closet where I'd locked him. Marian Larch was seated on the side of LeFever's bed, looking kind of droopy.

‘Hey, what's the matter?' I laughed. ‘You've got a killer in custody—you should be feeling good.'

‘That's not the way it works,' she muttered.

Wow, she was really
down
. ‘Marian? What is it?'

She waved a hand. ‘Don't mind me—I always get like this when we catch a killer. Depresses me.'

I sat down next to her. ‘Some tough cop you are.'

She laughed, a strained little laugh. ‘I know. I'm supposed to be hardened by now.'

‘It really bothers you, huh?'

‘It really bothers me. It bothers me a lot.'

‘Well.' I'd never have expected that—from this cool lady who always knew what to do. ‘Are you sure you're in the right line of work?'

Big sigh. ‘Yes, this is what I want to do. Kelly, don't worry about it—I'll be all right in a day or two.'

‘A
day
or two!' Jeez. ‘That's far too long to stay depressed. So cheer up, starting right now.'

‘Just like that, huh?'

‘You once ordered
me
to cheer up, remember? Not long after I'd learned about Ted—we were in my club, having coffee. You said, “Cheer up, damn it!” Remember that? Well, now it's my turn—so cheer up, damn it.'

She managed a smile. ‘We don't all have your resilience, Kelly.'

‘Hey, you should be cheering me up, not the other way around. After all,
I'm
the one who had four guns pointed at me today, you didn't.'

‘Four
guns?'

‘Four, count 'em, four. First, Leonard's. Second, yours—when you were coming on like Supercop. Then two more, in the hands of Captain Michaels and Ivan Malecki. That makes four unless I've forgotten how to count.'

Marian looked stricken, which I guess was better than looking depressed. ‘I didn't realize—Kelly, I'm sorry. We should have found a better way of handling it.'

Aha, she was thinking about something else, about me, a good sign. ‘Therefore, since you owe me a little cheering up—why don't you come home with me? I can put on some dry clothes and you can put your job aside for a while and we can cheer each other up. How about it?'

But she shook her head and slipped back into the droopy look. ‘Not tonight. But thanks for offering.' Damn, I almost had her.

So I just nodded and said, ‘Sure, you want familiar surroundings, don't you? Very well, then, I accept.'

‘You accept what?'

‘I accept your invitation—to go home with you where you will provide me with a bathrobe and a cup of warm liquid of some sort.'

‘Uh, well—'

‘Come on, Marian, you need company tonight. And I could do with a spot of company myself. What do you do when you get depressed? Sit alone in the dark? Listen to sad music? Eat? A lot of people eat when they get depressed. What do you do?'

She half-moaned, half-laughed. ‘I sit alone in the dark listening to sad music while I eat.'

‘Thought so.' Although I hadn't, really; I was just talking. ‘But tonight we'll turn on every light in the place and tell funny stories and—well, we'll decide about the eating later. I'm getting kind of hungry myself. What do you say? Am I invited?'

She laughed again, and this time it didn't sound strained at all. ‘Kelly, I'm kind of glad you're incorrigible. Of course you're invited. You're always welcome—any time at all.'