“Save my marriage, Mitch,” she pleaded. “Save me. Make love to me.” Her voice was a soft purr now. And she had moved very close to him on the sofa, her hand caressing his chest. “I am way serious.” She took his hand and guided it along her bare leg, her skin like electric velvet to his touch. “And way good.” Now she moved his hand under her shift… up, up, up… there. “And way ready,” she whispered. Which she most definitely was.
Briefly, Mitch could not believe this was happening to him. Utterly amazing. Also utterly out of the question. He snatched his hand away from hers and got up and crossed the room toward the faux fireplace, Mandy’s eyes following him.
“You barely know me,” he said hoarsely.
“I know plenty,” she countered. “I know you’ve got brains. You scored at least fourteen hundred on your SAT exams, am I right?”
“Well, yes, but that doesn’t necessarily equate with-”
“You’re smart. I want someone with smarts. I’m a big, healthy girl, a good athlete, pretty. Between us, we’ve got all the bases covered. Our kid would be great, Mitch. Pure dynamite.”
Mitch cleared his throat, swallowing. “Look, I’m very flattered. And I think you’re incredibly attractive. But there’s something you have to understand about me…”
“What is it?” Mandy wondered anxiously.
“I haven’t slept with anyone since my wife passed away. And when I do-if I do-I want it to be someone who I’m seriously involved with. I want it to be special. Can you understand that?”
She let out a sad laugh and got up and came over to him. “Of course, I do. You’re a romantic. I think that’s wonderful. Quaint and sweet and wonderful. I really do. Only answer me this…” She set her wineglass down on the mantle, then whirled and slapped Mitch across the face as hard as she could, an open-handed blow that stung like fire. “What am I, a goddamned bag lady?! Do you know how gorgeous I am? Do you know, how many men want me? How dare you say no to me?! What are you, some kind of fag?” Now she hurled herself at him, pummeling his chest and shoulders with her fists, kicking him, kneeing him.
The woman was out of control. The woman was totally mad.
Mitch tried to subdue her. He grabbed her by her bare arms, gripping her tightly. They wrestled. They grappled. They fell to the floor with a loud thud, her nails raking his face, an animal snarl coming from deep down in her throat. She was coiled and strong, but he was stronger. And he did outweigh her. And now he had her pinned to the carpet with his body. And as the fight slowly began to seep out of her, her eyes grew softer and her body began to shift and writhe and undulate beneath his, her lips pulling back from her teeth, her breathing becoming shallow and swift. She was, Mitch realized much to his horror, intensely aroused by this. She wanted this.
“God, give it to me right now, Mitch,” she moaned, her arms and legs entwining around him now, clutching him to her. One bare, perfect breast was fully exposed, her breath was hot on his face, her tongue in his ear. “Give it to me!”
Recoiling from her as though she was toxic to the touch, Mitch scrambled to his feet and fled out the door, Mandy screaming curses after him at the top of her lungs. He caught a cab home. His driver didn’t seem to notice-or care-that he was bleeding from his face, neck and hands. His lip was swollen and numb. His shirt was torn. He felt as if he had just been mauled by a tiger. He had. She was a tiger. Also a card-carrying lunatic. And the knife cut both ways-if Bud wasn’t home in bed the night Weems was murdered, then she had no one to vouch for her own whereabouts either. What if she and Niles Seymour had been an item? What if Niles had tried to break it off with her after he took up with Torry? What if Mandy had murdered them both? She did not exactly cope well with rejection, Mitch now felt safe in saying. And she was certainly capable of it. What if Weems found out and had to be done in, too? Mitch could believe it. He could believe all of it.
Mitch took the longest, hottest shower of his entire life when he got home. But he still did not feel clean. He applied antibiotic ointment to his scratches, an ice pack to his lip. He helped himself to a pint of Haagen-Dazs chocolate-chocolate chip. Popped Angels with Dirty Faces into his VCR. Turned off all of the lights in the apartment and sat there in the darkness, watching Cagney trade spunky, crackling barbs with Ann Sheridan.
And, slowly, life began to make sense again. And it was fair and it was just and it was fun. And, for the umpteen-millionth time in his thirty-two-year life, Mitch Berger remembered why they made films and why he loved films and why it was that they purposely had nothing whatsoever to do with real life.
After a while he dug out Lieutenant Mitry’s business card and called her pager number. She got back to him in exactly two minutes, her voice alert and anxious.
“I’m sorry if I woke you up,” Mitch apologized, it being 1:30 in the morning. “But I thought I ought to check in.”
“Not a problem, that’s why I gave you my number,” she responded, her voice partially drowned out by an entire choir of cats meowing in the background. “Sporty, you behave now, girl. No!”
“Just exactly how many cats do you own?” Mitch asked, his words somewhat slurred by his fat lip.
“Not a one. They own me. And if you’re wondering about Clemmie…”
“I’m not. But seeing as how you mention her…”
“When I stopped by this afternoon I found her curled up downstairs in your easy chair. The girl’s just moved right on in. Pretty soon she’ll be making microwave pizza, talking to her girlfriends on the phone… Now what have you got for me? And please, God, make it good.”
“Well, somebody in a green trenchcoat did try to push me onto the subway tracks today.”
She fell silent.
So silent that Mitch said, “Hello…?”
“Where was this?”
“Times Square.”
“Did you report it to the transit police?”
“And say what?”
“What you just said to me.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because whoever it was got away. And no one else saw anything. Who knows, it could have been a random act, some subterranean loon…”
“Uh-hunh,” she said doubtfully.
“Then again, I should also point out that Mandy Havenhurst and I had just parted company a few minutes earlier.”
“You’re saying it could have been her. She. Mandy.”
“Well, yeah,” Mitch acknowledged, fingering his fat lip.
“She was wearing a trenchcoat?”
“Well, no. But she was carrying a good-sized shoulder bag.”
“Um, okay, there’s one other possibility-Bud Havenhurst.”
“What about Bud?”
“He wasn’t around today.”
“She told me she spoke to him on the phone.”
“Maybe she did, but she didn’t speak to him at his office. Or at their house. Because he wasn’t at either one of those places all day. He wasn’t in town, near as I can tell.”
“You think he might have followed me in?”
“Her, more likely-if I know men.”
“Do you?”
“I can check with the conductors on the Shoreliner tomorrow,” she said, deftly slipping his jab.
“What if he drove in?”
“Then he’s very clever,” she admitted. “Are you all right?”
“Why, don’t I sound all right?”
“No, you sound like Elmer Fudd,” she said, stifling a yawn. “Have you been to the dentist or something?”
“No, I’ve just paid a round-trip visit to Mandy’s dark side. She came on to me this evening, big time.”
“And…?” The lieutenant’s voice seemed a degree or two chillier now.
“And I told her I wasn’t interested, right?”
“How would I know? You’re the one telling the story.”
