The Consummata

Time to get her back on track. “What was it that turned Richard Best into a corpse?”

“Broken neck. He got slugged with something. His cash, watch and ring were gone, and his place turned inside out. He lived in an apartment, nothing fancy. Lived there and died there.”

“Still, he must have had enough worth killing for.”

Bunny kicked her shoes off and put her feet up on the coffee table. “Morgan, anybody who has anything is worth killing for these days. That area where he lived—two robberies and a mugging in the past three months. Damn. World’s losing its moral compass, don’t you think?”

All whorehouse madams were philosophers.

I asked, “Ever have a regular patron turn up dead before, Bunny?”

She gave me sideways look laced with a tight smile. “Come on, Morgan. Anybody who makes a whorehouse a regular stop is some kind of target for somebody. I’ve seen familiar faces in the news one day and the obits the next.” Again she shuddered, and sipped beer. “It’s just that I don’t like to get called in to identify bodies.”

That tight little feeling was running up my spine again. I could sense it running across my shoulders and bunching up into my neck.

“I don’t like it, Bunny. With what we’ve been up to, having a stiff turn up for you to identify?...I don’t like it at all.”

“You think I do?”

I leaned back in the softness of the couch; it tried to soothe me, but it didn’t work. “Think you can find anything else out about this particular corpse—Richard Best?”

“Like how?” she asked suspiciously.

“Surely you have friends on the department.”

“Me and the fuzz don’t exactly socialize.”

“I didn’t ask if you socialized with them. You’re friendly with somebody or you wouldn’t be open for business. Somebody picks up a monthly envelope of green stuff. Or is it weekly?”

She reached for a package of Virginia Slims on the coffee table, selected one, lighted it up with a silver decorative lighter, and blew the smoke at the ceiling.

Reluctantly, she said, “Okay...so I know a few people.”

I gestured with an open hand. “You could show a sign of interest in the dead guy. I mean, they already know he was a client, so you go around and say ol’ Dick Best was a good, even beloved patron of the Mandor arts, much missed by all the girls. Then offer up a cheap burial if nobody claims the body.”

She smirked in quiet disgust. “Yeah? Then what?”

“Make a simple inquiry. I’d like to know what the autopsy report shows.”

“Damn it, Morgan! You...”

“Yes or no?”

Something in my voice stopped her, made her look at me closely a few seconds, then she said, “Okay, I’ve been a chump before.” She dragged on the cigarette again. Shook her head. “I don’t know why the hell I’m doing this.”

“I do,” I said.

“Really?”

“Sure. You’re a nosy old broad.”

This time her grin was quick and open. She looked me up and down with a friendly, salacious gaze. “I’m not that old, Morgan. I think I could still teach you a thing or two.”

“If I had the time, doll, I wouldn’t mind learning.”

Her forehead crinkled. “Time? Where the hell are you off to now?”

I got to my feet. “Why, a whorehouse, Bunny. Not just any whorehouse, either—an elegant place called the Mandor Club with a secret back entrance into a lovely doll’s private boudoir.”

“Gaita doesn’t come cheap,” she said. “Takes real dough to buy a night with her.”

I gave her my biggest grin. “Hell, kid—she offered it to me free the last time.”

She blinked at me in astonishment. “And, what? You’re going back for seconds?”

“Naw. I turned her down. I’m saving myself for you.”

She was still laughing when I closed the door on her.

I didn’t bother with the elevator. I took the stairs and paused at the bend by the landing. One corner of the building partially obscured the entryway, and if the doorman was standing in his area, I sure couldn’t see him.

At this hour, with nothing much to do, there was a good chance our man in uniform was sacked out somewhere, and I was ready to make an unhurried exit when I got that funny feeling up my back again, and held still.

The foyer was a mini-lobby that had been laid out like a blunt T, with a stairwell to either wing going up from the end of the arms, the self-service elevator in the middle facing the entry doors. When I had come in, the doorman had been sent to the storage closet at the other end, and at that time the overhead lights had been on. Now only my end was illuminated, and the other side was too deep in shadow to tell if anyone was there.

Somebody had a trap all set and waiting.

Very slowly, I edged back up the stairs to the next floor, walked the length of the corridor to the other wing, and went down the metal-and-tile stairs without making any sound at all. I snaked the .45 out, balanced it in my hand, held it under my arm to thumb the hammer back so no click would be audible, then crouched down in the shadows and stepped around the bend.

He was there, all right, his back partially toward me, a dark silhouette with a long-barreled, silencer-tipped gun dangling from his hand. I only stood there a second, knowing he hadn’t heard me, but when I saw a tiny involuntary twitch, I knew he had felt me there like an animal would, and I took two quick steps forward as he spun, and I kicked the gun out of his hand.

The weapon made a metallic clunk on the floor, but didn’t discharge, as its owner reacted like a cat, flipping sideways in a roll, a sharp hiss spitting between his teeth. He either didn’t see the gun in my hand or didn’t expect me to have one, because his hand whipped inside his coat, came out with a blade and he uncoiled from the floor like a spring in a lunge toward my chest and I laid the .45 across his ear as I sidestepped and he twisted and went down with a funny whistling sound and lay there jerking a few times before he made a soft sigh and went limp.

I waited a moment, then flipped him over with my foot.

The knife meant for me was hilt-deep in his chest, his fingers still gripped in a deathlock around the handle.

It only took a second to locate the doorman.

He was huddled in the storage closet, an ugly red and blue welt across his forehead. He was alive, but unconscious, and was going to stay that way a few hours. He was in no particular need of first aid and I didn’t give him any.

Instead, I went back out into the foyer, listened intently, while the quiet hung over the place like a blanket. The whole thing had been almost noiseless anyway.

I checked the dead man.

There was no wallet on him and his clothes were nondescript enough to make label identification impossible. He had sixty dollars in bills in a side pocket, but had been professional enough not to carry change, keys or anything else that might rattle. I put him in his middle forties, but from his features I couldn’t tag his national origin. He had enough of a tan to have been in the area a while, and the one hand that still clutched the hilt of the knife was soft enough to indicate he didn’t do any manual labor. He might have been Latin, but I couldn’t be sure.

I’d thought this might be Halaquez himself, and was relieved it wasn’t—I wouldn’t have minded that evil bastard being dead, of course, but I really did hope to find the money he’d stolen from my Cuban friends first.

Whoever he was, I added his bills to my own roll, found the gun I had kicked out of his hand and looked at it in the light. It was a Spanish-made job in beautiful shape except for where the serial numbers had been filed off. I stuck it in my belt, stood up and listened again. Still quiet.

From the call board in the foyer, I pushed in Bunny’s number, told her to get down in a hurry with her car keys and to take the stairs, and went back into the shadows and waited, hoping the apartment building didn’t have any late arrivals.