fall bigger than the one he would have taken in life.
Torrence never got the three million. He never gave a damn about it in the first place. All breaking up that robbery did was earn him prestige and some political titles. It was his first step into the big-time and he made it himself. He put everybody’s life on the block including his own and swung it. I wondered what plans he had made for Sally if she hadn’t nipped into him first. In fact, marrying her was even a good deal for him. It gave him a chance to keep her under wraps and lay the groundwork for a murder.
Hell, if I could check back that far with accuracy I knew what I would find. Sim paid the house upstate a visit, found Annette Lee asleep and Sally in a dead drunk. He simply dragged her out into the winter night and the weather did the rest. He couldn’t have done anything with the kid right then without starting an investigation. Sally would have been a tragic accident; the kid too meant trouble.
So he waited. Like a good father, which added to his political image, he adopted her into his house. When it was not expedient for him to have her around any longer he arranged for her execution through Levitt. He sure was a lousy planner there. Levitt talked too much. Enough to die before he could do the job.
In one way Sue forced her own near-death with her crazy behavior. Whatever she couldn’t get out of her mind were the things her mother told her repeatedly in her drunken moods. It had an effect all right. She made it clear to Sim that he was going to have to kill her if he didn’t want her shooting her mouth off.
Sim would have known who The Snake was. Sally had referred to him by that often enough. No wonder he ducked it at the trial. No wonder it seared him silly when Sue kept insisting her mother left something for her to read. No wonder he searched her things. That last time in Sue’s little house was one of desperation. He knew that sooner or later something would come to light and if it happened he was politically dead, which to him was death
But somebody made a mistake. There was a bigger snake loose than Torrence ever was. There was a snake with three million bucks buried in its hole and that could be the worst kind of snake of all. Hell, Sim wasn’t a snake at all. He was a goddamn worm.
I folded the letter and put it back in my pocket when the bell rang. When I opened the door Velda folded into my arms like a big cat, kicked it shut with her heel, and buried her face against my neck.
“You big slob,” she said.
While she made coffee I told her about it, taking her right through from the beginning. She read the letter twice, getting the full implication of it all.
“Does Pat know all this?”
“Not yet. He’d better take first things first.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Call Art Rickerby.”
I picked the unlisted number out of memory and got Art on the phone. It took a full thirty minutes to rehash the entire situation, but he listened patiently, letting me get it across. It was the political side of it he was more concerned with at the moment, realizing what propaganda ammunition the other side could use against us.
One thing about truth . . . let it shine and you were all right. It was the lies that could hurt you. But there were ways of letting the truth come out so as to nullify the awkward side of it and this was what the striped-pants boys were for.
Art said he’d get into it right away, but only because of my standing as a representative of the agency he was part of.
I said, “Where do I go from here, Art?”
“Now who’s going to tell you, big man?”
“It isn’t over yet.”
“It’s never over, Mike. When this is over there will be something else.”
“There will be some big heat coming my way. I’d hate to lose my pretty little ticket. It’s all I have.”
He was silent for a moment, then he said, “I’ll let you in on a confidence. There are people here who like you. We can’t all operate the same way. Put a football player on the diamond and he’d never get around the bases. A baseball player in the middle of a pileup would never get up. You’ve never been a total unknown and now that you’re back, stay back. When we need you, we’ll yell. Meanwhile nobody’s going to pick up your ticket as long as you stay clean enough. I didn’t say legal . . . I said clean. One day we’ll talk some more about this, but not now. You do what you have to do. Just remember that everybody’s watching so make it good.”
“Great, all I have to do is stay alive.”
“Well, if you do get knocked off, let me repeat a favorite old saying of yours,
He hung up and left me staring at the phone. I grinned, then put it down and started to laugh. Velda said, “What’s so funny?”
“I don’t know,” I told her. “It’s just funny. Grebb and Charlie Force are going to come at me like tigers when this is over to get my official status changed and if I can make it work they don’t have a chance.”
That big, beautiful thing walked over next to me and slid her arms around my waist and said, “They never did have a chance. You’re the tiger, man.”
I turned around slowly and ran my hands under her sweater, up the warm flesh of her back. She pulled herself closer to me so that every curve of hers matched my own and her breasts became rigid against my chest.
There was a tenderness to her mouth that was only at the beginning, then her lips parted with a gentle searching motion and her tongue flicked at mine with the wordless gestures of love. Somehow the couch was behind us and we sank down on it together. There was no restraint at all, simply the knowledge that it was going to happen here and now at our own time and choosing.
No fumbling motions. Each move was deliberate, inviting, provoking the thing we both wanted so badly. Very slowly there was a release from the clothes that covered us, each in his own way doing what he wanted to do. I kissed her neck, uncovered her shoulders, and ran my mouth along them. When my hands cradled her breasts and caressed them they quivered at my touch, nuzzling my palms for more like a hungry animal.
Her stomach swelled gently against my fingers as I explored her, making her breath come in short, hard gasps. But even then there was no passiveness in her. She was as alive as I was, as demanding and as anxious. Her eyes told me of all the love she had for so long and the dreams she had had of its fulfillment.
The fiery contact of living flesh against living flesh was almost too much to stand and we had gone too far to refuse the demand any longer. She was mine and I was hers and we had to belong to each other.
But it didn’t happen that way.
The doorbell rang like some damn screaming banshee and the suddenness of it wiped the
“When will it be, Mike?”
“Someday, kitten.”
Before I could leave she grabbed my hand. “Make it happen.”
“I will. Go get your clothes on.”
The bell rang again, longer this time, and I heard Pat’s voice calling out in the hall.
I yelled, “All right, damn it, hold on a minute.”
He didn’t take his finger off the bell until I had opened the door.
“I was on the phone,” I explained. “Come on in.”
There were four others with him, all men I had seen around the precinct. Two I knew from the old days and nodded to them. The others went through a handshake.
“Velda here?”
“Inside, why?”
“She was down asking questions around the party headquarters. They want an explanation. Charlie Force is pushing everybody around on this.”
“So sit down and I’ll explain.”
Velda came out as they were pulling up chairs, met the officers and perched on the arm of the couch next to me. I laid it out for Pat to save him the time of digging himself, supplied him with Velda’s notes and the names of the persons she spoke to, and wrapped it up with Art’s little speech to me.
