Ethel didn't have anything on. Only her shoes. She kicked them off too and sunk to the softness of the bearskin, a beautiful naked creature of soft round flesh and lustrous hair that changed color with each leap of the vivid red flame behind her.
It was much too warm then for a jacket. I heard mine hit a chair and slide off. My wallet fell out of the pocket and I didn't care. The sling on my gun rack wouldn't come loose and I broke it.
She shouldn't have done it. Damn it, she shouldn't have done it! I wanted to ask her some questions.
Now I forgot what I wanted to ask her.
My fingers hurt and she didn't care. Her lips were bright red, wet. They parted slowly and her tongue flicked out over her teeth inviting me to come closer. Her mouth was a hungry thing demanding to be tasted. The warmth that seemed to come from the flames was a radiation that flowed from the sleek length of her legs and nestled in the hollow of her stomach a moment before rising over the convex beauty of her breasts. She held her arms out invitingly and took me in them.
Chapter Five
I came awake with the dawn, my throat dry and my mind groping to make sense out of what had happened. Ethel was still there, lying curled on her side up against me. Sometime during the night the fire had gone down and she had, gotten up to get a blanket and throw it over us.
Somehow I got to my feet without waking her up. I pulled on my clothes, found my gun sling and my jacket on the floor. I remembered my wallet and felt around for it, getting mad when I didn't find it. I sat on the arm of the sofa and shook my head to clear out the spiders. Bending over didn't do me much good. The next time I used my foot and scooped it out from under the end table where I must have kicked it in getting dressed.
Ethel Brighton was asleep and smiling when I left. It was a good night, but not at all what I had come for. She giggled and wrapped her arms around the blankets. Maybe Ethel would quit being mad at the world now.
I climbed into my raincoat and walked out, looking up once at the sky overhead. The clouds had closed in again, but they were thinner and it was warmer than it had been.
It took twenty minutes to reach the highway and I had to wait another twenty before a truck came along and gave me a lift into town. I treated him to breakfast and we talked about the war. He agreed that it hadn't been a bad war. He had gotten nicked too, and it gave him a good excuse to cop a day off now and then.
I called Pat about ten o'clock. He gave me a fast hello, then: 'Can you come up, Mike? I have something interesting.'
'About last night?'
'That's right.'
'I'll be up in five minutes. Stick around.'
Headquarters was right up the street and I stepped it up. The D.A. was coming out of the building again. This time he didn't see me. When I rapped on Pat's door he yelled to come in and I pushed the knob.
Pat said, 'Where the hell have you been?' He was grinning.
'No place.' I grinned back.
'If what I suspect goes on between you and Velda, then you better get that lipstick off your face and shave.'
'That bad?'
'I can smell whisky from here too.'
'Velda won't like that,' I said.
'No dame in love with a dope does,' Pat laughed. 'Park it, Mike. I have news for you.' He opened his desk drawer and hauled out a large manila envelope that had CONFIDENTIAL printed across the back.
When he was draped across the arm of the chair he handed a fingerprint photostat to me. 'I took these off the corpse last night.'
'You don't waste time, pal.'
'Couldn't afford to.' He dug in the envelope and brought out a three-page document that was clipped together. It had a hospital masthead I didn't catch because Pat turned it over and showed me the fingerprints on the back. 'These are Oscar Deamer's too. This is his medical case history that Lee was holding.'
I didn't need to be an expert to see that they matched. 'Same guy all right,' I remarked.
'No doubt about it. Want to look at the report?'
'Ah, I couldn't wade through all that medical baloney. What's it say?'
'In brief, that Oscar Deamer was a dangerous neurotic, paranoiac and a few other psychiatric big words.'
'Congenital?'
Pat saw what I was thinking. 'No, as a matter of fact. So rest easy that no family insanity could be passed on to Lee. It seems that Oscar had an accident when he was a child. A serious skull fracture that somehow led to his condition.'
'Any repercussions? Papers get any of it?' I handed the sheets back to Pat and he tucked them away.
'None at all, luckily. We were on tenterhooks for a while, but none of the newsboys connected the names. There was one fortunate aspect to the death of Oscar . . . his face wasn't recognizable. If the reporters had seen him there wouldn't have been a chance of covering up, and would some politicians like to have gotten that!'
I pulled a Lucky from my pack and tapped it on the arm of the chair. 'What was the medical examiner's opinion?'
'Hell, suicide without a doubt. Oscar got scared, that's all. He tried to run knowing he was trapped. I guess he knew he'd go back to the sanitarium if he was caught . . . if he didn't stand a murder trial for Moffit's murder, and he couldn't take it.'
Pat snapped his lighter open and fired my butt. 'I guess that washes it up then,' I said.
'For us . . . yes. For you, no.'
I raised my eyebrows and looked at him quizzically.
'I saw Lee before I came to work. He called,' Pat explained. 'When he spoke to Oscar over the phone Oscar hinted at something. He seems to think that Oscar might have done other things than try to have him identified for a murder he didn't do. Anyway, I told him you had some unusual interest in the whole affair that you didn't want to speak about, even to me. He quizzed me about you, I told all and now he wants to see you.'
'I'm to run down anything left behind?'
'I imagine so. At any rate, you'll get a fat fee out of it instead of kicking around for free.'
'I don't mind. I'm on vacation anyway.'
'Nuts. Stop handing me the same old thing. Think of something different. I'd give a lot to know what you have on your mind.'
'You sure would, Pat.' Perhaps it was the way I said it. Pat went into a piece of police steel. The cords in his neck stuck out like little fingers and his lips were just a straight, thin line.
'I've never known you to hang your hat on anything but murder, Mike.'
'True, ain't it.' My voice was flat as his.
'Mike, after the way I've been pitching with you,
'I won't get smeared.'
'Mike, you bastard, you have a murder tucked away somewhere.'
'Sure, two of 'em. Try again.'
He let his eyes relax and forced a grin. 'If there were any recent kills on the pad I'd go over them one by one and scour your hide until you told me which one it was.'
'You mean,' I said sarcastically, 'that the Finest haven't got one single unsolved murder on their hands?'
Pat got red and squirmed. 'Not recently.'
'What about that laddie you hauled out of the drink?'
He scowled as he remembered. 'Oh, that gang job. Body still unidentified and we're tracking down his dental work. No prints on file.'
'Think you'll tag him?'
