'Yeah, great news. Tomorrow the public gets my picture and another lurid account of how that Hammer character conducts a private war on a public thoroughfare and I'll get an eviction notice from my landlord and a sudden lack of clients.'
Bill laughed and polished his drink off. 'Just the same, it's news. We got some of it from headquarters but we want the story straight from you. Hell, man, look how lucky you are. You get to tell your side of it while the others can't say a word. Come on, give.'
'Sure, I'll give.' I lit up a Lucky and took a deep drag on it. 'I was walking home and . . .'
'Where were you?'
'Movies. So just as I . . .'
'What movie?'
I showed him my teeth in a lopsided grin. That was an easy one. 'Laurance Theatre. Bum show.'
Marty showed me his teeth back. 'What was playing, Mike? He was the only one not ready to take notes.
I started in on as much of the picture as I had seen and he stopped me with his hand. 'That's enough. I saw it myself. Incidentally, have you still got your stub?'
Marty should have been a cop. He knows damn well that most men have an unconscious habit of dropping the things in their pockets. I pulled out an assortment and handed him one. He took it while the other boys watched, wondering what the hell it was all about. He picked up the phone, called the theatre and gave them the number on the ticket, asking if it had been sold that day. They said it had been and Marty hung up sheepishly. I let go my breath, glad that he hadn't asked what time. He wasn't such a good detective after all.
'Go on,' he said.
'That's all. I was coming home when the punks in the car started to blast. I didn't get a look at any of 'em.'
Bill said, 'You on a case now?'
'If I was I wouldn't say so anyhow. What else?'
One of the boys from a tabloid wrinkled his nose at my story. 'Come on, Mike, break down. Nobody took a shot at you without a reason.'
'Look, pal, I have more enemies than I have friends. The kind of enemies I make go around loaded. Take a check on most known criminals and you'll find people who don't like me.'
'In other words, we don't get a story,' Bill said.
'In other words,' I told him, '. . . yes. Want another drink?'
At least that was satisfactory. When they had the bottom of the bottle showing I whistled to stop their jabbering and got them together so I could get in a last word. 'Don't any of you guys try tagging me around hoping for a lead about this. I'm not taking anything without paying it back. If a story crops up I'll let you in on it, meantime stick to chasing ambulances.'
'Aw, Mike.'
'No, 'Aw,' pally. I'm not kidding around about it, so stay out of my way.'
As long as the bottle was empty and I wouldn't give with a yarn, they decided that there wasn't much sense in sticking around. They went out the door in a bunch with Marty trailing along in the rear. He said so-long ruefully, his eyes warning me to be careful.
I spread the slats of the blinds apart and watched them all climb into a beat-up coupe and when I was sure they were gone for the night I took off my clothes and climbed into the shower.
I took a hot and a cold, brushed my teeth, started to put away my tools and the bell rang again. I damned a few things in general and the Fourth Estate in particular for not making sure all the boys were there when they started their inquisition. Probably a lone reporter who got the flash late and wanted to know all about it. I wrapped a towel around my lower half and made wet tracks from the bathroom to the front door.
She stood there in the dim light of the hall not knowing whether to be startled, surprised or shocked. I said, 'Goddamn!'
She smiled hesitantly until I told her to come in and made a quick trip back for a bathrobe. Something had happened to Linda Holbright since the last time I had seen her and I didn't want to stand there in a towel while I found out what it was.
When I got back to the living room she was sitting in the big chair with her coat thrown over the back. This time she didn't have on a sack suit and you knew what was underneath it. It wasn't 'probably nothing' either. It was a whole lot of something that showed and she wasn't making any bones about it. The angles seemed to be gone from her face and her hair was different. Before it was hair. Now it was a smooth wavy mass that trailed across her shoulders. She still wasn't pretty, but a guy didn't give a damn about that when there was a body like hers under her face.
Because of a smile she had gone to a hell of a lot of trouble. She must have taken her one asset to a perfectionist and let him build a dress around it. I think it was a dress. Paint would have done the same thing. There wasn't anything on underneath to spoil the effect and that showed. She was excited as hell and that showed too.
I was thinking that it could be very nice if she had only come a little sooner before I knew that Ethel had told what she had found in my wallet. Linda smiled at me tentatively as I sat down opposite her and lit up a smoke. I smiled back and started thinking again. This time there was a different answer. Maybe they were playing real cute and sent her in for the kicker. Maybe they had figured that their little shooting deal might get messed up and sent her around to get the score on me.
It made nice thinking because that was the way they worked and I didn't feel sorry for her any more. I got up and moved to the couch and told her to come over. I made her a drink and it must have been her first drink because she choked on it.
I kissed her and it must have been her first kiss, but she didn't choke on it. She grabbed me like the devil was inside her, bit me twice on the neck then pushed back to look at me to be sure this was happening to her.
There was no softness to her body. It was tense with the pain that was pleasure, oddly resilient under my hands. She closed her eyes, smothering the leaping fire to glowing coals. She fought to open them halfway and when she saw that I had been burnt by their flame she smiled a twisted smile as if she was laughing at herself.
If she was going to, she should have asked me then. Any woman should know when a man is nothing but a man and when he'll promise or tell anything. I knew all those things too and it didn't do me any good because I was still a man.
She asked nothing. She said, 'This . . . is the first time . . . I ever . . .' and stopped there with the words choking to a hoarse whisper in her throat. She made me feel like a goddam heel. She hadn't known about Ethel's little stunt because she had been too busy getting prettied up for me.
I was going to make her put her coat on and tell her to get the hell out of there and learn more about being a woman before she tried to act like one. I would have done just that until I thought a little further and remembered that she was new to the game and didn't know when to ask the questions but figured on trying anyway. So I didn't say a damn thing.
Her hand did something at her back and the dress that looked like paint peeled off like paint with a deliberate slowness that made me go warm all over.
And she still asked nothing except to be shown how to be a woman.
She wouldn't let me go to the door with her later. She wanted to be part of the darkness and alone. Her feet were a soft whisper against the carpet and the closing of the door an almost inaudible click.
I made myself a drink, had half of it and threw the rest away. I had been right the first time and went back to feeling like a heel. Then it occurred to me that now that she had a little taste of life maybe she'd go out and seek some different company for a change.
I stopped feeling like a heel, made another drink, finished it and went to bed.
The alarm woke me up at six, giving me time to shower and shave before getting dressed. I grabbed a plate of bacon and eggs in a diner around the corner then hopped in my car and drove downtown to pick up Velda. She was standing in front of the building tucked inside a dark gray business suit, holding her coat open with her hand on her hip.
A newsboy was having trouble trying to watch her and hawk his editions too. I pulled in at the curb and
