The Topless Tulip Caper

I put an arm around her and she sort of settled in against my shoulder. I gave her shoulder a squeeze and took her hand with my other hand.

“Who do you think did it, Chip?”

“I don’t know.”

“Could it have been Andy?”

“I suppose it could have been anybody. How did he get on with Cherry?”

“I’m not even sure they ever met. Where would he get hold of poison? Where would he get a key to my apartment? I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I.”

“I’m just so confused.”

She snuggled closer and I got a healthy lungful of her perfume. It was all I needed. I mean, the whole scene was beginning to get a little strange. I was playing a kind of comforting Big Brother role, which was weird in that she was not only older than me but bigger. And at the same time she was turning me on something terrible, and it shouldn’t have been that way because the scene itself wasn’t fundamentally sexual, but go tell yourself that when you’re turned on. I looked down at her body and remembered what it looked like with no clothes on it, dancing merrily away on the stage at Treasure Chest, and then I closed my eyes because the sight of her was doing things to me, and having my eyes shut didn’t really help at all because I could see her just as well with them shut.

“It’s all so rotten,” she said.

I took a breath. “Look,” I said, “I think you’d better go to sleep, Tulip. It’s late and you’re exhausted, we’re both exhausted. Things will look better in the morning.”

“That’s what people always say, isn’t it?”

“Well, I didn’t claim to originate the line.”

“Maybe things will look better in the morning. But will they be any better?”

“Uh.”

“I guess you’re right,” she said. She got to her feet. “Could you show me where my room is?”

I walked her to her room. “Come in for a minute,” she said. “You don’t mind, do you?”

We went into the room. She flicked on a light. Her bed had been opened and Wong had changed the sheets. I hadn’t really had enough time to dirty them.

“It looks comfortable,” she said.

“I’m not sure whether it is or not. I spent a couple hours on it this morning, but I was too tired to notice whether the bed was any good. It probably beats the couch. I slept on that one night before Haig bought the bed and it was like spending a night on the rack. I woke up with my spine in the shape of the letters.”

“Oh, and now you have to sleep on it again because of me! I’m sorry, Chip.”

I used both hands to get my foot out of my mouth. It was a struggle. “Oh, I was exaggerating,” I said, not too convincingly, I think. “It’s not really all that bad. Anyway as tired as I am it won’t make any difference.” I made myself yawn. “See? Can’t keep my eyes open. Well, goodnight, Tulip. Guess I’ll see you in the morning, and in the meantime—”

“Chip?”

“What?”

“Look, we don’t really know each other, and maybe this is silly, and of course I’m probably too old for you and you couldn’t possibly be interested, but—”

“Tulip?”

“Don’t go, Chip.”

It started off being basically closeness and warmth and comfort, and we were both deliriously exhausted, and we drifted gradually into a beautiful lazy kind of lovemaking. Then it stopped being lazy and we stopped being aware that we were all that exhausted, and then we stopped being aware of much of anything, actually, and then, well, it became too good to talk about.

And a while later she said, “I thought it might turn you off. Me being older than you.”

“Oh, sure. You really turned me off, Tulip. That’s what you did, all right. Like a bucket of cold water.”

She giggled. It was a pretty sexy giggle, actually. “Well, I thought it might turn me off, then I was attracted to you, you know, but I’m used to older men. And we were both so tired but I wanted to do it anyway.” She put her hand on my stomach and moved it gradually lower. “You must be really exhausted now,” she said, holding on to me. “Oh.”

“Uh-huh.”

“How did you get so wide awake so fast?”

“It’s one of the advantages of younger men,” I said “We have these incredible recuperative powers. Especially when we’re in bed with somebody like you.”

“How nice,” she said. “But you must be tired.”

“I’m not that tired,” I said.

The last conscious thought I had was that I’d damn well better get from her bed to the couch before I fell asleep. Because Haig would either say something or maintain a diplomatic silence, and one would be as infuriating as the other. I had that thought, all right, but that was as far as it went. The next morning I knew it was morning.

Fourteen

I WAS THE last one awake. I yawned and stretched and reached for Tulip and encountered nothing but air and linen. I yawned some more and got up and put clothes on. They were having breakfast. I slipped out without saying hello, walked the few blocks to my own rooming house, showered and changed clothes and went back to Haig’s. By then they were in the office and the great man was on the telephone. I couldn’t tell who was on the other end of the line or what they were talking about, because all Haig said was “Yes” and “No” and “Indeed” and, at last, “Satisfactory.” For all I could tell he had called the weather bureau and was talking back to the recording.

“There you are,” he said to me. “I thought you’d gone off without instructions. You’ll want to see Mrs. Henderson without further delay. And there are other errands for you as well.”

I got out my notebook.

“I also want your report. Last night, from the time you left for Treasure Chest until your return. Verbatim, please.”

I came as close to verbatim as possible and he listened to it with his feet on the desk. When I’d brought it to the point where I left Danzig at his apartment and hopped a cab home, he took his feet off the desk and leaned forward and frowned at me. “How did Mr. Danzig know where to find you?” he demanded

“I thought about that. Jan Remo.”

“The barmaid.”

I nodded. “She excused herself to go to the bathroom. I don’t think she went to the bathroom. I think she went to the telephone.”

“And called Mr. Danzig.”

“Right. I think she fingered me. That’s the right term, isn’t it?”

“I believe so.”

“Well, I believe she fingered me.” I pictured Jan, the red hair, the feline face, the fishnet stockings, the body stocking filled with just what I’d always wanted far Christmas. “She fingered me,” I said. “I’d like to return the favor.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Just thinking out loud,” I said.

Haig grunted—his way of thinking out loud—and spun around to consider the Rasboras. I looked over at Tulip and she gave me the world’s most solemn wink. I don’t know if I blushed or not. I probably did.

Haig turned around again. “There’s another variable. Rather surprising. You had a telephone call this morning