One Night Stands And Lost Weekends Part 31

"Probably," I said. "It's hardly a sure thing, though. She was a blackmailer, and there's a law against that sort of thing, but she's in a position to turn state's evidence and help them nail the lid on Zucker and his buddies. And, as she said, she never killed anyone. Only tried."

I shrugged. "And she's a girl. A pretty one. That still makes a difference in any case where you have trial by jury. The worst she can look forward to is a fairly light sentence. She could even get off clean, if she has an expensive lawyer."

"Like Phil Carr?"

"Like him, but not Carr. He won't be practicing much law anymore. He'll be in jail for everything the D.A. can make stick. And Zucker will stand trial, too."

I'D CALLED SHARON A DAY OR TWO after the whole thing was wrapped up, and after she had cooled off from the broken-date routine. And, over our steaks, I had filled her in on most of the story. Not all of it, of course. She got the expurgated version. You never tell one girl about the bedroom games you played with another girl. It's not chivalrous. It's not even especially intelligent. after the whole thing was wrapped up, and after she had cooled off from the broken-date routine. And, over our steaks, I had filled her in on most of the story. Not all of it, of course. She got the expurgated version. You never tell one girl about the bedroom games you played with another girl. It's not chivalrous. It's not even especially intelligent.

"I guess I forgive you," she said.

"For what?"

"For breaking our date, silly. Brother, was I mad at you! You didn't sound like a man with business on his mind, not when you called me. You sounded like a man who had just crawled out of bed with someone pretty. And I was steaming."

I looked away. h.e.l.l, I thought. When I called her I had had just crawled out of bed with something pretty. But I didn't know you could tell over the phone. just crawled out of bed with something pretty. But I didn't know you could tell over the phone.

"Ed?"

I looked up.

"Where do you want to go after dinner?"

"A little club somewhere on the East Side," I said. "We'll listen to atonal jazz and drink a little too much."

She said it sounded good. It did. We would listen to atonal jazz and drink a little too much, and then we would go back to her place for a nightcap. She wouldn't be a secretive blackmailer with a closet full of dynamite. She would just be a soft warm girl, and that was enough.

There might be explosions. But dynamite wouldn't cause them, and I wouldn't mind them at all.

STAG PARTY GIRL.

ONE.

Harold Merriman pushed his chair back and stood up, drink in hand. "Gentlemen," he said solemnly, "to all the wives we love so well. May they continue to belong to us body and soul." He paused theatrically, "And to their husbands-may they never find out!"

There was scattered laughter, most of it lost in the general hubbub. I had a gla.s.s of cognac on the table in front of me. I took a sip and looked at Mark Donahue. If he was nervous, it didn't show. He looked like any man who was getting married in the morning-which is nervous enough, I suppose. He didn't look like someone threatened with murder.

Phil Abeles-short, intense, brittle-voiced-stood. He started to read a sheaf of fake telegrams. "Mark," he intoned, "don't panic-marriage is the best life for a man. Signed, Tommy Manville"...He read more telegrams. Some funny, some mildly obscene, some dull.

We were in an upstairs dining room at McGraw's, a venerable steakhouse in the East Forties. About a dozen of us. There was Mark Donahue, literally getting married in the morning, Sunday, tying the nuptial knot at 10:30. Also Harold Merriman, Phil Abeles, Ray Powell, Joe Conn, Jack Harris, and a few others whose names I couldn't remember, all fellow wage slaves with Donahue at Darcy & Bates, one of Madison Avenue's rising young ad agencies.

And there was me. Ed London, private cop, the man at the party who didn't belong. I was just a hired hand. It was my job to get Donahue to the church on time, and alive.

On Wednesday, Mark Donahue had come to my apartment. He cabbed over on a long lunch hour that coincided with the time I rolled out of bed. We sat in my living room. I was rumpled and ugly in a moth-eaten bathrobe. He was fresh and trim in a Tripler suit and expensive shoes. I drowned my sorrows with coffee while he told me his problems.

"I think I need a bodyguard," he said.

In the storybooks and the movies, I show him the door at this point. I explain belligerently that I don't do divorce or bodyguard work or handle corporation investigations-that I only rescue stacked blondes and play modern-day Robin Hood. That's in the storybooks. I don't play that way. I have an apartment in an East Side brownstone and I eat in good restaurants and drink expensive cognac. If you can pay my fee, friend, you can buy me.

I asked him what it was all about.

"I'm getting married Sunday morning," he said.

"Congratulations."

"Thanks." He looked at the floor. "I'm marrying a...a very fine girl. Her name is Lynn Farwell."

I waited.

"There was another girl I...used to see. A model, more or less. Karen Price."

"And?"

"She doesn't want me to get married."

"So?"

He fumbled for a cigarette. "She's been calling me," he said. "I was...well, fairly deeply involved with her. I never planned to marry her. I'm sure she knew that."

"But you were sleeping with her?"

"That's right."

"And now you're marrying someone else."

He sighed at me. "It's not as though I ruined the girl," he said. "She's...well, not a tramp, exactly, but close to it. She's been around, London."

"So what's the problem?"

"I've been getting phone calls from her. Unpleasant ones, I'm afraid. She's told me that I'm not going to marry Lynn. That she'll see me dead first."

"And you think she'll try to kill you?"

"I don't know."

"That kind of threat is common, you know. It doesn't usually lead to murder."

He nodded hurriedly. "I know that," he said. "I'm not terribly afraid she'll kill me. I just want to make sure she doesn't throw a monkey wrench into the wedding. Lynn comes from an excellent family. Long Island, society, money. Her parents wouldn't appreciate a scene."

"Probably not."

He forced a little laugh. "And there's always a chance that she really may try to kill me," he said. "I'd like to avoid that." I told him it was an understandable desire. "So I want a bodyguard. From now until the wedding. Four days. Will you take the job?"

I told him my fee ran a hundred a day plus expenses. This didn't faze him. He gave me $300 for a retainer, and I had a client and he had a bodyguard.

From then on I stuck to him like perspiration.

Sat.u.r.day, a little after noon, he got a phone call. We were playing two-handed pinochle in his living room. He was winning. The phone rang and he answered it. I only heard his end of the conversation. He went a little white and sputtered; then he stood for a long moment with the phone in his hand, and finally slammed the receiver on the hook and turned to me.

"Karen," he said, ashen. "She's going to kill me."

I didn't say anything. I watched the color come back into his face, saw the horror recede. He came up smiling. "I'm not really scared," he said.

"Good."

"Nothing's going to happen," he added. "Maybe it's her idea of a joke...maybe she's just being b.i.t.c.hy. But nothing's going to happen."

He didn't entirely believe it. But I had to give him credit.

I don't know who invented the bachelor dinner, or why he bothered. I've been to a few of them. Dirty jokes, dirty movies, dirty toasts, a lineup with a local wh.o.r.e-maybe I would appreciate them if I were married. But for a bachelor who makes out there is nothing duller than a bachelor dinner.

This one was par for the course. The steaks were good and there was a lot to drink, which was definitely on the plus side. The men busy making a.s.ses of themselves were not friends of mine, and that was also on the plus side-it kept me from getting embarra.s.sed for them. But the jokes were still unfunny and the voices too drunkenly loud.

I looked at my watch. "Eleven-thirty," I said to Donahue. "How much longer do you think this'll go on?"

"Maybe half an hour."

"And then ten hours until the wedding. Your ordeal's just about over, Mark."

"And you can relax and spend your fee."

"Uh-huh."

"I'm glad I hired you," he said. "You haven't had to do anything, but I'm glad anyway." He grinned. "I carry life insurance, too. But that doesn't mean I'm going to die. And you've even been good company, Ed. Thanks."

I started to search for an appropriate answer. Phil Abeles saved me. He was standing up again, pounding on the table with his fist and shouting for everyone to be quiet. They let him shout for a while, then quieted down.

"And now the grand finale," Phil announced wickedly. "The part I know you've all been waiting for."

"The part Mark's been waiting for," someone said lewdly.

"Mark better watch this," someone else added. "He has to learn about women so that Lynn isn't disappointed."

More feeble lines, one after the other. Phil Abeles pounded for order again and got it. "Lights," he shouted.

The lights went out. The private dining room looked like a blackout in a coal mine.

"Music!"

Somewhere, a record player went on. The record was "The Stripper," played by David Rose's orchestra.

"Action!"

A spotlight illuminated the pair of doors at the far end of the room. The doors opened. Two bored waiters wheeled in a large table on rollers. There was a cardboard cake on top of the table and, obviously, a girl inside the cake. Somebody made a joke about Mark cutting himself a piece. Someone else said they wanted to put a piece of this particular wedding cake under their pillow. "On the pillow would be better," a voice corrected.

The two bored waiters wheeled the cake into position and left.

The doors closed. The spotlight stayed on the cake and the stripper music swelled.

There were two or three more lame jokes. Then the chatter died. Everyone seemed to be watching the cake. The music grew louder, deeper, fuller. The record stopped suddenly and another-Mendelssohn's "Wedding March"-took its place.

Someone shouted, "Here comes the bride!"

And she leaped out of the cake like a nymph from the sea.

She was naked and beautiful. She sprang through the paper cake, arms wide, face filled with a lipstick smile. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were full and firm and her nipples had been reddened with lipstick.

Then, just as everyone was breathlessly silent, just as her arms spread and her lips parted and her eyes widened slightly, the whole room exploded like Hiros.h.i.+ma. We found out later that it was only a .38. It sounded more like a howitzer.

She clapped both hands to a spot between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Blood spurted forth like a flower opening. She gave a small gasp, swayed forward, then dipped backward and fell.

Lights went on. I raced forward. Her head was touching the floor and her legs were propped on what remained of the paper cake. Her eyes were open. But she was horribly dead.

And then I heard Mark Donahue next to me, his voice shrill. "Oh, no!" he murmured. "...It's Karen, it's Karen!"

I felt for a pulse; there was no point to it. There was a bullet in her heart.

Karen Price was dead.

TWO.

Lieutenant Jerry Gunther got the call. He brought a clutch of Homicide men who went around measuring things, studying the position of the body, shooting off a h.e.l.l of a lot of flashbulbs, and taking statements. Jerry piloted me into a corner and started pumping.

I gave him the whole story, starting with Wednesday and ending with Sat.u.r.day. He let me go all the way through once, then went over everything two or three times.

"Your client Donahue doesn't look too good," he said.

"You think he killed the girl?"

"That's the way it reads."