John D. MacDonald
Bedside Murder
Chapter I
He made me want to laugh. If my case of the jumps hadn’t been so bad, I would have laughed. Maybe he could have been at ease and charming with college girls. He had a face he could have used to be charming with. One of those Mephistopheles faces, but young and nice around the eyes. Crinkly. It was flattering the way he acted as though I were Helen of Troy, just hurled into his lap.
I had to repeat my name twice before it got by the glaze in his brown eyes. He stuck two fingers under the knot in his necktie and pulled it.
“Ah, yes,” he said hoarsely. “Henrietta Ryan.” He pretended as though it meant something. The name couldn’t possibly have meant a thing to him.
The office was new and dean and small. Kimberly Hale, Attorney-at-Law. No girl. I guessed he used the public stenographer whose sign I had seen in the lobby of the musty old office building on Fortieth.
I had no appointment I hadn’t even phoned. When you have the jumps as bad as I had them, you don’t consider the niceties. I sat in the chair he made the aimless gesture at.
“My friends call me Hank,” I said.
He stared at me as though I were Truman and had just asked him to call me Harry. “I’m Kim,” he said weakly.
Maybe he wouldn’t have had such an extreme reaction to Harry. In my business I’m forced to be spectacular. Nature helped by giving me soft silver hair and smoke-gray eyes — and a figure that I have inadvertently overheard described in words no lady would repeat. I further the illusion with the right clothes and a sunlamp that gives me a tan the color of warm honey.
He stared at me, popped up and adjusted the blinds behind his desk to keep the light out of my eyes. I took my cigarettes out of the red lizard purse and he scampered around the desk with a lighter, banging his leg heartily against one of the desk corners. After he sat opposite me, he pulled himself together again, squared his shoulders.
“What is your trouble, Miss Ryan?”
I puffed a fat and perfect smoke ring which looped nicely over his pen on the desk set.
“Somebody is trying to kill me,” I said. “I’d like to assure a — certain degree of failure on their part.”
The remains of the smoke ring flattened out against the top of his desk in an expanding gray pool. There was a frantic note in his voice.
“People just don’t come into law offices with that sort of thing,” he said. “What’s the matter with the police?”
“I think the police are fine. In fact, my father was a cop.”
“Then you better tell them about this. I... I wouldn’t know what to do.”
He was becoming a shade brusque. I relaxed in his uncomfortable visitors’ chair, arching my back just the smallest bit. As his eyes began to glaze, I lowered my head, looked at him through the small thicket of eyelashes and smiled.
“Maybe you’d like to hear about it?” I asked.
He tried to say he did and he didn’t, at one and the same time.
“I thought of going to the police,” I said, “and I thought of going to some reliable detective agency. But I don’t want an obvious bodyguard. I’m afraid my unknown friend is a little too clever to be stopped by such a move. I have friends who would help me, but I prefer a stranger.”
“Did... did someone mention me?” he asked.
“I found your name in the book. How busy are you?”
He regained his dignity. “Quite busy. I have some estate work and... and... quite a bit of estate work.”
I unclipped the purse again, took out one of the five new bills I had picked up at the bank an hour before. A five hundred dollar bill. I put it neatly on the corner of his desk, smiled at him again.
“Shall we call that a retainer?” I said.
He stood up suddenly, turned to the window and shoved his hands in his pockets. When he turned back there was no shade of expression on his face.
“I’m afraid, Miss Ryan, that I’d rather not get into this sort of thing. I’m sure the police would—”
It wasn’t an act on my part. The tears were just there. You can fight something for just so long, and then it’s too much. They rolled down my cheeks and I knew my mouth was trembling. I couldn’t look at him. He handed me a big, white, crisp handkerchief and made small soothing sounds.
After I had blotted up the tears, I looked up. He was sitting on the edge of the desk.
“Suppose you tell me about it,” he said softly.
“My professional name is Laura Lynn,” I said.
His eyes widened. “Some quality in your voice, the huskiness—”
I smiled through the remnants of tears. “It isn’t natural. When I was thirteen I was playing football with the kids on the block and got kicked in the throat.”
“All women ought to be kicked in the throat,” he said warmly, then caught himself. “Ah — you’re singing at the Staccato Club now, aren’t you?”
“Yes, backed up by Sonny Rice and his band. I’ve been there six months and, according to Sam Lescott, the owner, I’ll be there another six. I make recordings on the side, do some guest spot work in radio and so on.”
“What makes you think someone is trying to kill you?” he asked, frowning.
I caught the faint tone of disbelief in his voice. I dug in my purse, handed him the bit of paper. He unwrapped it, stared at the small object.
“A bullet!”
“I live in an apartment in the Village,” I said. “There is a fire escape outside my window. It came through the window one night on a short visit. I dug it out of the plaster.”
He shrugged. “Maybe it wasn’t meant for you.”
“The curtain was scorched. Whoever fired the gun stood on the fire escape.”
He shrugged again. “Some sort of a practical joke.”
I stood up so quickly it startled him. I unbuttoned the coat of my navy suit, drew the blouse up out of my skirt, exposing a tan tummy. I pointed a shaking finger at the faint red streak two inches long just below my ribs.
“Big joke,” I said. “Ha, ha!”
He stared at the red mark and then his eyes roamed away from it and he began to perspire. I hurriedly tucked the blouse back into the top of my skirt. His nice crinkly eyes were narrowed.
“Who would want to kill you?”
“Are you going to take the case?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Become the current boyfriend,” I said. “Take me around places. Keep your eyes open. I’ll pay all expenses and give you whatever you ask.”
For the first time he really smiled. “Mother forgot to mention that some days would be like this,” he said. “All this and money too!”
“You understand, Kim Hale, that this is purely a business arrangement,” I said coldly.
He sobered at once. “Of course. Of course.”
“Just exactly how busy are you?”
He glanced over at the crisp bill. “That money, Hank, will keep the men from coming and taking away the furniture.”
“Do they do that to lawyers?”
“Especially to lawyers. I trust you’re not thinking of me in terms of a bodyguard. I’m not — in practice for that sort of thing. I can use a gun, and I have both the gun and the permit to carry it because sometimes I have to carry negotiable securities around. Should I wear it?”
“I’d feel better if you would, but I didn’t expect you to.”
He picked up the bill, glanced at his watch. “Now, then,” he said, “I’m working for you, Hank. Give me the rest of the story. Whom do you suspect? What other attempts have been made?”
“I’ll tell you about the other attempts. That bullet was fired at me four nights ago at four o’clock in the morning. A week ago I was crossing Madison at Forty-second. The crowd was thick. I was in the front rank waiting for the traffic to thin out. I like to hurry across whenever there’s an open space between cars. I saw room enough between two cabs. Just as I moved ahead, somebody tripped me. I went flat on my face and it was so close that the right front tire of the taxi smashed my hat and ran over my hair.”