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I told her I wasn’t thirsty anyway while she leaned away from me. The backs of her knees caught on the edge of the tub and she began to go over with a little yelp, the hostess gown riding high on graceful thighs and parting when the sash began to come loose. I caught her before she could fall and lifted her of! the floor and padded out of the bathroom with her kicking and thrashing but laughing too. The soap had dried and stiffened on my face and was smarting where she’d cut me with the gold-plated razor.

“Gideon, wait. If this is just a joke to you, like what happened at the beach….”

“Shut up, baby.” It was no joke. It was suddenly, devastatingly, wonderfully the sum-total of all that mattered in the world. Karen, with the white-gold hair framing her face and the wheat-colored gown almost matching her skin as it parted further and slipped from her shoulders and left me holding bare skin, smooth as satin but animal warm with a woman scent of perfume and musk….

“Say something nice. Say something nice or I’ll scream.”

She meant it. “It’s crazy, “I told her, “but it’s like things ought to be.”

I dumped her on the bed, a big, oversized job done in what they call Chinese modern. She crouched there on hands and knees, staring at me, ready to leap at me or dart away, I didn’t know which. She crouched there, bronze with two white slashes across her body. “Say something. I’ll make you say something.”

She hurled herself at me, a gouging, kicking, slapping wildcat. She was dead serious. I found myself wrestled over on my back. A knee plowed into my stomach and drove the wind from my lungs. “If this was just a game with you….”

I fought for breath and knew she could handle a lot of men with that feline strength of hers. But when my breath returned I laughed and got my hands under her armpits and threw her off. She tumbled to the floor and was silent. I didn’t even hear her breathing.

I looked at the ceiling and called myself every name in the book. What a way to conduct an investigation, but there it was. “Goddammit, Karen,” I said. “I think I’m falling in love with you.” And I meant it.

A halo of white-blonde hair appeared over the edge of the bed. And then her face and the rest of her in solemn repose now, all the fight gone from her and all the pentup agony which makes the most interesting people live the shortest lives.

It was dark outside by the time we ate dinner.

CHAPTER EIGHT

IF YOU EVER TRIED taking the circuitous subway route from Queens to Coney Island via Manhattan you’ll realize I arrived at my own place pretty late. I had a room in a dubious hotel which held down the corner of Surf Avenue and West 16th Street, two storeys of drab green asbestos shingle with all the dirty yellow windowshades drawn down. On the ground floor below the hotel, supporting the small rooms and dusty hallways, were a shooting gallery and one of those scooter rides. You walk into the hotel and the first thing you see is a blank wall with a hand-lettered sign which says, “upstairs” and an arrow indicating that you do an abrupt column right up a flight of creaking wooden steps.

At the top you find a desk and a row of mail slots and a desk clerk who slept with one eye open. For a small commission he’d get you anything from a bottle of whiskey to a sleeping companion. From the rhythmic squeaking of bed-springs in the hall the desk clerk must have carried on a brisk trade.

I passed the desk and the clerk’s other eye remained shut so I figured he was asleep. I unlocked the door to my room, went inside and began to undress. I stripped down to my undershorts in the semi-darkness, with light and carnival commotion streaming in through the yellow window shade when some female throat-clearing made me turn around.

There was a dark shape in the room’s one chair.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you, Mr. Frey,” the dark shape said. The shape had a voice I recognized. It wasn’t the shape, but the shapeless. It was Becky Lutz.

I put my pants back on and pulled the string for some light from a naked bulb hanging down from the low ceiling.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Frey. I didn’t mean to disturb you or anything. But I had to see you.”

“How did you find me here?”

“Well, I said to myself, Mr. Frey would probably live nearby in a hotel or a boarding house. I kept looking until I found the right one and the nice clerk let me in. I don’t usually do this. I don’t visit strange gentlemen in their bedrooms.” Apparently Becky saved the nagging for Ben. She spoke in such a diffident tone and so formally I half expected her to drop to the floor and salaam. “Whatever you do, Mr. Frey, I hope you do not entertain the wrong idea about me. Ben and me, we’re happily married.”

“Becky, the moment I saw you I knew you were not a loose woman.” I tried to keep from smiling. I was suddenly wide awake, though.

“Mr. Frey, I… I do wish you would put on your shirt.”

I slipped into my shirt but left it unbuttoned. Becky’s eyes roved the room anxiously. They said I was the most virile thing she’d seen since Valentino’s death.

Becky licked her lips nervously. She’d come prepared to barter for whatever she wanted, if necessary. As she leaned forward the low neckline of her print dress revealed a couple of items entirely too large, shapeless and — I guessed — soft. There would be one of those steel-ribbed girdles below the brassiere, also pink, perhaps embroidered with some flowery stitching. It kept Becky tucked in and squeezed the fat into a dumpy but not obese mold.

“Mr. Frey, it’s about my Ben. Ben is a good, hard worker and he’s been at it a long time now. You remember that day you came into the bar for the first time? You looked like such a gentleman. Right away I knew from the polite questions and the way you smiled so courteously. I’m a good judge of that, Mr. Frey. I forget your first name.”

“It’s Gideon.”

“Everybody’s been talking since you came here. You can’t hide those things, you know. Everybody is saying that Mr. Frey is either the letter writer or he’s working for the letter writer.”

“The letter writer,” I said. This was a new one. “Well, I won’t deny it in front of someone as astute as you, Becky. How are those plans for Blue Mountain Lake coming?”

“That’s just it. I came to see you about Blue Mountain, Lake, Gideon. We need more money. My Ben is only scared a little. We should take vacations like to Blue Mountain Lake and live out in Forest Hills someplace. I only want what’s good for Ben. A good legman you need? That Vito Lucca is a baby, all wet behind the ears yet. Let my Ben take over the legwork.”

“Well,” I said, wishing I knew what we were talking about, and wanting to give the impression I did. “Vito is a younger man.”

“But my Ben has the contacts. For that you would be willing to pay more money, wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe,” I said. “How does Vito feel about all this?”

“Vito? A baby! We will leave Vito out of it.”

I got up off the bed and listened to the springs creak. I placed my hand on Becky’s shoulder, big and flesh-padded, and felt her shiver. “I’ll think about it,” I said. “We like our people to come out and say what they’re thinking. Incidentally, does Ben have the necessary transportation?” It was a hunch. I’d run into Vito with an unmarked panel truck and a suspicious attitude.

“You mean a truck? I didn’t know Vito owned his truck. I thought you gave it to him. Ben could use the same truck. He’s a more careful driver, too.”

“It’s a good point,” I said. “Does Ben know you know what we’re doing over at Tolliver’s?”

“Certainly my Ben knows. He keeps no secrets from me. I keep no secrets from him, except little ones.”

Maybe Becky would have gone right on talking, I don’t know. Unfortunately, a bed spring began creaking overhead in the top floor of the hotel. They were in earnest, those two upstairs, and one or both of them must have been well-stuffed. Becky mopped sweat off her face with a gayly colored handkerchief. She lumbered toward the door mumbling something about it being later than she thought and Ben would worry.