“You do nothing but yell at me, at the kids; I never know when you are in or out or what the hell you are doing. All I asked was if you wanted cocoa or not, and you.”
“And I have apologized, okay?”
“Then there were those phone calls, who were you yellin’ at on the other end of those?”
“Mac.”
“Who?”
Larry leaned up, and sighed. “Look, it’s tough at the moment, with the accident. I mean, I dunno if I’m on the case or not.”
Susan turned toward him. “But they wouldn’t put someone else on it, would they? I mean, you were the one who found him, why would they do that?”
Larry lay back again. “I dunno... Mac’s an odd bugger.”
Susan cuddled up, hooking her leg over his, and he had that awful feeling that maybe there was a love bite, something of Lola on his body. “I’m knackered, good night.” Susan curled up on her side of the bed again, “good night.” He reached out and patted her back, and she muttered, “Sooner this case is over and done with the better. Good night.”
“Good night.” He lay awake until he heard Susan’s breathing deepen as she fell asleep. The warmth of her body next to him made him think of Lola.
He couldn’t stop thinking of her, wanting her, but he knew he had better not see her again, ever.
18
Von Joel’s shorn hair looked lopsided and rather strange, and a few bruises were still visible on his face, but for a man who had been through major trauma and had only just come out of the hospital, he looked remarkably fit. As his handcuffs were unclocked he ran his gaze around the seedy bedroom. He sighed quietly as the police officer pocketed the cuffs and left him. As a comedown this place was spectacular. It was not simply seedy and scruffy and terminally downbeat; it was dirty. The rug was colorless with ingrained dirt, there was dirt on the window ledge and walls, he could smell dirt when he inhaled. The light in the room came from a single weak bulb coated with a film of dirt. McKinnes appeared at the doorway. He held up a sheet of paper. “Where’s Jackson?” Von Joel asked. “Your pal Min ton says he wasn’t on the robbery. He’s don’t an alibi. Same one he had last time.” Von Joel delicately pinched the skin between his eyebrows with his forefinger and thumb. He looked at his narrow bed with weary eyes. “His word against mine,” he said.
“Oy, look at me.” McKinnes came into the room. “I’m not here to play games, Eddie. You’ve got more, I need more.”
“And I’ve got a headache.”
McKinnes considered the situation. It was Saturday night. It was settling-in time. On top of that, all things considered, the prisoner couldn’t be feeling too grand. McKinnes decided he would go easy until they got down to the organized, on-the-record questioning first thing Monday morning. From then on there would be no kid gloves, no cotton wool. One way or another, easy or the hard way, Mr. Smartarse would come up with the goods.
“Sweet dreams, Eddie.” McKinnes walked out of the bedroom. Von Joel glanced at his bags, made a face as he sniffed the air again. He went to the window and peered out past the curtain. There was nothing to see through the streaky grime. He dropped the curtain back in place and turned to the door again, frowning. He knew the set-up had been radically changed, too radically, and he would bet not all of the changes were visible yet.
“Where’s Jackson?” he whispered.
Larry had nursed his wrath for the entire weekend. He brought it to the Hyde Park Hotel fresh and still simmering on Monday afternoon, after hanging around the station all morning trying, without any luck, to get a word with McKinnes. He drummed his fingers on the desk as the receptionist called Suite 340.
“It’s ringing, sir.”
Staying mad had been easy. The kids had played merry hell with his nerves and Susan had managed to say and do all the wrong things, over and over, in every permutation. Disruption and aggravation had been piled on his brooding. The brooding itself had been bad enough; isolation from the case had begun to give him a degree of unrest amounting to actual pain. All weekend, every time he thought of what had been done to him at St. John’s Row, he wanted to yell. He wanted to lash out and hit something and pretend he had smashed the hairy vindictive kisser of Jimmy McKinnes.
There had been no corner of peace for Larry. Home was a bear garden, a noise-pit with the kids yelling and banging and Susan alternately squeaking and whining. Whenever he tried retreating into himself, thinking of his breakthrough night with Lola, the sexual jolt was short-circuited by the recollection of her malicious antics on the phone. All in all, the weekend had been undiluted misery, and now he wanted to share some of that.
“You can go right up, sir.”
He hadn’t rehearsed what he would say to Lola, he knew it would come out under its own steam and at the right pace; all he had to do was aim it. Leaving the lift he strode along the passage and knocked on the door hard, twice. He tensed himself.
The door clicked and swung open. He saw Lola walking away from him. She was barefoot, wearing a silk robe, her hips swaying like a voluptuous metronome to the pulse of the music pouring from the stereo unit. It was turned up full blast, a recording of Caruso that Larry had heard before, blaring through the bedroom wall at the safe house.
He followed her into the sitting room, slamming the door behind him. Lola stopped in front of the stereo, gazing down at it, swaying, her arms wrapped around her tight little body. “Listen to him,” she said without turning. “Listen to the way he reaches the high notes with such softness. It’s magic. Pure magic. The decrescendo to pianissimo on the final B flat — oh, Pavarotti and Domingo can’t touch him...”
Larry was furious. He had been ready to explode all over her and she had deliberately pulled this defusing tactic. He leaned forward and hit the stop button on the tape deck. He spun Lola to face him and held up a warning finger to her face.
“You don’t call my home. Ever. You hear me?”
For one beat she stared, wide-eyed, then she flew at him. Her left fist cracked on his ear and her right hand delivered a stinging slap to his right cheek. He reeled back.
“If it wasn’t for you,” she screeched, “he wouldn’t be locked up! It’s all your fault!”
“I...” Larry blinked at her, rubbing his cheek. “I just don’t understand you—”
“But I understand you, Larry.” The tightness of anger vanished from her face. Her eyes softened as she stepped closer to him. “I know what you came here for.” She took his hand. “Well? You want it?”
With her other hand she undid the sash of her robe. It fell open. Larry tried not to stare. Her body was a compact miracle. She stood with her hips thrust forward, the smooth line of her belly drawing his gaze to the compelling darkness at the junction of her thighs.
There was a sound behind the bedroom door. Larry looked at it, looked at Lola, then strode across the room. He twisted the handle and threw open the bedroom door. Charlotte Lampton lay on the bed. She was naked.
“Hi,” she said, smiling, her hand coming up from the far side of the bed with a bottle of champagne. “Want a drink?”
Lola turned on the Caruso tape again. She crept up behind Larry and put her arm around his shoulder.
“If you orgasm to Verdi’s B-flat aria in Aida then you will never believe opera is boring. It will give you...”
The rest was a moan as Lola wrapped herself around Larry, her hands sliding over him like small busy animals, her mouth hot with sighs and groans against his ear. Larry tried halfheartedly to extricate himself, his anger completely gone. Embarrassment and discomfort melted toward arousal as Lola fitted herself around him and he watched, over her perfumed hair, as Charlotte stretched out along the bed, still smiling at him.