I won money at the poker game that night. We played at Ed Hart’s place in a downstairs game room similar to Murray’s. I wound up eighty bucks ahead, mostly by honest play with a few assists from sleight-of-hand. The cheating, such as it was, was almost automatic. Like the palmed-off five spot at the lunch counter a week or so earlier. That sort of habit is a hard one to break. I played fairly well and the cards ran my way, so even without a little of the best of it I would have cleared fifty bucks or so. The cheating was worth the extra thirty to me.
Saturday I slept late, soaked in a tub, cracked a fresh fifth of scotch, drove around town aimlessly, took Barb to dinner. We wound up going to a movie, finally. I held her hand through the show, and now and then she gave me a little squeeze.
Would I hold hands with Joyce? No, of course not. We might leave the movie in a hurry and find a hotel room. We might watch the movie all the way through without any contact at all. But we would never sit holding hands in a theater balcony.
We were too damned hip for that.
After the show I suggested going some place and drinking. Barb said she had scotch at her place. “The seats are comfortable and the privacy can’t be beat,” she said. “And the prices are eminently reasonable, Bill.”
So at her house we sat on her couch and drank her scotch out of coffee mugs because she couldn’t find appropriate glasses. We pretended it was Prohibition and we were in a subtle speakeasy. She did a terrible imitation of Walter Winchell announcing The Untouchables, and I poured fresh scotch into our cups, and we put Ella Fitzgerald records on the player.
I don’t remember who suggested dancing. We wound up giving it a whirl. I held her a little closer than necessary and clomped around ponderously and tried to remember how long it had been since I’d done any dancing. That had been a big thing with Carole before we had been married. After the marriage had ended I didn’t have anyone to dance with. A card sharp doesn’t take his girls dancing or dance with them in a living room. He lets them lose his money on the dogs or the horses, takes them to hip parties or clip-joint nightclubs, and once in their apartments he beds them down as soon as possible. But I was dancing with Barbara now, and I was enjoying it.
I kept enjoying it more. Barb’s cheek stayed next to mine. Her perfume was subtle but distinctive, a fresh, cutely sexy scent. I held her close and felt her breasts press against my chest. My arm was around her waist. Somewhere along the way my arm moved a few inches lower and pressed her flanks. They were marvelous. I drew her close and felt the warmth of her loins. She began breathing a little harder. I kissed her and she purred.
We continued dancing. I stroked her and she danced with delicious little hip motions that racked her loins against mine and had the right effect on both of us. I wanted her with a sweet tender ache that improved as it developed. There was no urgency, just the sure feeling that sooner or later the record would end and I would have this girl and she would be divine.
The record ended. The player shut itself off. I still held her and I still stroked her and she still made those delicious movements with her delicious hips, but we were not dancing any more. We slipped into her bedroom, and we took off all our clothes and put them neatly aside, and we rolled into bed.
Her flesh was sweet and yielding. We took a long time loving each other. I touched all of her body, marveling over her beauty, and each caress pitched her passion higher. I kissed her breasts, teased them with my tongue. I found her with my fingers and she shivered and quivered and surged with delight.
I sought her and found her and we were together and she moaned and she held me. We rocked together and the whole earth sang.
Afterward Barbara cried a little, giggled a little, said that maybe she was a call girl after all, then cried some more. I drew her close and told her that everything was all right. She rolled on to her side, supporting her weight on an elbow, and looked at me.
“It’s been so long,” she said
“Barb—”
“So very long…”
I returned to my apartment and took a bottle to bed with me. The next day I didn’t do much of anything. I spoke to a few people on the phone—Barb, Joyce, Sy Daniels. I put in an appearance at the Glade and wound up spending the night there. Early Monday morning I left, changed clothes at my apartment, and went to the office.
It was a dull day. Then it was night, and time to work.
I stuck around the Black Sand office until Murray left. Then I carried the three onionskin copies upstairs to his office and tucked them away in a file drawer under M for Milani. I made it out of there on the double and dropped the duplicate key into a sewer. I didn’t need it anymore.
After dinner I headed for my room at the Glade and waited for the desk clerk to go across the street and return. He made the trip every evening around eight—ducked across to the Silver Dollar and had a shot and a beer, sometimes a few extra shots if he felt like it. He was a quickie drinker, but it still took him fifteen or twenty minutes and the desk was untended during that time. This time he left at five to eight and stayed away for half an hour.
Murray was home alone. Joyce had taken the younger daughter shopping and the older one had a date.
When the clerk was back behind the desk everything was ready. I rolled up my left sleeve, took a penknife from my pocket, killed the germs on the blade with my cigarette lighter flame and made a good gash halfway up my forearm. It took me three tries before I could force myself to make the cut. I sprang a capillary or two and started bleeding. I bled on the bed, dripped beads of blood onto the floor. After a few seconds I opened up a band-aid and slapped it on the cut.
Then I took a pair of hundreds from my wallet. I opened up the dresser drawer, dropped the bills on top of a flashy sport shirt and left the drawer open. After the way I had flashed money at the clerk, robbery might look like a possible motive. With money lying around like this, the cops could cross robbery off their list.
I flipped the hat on the floor, caved in the crown with my foot. I dropped the drugstore eyeglasses and stepped on them hard enough to break both lenses. I put the frames in a pocket for the time being.
My arm was beginning to throb a little. I gave a check to see if the cut were bleeding through the band-aid. No blood.
There was a glass ashtray on the little table next to the bed. I knocked it to the floor. The damned thing bounced around crazily without breaking and wound up somewhere under the bed. I dug out the receptacle and tried again. It shattered.
I picked the phone off the hook, set it down. The desk clerk started babbling hello at nobody in particular. There was a fifty-nine cent cap pistol in my pocket, a recent purchase from a notions store. I took out the pistol and squeezed the trigger. It made a nice noise, left a gunpowder smell hanging in the air. Then I picked up the telephone, and the voice I used was Murray Rogers.
“It’s nothing,” I said. “Just knocked the phone off the hook, that’s all. Forget it.”
I hung up before he could think it over. In a minute or two, if he had half a brain, he would put two and two together and deliver the desired five. I took a quick breath, then tugged the pillowcase off the pillow the management had stuck at the head of the bed. I used the pillowcase to wipe up some of the blood from the floor. Then I threw open the window and dropped down into the courtyard.
I had the pillowcase in a pocket, the hat and eyeglass frames in one hand. I tossed the hat to the ground, flipped the frames near it. The next step hurt like hell. I yanked off the band-aid, opened up the cut on my forearm and left a trail of blood leading away from the window toward the rear of the courtyard. Then I re-fastened the band-aid over the gash and took off my jacket and dragged it along the ground for twenty or thirty yards. I put on the jacket again and got the hell out of there. I didn’t run. I walked quickly to the back of the courtyard and out through the driveway. So far as I could determine, nobody had observed me.