“For strangers, you mean.”
“Or for people you know.”
“God,” she said. “You mean I have to suspect everybody, is that it?”
“Just about.”
“It’s been hard enough living with Gordie lately. And now to have this on my mind—”
I said, “Look, it’s not my place to say this, but I’ll say it anyway. I agree it’s hard to imagine Gordie involved in such a complicated series of murders. It’s also hard to imagine him involved with you. I mean, I really can’t figure out what you see in a baboon like him.”
She picked up her coffee cup and looked into it for a long time. Then without raising her eyes she said, “Oh, I don’t know exactly. I haven’t had much experience with I men. Before I met Gordie I fell in love with one of the boys in my acting class. He was a completely different type I from Gordie. Very gentle and sensitive.”
“I have a feeling I know how this ends.”
“Of course. He turned out to be gay, which was something I probably should have recognized in the first place. The signs were all there. And it wasn’t as though he did anything to encourage me to fall in love with him. He thought I knew what he was and just wanted to be friends.” She looked up. “I took all of this terribly hard. And I decided that my next man was going to be as heterosexual as possible. Gordie was such a change, he had all this macho strength, and at the time I thought it was what I wanted.”
“I gather you’ve changed your mind since.”
“I know I couldn’t marry him. Or even live with him much longer. Last night after your phone call I was furious with him. He had no right to act that way. I wanted to tell him to leave.”
“What stopped you?”
“I think maybe I’m a little afraid of him. That he would take a punch at me or something.” She managed a lopsided grin. “I’m a lot more afraid of him now than I was last night. After what you told me.”
“Well, don’t act any differently for the time being.”
“I’ll try not to. I can be a pretty good little actress when I have to.”
“And an ornament to the stage. I think we’ll crack the case in the next couple of days. And when all this is over—”
I left the sentence unfinished. I also left Kim’s apartment after a few minutes because otherwise I might have found myself talking about what would happen when all this was over. I couldn’t keep from having thoughts on the subject, but it was pretty silly to voice them at that stage. Premature, Haig would have called it.
I tried Andrea again. “I feel like a secret agent,” she said. “I hoff zee documents.”
“That’s the worst Peter Lorre impression I ever heard, but it’s good news. Can I come over?”
She gave me the address.
Fifteen
She lived in the same building she had occupied as Jessica’s roommate. Not in the penthouse, however, but in a studio apartment on the third floor. She opened the door for me and motioned me inside. “Excuse the place,” she said. “I haven’t had time to buy any furniture that I like. That chair’s not too bad.”
As I was on my way to the chair that wasn’t too bad she asked me if my leg was bothering me.
“Everything’s bothering me,” I said.
“I mean the way you walk. Did you hurt yourself?”
“I didn’t have to. Someone did it for me.”
“Huh?”
“I was beaten up last night. By professionals, I think. They didn’t break any bones or anything like that. They just beat me to a pulp.”
“Oh, God. Take your shirt off.”
“Huh?”
“Take your shirt off and let me see. Christ, they really did a job on you. You’re going to be stiff. Get undressed, Chip.”
“Huh?”
“Take your clothes off and lie down on my bed. I’m serious, dumbbell. The only thing that’s going to do you any good at this point is a massage. You should get a daily massage for the next week, as a matter of fact. Well, you came to the right place. I happen to be a damned good masseuse.”
“I remember.”
“Most of the girls don’t know anything about muscle groups. I took the trouble to take a decent course. Come on, lie down on your stomach. Oh, you poor baby. They really worked you over, didn’t they?”
“Ouch.”
“Your flesh is very tender and I’ll have to hurt you a little, but you’ll feel a lot better afterward. Just trust me and try to relax.”
“Okay.”
She really knew what she was doing. She hurt me a little from time to time, but I could feel a lot of soreness and tension draining away. I began to feel very drowsy, and she had stopped touching me for a while before I realized the absence of her hands.
I asked if we were finished.
“Nope,” she said cheerfully. “I’m taking my clothes off. I work better in the nude. Okay, tiger. Roll over.”
I rolled over and opened my eyes. That long lean body was even nicer than I remembered it.
I said, “I don’t know about this.”
“You don’t have to,” she said. “Just shut up and relax. Does this hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Those rotten bastards. There, that’s better, isn’t it?”
I was beginning to feel a little stirring. You probably don’t find that hard to believe. Her hands were very firm and very gentle, and her body was very beautiful, and she had that nice spicy smell to her skin. When she started touching my thighs with that feathery way she had, I started to sit up. She made me lie down again.
“Hey,” I said.
“Feels nice, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, but I really don’t want to wind up frustrated.”
“That must have been awful the other day. I hated to see you leave like that.”
“I didn’t like it much myself, but I don’t have any money now and I—”
“Who said anything about money, Chip?”
“Huh?”
She grinned wickedly. “Dumbbell. I’m not working now, you jerk. I’m on my own time, and I’m giving you a massage because you can use one. This is just therapy for you, baby. I’m not going to leave you tied up in knots. I’m going to untie knots you never knew you had.”
“Oh.”
“Now you lie still and just enjoy this. I’m going to take my time, and it may seem as though I’m teasing you, but it’ll just make it that much better at the end. You’re going to love this, baby.”
She used her hands and her breasts and her lips and tongue. She found erogenous zones I hadn’t known I had, and at times it did seem as though she was teasing me, and at times I thought I would die if it didn’t end soon, and at times I wanted it to go on forever, and at the very end she turned her sweet mouth into a vacuum cleaner and turned me inside-out.
“Jesus,” I said.
“I told you you were gonna love it.”
“You’re absolutely fantastic.”
“Well, I do this for a living, honey. There’s a lot to be said for professionalism.”
“I guess there is.”
“If I weren’t reasonably competent by now, I’d go into some other line of work. But I don’t get many complaints.”
“You won’t get one from me.”
“Come on,” she said, slapping me lightly on the thigh, “Put some clothes on and I’ll show you what I stole for you. And where do you get off saying I do a lousy impression of Peter Lorre? That wasn’t Peter Lorre. That was Akim Tamiroff, and I do a great Akim Tamiroff.”
There was quite a stack of membership application forms from the two-week period preceding Jessica’s death. Indulgence evidently did a hell of a business, and if all its recreational therapists were like Andrea, I could understand why.