We left the office together and she tucked her arm through mine with an easy familiarity, as if we had known each other a long time. She kept step with me across the lobby and I wasn’t ashamed to be seen with her. I could feel her pulsing aliveness and the fluid grace of her body.
But not for long.
She gave a sudden start and I felt her stiffen at my side. Then she jerked free and her heels clicked a sharp tattoo on the sidewalk as she steered straight for a man holding up the side of the building. I followed.
“Are you spying on me, Charles?” she demanded acidly. Her eyes were hot and her voice was cold. “When did you come to New York?”
He made a pacifying gesture and smiled affably. “Arrived yesterday, on the same train you did, my sweet.” He flicked his eyes significantly in my direction. “Could I talk to you alone, love?”
“No,” she snapped rudely. “We’re all washed up, Charles. I told you that months ago when I left the bungalow. Besides, I’m busy now. This is my lawyer, Scott Jordan.” She indicated the man with a carelessly deprecating gesture. “My husband, Charles Denney.”
“How do you do,” I said.
“Fine,” he said.
I understood now why he would never be a success in talking pictures. There was nothing wrong with his diction, nor with his charm. He looked like an aging playboy, but he spoke like the head chamberlain in a harem.
Grace Denney said between her teeth, “If you insist upon following me, Charles, I’ll complain to the police. That kind of publicity can hurt your career. Good-bye.”
He tried to detain her. He reached for her arm. She swung around furiously and slapped his face. A red welt blossomed on his cheek. He cried out in a thin womanly bleat and slapped her back. She gasped and looked stunned.
“Here,” I said. “Let’s have no more of that.”
He turned on me, teeth bared. “You stay out of it. She’s my wife.”
A crowd of curious onlookers had begun to collect. I took her elbow firmly and said, “Let’s go, Grace.”
Charles Denney surprised me. He struck out at the point of my jaw, and the sonovagun was in good condition. My head snapped back with a stab of pain. He was begging for it, so I obliged. I grinned wolfishly and aimed one at his stomach. It was a good shot and I felt my fist sink in to the wrist. Denney’s lungs collapsed like a punctured balloon, and the fight went out of him. He leaned against the building, his face pasty.
I turned and walked Grace to the curb and yanked open the door of a waiting cab, got her installed, climbed in beside her, and the driver gave it the gun. His engine roared and we spurted away.
He swiveled his head. “Hey, you ever fight professionally?”
“Golden gloves.”
“Look, buddy, you got a lot of promise in them dukes. I know a manager who can—”
“No soap,” I told him. “I’m perfectly satisfied with my own racket.”
He looked pained. “Okay,” he said. “Where we going?”
“Give him the address, Grace.”
It was all the way down on Park Row, one of those ancient musty seedy buildings that had served its purpose and was marking time until the wreckers pulled it down. Lester Britt had an office on the third floor. The naked-ribbed elevator cage took us up, squealing and groaning on its cables. The hall hadn’t seen a janitor’s mop in months. Grace made a rabbit’s nose and stepped quickly and lightly to a frosted glass door with Britt’s name and the legend: Investigations.
She turned the knob and went in. I was right at her heels when she stopped short and I had to clamp my brakes to keep from knocking her over. She was making sick, gurgling noises and trying to backtrack, but I was in the way. Then she turned and buried her face against my shoulder, clinging to me, trembling along the full length of her body. Another time this might have been a pleasant experience.
Not now. Not with this sight.
Now I could see over her shoulder. I saw Mr. Lester Britt, private eye, seated behind his desk, with a letter opener sticking out of his throat at right angles. The blade had failed to seal his wound. His jugular had spurted like a punctured wine gourd, and the whole front of his vest was sticky and viscous with the blood from his emptied veins.
He was a small man with a round face and a balding head. His eyes were glazed and his lips skinned back, leaving his teeth naked to the gums. I knew the kind of private eye he was. His office and everything about him told me. You can buy them for a dollar a dozen, the divorce specialists, the transom peepers, the deadbeat dicks hounding wage slaves who can’t meet the last installment on a set of Grand Rapids furniture worth exactly ten percent of the sale price. Lester Britt, with a license in his pocket and a tin badge that permitted him to park anywhere he liked, providing he paid the fine. He had taken a job and bucked some customers who were too fast for him. A knife or a bullet or a broken skull, this was bound to happen to him sooner or later.
Grace Denney was still shivering in my arms like a woman suffering from malaria. But she hadn’t screamed and I was thankful for that. “All right,” I said close to her ear. “Let’s get out of here.” I almost had to carry her.
I held her hand in the elevator and it was cold as ice. Our first stop was a bar across the street, a small oasis with booths and checkered tableclothes.
“Two double brandies,” I told the waiter.
“I’ll take the same,” she said.
He gave her a double-take, blinking in surprise, then shrugged and shuffled off to fill the order. I told her to wait and went up front to patronize the telephone booth. I made an anonymous call to Headquarters and hung up. I was in no mood to stick around for a long investigation, trying to convince them I didn’t know the answers to any of their questions.
Back at the table, I said, “You all right, Grace?”
She swallowed hugely and nodded.
“Good,” I said. “Now listen to me. I have a hunch. What happened to Britt is probably the result of handling your case. That’s why he got all worked up when you suddenly appeared at his office yesterday. Chances are he learned something he didn’t want you to know. And I think the explanation can be found at the Vandam Nursing Home. I’m going out there.”
She tossed off the second brandy like an aspirin tablet. It settled her nerves and put some of the color back in her cheeks. “Can I go along?” she asked.
“If you’ll stay in the car and let me handle it.”
She nodded quickly. “Of course.”
I paid the check and we took a cab uptown to the garage and I got out the Buick. We drove across the Queensboro Bridge, heading out towards the South Shore. Grace Denney was silent, her eyes remote, sitting prim and straight, with her hands folded stiffly in her lap and the wind whipping back through her lustrous ebony hair.
At this time of the day traffic was light and the parkway unraveled swiftly under our wheels. Overhead, the sky was clear, a canopy of rich cobalt, and presently I spied a few seagulls wheeling against the horizon and I knew we were approaching the sea. I saw directions and turned off the main artery and drove along a very narrow macadam road. Every now and then a flash of blue water reeled past and the crisp tang of salt was in the air.
This was a choice expanse of realty, with entrenched wealth in fifteen room chateaus, looking out on their own private botanical gardens.
“This is it,” Grace said, stirring at my side.
All I saw was a six foot wall into the top of which had been cemented chunks of broken glass. A pole vaulter might scale the barrier, but the average trespasser would most likely try another route.
“Where’s the entrance?” I asked.