The faint light from a street lamp poured through a circular window into the balcony and gave her skin a glow, an almost mystical look, like a textured photograph. She sat up in bed and propped her knees up and rested her chin on them, locking her hands around her legs. She stared at him, her smile slight.
“You were wonderful,” she told him. “I... I never felt so much a woman before.” She leaned over and brushed her lips across his cheek.
“You’re a woman all right,” he said. Not entirely true, but she had been a lot less girl than Nolan had expected.
Boredom from the so far sleepless night mixed with the infrequency of sexual activity in his life of late tempted Nolan to go another round with the girl. She’d admitted she wasn’t a virgin, but she’d been close to one, and he didn’t want to press her unduly.
But then her lips were on his chest and her fingers had found their way to his back, where they were digging in. She looked at him, resting her head against his chest, her expression one of sweet shame, asking him if...? He reached his arms around her and covered her mouth with his.
Twenty minutes later Nolan was sitting in the dark smoking, his back against the headboard, his mind adrift. His left arm was around her shoulder, his hand cupping a breast. The other arm rested on the nightstand by the bed, where he’d laid his un-holstered .38. Vicki had floated into sleep a few minutes before, but he remained awake beside her, thinking and smoking, smoking and thinking...
Around three a.m. Vicki awoke suddenly and found Nolan still sitting back against the headboard with the fourth, maybe fifth cigarette tight in his lips. His grey eyes were open, two dead coals in the darkness.
“What’s the matter? What is it? Why are you still up?”
He didn’t look at her. “Have to be leaving soon.”
“Is it getting to be dangerous for you to stay around Chelsey, or what?”
“No, that’s not it... it’s always like that for me. It’s just that I got a feeling there’s nothing here that needs to be found out about Irene Tisor.”
Her hands played with the blanket. “When do you have to leave?”
“Soon, I said.” He had to figure a way to hit the Chelsey operation first — he had to get his hands on this Elliot guy and make his hit for the cash on hand and the hell with Chelsey and Sid Tisor’s dead kid.
“Will I see you again? After you leave Chelsey?”
“Sure.”
“You’re not telling the truth.”
There was no answer to that.
She buried her head in his chest and he felt her tears on his flesh.
He smoothed her hair. It was soft and fragrant. “Don’t pretend to yourself that you want me to stay.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’m one or two nights in your life and that’s all I am. Accept me that way.”
She studied him, her eyes moist. “You know something, Nolan? No, don’t object to me calling you Nolan, you’re not Earl Webb you’re Nolan and in my bed I’ll call you Nolan if I damn well please. I have you pretty well figured out. You walk around like a mobile brick wall. So cold, the ice forms on your shoulders. And you know what you are under all that ice, Nolan?”
“You tell me.”
“You’re all the emotions you despise to show. You’re like that gun over there. You’re a hunk of metal until you get in a demanding situation, then you explode. I’ve been with you only a few hours, but I’ve seen you kick a man in the head and later come out of your motel room looking like you just wrestled a grizzly and won. And I’ve shared my bed with you, and you were tender enough, I guess, but that damn gun of yours remained on the nightstand beside you all the while. Anybody as violent as you, and as passionate, is a fire-bomb of emotion. Now... what do you think about that?”
He was silent for a moment. Then said, “I think you talk too much.”
She laughed her warm laugh and nodded that she guessed he was right and leaned her head against his shoulder.
“You going to stay in Chelsey, Vicki?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I have... have a problem or two that may keep me here.”
“It’s your business,” Nolan shrugged.
She smiled. “I guess you think I was out of line a minute ago with my dimestore psychology. Now here I am keeping secrets from you. But... everybody needs a few secrets.”
“Sure.”
The phone rang.
“Who the hell would call you at this hour?”
“Nobody.”
“You better get it.”
“Are you here, Nolan?”
“Earl Webb is.”
“Okay...”
“Careful,” he told her. “Too goddamn late for a phone call. It’s going to mean something, whatever it is.”
“Even a wrong number?” She laughed.
“Answer it before they give up.”
She climbed out of bed and threw a filmy negligee over her creamy-white skin. She flew down the spiral staircase that connected the balcony to the living room and grabbed up the phone, which was on the bar in the kitchenette. Upstairs, Nolan leaned back and took a cigarette from the half-empty pack and popped it into his mouth.
From below, her voice came, “It’s for you, Earl.”
He got out of bed, slipped into his pants and shoes and went down the spiral staircase, taking his .38 with him.
“This is Webb.”
“This is George, George Franco...”
“What do you want, George? A little late for you to be up, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I know it’s late, Mr. Nolan...”
“Webb.”
“Sorry, Mr. Webb... but I have to talk to you!”
“About what?”
“I can help you take Elliot down.”
There was a hesitation at Franco’s end.
“What’s wrong, George?”
“Just a second, Nolan, I mean Webb, the door, I think my girl friend might be back. Jus’ a second.”
There was silence and Nolan looked at Vicki and said, “Think he’s been into the cooking sherry again.”
She smiled in confusion and Nolan half-grinned and the receiver coughed the sound of a gun-shot.
Nolan dropped the receiver as if it were molten and ran out the door and down the steps to street level. He wasn’t wearing a jacket — just a T-shirt — and the cold air hit him like a pail of water.
From the doorway above Vicki called down, “Nolan... what are you doing...?”
“Wait here,” he said. “Somebody just got shot. Stay put, don’t let anybody in but me.”
“But...”
“Shut the door and wait, Vicki,” he told her, wheeling around to face the deserted courthouse square, marked only by a few scattered parked cars whose owners lived in apartments over stores. Down the street a light was on in George’s penthouse above the Berry Drug.
Nolan ran to the corner, turned and slowed into the alley. He kept the .38 in front of him and made sure the alley was empty. Then he jumped up and pulled down the fire escape and climbed to where he had used his glass cutter to get in the day before. He elbowed the cardboard patch and it gave way easily. He slipped in his hand, unlocked the window and crawled into the apartment.
There was no one inside except George, and he was over by the door, dead, his head cracked like a bloody egg.
The killer had used a .45, Nolan thought, or possibly a .38 at close range. Plugged George right square in the forehead with it. Effective. Not particularly original, but effective.
The killer hadn’t bothered to hang up the phone, which was making the loud noises the Bell people use to persuade you to hang the damn thing up. Nolan slipped it onto the hook and heard sounds coming from the drug store below.
He climbed back out the window and down the ’scape and dropped silently to the ground. Cautiously he made his way around to the front of the store, wondering if the killer had made his way out yet.