You carry the kid inside, looking for a place to set her down, and she comes around long enough to say: Second floor? Thus, with questions, she guides you up the circular balustrade and down the chandeliered hall to her bedroom, which is itself bigger than most houses you’ve been in, with winking starlights on the ceiling, her bed the size of your efficiency flop. You drop her on it and she says: Jammies? Second drawer?
I’ve got you this far, sweetheart. You’re on your own.
Please. .?
WHEN YOU FIRST SET OUT YOUR SHINGLE, YOU IMAGined being involved in exotic complicated crimes, having to solve them with your wits, do the hero act when things got rough, walk away from the praise after, lighting up a smoke, but in fact you were mostly hired to tail adulterous spouses and get the goods on them. You knew less about sex than you knew about sleuthing, but you soon figured out what the goods were and got them. You were not so much a private eye as an eyer of privates. Your university days. You were good at it, but even so, your clients looked down their noses at you. You were a kid and they had grown-up problems, thought they did. So you were naturally flattered to meet someone who wanted your services and looked up to you, an affectionate little sex kitten a few years your junior, ignorant of the private detective racket and willing to pay whatever you asked. And a more interesting case, too: a missing person. Her sister.
She was afraid of her parents, believing they might have had something to do with her sister’s disappearance and worried something like it might happen to her, but they were off traveling somewhere, so she was able to take you home with her to show you some photos, her sister’s diary, a glove of which the mate was missing, her sister’s perfume, her underwear, anything that might help you locate the missing girl. She told you, rather breathlessly, everything she could remember about her sister, and especially the days just before she disappeared, and, taking your hand, gazing up at you adoringly, led you room by room through the family manor according to the thread of her story. Which had to do with a row her sister supposedly had just before her parents left on their previously unannounced travels. Vague threats. You weren’t sure if the story she was telling you held together, but solving the case was no longer foremost on your mind. You just liked to hear her talk and to feel her innocent little body rubbing up against yours. Also innocent. Was the missing sister alive or dead, and, if dead, who killed her and why? You didn’t really care. Maybe her sister was not really missing and this was just a ruse to lure you here to get laid. This was the theory you favored. So when she proposed a cooling-off late-night dip in the pool, you tucked your pencil behind your ear and flashing the insouciant smile you’d been practicing in front of your mirror, said, Sure, kid, why not?
She led you out to the pool and took off her clothes and, since you were a tad slow off the mark, helped you out of yours. Did you consider the possibility that, if the sister was dead and the parents got sent to the chair for murder or failed to survive their travels, she’d inherit the family fortune? Maybe in the back of your mind, you did, but women’s pubic hair was still fairly new to you and most of your attention was focused on that. That and the slightly embarrassing evidence of your throbbing excitement. She took hold of it as she might a pump handle, triggering instant convulsions, and then, with a mischievous grin, gave it and you, laughing giddily, a push into the pool. She’s great! you were thinking as you went under. This is fun! But then you glimpsed something at the bottom of the pool that shouldn’t be there: a naked girl’s body. You dove down to it, worked the weights off the neck and ankles, and, gasping for breath, hauled her, still soft and warm, to the surface. Which was when you met Blue, then just a rookie cop in homicide, eager to show his stuff and win his merit badges. He was standing at the edge of the pool along with another eight to ten of his grinning pals with automatic rifles aimed at your head, the sex kitten in her pajamas and bathrobe weeping somewhere in the background.
You’d been in some rough street fights, but you hadn’t taken a real beating before then. Blue was nothing if not thorough. There was little of you left ignored. Coshes, fists, nightsticks, rubber hose, boots. Some of it while blindfolded, some not. Your further education. Principles of Getting Fucked Over 101. Through it all you stuck by your story because it was the only story you had. C’mon, Noir, he barked, slapping you up one side of the head, then slapping you up the other. We caught you stark naked hugging the corpus delicti. You’re a fucking necrophiliac. What more is there to know? That I’m a private detective, that I got hired by that kid to find her missing sister, that she was the one who pushed me into the pool, and that when I saw the dead girl I dove down and brought her up. I figure the kid killed her and needed a fallguy. You’re a goddamned liar, Noir. You’re gonna get the chair for this. Lie detector tests were the thing in those days. You passed with flying colors. But then so did the sex kitten. Blue never believed you, has never been able to forgive you for spoiling his first big case, still thinks of you as a pervert and a killer and maybe worse if there is worse.
SO YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER. YOU DO KNOW BETTER. Just the same (this kitten’s soft pleading voice, sweet milky aroma, her damp bunnies — what can you do?), you pull off her shoes and socks, her skirt, go get the pajamas. More bunnies, matching her underpants. When you peel them off her, her hand falls between her thighs like it’s always been there, and she whimpers softly. Even her whimpers are questions. You ask where her parents are while unbuttoning her blouse.
My father’s dead. My stepmother killed him. And she’s going to kill me.
Typical teenage fantasy, especially when they’re doped up and feeling sorry for themselves. Off comes the blouse. No bra. A pause to take in the sights.
She opens her eyes to watch you watching her, though they cross with her dopey sleepiness and she closes them again. Can you protect me?
I can’t protect anyone right now, kitten. I’m in deep shit and have to save my own ass first. You sound like Skipper’s parrot. You used to talk only to cops and gangsters that way. Now everybody gets the same treatment. You get her pajama top on over her curly head, but she hugs the pants like a security blanket.
Please? I’m so afraid? Stay with me? Just tonight?
You’ve never taken advantage of dolls in distress; on the other hand, if they want to take advantage of you, your resistance is low. There’s a whiskey bottle on her vanity. You pour a water glass full, savoring it as though it might be your last, thank her for it, hang your fedora on the neck of it, commence to strip down. The.45’s missing. Must have left it in the street when you bumped into her. You decide to leave your trenchcoat, jacket, shirt and tie on, studs in place, in case you have to make a quick exit. The sort of exit any sane man would be making right now.
Thanks? For—? she murmurs. I don’t drink whiskey? She opens her eyes blearily and sees your blond pubes, starts giggling. It’s so cute—?
It’ll grow out, you grumble, and stretch out beside her, well aware that you might be crawling into bed with a deranged killer. Well, the thrills. It’s what I’m in this game for, right? you inquire of the starscaped ceiling, and, stretching out under it, you replace the hand between her legs with your own.