As the elevator doors closed, Maxwell Baxter wheeled around to regard Sheila. There was accusation in his eyes.
Sheila didn’t like dealing with Uncle Max, but she could do it. She handled him the way she handled all men, by being cute and witty and adorable, by kidding him along with light irony and gentle sarcasm.
Still, she always hated to take the initiative, especially under that steely gaze.
But she had to, so she did.
“Uncle Max-” she began.
He cut her off with a voice as cold as ice. “How much?”
Sheila smiled, one of her most adorable smiles. “Uncle Max, don’t be like that.”
“How much?”
“A hundred.”
“For what?”
“Rent.”
“It’s the middle of the month.”
“I’m late.”
Maxwell Baxter turned and walked back into the living room. Sheila followed behind. He sat down on the couch, arranged himself comfortably, and assumed what Sheila well knew was his lecturing pose.
“You know,” he said, “a girl your age needs something more than just acting. Do you know how many unemployed actresses there are in New York City?”
Sheila sat on the couch next to him and smiled, playfully.
“Uncle Max,” she said. “That’s your five-hundred-dollar lecture. I only want a hundred.”
4
Sheila snorted the stuff up her nose. She straightened up and sniffed twice.
Michael Croft leaned back in his desk chair and watched her. Croft, thirty-five, lean, tanned, neatly dressed in a stylish tailored suit, was an advertising executive and junior partner in the firm of Hoffman, Whittiker, and Croft, but fancied himself a Hollywood agent. For him the coke was just part of the image.
Croft cocked his head at Sheila. “Well?”
Sheila took her finger and wiped the residue of the line she had snorted from the top of his desk. She stuck her finger in her mouth, licked it off.
She smiled. “Pure milk sugar. It’d be great in coffee.”
“I didn’t cut it at all.”
“This could be competition for NutraSweet.”
“Come on. Before I ground this up it was solid rocks.”
“Yeah. Sure. And you got it from a little old lady who only snorted it on Sundays.”
Croft laughed. “How did you know?”
“Lucky guess.”
“Are you saying this is the worst coke you ever had?”
“That would be flattering it.”
“I see. How much do you want?”
“A gram.”
Sheila emerged from the office building on Madison Avenue and hailed a cab.
It was one-thirty by the time the taxi dropped her off in front of her building, and Sheila would have been hungry had it not been for the line she’d snorted in Croft’s office. As she went up the front steps, she realized it was just beginning to wear off, and she was in a hurry to get upstairs and snort another one. So she was halfway up the stairs before she remembered.
The mail. The thought filled her with a sudden dread. She hadn’t picked up the mail. What if there was another letter? A more specific letter. A letter that told her what this was all about. Sheila wanted to know, and yet she dreaded to know. Not with Johnny gone. Please. Just keep this on hold till he gets back.
Sheila went back down the stairs and looked in the mailbox. Shit! There was a letter in it. She dug her keys out of her purse and unlocked the box.
It was a bill. Sheila had never been so happy to hear from Con Ed.
Sheila stuck the letter in her purse, locked the mailbox, and went back up the stairs.
She unlocked the door to her apartment, walked in, and stopped suddenly.
The body of a man was lying sprawled on the floor. He was lying on his stomach, with his head twisted to one side, so that Sheila could see his face. He was a thin, gaunt man, somewhere in his fifties. Sheila didn’t recognize him-she had never seen him before.
But she did recognize the large carving knife which should have resided in the rack on the wall in her kitchen alcove, but which now resided in the unknown gentleman’s back.
5
She didnt scream. Sheila could count that to her credit And, considering her state of mind, that was quite an accomplishment.
If she had screamed, she realized, she would have been fucked. That snoopy Mrs. Rosenthal from next door surely would have heard-she heard every time Johnny slept over, so how could she miss a scream? And that would have been that. The fat would have been in the fire. Mrs. Rosenthal would have knocked on her door, and she would have had to call the police.
Sheila knew she had to call the police, but not yet. Not now. Not until she got a grip on things.
Who was this guy? She had just received a blackmail letter, so presumably he was the blackmailer. Which would make her the number-one suspect. But what the hell was he doing here?
The question had no answer. No one writes you a blackmail note, comes to your apartment, and sticks a knife in his own back. It just didn’t make any sense. The way Sheila saw it, the only way it made sense was if the guy came there to blackmail her, and she killed him. And, she realized, if that was the only thing that made sense to her, it was sure as hell gonna be the only thing that made sense to the cops.
But she had to call them. What the hell else could she do? The guy was in her apartment. Dead. That made him kind of hard to ignore. Unless she ditched the body, which she realized was beyond her-she had to call the cops.
She took a deep breath, got control of herself All right, what did she have to do first?
She went in the kitchen alcove and checked the knife rack on the wall. Sure enough, the slot for the large carving knife was empty. He’d been killed with her knife.
Sheila had a sudden mad impulse to pull the knife out of the man’s back, wash it, and put it back in the rack. She quickly stifled it. That would be suicide. She was in enough trouble already. If she got caught trying to cover up, she’d be screwed.
She went back into the main room and looked down at the man. Christ, she must know him from somewhere. But she didn’t. He was a total stranger. A dead total stranger, murdered in her apartment. Great.
She pulled herself together again. Okay, the cops are coming. They’ll search the place. More trouble.
Sheila ran back to the kitchen alcove and got a paper shopping bag from the ones she had wedged in beside the refrigerator to save to use for garbage.
She ran back, detoured around the body on the floor and went to her night table beside the couch. She took the mirror and the straw and put them in the paper bag. Then she went to her bureau, jerked open the drawer, and began fumbling through it She pulled out a small plastic grinder, a gram scale, some gram bottles, some straws, and other assorted drug paraphernalia, and put them in the bag. She pulled the clothes out of the drawer and threw them on the floor, just to make sure she hadn’t overlooked anything. When she’d made sure she’d emptied the drawer of anything incriminating, she crammed the clothes back in and closed the drawer.
Okay. Was that everything? Yes. Shit! No. The gram in her purse. She grabbed the purse, fumbled in it, pulled out the small envelope with the small plastic bag.
She started to throw it in the paper bag, but stopped. Damn.
She couldn’t throw it away. It wasn’t fair. She’d gone through too much to get it. Sucking up to Uncle Max. And she’d need it to get through this crisis, what with Johnny being gone, and all.
But she couldn’t. She didn’t dare leave it in the apartment, and she didn’t dare carry it on her. Not the way things stood. Because, much as she hated to admit it, she realized, there was a damn good chance she was going to be arrested.
Sheila had a moment of near hysteria. She was trapped. Everything was coming down on her.
Then she had a flash of inspiration. She ran to her desk, jerked open the drawer, and pulled out an envelope. She took a pen and addressed the envelope to herself. She put the gram of coke inside, sealed the envelope, found a stamp and put it on.