So Nude, So Dead Page 12

  “Come,” she said. She slipped out of his arms and took his hand, walking into the bedroom.

  She sat down on the bed, and he sat down beside her. She reached for the lamp on the end table and snapped it on.

  She turned, and her eyes opened wide in shock. “Ray! Good God, what did they do to you?”

  She reached out with a slim, cool, hand and he flinched. The pain shot into his eye again. He winced and she took his head in her hands, brought him close to the warmth of her body.

  “Darling, darling,” she said. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I got a working over. But good. I think I know now why Eileen was killed.”

  “Tell me, darling. Tell me.”

  “They wanted to know what I’d done with the heroin. The lousy bastards kept on even after I told them—”

  “Who, Ray? Who were they?”

  “I never saw them before. I told them I didn’t know what had happened to the horse, but they kept hitting me anyway. Hank, one was called. And Freddy.”

  “Go on.”

  “I think they killed her for the stuff, Babs, They must have. Why else would they pick me up and pound hell—”

  “But that’s nonsense, Ray. If they had the stuff, why would they beat you?”

  “Something must have got fouled up along the way. But that’s why she was killed, all right. I’d bet my life on it.”

  She was stroking his forehead now. “You’ll need some sleep,” she said. “Forget all this, Ray. Get some sleep and we’ll talk about it in the morning.”

  “I found out something else, too,” he said, “just before they picked me up.”

  “Darling, don’t try to talk.”

  “I’m all right, Babs. A little sore, but all right otherwise. Eileen was pregnant, did you know that?”

  “I like you better as a blond, did you know that?” she asked.

  He touched his hair. “The rain— It washed out the black.”

  “Go to sleep, darling,” she said. “Close your eyes.” He nodded, suddenly exhausted. In a few moments, he was dead asleep.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ray woke to the accompaniment of a tympany pounding away inside his head. The sun poked through the blinds with long yellow fingers. Dust motes floated lazily on the air, visible in the strong sunlight.

  He thought of the needle first. No matter where he was, no matter what condition, his first waking thoughts were of the needle.

  There was the familiar tenseness tugging at his nerves, the empty feeling in the pit of his stomach, the hot ball of lead in his throat. The merry-go-round never stopped. You took a ride, and as soon as you were rested you took another ride.

  And every morning, rain or shine, hell or high water, your nerves beat out a Dixieland dirge, blaring at your senses, shrieking, screaming. Until the fix. The fix smoothed everything out, spread oil on the troubled waters, calmed the nerves, stopped the clamorous beating inside the skull.

  There was no fix this morning.

  There’d been no fix yesterday morning, and none the morning before that, either. Had it been only three mornings so far? Something must be wrong with the clocks. Time must have called it quits for a while. Eileen had been dead for weeks, hadn’t she? Hadn’t it been weeks ago when he found the slugs in her belly? Hadn’t that been weeks and weeks ago? Or years?

  He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, remembering for the first time where he was. He glanced over his shoulder at the empty bed, the shape of Babs’s head still in the pillow. An electric clock on the end table said eleven-fifteen.

  “Babs?” he called.

  He waited for an answer, puzzled when he got none. He began to get a little nervous, clasped his hands together and stood up abruptly. Why do addicts take everything so damned seriously, he wondered. So she doesn’t answer. Maybe she’s in the john, or maybe she went down for some bread or eggs or something. Why do addicts immediately assume the worst?

  He knew the answer, of course. So many things could happen to an addict when he was high. It was like coming up from another world, and each time you came up you checked to see that the old world hadn’t changed while you were gone. He shook his head, walked over to the bathroom door. The door was closed, so he rapped on it gently with his knuckles.

  “Babs?”

  There was no answer. He rapped again.

  “Honey, you in there?”

  Fear, sudden and sickening, ripped at his guts. He stopped breathing for an instant, heard the gallop of his heart beating against his ears.

  Three mornings ago!

  He’d wakened then, too. He’d spent the night with a girl, a lovely girl. He’d wakened and she was dead and her blood was running all over her stomach.

  He twisted the doorknob violently. He stumbled into the room, glanced at the floor, the empty tub.

  He let his shoulders slump then, exhausted, and let out his breath in a long, relieved sigh. He had expected to find her lying there, a bullet under her breast perhaps, or a stocking knotted around her throat. He shook his head thankfully now, chiding himself for having been such a fool.

  He found the note in the kitchen, propped up against the chrome toaster. Her handwriting covered it in an excited, wide scrawl:

  Ray, baby,

  I didn’t want to wake you, darling. Forgot to tell you last night that Kramer called a full band rehearsal for this morning at ten, damn him. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Please don’t leave the apartment. Eggs, bacon and milk in refrigerator. Coffee in white cabinet. Bread in oven.

  Wait for me, darling. I’ll have something for you.

  The note was signed with a large “B.” He read it through twice, and his eyes paused on the last sentence: I’ll have something for you.

  Now, what the hell did that mean? Was it her way of saying she’d throw herself into his arms the minute she got back? Or did she mean something else?

  He shrugged the thought away. Where the hell would she get heroin? But maybe that’s what she did mean. He wet his lips. Maybe she was going to bring him a deck. Maybe two. He’d wait. He’d wait if it took her ten years.

  He walked back into the bathroom and looked at his face in the mirror. The puff under his eye had gone down, leaving a multicolored area the size of a baseball around the eye. He touched it with his fingertips. Well, at least it didn’t hurt anymore. It sure looked like hell. Something like rotten meat. All he needed was a few maggots.

  He kept staring at his face, looking at the raw areas on each cheek, the split lip. Brother, what a mess. If he ever met that son of a bitch Hank on the street, there was going to be another dead citizen in New York.

  He let the water run, and tried piecing the thing together while he washed.

  Eileen was killed for the heroin, of that he was certain. But what about Charlie Massine? Where the hell did he fit into the picture? Maybe Charlie killed Eileen, swiped the heroin, and then was killed by someone else who wanted the stuff.

  He appraised this as he washed his face carefully.

  His imagination ran free, quickly composing a picture of the murder. Charlie sneaks up to the room, opens the door. Ray and Eileen are lying on the bed. Charlie pumps Eileen full of holes, picks up the tin of heroin, and leaves.

  He rinsed his face and thought this over again. No, something was wrong there. He tried it again. Charlie comes into the room, looks for the heroin. He finds the heroin first, and then shoots Eileen. He leaves.

  Something was still wrong.

  Ray reached behind him for the towel, patted his face. Assuming that the killer was after the heroin, a new problem presented itself. Why in hell was Eileen killed?

  They’d both taken enough horse to keep them out for hours. There was the slim chance, of course, that Eileen had snapped out of it while the murderer was in the room, and he’d had to kill her to keep her quiet. But in all probability, Eileen was out like a light when the heroin was snatched.

  So why kill her?

  And if the killer dispos
ed of her, why not dispose of Ray, too?

  Well, the answer to that one was obvious. Whoever had killed Eileen figured that Ray was a ready-made patsy. Kill them both, and the police would still be looking for someone to pin it on. Kill only the girl, and the police would tag the guy who spent the night with her. All right, it was logical to kill only Eileen and leave Ray to take the rap. But that still didn’t answer the first question: Why kill Eileen at all?

  Ray squeezed some toothpaste onto his finger and briskly massaged his teeth and gums. He rinsed his mouth and walked into the bedroom to dress.

  Eileen was pregnant.

  He was used to the idea by now, and it no longer shocked him. All right, she was pregnant. So what? So a million things. The killer was the baby’s father. He didn’t want to marry her, so he came up to rub her out quickly and quietly.

  The killer was Eileen’s husband, furious at the thought of his wife pregnant by another man. He came up in a fit of jealousy and killed her.

  The killer was Eileen’s father, disgraced by his daughter’s shameful actions.

  The killer was Eileen’s ex-beau, disturbed over her marriage, allowing his hurt to fester, and finally taking it out on her with two quick slugs in the gut. The killer was anybody.

  That’s just about what it amounted to. Except that the heroin was stolen. That meant that whoever killed Eileen wanted her dead and also wanted the heroin.

  Ray shrugged into his shirt, began buttoning it up the front. It wasn’t until he’d completely buttoned it that he noticed it had been washed and ironed. Quite a woman, Barbara Cole. He looked down at his trousers. They’d been wrinkled and shapeless last night when he’d thrown them over the chair. This morning, they had knife creases down both legs. He picked up his jacket and examined it closely. It, too, had been pressed, and the blood stains taken out of it.

  He sighed appreciatively and tucked his shirt into his trousers, trying to pull his mind back to Eileen’s death. Perhaps Charlie Massine was the father of the child. All right, Ray thought, let’s take it from there.

  The murderer killed Eileen in a rage. He killed Charlie in the same heat of passion. That pointed to Dale Kramer. But why should Kramer be jealous when he had a doll of his own? Rusty O’Donnell, Babs had said. Ray would have to see her, too. But even assuming that Kramer had killed both Eileen and Charlie in a rage, where did the heroin come into the picture?

  Whoa, whoa, he told himself. He had automatically assumed that Charlie and Eileen had been killed by the same person. It didn’t have to be that way at all. Why, Charlie could have killed Eileen, and then been killed himself in reprisal.

  Ray shook his head. There were too many possibilities, too many combinations.

  Hadn’t Kramer accepted his wife’s death just a little too calmly? And didn’t Sanders seem a little too casual about the whole thing?

  Everyone had built a solid wall of protection around himself, covered the wall with indifference. But these people were Eileen’s life, and she was a part of each of their lives. It seemed unnatural that her death could be shrugged off so lightly.

  Someone had killed her, effectively and thoroughly. That someone had also swiped a sixteen-ounce tin of heroin. And that someone may also have killed Charlie Massine.

  Tie those together into a neat little package and he should have the answer. One and one make two. They always did.

  Except, in this case, one and one made zero.

  * * *

  He roamed around the apartment after breakfast. He hadn’t eaten heavily because he was afraid it wouldn’t stay down. He drank a small glass of orange juice and a cup of hot coffee. He washed the glass, the cup, and the saucer, and then began waiting for Babs to return.

  The piano in the living room came as a shock to him, and he wondered why he hadn’t noticed it before. He walked up to it slowly, stood looking down at the polished keys. His forefinger poked timidly at middle C. A little off, his ear told him, but a nice clean tone.

  He pulled back the seat, sat down on the cushion, and pulled himself closer to the instrument. He rested his fingers on the keys lightly, like a blind man reading Braille. He didn’t try to play. He just sat there with his hands on the keys, his head slightly bent, his eyes focused on the middle octave.

  Tentatively, delicately, he tried to recall the fingering of “Long Ago And Far Away.”

  Was the key B flat, or E flat? Or had the band played it in C? B flat, E flat, C. Was that the right chord? It seemed right, the feel seemed natural.

  He struck the three notes together, then poked out the melody with his right hand. Yes, it seemed right. The next chord? The fingers on his left hand hovered indecisively over the keys. He found the notes, struck too loudly. He tried for the melody with his right hand, pleased when he hit the correct sequence of notes.

  But what came next? He became abruptly aware of the sweat covering the backs of his hands. He rubbed them on his trousers, then passed a hand over his wet upper lip.

  Doggedly, he played the first two chords again, his mind groping for the next chord in the progression.

  Really makes you play, don’t it, man?

  The memory gave him a start. Phil Ragow, wasn’t it? The bass man on the band. Was that his name? Was that how it all started?

  He dimly remembered an Irish wedding, with a beaming groom and a dark-haired bride. There were kegs of beer at the far end of the hall, and little ham sandwiches, and people dancing, and kids running between the dancers. It was a hot summer night, and his trousers stuck to his legs, irritating his crotch. The piano was tinny and out of tune, the keys yellowed and chipped. He remembered that two notes were completely dead in the middle octave. F and A. He couldn’t play decently, and that had annoyed him. That and the noise and the set of numbers they’d just played.

  Phil Ragow, if that was his name—it had been so damned long ago, and he was such a kid—hung over the big double bass like a drunk clinging to a lamppost.

  “Big drag, ain’t it?” he asked.

  Ray nodded, the heat reaching up onto the bandstand with clammy, stifling fingers.

  “Come on with me, man,” Ragow said. “We’ll give this little party a boost.”

  They went to the men’s room, a urine-smelling, beer-smelling cubicle. Ragow had taken out the deck of cocaine, and Ray watched him while he went through the process of arranging it on a small hand mirror in a little white mound.

  “Go on,” Ragow said. “Take a sniff.”

  Ray hesitated. He’d tried marijuana before, but that was small-time. This was the big stuff, the inner circle. Cocaine, heroin, opium, morphine.

  “Come on, man,” Ragow insisted. “Build yourself a dream.”

  “I don’t know, Phil—”

  “Look man, don’t be a crow. You dig this stuff and those crazy jerks out there won’t be able to touch you.”

  Ray reluctantly admitted to himself that the heat and the noise and the frantic movement were beginning to wear on him. But still…

  Ragow insisted. “Just this once, man. Can’t do you no harm. Hell, all the other cats are onto it, too. Come on, come on, let’s ride.”

  Ray sniffed. Gently. On the mirror the mound looked bigger, its reflection doubling its size.

  “Hell, that ain’t gonna do nothing,” Ragow said. “You gonna snort, you got to really snort. Come on, take a big pull. Come on.”

  Ray inhaled. The white flecks leaped off the mound, darted into his open nostrils.

  “More, man. More.”

  He inhaled again, and the mound disintegrated. The mirror caught light from the bare bulb over the closed cubicle. The light sent splinters chipping off the surface of the mirror and Ray sniffed deeply. The mirror grew brighter, and the white mound seemed to reach up for his nose.

  The noises outside the locked door of the toilet blended together into a soft, steady hum, punctuated with hoarse laughs. Ray’s feet were off the ground. He was floating. He felt wonderfully light, marvelously happy.

  “
Hit you, eh man?” Ragow asked.

  Ray grinned foolishly, blinked his eyes and then opened them. Ragow was sniffing at a new mound on the mirror.

  “Christ,” he said.

  “Jesus H.,” Ray said, the smile still on his lips.

  “Mmmmm-mmm.”

  Ragow flushed the toilet. The noise was faraway and muted, like the wash of the ocean on a long, white beach. There were gulls over the beach, wheeling and screeching. The sky was an endless blue, cloudless, a lone white sail against the horizon.

  “Let’s go, man,” Ragow said. “Let’s go play now. Let’s go play.”

  The kids still ran over the dance floor, but they ran slowly and their voices were hushed. Ray walked among them, grinning, floating leisurely up to the bandstand. The faces all around him were stupid, and he felt good and wise and self-sufficient. The heat no longer bothered him.

  His fingers wandered over the keys during the next set, grew into the keys, became a part of the instrument, and his soul flooded out through his fingertips, and the music became a part of him. He felt wonderful. He felt just grand.

  “Really makes you play, don’t it, man?” Ragow asked.

  * * *

  He sat at the piano in Babs’s apartment, and the keys were wet and slippery under his hands. He shoved back the stool abruptly and began to pace the room, thinking of that first cocaine lift, thinking of the heroin that followed.

  He stopped near the piano, smashed his fist down against the keys. The cacophonous blast hung on the air, and he turned and walked back to the couch, over to the bar, back to the piano, crossing the room, recrossing it, while the sweat stood out on his brow, drenched his back. His hands trembled and his face shook, and the walls began to close in on him.

  He had to get out of there. He had to walk, had to get some air.

  He fairly ran to the bedroom, threw his jacket onto his back. He’d come back later, after he’d walked this off. He’d leave a note for Babs. He went into the kitchen, fumbled in one of the drawers for a pencil. When he couldn’t find one immediately, he gave the idea up, walked quickly to the front door and stepped out into the hallway, clicking it shut behind him.