CHAPTER 22
The Champagne Room was singing itself a lullaby. At half past three in the morning, only the brave and the strong remain awake in such a place as this. On the dance floor, a few addicts still heaved their tired hips in the sexy rhythms of the rhumba. An old man tugged a sliding blonde around the floor, struggling to regain his lost youth while his feminine companion watched his blood pressure rise with a sly smile. Two youthful herky jerks eased themselves in a slow circle, grinding and bumping as they danced, their eyes closed and their conversation limited to fumbling fingers. A fatted matron followed Chico into a dim corner, raping him with her eyes. Two sleepy waiters hid behind a post, arguing the merits of a horse named Calling Katie, due to run in the fall meet at Belmont. On the band stand, the Latin musicians bounced and bumped in a lazy beat, dreaming of the cooler parts of Brooklyn and the Bronx. The last dying strains of their music blared into the almost empty room, giving the place an air of fantasy. They were playing only for the diehards, playing to a roomful of empty tables and stale smoke. I scanned the corners for familiar faces. I found none.
The cacophony of honest revelry rose up out of the bar. Inside, the oval-shaped room still crawled and squirmed with the more serious stay-outs. The liquor set chattered and romanced in earnest. And most of my friends were here, in various stages of alcoholic laxity. I edged my way along the bar toward the rear, where Archy Funk sat over a tall drink. He yanked me in and bade me join him, flipping his hand at the bartender, who produced my brand in the flick of a second. The room danced and swirled with the edgy excitement always found in spots like this. People around and about me were lost in the miasma of sweaty activity generated by too many bodies brought together in too small a room for too many drinks. Buddy Binns sat with Margo at a table near the terrace door. Were they both drunk? Margo tossed me a seductive wink and made passes at me with an uplifted finger, beckoning me her way for my second drink.
The Scotch was cool and I downed another with them. Somebody came up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder and said a kind word. It was Paul Forstenburg. He looked fresher and gayer than I had ever seen him. For a brief and bumbling moment I was tempted to tell him about Jorgenson. But the sight of his anxious smile zippered my lip. Paul Forstenburg would be worrying plenty tomorrow. Or maybe later tonight. I gave him a friendly few words and watched him snake through the crowd toward Don Trask.
Don was enjoying himself with a strange and tremulous young thrush who seemed lost as she listened to his fancy talk. He had entered the stage of his drunken madness that involved a loose tongue and a gentleman’s demeanor. He was making good time with the young doll, his hand snaking over hers, his eyes gnawing at her delectable young torso through the thin barrier of her evening gown. And she was liking it.
Through the door, the terrace held other parties and other projects, pursuing their zany festivities with as much sweat and strain as the mob inside. It was just as hot out there. At a table near the hedge, Manny Erlich and Darlene sat together and alone, lost in each other. She turned and saw me and waved to me and pointed me out to Manny, who did the same with a bandaged hand. I retreated to the bar and skimmed and slid back to Archy and another drink.
“Easy, peeper,” said Archy. “It’s a bad night for a load. Too hot.”
“I need it,” I said.
“Where’ve you been? You look like something out of a Turkish bath. Another drink?”
“A double.”
“On me,” said Archy, and snapped his fingers for the barman and leaned into me eagerly, his wide-open face punching home his friendly curiosity. “How are you doing on the dirty business, Steve? You getting anywhere?”
“I’m almost home, Archy.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Not right now,” I said. “But sooner than you think.”
I downed my drink and counted the house, checking through the personalities at the bar. Archy watched me with the wet-eyed scrutiny of a well-trained dog. He was guessing along with me.
“You looking for somebody, peeper?”
“Lasker.”
“He hit the hay about a half hour ago. Couldn’t take the noise.”
“And how about Lili?” I asked. “Don’t tell me she hit the mattress at this early hour?”
“Crazy broad.” Archy laughed. “You just missed her. She was looking for you, too. What is it you little guys got, anyhow? She sounded like she wanted you real bad.”
“Where’d she go?”
“She took a bottle with her and went down to the lake. She left a message for you. She was screaming it to the whole world, Steve. Said she wanted to take a moonlight swim with you.”
The liquor was biting deep inside me now. The buzz and hum of humanity rose and fell in waves of sound, pounding against my inner ear and adding fresh tension to Archy’s words. And Archy seemed hell-bent for hearing the payoff from me. Of all the customers in the room, only Archy retained his steady, burning purpose, a sobriety that made him stand out in my eyes. He remained at my elbow, peppering me with questions.
“You look like you could take a poke at somebody, Steve,” he said, his sanded voice low and meaningful. “Anybody in this room?”
“You’re breaking my arm, Archy. You’re too anxious.”
“Why shouldn’t I be? Grace was an old friend of mine, remember?”
“How could I ever forget?”
“Listen,” he breathed. “I want to be in on the pinch, Steve.”
“You’ll be the first to know, Archy.”
“When?”
I started away from him, but he followed me, still talking fast, still pleading for a box seat at the end of the line.
“Where you going now, Steve?”
“I’ve got a date for a moonlight swim, Archy. You wouldn’t want to spoil my party, would you?”
He broke down and laughed at that one. He held me out under the big tree near the terrace, long enough to wish me luck with Lili.
“You coming back to the bar, Steve?”
“Don’t lose sleep waiting for me,” I told him. “The last time I took a moonlight swim, I rolled home in time for lunch. With Lili, it might mean a bigger deal than that.”
I went out to find Lili. The path to the lake was misted and vague, falling away under my feet in easy stages. A dim mist had come out of nowhere to veil the mountainside in smoky stretches of gray fog. Behind me, the noises from the bar faded into distant whispers and random high notes of laughter, lost finally when I dropped toward the shore and down to the boardwalk leading out to the enclosed pool where the kids swam. The heat had generated a greater area of fog and dimness down here. A pall of gray hung over the water, so thick that I breathed it as I walked. My heels made an echoing clack on the boards, the only sound of life in the deep pit of the valley. I crossed to the small diving board over the lakeside of the crib. Somebody had hung some feminine garments on the railing: an evening gown and a silken bra and a pair of step-ins. Two high-heeled evening slippers sat under the clothing. I lifted the underthings. The high voltage smell of Lili’s perfume rose up in an invisible cloud to bite through the damp lake smell. She was out there somewhere.
I squinted through the gloom. There was a float out in the deep distance, about a hundred yards from the boardwalk. And across the fiat reach of water, I heard the sound of Lili’s voice, low and muted, singing a popular tune.
“Comeonamyhouse,” she sang.
“Lili!”
The sound of my voice was a sharp-edged knife in the still air. From over an invisible ridge of hills the echo rounded the turn of the mountains and came bumping back to me. Lili—Lili—Lili. The moon rose out of a galaxy of small clouds and ridged their fleecy backs with silver. The strong light filtered down through the mist and cut across the fog and showed me the float out there. She was on it, on her back, the smooth rich outlines of her body clearly defined in the sudden glare. She lay for a moment looking up at the sky, and then she turned and seemed to stare my way. The curve of her breasts flickered with dampness, converting her into a fairyland sprite, a lakeland goddess. She moved, shaking the wet from her hair and laughing a high and throaty laugh that echoed and bubbled in the air. She stood. In the brightening glow over the lake, her hips were moving subtly as she held her arms up and laughed again.
“Comeonamyhouse, Stevie boy,” she said huskily.
There was a splash as her body arched into a graceful dive and disappeared under the surface of the gray-black water. She came up and swam smoothly back toward the float and lifted herself aboard with the animal movements of the seasoned professional aquamaid.
“Lili!” I shouted again. “Better come on in now.”
“Too hot, darling.” She laughed. “Come on out.”
I took off my jacket and rid myself of everything but my shorts. I carried my clothing back to the shore and hid it behind a convenient bush. Then I bounced back over the boardwalk, alive now to the subtle change in the air, the dampness and the freshness down here. The heat still lay like a warm cloud over the lake, but the sting of the water after my dive swept the shadows out of my brain and sharpened me for the chore ahead. I swam a slow crawl, nothing fancy, because I had never really perfected my swimming style.
Lili was giggling when I arrived, finishing the last few swallows from a bottle at her side. She flipped the bottle out into the water and laughed crazily as it filled and gurgled and sank. She sat beside me, naked and unashamed. It was too dark to see her face clearly. But I could feel her. I could feel the wetness of her fingertips on my shoulders.
“Nice party now,” she cooed. “Kiss me, Stevie boy.”
“The party’s over,” I said.
“Just starting, lover boy.”
She was hell-bent for fracturing me with her consuming passion. In the vagueness through which we floated, in the great open area of the lake, the scene began to take on all the elements of fantasy. Her arms were tugging at me hungrily. She rubbed her delicious legs against mine and pulled me closer, her fingers strong and firm on me, her mouth open and waiting for mine.
I shoved her away.
“I said the party’s over, Lili. I’m taking you back now.”
“Not now,” she chuckled. “Just starting, Stevie. Kiss me.”
She moved quickly, jerking my head down and stabbing my mouth with her electric tongue. She was an expert at her craft, burning herself into me and melting against me with her burgeoning charms. It was madness. It was a horror of delight, a wrestling match with a damp and delectable mermaid. She began to coax me in other ways, using the illegal devices she knew so well. The rich ripe smell of her body rose up to stupefy me, to challenge me and my purpose. She rolled to one side and her hands went loose for a moment, and I seized that moment to pin her under me. She welcomed my efforts, laughing up at me, her teeth glistening white in the fresh moonlight. She would have pulled me down over her if I hadn’t grabbed her wandering hands and stopped their anxious grappling gestures.
“We’re going back,” I said again.
“What’s your hurry, darling?”
“I’ve got to see a man. You, too.”
“I’ve got my man, darling.” She laughed again, drunkenly. “What are we waiting for?”
“Not tonight, Lili. Tonight you stop playing. You stop playing with murder.”
“You talk silly, Stevie.”
“I talk sense,” I said, putting the pressure on her hands and holding her tight beneath me, her legs pinned down so that she could not move away from me, so that she had to look up at me. “You killed Grace Lasker and Hugo Repp.”
She laughed long and hard. “Crazy detective.”
“I’ll tell you how and why,” I said. “I’ll cut it up into small pieces for you, Lili. It was you and Manny Erlich, all the way from the beginning. Manny got the idea and you perfected it. You were supposed to sell that stag reel to Margo Lewis, you and Manny. Hugo Repp came up here to deliver it to you, but Grace Lasker reached him first. He pulled the switch on you, probably because you didn’t have anything but the promise of a sale. But Grace Lasker had cash—and Repp loves cash. So she bought it from him for thirty grand. She took the reel to her room. And you went up there and stabbed her.”
“Louder and funnier, little man,” said Lili, still laughing in her zany, drunken way. “Grace Lasker killed herself, remember? She went over the cliff.”
“In the pig’s valise,” I said. “After you murdered her, you were interrupted by me, weren’t you? I walked in and found her in bed, an accident that loused up your plans. So you slugged me and hauled me upstairs. Then you dragged her down to her convertible and got Manny Erlich to drive her up to Indian Cliff. He did a good job, but he had a little accident. When he dumped the gasoline on her car, he lit it too soon. He burned his hands. That was why he had to stage the fake fire in The Champagne Room. That was why you had to play-act at bandaging his hands so quickly, to cover for his accident up on Indian Ridge. After that, you were in the clear. Until you remembered that Hugo Repp might con the police your way. If Hugo ever talked about me sale of that stag reel, the investigation would never end, and you knew it. So you killed him. You shot him when I was with him. You were in deep after that. You were in so deep that you lost your head. Or was it Manny that hid the stag reel in Darlene’s room?”
Lili squirmed and tightened under me, tense now, her face bright with sudden anger. She had been playing it straight until I dropped Darlene’s name into my monologue. In the reflex of her womanly jealousy, she could do nothing to restrain her violent hatred of the rhumba queen. She muttered a masculine obscenity.
“You hated Darlene,” I continued, quieting her wriggling with more pressure. “Yet, she was useful to both you and Manny, in a roundabout way. I figure she must have spilled her guts to Manny about the theft in Repp’s room. Darlene is in love with Manny. He’s the only person in The Montord who might share her confidence. She gave him the lowdown on the swindle with Jorgenson. And that was why you were able to add it all up and slug Jorgenson to get that reel back. What an operation for a woman! You queered yourself in a couple of ways, Lili. It had to be you, and not Manny, who slugged me and hauled me upstairs out of Grace Lasker’s room. Manny just hasn’t got the muscles for a job like that. It had to be you who killed Repp, too. How could Manny fire an automatic with his hand bandaged? And it had to be you who almost killed Jorgenson to get that stag reel back. You eat too many Wheaties, Lili. You’re too strong for a dame.”
Strong? She was wire and steel under me. She bit at her lip and called me a half dozen foul names and began to move her powerful frame against me. She fought desperately, kicking up at me, working to use her weight strategically. She was damp and slippery under my hands, a squirming, writhing bundle of motion and mayhem. She slithered and slipped slowly away, roiling from under my fingers and toward the edge of the float. She bit at me, finding a spot on my right hand and sinking her teeth into the soft part of my arm so that I yelped and yammered with pain. She ducked away from me and I found myself skidding after her, not knowing that she wanted it this way, not realizing that she was struggling to upset me into the water.
Because she could drown me there!
The impact of my body against hers was a soft blow, almost a kiss as she allowed me to move into her and over her. The madness of the moment only hit me when I fell forward and away from her as she slipped skillfully over the side. The water came up to slap me. But hard. And then all hell broke loose.
Lili fought to murder me. Once in the water, I was no match for her in any way. Her lithe and athletic body appeared alongside me for a quick flash of movement, like a great marauding fish circling for an attack. Then her hands were in my hair and she was yanking me down.
And she was saying, “Clever, clever little peeper. You didn’t figure this angle, did you? You didn’t figure how easily I could drown you. Take a deep breath, darling. You’re on your way out.”
She was on me and all over me, .the weight of her body lugging and jerking me, her hand on my mouth, her legs lashing out at me to gain the necessary momentum for carrying me to my underwater grave. I struck out at her blindly, not knowing how to injure her, struggling to hold her with me, under the water. But Lili knew all the tricks. Lili attacked me from all angles, lashing out at me, kicking me low, her legs working with machinelike precision, her horrible antics geared to fill my stomach with the lake. She bumped against me and struck hard once more, her elbow in my gut. She held me under without mercy, always moving in quickly to grab and hold and then move away again. Vaguely, in some dim and misted comer of my consciousness, I wondered how much it would take to try for an underwater swim back toward the float. It was dark enough to deceive her. If I had the air for the deed. But Lili must have read my mind. She continued to force the fight, allowing me no time for the quick rush to the surface for a gasp of all important ozone. I began to fade. I lashed out at her with all my remaining strength. I did what I might have done in a nightmare, encircling her with my legs and holding her in a scissors. She began to sink with me, clawing at my face with her long nails. She pressed hard against me and in the last moment of consciousness I knew that she was going down with me, locked in my legs, her slick body straining against mine, her breasts hard against my chest, rising and falling in a mad struggle for breath, for the quick burst of air she must have to win over me. Then we were lashing out wildly, dropping and dipping in the black water. Lili pushed into the wall of my chest, digging in with her claw-like fingers, ripping and tearing against me. She burst into a final fit of action and broke away from me, up, and higher still, until her legs were sweeping over me. I caught at her swirling shanks and grabbed hold and moved upward, breaking through to the cool, sweet black air. The thrust of a thousand angers whipped me after her and I managed to slide a hand along her arm as she passed, clutching her and ruining the smooth symmetry of her expert stroke. I called her a foul name and she came at me again, but this time I was prepared for her attack. I hit her hard, where no woman should ever be hit. I put everything into the blow, aware that she would drown me if she had another chance at me. The soft and silken feel of her stomach under my knee gave me new courage. She was a demon in the water, but the demon was hurt now. I cracked her across the jaw with a free fist, lifting my arm into the air to gain power and direction. I hit her as hard as I had ever hit any living thing. She sagged and began to sink and when I knew that she was on her way downy I pulled hard and hauled her into the first and most elementary position in the art of life saving. Slowly, slowly, I headed for the shore.
And I was yanking her limp body up the pebbled shallows when Manny Erlich stepped out from behind the trees. He was standing near the clump of bushes where I had dropped my clothes. He was only a dim and faded figure above me, on a huge rock, but his silhouette came alive suddenly, the moon bright on his pale face. And brighter still on the muzzle of the automatic he held in his now un-bandaged hand.
“Too bad, Steve,” he said softly. “Too bad Lili couldn’t knock you off out there.”
“You thinking of doing that little thing?” I asked.
“Got to.”
“Why take the rap for her? You didn’t kill anybody, Manny.”
“We were in it together.” He stared down at Lili. She was beginning to come alive already, her body twitching and writhing in the shallow water where I had dropped her. “We’ll finish it together.”
“How?”
“She’ll drown you.”
“She couldn’t drown a cat,” I said. “She’s too far gone.”
Manny showed me his other hand. He was holding a rock, a rock that was big enough to stun and kill. He held it up delicately, in the manner of a lecturer holding up an exhibit of earth to a geology class.
“This will help her, Steve. Get over to her and wake her. Lili’s strong. And she wouldn’t want to miss finishing you off. You’ve been a great big pain in the butt to both of us.”
I leaned over Lili, but there was no need to slap her awake. Her eyes were open and she was already struggling to a seated position, rubbing the water out of her eyes and then staring at the scene before her until it came into focus. Manny eased his way down the big rock gingerly. He paused near me and flipped the brickbat to her and she caught it with as much finesse as any member of the Dodger infield. She began to cackle again and sloshed through the water in my direction. She held the stone in position for a crack at my head, advancing with the stride of a vindictive Amazon. I felt as lost and hopeless as a wandering male in a ladies’ washroom.
Then there was the sound of a great confusion from the brush near the bank. Archy Funk crashed through and leaped to the edge of the big rock and hurled himself at Manny Erlich before the little man could jump aside. They went over into the shallows, Manny squealing and crying out his rage and despair. Archy had slapped the gun out of his hand and it clacked on the rock and bounced back toward the shore with Lili in hot pursuit. I galloped after her, a madman in a mad tableau, tackling her around the knees as she reached down for the gun, catching her above the shanks because of her sudden stoop and finding myself bucking her over on her head by way of the sudden lunge at her shapely posterior. Then she was in the water, gurgling and gasping as I held her head into the pebbles for a while.
After that, she fainted. I turned her pretty face to the sky and left it that way.
Archy had hammered Manny into insensibility. He sat on the rock, nibbling at a toothpick and fiddling for a cigarette for me.
“Thought you maybe came down here to grab Lili,” he said.
“You thought right,” I told him. “She almost put me away out there—in the water. Lili plays too rough. She plays for keeps.”
“And the little crumb?”
“She made the rules for him,” I said. “They got fouled up together, in more ways than one. She’ll tell the jury that she did it for Manny, that she only wanted enough dough to allow the little man his own Broadway show. She’s ripe for the jury, Archy. She’ll fiddle and cry and roll up her skirt to show the boys her pretty gams, right up to the garters. She’ll wear a low-cut dress and an uplift that will keep twelve pairs of eyes nibbling at her torso. But she won’t get away with it, because it’s open and shut for the hot seat. And when they strap her in and reach for the switch, she’ll just be corny enough to take a last deep breath and really believe that what she did, she did for love.”