I pressed the doorbell button.
The door opened and Anne smiled at me.
“I was waiting for you,” she said, softly.
I entered the apartment and her arms went around me. We kissed.
“Hold me for a while,” she said when the kiss was over.
I looked over her shoulder. The piranha was motionless in his tank. The birds had hoods over their cages.
“It was awful,” Anne said, and I could feel the tremor that moved through her body. “I was standing there in the club when they carried Earl’s body out.”
“John’s,” I corrected.
“What?”
“Your late husband’s real name was John Bray. He was wanted for murder in Virginia.”
“I knew there had to be something like that in his past,” she said after a moment. “He would never talk about the past.”
“I’d like a drink,” I said.
“I think I would, too, Larry.”
I sat down while Anne made the drinks. The piranha seemed to be staring at me through the one big eye that I could see. I lit a cigarette. Anne came over with the drinks, sat on the floor at my feet.
“I concentrated so very hard,” she said.
“Hm? I beg your pardon?”
“I sat in that big chair near the window and I looked out over the city and then I closed my eyes and thought about you. And I said, ‘Come to me, darling, please come to me.’ Well, it worked. Here you are.”
“It must have been a mental telepathy striptease,” I said.
She laughed, quietly. “A what?”
“The image of you that came through to me had no clothes on.”
She squeezed my legs in a sudden embrace. I felt the beautiful softness of her.
“It’s almost dawn,” I said.
She turned her head, looked in the direction of the window. “A new day,” she breathed.
I lifted my glass. “I’ll drink to that.”
We were quiet for a while after that. The piranha started to swim slowly in the tank. I couldn’t see any movement from the other fish. It would be a hell of a trick, I thought, to net the ugly cannibal fish and dump him in one of the other tanks.
“Salem,” I said.
She trembled against my leg.
“We’ll call him Salem instead of Bray,” I said.
“Do you really want to talk about him?” she whispered.
“I think we have to, don’t you?”
“Yes, I suppose so.” She looked into my eyes. “All right, Larry, let’s talk about him. Let’s say all there is to say about him ... and then let’s never mention his name again.”
“It’s a deal. Did you have a talk with the police?”
“Yes. After the shooting I went over to one of the police officers and told him who I was. They took a statement from me.”
“Did you tell them you suspected that your husband killed Eve Delmar?”
“No.”
“Did you tell them that you knew me?”
“I didn’t know what you’d want me to tell them. So I said nothing about our friendship. They didn’t even ask about you. But I did say I left you alone in the office with Earl.”
I nodded.
“What happened in there, Larry? I saw the detective shoot Earl from the door, and I heard a shot from inside the office as he opened the door ...”
“That was Earl, shooting at me,” I said.
“You accused him of killing Eve, didn’t you? That was why—”
“No, honey.”
“You ... didn’t accuse him?”
I lit another cigarette. “On the night Eve was killed, you told me that he got back to the apartment a little before eleven thirty.”
“Yes.”
“It was six or seven minutes earlier than that, Anne. He talked with the garage attendant before going up to the apartment. The time element gave him a perfect alibi. He’d have had to drive back to the city in about thirty minutes. It just can’t be done. You have to stop three times at toll booths, then there’s the speed limit inside the city.”
“But he must have—” She stopped. “Those men. Greg and the other man I saw in the club. They—”
“No, Anne. Your late husband didn’t contact Greg until tonight ...” I looked at the gathering dawn and corrected myself, “Last night. But that’s part of another story.”
She frowned. “I don’t understand, Larry.”
“That’s why I’m here; to explain. Salem tried to kill me because I knew he was wanted for murder in Virginia. But he didn’t kill Eve.”
“If he didn’t ...”
“Who did? Ever hear of a man named Peller?”
“Peller?” She turned the name over in her mind.
“Stanley Peller.”
“It sounds familiar.”
“He’s the house detective at the Sunshine Garden Hotel. A little man with a paunch.”
“Oh. Yes. That filthy little man.”
“A perfect description.”
“It must have been—oh, five months ago when I met him. It was one of the times I drove down to Atlantic City with Earl. We stopped in to see Eve on the way back. Peller stepped in front of us and talked with Earl. There was a slimy look about him.”
“What did he say?”
“He said how nice it was that we were stopping by to see Eve Delmar. He said she was such a lonely woman that he felt sorry for her. But his words didn’t ring true. I ... I didn’t know what to make of him.”
“I’ll tell you what he was doing.” I said. “He was setting Salem up for blackmail. That’s how crumbs like Peller make their living.”
“He picked the wrong man when he selected Earl.”
“He found that out later. I had a talk with him just a while ago. In the beginning, he thought he might be able to shake your husband down. His material was the same stuff he was using to bleed Eve. But then he checked in New York and discovered that Earl Salem wasn’t the kind of a guy you could put the pressure on. Information of that sort is obtainable in the underworld. So Peller left Salem alone ... until he had something really big to offer. Peller figured on one big financial killing—then he was going to run.”
“Peller was blackmailing Earl?”
“He didn’t see it as blackmail. Though, in a sense, it was. Your late husband paid Peller to keep his mouth shut about two things Peller saw the night Eve was murdered. One. he saw Jack Delmar leave the hotel area before the murder shot was fired. Two, he saw someone else leave Eve’s suite after the shot was fired.”
“Peller saw the killer?”
“Yes. Actually, I didn’t need Peller’s testimony; I already had a pretty good idea of what had happened in Eve’s suite. Oddly enough, it was Salem who told me. Oh, he didn’t give me a name. He didn’t say so-and-so killed Eve Delmar. All he did was let me see his left hand.”
“His left hand?”
“The third finger. I think you know what I mean, honey.”
She nodded, slowly. “The ring.”
“That’s right. The wedding band, studded with diamonds. A woman who gives her husband a wedding band worth a few thousand ... well, there’s a woman in love. It added up when I remembered something Eve told me about you. She said you were beautiful. Looking back, I can see she was jealous of you.”
“She knew Earl loved me,” Anne said, her voice flat.
“And she was aware of why he kept the affair going—only because she knew about the murder in Virginia. Salem had to keep seeing her, had to make sure she wouldn’t tell the police.”
“She was no good,” Anne said. “If there was ever a woman who deserved to die, that woman was Eve Delmar.” She smiled at me. “Yes, I killed her. I should have killed Peller, too. But I wasn’t sure he recognized me. It was dark there.”
“Peller lives in the dark.” I looked at her, admiringly. “You put up a fine show. You came to me and pointed the finger at your husband, knowing all the while that the time element would get him off the hook. He knew you killed Eve, of course; he knew because you weren’t in the apartment when he got there. What you did in effect was, you gave yourself an alibi by pretending that you thought Salem killed Eve. At the same time you were keeping your eye on me—with your late husband’s permission, of course.”
“You have it all,” she said. “What are you going to do about it?”
“The police will be here soon.”
“I don’t suppose there’s any point in offering you money ...”
“No point at all,” I said.
“I thought not.” She got to her feet. “Well, I gave it a try, didn’t I, Larry?”
“A very good try.”
“I might have got away with it if you weren’t involved.” She walked to the line of fish tanks, looked at the piranha. “Will you see to it that the fish and birds are fed?” she asked. “Louise won’t be back for another week.”
“I’ll take care of it personally,” I said.
“There’s one more thing. Will you see to it that I’m buried next to Earl?”
“That won’t be for a long time yet, Anne. With a good lawyer—”
She moved fast. I ran after her, but she slammed the bedroom door in my face, twisted the lock. It was a big, heavy door. I heard the window open in her room. I went to the big windows, looked out. I caught a glimpse of her robe, nothing more. The angle of the building didn’t let me see the sidewalk below. But a cab stopped and a man got out, and two other men ran across the street. The three men stopped and looked down at what I couldn’t see.
I sat down and lit a cigarette.
“That’s love for you,” I said.
The piranha stared back.