The bright red scarf around Conchita’s throat ceased to flutter as the car came to a stop. The red—a perfect match with the color of the car—awoke glowing echoes in the dark golden velvet of Conchita’s skin, made her eyes and hair seem even darker than they were. Her eyes and lips were laughing as she motioned me to get in beside her.
“Jump in, Jim,” she said. “I’ll rush you to the hospital. Are you hurt?”
“Not physically. Just morally and spiritually. I’m crushed by the thought that you wanted to run me down like a stray cat.”
“How can you say such things? You were the last person in the world I expected to see barking his shins on my bumper. What are you doing in this neck of the woods, Jim?”
That, I was sure, was a purely rhetorical question. I could have sworn that Conchita not only saw me emerge from Grossbeck’s Pharmacy, but that she had been parked down the block waiting for just such a contingency.
“I used to live in the Village before the war,” I said. “I was looking for some old friends.”
“I hear that some of your new friends are looking for you” Conchita said. “McKay was furious that you left Blindman’s Lake without even a word.”
“I didn’t realize that McKay felt that way about me,” I said. “If I’d known he cared, I certainly wouldn’t have left without saying goodbye.”
“You sure made a neat getaway,” Conchita said. “You sure got down here in a hurry. How did you manage it?”
“It’s a trick they taught us overseas,” I said. “Extrasensory deception. It’s extra-sensational. I understand the Duponts have the patents tied up and are keeping it off the market, so as not to ruin General Motors. It would revolutionize transportation. You just think of some place you’d like to be, you close your eyes, you count to 1492 by tens, and when you open your eyes you discover yourself in the new place.”
“Oh, you!” Conchita said. “Get in. I’ll give you a lift—so you won’t have to close your eyes. You might miss something.”
“It isn’t far to walk,” I said, holding back.
“I thought maybe you were going to Grace’s apartment,” she said. “It’s quite near here.”
“I know.”
“I thought maybe Grace sent you down for some clean pajamas or a spare toothbrush or something,” Conchita said. “She might have to stay up in the country longer than she planned.”
“I don’t collect toothbrushes,” I said, boring in with my most omniscient gimlet stare. It didn’t seem to penetrate very deep.
“You!” Conchita repeated. She leaned over to open the door. “Better get in. I passed two green prowl cars in Greenwich Avenue just now. We’d better get you off the streets.”
Her eyes weren’t laughing now. The same hard, steely, determined glint I had seen in the garden by the lake was back. She was making no threats to alert the police cars she had seen, but there was blackmail in her voice. It was polite blackmail, true, and I was not quite sure of the motive. But I got into the car.
Conchita’s smile reappeared, as big as it was enigmatic. I wanted very much to know what she was so pleased about, and I knew I would find out soon enough.
“Where to?” she asked, as the clutch took hold and we began to move.
“I was on my way to Peewee Burnley’s,” I said, grabbing a name out of the air. “I always used to find a few kindred souls taking the waters at Burnley’s at this time of day.”
“Burnley’s is closed on Sundays now,” Conchita said. She swung the car around a corner. “Tell you what. We’ll go up to my place for a drink.”
“I’m really not thirsty,” I lied.
“Eddie won’t be home for an hour or so. He goes on the air in half an hour, and we can catch his show while we’re refueling.”
“I’d like to hear Eddie’s show,” I said, “but I’m sort of hungry. Can’t I entice you into some Greasy Spoon? I’d ply you with hamburgers.”
“Much too public,” Conchita said. She paused just enough for me to read into her pronouncement any implication I wanted. Then, “You ought to lead a very private life, Jim, as long as you’re such tempting cop bait. If you’re really hungry, I can knock a couple of eggs together.”
I said nothing. Comment seemed useless. We were obviously heading back to Perry Street, come what may. I was resigned. I had half an hour to kill anyhow, until Grossbeck closed up his pharmacy and set off to take his wife to the movies. Spending the time with Conchita seemed a much more sensible and pleasant prospect than jumping out of the car at the next traffic fight and making a break for it. Conchita didn’t scare me.
She stopped her car in front of the Perry Street address, which was a brownstone house like a thousand other brownstone houses in the Village, with a high stoop, a wrought-iron gate under the stairs leading to a basement apartment that had probably been a speakeasy in Prohibition days, and a recessed front door painted blood red. There was an Italian restaurant on one side and a nursery school on the other.
As Conchita leaned over to shut off the ignition, her shoulder brushed against me and lingered for a warm, tingling moment. It was not an accidental gesture. On the contrary, it was pulsing with promise. I contemplated the immediate future and found the prospect not unpleasant, even though the thoughts of Grace and the police and Grossbeck’s Pharmacy were milling about with mild insistence at the back of my mind.
Conchita twisted herself from under the wheel and pressed her knees against my thigh. I didn’t move. Her knees nudged me tenderly.
“We’ll get out on your side, Jim,” she said. “Can you unwind those long legs of yours?”
“I’m very comfortable right here,”
“Go on. Unwind. One, at least.”
“I’ll try,” I said, moving one leg.
Conchita started to climb over me. I caught her calves in a quick, gentle scissors. They were agreeably soft between my knees.
“Jim.” She gave a brief, throaty laugh. I squeezed a little harder, then released her. She opened the door and we got out.
We went up the brownstone steps and I looked at the names on the brass mailboxes beside the door. I stood right behind her as she bent her head over her bag, looking for her keys. The back of her neck was smooth and tempting. I tugged playfully at a wisp of dark hair that strayed down along the nape. Conchita did not turn around. She opened the street door.
The place was a walk-up. Conchita hooked her arm in mine as we climbed one flight of rickety stairs. I was glad there was no more than one flight, because the stairway swayed like a suspension bridge, and I noted that the outer edge was guyed up with occasional strands of twisted piano wire. Looking over the worm-eaten banisters into the stair well, I reflected that people who live in the Village must not suffer from acrophobia.
The hall light was out on the first landing. It was always out, Conchita said. The superintendent was a part-time poet and paid no attention to such mundane details.
“Strike a match, Jim.”
I snapped a flame from my utility lighter and held it above Conchita’s head. She took quite a while finding the key hole—as though her hand were trembling. When she pushed the door in, I let the lighter go out and followed her. The door clicked shut behind me, and we were in utter darkness. I felt my heart-beat quicken, partly in anticipation, perhaps partly in apprehension.
“Conchita, where are you?” I stretched out a groping hand and touched the warm softness of her cheek. Instantly she was in my arms, her lips thrust avidly against mine, her hands clasped tightly behind my head, pulling me closer, ever closer—as if it were possible.
The tempest was not altogether unexpected. There had been plenty of scudding clouds and preliminary rumblings. Yet I was still surprised by the fury of the storm when it broke, by the burning ardor of her lips, the hungry fervor of her embrace. I lost track of my heartbeat, and of everything else except the fragrance of her hair, the sinuous nearness of her body against mine, and the wanton sweetness of her kiss.
I was dizzy when I finally came up for air. I suppose it was the natural need of the blood stream for oxygen which provoked the hiatus, although at the moment I was convinced that my red corpuscles were doing very well on the neurotropic stimuli on which they were being gorged. Conchita continued to cling tightly to me, her cheek against the hollow of my shoulder, her breath quick and feverish against my neck.
“Jim!” she whispered. “This is so wonderful. I knew it would be—from the first minute I saw you.”
I made some small, inarticulate purring sounds. I was out of breath myself, and could think of no appropriate words. Besides, I had a sudden surge of uneasiness, probably caused by my gradual awareness of a fusty, shut-in odor that pervaded the darkness, a blend of forgotten tobacco smoke and the ghost of some dead perfume, with animal overtones. Then, over Conchita’s shoulder, I saw a pair of luminous, greenish eyes staring at me out of the blackness. I blinked. The shining eyes still looked at me.
“Kiss me,” Conchita murmured.
I kissed her again, with something less than my initial enthusiasm. Conchita’s fine, glowing frenzy was undiminished, it seemed, but my own responsiveness was caught in the cross-current of uneasiness. I found myself wondering why Conchita had not put on the light and whether she intended spending the rest of the evening in the dark. It was not that I had never kissed a girl in the dark before, or that it was likely that kissing Conchita would be any more enjoyable in the full glare of electric lights. I certainly made no attempt to analyze my feelings at the time, and I am sure that it never occurred to me that those luminous green eyes could be my conscience or a psychic projection of my better nature trying to stare me down. Subconsciously I guess I attributed the twin points of light to some trick of reflection, probably from an unseen street light. Yet the impression was so strong in me that the darkness around me was charged with unseen menace that I raised my head again, looking over Conchita’s shoulder for those glowing eyes.
The eyes were gone.
I wound my arms around Conchita and kissed her violently, as though to dispel the uneasiness by sheer vehemence, a flood of passion that would sweep away all extraneous thoughts and feelings.
This time it was Conchita who broke the spell. Her lips moved across my cheek and then back along my jaw, coming to rest below my chin. Her warm contralto was vibrant against my throat as she said:
“You do want me, don’t you, Jim? You’ve felt like this from the first, just as I have.”
Before I could reply, I felt a sharp, burning pain in my left leg. It was as though a dozen red-hot knife points had been suddenly plunged into my calf. The pain was so unexpected that I loosed an involuntary yelp.
“Jim darling! What’s the matter?”
“I think something bit me,” I said.
Conchita slid out from my embrace.
“It must be Othello,” her voice said in the darkness. “Stop that, Othello. Where are your manners?”
She touched the electric switch and the ceiling lights blazed.
When I stopped blinking at the glare, I saw a large, sleek, coal-black cat sitting on its haunches across the room, staring at me complacently.
“Bad kitty,” Conchita said. “Othello’s getting revenge for being left alone. He hates being left alone. It makes him neurasthenic and introspective. Where did he hurt you, Jim?”
“It’s nothing much, I guess,” I said. “Probably just multiple lacerations, secondary hemorrhage, and shock.”
I sat down in the nearest chair, which was a startling contraption of chrome-plated gas pipes and two turquoise cushions. I pulled up my trouser leg and examined my wounds. The cat’s claws had gashed out symmetrical crimson marks, shaped like fish forks, which bled quietly on each side of my calf.
“You poor darling!” Conchita bent over me to examine the damage. “Let me give you first aid.”
She disappeared into the adjoining bathroom while I pulled out a few shreds of wool that had been imbedded in my leg by Othello’s playful talons. She returned with cotton and iodine with which she painted stinging brown designs on my manly calf. Then she covered up her handiwork with adhesive bandages, taking care to affix the adhesive firmly to the hairs on my leg.
“You poor darling!” she repeated. “You need a drink after that. I should have warned you that Othello has a persecution complex.”
She kissed my knee, pulled my trouser leg back into place, and departed with her first-aid equipment. On her way to the bathroom, she extinguished the ceiling lights and turned on a bridge lamp in the corner. The soft glow revealed a pair of nylon stockings draped over the pink lamp shade to dry.
While listening to the clink of glasses and the boiler-factory clatter that told of an ice-tray being chiseled loose from the electric refrigerator in the kitchenette, I took stock of the Westerford apartment. It was not fundamentally different from any other Village roachery, with fifty years of grimy walls buried beneath successive biennial layers of cheap paint. Yet it bore the unmistakable imprint of the Westerfords’ own way of life, symbolized by the stockings hanging from the lamp shade. At the base of the lamp, an open book lay face downward on the floor. Two empty glasses and an overflowing ashtray stood on the radio. A somewhat rumpled pink elastic girdle had been flung into a corner of the divan and a cerise necktie dangled from the knob of a half-open door which led into the bedroom.
I could not see into the dark bedroom, but I could well imagine what a light would reveal: spilled powder, bobby pins, and a hairbrush fuzzy with combings on the dresser; an unmade bed; another unemptied ashtray on the night table; pants or a sweater on the back of a chair, and shoes lying in odd corners.
One wall of the living room was devoted to built-in bookshelves. From where I sat I could not read the titles of the volumes on the half-filled shelves, but I recognized most of the pictures on the other walls. They were all reproductions—an authentically anaemic and noseless Marie Laurencin, a charmingly hideous Rouault, a Marc Chagall with levitating violinists, and a geometrical abstraction in a dozen shades of purple by some artist whose work I had never seen but did not much regret. On the floor near the radio stood an object resembling a truncated elm set into a concrete base which I took at first to be a piece of nonobjective sculpture, perhaps by Brancusi. On closer study, however, I realized that the bit of tree trunk was merely a device on which Othello was supposed to sharpen his claws when there was no leg of a visitor handy.
I decided abruptly that I had seen enough of the Westerford apartment. Even the luscious Conchita was not going to detain me longer; she was not at her best on her home grounds. The shut-in atmosphere, the background of disorder, did not set off her aura of sultry mystery as vividly as had the autumn foliage at Blindman’s Lake. I stood up, and had started toward the door when Conchita came out of the kitchenette with a glass in each hand.
“Sorry I was so long,” she apologized. “I had trouble with the ice cubes.”
She handed me a glass and hooked her free arm in mine to draw me toward the divan. Othello sprang out from under just in time to avoid being crushed to death, yowled briefly in protest, and stalked sulkily into the bedroom.
“I know it’s not polite to drink and run,” I said, “but that’s what I’m going to have to do.”
“You’re not,” Conchita said. “You can’t. I can’t let you go to jail—yet.” She touched her glass to mine. “Here’s how. Here’s to you and me.”
“Here’s to crime,” I said.
I emptied half the glass without tasting it, but the aftertaste was strange and unfamiliar. I wondered vaguely what she could have put in to make even cheap whisky taste like a dentist’s fingers. However, I had long since discovered that the feminine touch in mixing drinks is just one of those things to be charged off to intuition and never to be questioned. Anyhow, I was drinking for therapeutic reasons, not for pleasure. I drank half the remainder.
“What crime, Jim?” Conchita asked, putting her cheek against mine.
“Oh, any crime, as long as it’s not a capital crime. I’m still a little squeamish about murder.” I drained my glass. “Well, I’d better run.”
“You!” Conchita said. “You’re not going to give yourself up, are you, Jim?”
“Why not? I didn’t kill anybody.”
“It seems so much simpler just to wait until they find you. And anyhow, I don’t want to lose you—not yet.”
She leaned over to kiss me. I kissed her back, but I’m afraid it was pretty perfunctory. Her lips had lost their fascinating savor. I patted her cheek.
“I thought we were going to listen to Eddie’s program,” I said.
“Of course. I almost forgot. But it’s not surprising, is it?” She got up to turn on the radio.
The tubes warmed up in the middle of a newscast. The announcer was panting over something the Russians did or were going to do in the United Nations Security Council, an imminent divorce in Hollywood, and a train wreck on Long Island. He was completely breathless by the time he reached the item that gave me an acute attack of horripilation.
“And here’s the latest on the murders at Blindman’s Lake,” the newscaster was shouting. “A six-state alarm has gone out for the arrest of Lieutenant James Lawrence, former U.S. Army officer attached to SHAEF headquarters in London. Lieutenant Lawrence is wanted by New York State Police in connection with the murder of Dr. Norman H. Norman, New York physician and pathologist, found shot to death last night in a summer cabin at Blindman’s Lake, a resort community in the Ramapo Hills of Southern New York state.”
The newscaster paused for breath, so I breathed, too.
“Lawrence disappeared shortly before the discovery of the second murder in twenty-four hours,” the racing voice resumed. “The second victim was Alma Frazer, a waitress at the Lakeside Inn, where the murdered Dr. Norman had been staying before his death. Police believe Alma Frazer was strangled because she was a witness to the Norman murder. According to Captain McKay of the State Police, a note was found near the waitress’ body, in her own handwriting, addressed to Lieutenant Lawrence, asking him to meet her in her room at the inn, probably in the hope of blackmailing him. Lawrence is believed heading for the Canadian border.… And now the weather forecast. For New York City and vicinity and Northern New Jersey-—”
“Jim,” Conchita interrupted, “you didn’t tell me about Alma.”
“Didn’t I? I thought you knew. You know so many things.”
“Why did you do it, Jim?”
I looked carefully into Conchita’s eyes. She sounded so sincere that for a moment I thought she was naively asking for information. Her eyes were neither smoky nor flinty. They were merely anxious.
“I didn’t like the way she fixed her hair,” I said. “I asked her to get a feather bob, and she refused. So what else was there to do?”
“Anyhow, you can’t leave here now, Jim. There’s a six-state alarm.”
“I’m safe. They think I’m halfway to Canada. Give me a quickie for the road, and I’ll start right out for Mexico.”
“You!” Conchita said. “Of course I’ll get you a drink, but you can’t leave—yet.”
As she went into the kitchenette, the radio program reached a station-break. The announcer went into an orgiastic description of the next show, something called “Ten Thousand to One,” with the Twitchell Twins, Billy Bouncer’s Band, and ten thousand bucks to anybody who knew the right answers.
“Hey, Conchita,” I called. “I thought Eddie’s show was next.”
Conchita emerged instantly with a fresh drink. She had conquered the ice problem, apparently.
“Sure, Eddie’s on next,” she said. “He follows the news.”
I took the drink. “This is Ten Thousand to One,” I said. “Is that Eddie’s show?”
“Good grief!” Conchita glanced at her wrist. “My watch stopped. We missed the show.”
“Tough. But I’ll try to bear up.” I took a big bite out of the drink. The phone rang.
Conchita answered and her face changed. Either she was a first-rate actress or the phone call was upsetting. I listened to the one-sided conversation.
“Yes, just a little while ago.… No, not yet … No, nobody.… Well, it’s not very convenient. I just got out of the bathtub … Can’t you make it later?” A long pause. Then, “Okay, suit yourself.… I think you’re crazy, but if you—Okay. See you.”
Conchita dropped the phone and came at me with arms flailing.
“Jim, get into the bathroom. Quick. Take your drink with you.”
“Now wait,” I said. “I never drink while—”
“Quick, Jim. We’re having company. A neighbor. He’s a police detective and he lives in the apartment just downstairs. He must have seen us come in together and he suspects something. He’s coming right up.”
“Don’t let him in,” I said.
“But he’s a cop, Jim. I can’t keep him out. He’ll get a warrant or break down the door or something. Quick.”