Strange Embrace Read online

  “So we’ll make up for it,” she said. “You didn’t get here before the others, so you can stick around after they leave. They’ll be going any minute. You can stay.”

  He dropped a hand behind her and stroked her buttocks. Jan’s behind looked very good in the tight slacks. It felt even better than it looked.

  She put her lips to his ear and nibbled. “You are going to stay here,” she said. “With me.”

  “I couldn’t stay long,” he said. “I’ve got five hundred things to do.”

  “Not long. Just a little while.” She ran her hands over his body. “You’re beautiful,” she said. “A beautiful man. Stay with me.”

  “People will talk. It’s a little awkward, Jan.” Hell, it was damned awkward. When you were on the way back from the bathroom and the hostess practically started making love to you in the hallway…well, how much more awkward could it get?

  “They talk about me anyway,” she said dreamily. Then she straightened up. “You’re right,” she said. “Look, why don’t you leave with everybody else. Then walk to the corner and back again, or something. And nobody will talk.”

  So she’s a tramp, Johnny thought. But what was the matter with a tramp?

  “Good idea,” he said, feeling foolish, feeling like an adolescent making an appointment for a hot necking session. “I’ll leave with everybody else, then take a hack around the block while they all go home. I may be a few minutes. Don’t go to sleep.”

  Her smile was devastating. “Oh, I wouldn’t,” she purred. “Not without you, Johnny.”

  Now that, he decided, was known as putting one’s cards on the table. Subtlety was not her strong point. So what? Frankness and candor were virtues too, weren’t they?

  They were, he decided. Especially when they came in such a nice package.

  Chapter Six

  “SHARE A CAB, LANE?”

  Johnny stood with Carter Tracy in front of Jan’s apartment building. The other cast members were milling around, either hunting for cabs or preparing for a trek to the nearest subway, depending upon their financial position at the moment. Sharing a cab with Carter, Johnny reflected, was possibly the last thing in the world he wanted to do. “Thanks just the same,” he said. “But I’ve got a few stops to make on the way. I’d better grab my own hack.”

  “Suit yourself.” Carter Tracy’s voice dropped to a whisper. “And thanks for dragging me to this little gathering in spite of the way I acted. This is wonderful, Lane. It clears me, doesn’t it? Clears me completely.”

  Johnny nodded noncommittally.

  “I’ll admit I was pretty stupid,” Tracy said, “to hand that police lieutenant a fabricated alibi. But it seemed the only thing to do at the time. I was worried that I’d be in a lot of trouble, Lane. More for lying than anything else. But now that won’t have to get aired, will it?”

  Johnny looked at him. “What are you getting at?”

  “Just that there’s no point now in bringing up the fact that my alibi was a lie. The police won’t bother to run it down too carefully, I don’t think—not with this new angle to work on. So why tell them about it?”

  The man’s gall was incredible. Johnny took a step toward the actor, caught his lapels and pulled him up close. “You were one of the ones who didn’t get a phone call,” he snapped. “Maybe there was a reason. Maybe you were too busy making the calls, Tracy.”

  “What!”

  “You heard me,” Johnny said. “You’re just a little too worried about that alibi. You’re selling me nice and soft but not soft enough. Did you kill her, Tracy?”

  The actor’s mouth dropped open and stayed that way for a second or two. “That’s ridiculous,” he managed finally. “And you know it’s ridiculous.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” Johnny’s hand fell and the actor took a step backward. Johnny looked around; the rest of the cast had disappeared. And Jan was waiting inside, waiting for him. “I’m not so damn sure what’s ridiculous, Tracy. You’re a little too anxious to cover your tracks. So don’t tell me what I’m going to give the police and what I should hold out on them. I’ll make up my own mind.”

  A cab came down the street. Johnny held out a hand and whistled. The taxi pulled to the curb and Johnny opened the rear door.

  “I think I’ll take this one,” he told Tracy. “If it’s all right with you. I’m in a hurry.”

  And he stepped into the cab and pulled the door shut. “Go around the block,” he told the driver. “Take it slow and easy, then let me out where you picked me up.”

  The cabby studied him intently. “Sure,” he said dubiously. “You some kind of a nut or something?”

  “I’m eccentric,” Johnny said. “I’m also a big tipper. Except when cab drivers make themselves obnoxious.”

  The cabby lapsed into a hurt silence and Johnny settled back to enjoy the ride. It was a quarter after nine—the meeting had lasted a little less than an hour. Haig was probably sleeping, and would go on sleeping for another hour at the very least. For which Johnny blamed him not at all.

  But that meant, happily enough, that Johnny could dally with Jan Vernon and feel no pangs of conscience. True, Haig was not the only Homicide cop in Manhattan. But the thought of trying to explain the state of affairs to some officer he didn’t know—or some of the ones he did know, as far as that went—did not appeal at all. He couldn’t talk to just any cop. It had to be Haig, and Haig was sleeping.

  So he would wait for Haig to wake up. And what better waiting place was there than Jan Vernon’s apartment?

  None, he thought pleasantly. None at all.

  The meeting had served its purpose, he thought. If nothing else, it had let everybody know what they were up against. The silent agony that Buell and Flood had been going through must have been enormous. Now, at least everybody knew that the problem was not an individual one but a group affair. Somebody was working on them all together. That wasn’t pretty, but at least it drew some of the ends closer together.

  Most of the ends remained loose, however, and that was the hellish part of it. He wondered if he might be missing something. Tracy seemed to be the large unknown quantity, and he tried to decide whether the actor could have been the murderer.

  It did not work out. Tracy could have killed the girl—but the razor meant it had been done with a motive, not merely on impulse. And no motive had turned up as yet. Or, if you accounted for the razor in some other way, he could have killed her on impulse and then made phone calls to divert suspicion, to make the killing look like part of someone else’s pressure project. But that still did not work out. Because Jan had been getting calls for a few days prior to the murder, and so had Elaine James. While Tracy might conceivably have killed the girl on impulse, perhaps with some vague motive at the root of it all, he would hardly have taken three days to lay the groundwork.

  Johnny shrugged. He thought, maybe I like him for the murder because I don’t like him for anything else. But it’s better that he didn’t do it. Because he fits his part in Squalor the way those slacks fit Jan’s rear end.

  “Hey.” The cabby’s voice cut through his train of thought and the cab slowed to a stop at the curb. “Hey, character. We’re back where we started from. Now where do you want to go?”

  “This will do,” Johnny told him. The meter read thirty-five cents. He handed the cabby a dollar and told him to keep the change, then hurried into Jan’s building.

  It was a remodeled brownstone similar in architectural design to the one he had been in a night ago, the one in which Elaine James had died. The similarity ended with the exterior design. Jan’s Gramercy apartment house was plush and comfortable and her apartment took up the entire second floor. There was quite a difference between the two buildings—the difference between a successful actress and one reaching for the big break. All the difference in the world.

  He took the stairs two at a time. He stopped at the head of the staircase to light a cigarette. He straightened his tie, drew a breath, and told himself he was
supposed to act casual. But he did not feel casual at all.

  He knocked. There was the sound of a peephole opening. He stared into it and saw his own face in the one-way glass. Then, happily, the door opened.

  And there was Jan.

  “It took you a long time,” she said. “I was worried for a few minutes. I thought you weren’t coming.”

  “You should have more faith.”

  “Well, come on inside so I can close the door. Hey, is something the matter? Why are you staring at me?”

  “You changed your clothes,” he said foolishly. “Again.”

  “Don’t you like?”

  “I definitely like.”

  He liked, all right. She looked magnificently naked, delightfully obscene. She was not really wearing clothing at all, when you got right down to it. She had on what he would describe as peekaboo panties, consisting of a strip of black string around her belly from which a bright red fringe dangled to the tops of her thighs. Her bra was a fringe that matched the panties and was every bit as flimsy. It gave no support, which obviously she did not need in any case. Nor did it do anything to conceal her flesh from his eyes. It just managed to appear sexy, which was its mission.

  On top of this she wore a bolero jacket that fell almost to her waist. But it might as well have been cellophane, it was that transparent.

  Obviously, her clothing was not meant to keep her warm. But it was sure as hell keeping Johnny warm.

  “Classy it’s not,” she said. “It’s vulgar, actually. Common and cheap and all that. They call it French underwear and sell it to peasants and amateur whores and fetishists in the garbage shops around Times Square.”

  “I repeat,” he said, “I like it.”

  “So do I. It’s so blatantly obvious. Does it make me look sexy?”

  “You’d look sexy in a rain barrel.”

  It was true enough, he thought. The dark-haired actress literally oozed sex from every pore. And with her in that outfit, he could see all the pores.

  She leaned at him and he took her in his arms. Her body was warm against his, her breath coming fast and hard. He tipped her face upward and kissed her. She threw both arms around his neck and the kiss turned into a four-star production.

  “Johnny,” she moaned. “Johnny.”

  He kissed her again and her loins ground into his. As the kiss sustained, his hand went under the sheer bolero and fondled her back. Her skin was warm and velvety.

  “Johnny,” she said softly. “What should we do now? What do you think we should do?”

  His voice was hoarse. “I think we should go to bed.”

  “Now that’s a good idea,” she murmured, nuzzling him. “That’s a wonderful idea. Hurry, Johnny!”

  They were lying back on the bed, sharing a cigarette and looking up at the ceiling. His heart was beating normally again and he could breathe regularly. There was a silly grin on his face which stubbornly refused to go away, but outside of that everything was perfectly normal.

  And she was wonderful.

  “I’m not frightened now, Johnny.”

  He passed the cigarette to her. She took a deep drag and let the smoke out slowly. He watched the end of the cigarette glow when she drew on it. Then he took it from her and smoked.

  “I was frightened all day,” she went on. “I don’t want anybody to kill me, Johnny. Is that silly?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I was frightened. So frightened. And I needed you. The fear must have had a lot to do with it. I wanted you this morning, at your apartment. You were barely awake and I wanted to take you back to bed. You could tell, couldn’t you?”

  He didn’t answer. He thought about the sweet small sounds she had made while they were making love, about the delicious warmth of her spectacularly female body. Her reputation did not matter now. You could not judge her as you judged other women. She was a special creature, a creature built solely for love.

  Which was enough.

  More than enough.

  “I wanted you all day long. I sat around with the door locked and I worried and wanted you all at once. I thought maybe you would get here early and we could… Do you see how shameless I am, Johnny? I wanted to knock off a quickie before the rest of the cast got here. Demure and ladylike, aren’t I?”

  “You’re wonderful,” he said. He squashed the cigarette in an ashtray on the bedside table, then rolled over on his side and took her in his arms. His hands stroked her forehead, her cheek, the back of her neck.

  “Wonderful,” he repeated.

  “Sure. Wonderful Jan. A fine specimen of the female sex carried to its logical conclusion. A gal who reacts to any kind of tension by leching for the first man she sets her eyes on. A girl who thinks with another part of her anatomy instead of her brain.”

  “I like that part of your anatomy.”

  She didn’t laugh. “I’m a tramp, Johnny. Period. I’m a good actress and a good lay and that’s all I’m good for.” She sighed, then moved away from him. “You’d better get going, Johnny. You have to call that policeman. Craig?”

  “Haig.”

  “Go home, then. Call him and tell him all about it. Get the police working on it so that they can catch the murderer and we can all relax a little.”

  He sat up on the edge of the bed and fumbled around for his clothing. “I’ll tell Haig to take his time,” he told her. “I’m in no hurry to catch the killer.”

  “What?”

  “Let him roam around for a few days,” he went on. “You see, you’re a lot of fun when you’re frightened. One perfect hell of a lot of fun.”

  Her voice was soft. “I don’t have to be frightened to want you, Johnny Lane.”

  “No?”

  “No.” A soft chuckle. “You can drop around any time you want. You’re nice to have around, Johnny Lane.”

  When he was dressed she wrapped herself in a bathrobe and walked to the door with him. “I want to be able to lock this after you,” she said. “I’m still a little nervous, I guess. At a time like this I’m glad I don’t live on the ground floor. And that there’s no fire escape handy. I used to worry about what would happen if there were a fire. Now I have other things to worry about, don’t I?”

  He told her to keep the door locked and not to let anybody in. “Even if you know them,” he said.

  “At this hour?” She pouted. “I wouldn’t let anybody into my apartment at night, Johnny. It’s after ten o’clock. What kind of a girl do you think I am, anyway?”

  “A nice one,” he told her. He kissed her and she clung to him for a moment, then let him go. He opened the door and closed it after him, waiting in the hallway until he heard the click of the bolt sliding into place. Then he walked buoyantly to the stairs and down to the first floor.

  The night had a cold edge on it. He stood in the doorway and buttoned his coat to the neck. He took out his pack of cigarettes, shook a cigarette loose. He scratched a match and lit it, then stepped out of the doorway.

  “Lane—”

  He turned at the voice. He had just enough time to see a broad, dull forehead and a pair of piggish little eyes. Then a hand the size of a leg of lamb slammed into his chest. He went down.

  Johnny came up fast and hard. There were two of them, one bigger than the other. They wore rough working clothes and heavy boots. The bigger of the two was the one who had hit Johnny, and that was the one he went for. He brought up an uppercut from the floor and threw it at the guy’s jaw.

  It didn’t seem to have any effect. And then Johnny caught another punch over the heart and went down like a sack of oats. The one who had hit him slung him up over his shoulder and carried him to the air shaft at the side of the building. He tried to yell and nothing came out. He couldn’t breathe.

  The small one—if you could call him small—began to talk.

  “Be smart, Lane,” he said. “We got a job to do. We got to work you over. You can have it easy or you can have it hard. You take your choice.”

  Johnny
struggled. But it was not easy to put up much of a fight when you were slung over somebody’s shoulder. He wished the son of a bitch would put him down. And then, damn it, the son of a bitch did put him down. Not gently. And Johnny hit the hard pavement like—you guessed it—a sack of oats.

  This time Johnny got up more slowly. “All right,” he managed to say. “What’s the pitch?”

  “No pitch. You got a show that ain’t supposed to open. We was hired to tell you.”

  “So you told me.”

  “But we gotta convince you, see?”

  “How?”

  The big one hit him again. This time in the stomach. Johnny folded up like an accordion and fell forward just in time to catch a punch in the face. It put him back against a brick wall and he decided to stay there.

  A cold, professional beating—that was all. No emotion, no feeling. Just services rendered in return for a fee paid. That was it. And he knew the smart thing to do. You didn’t fight back. You stood there and took it and waited for it to end. Then you found a doctor and got him to put you back together. You didn’t try to fight your way out of it because these boys were pros and you were strictly an amateur.

  Johnny knew all this.

  But it was just too cold and mechanical and gutless for him. Being beaten up by hired machines was too humiliating. So when the next punch came, aimed for the stomach, Johnny slipped to one side and let the fist crash into the wall instead of into his guts. The big one let out a muffled roar and whirled to get him. The smaller one came on fast, going for him with a leather-covered sap. Johnny ducked the blow, spun the guy and left-hooked him in the face. He went to one knee. When Johnny kicked him in the chest he went down the rest of the way.

  The big one had a good hand left, which was a shame. He threw it like a shot-putter and Johnny could not get out of the way in time. He hit the pavement with his back, then came up under the man and threw him with a judo toss he’d been practicing. There were advantages in having Ito around, Johnny thought hazily.

  But now one of them was behind him and the other in front and there was no place to go. The smaller thug was getting to his feet and the bigger one was already up. Johnny went for the big one—he was blocking the way to the street.