RON MILLER is the illustrator and author of more than thirty books, including six novels. He has won a Hugo Award and the American Institute of Physics Award for Excellence in Science Writing, among many other commendations. He has also created US postage stamps, designed for motion pictures, consulted for Walt Disney Imagineering and provided illustrations (and articles) for publications ranging from National Geographic and Scientific American to Analog and Reader's Digest. His original art hangs in public and private collections worldwide, including the Smithsonian Institution and the Pushkin Gallery.
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Chapter One

I get off the bus in Plankton Key, Florida and it's like stepping in front of a glassblower's furnace. The dank tropical heat hits me in the face like a blow from a wet army blanket. It's as easy to breathe as a blanket, too, each mouthful like a bite of dry wool, which might be confusing the metaphor, but what the hell. The air tastes like dust and my eyes water from a glare that seems to penetrate even the shadows. My body is instantly wet with perspiration which the oversaturated air refuses to accept so instead of cooling me like nature intended it just covers me with a salty, sticky coating. Droplets of sweat trickle from under my armpits, tickling like little insects, and I can feel a salty delta forming as sweat funnels between my breasts. Welcome to the Florida Keys, I tell myself, and a new record for instant misery. My thirty-dollar white silk blouse clings to me like wet tissue. I could have saved my money, I figure, and used a fifty-cent box of damp Kleenex to the same effect.

There's a punk-looking guy sitting on a bench just outside the door to the station. He must be waiting for God Himself to get off the bus since I can see no other reason to sit outside in this heat. He's trying to look cool in his cheap seersucker suit, but he's no better an actor than he is a dresser, which isn't much. He's sweating like a cheap hot dog, which he more than a little resembles. He's peering over the top of his limp racing sheet, scanning the platform like a weasel looking for a baby bird to drop out of its nest. He spots me and does a perfect Jimmy Finlayson double take. I do tend to stand out in a crowd.

I'd laugh if I could breathe, but I'm making a beeline for the station door, which bears a sign reading Air Conditioned Inside in blue letters with little icicles hanging from them. It draws me like the North Pole attracted Peary. Weasel, though, unfolds himself from the bench like five feet of carpenter's rule and intercepts me four paces from the door. He's a skinny little runt who barely reaches my collar bone. His limp straw hat has a wide brown stain around the band and his suit looks damp enough to wring like a sponge, which is as dreadful thought as I've ever had. He has a voice like someone with a really bad sinus infection. "Hey! New in town, huh? How 'bout I show ya 'round?"

I look at him in the same way John D. Rockefeller would look at a wooden nickel.

"I've been around."

I push by him he squelches a little like a wet dishcloth and finally get into the refrigerated station. The air inside is so frosty I think for a moment that my more fragile bits may snap off with the sudden change in temperature and my coating of itchy sweat suddenly congeals into a clammy slime. There's not much inside other than a couple of old benches with limp, bored people draped on them and a ticket counter. I go up to the old man behind the cage and ask, "Any place to get a cold drink around here?"

This doesn't seem to me to require a whole lot of thought, but obviously it's been a long time since anyone's asked him for more information than the time of the next bus and the old man is a little taken aback by the responsibility. He mulls the question for a while, savoring the moment, as he massages his gums with his tongue. I glance over my shoulder and there's Weasel, looking through the window at me. He turns away so quickly he bumps into a fat woman carrying a kid and she lays into him like he'd just tried to mug her or something. Meanwhile, the old man's telling me there's a fine bar just across the highway from the station, which I wouldn't have thought to have been such a hard thing to have remembered but then I'm not an old man stuck behind a ticket counter in a podunk bus station.

I can see the bar shimmering in the heat like a mirage on the other side of about forty feet of nearly liquid asphalt. It looks as far away as Timbuktu. I can just imagine someone someday finding my bleached bones scattered across the median line. I take a deep breath before leaving the station. It's like swimming through molten glass, but I make it. The tavern isn't air conditioned, but the inside is as dark and cool and dank as a cave, even if it does smell like stale beer and cigarettes. The place is practically empty which is OK by me. I swing myself onto a stool at the bar and toss my suitcase and jacket over the seat next to me. I set my purse on the bar in front of me a little more carefully because I don't want the automatic to make too loud a bump, pull a handkerchief from it and mop my face. The bartender has been eyeballing ever since I came through the door. I don't suppose I look much like a local.

"Get you something, lady?"

"Yeah. I need the coldest beer you've got and some directions."

"The first is easy," he says, rustling a bottle out of a chest of ice. A Pabst Blue Ribbon, too. Oh boy! The sound alone sends a welcome chill down my spine. I savor it, vertebra by vertebra. "The second depends."

He pops the cap off and sets the bottle in front of me along with a tall glass. I surprise the hell out of him and pick up the bottle. I guess I'll never make a Southern lady. The beer goes down like a skier on a slope of fresh powder. I set it down half-empty.

"Depends?"

"Depends on where you want to go."

"Yeah. Well, you know where the Paughner place is?"

"The what?"

"Paughner," I repeated, "P-a-u-g-h . . ."

"Oh! The Paughner place!" He pronounced it "Poffner". I'd been saying "Pockner", like I'd been taught. But then, I'd been raised genteel.

"Yeah, that's it. You know where it is?" He's turned his back to me but I can see him staring at me in the mirror and I don't much like the expression on his face. Maybe it's just the dirty glass.

"Maybe. You got a minute I'll call a buddy and get directions for you."

"Thanks, You got any place I can clean up a little? The heat out there's really something. I must look a mess."

"Sure, lady," he replies with a gallantly skeptical smile "Through there, in the back. Only one door. Can't miss it."

"Keep an eye on my bag for me?"

"Sure." He tries to make it sound like he'd die to protect that bag, which would be just fine by me. I know what I got in the suitcase, I don't know him from Adam.

The room in the back is a stuffy little restroom with no ventilation, no evidence of regular cleaning and, awful to see, no seat on the toilet. Fortunately I'd taken care of that business on the bus, thank Hygeia. The only light comes from a single bare flyspecked 30-watt bulb dangling from a frayed cord and a cracked pane of frosted glass. I switch the light off and the room actually seems to get brighter. There's a green-stained sink and a cracked mirror, though I have to stoop a little to use either. It's nice being tall but sometimes it's, well, a pain in the neck. I turn on the faucet and let the water run to get cold. While it's trickling I look in the glass. Yup, the bartender was being gallant, all right. I look godawful. I look like I'd just spent a day and a half on a plane and a bus, can you believe it. My black hair is plastered to my head like wet licorice. Fortunately, it's exactly for times like this that I keep it cut in a simple pageboy. It's hopelessly out of style but all I have to do is give it a shake and maybe a couple of brush strokes if I think of it and it's as good as new.

I peel my blouse off, being careful to not let it touch anything in the room, and hang it from the hook on the back of the door. My shoulders are so naturally broad and level I have to cut the pads out of all my blouses and jackets, otherwise I'd look like a character from Things to Come. I unhook my brassiere and hang it from the doorknob. The sink's full of cool water and I splash it on my face. I soak a paper towel and use it to swab out my armpits and the undersides of my breasts. Still damp, I lean on the sink and look closely into the mirror. Mirror, mirror, on the wall, huh? Well, I better not ask questions I might not want to hear the answers to. There's only one man I've ever known who went goofy over my looks and, well, that's a story I'd just as soon not get into right now. The pale lean face looking back at me is a lot more like something out of Vogue than Rogue not exactly man bait. Suzy Parker, maybe, instead of Jane Mansfield, if you get my drift. Okay, so it's not the face of man bait but is it the face of a man killer?

The hell with it.

I get back into my bra and blouse, both of which are now cold and clammy. I consider abandoning the former altogether, which feels like a big leech snuggled against my chest, but I don't quite yet want to put too great a strain on Southern sensibilities.

When I get back to the bar, the bartender has another beer waiting for me along with a scrap of paper with some directions scrawled on it in thick pencil.

"It's on the house, lady. Don't get too many tourists in Plankton this early in the season."

"Thanks. I imagine you're right, but I'm not really a tourist." I tap the note with a fingertip. "How far from here?"

"I dunno. Five-six miles maybe."

"I don't suppose there're any cabs around?"

"Yeah, sure." He thinks I've made a joke.

"Any chance I can get something to eat?"

"I got some ham and swiss you want a sandwich. Wonder bread. That's about it."

I tell him that'd be swell because Wonder bread helps build my body eight ways and take my beer to a table where I can see the blazing street. All the while I'm thinking, my, my, I wonder why someone living in this two-bit town would need to call to find out where anyone lives? It's an island, for God's sake. No place on it could be more than spitting distance from any other place, which brought up a pretty nasty mental picture. While I'm wondering who the bartender had called I see a familiar figure coming out of the station and I bet my last dollar he's going to come over here. I win the buck from myself, as I expected I would, as the weasily little gink comes trotting across the half-molten pavement and sure enough comes straight to the door of the bar. He tries not to notice me as he comes in and the effort is so obvious he may as well be gawking right in my face. He gets a beer from the barkeep and, even though every other table in the place is empty, he looks around as though trying to decide where to sit. He finally comes, big surprise, over to where I'm sitting. I figure chances are good he's who the bartender called, God knows why.

"Anyone sitting here?"

"Yeah, my pal the invisible man."

Mistakenly taking this as an invitation, he plunks himself down with an audible squish. He sucks on his beer for a minute, his eyes self-consciously avoiding me. He's so nervous I begin to wonder if I'm going to see him completely dissolve right in front of me.

"Say, Miss, ah . . ."

I wonder if I ought to try to make things easier for him, but figure, what the hell. So I just stare back at him. His eyes skitter under my gaze like olives avoiding a dull fork. He mumbles some more then finally makes a brave try at getting to whatever his point is.

"Look, ah, Miss, ah . . . Hey! Sorry about, ah, back there . . . didn't mean to sound fresh or nothin'. Just tryin' to be friendly helpful-like, you know? You bein' new in town an' all. You know?"

He looks up at me hopefully. I don't give him anything back but more stare.

"Ah, uh . . . you gonna be in town for long?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. Why?"

"Well, uh, you wouldn't be plannin' to go out poke around town or anythin' like that, would you? I mean, not that it's any of my business or nothin'."

"And if it were your business?"

"Nothin'! Nothin', of course! It's just, well, just that, you being a stranger 'round here and all, you might not be . . . I mean, you might like some friendly advice."

"I'm hanging on your every word."

"Yeah. Well. What I mean is . . . if you got a return ticket, well, then, if I was you I'd just stay around here 'til the next bus outta town. It's nice an' cool here. It's a good place to wait."

"Well, that is mighty interesting advice. You make Plankton sound kind of unhealthy for a poor little ol' city girl like me."

"Well, yeah . . . I guess it could get kind of unhealthy."

"You're a healthy kind of guy, aren't you?"

"What?"

"How're you feeling?"

"I . . . uh, OK, I guess."

"That's pretty tough, then," I say, reaching across the table. I grab his tie and jerk it so hard his face bounces off the table like a tennis ball. He continues on backwards, toppling chair and all onto the floor. I glance up at the bartender, but he's got his back turned, pointedly polishing a perfectly clean glass. I get up and toss a tip onto the table, next to where a single tooth is embedded in the wood in the center of a wet red circle. It looks like a tiny tombstone. I go to the bar, retrieve my bag and the sandwich sitting next to it, thank the barkeep for his hospitality and insincerely apologize for leaving such a mess. I can't tell if the sarcasm's been lost on him since he still won't look at me, the bastard. I have to step over Weasel's face on my way to the door. He's still out, blowing a big red bubble through a nose that looks like a squashed tomato. I kick the face and the bubble goes plip.

Thanks for the advice, friend.

 

Chapter Two

I'd spotted a motel the "Cozy Haven O'Rest", no kidding. I thought it sounded like a pet cemetery when the bus had crossed the main highway, so I braved a hike of a couple of blocks. I can't imagine why Plankton needs a motel at all. Its existence is about as good an example of wishful thinking as I've ever seen. During the walk I suspect I see about all there is of Plankton: a seedy-looking general store and post office, a two-story place with a doctor's and lawyer's offices, an express agency, a hardware store, a five-and-dime, a branch bank the usual small-town stuff except that everything was in pink stucco. I thought the buildings looked like a display in a bakery window. There's only two real streets, the main highway that runs from the mainland all the way to Key West and a cross street that runs off into some desolate-looking scrub in one direction and in the other at the beach and wharves on the far side of the bus station. The tourist court is pretty much what I expected but the cabin doesn't look half bad, not that I've got a whole lot of room to be finicky. The owner gives me a little trouble about being unescorted but I get all high-hat on him and he backs down quick enough and gives me a key. I can hear him dialing his phone, big surprise, before I'm even out the door. Sure would like to know who everyone's so anxious to talk to.

The room's OK, like what'd I expect? It's got a bed, a chair and little table with a clock radio on it, a rickety dresser with an electric fan sitting on top, some godawful pictures on the wall and a closet-sized bathroom with a toilet and shower stall squeezed inside. I'm pleased to see a seat on the toilet. It even has a paper band wrapped around it assuring me that it'd been "Sanitized for Your Protection". Uh huh. I make sure the door's bolted and the shade drawn and undress. My soggy clothes peel off me like the skin from a scalded tomato. I turn on the cold water in the shower and let it run a few minutes before climbing in. It feels great even if the water really is only tepid. I don't towel off. The water's cool as it struggles to evaporate into the humid air. Still wet, I unpack the few things in my bag. I don't plan to be in town more than forty-eight hours, tops, but I hate living out of a bag for even that short a time.

It takes about twenty minutes in the humid air, but I'm finally dry. My hair only needs a quick brush before I get dressed and the hell with makeup. White shorts, bandana halter knotted behind my back and a pair of sneakers seem like just the ticket, though God knows there's now not much place to stash my .45, which I have to leave in my purse a nuisance, but fortunately the bag's got an extendable strap so I can carry it over my shoulder. I check the results in the mirror and figure it's not so bad. Fifty-seven percent leg, exactly, according to a pal I had at Slotsky's who was never without a tape measure. Seems funny to be dressed like this while it's still snowing back home. A wide-brimmed straw hat and sunglasses and I'm ready to face the perils of Plankton, Florida, such as they may be, looking like a goddam tourist.

I'd spotted the sheriff's office on the way to the motel. It was in a moderately new brick building set conspicuously among its shabby neighbors. It also, I saw, housed the magistrate, a license bureau, a farm co-op office ("farm"? farming what? coconuts?) and a bail bondsman. Hardly anyone had paid me much attention on my way to the motel, but the few people out in the heat mostly some old geezers in front of the feed store now gawked at me as though I'd just been dropped into the middle of town from a flying saucer. I don't suppose six-foot brunettes with legs up to here are all that terribly common down here so I let them have their fun, hoping that the rise in blood pressure won't do them any harm in this heat. And screw them if it does. I pass a sweating fat woman lumbering along the sidewalk in an Hawaiian-print muumuu, looking for all the world like some enormous Jell-o fruit mold, who audibly huffs at me and I almost laugh out loud.

I wonder how I can get what I want to know out of the sheriff without tipping my hand. I not only want this to be a solo job, I'm as sure that it has to be solo as I'm sure the sheriff would lock me up for my even thinking of doing what I want to do. He's probably looking for me right now for smashing Weasel's face. Then again, who am I really kidding? In the hour since then everyone in town probably knows I'm here and has at least half an idea of what I'm after. King Noorvik probably owns the damn place, which I don't doubt for a second. As I'm passing a hardware store I have an inspiration, which happens every now and then. I make a right-angle turn and go in. The place has that great smell only hardware stores have: oil and rubber and metal. A little like a new car. The place is narrow and high and dark, with crowded shelves rising to an embossed tin ceiling and a high ladder on a track for getting to the things out of reach. Looks more like a warehouse than a shop and I like it. There's a counter in the back half covered with packages and boxes and displays of jackknives and combination screwdrivers and a big roll of brown paper. I bang on the bell. Someone sounding like Andy Devine yells from the back, "Hold your horses!". But if I'd half expected someone looking like Andy Devine I was disappointed. The old man who pops out of the gloom in the back of the store is more like a garden gnome than Wild Bill's sidekick. His head can hardly be higher off the floor than my diaphragm. He's so twisted and wrinkled he looks like a length of knotted rope with a big turk's head at the top, one made by an inexperienced sailor at that. Grotesque as this apparition is, it's given me my first friendly reception since arriving in town, which is something.

"Well now," comes that fluting, broken voice from one of the folds in the big knot, "if you ain't a sight for sore eyes I ain't got sore eyes!" I take this as a compliment, while at the same time wondering if the old man even had eyes. I assume they were what I might have otherwise taken for a pair of oiled ball bearings embedded in a couple of deep wrinkles. "I reckon you're just passin' through?" he went on. "It'd be too much to hope, I s'pose, that you're thinkin' of hangin' 'round?"

"I hope not. I've got some business in Plankton and if I'm halfway lucky it won't take long."

"Business here? That's a rich one!" His laugh was all twangy like a jew's-harp.

"Well, maybe you can help me out."

"It'd be my pleasure, miss, it surely would."

"You think there's anyone who'd have a car I could rent for a couple of days?"

"A car?"

"Yeah. My business is out of town a ways and I can tell you right now I don't want to walk another fifty feet around here."

"Plankton ain't the best place to be in the summer, that's for sure. Ain't so great in the winter, neither, for that matter."

"I've seen no reason to doubt that. But do you know anyone with a car?

"Sure do. I got one."

"You do? That's great! Would you be willing to rent it to me for a day or two?"

"Ain't doin' me any good. I ain't driven the thing in a year. Useta run deliveries with it, when I useta deliver, which I don't no more. If it'll start, it's yours."

"How much?"

"I dunno. Ten bucks sound OK? Use it long's you want. Like I said, ain't doin' me no good."

"Sounds more than OK by me. You want me to sign something?"

"Naw. Purty gal like you? Besides, wait 'til you see it. You're sure not gonna wanta steal that car."

"Can I get it now?"

"Sure. C'mon, it's out back."

I followed the old man through the back of the store and into the alley behind. At first it was hard to distinguish the car from the rest of the trash and rubbish, but it was there all right, a De Soto sedan built before I was born.

"There oughta be a can o'gas just inside the door there" he said while excavating the car, "if you wouldn't mind fetchin' it. I'm sure she'll be dry as a bone. Plannin' to go far?"

I wondered how much to tell him and figured, what the hell. "Depends. How far's the Poughner place?"

"The Poughners? What in the world you want out there?"

"It's a personal thing. Just got to see them, that's all."

"You a relative or somethin'?"

"Or something."

"Well, if you're lookin' for a big inheritance, you gotta rude shock comin'."

"Yeah, I guess someone'll have one coming. I was told the place was five or six miles out of town, that sound right?."

"Somethin' like that, yeah."

"Well, I ought to have your car back by this evening, I imagine."

"If I ain't here, just leave it in back here and chuck the keys in the mailbox."

He'd finished emptying the can into the tank so I took the keys and climbed into the car. The inside smelled like a funeral home. I rolled down the window and leaned on the sill. That just about brought me eye level with the old man.

"You really got business out there, miss?"

"Yeah, I really got business out there."

"Well, I was just wonderin' . . . I mean, if you didn't . . . well, the law ain't nothin' to mess around with, 'round here, that's all."

"The law? The sheriff?"

"Aw, the sheriff's OK. He's a new fella and pretty square, I suppose. Ain't heard a word against, at any rate. It's his depitty, Mackanaw. He's a real wrong'un."

"Well, I'll be careful. I gotta get your car back to you."

"Yeah, well you do that now, miss."

I follow the bartender's directions out of town and by the time I get to the second or third turn I begin to suspect that I'd been had. The odometer's already clocked six miles. By all rights I should've passed the place. In a couple more miles I'll run out of island and be in the Bay of Florida. I wish now I'd shown the directions to the old man instead of just confirming the distance. Well, hell, it's past noon already but I figure I can get back to Plankton, get the right directions from the old man and still have the time I need at the Poughner place, wherever the hell it is.

The island beyond town is just dried-out scrub and sour-looking marshes, flat as a pancake. The air is dead still and the only motion in the landscape is from the heat waves rising from the road. It smells like someone's frying lizards somewhere.

I find a dirt side road to turn around in and I'm just starting to back out onto the road when I hear a siren. I wait for the cop to pass, but instead he pulls over ahead of me. Somehow I feel no particular surprise: the coincidence would be obvious even for Highway Patrol. The cruiser looks only maybe five years newer than the car I'm driving and I bet myself it's the only one the county owns. A big red-faced man with a gut too large for his sweat-stained uniform climbs out and ambles over to me, jerking his baggy trousers up as he comes. He's no Broderick Crawford and Broderick Crawford's no beauty, as we all know. He puts a pair of hands the size of catcher's mitts on the roof of my car and leans down toward my open window. I can hear the sweat from his palms sizzling on the metal, but he doesn't seem to notice. I give him my best Pepsodent smile and say, "Good afternoon, officer. Anything wrong?"

He just stares at me for a moment, chewing his cud. I get the impression that I might as well have been speaking Chinese. A glistening droplet of amber spit rolls out of one corner of his mouth and immediately gets caught in a thicket of coarse whiskers. I watch it dull as it dries in the heat.

"You think somethin' might be wrong, lady?"

"Me? Not at all. I'm as happy as a lark on the wing."

"Yeah? Kinda lonely place fer a lady to be. This road don't go nowhere. Where might you be headed?"

"Nowhere particular. I'm new around here. Just thought I'd take a look around. That OK?"

"Yeah? Well, lady, it just might not be OK."

"No? I don't see why not, officer. It is a public road and all."

"Yeah. You'd think so, wouldn't you." He steps back from the door a pace. "Want to climb outta there a minute?"

"Well, I'll tell you, officer, unless there's something wrong, I'd just as soon get back to town. There's . . ."

"And I'd just as soon not have to ask you again."

I get out of the car.

"Jesus Christ, you're a long one, ain't you?'

"Why, yes, officer, I guess I am, now that you mention it." He was a full head shorter than me, but about twice as thick.

"And a little bit of a smart mouth, too, eh?"

"My friends have hinted as much." Hell, most of them have told me that outright.

"Well, you so smart you know what happens to uppity wimmin round here?"

"I hate to imagine."

"Yeah, you sure would hate to," he said as without the slightest warning his right hand whips up from his belt and catches me across the mouth. The blow is so unexpected that it throws me off my balance and my back bangs against the car door behind me. He backhands me with a left before I've even bounced back from the metal and this time I can feel the blood rush from my mouth. It was like being hit with a brick wrapped in sandpaper. Before he can slap me a third time my right foot shoots out at the end of a long, straight leg like a battering ram. It catches him on a kneecap but I don't hear the pop I'd hoped for. It was like kicking a tree trunk and I can feel the jolt along the full length of my spine. Given the damage I've failed to inflict on the cop, I'm taken entirely by surprise by what he does next: his fist slams into my face like a cannonball. What kind of Southern hospitality is this?

I'm only out for a second. As soon as the stars go away, encouraged by the pain in my scalp, I realize I'm being dragged into the grass by my hair, like a cave woman and her favorite Neanderthal. I can all too easily imagine what the fat bastard has in mind, so I grab a chunk of coral and smash it into the back of his hand. This time there's an entirely satisfying crunch and the cop yells out in pain. That's good. What's not so good is that I've just barely gotten to my knees when he plants a kick in my ribs that lifts me entirely off the ground. But it also throws me far enough away from him that I get a chance to jump to my feet before he can get another kick in.

I face him, crouching tiger-like, or at least I hope so, ready to spring in any direction circumstance or good sense might dictate. The fat cop just stands there facing me, casually confident in his weight and masculinity, both of which he possesses in abundance. One of his hands is blue and puffy, seeping red from a broad abrasion. It doesn't seem to bother him much, more's the pity. He's got a gun, but I suspect and hope he's too sure of himself to think of drawing on a mere l'il ol' fee-male. I plan on doing my best to disabuse him of the wisdom of that assumption. I don't know what he thinks I'll do, but I'm betting that preemptive attack is not high on his list. So, acting on that thought, I spin and plant the side of my foot against his ear. I think that's a new one for him. Thank God for Hawkshaw's Book On Detective Work, Volume Seven: Unarmed Self-Defense, to say nothing of three years of practicing high kicks in the Follies. There's a hollow thonk like I'd just kicked a watermelon. Not stopping to see the effect of my kick I use my momentum to slam my foot into the same spot again. He staggers back a pace, as much from surprise, I suspect, as the pain. His left ear has been smeared across his cheek like an overripe tomato. I step in and jab the ends of my rigidly-held fingers into his windpipe. I finally get to hear something go pop. He goes purple almost instantly, his tongue sticking out as he tries to suck air through his crushed larynx. Unfortunately, I underestimate the man's sheer animal endurance and make the mistake of just standing there, enjoying the sight of him choking, distracted by the pain in my ribs, at least one of which I'm sure is cracked, dammit. Although he can hardly be consciously aware of what he's doing like a mortally wounded dinosaur he suddenly pile drives a fist at me that connects with my jaw like a sledgehammer snapping a two-by-four in half. At least that's what it sounds like. There's a blinding flash and I don't even feel my back hit the ground.

The sensation of having the skin flayed from my shoulder blades brings me back around. The cop has both of my feet tucked under one arm as he's dragging me through the saw grass, away from the road and into the low ditch paralleling it. The grass has cut through my shorts like broken glass and my halter's been dragged up around my neck and I'm half afraid I'll strangle on it long before the cop can do whatever he has in mind, not that the "whatever" should be hard to guess. I'm sure it's nothing good, for even from the back I can see that one side of his face is caked with blood and I can hear his breath whistling through a bruised esophagus. I suppose he must resent that. He seems like a man who would harbor a grudge. I'm bitterly disappointed, though, since I'd been sure that I'd hit his throat hard enough to kill him.

I can think of no reason for being taken out of sight of the car that augurs well for my girlish dignity.

I'm just thinking about what I might do, since he's as yet unaware that I'm conscious, when he drops my feet and turns around. I like what I see from this side even less. He'd been no beauty to start with and now he looks as though someone has hit him in the face with a fistful of raw hamburger. As I push myself up on my hands he draws his gun and holds it at his side with a disturbing non chalance, if thatmeans what I think it does. People who handle a gun like others would handle a cigarette lighter scare me.

"You shoulda kep' your big fat mouth shut, lady," he says with a gentleness that sends a chill down my back that would have been welcome an hour earlier. "You shoulda jus' turned around an' gone back to town, like I asked. You shouldn'ta smart-mouthed me."

I saw no reason to argue with him: he was absolutely right. Whatever had I been thinking of?

"So what now?" I ask, probably unnecessarily.

"So now I gotta make you sorry."

"You wouldn't just take my word that I am?"

"No ma'm, I don't think I'd believe you. You don't look like the type who feels sorry very often."

Well, he was dead wrong about that, anyway. I was sorry all right, but only that he wasn't on his knees coughing up blood. I knew exactly what he had in mind as punishment for me. Even though he outweighed me by a good hundred pounds if he thought he'd get away with rape entirely unscathed he had another think coming.

It's no surprise, then, when he starts fumbling with his belt buckle with his free hand, but it is when instead of unfastening his fly he pulls the two-inch-wide leather strap from its loops. The significance has only a second to register before I feel the makeshift lash cut into me with the sound of a pistol shot and the pain of a red-hot poker. He tries it again, but this time I hold my forearm up and the belt whips around it. I give a hard jerk and the buckle snaps out of his hand, taking a chunk of flesh with it so big I think it must be an entire finger. I sure hope so. I'm on my feet before the surprise has scarcely had a chance to register on his face, but I don't have a chance to do anything. The gun is already pointed squarely at the bridge of my nose.

 

Chapter Three

So what the hell was I doing getting the shit beat out of me on Plankton Key, Florida for God's sake? Me, a would-be private eye from New York who's never been further south than Atlantic City? Don't think I wasn't asking myself that very same question, because I sure as hell was. Well, it all began (to take a tried-and-true opening line from the very best women's magazines) not more than a month ago . . . not in the office of the Bellinghausen Superior Detective Agency (which had been closed due to non-payment of rent), but in my own apartment building, the Zenobia Arms eight flats, two to a floor on Pith Street in the Village. A new family had recently moved into one of the top floor apartments an occurrence unusual enough to have caused some considerable discussion among the other tenants. There'd not been anyone new in the place since I'd moved in three years earlier. And before that, for all I could tell, the others had been waiting on the sidewalk, suitcases in hand, while the last brick was being laid sometime, I think, during the Garfield administration. I'm sure they'd been there at least that long. It was like living in some old folks' home, not that I'm really complaining you understand. My rooms are on the third floor, on the right side to someone standing on the street looking at the place, not that anyone would be likely to do that. Like every other apartment in the Arms its rooms are lined up one after the other like those in a house trailer: a living room/parlor that opens directly onto the hall at the top of the central staircase, a kitchen, a bath and a bedroom at the back. A fire escape landing is right outside my rear bedroom window. It's a nice place to sleep in the summer. The rooms on either side of the stairs are identical, except for being mirror images of one another.

The first floor apartments are occupied by the Schoenfelds, a nice old couple who run a candy store a few blocks away and who also act as the resident managers of the building and who are unvariably lenient when my rent is late which is almost always, and a pair of nice old spinster ladies the Clarence sisters. They exist on the income of some kind of trust, which is apparently just enough to pay for their rent and utilities and the single, meager-looking bag of groceries that's delivered every week by the boy from Carlton's down at the end of the block. Mr. Myagkov, who plays the violin and cello for a symphony orchestra and also moonlights for several recording studios, lives in the rooms directly beneath my own. He is very good (at least I think so, but what do I know about music?) and his playing never bothers me at all. In fact, I kind of look forward to the weekends and evenings he isn't working, especially in the Spring and Summer when all the windows are open, because he spends the afternoons and evenings practicing, though I don't know what for since he sounds plenty fine to me. But like I said, what do I know? I can't even whistle. Across the hall from him are the Leonis, a nice Italian couple with about seventeen kids. He's a steam fitter in a boiler factory and she takes care of the kids and I can tell you who I think's got the better half of the deal and so would you if you ever meet the Leoni spawn, God forbid. Across from my place on the third floor is Mr. Arkady. A tall, thin, pale man in the creepy mold of John Carradine, he's always been civil enough to me when I've run across him, but prefers to keep to himself which is just fine by me. I can't see him but what I wonder if he's thinking how my blood would taste, for which I can hardly blame him since he looks like he's definitely shy a couple of quarts. He's a dealer in old books and whatnot who works out of his apartment, which is filled wall to wall and floor to ceiling with musty, leather-bound volumes and precious little else, even his refrigerator had a book in it, for Pete's sake, between the goat cheese and a half bottle of red wine (I'd just gotten my new set of lock picks and had to try them out, so kill me). The place on the top floor right that is, just above my own is home to Miss Birdwhistle, a Broadway star in the making (not that I think she has a chance in hell, but why not give the kid a break?). She waits tables nights at a restaurant about six blocks uptown and spends her days and weekends auditioning. So far as I know, the only stage jobs she's ever gotten are gigs in the burlesque houses yet she always seems to think that her big break is coming with the next interview. One has to kind of admire that sort of optimism, stupid as it might be. Kind of like watching a moth bashing its head on the outside of a window, trying to get to a light bulb. The apartment opposite hers used to be occupied by a nice old Jewish man named Goldberg who headed the embroidery department in an apron factory over in the garment district. He died and the apartment wasn't even vacant a week before someone new moved in.

Needless to say, the newcomers ran a gauntlet of curious eyes as they carried their belongings from the street to the top floor. My eyes were among them, of course, but I'm supposed to be a detective so what did you expect me to do?

There seemed to be just the two of them (though I was wrong about that as it turned out): a mother and her daughter, I figured (I was on the money there). The former was a tall, thin, frail-looking bird who I suspected was nowhere near as old as she looked. She had one of those fine-boned, fragile English faces you see on women in FSA photos of Okey families during the Depression, the ones with the hopeless, empty expressions. The kid was maybe fourteen or fifteen, I guessed, tall and thin like her mother though it looked better on her. That and the lean face with the huge black eyes and the hank of black hair hanging over the high, white forehead made her seem very esthetic I figured her for a poet or some such thing, probably a philosophy, literature or sociology student at NYU. Someone whose scribblings the beatniks in the basement coffeehouses would get all shaky over. She was probably figuring that since she had edited the high school literary magazine and the class yearbook and everyone in Duckanus, Arkansas thought she was the cat's pajamas because she'd written that editorial for the Duckanus Weekly that'd gotten the big civic prize from Mayor Cornball, that she'd give the Big City a shot, show the New Yorker a thing or two and maybe set off-Broadway on its ear if she had the time and inclination. Either that or she was a consumptive come for treatment at one of the big sanitariums. She sure looked the part, I can tell you that. One way or another, anyway our building being filled to the brim with nosy Parkers I was sure I'd be finding out more than I'd ever care to know about the new tenants before the week was out. If one thing is certain, being a detective in the Zenobia Arms is a redundancy.

As it turned out, it didn't take a week at all.

It was one of those weird balmy days in late March when the weather tries to lull you into thinking winter was finally over. I knew better, having just listened to the radio. Buffalo and Albany had just been socked with the worst blizzard in ten years and the thing was rolling down toward New York like an avalanche. In the meantime, I was enjoying the respite maybe even more so knowing how short it was going to be. It must have been hardly sixty degrees outdoors but it felt a lot warmer in the sun. Since the front of my building faces south, I was lounging in shorts and halter on top of the wide sloping wall that flanks the front steps, soaking up the warmth from the sun and the hot stone and not doing much more than idly watching people walk past. Sounds nice which it was though what it really meant was that I didn't have anything much better to do, like work on a job, for instance. Business had been a little slack since New Year's. It had actually been slack since Labor Day, but I was just counting the current year in order not to depress myself unduly.

Anyway, I was about halfway through a bag of peanuts and a Blue Ribbon my lunch well, my breakfast and lunch for that matter when I saw the new kid coming up the block. Not hard to spot since she stood out like a sore thumb. She was half a head taller than most anyone else on the street, looking even taller because of her thinness. She looked like one of those East European refugees you see in the newsreels or that skinny, waif-like actress in the movie I'd seen last week, The Secret People Audrey Hepburn. She was dressed as though she were on her way to a Sadie Hawkins dance, wearing only a calf-length gingham dress, bobby socks and sneakers, and a ratty cloth coat even the Salvation Army wouldn't have wished on anyone. There was an overwhelming sense of unhealthiness on first impression, but she walked with a springy step, her jet black hair bouncing around her pallid face like the wings of a crow, her expression intensively alive, her enormous dark eyes as alert as a deer in hunting season.

I took off my sunglasses and greeted her as she swung toward the steps.

"Hi! You must be the new kid from upstairs."

She looked at me for a moment just a heartbeat too long, enough to make me feel as though I just called her some awful name and she was deciding whether to ignore me or call a cop. But instead, she smiled and said, "Sure! I just moved in with my mother and brother, up on the top floor." She had a pleasant voice, softened by a slow, gentle Southern drawl, the kind that sounds genteel instead of uneducated. The smile had made all the difference, transforming what on first sight had looked like a walking tuberculosis case into something else entirely. She really was a good-looking kid, after all, I decided. Pretty in a fragile sort of way. The kind of kid the French call a gamin, I think, if gamin is the word I want.

"Welcome to the Zenobia Arms. My name's Bellinghausen, Velda Bellinghausen." I held out my hand and she took it without any hesitation at all this time. Her grip was firm but cold as ice.

"Hi. I'm Maxie."

"Maxie? That's an interesting name. Want to sit with me for a few minutes? It's too nice a day to be indoors. We ought to enjoy it while we can . . . going to get cold again this week and probably stay that way until Easter. I hear there's snow on the way."

"Sure." She folded up beside me like a carpenter's rule, carefully tucking her skirt around her long legs. "I'm kind of glad to hear there's going to be snow. I've never seen snow before."

"You'll be thinking twice about that a week from now."

"Maybe, I guess."

"Have a peanut?"

"Thanks." She took one and shelled it, then said, as though I'd just asked her a question, "Everyone calls me Maxie, but that's not really my name, not my given name, I mean."

"What is your real name, then, and why does everyone call you Maxie?" I already knew that her last name was Fort. That was no big trick: the name was on the mailbox. "If I'm not being too nosy that is."

"No! Not at all! Well, you see, people actually call me Max more often than Maxie, which is short for Maxine. It's just a name I I like, I guess. You ever hear how Indians had two names? The one that everyone called them and their secret name, the one only they knew? Something like that, I guess, but turned around backwards kinda, if you see what I mean. I like being called Max because, well, because it just seems to to fit me better. My Christian name is Cleo for Cleopatra you know, the Egyptian queen? Funny, if you think about it, that my Christian name is the same as a pagan queen. She was pagan wasn't she? I'm pretty sure she was. The Egyptians worshiped all those gods with bird heads and all. But like I said, no one ever calls me Cleo except my mother and brother."

"Cleo's nice, though. Very unusual. Very classy."

"Yeah, I guess. I think it sounds like that goldfish in Pinocchio. But I hardly ever hear anybody call me that. Not since I was kid. I just tell everyone my name is Max."

"So how do you like New York, Max?"

"It's fine. Awful big, though, and cold."

"Wait until summer, you'll be wishing it was winter again. You liked it better down south?"

"How'd you know where I was from, Miss Bellinghausen? How'd you know I was new to the city?"

"Please call me Velda, since we're neighbors after all. How'd I know? I guess it's just my business to figure out things like that."

"Your business?" She screwed up her face in thought and then brightened. "Miss Bellinghausen! I mean . . . Velda you, you're not that lady detective they said lives here?"

"Well, there're a whole lot of people who'd argue about the 'lady' part, but, yup, that's me."

"Golly! A detective! Just like in the movies?"

"Well . . . not so's you'd notice all that much."

"Gee . . . it must be awful exciting. Being a detective and all! And in New York City! Golly!"

Why disabuse the kid? Besides, it'd been too long since I'd been hero-worshiped to want to spoil the sensation. In fact, no one had ever hero-worshiped me, God knows.

"You have a gun and handcuffs and everything?"

"Sure. I even have a trench coat . . ."

"Oh, just like Venus McFury!"

"Venus McWho?"

"Oh, you know! Here," she said, pulling a rolled-up magazine from her school bag. Handing it to me, I unfurled it to reveal an uncommonly lurid comic book. The cover featured a woman of unlikely proportions, who I assumed was the eponymous Venus McFury, in an even more unlikely situation. She did, indeed, have a trench coat, though what little was left of it was being torn from her by a gang of bearded Bolsheviks who did not seem terribly concerned that slugs from the brace of blazing .45 automatics she clutched in her hands were tearing their comrades to shreds. Venus appeared to not be wearing anything under the coat and I thought the men looked more anxious to settle that question than in maintaining their personal safety, let alone overthrowing America by violence or subversion. Cleo's comparison of me with Venus was supposed to be flattering, I guess. The comic book detective appeared to be tall and leggy enough like I've already said, I'm six foot even but with more curves than the reptile house at the Central Park Zoo most of which seemed to be concentrated in her bosom. In fact, most of Venus seemed to be chest which I can tell you right now is no description of me. She had a billowing mane of blonde hair, too, where my dark locks are sheared off in a Buster Brown cut. Well, if Cleo wanted to think I was the living embodiment of her comic book heroine, who was I to disenchant her? I rolled the comic book up and handed it back to her.

"Well, yeah, I guess. Something like that, I suppose. Stop by sometime and I'll show you some of my souvenirs."

"Thank you, Velda, I'd love to come visit."

"What brings you to the big city, anyway, Max? Going to school up here?"

"No, nothing like that. Well, I mean, yes I'm going to school, or will, anyway, soon's I get registered, but that's not the reason we came up here. I . . . I . . . I gotta see some doctors." Her voice had dropped at that last sentence, as though she were sharing some dark, embarrassing secret.

What could it be? Pernicious anemia? Tapeworm? TB? Sure, why not TB? After all, she looked like she could audition for the lead in Camille.

"Doctors? You look plenty healthy to me," I lied.

"These, these are special doctors. They're they're about my spells."

"Spells?"

The girl had whispered this as though people passing on the street were going to stop and ask her what in the world she thought she was doing, a nice girl like her, having spells, for God's sake! She looked uncomfortable and I was afraid that I'd touched on something perhaps a wee bit too personal and sensitive. It was dead clear it was something she didn't like being reminded about, and sure as hell not by a total stranger.

"Have another peanut, Max. You come on down to my place anytime at all it's apartment three-B, and I'll tell you all about what it's like being a detective." I'd have to dig out all my old pulps and memorize some good adventures for her. God knows I hadn't had many of my own. She just struck me as the type who probably wouldn't quite understand that the only cases I'd had since putting up my shingle had for the most part involved sneaking photos through hotel windows of people doing things that surely would have shocked their mothers. And those were the cases that didn't embarrass me. The ones I really didn't want to tell her about involved me being on the other side of the window.

"I'd like that just fine . . . Velda. I gotta run, now. It was really nice meeting you and I'd sure like to hear all about being a detective sometime."

"Any time at all."

She uncoiled her lanky prolongations from the steps for all her apparent gawkiness, she was as sinuous as a cobra and ran into the building.

 

Cleo showed up at my door the following afternoon. I was surprised. I hadn't really expected her to take my invitation seriously, but I was pleased to see her and asked her in and offered her a coke. While I got a couple of bottles out of the fridge and popped the caps off, she looked around my place with the kind of slack-jawed incredulity you see on tourists gawking at Rockefeller Center. I guess the fact that it was the apartment of a private eye gave it a sort of glamour in her eyes. It just looked like the same old dump to me, but far be it from me to disabuse a budding fan.

I handed her a bottle and said, "Have a seat, Cleo ah, Max. Make yourself at home."

She chose a chair and sat gingerly on the very edge of the seat, tidily tugging the hem of her skirt over her knees.

"Gee, thanks, Miss I mean, Velda."

"Where you been all day? Getting ready for school?"

"Oh, no, not yet. I've been looking for a job. I mean, a real one. I had lots of part-time work, especially over the holidays, in the stores, but that's all over now. I've been trying to get into some classes, but that's awful hard this late in the school year. It's expensive, too, which is why I'm trying to find something to do."

"Did you have a job back home?"

"Yes no, not really. I I stayed home most of the time, when I wasn't in school that is. And I I was sick a lot. That's why we came to New York, you know so I could see a doctor. But I did make lace, to sell to the tourists, I got real good at that."

"Tourists?"

"Yeah. Lots of tourists went through town, on their way to Key West."

"That's right, you said you were from Florida."

"Yeah, a little place called Plankton Key. I'm sure you've never heard of it."

"You're right, I haven't. Sorry."

"Oh, that's okay. No one else's ever heard of it, either."

"Did you like it there? Do you miss it?"

"Sometimes " A strange, distant look came to her face for a moment. I wasn't sure what it meant, but it wasn't homesickness. Then her face cleared and she said, perhaps a little too brightly, "I sure miss home when it's this cold out! Boy! Winter in New York is sure something!"

"Yeah, it's something all right."

"Do you work from here, Velda, or do you have an office somewhere?"

"Ah yes ah, I've had to stay away from my office lately. Ah commie agents have the place staked out and I don't want them to get a tail on me."

"Wow! Real communists? Gee, Velda, that's really something! A big case, huh?"

"Yeah, sure."

"I guess you can't talk about it, huh?"

"No, not really. Maybe I can tell you something about it later." As soon as I got a good plot out of Thrilling Detective Mysteries, I would do that very thing.

"Gee, Velda, are these pictures of you?"

"Uh, yeah " She'd found the framed photos of me from when I'd worked the stage at Slotnik's. I'd forgotten all about them. If I'd remembered, I'd have taken them down before inviting the kid in. I don't know if they're the sort of thing a teenage girl ought to see.

"Gee . . . that's a pretty swell costume in this one. Gosh, it must've been grand to wear something that beautiful. I've never had anything with sparkles on it like that."

"Well, yeah " I didn't know what to make of this. I never thought anyone would ever think that anything I'd had to do with Slotsky's was grand. I mean, I was more than a little embarrassed by those years not that I'd really had any choice in the matter and this kid was admiring me!

"Didn't you ever get cold, Velda? This one's kinda, well, kinda skimpy and, gee, are those your "

It was about time to change the subject while she was still gawking at the pictures from the earlier part of my stage career. I wasn't sure what she'd make of the ones further down the wall, so I said, "Have you made any friends yet, Max?"

"No not really. Well . . ." She looked down at her coke and blushed.

"You've met a boy?"

"Gee, Velda, how'd you know that? Oh, that was a silly question to ask a detective, wasn't it?"

"I know all."

"It's he's a fellow I met while I was working in an art supply store just after we moved here last Fall. He's taking classes at Pratt, the big art school, you know? He's studying to be an architect. Isn't that wonderful? He's going to design houses and skyscrapers and things like that."

"What's his name?"

"Bill. He's really nice a gentleman, you know?"

"Well, I'm glad you met a nice fellow. Let alone a gentleman. It can be hard finding a friend in this city sometimes, especially for someone new in town. The place can be kind of intimidating. I'm not surprised, though, that you've met a boy already. You're a very pretty girl."

"Aw gee, thanks, Velda!" And by God, she was blushing! It was the only color in a face that looked like a black and white woodcut.

"Want another coke? I've got some potato chips around here somewhere that probably haven't gone limp yet."

"Thanks, but I can't stay too much longer. My mother worries when I'm late coming home. Can can I ask you something personal?"

"Sure. Ask me anything you like."

"Well, I was just wondering I've never heard of a lady detective before. I mean, outside of TV and things like that. I didn't know that a lady would want I mean "

"You mean why would any woman want to be a detective?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Fair enough. I wish I had a good answer for you. I guess it's just something I want to do. I'm not really very good doing anything else. You should see me try to type." Which was as good an evasion as any, I suppose. I don't know why, but I would've felt kind of weird telling her it beat undressing in front of five hundred strange men every night.

She glanced at the clock on my side table and squeaked. "Oh gosh! I'm going to be late. I'd better run, Miss Velda. Thanks for the coke. I hope I haven't been a bother?"

"Not at all. You're welcome to stop by anytime you like."

"Thanks, Velda."

As it turned out it was nearly a week before I saw Max again and it wasn't quite under the circumstances that either of us had anticipated.

 

It was two o'clock in the morning when I finally realized that the banging in my ears wasn't the radiator next to my bed. It was some idiot at my front door. I climbed from under the covers, threw the first thing I could find around myself and went to the front room.

"Who the hell is it?" I asked through the door.

"Miss Bellinghausen?"

I recognized Birdwhistle's voice and groaned. The little moron had probably just been propositioned for the seventy-eighth time and wanted a shoulder to cry on. Someone needs to tell her that she really has only two marketable talents and if she knows what's good for her, she'll stick to waitressing. I told her to hold her horses and fumbled the chain from the door. Birdwhistle looked surprised to see me. Who'd she expect? Senator McCarthy?

"Did I wake you?" she asked.

"Not at all. Some people think it's strange, but I often spend entire nights leaning against my door, just in case someone might knock at two o'clock in the morning."

"That is strange."

"Come on in. Want some coffee? Might as well start the day now and get it over with."

"Thanks, Miss Bellinghausen, but coffee makes my teeth yellow."

"Sorry. Should've thought of that. And for God's sake please call me Velda. 'Miss Bellinghausen' sounds like a third grade grammar teacher."

"Sure, Miss I mean, Velda. Thanks."

"Come on in the kitchen. You can watch me caffeinate myself. I need to see in color before I can talk to anyone. Want some orange juice? I think it's still orange anyway; it's been a while since I looked."

"Sure, thanks. And Miss Velda, you can call me Iphigenia if you want. That's my given name, but I'm going to change it, of course, when I get on the stage. Iphigenia sounds kinda like some sort of stomach medicine. What do you think of Olivia de la Rue?"

"Never heard of her."

"No, I mean for me, for my stage name. Doesn't it sound nicer than Iphigenia Birdwhistle? Kinda elegant-like?"

I thought that a frying pan dropped down the fire escape would sound more elegant than "Iphigenia Birdwhistle", but, on the other hand, Iphigenia Birdwhistle might be better than sounding like a cheap stripper. It was at least unique. So I said, "Olivia de la Rue is a lovely name."

"Yeah, that's what Mr. Lupine said, too."

"Mr. Lupine?"

"The manager at the Bijoux Theater. He said he thought it sounded like the name of a real headliner."

"Uh, Iphigenia, is there any particular reason you wanted to see me? Or were you just in the mood for a chat?"

"Oh! I'm sorry! I completely forgot! I do that all the time and sometimes it's really embarrassing, as you might imagine since you know I'm a waitress well, just a part-time waitress, of course, just to make ends meet until I get a break. Just the other day, Mr. Spool, he's the short-order cook at the coffee shop, he said "

" he said, 'Ipheginia, why don't you get to the point?'"

"Oh, yes! Those new people who moved in upstairs? The ones across the hall from me?"

"Uh huh. The Forts."

"Yeah, well, the kid's really sick and they need someone to come up and help."

"You should've found a doctor, then. I can't even get a BandAid on right."

"It's not like that. I think they need someone like you."

"Someone like me?"

"Yeah. A detective."

I glanced at the clock. One-thirty, it sneered. Oh, what the hell.

"Let me get something on first."

I went to the bathroom and shucked my robe. As I was pulling on my jeans, Iphigenia, who was watching me from the kitchen, said with the hushed awe most people reserve for fireworks displays and bad traffic accidents, "Gee, Velda! You oughta go talk to Mr. Lupine yourself! With a figure like you got, he'd give you a part easy, I'm sure. Everyone's always looking for tall girls for the chorus and jeez what I wouldn't give for legs like yours if you don't mind me saying so. They ain't as easy to find as people might think, tall girls I mean, leastways ones that don't look like horses."

"I'm sure he'd be glad to offer me a part, but I'm afraid he might not like what I did with it."

"Aw, you're just being too modest, Velda," she argued, completely missing the point. Sometimes my humor is just too subtle. Just as well, I suppose Iphigenia would only be hurt if she thought I'd been laughing at what she'd offered as an honest compliment. Besides, I didn't think there'd be anything gained from telling her that because I knew all too well what it was like being a chorus girl, that's what'd made me want to be something else. Anything else. Obviously. But just because I wasn't cut out for the business didn't mean that other people weren't Iphigenia being a perfect case in point. If anyone was destined to be a burlesque queen she was. If she just weren't so damned sweet.

I pulled on my sweatshirt and sneakers, shook my hair into place and said, "All right, Iphigenia. Lead on."

I followed her upstairs and she tapped on the door of 4A. It opened instantly, which was kind of creepy, particularly since it was Max's mother who stood there in the half shadows. It was the first time I'd seen her up close and I was shocked. The woman was obviously a nervous wreck. Anyone could see that she'd probably never been in any great shape to begin with, physically, looking under the best of circumstances like she'd been cobbled together from bits and pieces of beef jerky and coat hanger wire, but now something had worried her to the point of cadaverousness, if cadaverousness is a word. I'd seen healthier-looking heroin fiends.

"Miss Bellinghausen?" she said.

"Call me Velda," I replied and followed her into the room, which was exactly like mine, except laid out in a mirror image like I said before. "How can I help you?"

"I don't know. I didn't know what else to do. Cleo's . . . Cleo's cries disturbed Miss Birdwhistle "

"That was OK," Iphigenia protested. "I was already awake. I'd just come in and probably wouldn't have heard anything at all if I'd been asleep. I sleep like a log when I've been out all "

" and she came over to see if anything was wrong."

"That was kind of her, I suppose."

"It was she who suggested that you might be able to help us."

"Yes, that was very kind of her."

"I apologize if she woke you. I'm sure you must've been asleep."

"Me? Naw. Country girl like me gets up with the pigeons, squirrels and garbage collectors."

"I just didn't know what else to do."

"Well, why don't you tell me what's wrong first? That'd help a lot."

"It's Cleo, my daughter."

"Well, yeah, I kind of figured that."

There was a yell from the rear of the apartment, a kind of plaintive bleat that had the same effect on Mrs. Fort it would have had on a mother sheep, whatever those are called. She gave a nervous little frisk and hustled off toward the bedroom. Birdwhistle and I followed.

The bedroom was dark, the only light being what spilled in from the kitchen and a dim blue glow from the window that cast a distorted rectangle across the bed. Still, I could see clearly enough the figure that lay twisting on the bed, writhing like a landed fish giving up its last gasp. It was the kid, Max, and she gave another low moan and Mrs. Fort scuttled over and took one of her hands. The kid was sick, all right, anyone could see that much, and I wondered again what the hell I was doing there.

"We really oughta call a doctor," I told Iphigenia.

"No . . . listen a minute."

The kid Max had thrown off most of her bedclothes and was lying on the rumpled sheets in nothing but a pair of cotton panties that looked like hand-me-downs from someone a lot older and bigger, probably her mother, an awful enough thought. Although the room was cold a light snow had started falling just before midnight the girl was drenched in sweat. Her blue-white body glistened like a firefly in the dim light. She was lot older than I'd originally thought maybe more like eighteen or nineteen. Her lanky body and thin face had misled me. She was even skinnier than her mother. I could see her ribs plainly, her breasts sitting upon them like overturned saucers. She was writhing and twisting and moaning like someone who'd just eaten the leftover salmon salad from yesterday's picnic.

"I don't know about this," I said. "It sure looks to me like she needs a doctor."

"No," replied Mrs. Fort, wringing her hands together with a sound like dry leaves. "No she's been like this before."

Just then, the kid gives out another low moan, like a cat in heat, and I felt my nape go all bristly, which had never happened to me before and I didn't like it one bit. I went closer, to where the light from the window fell across her face. It looked like it was made of suet. The lips were tightly clenched, as were her hands, but the spookiest thing was her eyes. They were wide open, the pupils dilated to black pools, the whites showing all the way around. They looked dull, like bread pills, and stared right through me. When I waved my hand in front of her face the eyes didn't waver. Her expression was a Godawful mixture of horror and fear, like she was seeing something utterly unbearable.

I felt her chest, face and hands. They were cold as ice. I touched her wrist and was astonished to feel a regular, though faint, pulse. It seemed as though she were hardly breathing at all you had to watch for a minute to see her thin chest slowly rise and fall.

"She's done this before?" I said to the mother, wondering why she needed me, let alone anyone else, if this were a regular item on the Fort program. "What the hell's wrong with her?"

"I don't know. I don't know. She's done this off an' on since she was six. Hardly's had a spell at all since she was sixteen, but now they've started again."

"Well, Jesus, you really ought to have a doctor take a look at her."

"Yeah," added Iphigenia. "I saw someone have a fit once, right on the sidewalk. God, it was something awful to see! Bit his tongue right off. Jeez, you shoulda seen all the blood!"

"She's perfectly healthy," Mrs. Fort protested. "Never had a sick day in her life, other than these spells. They don't seem to do her any harm she hardly remembers them when she wakes up."

Max suddenly jack knifed straight up in her bed, screaming at the top of her puny lungs, "For God's sake! Don't hit him!"

I jumped, not from the sound but because the kid had made the warning sound so . . . so real. Her eyes were wide open, focused on a point somewhere beyond my shoulder, and the impression was so strong that she was looking at someone I instinctively turned to see who it was. There was nothing there but an empty chair.

"Don't kill him!" she shrieked, and kept repeating that until I could hear people stirring in the floors below us.

"Come on," I said, "we better get her calmed down or someone's going to call the cops."

Mrs. Fort brought a pan of cold water from the bathroom and she and Iphigenia got the kid quieted down some by bathing her face and chest with wet hand towels. Max lay back on her pillow, mumbling and crying, but at least not so's you could hear her a block away now. As I'd been half expecting, there was a knock at the door. I recognized the discreet tapping of either Mr. or Mrs. Schoenfeld. I knew it well. It was the apologetic knock they used when they came to remind you that your rent was overdue. I took the liberty of answering the door. Both Schoenfelds stood there, huddled together with their eyes bugging out, as though they'd been certain they were about to witness the bloody scene of an ax murder. They looked vaguely disappointed.

"Miss Bellinghausen?" Seeing me there instead of their new tenant, they must've been sure that something awful was going on.

"Yup. Sorry about all the fuss. The kid here's just had a kind of nightmare, I guess."

"Nightmare? My heavens, it sounded like someone was being murdered!"

"Nothing like that, I assure you. Miss Birdwhistle and I came over to see if there was anything we could do. The kid's a little sick is all, picked up a fever and it gave her a nightmare. We got her calmed down now and I'm sure she's going to be quiet."

"Well, I certainly hope so. We got a very angry call from Mr. Arkady. He's quite upset about being awakened this early in the morning."

"Early? It's only two o'clock. That's still practically yesterday."

"I wouldn't know about all that, but you should please tell Mrs. Fort that this is a quiet place, with respectable people, and we just can't tolerate this sort of thing."

"I'm sure it won't happen again. Go on back to bed. Everything's going to be all right now."

"Well, if you say so, Miss Bellinghausen. We certainly hope you're right."

When I got back to the bedroom, I was glad to see it didn't look as though Maxie were about to put the lie to the promise I'd just made. She was under a blanket now, just laying there, her eyes like ball bearings, muttering to herself while her mother wiped her forehead. I took her wrist in my hand. Her pulse was still weak but steady.

I sat on the edge of the bed opposite Mrs. Fort and held the bowl for her while we chatted quietly about nothing in particular. Finally, I suggested to Mrs. Fort that she ought to get some sleep herself. She looked like hell, though I didn't put it exactly like that. For all I knew maybe she always looked like hell. She didn't take much convincing but only nodded wearily and stumbled off into the living room where I guess she bedded down on the sofa seeing that the kid was occupying the only bed I'd noticed in the place.

"You might as well get to bed yourself, Ipheginia. You don't want to miss much more of your beauty sleep if you've got auditions tomorrow."

"It's okay. I'm used to being up all night anyway. I'd like to hang around if you think it'd be okay."

"It's no skin off my nose."

"Swell. I'll just curl up in that big chair in the living room. You need me, you just call, okay?"

The only chair in the bedroom was a cheap wooden one, which I pulled it over to the bed and slouched in, leaning the back against the wall behind me. I could see that the kid wasn't sleeping too well. She seemed to be as rigid as a board and her breathing was shallow as she panted and clenched and unclenched her fists.

Around about two-thirty, Max sat up again with a kind of little whimpering cry. I went to put a hand on her shoulder when she suddenly launched from the bed like a startled deer, nearly knocking me over backwards. She wasn't screaming this time, thank God, but it took all my strength to hold her down. I was startled by the strength she showed she felt like a bar of spring steel. Her eyes had that glassy stare again, focused somewhere beyond me. It was like wrestling a blind lunatic and it was a damned uncanny sensation.

Max, meanwhile, was talking. The same stuff she'd spouted before, about someone being hit, being killed, about blood being everywhere, and new things, things that my skin go all cold and pimply. She talked about running down dark alleys, hiding in doorways, wondering where the river was so she could throw herself into it. She whimpered, "My feet! Oh, my feet!" and when I felt them they were as ice cold as the pork chop in my fridge downstairs. Then some very weird stuff about having a baby taken from her. This went on for about half an hour, her voice getting weaker and weaker until she finally fell back onto her clammy sheets, this time (I hoped) completely exhausted. At any rate, she was soon asleep, breathing deeply and regularly.

I pulled the blanket back over the slender figure and as soon as I felt sure she was going to be quiet, I made myself as comfortable as I could in the chair and watched her. I must've fallen alseep for the next thing I remember was hearing the front door open and close and heavy footsteps coming toward the bedroom. I glanced at the clock. It was nearly five I'd been out for more than two hours. The window was a lightless rectangle. I glanced at Max and saw that she was still sleeping soundly. Suddenly, the room darkened. An enormous figure was eclipsing what little light had been coming from the front of the house. Behind the colossus I could just make out the figure of Mrs. Fort and beyond her the silhouette of Iphegenia.

"Oh, Ruben!" Mrs. Fort said, seeming to be happier to see King Kong in her bedroom than I would have been. "Ruben, Cleo's had another spell."

"Yeah." Ruben's voice sounded like someone talking into a coffee can. Ruben? Who's going to show up next, for God's sake, Pappy Yokum? "Looks like a bad'un."

"Worse she's had in a long time, Ruben."

"Who th' hell're all these dames?"

"They're neighbors, Ruben. Be polite. They came 'cause they thought I needed some help. This is Miss Birdwhistle, from 'cross the hall, an' this is Miss Bellinghausen. Misses, this is Ruben, Cleo's big brother."

"Bellinghausen, huh? You th' bird thinks she's a shamus, huh? Long drinka water, ain't ya?" He said all this without looking at me at all, being too busy ogling Iphigenia like some geek in front row center at Minsky's waiting for Sally Rand to molt her last feather. "The kid'll be out for hours. I seen it before. Don't see no reason for you t' be hangin' 'roune any longer." A great big thank-you from Mr. Ruben Fort, you're welcome.

"I can take a hint," I said. "I'm sensitive that way."

"Yeah." He chewed an idea around for a minute or two, then said, "So you're some kinda detective, huh? That's funny."

"Yeah, it sure is."

"Well, I can tell you right now Ma ain't paying you nothin'. You came up here on your own hook. You wanta charge someone, get that bimbo invited you in here to pony up, you wanta make a buck outta this. You ain't gettin' a penny outta us."

"Calm yourself, Ruben. I was just being neighborly."

"Neighborly! Hmpf. Yeah, sure."

There was little point in arguing with the big lummox, or in letting him get my goat, which he was well on his way to doing. I wanted to find out more about Ruben, who I could tell was bad news from way back, but for the time being I just shrugged my shoulders and walked out. As Ipheginia and I passed through the living room, I saw Mrs. Fort draped on a ratty sofa that must have come with the room, out like a light. I closed the door quietly behind me, said good night to Miss Birdwhistle and went back to my room, showered and got dressed. I badly needed to go out and get some coffee. I'd stopped seeing in color around five a.m. and it was annoying me.

I didn't really want to, having had about as much of the Fort family as I could take in one sitting, but I was dead curious about the kid and, besides, maybe the old lady'd like me to bring back some coffee and something for her and the kid to eat, seeing as how it looked like neither had had a square meal since VE Day. Heart of gold, that's me. Brain of gold, too, if you get my drift. I went back upstairs and rapped on the door of 4B, hoping that Ruben the Ox wouldn't be there. When Mrs. Fort opened the door, looking as though she hadn't slept in weeks (which was unfair since she was the only one who had gotten any sleep last night), I could see that her son was nowhere in sight. Good. Probably gone back to his job braining cows at the slaughterhouse.

"I just thought I'd look in and see how the kid was doing."

"That's very kind of you, Miss Bellinghausen "

"Please, call me Velda."

"Yes. Well, that's very kind of you, Velda. Won't you come in? That was so nice of you to look after poor little Cleo last night. I can't tell you "

"Don't bother. What're neighbors for, anyway?"

"Would you care for some coffee?"

"I was just on my way out to get some and I thought maybe I could bring something back for you."

"I couldn't possibly ask you to do anything else. You've been much too kind already."

"Is Max Cleo still asleep?"

"Yes, thank God. She's been sleeping like a log all morning, bless her heart."

"Just what is the kid's problem, anyway?"

"I don't know, I really don't. Our doctor back home had no idea. The problem's that Cleo's in perfect health otherwise. You have to see her having one of her spells to tell how sick she really is, and the doctor never saw that."

"Doctor back home? Just where is home, Mrs. Fort?"

"Oh, we've come all th' way from Florida. Just a little backwater town no one's ever heard of. We only had one doctor there, just an old country MD. Awful good man, but t' tell th' truth anything beyond a broken leg or a childbirth is a little beyond him. He told us about a doctor in Tallahassee who might be able t' help. Took every penny we had an' it didn't do no good at all. Said we should be grateful we had such a healthy girl."

"How'd you get up here, then? New York's a wee tad further away than Tallahassee."

"Oh, I got a little inheritance when my granddaddy passed away, and Ruben, he got a job 'cross the river that pays the rent."

"What's Ruben do, anyway?"

"He works for a meat packer."

Ha!

 

I strolled down the block to Joe's place, a hole-in-the-wall diner where I've had my morning coffee and donuts for the last four or five years. It'd snowed all night and there was a couple of inches on the sidewalk and streets. There hadn't been enough traffic yet to turn it all into grey slush and everything was still quiet and pretty. Captain Joe grinned as I came in, as he always did. He was a castaway from the Merchant Marine, a hugely powerful man gone to flab. He was always there behind the counter no matter what time I'd wander in, which was as likely to be one o'clock in the morning as noon. It was now about six thirty which split the difference pretty closely.

"You look like someone kicked you down a flight of stairs, Velda," he said not unkindly, pouring me a cup of his infamous coffee. "You're getting too old to party like that any longer. Here, have an eye-opener." I've known Turks who consider it a variety of paint remover and as such an affront to Allah but I always found it hit the spot. This time it hit it good and hard.

"Take care, Joe. You open my eyes too much and I'll remember how ugly you are."

"Got a hot case cookin'?" Joe's fascinated by my line of work, apparently thinking I'm some sort of female Mike Hammer. As automatically as he'd poured my coffee he placed a plate with four plain cake donuts the only kind I can bear to eat with coffee beside the cup. I hate being so damned predictable, but there you are.

"Wish I did. But no just a case of neighbors."

"You oughta find a place where you can get some sleep. Nice girl like you needs all the sleep she can get."

"Yeah. If I ever got the all beauty sleep I need I'd be in a coma." I winced as a police cruiser roared around the corner, its siren sawing the top of my head off.

"Aw, you're too hard on yourself, Velda."

A customer had just come in and as Joe went to see what the newcomer wanted he tossed the morning paper onto the counter. "Help yourself, kid, hot off the press."

I unrolled the paper and flattened it next to my plate. I scanned the headlines, hardly reading them, until one caught my eye. "Prominent Socialite Found Murdered." I was vaguely aware of the name mentioned in the text, a self-proclaimed "man about town" who I'd briefly met once or twice for no particular reason, so I couldn't really say I knew the man. So far as I knew, though, his passing would be no great loss to the world at large. Getting both of my eyes into focus simultaneously, I read the article to see who'd done the city such a big favor. It was brief, just a paragraph evidently slipped into morning edition at the last moment.

Jackson Sline, well-known patron of the arts and clubman, was found dead in his bedroom in his penthouse at Sheridan Square in the early hours of this morning. Police report that Sline's skull was fractured and his body savaged in what was apparently a violently brutal attack. An artist's model known only as "Max" is currently being sought in connection with the murder.

The story was continued on page 12 and I flipped the paper over. I didn't read what it said because there was a photo of the suspect, the artist's model known only as "Max". It was a photo of Cleopatra Fort.

What the hell?

Copyright© 2003 Ron Miller