A Smile on the Face of the Tiger (21 page)

“I don’t see how you get insurance.”

“I don’t have insurance. I don’t drive a Porsche or live in Grosse Pointe either. I’ve made my peace with these things.” I closed my eyes against the throbbing going on behind them; or rather my eye. The left was pretty much shut all the time. “Your roommate wouldn’t have any ice, by any chance. It’s okay if the cubes are shaped like ducks.”

She set down her cup and saucer and went into the kitchen. After a minute she came out wrapping a clean dishtowel around one of those blue gel-packs. I got rid of the towel and applied the pack directly to my eye. I could feel the heat of the swelling right through the gel.

“I don’t suppose it will do any good to insist that you see a doctor.”

“Probably not, but don’t let it stop you. It isn’t often somebody cares.”

She sat down again and crossed her legs. The robe fell open, exposing a stretch of tanned thigh. She covered it without undue haste. “Okay, we’ve discussed your condition and analyzed your career choice. Is this the place where we talk about what happened?”

She was entitled and I told it. I couldn’t tell it without Eddie Cypress and so I went back to the picture she’d showed me of Cypress in the
Free Press
and continued from there. She and Barry Stackpole shared the same view of Glad Eddie—I’d never heard her call anyone a son of a bitch before, and she interrupted me to do it—and I thought it was a shame they hadn’t gotten together years ago when Barry had a book and Louise wanted to publish it. It had been a memoir of Vietnam; the bottom had fallen out of that market quicker than slide rules.

When I finished, she picked up her cup, sipped, made a face, and put it back. The coffee had grown cold while she was listening.

“You should have told me,” she said.

“I wasn’t a hundred percent sure it was Cypress I saw at Black Lake. I had to see him face to face. When he called me ‘sport,’ I knew he remembered me too, and didn’t care whether he confirmed anything when he said it. He’s a pretty confident character.”

“Why not? He’d decided to have you killed. I guess he’s too good to take care of it himself these days.”

“If he wanted me killed I’d be on ice right now instead of the other way around. What happened at the Blue Heron was in the way of a message.”

“Maybe the mob’s getting civilized. Forty years ago their idea of sending a message was killing Eugene Booth’s wife.”

“I’m not married. Anyway if murder was called for it would have been cleaner just to do me. I’m not a famous writer. The cops would close the file in a week, with or without an arrest.”

“So what was the message?”

“Lay off. Butt out. Take a hike. Whatever’s current. I haven’t seen a rock video in a while. In a way it’s a compliment to me he didn’t have Hurley or his boy Herb say hello from him. He figured I’d get it.” That made me remember something, but she was talking then.

“Are you sure it
was
from him? You said yourself pianos fall on you from time to time.”

“I found a pair of smashed glasses where I fell. I don’t need the prescription to know they were the ones Hurley was wearing at Borders. Everything happened too fast for me to count, but our chef friend said he saw two men laying rubber in a gray Lincoln. He’d have Herb with him on a job like that. It wasn’t your usual publicist work. Do you read Italian?”

She blinked. “My ex-husband and I spent a winter in Rome. I understand it better than I speak it. What a question. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“There’s a copy of Cypress’ book in my car. I might have been able to remember the inscription he wrote if I hadn’t been hit on the head, but I doubt it. Can you take a look at it and translate?”

She got up and went out. While I was waiting for her to come back I finished my coffee. It was nearly as cold as the ice pack but I needed the caffeine. It’s important to stay awake for a few hours after sustaining a concussion. She returned with the book open in her hands and a tight-lipped smile. “It’s too bad you’re not multilingual,” she said. “You might have spared yourself a beating. Do you mind a loose interpretation?”

“Punt.”

“The man has a sense of humor. He wrote ‘I feel your pain.’”

Grinning hurt; but I’m a tough guy. “If he didn’t have any imagination he wouldn’t have written a book.”

“It was probably ghosted.” She stopped smiling. “Amos, you should call the police.”

“They’re the competition. In any case it doesn’t prove anything, except that he’s not worried enough to cover his tracks. Which makes me think I’m not as right as I thought I was.”

“He’s pretty sure of his protection.”

“Either that or he doesn’t think he needs any. Maybe he doesn’t know Booth’s dead.”

She was still standing, holding the book open. She closed it gently. “But if it
was
suicide, what was Cypress doing staying in the next cabin?”

“I’ll ask him.”

“You’re going to confront him again after what happened the last time?”

“He owes me lunch.”

“Not on my time,” she said. “One man has died already. If Booth was murdered, I want to know why and if it had anything to do with the book he was writing. I need to know if in some way I’m responsible. If he killed himself, well, that’s that, and if it has anything to do with me—I don’t know, maybe I gave him hope just when he’d resigned himself to life as a has-been and when he found out he was right all along it put him over the edge—I’ll live with that. What I can’t live with is two men dead before their time over a book with a shelf life of three months maximum. I’ll take you off the case before I let that happen.”

“So am I fired?”

She pressed her lips tight. Standing there in her robe with her hair loose, holding a book, she looked like an Annunciation painting. “What if you are? Will you forget Glad Eddie and go back to whatever it is you do that doesn’t involve getting roughed around in restaurant parking lots?”

“Don’t let that enter into your figuring. As parking lots go I’ve kissed the asphalt in places a lot less classy than the Blue Heron. I don’t usually have to make a reservation. I wouldn’t have gotten roughed around at all if I’d remembered I was meeting a hoodlum instead of a literary celebrity. I won’t make that mistake twice.”

“You didn’t answer my question. If I fire you, will it take?”

“I don’t know. Fire me and let’s see.”

A heavy truck detouring around construction on I-75 shuddered past on the street, its load shifting over a break in the pavement. The noise made her flinch. She tossed the book into the rocker and sank down onto the slipcovered sofa. One half of her robe slid sideways, showing the whole of one bare leg. She’d been walking around Central Park Sundays.

“I don’t know what to say,” she said. “I don’t know what’s right: abandon Eugene Booth and risk another life or cut our losses and risk letting a murderer go free. It isn’t like deciding which book to publish.”

“I’ll make it easy, since it’s my life. If Booth killed himself, someone walked around his body hanging in his cabin and walked out with his manuscript. It makes more sense that whoever did that also strung him up to begin with. It takes strength to hoist a full-grown man, dead or dead drunk, and hold him up long enough to slip a noose over his head. Eddie’s a healthy-looking fifty. If he needed help he has Hurley and Herb, which sounds like a magic act in Vegas. Then there’s the very good point that I don’t like getting my head and my ribs kicked in next to a Dumpster when I ought to be inside choosing between the rack of lamb and the pan-roasted veal. When I’m through bouncing Siegfried and Roy off a few walls and the cops show up to nail me for battery, it might help my case if I can claim a client, but whether I’m on the clock or not I’m going to pay them a visit. Did I mention I don’t like getting my head and my ribs kicked in?”

“A couple of times.” She smiled. “Do you make enough from this hobby of yours to pay taxes?”

“The government seems to think so. Some days I’m not so sure. It pays better than bungee-jumping, and the risk’s not as high. Cords break.”

“So do skulls.”

I had nothing to throw at that. I turned the ice pack over and pressed it against my eye. It was just as warm on that side. “Is there another one of these in the freezer? I sucked the life out of this one.”

“It was the only one. I can put some ice in a plastic bag.”

“Don’t bother. I’m beginning to feel like broccoli.”

“Would you like to lie down?”

“I thought I was.”

“I meant over here.”

I flipped the ice pack onto the table beside the chair. It was supporting a lamp with a hunting scene in the base. She had lowered herself to one elbow and crossed her legs, hanging a mule off one slim foot. She had a high arch.

I said, “I take it I’m still employed.”

She wasn’t insulted. She never was when it came to that. “Tell me something?” she said. “When that nice young man picked you up off the pavement, why did you tell him to take you here?”

“It was closest. Hospitals make you watch soap operas all day and charge five bucks a pop for aspirin.”

“Your house is just as close.”

“You’ve been boning up on the local geography.”

“I rented a car yesterday. The man at Hertz gave me a map. Detroit certainly has a lot of suburbs.”

“White flight. All I had to do at home was sleep, and that’s not a good idea when you’ve taken a hit to the head. Conversation with you has never put me to sleep yet.”

“Don’t you have friends?”

“I also had a report to make. Combining things saves my clients money.”

“I don’t believe you. When a dog gets shot he limps out of his way to the place where he can find love and sympathy.”

“Poetic, but not zoologically correct,” I said. “He crawls under a porch.”

“What are you, a dog or a man?”

I said nothing. She took a base.

“We have a history, you know,” she said.

“So do France and Germany. That doesn’t make us Romeo and Juliet.”

“Romeo and Juliet were teenagers. We’re grownups.”

She had me beat in literature.

“New York’s a village,” she said. “Publishers’ Row is even smaller. It’s like incest. I’ve been busy for two years trying to find a hole to get my head above water. I haven’t seen a show since
Sunset Boulevard
closed, or been to a good restaurant where I didn’t put the check on my corporate card since I can’t remember when. It’s been a long dry spell, Amos. I’m not a camel.”

I glanced toward the front door. She saw it.

“Debra called this morning. She’s stuck in Terre Haute. If anybody walks in on us, you have my permission to shoot them down.”

“I left my gun in the car.”

She tugged loose her sash with an impatient jerk. The robe fell open the rest of the way. There were no swimsuit rules in the tanning beds in Manhattan.

I got up out of the chair without a grunt or a gasp and managed not to sway while the blood charged out of my head and made the long circulatory journey back. She made room for me on the cushions and I went over and sat on one hip on the edge. A rib pinched. I caught my lip. “You might have to do most of the work.”

“I’m the boss. I’m used to it.” She put her arms around me and drew me down beside her.

23

I
ghosted away from there an hour past dark. We’d moved to the guest room, the only room in the house that didn’t look as if Heidi might wander in at any moment, and I left Louise sleeping. I found a pad and pen in the kitchen, but all I could think of to write was “
Senso vostra angoscia.
” That didn’t seem appropriate. I didn’t leave a note.

The night air was cool and damp and smelled of fresh-cut grass. The driver’s seat felt clammy when I eased under the wheel. I wouldn’t be taking any deep breaths for a couple of weeks, but my head was clear and the business with the ice pack had opened up my left eye enough for driving. Back home I mixed a drink from the everyday bottle, got the rest of the fried-egg sandwiches I’d made that morning out of the refrigerator, and sat in the breakfast nook to wash them down with Scotch and tap water. Fourteen hours old and cold, they tasted like cork coasters. It was a far cry from the lunch I hadn’t had at the Blue Heron, but it was better than what fifteen others had had after they met up with Eddie Cypress.

I’d brought his book home. There was a full-length photograph of Glad Eddie on the front of the jacket, in his working uniform of blue Oxford shirt, loose-fitting sportcoat, pleated slacks, and Gucci loafers, which were the only things Italian about him apart from some phrases he’d picked up on the job, unless some Roman centurion had docked at his great-plus-grandmother’s Greek island for an olive to put in his martini and fell in love between tides. The family name, according to the copy on an inside flap, was Kyparissia, but an evergreen tree was as close as the civil servant who had checked his grandfather through Ellis Island could come.

The book’s title was
Prey Tell.

I laid it facedown on the table. I didn’t feel like reading. Reading seemed to be all I’d been doing on this one when I wasn’t driving or getting my face punched. The left side of it from the eye down ached and felt tight. I knew what it was like to be the Phantom of the Opera, except my tenor sounded like a teakettle with a sore throat.

A white rectangle on the table caught my eye. Russell Fearing’s business card had fallen out of the book when I opened it. The calm black bodyguard with the Secret Service resumÉ had told me I’d need him someday if they didn’t kill me first.

I knew the office would be closed, but I went into the living room and called the number anyway. A female contralto with a crumpet in it confirmed in a recording that I’d reached the headquarters of Russell Fearing Security Services and told me the hours of operation were 9:00
A.M.
to 6:30
P.M.
Monday through Friday. She offered me the opportunity to record a message. I didn’t take it.

It was still early, but I had put in a full day for a sabbath, with the most exhausting part at the end. Louise Starr was a cool cypher only when it came to the publishing business. My face ached, my ribs hurt. My blood had ceased to circulate in my extremities, bagging like lead shot in my feet and hands. I shuffled when I walked and had to rest my arms before unfastening the next button. I dumped myself into bed, not bothering with the sheet or blanket, and woke up ten hours later in the same position, on my stomach with my head twisted to the right. I drove to the office making all right turns because I couldn’t turn my head left.