Strange Embrace (8 page)

“It makes perfect sense,” Haig said. “He already told you one motive. He may have had a better one. We’ll find out sooner or later. Murder isn’t usually too complicated, Johnny. Nine times out of ten the first suspect is the right one.”

“That still leaves one shot in ten.”

“Uh-huh. And this isn’t that one. There’s more, Johnny. I talked to a girl who was fairly friendly with the James babe. Girl by the name of Sondra Barr. One of the pale-lipstick crew from that neighborhood. In fact, Sondra lives in the building just across the street. Seems she looked out the window last night and saw Elaine James walking into her building with a guy. The guy Sondra describes sounds like Carter Tracy.”

“So what? He said he was there. Did she see him leave?”

Haig shook his head. “Nope. But that proves he was on hand. And I don’t care whether he already said he was there or not. He’ll change his story half a dozen times before the jury tells him he’s guilty. I’m talking about evidence. Now we can prove he was there.”

“But you can’t prove he killed her, can you?”

“We will, Johnny.”

Johnny lit another cigarette. “I won’t buy it,” he said.

“But—”

“Listen to me a minute, Sam. You know crime and you know criminals but you don’t know Tracy. I do. I don’t like him, but I know him. I don’t like him at all. Just the same, I can’t see him as a killer.”

Haig shrugged.

“You going to pick him up?”

“In the morning,” Haig said. “I don’t figure he’ll run very far. He thinks he’s in the clear now, according to what you said before.”

“That’s what I was getting at. He’ll be around in the morning. He’ll also be around in the afternoon. Why don’t you let it sit on the fire for a few extra hours? Tracy won’t run away. And the longer you wait, the tighter case you’ll have when you do pick him up—if you ever decide to. Good enough?”

“I don’t know.” Haig shifted his weight from one foot to the other. His eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“Because I’d rather you didn’t pick him up at all.”

“We should let him go free so you can put on a show?”

“I don’t think he did it,” Johnny said. “I think if you wait a while you’ll find that out. But if you nab him in a hurry and release him later a lot of things are shot to hell. His career, for one thing.
A Touch of Squalor,
for another.”

“He did it, Johnny. You might as well get used to that. He killed the girl.”

“I don’t think so.”

They stared at each other. Johnny watched the play of expression on the cop’s face and saw the wheels turning in his mind. “What the hell,” Haig said finally. “I suppose it won’t hurt to stall till afternoon.”

“It won’t.”

“You going to be busy in the meantime?”

“Probably,” Johnny admitted. “I want to see this friend of Elaine’s. This Sandra.”

“Sondra,” Haig said elaborately. “With an
o.
Sondra Barr. It was probably Sandra Barpenschlobber the first time around. What do you want with her?”

“I want to talk to her. About Elaine.” He shrugged. “I can’t help it, Sam. Maybe I’m too used to plays, where everything dovetails beautifully and the dramatic effect has to be right. Something rings wrong here. Maybe Sondra can tell me something. Hell, I don’t know much of anything about Elaine—who she was, what she was like, any of that. She was a good actress and a pretty girl and a virgin and she’s dead. That’s all I know.”

“That’s enough to electrocute Tracy.”

“Maybe there’s more. And I’d like to know about it. Will you hold off on picking up Tracy until three in the afternoon? That’ll give me time to snoop around a little.”

Haig nodded unhappily. “But you’re wasting your time,” he said. “You’re not a cop, Johnny. You don’t think like a cop.”

“I’m not trying to be a cop, Sam.”

“Hell,” Haig said, “I wouldn’t worry too much about it. About not being a cop, I mean. Us cops don’t live in penthouses. Not even with all the graft we take. Go to sleep, Johnny. I’m going to go collect some graft.”

A moon-faced, dull-eyed doctor tried to give him a hard time in the morning. “You need bed rest,” he kept saying. “The bones need a chance to relax. We can’t be responsible—”

Johnny explained very carefully that he would sign a quitclaim absolving the hospital of all responsibility, that he could take care of his own damn skeleton, and that nothing was going to keep him in bed. The doctor was clearly unhappy but, just as clearly, there was not a hell of a lot he could do about it. Johnny signed the quitclaim, signed himself out, and caught a cab back to his place.

He reassured Ito that he was alive, which was no small task. He washed up, changed clothes, then called Jan and gave her a quick rundown on the beating and the conversation with Haig. “So you can stop worrying,” he wound up. “Whoever is trying to send the show up the nearest creek isn’t using razors this year. Somebody else killed Elaine.”

“And it looks like Carter?”

“That’s the way it looks to Haig. Not to me.”

“Be careful,” she told him. “Very careful. I’ll be worrying about you. And Johnny…”

“Yeah?”

“You’re hurt,” she said. “Floating ribs. I won’t be able to hug you. We won’t be able to…uh—”

“We’ll find a way,” he said. He hung up. It was time to go hunting for Sondra Barr.

S
ONDRA, UNFORTUNATELY, DID NOT ANSWER
Johnny’s ring. But a neighbor, of whom Johnny presumed to make inquiries, proved quite cooperative.

“Sonny doesn’t hang around her pad much,” said the neighbor. “You might fall over to the Gila Monster. She makes the scene there kind of regular.”

“How do I recognize her?”

“She’ll probably be turned on,” the neighbor said. He was a young man with a beard that covered most of his face, which was probably just as well. “She’s always turned on. So am I, but I’m on a Zen kick. You know—meditation. I turn on to visions of hallucinatory reality.”

“That’s nice,” Johnny told him. “What does Sondra use?”

“Anything. Tea, meskie, hash, juice—she’s not particular. So that’s how you can recognize her. Which won’t help much.”

“No?”

“No. Because everybody is turned on at the Gila Monster. It’s that type of scene.”

It was that type of scene. When Johnny walked in, he found himself in a low-ceilinged basement that should have been left as a basement, or condemned, or something. The dark, scarred door opened inward. One sealed-up window. Tables and chairs, no two alike, that could once have been furniture on the Mayflower, or maybe on the Ark.

And people. Young men with beards who looked like Actor’s Studio types on the skids—torn sweaters, uncut hair, unshaved faces—sprawled over chairs, their eyes shut and their mouths hanging open like caverns. Girls wearing dungarees and sweatshirts and looking most unappetizing, with white lipstick and too much eye shadow. One of the girls had to be Sondra Barr. And, after he had managed to convince the lantern-jawed waiter that he was not a policeman, he learned which one she was. She sat, glassy-eyed and inert, at a small table at the rear. She was alone. He joined her, spoke her name. She looked up at him and her violet eyes were unfocused, blank, opaque.

“My name’s Lane,” he told her. “Johnny Lane. I want to talk to you.”

She did not answer him.

“About a friend of yours, Sondra. Elaine James.”

The eyes were still unfocused but the girl came halfway to life. “Elaine’s dead,” she informed him. “Good girl, Elaine. But dead.”

Sondra stared sadly at him. Then, strangely, she began to laugh. The laughter sent chills up his spine. It was sickly dry laughter like the rattle of bones in a dusty graveyard.

“Tell me about her, Sondra.”

“The fuzz came around,” she said. “Big bad fuzz with a crooked nose. Showed me a badge and asked me questions. So I told him I saw Elaine with a guy. Fell up to her pad, oh, maybe ten o’clock. Maybe later. Maybe earlier.”

He could not help smiling. This, he thought, was Haig’s proof. Sondra would be magnificent on the witness stand. She would not even be sure of her own name. A defense attorney would have a barrel of fun with her.

“That’s not what I mean,” he said. “About Elaine. What kind of a girl was she?”

“Solid. Good to know. What else?”

“Who were her friends?”

Sondra Barr waved a hand that took in the whole room. “Everybody,” she said, “and nobody. She was hard to reach. She belonged and she didn’t. Like floating.”

Like floating? He wondered what cloud Sondra was floating on. “What was she interested in?” he asked. “What was her kick?”

“Ordinary-type kick. She didn’t dig getting high. She had this theater bit going for her. She had it almost made before that cat carved her. A bad scene, huh?”

He grunted vaguely.

“And sex,” Sondra went on. “That was a kick of hers. Sex is an ordinary-type kick, right, Jack?”

“I thought she was a virgin, Sondra.”

The laughter was back again, high and dry and brittle. Then it stopped all at once. “I’m hip,” the girl said. “Elaine was a virgin. I forgot for a minute.”

“Then—”

“She thought about sex a lot,” the girl said. “She had this mystic attitude, you dig? That’s all.”

He nodded. He was not getting anywhere with Sondra and the place was beginning to get on his nerves. He wondered what would happen if he wanted a cup of coffee. Nobody seemed to be interested in taking an order from him. How did the place show a profit?

“Anything else, Sondra?”

“Hey,” she said unsteadily. “Hey, why are you pushing me? Who are you, anyway? Who the hell are you, dad?”

“A friend of Elaine’s.”

“A friend? Okay, friend. That’s all for now. On your way, friend.”

“Look,” Johnny said. “I was interested in her. I thought she was the greatest. I was starting her on her career, understand? I’m the producer of the play she was rehearsing for, and…”

“Producer!” Sondra lost, or half lost, her stoned expression. The violet eyes narrowed, actually focused, carefully measured Johnny as if he had registered on them for the first time.

“That interest you?” he queried.

“Sort of.”

“You an actress too? You after a part, is that it?” Johnny figured he might be able to offer her work in exchange for information, in a pinch.

“I’m no actress. I don’t want a part. And I have nothing to trade.” She was still measuring him with those violet orbs. “Wish I did, though.”

“Try hard. Maybe you’ll think of something. Why should Elaine’s killer get away with it? Let’s nail him.”

“I’d help you if I could,” Sondra said. Her expression went foggy again, and then she seemed to come to a sudden decision. “Would you help me?”

“Sure. How?”

“Well, you’re a producer. That means you must make it with the very best chicks. Lots of them. I mean—you know about women. You know how to handle them. Dig?”

“I’m not sure,” Johnny admitted.

“Well, Mr. Producer, I’d appreciate it if you would handle me.”

It took him a few seconds to get the idea. When it sank in, he said levelly, “For money?”

“Kicks,” she said. “Just kicks.”

“All right,” Johnny said. “But you’ve got to think of something. I’ll do my best to deliver for you—if you do your best to deliver for me. Any little thing. Search your memory.”

“It’s a deal,” Sondra said. “Come on.”

She led him out of the Gila Monster and into the fresh air. Now that she was on her feet, he had a chance to look her over.

Pretty good stuff, he had to admit. Tall, and on the slender side. But a beautiful, heavy bosom. A bottom enticingly conforming to the classical pear shape. Long, lively legs. His gaze returned to her face. The cheeks were too hollow. The mouth was too full. But it was an intriguing face, and her hair, falling in red-gold waves to her slim shoulders, was an absolute glory.

This was a deal, he told himself, that could turn out to be a bargain.

He could use a few kicks, himself. And he was pretty confident that she knew more than she had yet told, that in the grip of intimacy she could be persuaded to give him more information about Elaine.

She tapped along on her stick heels, guiding him to her place. Climbing the stairs behind her, he was fascinated by her leg action, gawky yet somehow delightfully graceful, like that of a thoroughbred filly walking up to the post.

Her door was not locked. She just pushed on it, and it yielded.

“Welcome to the pad,” she said. She looked up at him out of the foggy violet eyes. “It’s true, isn’t it? You really do know about women? You really know what to do with a woman?”

“I’d say it was true,” Johnny assured her.

She stepped aside to let him pass.

He found himself in a dingy one-room flat, but, unexpectedly,
it
was neat as a pin. A tailored curtain hung over the one window. The furniture consisted of an unpainted wooden chair, a bridge table, a neat lamp on the table, a small unpainted chest of drawers, and a mattress on the floor. The mattress was neatly covered with a plain brown bedspread. There was no kitchen or icebox. Johnny pushed open a second door, saw a small lavatory. He pushed the door shut. A faint sweet smell, like a whiff of burning hay, came to his nostrils. Tea, he thought. Marijuana.

Sondra walked slowly toward him, the violet eyes wide, misty, and gazing into his eyes with a curious fixity.

“You think I’m turned on,” she said. “I’m not. Not very. Had myself a little tea, a while ago, but for me that’s not very turned on. So don’t be afraid.”

“Who’s afraid?” Johnny said, the shivers running up and down his spine. Her gaze was like the gaze of a blind woman. Her voice was the voice of a ghost. But she was neat, he reminded himself. Which meant that probably she was clean, also. Then he remembered what she expected of him. She expected him to be a polished, highly competent lover. He reached out and took her hand. It was a surprisingly warm and vibrant hand, not a ghost hand at all. He let his fingers caress her palm.

“Oh, you don’t have to force yourself,” she said. “I’ll take care of that. I know that much.”

She danced away from him.

“You just watch me.” Sondra laughed shrilly and eerily. “Just watch!”