"Not when you're here."

"It wasn't always me."

"This is now now, Mike," she said. It was almost me thinking again when I walked up the steps a couple of days ago.

I took her hand, then in one full sweep flipped the sheet off her body and looked at her.

What is it when you see a woman naked? Woman Woman. Long. Lovely. Tousled. Skin that looks slippery in the small light. Pink things that are the summit. A wide, shadowy ma.s.s that is the crest. Desire that rests in the soft fold of flesh that can speak and taste and tell that it wants you with the sudden contractions and quickening intake of breath. A mouth that opens wetly and moves with soundless words of love.

I sat on the edge of the bed and let my fingers explore her. The invitation had always been there, but for the first time it was accepted. Now I could touch and feel and enjoy and know that this was mine. She gasped once, and said, "Your eyes are crazy, Mike."

"You can't see them."

"But I know. They're wild Irish brown green and they're crazy."

"I know."

"Then do what I want."

"Not me, kid. You're only a broad and I do what I want."

"Then do it."

"Are you ready?" I asked.

"I've always been ready."

"No you haven't."

"I am now."

Her face was turned toward mine, the high planes in her cheeks throwing dark shades toward her lips, her eyes bright with a strange wetness, and when I bent forward and kissed her it was like tasting the animal wildness of a tiger filled with an insensate hunger that wanted to swallow its victim whole and I knew what woman was like. Pure woman.

Across the room, m.u.f.fled because of the alcove, came a peculiar distant tone that made the scales, rising and falling with an eerie quality that had a banshee touch, and Velda said, "She's awake."

I pulled the sheet up and tucked it around her shoulders. "She isn't."

"We can go somewhere."

"No. The biggest word."

"Mike . . ."

"First we get rid of the trouble. It won't be right until then."

I could feel her eyes. "With you there will always be trouble."

"Not this trouble."

"Haven't we had enough?"

I shook my head. "Some people it's always with. You know me now. It comes fast, it lasts awhile, then it ends fast."

"You never change, do you?"

"Kitten, I don't expect to. Things happen, but they never change."

"Will it be us?"

"It has to be. In the meantime there are things to do. You ready?"

She grinned at me, the implication clear. "I've always been ready. You just never asked before."

"I never ask. I take."

"Take."

"When I'm ready. Not now. Get up."

Velda was a woman. She slid out of bed and dressed, deliberately, so I could watch everything she did, then reached into the top drawer of the dresser and pulled out a clip holster and slid it inside her skirt, the slide going over the wide belt she wore. The flat-sided Browning didn't even make a bulge.

I said, "If anybody ever shot me with that I'd tear their arms off."

"Not if you got shot in the head," she told me.

[image]

I called Rickerby from downstairs and he had a man stand by while we were gone. Sue was asleep, I thought, but I couldn't be sure. At least she wasn't going anyplace until we got back. We walked to the parking lot where I picked up the rented Ford and cut over to the West Side Highway.

She waited until I was on the ramp to ask, "Where are we going?"

"There's a place called 'The Angus Bull.' It's a new one for the racket boys."

"Who told you?"

"Pat."

"And whom do I con?"

"A man named Del Penner. If he isn't there you'll pick up a lead if you work it right. He was pushing Kid Hand and will probably take his place in the group. What you want to know is this . . . who is Mr. d.i.c.kerson?"

She threw me a funny glance and I filled her in on the small details. I watched her out of the corner of my eyes while she picked it all apart and put it back together again. There was something new about her now that wasn't there seven years ago. Then she had been a secretary, a girl with her own P.I. ticket and the right to carry a gun. Then she had been a girl with a peculiar past I hadn't known about. Now she was a woman, still with a peculiar past and a gun, but with a strange new subtlety added that was nurtured during those years behind the Iron Curtain in the biggest chase scene civilization had ever known.

"Where do we clear?"

"Through Pat."

"Or your friend Rickerby?"

"Keep him as an alternate. It isn't his field yet, so we'll stay local."

"Where will you be?"

"Running down the immediate past of a guy called Basil Levitt. Pat came up with nothing. They're still on the job, but he had no office and no records. Whatever he carried he carried in his hat, but he sure was working for somebody. He was after you and the kid and was four days watching your joint. I don't know what we have going, but these are the only leads we have."

"There's Sue."

"She has nothing to say yet."

"Did you believe what she said about her father trying to kill her? "

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because it isn't logical. The kid's a neurotic type and until something proves out I'm not going along with childish notions."

"Two dead men aren't notions."

"There's more to it than that, baby. Let me do it my way, okay?"

"Sure. It's always your way, isn't it?"

"Sure."

"Is that why I love you?"

"Sure."

"And you love me because I think that way?"

"Why sure."

"I'm home, Mike."

I touched her knee and felt her leg harden. "You never were away, kid."

She was on her own when I dropped her downtown. She grinned at me, waved, and I let her go. There was something relaxing about the whole thing now. No more tight feeling in the gut. No more of that big empty hole that was her. She was there and bigger than ever, still with the gun on her belt and ready to follow.

Going through Levitt's place was only a matter of curiosity. It was a room, nothing more. The landlady said he had been there six months and never caused trouble, paid his rent, and she didn't want to talk to any more cops. The neighbors didn't know anything about him at all and didn't want to find out. The local tavern owner had never served him and couldn't care less. But up in his room the ashtrays had been full of b.u.t.ts and there were two empty cartons in the garbage and anyone who smokes that much had to pick up cigarettes somewhere.

Basil Levitt did it two blocks away. He got his papers there too. The old lady who ran the place remembered him well and didn't mind talking about it.

"I know the one," she told me. "I wondered when the cops would get down here. I even woulda seen them only I wanted to see how fast they'd get here. Sure took you long enough. Where you from, son?"

"Uptown."

"You know what happened?"

"Not yet."

"So what do you want with me?"

"Just talk, Mom."

"So ask."

"Suppose you tell." I grinned at her. "Maybe you want the third degree, sweetie, just like in TV . . . okay?"

She waved her hand at me. "That stuff is dead. Who hits old ladies anymore except delinquents?"

"Me. I hit old ladies."

"You look like the type. So ask me."

"Okay . . . any friends?"

She shook her head. "No, but he makes phone calls. One of the hot boys . . . never shuts the door." She nodded toward the pay booth in back.

"You listened?"

"Why not? I'm too old to screw so I get a kick out of love talk."

"How about that?"

"Yeah, how? " She smiled crookedly and opened herself a c.o.ke. "He never talked love talk, never. Just money and always mad."

"More, Mom."

"He'd talk pretty big loot. Five G's was the last . . . like he was a betting man. Was he, son?"

"He bet his skin and lost. Now more."

She made a gesture with her shoulders. "Last time he was real mad. Said something was taking too long and wanted more loot. I don't think he got it."

"Any names?"

"Nope. He didn't call somebody's house, either."

I waited and she grinned broadly.

"He only called at a certain time. He had to speak up like wherever the other party was, it was d.a.m.n noisy. That's how come I heard him."

"You'd make a good cop, Mom."