The Suspense Is Killing Me Read online

  The cool little eyes never strayed from my face.

  “I’m sorry, Sam,” I said.

  He reached across the mirrorlike surface of the table and put out his hand. I took it. It was a good thing to do. It was good to be straight with Sam again.

  “Pals?” he said.

  “Pals.”

  Late in the evening Sam Innis decided he’d had enough of the wind and the rain inside, so we went out onto the terrace, into the thick wetness and deadening heat broken only by the infrequent limp breeze staggering through the tops of the trees in the Park. The terrace wrapped around the corner of the building and featured a nautical theme. Jazz played through the kind of speakers you found on cruise ships. The flooring was a polished deck and the chairs were elegant things that came from a defunct ocean liner, the Titanic for all I knew. There was a wet bar with a fridge under a green-and-white awning. There was a stairway that led up to the bedrooms of the second floor of the duplex. There was a greenhouse with rounded corners. Everything but a shuffleboard court and the ladies outnumbering the men. Apparently wherever Sam was, he liked to pretend he was somewhere else. I didn’t know whether to feel sorry for him or wish I could trade places with him. But the fact was when I was at my place across the Park, I was exactly where I wanted to be.

  The three of us leaned on the brass railing embedded in the terrace wall and looked out over the city, down Fifth Avenue to the fountain and the Plaza and the Trump Tower and way on down to the glow of Little Italy and Chinatown.

  “Land ho!” I said.

  “Been said before,” Heidi remarked. “Very witty.”

  Sam slapped the Post on the railing. The picture of Sally Feinman stared up at me. “Came across your name in the paper, Lee. This is just a damn tragedy. Poor, poor girl. What’s the story?”

  I must have been holding it in because I let it go, the tale of Sally and me and how it ended a couple of hours after my lunch with Heidi Dillinger. Innis came to life as I laid out the story line, all the stuff about the search for JC and how Sal had helped me with putting my life back together when I’d finally returned to New York. Then he wanted to know all the details of my finding the body, the guy knocking me down on the stairway, the terrible heat in the loft, the stench in the bathroom, the smell of burning, the condition of the body. In the end I saw that it was the violence, the viciousness in Sally’s fate, the horror that had been waiting for her around the last corner, the fact that I’d come so close to barging in while the work was in progress—all that was what he was after. It was the darkest side of life that drew him like a bagful of iron filings to a magnet: the darkness lay just below the surface of the man, like a beckoning pool that might claim him, or someone near him, at any moment. I saw it all in his face—the cool eyes, the way he wet his lips and tugged at his beard as he listened. Sam Innis might be dead after all. And it occurred to me that Allan Bechtol might be a dangerous man.

  Heidi Dillinger’s interest was less visceral, as you might expect, and more analytical. Why did they torture her? What could she have come across that was so important? Wasn’t her Tripper story the last really big thing she’d done? I didn’t think it could have anything to do with me, did I? I had to give Heidi credit for that one later on: she was the first person who suggested any kind of connection between yours truly and the murder of Sally Feinman. The thought simply hadn’t crossed my mind before that moment. Then she slid on past it, observing how lucky I’d been not to have arrived earlier. She took credit for using up enough time at lunch to save my life.

  When she excused herself and went indoors, Sam and I stood awhile longer leaning on the railing, with all the beauty of New York’s light show on a sultry summer night spread out before us. Ships were moving slowly on the East River, lights twinkling. I recognized the sound of the Mary Lou Williams Quartet with little Don Byas on sax playing “Moonglow.” I commented on it and Sam said, “With all respect to JC, I stopped listening to most of the post-1964 music long ago. Rock, anyway. Oh, the Beatles and Dylan, but they’re different, they exist outside of time. But mainly I’m stuck in the forties and fifties.”

  “Mary Lou and Byas recorded this at the City of Light in Paris in the early seventies. Not long before he died.”

  “Hey, I know that. But it’s not seventies’ music, pal.”

  “I know, I know.” It surely wasn’t. I didn’t even enjoy listening to JC and the Traveling Executioner’s Band anymore. The moment had passed for me.

  “So what do you think of Heidi?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure. She’s a beautiful girl. Of a kind.”

  “Your kind?”

  “I’ll never find out.”

  “Ah, don’t be so sure. She’s brilliant, Lee, a genius in a way. She’s a whiz with computers. A bulldog when it comes to research—I mean the hard kind, stuff people don’t want to let you know. At chess, well, it’s scary. She’s a tactician, a strategist—she’s a plotter, second to none. How much do you think I pay her?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Base salary a quarter of a mil, with an override on my royalties. I have no choice. She could better what I pay her before you could say ‘Frank Lorenzo’ or ‘Carl Icahn.’ Maybe even before you could say ‘poison pill’—”

  “How about before you say ‘federal prison’ or ‘Ivan Boesky’?”

  “She’s a great one for setting goals, planning, then improvising within the overall scope of the plan. She’s also a security expert.”

  “And,” I said, “I’ll bet you could stick her heart in a thimble and have room left over for her code of ethics.”

  He chuckled and shook his head. “You do her a grave injustice. I adore her. I’d be lost without her.”

  “Isn’t adoration a little strong?”

  He looked startled for a moment, then relaxed. “Look, this is a purely nonsexual adoration. More like the adoration of Saint Heidi. Without whom my make-believe worlds would go down in flames or up in smoke or some damn thing. As far as sex goes, Heidi’s life is a mystery to me. But since she has her own suite in my place here, and since I seem to require her at all sorts of odd hours, I’d say she pretty well sublimates all that.”

  “What about you? Girlfriend?”

  “Oh, now we come to the secret of my success—the formula that made me what I am today. I am completely impotent.” He laughed at my expression. “No kidding. It’s been my salvation. I haven’t had a hard-on in fifteen years. Can you imagine the time that has freed up? The energy? I recommend it, Lee, it’s the answer to the world’s ills. I guess it’s some psychological problem, but if I’m ever cured it’s curtains for Allan Bechtol. I was a slave to sex for so damn long … it was like having an eight-hundred-pound man stop standing on my face. Then, suddenly, I was free. I live in fear I’ll unexpectedly get horny and sprout a woody again. The time saved in not whacking off, waxing the old otter, amounts to months, years of life I wouldn’t have had.”

  “I wonder if you’re telling me the truth. Maybe you’re just playing another tape for me. Sucking me into another game.”

  “Would I kid you about a thing like this?” He looked at his watch. “Listen, I’ve got six or eight hours of work ahead of me. Always work at night. Like a ballplayer. Which reminds me, we’ve gotta get up to the Stadium together, Lee. But now, I must work. I’ll have Heidi see you home.”

  We went back inside and he gave me a hug and said he’d see me soon and disappeared down the hall.

  Heidi said, “Feel like a slow walk? We could walk down around the Park if you feel like it.”

  I told her that would be fine.

  “Well, that certainly warmed the cockles of this old heart.” Heidi Dillinger was being ironic on the subject of Sam and me and I was being hot and sticky. That’s the way with New York. When the heat and humidity hit, they just won’t let go. Day or night, it just goes on and on, banging your head with a manhole cover until you think you can’t take any more. Then it gets really hot. That’s the kin
d of a summer it was turning into. Of course, Heidi Dillinger took no notice. No sweat, no complaining. She liked it. We were walking past the Strand’s outdoor book cabinets near the Plaza, and the Park was still and oppressively humid. The muggers and killers and rapists waited in the dark, you could almost hear them breathing, almost hear their eyeballs clicking as they peered after the unwary. But we were a few feet away from all that. We were safe from damn near everything but irony.

  “Women are frequently irritated by male bonding,” I said. “There’s no female equivalent. The best the poor things can do is something they call networking. Not my view particularly. I’m quoting Sally Feinman. She used to tell me that a woman with a best female friend also knows she has a lifelong enemy, somebody to dance on her grave. Personally I hold women in higher regard than that.”

  “How about male bonding, then—do you trust Allan?”

  “Call him Sam. He’s Sam.” I said it but I wasn’t sure.

  “No, he’s Allan,” she insisted. “He used to be this Sam person. But forget Sam. Call him Allan.”

  “All right. Do I trust Allan? How should I know? I’ve only known him a few hours.”

  “He has plans for you, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know. And I don’t really care about what he has—”

  “Oh, but you will. He’s very persuasive. He wants something from you.” We were strolling along Central Park South. The horse-drawn carriages were still for hire, and across the street in front of the hotels the sidewalk was crowded. On nights this hot, New York never really goes to sleep.

  “So he’s persuasive. What does he want?”

  “He wants you to come for dinner again tomorrow.”

  “Okay, fine by me. That was easy, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s not all he wants.”

  “But you’re not going to tell me the rest.”

  “That’s right. I’m not.”

  “How is he going to persuade me?”

  “Allan firmly believes that everyone has his price. I believe it myself, for that matter.”

  “Just because he met yours?”

  “Is that a way of saying you’re made of finer stuff? That you’re above all that?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. I’m a man well known to have a price. And not too bloody high, at that.”

  “Sometimes you take me off guard,” she said.

  “Try not to kid a kidder. The last time someone took you off guard, Lefty Gomez was on the hill at the Stadium.”

  “Who on earth is Lefty Gomez?”

  “You’re the researcher. Go look him up.”

  “Simple curiosity—what have you got against me?” She glanced up sharply. “What are you laughing at? I don’t much like being laughed at.”

  “Don’t worry. You don’t seem to do funny things. I’m just thinking of an old joke.”

  “I suppose it has something to do with Mr. Gomez—”

  “No, no. It’s old and it’s dumb. Like Ronald Reagan.”

  “Are you going to tell me or are you intent on just being irritating?”

  “If I told you you have a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “That’s the joke. Old and dumb. I know a lot of them like that. For instance, a page is always a page, but once a knight—”

  “Is enough. Even I’ve heard that one.”

  “Look, you don’t like being laughed at. And I don’t like being conned. As in the way you did that little number on me yesterday. You and good old Allan can play all the stupid little games you like, but leave me out of ’em. No games with Lee Tripper. My tolerance level is lower than Joel Skinner’s batting average.”

  “Who is Joel Skinner?” She made a face and sighed. “Don’t say it. I’m the researcher. Well, I’m sorry if yesterday upset you—”

  “No, I thought I was a pretty nifty guy yesterday. You are very, very beautiful and getting more so with each passing minute. Picking you up was a small but meaningful triumph. Finding out that my charm, wit, and good tailoring had nothing to do with it—well, my hopes were dashed. Made me unhappy. Put me in a funk. I may not come out of it until tomorrow.”

  “What hopes?”

  “Oh, you know. Probably base animal hopes …”

  “I might have known.”

  “I suppose you’re made of finer stuff, you’re above all that. Fine. It’s your life, and welcome to it.”

  This lively patter, true to the traditions of the earlier cute meet, got us to the big statue of Columbus at the southwest corner of the Park. Which seemed to me just about as far as it was ever likely to get us.

  “I can get home safely from here,” I said. I hailed a cab but she pulled my hand out of the air.

  “My instructions were to get you home.” She slid her arm through mine and we headed uptown on Central Park West.

  I couldn’t get any more out of her about Bechtol, and when we got to my building we stopped and I couldn’t stop smiling at her. “Want to come up and spend the night?”

  “You are truly absurd.”

  “It’s nothing, really.”

  “I like that in a man.”

  “Well, I take it back.”

  “Take what back?”

  “What I said. You are sort of funny.”

  “If you do what Allan wants, if you let him persuade you”—her tan eyes fastened on mine, I was conscious of the cut of her hair and the shape of her head—“you and I will be seeing more of each other.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind. I might do it anyway.”

  She kissed my cheek and I felt her wide mouth grinning against me. “What a gallant guy.”

  “I never kiss on the first date.”

  “Your reputation is safe, Tripper. This wasn’t a date. This was business.” She was moving back toward the curb. A taxi was waiting. “Make it eight o’clock. We’ll be waiting for you.”

  I had no doubt about that. I saw the dark pool beneath the surface of Allan Bechtol’s life, the pool that beckoned so seductively, and I wondered if it was beckoning not to Bechtol but to his old friend. Me.

  Four

  THE NEXT NIGHT THE PLOT, as the man said, thickened. The pool of darkness deepened and I heard what passed for the siren song. In a way it was one of JC’s songs haunting me, the past reaching out, like Noel Coward’s observation on the powers of what he called cheap music. Strolling through the Park with the sun setting down long shadow lines past the towers of the West Side, I was feeling somewhat less sprightly than is normal. The bruiser on the stairway was taking his toll. My back was aching where my kidneys were supposed to be. I’d hit hard on the edges of several steps. I was feeling pretty punk. But curious.

  The mood at Bechtol’s was entirely different from the previous night. The audio storm persisted, but we three ate by candlelight on the terrace. A couple of strategically placed oscillating fans created an artificial breeze, the candles guttered, the sweat eventually dried on my face. Bechtol had left the cooking to the Japanese couple, and the result was grilled swordfish with a biting jalapeno sauce, hot and crusty rolls, fresh green beans steamed to crunchy perfection with a hint of ginger about them, a dry Australian white wine—I mention this not because I aspire to Gael Greene’s station in life but rather to indicate the way my old pal Sam Innis (who could survive on cold anchovy pizza and chili sandwiches and plan a chain of horror-show restaurants) had changed as he metamorphosed into Allan Bechtol. He might have been a different man, not old Sam at all. Now he lived like a king, and the king who came most readily to mind was mad Ludwig of Bavaria.

  The connection seemed even more appropriate once I heard my old friend’s proposal, but when he got to the part about the persuasion he proved that he had my number. It was a rather large number, as it turned out, but that will come in due course. Over the cocktails I asked him what the hell he was up to that took two nights to get through. I suggested that he remember what fantastically close pals we’d been once and
now were once more. I told him it was time for the con to stop.

  He began talking, selling his idea hard, and with my occasional interruptions the pitch lasted all the way through dinner, which concluded with strawberries in clotted cream, coffee, and cognac, and finally came the demand for an answer from me. Watching and listening, I would hardly have thought him the man I’d seen the night before. He was wearing an immaculate, virginal white suit, a pearl gray shirt by Paul Smith of lower Fifth, a pale green tie, and a gold Patek Philippe that made a Ritz cracker look like a tractor tire. His beard was neatly groomed, his hair trimmed and combed. Heidi Dillinger was dressed to kill, simply turned out in a drop-dead black cocktail dress with spaghetti straps. It clung to her like a naughty reputation. She wore pearls: a necklace, earrings, and a large ring! Thank God I’d at least thrown on a beat-up old safari jacket I’d carried over my shoulder across the Park. The way they looked made me wonder how I smelled.

  “I’ll get right to the heart of it, pal,” he said. He was wearing slightly tinted glasses with tortoiseshell frames. The candlelight was reflected in the lenses. “I have the sneaking suspicion that old JC is still alive.” He paused, waited for me to roll over with all four paws in the air.

  “So do several million of his fans. Their brains have been turned into Doggie Treats by LSD, hash, grass, cocaine, and who cares what else. What’s your excuse?”

  “Just a hunch, a rumor or two, things I’ve heard. None of that really matters. The point is I think JC’s out there someplace in the tall grass. I want you to find him if he is … if he’s not, if he’s dead, well, we’ll know once and for all.”