Murder on the Rocks. Talmage Powell

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СКАЧАТЬ into my coat pocket, I pulled out her two five-hundred-dollar banknotes, smoothed out the wrinkles, and admired the engraving. I could drop them on the table, walk out of the door, and never come back. For a while I considered the idea and then discarded it. I had had a bottle of excellent beer at her expense and I had agreed to listen to what she had wanted so much to tell me. On top of that I told myself that I had been getting stale. Any action you can get out of a pile of tax returns and a shelf of tax books is strictly mental. And tedious.

      I persuaded myself to linger over a second bottle of beer and if Iris still slept I would leave her thousand dollars on the table and walk out.

      Just then the telephone rang.

      I reached for it, then hesitated. If it was her husband he might not like hearing a man’s voice in his wife’s apartment, separated from her or not. And Paul Sewall knew some nasty people, hoods who would sap me for laughs, then break my arches for staggering. Then again it could be her sister, Sara. Or her father, the Ambassador.

      Picking up the phone, I said, “Hello,” but there was no answer, only an exclamation of surprise, abrupt and sexless, and the wire went dead. I lowered the receiver, shrugged, and decided I should have ignored it. As I walked away from the telephone I heard a key in the front door lock. The door opened inward and a bulky Negro woman stared at me. From one arm hung the strap of a shopping bag. A shock of celery leaves stuck out of one corner.

      “Hello,” I said.

      She looked at me, then at the half-closed door, deciding whether to scream or come in the rest of the way. Finally she said, “Where’s Mis’ Iris?”

      “In the bedroom,” I said. “Sleeping.”

      “Huh!” she exploded. “You the genneman kep’ her out all night?”

      I shook my head.

      “She drunk?”

      “Ask her. And skip the Aunt Jemima dialect; it doesn’t come natural.”

      Her eyes narrowed and she looked apprehensively at the bedroom. When she looked back at me she said, “Thank you. No one else ever noticed. How does it happen that you did?”

      “I was brought up around here. It’s been twenty years since the last minstrels.”

      “They die hard,” she said. “Some employers wouldn’t like knowing I graduated from Howard University with a degree in education, but teaching pay isn’t enough to support my son and myself. Mrs. Sewall isn’t the kind who would care, but all her friends aren’t like her. You won’t say anything, will you?”

      “Why should I?”

      She brushed past me and went into the bedroom. After a while she came out, carried the shopping bag into the kitchen and came back. “I hung up her clothing,” she told me. “I’ll give her a neck and shoulder massage to bring her around. It shouldn’t take long, Mr.—”

      “Bentley.”

      “Mr. Bentley. I’ve never seen you with her before.”

      “We just met.”

      The Siamese cat stood up and stretched.

      “Ava!” the woman called.

      The Siamese cat arched her back and sneered.

      “Siamese cats,” the maid said. “The smartest domesticated felines alive. And don’t think they don’t know it. I don’t feed her now, she’ll sink her teeth in my ankle and laugh like a fiend. Excuse me.”

      Ava followed her into the kitchen. I heard the refrigerator door swing open, the splash of milk in a saucer. When the maid came out she crossed into the bedroom.

      I walked into the. kitchen, opened another bottle, and watched the domesticated feline lapping milk noisily. From there I turned on the hi-fi unit. Sound swelled through the room and I lowered the volume a little. The music was unfamiliar but I liked it. It soothed me and brought back a sense of reality that had started leaving me when I walked out of Hogan’s with Iris Sewall.

      At four-fifteen the Siamese cat drifted out of the kitchen, found a comfortable spot on the rug, and began cleaning her chops. The bedroom door opened and Iris appeared. There was color in her cheeks, her skin looked freshly showered, and she had on brocade lounging pajamas and velvet ballerina slippers.

      “Sorry,” she said. “Terribly sorry, and all that, but the drinks were obviously too many. That or the sun. Or possibly both. In any case, thanks for staying around.” She lighted a cigarette and glanced at the hi-fi set. “Like my music?”

      “Anyone would.”

      She came to the sofa and sat on the far end. Her hands moved nervously. She was drawing herself together, getting ready to say what she had to say.

      “Someone called,” I told her, “but when I answered the line went dead. Sorry if I’ve compromised you. Then again, it might have been only Sara.”

      “My sister? How did you—?” She turned toward the photograph and her face relaxed. “Of course. No, Sara will still be sleeping. She gave last night’s brawl. Her husband is Wayne Cutler. Perhaps you know him?”

      I shook my head. “I’m not part of the mallet-and-horse-show crowd.”

      “A worker who scorns the drones.”

      “If we have to put it that particular way, that would be a way to put it. Is your sister involved in this problem of yours?” I thought I’d help her get to the point.

      “No—no, it isn’t Sara. Not this time. And what made you ask? Do you know about those other times?”

      “What kind of times?”

      “Oh, when she was at Fentriss after me. Running away from school. The first time she made the papers she’d been gone a whole week. When the police found her she was in a Richmond hotel room with two sailors and a truck driver. Drunk. The next time it was a policeman in Alexandria, and so on.” She blew a feather of smoke at the kakemono. “Sara’s married now, so she’s Wayne’s problem, not mine or Father’s.”

      The thread had given out. I gave it another tug. “An hour and a half ago you couldn’t wait to tell me your troubles. You even gave me a bundle of earnest money. If you’ve changed your mind, I can still salvage something from the week-end. If not, why stall?”

      She glanced at me, ground out her cigarette, and clasped her hands around her knees. Her ankles were slim and what I could see of her legs was tanned. In the room’s semi-darkness her eyes seemed to glow.

      Huskily she said, “It’s a man. A man from Father’s Embassy. One of the diplomatic couriers. His name is Silvio Contreras.” She spelled it for me. “Tuesday night he brought a diplomatic pouch to the Embassy and the next morning he was supposed to leave with a pouch to Ottawa. But he never came back to the Embassy. Father is very upset. He wants Silvio found right away, and without any publicity. Silvio checked out of the Mayflower Wednesday morning and no one knows where he’s gone to.”

      I took her money out of my pockets, laid it on the cushion beside her, and stood up. “It’s a case for Missing Persons,” I told СКАЧАТЬ