Vice Cop Page 6

  She turned fire red, then the color faded to leave her almost pale. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Was I that obvious?”

  “You were that obvious,” I assured her.

  For a few moments she was silent. Then she said miserably, “I can’t help it. I love him. What does she have that I haven’t?”

  “Farrell,” I said bluntly. “Why don’t you give up? If that’s what he wants, let him have it.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t. If only I’d known the first night he picked her. I thought it was just for an evening. But now it’s always her. And I know he comes here even when there’s no party.”

  “What do you mean you thought it was just for an evening?”

  “I didn’t mind that,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with trading partners, so long as you know it’s an interlude and he really loves just you. We do that all the time. But he doesn’t come back to me any more. Now, if he picked me for an evening, I’d be the interlude, and when it was all over he’d go back to her.”

  What a hell of a mixed-up group this was, I thought. You weren’t supposed to mind if your wife or girl friend wandered off to a bedrom with another man. You just wandered off to a different bedroom with his wife or girl friend. After the party everything was cozy again and your relationship with your original partner was supposed to remain unchanged.

  Sharon assumed I understood this psychology. It was supposed to be old stuff to me, because I had belonged to a key club back in New York City. I wasn’t in any position to express my real opinion of partner-trading.

  The music was still playing, but all of a sudden I became conscious that dancing had stopped. Everyone was standing looking at a man who had just entered the room from the entrance foyer.

  He was a meek-looking little man of about fifty with rimless glasses and a fringe of sparse gray hair circling his head at ear level. The top of his head was shiny bald and was shaped like a saddle. He wasn’t wearing a dinner jacket. He wore a dark blue suit and held a matching Homburg in his hands.

  Isobel moved over to the record player and shut it off. “Don’t you ring the bell before you walk into people’s homes, Ross?” she asked in a crisp voice.

  “I did, but I guess nobody heard it over the music,” he said apologetically. Then, with a little more spirit, “It’s really my home anyway.”

  “Not according to the divorce settlement,” Isobel said coldly. “What do you want?”

  “I just wanted to talk to you for a minute.”

  In the same cold voice she said, “You can see I have guests. Couldn’t you have picked a better time?”

  “I didn’t know you were having a party, Isobel. I can’t come back tomorrow, because I’m leaving town for a couple of weeks in the morning. I’ll only take a minute.”

  Isobel’s expression suggested that her patience was strained, but she was acquiescing because she didn’t want to create a scene. Switching the record player back on, she walked to the entrance foyer and beyond it into another room which I guessed was probably the dining room. As she swept by her ex-husband, I noted that she towered over him a good four inches. Since he also appeared to be about twenty years older than Isobel, and didn’t possess very impressive looks, I wondered how she had ever happened to marry him.

  As he followed docilely after her and disappeared, I said to Sharon, “I gather that’s Isobel’s former husband.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “Timid little pipsqueak, isn’t he?”

  “He doesn’t have a very forceful personality,” I conceded. “Have they been divorced long?”

  “About a year. They were only married for six months.”

  That explained it, I thought. She must have married the man with the deliberate intention of divorcing him and taking away some of his money.

  Sharon said, “He keeps begging her to take him back. That’s probably what he wants now.” There was a faint touch of contempt in her voice.

  “She got the divorce, then?”

  Sharon nodded. “She went to Reno. I understand he fought it all the way. But when he finally realized it was inevitable, he didn’t fight over the settlement at all. He gave her everything she asked for, including the house. Isobel gets a tremendous alimony.”

  The man must like being a sucker, I thought. If it had occurred to me, after seeing them both only once, that Isobel had probably married him solely to hold him up over a divorce settlement, the thought must have at least flitted through his mind. Why he hadn’t fought to give her the least amount he could get away with was beyond me.

  “What’s he do?” I asked.

  Sharon looked surprised. “He’s Ross Whittier, the investment broker. I thought everybody knew him.”

  I had heard of him, now that I put the two names together. He was one of the wealthiest men in town. I even recalled reading about his marriage when it occurred, though if the subsequent divorce had been reported in the local papers, I had missed it.

  I said, “You forget I’m from New York.”

  All except one of the couples had resumed dancing. The only married pair who had been dancing together moved back to the bar. Both about forty, the man was stockily built and had the beginnings of a slight paunch and double chin. The woman was a plump, plain-faced blonde with by far the largest bosom at the party. It must have measured forty-six inches. They had been introduced to me as Mr. and Mrs. George Apple.

  The man moved behind the bar to mix a drink. Mrs. Apple inserted herself between me and Sharon.

  “You’re not allowed to be monogamous at Isobel’s parties, Mr. Rudd,” she said archly. “I want to borrow you for a dance. May I, Sharon?”

  “Of course,” Sharon said in a polite tone. She eyed Mr. Apple behind the bar without much enthusiasm, contemplating the next move would be his asking her to dance.

  I might not be top on the girl’s preferential list of men, I thought, but at least I outranked one man at the party. I said, “Excuse me,” and led the plump blonde onto the floor.

  When she moved into my arms, she squeezed herself against me so tightly, it was difficult to dance. Not only did she push her overlarge bosom into my chest until it was squashed to about a size forty, she also pressed her stomach and thighs against mine. I had to settle for the almost motionless style of dancing which used to be known as dancing-on-a-dime.

  Gazing up into my face, she said, “Do you have a first name, Mr. Rudd?”

  “Matt,” I said.

  “I’m Louise, Matt.”

  “Glad to know you,” I said politely.

  For a few moments we swayed back and forth to the music, barely moving our feet. She added a kind of circular motion to her swaying, causing our bodies to rub together intimately. She kept her face turned upward, gazing into mine with a fixed smile, as though expecting me to kiss her at any moment.

  Presently she said, “How did a man ever manage to be born with eyes like yours, Matt?”

  “My mother was frightened by a deer,” I said a bit shortly.

  She giggled. “Do you have any plans after the party really gets under way, Matt?”

  After considering this, I said, “What do you mean?”

  “Why, you know how Isobel’s parties work, don’t you?”

  “I have an idea,” I said cautiously. “This is my first one.”

  “You don’t stay with the girl you brought. It’s not allowed. Have you seen any girls you like better than me?”

  I liked them all better than her, but I could hardly say that. I said, “I think you’re a doll.”

  I didn’t think it possible for her to squeeze herself against me any closer without both of us first lying down, but she managed it. She whispered, “I’11 wait for you in the kitchen doorway.”

  This remark completely escaped me, but I pretended I knew what she meant. I whispered back, “I’ll look for you.”

  CHAPTER IX

  EITHER THE blonde’s husband hadn’t asked Sharon to dance, or she had refused him, because he was still beh
ind the bar when the piece ended. I steered Louise Apple back to it on the opposite side of Sharon and moved in close to the redheaded girl so that there wasn’t enough room for the blonde to insert herself between us again.

  Apple said, “Mix you a drink, Rudd? Sharon?”

  Sharon nodded and I said, “Two bourbons with soda, please.”

  As Apple started to mix the drinks, I saw Isobel and Ross Whittier come from the other room into the entrance foyer. The man wore a sullen pout on his face and Isobel’s expression was imperious. Pointedly she held open the front door.

  He paused long enough to give her a final pleading look, but when she merely coldly waited for him to leave, his shoulders slumped and he passed through the door. Isobel set the spring lock behind him, then tried the door to make sure it was locked.

  Moving across the room to the record player, she turned the volume down low.

  “Time for the second stage,” she announced generally. “Joe, be a doll and go bolt the rear door, will you?”

  Joe Greco moved to an archway leading into a wide interior hall and disappeared toward the rear of the house.

  Isobel said, “Shall we repair to the dining room?”

  She led the way through the entrance foyer into the room where she and her ex-husband had talked. As the others began to troop after her, I reached to pick up the drink Apple had mixed.

  “You won’t want that now,” Sharon said. “Just leave it.”

  Shrugging, I left it and trailed after Sharon as she followed the rest of the crowd.

  The dining room wasn’t as large as the front room, but it was still pretty sizeable. The front-room drapes had been pulled wide open, but here they were tightly closed. A table cloth was spread over something in the center of the dining-room table. It’s shape under the cloth suggested it was probably a punch bowl.

  As though she were a performing magician, Isobel flicked the table cloth away to expose what I had suspected: a punch bowl. It was filled with a claret-colored fluid which had a few pieces of fruit floating in it. Arranged about the bowl was a ring of glass punch cups. At either end of the table was a small, shallow dish, each containing about a half dozen brown-paper cigarettes.

  Isobel began ladling liquid from the bowl into cups. Everyone took a cup. Sharon picked up two and handed me one.

  “I don’t much care for punch,” I said dubiously. “I’d rather have the drink you made me leave on the bar.”

  “This is a special type of punch,” Sharon said. “It peps you up.”

  I took a bare sip of it, just wetting my lips enough to get its taste. It tasted like claret with orange and lime juice added.

  “What’s so special about it?” I asked.

  She gave me a secretive little smile. “You might call it a love potion.”

  So the rumors circulating at the country club were correct, I thought. Isobel did serve aphrodisiac-spiked wine at her orgies.

  Sharon plucked one of the brown cigarettes from a dish and stuck it into my mouth. “Know what this is?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “I’ve probably had more experience with them than you have.”

  I didn’t explain that my experience hadn’t been in smoking them, though. It had been in tracking down their sellers and users.

  Nearly everyone was now smoking the cigarettes, in most cases each couple sharing a single one between them and passing it back and forth. Setting down my punch cup, I got out my lighter and touched flame to mine. I drew on it deeply, filling my mouth with acrid smoke and holding it there instead of drawing it down into my lungs. I passed the cigarette to Sharon.

  As Sharon took a long drag and inhaled it, I let the smoke I was holding in my mouth slowly seep out, as though it were coming clear from my lungs. Glancing about, I saw that Joe Greco had rejoined us, but wasn’t entering into the spirit of the party. He had a highball glass in his hand and was smoking a regular cigarette. He was gazing with unwinking coldness at Isobel and Farrell, who were not only sharing the same reefer, but were alternately sipping from the same cup.

  I had seen all the evidence we needed to make a raid stick. I said to Sharon, “Excuse me,” and started for the entrance foyer.

  “It’s off the center hall,” she called after me, misinterpreting my destination.

  I smiled back over my shoulder. At that instant Howard Farrell walked over and flicked a wall switch, darkening the dining room.

  My first thought was that he had somehow guessed that a raid was imminent and was blacking the place out. Then I realized it was just another routine phase of Isobel’s parties. As I stood in the entry hall trying to figure out what was going on, one of the two youngest men present came from the dining room, threw me a chummy smile and flicked out the foyer light. Then he bounded up the stairs and the second-floor lights began to go out.

  The other young man went past me and began switching out lamps in the front room. Someone else moved from the dining room into the center hall and the lights at the rear of the house started to go out.

  Since Sharon had been under the impression I was heading for the bathroom, I decided to continue that illusion so that she wouldn’t miss me if I were gone for a while. I moved on into the front room and toward the archway leading to the center hall. Just as I reached it, the last light in the front room flicked out, plunging the entire house into darkness.

  I doubled back in the dark, quietly unlatched the front door and stepped out on the porch.

  I was reaching for the pencil flash in my pocket when a movement to my left caught my eye and froze me in position. Though it was a bright, moonlit night, the porch roof put me in deep shadow. The figure standing alongside the porch was in full moonlight, however, and I could see him clearly.

  Little Ross Whittier was standing on tiptoe, trying to see what was going on in the dining room. He couldn’t have been having much success. Even before the lights went out, the dining room drapes had been drawn tightly closed.

  Whittier was near enough so that he couldn’t have avoided seeing my signal flashes, even if I had shaded them with my palm on his side. Without sound I stepped back inside. I left the door unlatched so that the men posted in front could get in.

  The dining room drapes had now been drawn wide, I saw, allowing moonlight to pour inside. Probably Ross Whittier still couldn’t see much, because in contrast to the outside brightness, it was still quite dark in the house. From the foyer I could dimly make out figures in both rooms, however. In the dining room I could even see two faces alternately outlined in the glow of a cigarette coal as Farrell and Isobel continued to pass their reefer back and forth.

  In the front room one of the two young girls was standing directly in front of a window in a shaft of moonlight. She stood without moving, a dreamy expression on her face, as stocky, middleaged, George Apple methodically stripped her. Docilely she raised her arms as I watched, allowing him to pull her evening gown off over her head. With infinite care he folded it, then dropped it on the floor. She wore only a half-slip, which he took off downward instead of up, folded just as carefully and dropped on top of the gown. Moving behind her. he unclipped her strapless brassiere and simply let it drop. Her breasts were as small and pointed as those of a fourteen year-old.

  Coming around in front of her again, he knelt and she steadied herself by resting both hands on top of his head as she lifted one foot, then the other, so that he could remove her slippers. She was wearing a panty girdle, apparently solely to keep her stockings up, for her figure certainly didn’t require it. Her stomach was not just flat, but slightly concave, like the top of Ross Whittier’s head. Apple pulled it down without first unfastening the stockings, and again she lifted one foot at a time to allow him to pull the stockings off wrong-side-out.

  Then she stood still, staring off into space with the introspective smile of a marijuana smoker, quietly waiting while Apple proceeded to remove his own clothing.

  I stepped into the front room, then hurriedly sidestepped to avoid being run over
in the dark by a couple dancing by. When they floated through a shaft of moonlight, I saw that it was the young man who had turned out the front-room lights dancing with one of the middle-aged married women. She was totally naked and he wore only shoes and socks.

  When I had found Whittier out in front, it had been my intention to retreat immediately to the back door and flash my signal from there. But in the light of the turn the party was now taking, I decided to try to locate Sharon first. I wanted to make sure she at least had her clothes on when the raid broke.

  I headed back toward the dining room. As I passed through the foyer, three white figures with their arms across each other’s shoulders moved by me and went up the stairs. As the porch roof blocked moonlight from flowing into the foyer through the glass top of the door, it was too dark to make out their faces. None had any clothes on, however, and from their figures I could tell the two on the outside were men, the one in the middle a woman.

  What kind of a deal was that, I wondered?

  There was only one couple in the dining room, a middle-aged man and the other young girl, I judged by their silhouettes. Surprisingly, they still had their clothes on. They seemed to be sharing a cup of the love potion, for I heard the clink of glass as one of them set down the cup. Then they moved off toward the door leading from the dining room into the center hall.

  Farrell and Isobel had disappeared, so had Joe Greco and Sharon. With a touch of unreasoning anger I hoped Sharon hadn’t wandered off with Greco.

  I went back into the front room. As I passed through the foyer, I heard someone slowly walking up the stairs, but the stairway was so dark, I couldn’t even make out the sex of whoever was climbing them. Then as I entered the front room, I heard the front door ease open behind me. Pausing, I turned around. The doorway was dark, but silhouetted against the outside moonlight I could see a short figure wearing a Homburg. I caught the glint of eyeglasses.

  Ross Whittier had come in to investigate his wife’s goings-on. Pushing the door shut behind him, he moved on into the dining room. I shrugged and continued on into the front room.