Kiss and Kill (2 page)

Ed wet his lips. “She has an appendicitis scar. That's all.”

“Okay. We'll send this out. If she hasn't shown up by morning, bring a photo down to the station.”

“Wait—could she have been in an accident?”

“I just checked. She hasn't been reported.”

“But it's possible?”

“Sure. Somebody could have run over her and dumped her in a hospital without reporting it.”

“I'll check.”

Ed opened the phone book to the yellow pages and began calling hospitals.

2

Barney Burgess was one of the few private detectives who looked like what people thought private detectives ought to look like, from a vast experience with Late Shows and TV series. Most private detectives carry around a 46-inch waistline and a great deal of poundage, which is hard on their size-14 feet; they are married, have numerous progeny, struggle to keep up the mortgage and credit-loan payments, and have probably not handled a gun since their old days wearing the respectable blue of some police force. Their cases tend toward tracking down runaway husbands, or getting the goods, with photographs, on erring wives, or keeping an eye on some member of a well-to-do family afflicted with kleptomania, or indulging in a little harmless industrial espionage.

Barney was different. For one thing, he was licensed to carry a gun, he cleaned it regularly, and he had rather more frequent use for it than was healthy for a peace-loving society. This was because of his clientele, about most of whom the less said the better. He resembled his TV counterparts in other ways, too. He was thirty years old and a bachelor, he had an eye for pretty girls, and his sex life was more than satisfactory. In the sartorial department, he ran to crisp, natural-shoulder, specially cut suits, Sulka neckties, and hand-lasted shoes. Physically he might have stepped out of the nearest television color set: tall, shoulders padded by nature unaided, sleepy blue eyes that nevertheless managed to see everything, dark blond hair on the wavy side, a walnut complexion from much exposure to gymnasium sunlamps, and the kind of face made popular by cigarette commercials—handsome in an ugly sort of way. Humphrey Bogartish, in fact.

The truth was, Barney Burgess had modeled himself after Humphrey Bogart. As a teenager he had haunted the family boob tube; but where other striplings were persuaded by gung-ho movies to dedicate their lives to the United States Marine Corps, Barney went for the Bogart-type mysteries and determined to become a private eye. And he actually went out into the world and became one. It was just another case of life imitating art.

But the imitation was no empty one filled with straw. Barney was a really tough customer. He had been born that way, and no other life would have satisfied him. In certain respects he improved upon the screen. His office was in his apartment. He had no balloon-breasted girl Friday; girls were for leisure, and he was a businessman. He also had a sentimental streak that sometimes annoyed him.

Ed Tollman annoyed him. He was obviously not Barney's kind of case, but a hardworking schmo in deep trouble who probably thought a hundred dollars was a big fee. There was no profit in clients like Tollman.

Because he felt sorry for the guy, Barney said in a sarcastic tone, “So your wife's been gone six days and you're sore at the fuzz.” He even talked like Bogart.

The schmo's shoulders shot up in a hedgehog attitude. “Detective Sergeant Frannie told me he couldn't put any regular officer on the case without evidence of a crime. He told me to hire a private detective and suggested you.”

“Why me?” As if Barney didn't know. Frannie hated him; all the fuzz hated him, because he wouldn't play their little game of accommodation—you-scratch-me-and-I'll-scratch-you—and this was Frannie's mean little way of getting back at him, sending this wide-eyed cuckold to him on a two-timing wife caper.

“He said you're particularly good at finding people.”

Brother, Barney said to himself as he lounged in his big overstuffed leather chair, you don't know how lucky you are to be shed of her. She's probably making herself accessible in some Casanova's pad right now, and loving every minute of it. Still, Ed Tollman wanted her back. Why? She was a cellular conglomerate of eyes, nose, mouth, hair, breasts, thighs—made out of the same stuff as any other broad.

“You want me to find her.”

“Please.”

Didn't the guy know? Or wouldn't he let himself know?

“Then what?” Barney asked.

“I don't understand, Mr. Burgess.”

“Come home, Liz, all is forgiven?”

The remarkable part about it, Barney mused, was that the guy seemed for real. “You sound like the police,” Ed Tollman said in an angry voice. “They told me she'd be back in the morning, like most missing wives. Well, she wasn't—not that first morning or the other five. There can be only one reason for that, Mr. Burgess. She couldn't come back.”

It apparently never occurred to the schmo that she mightn't want to come back.

Still, that detail about the warm loaf of bread …

The man looked exhausted. There were smudges under his eyes like fine ash. He smoked in spurts, lighting cigarettes, immediately jabbing them out in the tray, or forgetting all about them as they burned down to the filters—acting just the way a schmo acts when his wife takes a powder.

Suddenly a thought struck Barney Burgess: Or, acting how a smart operator would act if he'd done away with the little woman.

And just as suddenly Barney was interested. Hooked, was the way his mind put it. It was his damn curiosity, a failing he often deplored. He had found that there was no profit in curiosity, only trouble. Curiosity was unbusinesslike. He grinned to himself. Maybe I'm an artist, he thought; and he said to Tollman briskly, “Okay, you've had six days. What have you done?”

“Done?”

“You scouted the neighborhood, phoned her friends, her office, the hospitals, the police. And then what? Sat on your ass and waited?”

Ed Tollman's face flushed. “The police told me to stand by.”

“Why?”

“To make identifications. Day before yesterday they had me look at a body they pulled out of the river.”

Barney set out a bottle of White Horse and a glass. “And in the whole six days you never ran out of the house and through the streets looking in every woman's face, hoping against hope?”

“That's not logical—”

“Do you live by logic? Didn't you panic?”

Ed twisted on the hassock.

“It happened so slowly. I mean, first she was gone for a few hours, then overnight, then another day. And all the time for no
reason
. You can't panic till you know what to panic about. Sure, I'm scared now. But I'm also puzzled, Mr. Burgess. It doesn't make sense.”

Barney poured himself a drink, none for Tollman. This thing was too interesting to spoil by giving the guy a slug of Dutch courage. “So she goes out to buy a loaf of bread. That's a sweet touch, Tollman. So is the little white doggie bit. Who'd figure a grieving husband would make up things like that? Huh?”

Ed Tollman stared at him.

Barney deliberately let his grin widen. “You're pretty good, you know? The kind old ladies feel sorry for. The poor, poor guy. So soft-spoken. So sincere. You can hear them now: ‘I can't believe that nice man would do an awful thing like that to his wife.'”

“What are you talking about, Mr. Burgess?”

“Don't you know, Tollman?”

Ed got off the hassock. His voice was dry and hard and cold. “No, I don't. Look, Mr. Burgess, I've got eight thousand dollars saved up. I was going to go into business for myself—it was Liz's idea. Whatever I am I owe to Liz. You can have the whole eight thousand if you find her. Would I make an offer like that—to impoverish myself—if I'd had anything to do with her disappearance?”

“You're damn right you would, Tollman. If you were very smart. And had planted her where you thought she'd never be found.”

Barney saw the man's features flow like mud. His right hand was a white-knuckled fist.

The blow failed to land. Barney caught the wrist and turned Ed Tollman in a half circle, so that he was now facing in the direction of his spring. Ed struggled, mouthing unintelligible words that summed up, or seemed to sum up, the totality of his anxiety and frustration of almost a week. But Barney easily held on to the arm twisted behind the man's back; and it was while he was holding on that he noticed a cut, like a shaving cut, under Tollman's ear. Some of the blood had welled up in spite of a styptic pencil and had dried in the shape and color of a German cockroach. It was while he was studying the irrelevant cut and allowing Ed Tollman to spend his rage in the futile struggle that Barney thought, A real cool cat would include this in his pose, the rage, the attack.…

“Go ahead and get it out of your system, Tollman,” he said in the man's ear. “You may as well, because I'm not letting go till you do.”

And suddenly Tollman's struggles stopped, and his body seemed to collapse. “Let me go now, Mr. Burgess.”

Barney let him go. Ed rubbed the back of his neck. From beneath lowered brows he shot the detective a curious look. “You've been playing with me.”

Barney shrugged. “Make a man mad, the mask comes off. I wanted to see what you were like.” He poured another drink and offered it. “You shouldn't lead with your right. Have a drink.” Ed shook his head. “Go ahead, Tollman, you need it. You're not thinking straight. Tell me: What do you conceive the problem to be?”

“The problem? It's to find Liz. She's lost.”

“Wrong. She knows exactly where she is. It's your problem, Tollman; you're the one who's looking. And feeling oh so sorry for yourself. Here, drink it.”

Ed took the glass and tossed the drink down. He looked vaguely around, and Barney took the glass from him.

“Will you take the job, Mr. Burgess?”

“I'll do this, Ed. I'll find out what's happened to her. My fee will depend on how long it takes. But I'm not working for you, I'm working for myself. Clear?”

“No,” said Ed Tollman.

“I mean I'll take it to the end. If that means you wind up whiffing cyanide, I'll mail you a bon-voyage card. And from this minute on I call the shots.”

Ed swallowed. “All right, Mr. Burgess.” He sat down suddenly on the hassock.

“Now some questions. Did Liz drink?”

“Socially. Very little.”

“She wouldn't go on a binge?”

“No.”

“Okay. You and the police have almost ruled out the possibility of accident by keeping a check on the hospitals and morgue. How about kidnaping?”

Ed licked his lips. “I thought of that. But right outside my door?”

“Why not?”

“The dog. When people make quick moves toward Liz, Bogus lets out a screech that breaks windows.”

“Not with a hand over his mouth. Two men working together could have silenced both of them.”

“But why? I haven't the kind of money—”

“Maybe somebody wanted her clammed up. Was she due to testify in court in some criminal action?”

“No.”

Barney went to his phone and dialed a number. “Clyde? Barney. Do me a favor, will you? Check the book on the night of April 13, neighborhood of 3200 West Pine. Look for holdups, muggings, murders, rapes, burglaries, stuff like that. I'll hold on.” Barney looked at Ed. “Where do you work?”

“Carter Electric. I design appliances.”

“And your wife?”

“Waterhouse, Carter and Prince. It's an ad agency.”

“Children?”

“No.”

“How does Liz occupy her free time? Any hobbies?”

“She enters contests. You know, ‘I like Flow-Pop because,' in twenty-five words or less. Wins pretty often. Her last prize was an expense-paid Christmas trip to Mexico.”

“You both went?”

“We were saving money. She couldn't cash in her prize, so she went without me.”

Barney frowned. But at that point his caller came back on the line. “One mugging in that neighborhood, that's all. Two kids lifted a drunk's wallet for twenty-two bucks. We got the kids.”

“What time was it?”

“Ten-thirty.”

“Thanks, Clyde.” He hung up the phone. “So she couldn't have witnessed a crime and been kidnaped to keep her quiet. That leaves us with the opposite—that she was kidnaped in order to make her talk. What could your wife know? The ad business? Your firm's trade secrets? Neither of you had access to that kind of information, I take it. Which brings us back to the beginning: that Liz took off on her own.”

“I can't accept that,” said Ed Tollman.

“Why not?”

“Are you married?”

“No.”

Ed shrugged. “I
know
Liz wouldn't leave me. She wanted nothing I couldn't give her.”

Barney did not smile. He had known couples like that—a self-enclosed, self-sufficient unit, like a double-yolked egg. (He had often wondered how it must feel to have that sort of rapport with a woman.) When someone threw a rock at the egg, it must be hell, he thought. Ed was Humpty-Dumpty, waiting to be put back together.

“Just the same,” Barney said, “we'll cover that loophole. People who disappear seldom break it off completely. Sometimes they'll get in touch because of habit. Who were Liz's closest friends?”

“A girl who worked in the agency, Connie Greenberg. Another old schoolmate who lived in Charlevoix, Michigan. Liz grew up there.” Ed Tollman added, “So did I.”

“Okay. I'll take on a couple of helpers, one to watch the agency, the other to keep his eyes open in the home town. They're just kids learning the game, but they can do the job. Twenty-five a day for them and expenses.”

Ed nodded. “Something else,” he said. “I don't know where it fits in, but two nights ago a woman called from long distance and asked for Liz. I tried to find out who she was, but she hung up. The operator traced the call to a pay phone in a bus stop in Kingdom City, Missouri.”