I made her drink the cognac.
After a long time she said, “I can’t believe it, Mr. London. I can’t believe Jackie’s dead.”
“Jackie?”
“Jacqueline Baron,” she said. “She was my sister.” She broke down again, suddenly regained her composure. “Not my twin sister. She was a year older. But we looked enough alike to pass for twins. My parents named her Jackie and me Jill. Jackie and Jill. Like the nursery rhyme. They thought it was cute.”
“Who called me? You or Jackie?”
“She did.”
“Because she was afraid?”
“Because we were both afraid,” Jill said. She held the glass of cognac in her hand, stared at it a moment, then drained it. “This is very good,” she said. “What is it?”
“Cognac.”
“Oh. It tastes good, makes me feel warm. But I still feel cold inside. Somebody killed Jackie and now they’re going to kill me. Oh, God, I’m scared.”
She started to cry again.
After a while she calmed down again. I asked if she knew who had been trying to kill Jackie and her. She said she didn’t know. I asked why anyone would want them dead. She didn’t know that either.
“We’d better take this from the top,” I said. “When did it all start?”
“Three days ago, I think.”
“What happened?”
“There was a phone call. Jackie answered. We share an apartment—shared an apartment,” she added morosely. “Jackie answered it. She listened for a minute, looked frightened, and slammed the phone down.”
“Who was it?”
“She wouldn’t say. Wouldn’t tell me anything about it. Then, the next day, someone in a truck tried to run us both down. It was so frightening. We were crossing the street and a truck came speeding at us from out of nowhere. He missed us by inches. Luckily, we got across in time.”
“Did you get a look at the truck?”
She shook her head. “No, I was too frightened. And I thought—then—it was just accidental. But Jackie was worried. I could tell something was wrong. When I prodded her, she told me about the phone call. Someone was going to kill us both.”
“Did she say why?”
“She didn’t know.”
“No idea?”
“Nothing she told me about…But there’s more. Yesterday, someone tried to kill me. Right on Park Avenue. A car whizzed by and somebody shot at me. Whoever it was missed. I was petrified.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
“It’s…We couldn’t.”
“And this morning Jackie called me. She wouldn’t call the police either, but she called me. That doesn’t make much sense.”
She didn’t answer.
“Look at me,” I said. “This is no game. Somebody shot your sister. Killed her in cold blood. Right now the police are picking her body up from Central Park and trying to figure out who the hell she is. You can’t afford to sit around deciding how much you can tell me and how much you can keep to yourself. You either open up or I’ll pick up the phone and call the police and you can tell it to them. Which is probably a fairly good idea at this stage.”
“No, don’t.”
“Then you’d better start talking.”
“Yes,” she said. “I guess you’re right.”
She started talking. Jill and Jacqueline Baron lived together in an expensive apartment on East 58th Street off Park. They were self-employed. They earned a good living.
They were call girls.
“We were going to be models,” she said. “You know, everybody starts out to be a model. Only we never did make it.
“But we did all right,” Jill said. Her eyes turned hard, bitter. “We had all the qualifications for our chosen work…I’m not bad to look at, am I?”
She was wearing a green sheath dress that hid her figure as effectively as Saran wrap. She had long legs, and they were crossed at the knee now so that I could see their shape, which was fine. Her breasts pushed out at me in a way that would keep her out of bounds for the fashion photographers but undeniably in bounds for any red-blooded man between the ages of eighteen and eighty. And she was beautiful to boot.
“Pretty,” she said. She rolled the word on her tongue and her eyes clouded. “Our looks were our downfall. It’s an easy life for a lazy girl, with looks and a figure, Ed. It doesn’t take any talent at all. The men come and they tell their friends about you and pretty soon you have a date every night, and every date is at least a fifty-dollar bill and maybe a hundred, and no income tax out of that, either…Would you pay me fifty, Ed?”
She laughed softly. She was playing Little Miss Desirable now, running her tongue over her lower lip, pouting a little, arranging herself in the chair to make herself appear the personification of commercial lust. The act drained away her sorrow, and her fear. She got caught up in it and part of the reality of Jackie’s death left her for the moment.
“It was handy,” she said. “Jackie and I had good times together. We were closer than sisters, Ed. You…well, you say how much we looked alike. We’ve always been able to pass for twins. That was an asset in business, you know.”
“Why?”
“Because we could cover each other’s dates.” She smiled, remembering. “If Jackie had two dates at the same time and I was free, I would take one of them and pretend I was Jackie. The tricks never knew the difference. They couldn’t even tell us apart in bed.”
“Handy.”
“Uh-huh. Sometimes we would take a trick together. You know, a man would want to go to bed with both of us at once. A real sister act.” She closed her blue eyes. “Men get their kicks in funny ways. Some need two girls in order to get their jollies. Men are all sick, Ed.”
“You get a distorted picture.”
“Do I?”
“Yes. You just meet the men who pay you. The straight ones, the sane ones, they’re home with their wives in front of a television set with a can of beer close by. But you don’t get to see that kind.”
Her eyebrows went up a notch. “And you? Have you got a wife, Ed London?”
“I don’t even have a television set. But let’s forget my sex life for the time being.
“Let’s take it from the top,” I said. “You’re both call girls and you live together. That is, lived together. Someone is trying to kill you and you don’t know who or why. Any ideas at all?”
“None.”
“Were you blackmailing anyone?”
“No.”
“Was Jackie?”
“If she was, she didn’t tell me about it.”
“Okay. How about men? Any boyfriends?”
“The only men in my life are customers, Ed.”
It was a sort of hopeless line of questioning. All she knew was that her sister had been shot and she was next in line.
“Why didn’t you go to the police?” I asked Jill Baron.
“You should know that by now. Call girls don’t look for help from the law. The police leave you alone if you live a quiet life and stay out of trouble, but if you draw them a map of who you are and where you live and how you earn your living, you might as well hang out a sign. The crooked cops come with their hands out and the honest ones haul you off to jail.”
She worked on her coffee. “Jackie didn’t even want to call in a private detective. She said you couldn’t trust them. But your name had been mentioned somewhere, and I heard you were honest. So I insisted we call you.”
“Well, now’s a good time to go to the police, Jill. Whoever is after you is playing for keeps.”
She shook her head. “But they’ll just ask me questions,” she said. “Questions, questions, questions, and I don’t know any of the answers that count. So what good will it do me?”
Her voice broke off and her eyes dropped. I took one of her small hands in mine. Her flesh was cold.
“Ed, help me,” she pleaded. “If you help me maybe we can find out what it’s all about and then go to the police. It won
’t do any good to go to them now.”
She had a point. She couldn’t give the cops anything much to work on.
“Jill.”
She looked at me.
“Think, now. Were you or Jackie ever arrested? I mean for any offense at all.”
“Just a traffic ticket once. Nothing more.”
“Did they fingerprint you?”
“No, I just got a ticket.”
“Were either of you ever fingerprinted for anything? A government job? Anything?”
“I turned a trick with a UN diplomat once. But you don’t get fingerprinted for that sort of thing. Why the questions?”
I filled a pipe and lit a match. Without prints, it was going to take them awhile to identify Jackie Baron’s body. A corpse without identification is a tricky thing, and although police routine always comes up with an answer, it takes time. They run through Missing Persons files, they ship the prints to Washington, they play games with laundry marks…
So we had time to dig around a little.
“All right,” I said. “We’ll leave the police out of things, at least for the time being.”
“And you’ll help me, Ed?” “I’ll help you,” I said.
FOUR
I put my gun in the shoulder rig where it belonged, went to the window, pulled back the shade, and peered across the street. A few old ladies were walking home. No one seemed to be lurking in the shadows.
“Did anyone follow you here?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
I told her to wait there and left the apartment. I walked downstairs, then left through the rear exit where the janitor drags the garbage. There is a low fence between the yard of my building and the yard of the building behind it that fronts on 84th Street. I pushed a garbage can against the fence, climbed onto the can, and dropped over the fence. I walked through that building, smiled at a curious seven-year-old boy, and came out on 84th.
The air was cooler now with the beginnings of a storm blowing up over the East River. The sky was a darker gray; in a few hours it would be completely black. I walked around the block to 83rd and headed toward my own building again, keeping my eyes open. All the parked cars were appropriately empty, all the doorways were now untenanted. If she had been followed, her shadow had melted. The coast seemed clear.
I went upstairs. She was standing by the fireplace looking at some of my books.
“Grab your purse,” I said.
“Where we going?”
“Downtown. I’m hiding you.”
We left the apartment. A cab drove up, and I gave the driver an address in the West Twenties. As he put the taxi in gear, Jill looked at me inquisitively.
“It’s a friend’s apartment,” I said.
“Anyone I know?”
“Probably not. She’s an actress, out of town with a road company. She won’t be back for two months.”
“And you have a key to her apartment?”
“Yes.”
She smiled. “How cozy, Ed. Hiding one girl at a girlfriend’s apartment. Won’t she mind?”
“She won’t be there to mind,” I said.
She kept quiet the rest of the trip. Once or twice she dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. The cabby took Second Avenue downtown to 23rd Street, then cut west and doubled uptown a block to the address I had given him.
“Here?” Jill said, surprised.
“That’s right.”
“Your actress friend can’t be making much money.”
“It’s a tough business.”
“It must be. Maybe she should try my line, Ed. Or doesn’t she have any aptitude in that direction?”
“Don’t be bitchy.”
She pouted. “Was I being bitchy?”
“Very.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll try to be good. It’s just…I guess I’m cracking wise to get Jackie out of my mind, what happened to her, and, oh, it isn’t really working, Ed.”
Jill and I climbed an unlit and shaky staircase past the machine shop on the first floor and Madame Sindra’s palmist studio on the second floor. She stood in front of Maddy’s door while I found the right key and opened it. We went inside. She sat down on a couch while I turned on the lights.
“Well,” she said. “Now what?”
I sat down next to her. “You’ll be safe here,” I said.
“I know.”
“And you can stay here while I try to get a line on whoever is after you. But I’ve got to ask you a question I already asked you, Jill. And you have to answer it straight.”
“Go on.”
“Were you mixed up in anything besides hustling?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“I’m serious. Ever try blackmailing a customer? Or did you ever overhear anything you shouldn’t have heard? Think about it. It’s important.”
Her face screwed up in concentration and then relaxed. She shook her head negatively.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“And Jackie?”
“If she was, I never knew about it.”
“Then it can only add up one way,” I said. “Somebody had a reason to see Jackie dead. But you both looked alike and you both acted alike and he couldn’t tell you apart. Maybe Jackie was working some sort of deal of her own. He couldn’t be sure it was Jackie he was after, or that you weren’t in on it with her. So he has to kill both sisters to make sure he gets the one he wants. Do you follow me?”
She nodded but looked perplexed. “Jackie wouldn’t do anything like that,” she said.
“Are you positive?”
“Well—”
I got to my feet. “I want you to stay here,” I told her. “Don’t leave the apartment, not for anything. Don’t make any phone calls. As long as you’re here, you’ll be safe. Nobody followed us here and nobody’s going to come here looking for you. Just stay put and wait for me.”
“Where are you going?”
“To your apartment.”
She stared at me. “Is that safe? The police—”
“I’m sure they haven’t identified Jackie’s body yet. It should take them two or three days unless they get lucky. And if I spot any cops, I’ll come right back. If not, I’ll have a look at your place and see if Jackie left anything around of interest.”
“And suppose the…the killer is waiting there?”
“That’s a chance I’ll take. But I’m a big boy.”
She looked me up and down, the kind of look I had given her earlier. “Yes,” she said evenly. “You are.”
“Give me your apartment key.”
She went over to her purse and gave me a brown leather key-wallet. She started to hand it over; then she took it back and looked at it, frowning. “This is Jackie’s,” she said.
“What?”
“It happens all the time,” she said. “We both have these things for our keys, same color, and we keep taking each other’s—” She broke off and looked at me. Her eyes were bright, as though she were trying to put a smile on top of a scream. “I keep forgetting she’s dead. I talk about her as if she’s still here…” She collapsed in a chair and cried. Her shoulders heaved from her sobs.
I’m no good at that sort of scene. The reality of her sister’s death was first hitting home, and for the next hour or so there wasn’t anything I or anybody else could do for her.
I took her dead sister’s keys and said, “Jill, I’ll hurry back.”
There were three other apartments on the second floor besides the one I sought, and someone was standing in the hallway in front of one of them. I didn’t want an audience when I opened Jill’s door—New Yorkers are tolerant people, but there is no point in straining this inherent tolerance. I walked up to the third floor and waited. Then I went back to the second floor, emptied my pipe in a hall ashtray, and stood in front of Jill Baron’s door.
I took out the key to the apartment, listened at the door, heard nothing. On
a hunch I dropped to one knee and squinted myopically through the keyhole. The apartment was dark inside.
I stood up again, stuck the key in the lock, and turned. I twisted the doorknob, pushed the door open, and stepped into a black room. I was groping around for the light switch when the Empire State Building fell on my head.
It was good but not good enough. He caught me on the side of the head just above the ear and I did a little two-step and wound up on my knees. He moved in the darkness, coming in to throw the finisher. My head was rocky and my legs wouldn’t behave. I managed to swerve out of the way of the blow and got to my feet, but my rubbery legs didn’t want to hold me. He came at me again, a blur in the darkness, and something hard shot past my head. I ducked and swung, aiming for where his gut should be.
My aim was good but there was nothing behind the punch—the shot on the head had drained my strength. He backed away from the blow and hit me in the chest. It wasn’t a hard punch but it sent me reeling.
Somehow, I got to the light switch. I flicked it on and saw him, moving toward me and blinking at the sudden burst of light. A big man, a fast man. A chin like Gibraltar and a chest like a beer barrel. Hamhock hands, and a leather-covered sap in one of them. He swung the sap. I dodged, caught it on one shoulder. My arm went numb and my fingers tingled. I tried to make my hand fish the .38 out from under my jacket, but my arm was having none of it. It wouldn’t behave.
He moved at me, grinning. I doubled up a left hand and pushed it at him. He batted it out of the way casually and kept coming. I lowered my fat head and charged him like a bull, and he picked up that sap and let me have it right between the horns.
This time it worked. I caught a knee in the face on the way down but I barely felt it at all. I just noticed it, thinking, Ah, yes, I’ve been kneed in the face, taking note of it but not caring a hell of a lot about it one way or the other. Then I blacked out…
FIVE
I wasn’t out long. Five minutes, ten minutes. I opened both eyes and blinked in the darkness and tried to get up, which was a mistake. I fell down again. It was as though someone had cut the tendons in my arms and legs. They just wouldn’t do my bidding.