The Body Lovers (20 page)

“What ever happened to the poverty program?” I asked her.

She poked me and said, “Hush!” with a stifled laugh.

Dulcie had an incredible memory for names, even the tongue twisters. She mingled easily, the right words always ready, her capacity for pleasing others absolutely incredible. More than one man looked at me enviously for being her escort, trying to catalogue me in their minds.

When I had to I could play the game too. It didn’t come as easily and began to wear thin after the first hour. I hadn’t come to hobnob and Dulcie sensed my irritation and suggested a cocktail at the bar.

We had just started toward it when Dulcie saict casually, “There’s Bdar Ris,” and swerved toward one comer of the room where three men were grouped. talking.

Belar Ris stood with his back angled to the wall. To an indifferent observer he was simply in idle conversation, but it wasn’t like that at all. This was an instinctive gesture of survival, being in constant readiness for an attack. His head didn’t turn and his eyes didn’t seem to move, but I knew he saw us. I could feel the hackles on the back of my neck stiffening and knew he felt the same way.

Dog was meeting dog. Nobody knew it but the dogs and they weren’t telling.
·

He was bigger than I thought. The suggestion of power I had seen in his photographs was for real. When he moved it was with the ponderous grace of some jungle animal, dangerously deceptive, because he could move a lot faster if he had to.

When we were ten feet away he pretended to see us for the first time and a wave of charm washed the cautious expression from his face and he stepped out to greet Dulcie with outstretched hand.

But it wasn’t her he was seeing. It was me he was watching. I was one of his own kind. I couldn’t be faked out and wasn’t leashed by the proprieties of society. I could lash out and kill as fast as he could and of all the people in the room, I was the potential threat. I knew what he felt because I felt the same way myself.

He had the skin coloration of one of the Mediterranean groups. His eyes were almost black under thick, black brows that swept to a V over a hawklike nose that could have had an Arabian origin. Pomaded hair fitted like a skullcap and his teeth were a brilliant white in the slash of his smile.

Dulcie said, “Mr. Ris, how nice to see you. May I present Mr. Hammer?”

For the first time he looked directly at me and held out his hand. His forearm that protruded from his jacket sleeva showed no cuff and I knew I had been right. Even under a tux he wore a short-sleeved shirt.

“Delighted, Mr. Hammer.” His voice was accented and deep, but devoid of any of the pleasure his smile feigned.

“Good to see you, Mr. Ris.” The handshake was brief and hard.

“And are you a member of our great United Nations group? I don’t remember having seen you....”

I wasn’t going to play games with him. “Hell, no,” I said. “I’m a private cop.”

For a split second there was a change in his eyes, a silent surprise because I couldn’t be bothered acting a part. For Dulcie’s sake he played it with an even bigger smile and said, “I certainly approve. Anyone as charming as Miss McInnes certainly needs a protector. But here, my dear, as if there was any danger ...” He let his sentence drift and glanced at me questioningly.

“Half these people here are fighting one another a few thousand miles away,” I said.

Belar Ris wouldn’t drop his smile. “Ah, yes, but here we are making peace. Is that not so?”

“That’ll be the day,” I said. I knew what my face looked like. I wore my own kind of grin that happened automatically when an enemy was in front of me and felt my eyes in a half squint and a funny relaxed feeling across my chest.

“You are not one of those who have confidence in the United Nations then, Mr. Hammer. That is too bad. It is such a monument to ... to ...” He paused, searching for words. “The integrity of the world.”

I said, “Bullshit.”

“Mike!” Dulcie’s face had turned pink and she nudged me with her elbow. “What a terrible thing to say.”

“Ask the boys who were in Korea or Viet Nam or Stanleyville. Ask ...”

Belar Ris threw his head back and let out a deep chuckle. “That is perfectly all right, Mr. Hammer. You see, it is people like you who must be convinced, then you will be the most firm advocates of the united world. It will take much discussion, many arguments and positive persuasions before things are resolved.” He held out his hand to me again. “Good evening, Mr. Hammer.” His fingers tightened deliberately and I threw everything I had into the grip. I could do it that way too. He felt me buck him, then let my hand go. “It is a good thing to have the opinion of ... the man on the street,” he said. He nodded to Dulcie, gave her a small bow that was typically European.

“Miss Mclnnes.”

He walked away, his blocky figure the picture of confidence. Dulcie watched him a moment, then turned to me. “It that what you came for? If I thought it was to get in a political argument ... You embarrassed him!” “Did I?”

Then she let the laugh go, trying to stifle it with a hand. “It was funny. Even when you said that awful word.”

“So wash my mouth out with soap.”

“Really, Mike. Now can you tell me why you wanted to meet him?”

“You wouldn’t understand, kid.”

“Are you ... satisfied?”

I took her arm and steered her toward the bar. “Perfectly,” I said. “Someplace in the pattern there’s a place for him.”

“You’re talking in riddles. Let’s have our drink and you can take me home. I have a big weekend with a new issue of the magazine in front of me and can’t afford any late nights until it’s put to bed.”

“That’s too bad,” I said.

Her fingers tightened on my arm. “I know.” She rubbed her head against my shoulder. “There will be other times.”

 

I left Dulcie outside her apartment and told the cab driver to take me back to my hotel. Upstairs, I got out of my tux, mixed myself a drink and slouched in a chair with my feet on the window sill, looking out at the night.

Sometime not too long ago a point had been reached and a bridge crossed. It was too dark to see the outlines of it, but I could feel it and knew it was there. Too long that little thing had been gnawing at the comers of my mind and I tried to sift it out, going over the puzzle piece by piece. One word, one event, could change the entire course of the whole thing. Out there on the streets Pat and his men and the staff of the paper were scouring the city for that one thing too. Somebody had to find it. I finished my drink, made another and was halfway through it when my phone rang. It was my answering service for the office number with the message that I had several calls from the same number and the party gently insisted that they were urgent.

I dialed the number, heard it ring, then Cleo’s voice said, “Mike Hammer?”

“Hello, Cleo.”

“You never came back.”

“I would have.”

“You’d better come now,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because I know something you’d like to know.” There was a lilt to her voice as if she had been belting a few drinks.

“Can’t you tell me now?”

“Nope. I’m going to tell you when you get here.” She laughed gently and put the phone back. I said something under my breath and redialed her number. It rang a dozen times but she wouldn’t answer it. I cradled the receiver, then got up and climbed into my clothes. It was eleven-thirty and one hell of a time to be starting out again.

There are times when something happens to Greenwich Village. It gives a spasmodic heave as if trying for a rebirth and during its convulsions the people who dwell in her come out to watch the spectacle. It’s hard to tell whether it’s the inanimate old section or the people themselves, but you know that something is happening. Windows that never show light suddenly brighten; figures who have merely been shadows in doorways take life and move. There is an influx from neighboring parts, people being disgorged from taxicabs to be swallowed up again in the maw of the bistros whose mouths are open wide to receive them.

The peculiar ones with the high falsettos, skin-tight pants and jackets tossed over shoulders capelike display themselves for public viewing, pleased that they are the center of attraction, each one trying for the center of the spotlight. Their counterparts, sensing new prey available, ready themselves, then stalk toward their favorite hunting grounds, masculine in their movements, realizing that sooner or later someone will respond to the bait being cast out, then the slow, teasing struggle would begin, and they, being the more wise, would make the capture.

A sureness seemed to be the dominant attitude. Everybody seemed so sure of themselves for that one single night. The heavy damp that should have been oppressive worked in reverse, a challenge to stay outside and dare the elements, a reason to go indoors to expend the excessive energy that was suddenly there.

I got out of the cab on Seventh Avenue and walked through the crowds, watching them pulsate across the streets at the change of the lights, feeling the static charge of their presence. I wasn’t part of them at all and it was as though I were invisible. They had direction of purpose, to be part of the pleasure of the rebirth. I had direction of course only and picked my way to the house where Greta Service had lived and pushed Cleo’s bell.

The buzzer clicked on the lock and I went inside, let the door shut behind me and went up the stairs to the top floor and stood there in the dark. I didn’t knock. She knew I was there. I waited a minute, then her door opened silently, flooding the landing with a soft rose glow from the lights behind her and she was wearing one of those things you could see through again.

“Hello, Mike.”

I walked inside, let her take my hat and coat from me and picked up the drink she had waiting on top of the table. Her project had been finished and her work area was rearranged, her tools and equipment placed to become part of the decorative concept of the room. Through the skylight and the full French windows I could see the outline of New York above the opaque surfaces of buildings around her.

“Pensive tonight, aren’t you?” She went over and pulled a cord, then another, closing out the view through the windows. It was like pulling the covers over your head in bed.

“Sorry,” I said.

“No need to be. You’ll loosen up. Even if I make you.”

“It’s one of those nights,” I told her.

“I know. You felt it too, didn’t you?”

I nodded.

She walked past me, the sheer nylon of the full-length housecoat crackling, the static making it cling to her body like another skin. She switched the record player on and let Tchaikovsky’s
Pathétique
seep into the room. She turned, swirling the ice in the glass in her hand as the subtle tones began their journey into life. “Fitting music, isn’t it?”

I looked at her and tasted my drink. She had built it just right.

“They don’t know it out there,” she said. “They take time out of their expressionless little existences trying to find something vital here and leave things as they found them. They really go away empty.”

“What did you have to tell me, Cleo?”

She smiled, crossed one arm under her breasts, balanced the other on it and sipped her drink. “But you aren’t one of them.”

“Cleo...”

She paid no attention to me. She walked up, took the drink I didn’t know I had finished from my hand very slowly and went and made me another. “Do you remember what I told you when you were here?”

“No.”

“I said I wanted to paint you.”

“Look ...”

“Specially now.” Her eyes viewed me with an odd interest.

She turned her head from side to side, moved to study me in a different light, then said, “Yes, something has happened to you since the last time. It’s better now. Like it should be. There isn’t any softness at all left.”

I put the drink down and she shook her head very gently. “It’s something you want to know, Mike, but you’ll have to do what I want you to do first.”

I said, “I found Greta.”

“Good,” she said, and smiled again. “It’s more than that now though, isn’t it?”

“Come on, Cleo. What have you got on your mind?”

She walked up to me, turned her back and took my hands, wrapping them around her waist. Her hair brushed my face and it smelled faintly of a floral scent. “I work for the Proctor Group too, or have you forgotten? I knew when you went up to see Dulcie McInnes. You should never have said what you did to her Miss Tabor. That old harridan can’t stand dominant males.”

“I was there,” I admitted.

She turned in my arms, her body a warm thing against mine. “And I was jealous.” She smiled, let her arms crawl up my sides, her hands going to my face, then lacing them behind my head. “I saw you first,” she grinned. “Am I teasing well enough?”

“I’m hurting. Don’t lean on me too hard.”

“There was some strange speculation about Teddy Gates. Now he’s missing after you paid another visit up there. People are talking, yet nobody really knows anything at all.”

“Except you.”

“Except me,” she repeated. “You found Greta Service, but it couldn’t have ended because you’re here now to find out something else.”

I ran my fingers down the small of her back and felt her body arch under them. “What’s your price, Cleo?”

“You,” she said. “I’m going to paint you first. I want you permanently inscribed so I can look at you and touch you and talk to you whenever I want and know you’ll never fade away.” She raised herself on her toes and her mouth touched mine lightly. Then she let herself down and pushed away from me, her eyes sad little imps dancing in far off places.