Where There's Smoke полностью

“Oh, boy,” I said, and rolled my eyes toward the ceil­ing. But in my heart of hearts, I knew it was just the kind of cute, stupid, sickening name that would stick forever.

The thing I liked best about Maria was that I never knew who she was going to be when we made love. She had come to me as innocently wide-eyed as a sixteen-year-old virgin, as lewdly inventive as a hundred-dollar hooker. I’d seen her slither from the bathroom like a houri in veils and pantaloons, heard her swearing beneath me in Span­ish like a Barcelona gypsy. I’d watched her in garter belt, panties, and nylons (rarities in this abominable era of pantyhose) as she approached the bed, smelling of mi­mosa, breasts free, hair loose, eyes glittering. I’d seen her play the English governess, the rape victim, the match girl, the princess, and the secretary surprised. Maria Hochs was a crowd, and I never knew what to expect from her.

Tonight she was a nurse.

Tonight she was every erotic fantasy of a nurse any red-blooded American male had ever entertained upon entering a hospital. Her blond hair twisted into a tidy efficient bun at the back of her head, she came to the bed where I lay naked beneath the sheets. She was wearing a white slip, white dancer’s tights, and white pumps. Sit­ting on the edge of the bed, she took my right wrist in her left hand, ostensibly to take my pulse, but before I quite knew what was happening, her free hand had slithered under the sheet. She kept calming me, reassuring me that the operation would turn out all right, urging me to relax while her restless hand urged otherwise. Excusing herself for just a moment, she took off the slip and came back to the bed wearing only brassiere, tights, and pumps. She apologized for having made herself so recklessly com­fortable, but it did get so terribly hot in these hospital rooms, didn’t I find it getting terribly hot in here? Reach­ing under the sheet again, she exclaimed that she felt sure I was developing a fever, and then suddenly threw back the sheet and widened her eyes in mock surprise, and smiled, and stood up, and backed away from the bed. The smile dropped from her face. Watching me, her gaze steady, she unclasped the bra and tossed it across the room, narrowly missing a chair near the dresser. Still watching me, she kicked off the pumps and then hooked her thumbs into the waistband of the tights, and eased them down over her hips and her belly, her thighs and her calves, and then stepped out of them with dainty aban­don. She came to the bed again. Her hand went to the back of her head, her long blond hair fell loose. I held her close, and she murmured in my ear that everything was going to be all right, I had nothing to worry about, I would most certainly come through the operation—and the telephone rang.

I looked at the bedside clock. The time was twenty minutes to midnight. I lifted the receiver.

“Hello?” I said.

“Benny?”

“Is that you, Coop?”

“Yes,” he said. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No, I was awake,” I said, and glanced at Maria.

“I’ve got something I think might interest you.”

“What is it?”

“About half an hour ago we caught a squeal from an old lady who was out walking her dog. She spotted a red-and-white VW bus parked behind a funeral parlor on Sixth and Stilson.”

“Go ahead,” I said. I was sitting upright in bed now.

“She got curious, went a little closer, and saw a guy carrying out a dead body. He put the stiff in the bus, and was just closing the door when the lady’s dog began bark­ing. She’s got this little Pekingese mutt, he started bark­ing to beat the band. The car was parked under a light near the back entrance, so he must have figured the old lady got a good look at the plate—”

“Did she?”

“No, she’s near-sighted, she wouldn’t recognize her own mother unless she was standing a foot away. But he didn’t know that, he must’ve figured he’d been spotted, and the car’d been spotted, so he came charging at the old lady with a crowbar in his hands. The dog started biting him on the leg, and the old lady took off one of her shoes and started hitting him and scratching him—she’s some ballsy lady, I got to tell you. The guy was almost twice her size, but to hear her tell it, she almost flattened him. Windows are going up all around by now, so the guy panicked, dropped the crowbar, ran back to the bus, and drove off.”

“Any prints on the crowbar?”

“The Detective Division and the lab boys are over there now. There’s a lot more to this, Benny. It’s pretty se­rious.”

“Tell me.”

“We dispatched an RMP car as soon as we caught the squeal. That was about a quarter to eleven. When the of­ficers summoned entered the premises—”

“No cop talk, Coop.”

“Sorry ... They found a guy laying dead on the floor of the preparation room. That’s where the bodies are em­balmed, Benny. They call it the preparation room. Man had one of his own scalpels sticking in his chest. He’s been identified as Peter Greer, one of the mortuary em­ployees.”

“Any blood on the table?”

“What table?”