“He opened a magic shop. It was a front, nothing more. I had a detective agency in Cleveland check the place out. Oh, the store was completely open and above board, all right. Only the place ran at one hell of a loss. Blake never made a nickel out of it.”

  I wanted a drink. Courvoisier, a lot of it, straight and in a hurry.

  “SO THE shop lost money,” I continued, “and Blake lived high off the hog. A big house out in Shaker Heights. Trips to Vegas and Hawaii. You don’t pull that kind of money out of a successful magic shop, let alone a losing proposition like the one on Euclid Avenue.

  “So Blake had another source of income. It’s not hard to figure out what it was, Rhona. The record of deposits to Jack Blake’s checking account makes it obvious. The two of you were working a string of blackmail dodges. You were on a dozen different payrolls for anywhere from a hundred to five hundred bucks a month. It was a sweet little setup. And you weren’t his daughter, either. That was another little lie, wasn’t it?”

  “You can’t be serious—”

  “The hell I can’t. Jack Blake was never married. He never had a wife and he never had a kid. You were his mistress and his partner. His private whore.”

  She started to get up. She saw my eyes, and she must have guessed what I would do to her the minute she got to her feet. So she stayed where she was.

  “His private whore.” I liked the sound of it. “And his partner. The two of you were doing fine. Then you got hold of something that made all the little swindles look like small potatoes in comparison. You latched on to the prize pigeon of them all. You hooked a man named Abe Zucker.”

  I took a breath. “Five months ago Miltie Klugsman got in touch with Blake and told him he had the goods on Zucker. Zucker’s been straight for years so he must have had something big on him, a rap the statute of limitations wouldn’t cover. Something like murder.

  “It doesn’t much matter what it was. It was too big for Klugsman and he was scared to work it on his own. He knew Blake was doing a land-office business in blackmail. They worked out a split. Klugsman couldn’t have done too well with it—his widow isn’t exactly living in style. But that’s how it went. Klugsman held on to the evidence and Blake set up the blackmail gambit and Zucker paid. There was a healthy deposit to your father’s—pardon me, your keeper’s account five months ago. The first payment from Zucker was something like ten thousand dollars.

  “Zucker must have thought it was a one-shot deal. When it happened a second time he figured out that it would be cheaper to arrange an accident for Blake than to pay him that kind of money for any length of time. And that was the end of Jack Blake, at least as far as this world is concerned.

  “You told that part of it straight enough, Rhona. A few thugs went to Cleveland and beat Jack Blake to death.”

  I took another deep breath and looked at her, all prim and proper on the bright orange couch, all schoolgirl-lovely in green sweater and black skirt, and I tried to make myself believe it. It was true, all of it. But it still seemed impossible.

  “JACK BLAKE was dead,” I went on. “But this didn’t faze you much. You could live without him, but you weren’t going to let a big fat fish like Zucker wiggle off the hook. He was too profitable a source of income.

  “Klugsman was anxious to give up. When Blake was rubbed out, Klugsman got nervous. He didn’t want to play blackmail games anymore. He wanted out. So you got in touch with him and offered him a fast five grand for the evidence on Zucker. That would put Klugsman out of the picture and give him a healthy piece of change for his trouble. He went for it. It looked like easy money.

  “But it wasn’t,” I said. “Zucker’s hirelings were already onto Klugsman. They picked us up when I met him in Canarsie and they shot a million holes in Miltie Klugsman. They didn’t kill me. Maybe they didn’t care much at that point. They just wanted Klugsman.

  “That left you in a bind. Zucker wanted to see you dead, too, because as long as you were alive he had a murder rap hanging over his head like a Sword of Damocles. You had to stay away from him and you had to get me to dig up Miltie’s package of evidence. You were too damned greedy to take your life and run with it. You couldn’t let go of that pile of dough.”

  “It wasn’t like that—” she started.

  “The hell it wasn’t. It was like that all across the board. And you never came close to leveling with me. You started out as the woman-of-mystery and when that fell in you shifted gears as smooth as silk and turned yourself into the damsel-in-distress.

  “You let me go to Brooklyn last night and almost get killed. You let me go up against Phillip Carr this morning. You never put your cards on the table and you never gave up the idea of bleeding that money out of Zucker.” I paused. “You look great in a sweater. You look great out of one. And you put on one hell of an act in bed. But you’re just another deceitful crook, Rhona. Nothing more.”

  Then it was quiet. Neither of us said a word. Finally, she blurted: “Ed—what now?”

  “Now I call the police,” I said. “I don’t care what happens after that.”

  She uncoiled from the couch like a serpent. She flowed toward me again, and her eyes were radiating sex once more. She turned the stuff on and off like a faucet.

  “Ed,” she cooed. “Ed, I’m sorry.”

  “Stow it,” I said.

  “Ed, listen to me. I didn’t trust you. I should have, I know it. And I’m sorry. But you don’t have to call the police.”

  I stared at her.

  “Listen to me, Ed. I didn’t…didn’t hurt anybody. I never murdered anyone. It’s not my fault Klugsman was shot and I wasn’t the murderer. It was Zucker and the men he hired. I just thought I could find a way to make a quick dollar.

  “DON’T YOU understand? Ed, I never killed anyone. I never hurt you—I lied to you but I never hurt you. And, Ed, when we were in bed together I wasn’t acting. I don’t care what you think of me. Maybe I deserve it—”

  “Maybe?”

  “I know I deserve it. But I wasn’t acting. Not in bed, not when we were making love—”

  I wish someone had filmed all this. She would have won the Oscar in a walk.

  “You could let me go,” she pleaded. “You could call the police and give them everything you want on Zucker and Carr and the rest of them. I’ll even help you. I’ll tell you what I know. With that much, the police won’t need Klugsman’s evidence. You can even tell them about me, Ed, if it will make you feel better. Just give me a few hours’ head start. In a few hours I can be out of town and they won’t ever find me. Just a few hours, Ed,” she pleaded.

  “Ed, you owe me that much. We meant that much to each other, Ed.”

  She was as persuasive as a loaded gun. “I’d have given you that much,” I told her. “Except for one thing.”

  “What?”

  “The dynamite,” I said. “Did you forget the dynamite, Rhona? You tried to kill me!”

  That time I didn’t slap her. It would have been superfluous. She reacted as though someone had belted her but good.

  “The dynamite,” I said. “It didn’t make any sense at the time. I couldn’t figure out why Zucker would use a cockeyed routine like that to get you out of the way, or how he knew where you were, or any of it. The dynamite had to be all your idea. Maybe you were afraid I would sell you out for Carr’s ten-grand reward. Maybe you thought I was guessing too much about you.

  “Anyway, you decided to get rid of me. And you were cute about it, too. You knew I’d come over here sooner or later. You left the apartment, figuring I’d eventually wander over to the closet. Then the dynamite would go off and I’d be out of your hair.

  “And you would be in the clear. You were subletting the place under a phony name, and once I blew myself to hell you would just disappear, rent another apartment somewhere else. Nobody could tie you to me. You’d be all alone in the clear.”

  “Ed, I must have been crazy—”

  “You still are if you think you can talk your way out of this, Rhona.”

  “Ed, I’m sorry. Ed—”

  She was making sexy movements, slithering toward me. But I saw what she was really doing, moving toward the table next to the couch, heading toward her purse. I could have stopped her then and there, but I wanted to give her more rope to hang herself.

  She got her hands on the purse. She was talking but I wasn’t listening to a word she was saying. I watched her hands move behind her back, opening the purse, dipping inside.

  She never managed to point her gun at me. My timing was too good. She dragged it out of the purse and I slapped it out of her hand and it sailed across the room and bounced around on the carpet. A .22, a woman’s gun. They can kill you too.

  Then she was beaten, and she knew it. I took out my own gun and pointed it at her, but I didn’t even need it. She stayed put while I picked up the phone. It was too late to get Jerry Gunther at Headquarters. I called him at his home.

  “Call downtown,” I said. “Tell them to get a pickup order out for Phillip Carr and Abe Zucker. And get over here”—I gave him the address—“and make an arrest of your own.”

  He whistled softly. “This is going to get a lot of unsolved ones off your books,” I said. “Maybe I’ll let you do the buying during our next vital conference.”

  He said something unimportant. I hung up. Then I stood pointing the gun at Rhona while we waited for him.

  ELEVEN

  IT WAS Thursday, and I was having dinner at McGraw’s, a favorite steakhouse of mine. I wasn’t eating alone. There was a girl across the table from me, a girl named Sharon Ross.

  She chewed a bit of steak, washed it down with a sip of Beaujolais, and looked up at me with wide eyes.

  “The girl,” she said. “Rhona. What’s going to happen to her, Ed?”

  “Not enough.”

  “Will she go to jail?”

  “Probably,” I said. “It’s hardly a sure thing, though. She was a blackmailer, and there’s a law against that sort of thing, but she’s in a position to turn state’s evidence and help them nail the lid on Zucker and his buddies. And, as she said, she never killed anyone. Only tried.”

  I shrugged. “And she’s a girl. A pretty one. That still makes a difference in any case where you have trial by jury. The worst she can look forward to is a fairly light sentence. She could even get off clean, if she has an expensive lawyer.”

  “Like Phil Carr?”

  “Like him, but not Carr. He won’t be practicing much law anymore. He’ll be in jail for everything the DA can make stick. And Zucker will stand trial, too.”

  I’D CALLED Sharon a day or two after the whole thing was wrapped up, and after she had cooled off from the broken-date routine. And, over our steaks, I had filled her in on most of the story. Not all of it, of course. She got the expurgated version. You never tell one girl about the bedroom games you played with another girl. It’s not chivalrous. It’s not even especially intelligent.

  “I guess I forgive you,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “For breaking our date, silly. Brother, was I mad at you! You didn’t sound like a man with business on his mind, not when you called me. You sounded like a man who had just crawled out of bed with someone pretty. And I was steaming.”

  I looked away. Hell, I thought. When I called her I had just crawled out of bed with something pretty. But I didn’t know you could tell over the phone.

  “Ed?”

  I looked up.

  “Where do you want to go after dinner?”

  “A little club somewhere on the East Side,” I said. “We’ll listen to atonal jazz and drink a little too much.”

  She said it sounded good. It did. We would listen to atonal jazz and drink a little too much, and then we would go back to her place for a nightcap. She wouldn’t be a secretive blackmailer with a closet full of dynamite. She would just be a soft warm girl, and that was enough.

  There might be explosions. But dynamite wouldn’t cause them, and I wouldn’t mind them at all.

  “Just Window Shopping”

  I climbed over the back fence and hurried down the driveway. They probably hadn’t seen me at the window, but I couldn’t afford to take chances. The police had caught me once. I certainly did not want to be picked up again.

  It was horrible when the police caught me. I admitted everything but that wasn’t enough for them. They put me in a chair with the light shining in my eyes so that I could barely see. Then they started hitting me. They used rubber hoses so there wouldn’t be any marks. They hit me so much I nearly fainted.

  The beating wasn’t the worst of it, though. They called me names. They called me a sex fiend and a pervert. That hurt more than the beatings.

  Because I’m not a pervert, you see. All I want to do is watch people. There’s no harm in that, is there? I don’t hurt anyone, and I never really bother anybody. Sometimes someone sees me watching them, and they get frightened or angry, but that’s only once in a great while. I’ve been very careful lately, ever since they caught me.

  And if they think I am a pervert, you should see some of the things I’ve seen. You wouldn’t believe the things some of these normal people do. It’s enough to make you sick to your stomach. Yet they are normal, and they call me a pervert, a Peeping Tom. I can’t quite understand it. All I do is watch.

  Ever since they caught me I have been very careful. That is why I left the window when the man looked at me. I’m almost sure he didn’t see me, but he glanced toward the window and I hopped the fence and got away from there. Besides, it wasn’t much fun watching at his window. The woman with him was old and fat, and I was getting bored with the whole thing. There was no sense in taking chance for that.

  When I got out to the street I didn’t know where to go. I used to have a perfect spot. A pretty, young prostitute over on Tremont Avenue who saw at least 10 men a night. I could spend night after night watching her. The backyard was dark and I had a perfect view. But one night she saw me watching.

  She was nice about it and sensible, too. She didn’t call me a pervert. But she said the men might notice me, that they wouldn’t like it. She told me to stay away. It was a shame that I had to give up the spot, but at least she didn’t call the police or anything.

  But I couldn’t watch there anymore, and I had to find a new spot. I walked down the street looking for a lighted window. I stopped at several places, but there was nothing much to see. There were just people sitting and talking or listening to the radio or reading or watching television.

  Finally I found a house with a light on that looked promising. The back yard was dark, too, which was important. It’s harder to see out from a lighted room when there is no light in the back yard.

  I stood close to the window and watched. A man and woman were sitting on the bed, taking their clothes off. I watched them. The man wasn’t bad looking but my attention was confined to the woman. I’m not queer, you understand.

  She certainly wasn’t beautiful. Better than average, though. Her face was nothing to write home about, her breasts were rather small, but she had beautiful legs and a generally nice shape all in all. I watched her undress and began to get excited. This was going to be a good night after all.

  They undressed quickly, which is not the way I like it. It’s better when they take a good long time about it. But they just pulled off their clothes and turned down the bedcovers. I guess they had been married for some time.

  I was really excited by this time, and my eyes were practically glued to the window. Then the man stood up and walked over to the wall. He touched a switch, and the room was suddenly plunged into complete darkness. I was so mad I could have killed him. Why did he have to do a thing like that?

  I stared through the window, but it was no use. The room was black as pitch. I couldn’t understand it. How could he enjoy it with the lights out? He wouldn’t be able to see a thing.

  I was mad, and just about ready to go home and call it a night. But the little I had seen left me so excited that I could not stop there. I walked around, looking for another window.

  By this time it was late and I had no idea where to go. Most of the people in the neighborhood were asleep by now. But I continued walking around, hoping against hope that something would turn up. I was just about ready to quit when I saw a lighted window on Bushnell Road. Never having been to that house before I decided to give it a try.

  I approached the window and looked in. It was a bedroom window, with a woman sitting there. She had her back to me, reading a magazine. She was all alone.

  ORDINARILY I would not have waited. Sometimes a woman will sit like that all night, just reading. But it was late and, having nowhere else to go, I waited. Besides, I had the feeling I would get a real show for my money.

  As it turned out, I was right. She put down the magazine in less than five minutes, stood up and turned toward me. I was stunned when I got a good look at her. She was beautiful.

  She was wearing a flower-print dress that made her look like a schoolgirl, but one good look at her would tell you she was nothing of the sort. Her body was far too mature for a schoolgirl’s, with proud, full breasts that nearly ripped the dress apart. Her face was pretty as a model’s, and her hair was that soft reddish-brown that drives me crazy. I was ready to watch her forever.

  She started to undress. I stared at her greedily. There was no one else around, and my eyes studied every detail of her body. She undressed slowly, tantalizingly, slithering out of her dress and hanging it up in the closet. Finally she stood there nude, and it was worth all the waiting, worth all the walking that I had done that night. She was like a vision, the most perfect woman I had ever seen.

  I thought I would have to go home then. I expected she would turn off the light and go to bed, and if she had I would have been satisfied. It was enough for one night. Instead, she walked to her mirror and began to examine herself.

  It was the perfect view for me. I could see both her back and the mirror image of her front. She looked at herself, and I watched her. Then she began to dance.