“You didn’t know anything about her?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “You didn’t know she was Donahue’s mistress?”

  “Oh, brother,” he said. “You have to be kidding.”

  We told him we weren’t kidding. He got greener. “Maybe that made it a better joke,” I suggested. “To have Mark’s girl jump out of the cake the night before he married someone else. Was that it?”

  “Hell, no!”

  Jerry grilled everyone in the place. No one admitted knowing Karen Price, or realized that she had been involved with Mark Donahue. No one admitted anything. Most of the men were married. They were barely willing to admit that they were alive. Some of them were almost as green as Phil Abeles. You could see the worry in their eyes, could imagine the wheels turning in their minds. A newspaper story, a parade of questions when they got home. A bachelor dinner, dear? I thought you were with an important account from Omaha. Why didn’t you tell me it was a bachelor dinner, dear? I think I need a new coat, dear. Don’t you think so?

  They wanted to go home. That was all they wanted. They kept mentioning how nice it would be if their names didn’t get into the papers. Some of them tried a little genteel bribery. Jerry was tactful enough to pretend he didn’t know what they were talking about. He was an honest cop. He didn’t do favors and didn’t take gifts.

  By 1:30, he had sent them all home. The lab boys were still making chalk marks but there wasn’t much point to it. According to their measurements and calculations of the bullet’s trajectory, and a few other scientific bits and pieces, they managed to prove conclusively that Karen Price had been shot by someone in McGraw’s private dining room.

  And that was all they could prove.

  Four of us rode down to Headquarters at Centre Street. Mark Donahue sat in front, silent. Jerry Gunther sat on his right. A beardless cop named Ryan, Jerry’s driver, had the wheel. I occupied the back seat all alone.

  At Fourteenth Street Mark broke his silence. “This is a nightmare. I didn’t kill Karen. Why in God’s name would I kill her?”

  Nobody had an answer for him. A few blocks further he said, “I suppose I’ll be railroaded now. I suppose you’ll lock me up and throw the key away.”

  GUNTHER told him, “We don’t railroad people. We couldn’t if we wanted to. We don’t have enough of a case yet. But right now you look like a pretty good suspect. Figure it out for yourself.”

  “But—”

  “I have to lock you up, Donahue. You can’t talk me out of it. Ed can’t talk me out of it. Nobody can.”

  “I’m supposed to get married tomorrow.”

  “I’m afraid that’s out.”

  The car moved south. For a while nobody had anything to say. It was October, the air was cool, the night was quiet. There were noises off in the distance, produce trucks unloading. Part of Manhattan is always awake.

  A few blocks before police headquarters Mark told me he wanted me to stay on the case.

  “You’ll be wasting your money,” I told him. “The police will work things out better than I can. They have the manpower and the authority. I’ll just be costing you a hundred a day and getting you nothing in return.”

  “Are you trying to talk yourself out of a fee?”

  “He’s an ethical bastard,” Jerry put in. “In his own way, of course.”

  “I want you working for me, Ed.”

  “Why?”

  He waited a minute, organizing his thoughts. “Look,” he sighed, “do you think I killed Karen?”

  “No.”

  “Honestly?”

  “Honestly.”

  “Well, that’s one reason I want you in my comer. Maybe the police are fair in these things. I don’t know anything about it. But they’ll be looking for things that’ll nail me. They have to—it’s their job. From where they sit I’m the killer.” He paused, as if the thought stunned him a little. “But you’ll be looking for something that will help me. Maybe you can find someone who was looking at me when the gun went off. Maybe you can figure out who did pull that trigger and why. I know I’ll feel better if you’re working for me.”

  “Don’t expect anything.”

  “I don’t.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” I told him.

  Before I caught a cab from Headquarters to my apartment, I told Mark to call his lawyer. He wouldn’t be able to get out on bail because there is no bail in first-degree murder cases; but a lawyer could do a lot of helpful things for him. Lynn Farwell’s family had to be told that there wasn’t going to be a wedding. That alone was enough work for a whole team of lawyers.

  I don’t envy anyone who has to call a mother or father at 3 AM and explain that their daughter’s wedding, set for 10:30 that very morning, must be postponed because the potential bridegroom has been arrested for murder.

  I sat back in the cab with an unlit pipe in my mouth and a lot of aimless thoughts rumbling around in my head. Nothing made much sense yet. Perhaps nothing ever would. It was that kind of a deal.

  The cab pulled up in front of my brownstone. I gave the driver a liberal tip, got the usual reactionary grunt, and went off into the night. I unlocked my apartment. Saturday’s mail cluttered a coffee table. Nothing demanded reading—ads, bills, the usual junk mail. I threw the mail in a drawer and, after a mental wrestling match with no decision, I finally fell asleep.

  THREE

  MORNING was noisy, ugly and several hours premature. A sharp, persistent ringing stabbed my brain into a semiconscious state. I cursed and groped for the alarm clock…turned it off. The buzzing continued. I reached for the phone, lifted the receiver to my ear, and listened to a dial tone. The buzzing continued. I cursed even more vehemently and stumbled out of bed. I found a bathrobe and groped into it. I splashed cold water on my face and blinked at myself in the mirror. I looked as bad as I felt.

  The doorbell kept ringing. I didn’t want to answer it, but that seemed the only way to make it stop ringing. I listened to my bones creak on the way to the door. I turned the knob, opened the door and blinked at the blonde who was standing there. She blinked back at me.

  “Mister,” she said. “You look terrible.”

  She didn’t. Even at that ghastly hour she looked like a toothpaste ad. Her hair was blonde silk and her eyes were blue jewels and her skin was creamed perfection. With a thinner body and a more severe mouth she could have been a Vogue model. But the body was just too bountiful for the fashion magazines. The breasts were a perfect 38, high and large, the waist trim, the hips a curved invitation.

  “You’re Ed London?”

  I nodded foolishly.

  “I’m Lynn Farwell.”

  She didn’t have to tell me. She looked exactly like what my client had said he was going to marry, except a little better. Everything about her stated emphatically that she was from Long Island’s North Shore, that she had gone to an expensive finishing school and a ritzy college, that her family had half the money in the world. She was Lynn Farwell, 23 years young, and she wasn’t supposed to be wearing a skirt and sweater today, no matter how well she filled them both. She was supposed to be wearing a wedding gown.

  “May I come in?”

  “You got me out of bed,” I grumbled.

  “I’m sorry. I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Could you sort of go somewhere and come back in about ten minutes? I’d like to get human.”

  “I don’t really have any place to go. May I just sit in your living room or something? I’ll be quiet.”

  There are a pair of matching overstuffed leather chairs in my living room, the kind they have in British men’s clubs. She curled up and got lost in one of them. I left her there and ducked back into the bedroom. I showered, shaved, dressed. When I came out again the world was a somewhat better place. I smelled coffee.

  “I put up a pot of java,” she smiled. “Hope you don’t mind.”

  “I couldn’t mind less,” I said. We waited while the coffee dripped through. I poured out two cups, and we both drank it black.

  “I haven’t seen Mark,” she said. “His lawyer called. I suppose you know all about it, of course.”

  “More or less.”

  “I’ll be seeing Mark later this afternoon, I suppose. We were supposed to be getting married in—” she looked at her watch “—a little over an hour.”

  She seemed unperturbed. There were no tears, not in her eyes and not in her voice. She asked me if I was still working for Donahue. I nodded.

  “He didn’t kill that girl,” she said.

  “I don’t think he did.”

  “I’m sure. Of all the ridiculous things… Why did he hire you, Ed?”

  I thought a moment and decided to tell her the truth. She probably knew it anyway. Besides, there was no point in sparing her the knowledge that her fiancé had a mistress somewhere along the line. That should be the least of her worries, compared to a murder rap.

  It was. She greeted the news with a half-smile and shook her head sadly. “Now why on earth would they think she could blackmail him?” Lynn Farwell demanded. “I don’t care who he slept with… Policemen are asinine.”

  I didn’t say anything. She sipped her coffee, stretched a little in the chair, crossed one leg over the other. She had very nice legs.

  We both lit cigarettes. She blew out a cloud of smoke and looked at me through it, her blue eyes narrowing. “Ed,” she said, “how long do you think it’ll be before he’s cleared?”

  “It’s impossible to say, Miss Farwell.”

  “Lynn.”

  “Lynn. It could take a day or a month.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “He has to be cleared as quickly as possible. That’s the most important thing. There can’t be any scandal, Ed. Oh, a little dirt is bearable. But nothing serious, nothing permanent.”

  Something didn’t sound right. She didn’t care who he slept with, but no scandal could touch them—this was vitally important to her. She sounded like anything but a loving bride-to-be.

  SHE READ my mind. “I don’t sound madly in love, do I?’’

  “Not particularly.”

  She smiled kittenishly. “I’d like more coffee, Ed…”

  I got more for both of us. She sipped hers and asked me if she made good coffee. I told her she did.

  Then she said, “Mark and I don’t love each other, Ed.”

  I grunted noncommittally.

  “We like each other, though. I’m fond of Mark, and he’s fond of me. That’s all that matters, really.”

  “Is it?”

  She nodded positively. Finishing schools and high-toned colleges produce girls with the courage of their convictions. “It’s enough,” she said. “Love’s a poor foundation for marriage in the long run. People who love are too…too vulnerable. Mark and I are perfect for each other. We’ll both be getting something out of this marriage.”

  “What will Mark get?”

  “A rich wife. A proper connection with an important family. That’s what he wants.”

  “And you?”

  “A respectable marriage to a promising young man.”

  “If that’s all you want—”

  “It’s all I want,” she said. “Mark is good company. He’s bright, socially acceptable, ambitious enough to be stimulating. He’ll make a good husband and a good father. I’m happy.”

  She yawned again and her body uncoiled in the chair. The movement drew her breasts into sharp relief against the front of her sweater. This was supposed to be accidental. I knew better.

  “Besides,” she said, her voice just slightly husky, “he’s not at all bad in bed.”

  I wanted to slap her well-bred face. The lips were slightly parted now, her eyes a little less than half lidded. The operative term I think, is provocative. She knew damned well what she was doing with the coy posing and the sex talk and all the rest. She had the equipment to carry it off, too. But it was a horrible hour on a horrible Sunday morning, and her fiancé was also my client, and he was sitting in a cell, booked on suspicion of homicide.

  So I neither took her to bed nor slapped her face. I let the remark die in the stuffy air and finished my second cup of coffee. There was a rack of pipes on the table next to my chair. I selected a sandblast Barling and stuffed some tobacco into it. I lit it and smoked.

  “Ed?”

  I looked at her.

  “I didn’t mean to sound cheap.”

  “Forget it.”

  “All right.” A pause. “Ed, you’ll find a way to clear Mark, won’t you?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “If there’s any way I can help—”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  She gave me her phone number and address. She was living with her parents. I didn’t bother asking for her number at work. North Shore girls don’t work.

  Then she paused at the door and turned enough to let me look at her lovely young body in profile. “If there’s anything you want,” she said softly, “be sure to let me know.”

  It was an ordinary enough line. But I had the feeling that it covered a lot of ground. She left my apartment. I heard her footsteps going down the one flight of stairs to the ground floor. I went to the window to watch her emerge from the building and hop into a car parked next to a fire plug. North Shore girl don’t have to worry about parking tickets. The car was an Austin Healey, black with red leather seats. It fit the image.

  I’m neither saint nor puritan. l can be bad, and she had the equipment. But not at that hour of the morning. She should have come around later in the day.

  At 11:30 I picked up my car at the garage around the comer from my apartment. The pimply attendant asked me when I was going to trade it in. He always asks me this. I always tell him to do something biologically impossible to himself, and I always tip him a quarter. We didn’t break the pattern.

  The car is a Chevy convertible, an old one that dates from the pre-fin era. I left the top up.

  The air had an edge to it. I took the East Side Drive downtown and pulled up across the street from Headquarters at noon.

  They let me see Mark Donahue. He was wearing the same expensive suit but it didn’t hang right now. It looked as though it had been slept in, which figured. He needed a shave and his eyes had red rims. I didn’t ask him how he had slept. I could tell.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Getting along all right?”

  “I suppose so.” He swallowed. “They asked me questions most of the night. No rubber hose, though. That’s something.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Mind some more questions?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “When did you start seeing Karen Price?”

  “Four, five months ago.”

  “When did you stop?”

  “About a month ago.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was practically married to Lynn.”

  “Who knew you were sleeping with Karen?”

  “No one I know of.”

  “Anybody at the stag last night?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  More questions. When had she started phoning him? About two weeks ago, maybe a little longer than that. Was she in love with him? He hadn’t thought so, no, and that was why the phone calls were such a shock to him at first. As far as he was concerned, it was just a mutual sex arrangement with no emotional involvement on either side. He took her to shows, bought her presents, gave her occasional small loans with the understanding that they weren’t to be repaid. He wasn’t exactly keeping her and she wasn’t exactly going to bed in return for the money. It was just a convenient arrangement.

  EVERYTHING it seemed, was just a convenient arrangement. He and Karen Price had had a convenient shack-up. He and Lynn Farwell were planning a convenient marriage. It was a funny world, I decided. People just did the “smart thing” nowadays. Love and hate were dead issues on the contemporary scene.

  But someone had put a bullet in Karen’s pretty chest. People don’t do that because it’s convenient. They usually have more emotional reasons.

  More questions. Where did Karen live? He gave me an address in the Village, not too very far from his own apartment. Who were her friends? He knew one, her roommate, Ceil Gorski. Where did she work? He wasn’t too clear. She got jobs now and then, jobs like, well, like popping out of paper cakes. Questions, answers. When the questions ran out we spent a few moments just looking at each other. He managed a smile.

  “My lawyer’s trying to get them to reduce the charge,” he said. “So that I can get out on bail. You think he’ll manage it?”

  “He might.”

  “I hope so,” he said. His face went serious, then brightened again. “This is a hell of a place to spend a wedding night,” he smiled. “Funny—when I was trying to pick the right hotel, I never thought of a jail.”

  FOUR

  IT WAS only a few blocks from Mark Donahue’s cell to the building where Karen Price had lived…a great deal further in terms of dollars and cents. She had an apartment in a red-brick five-story building on Sullivan Street, just below Bleecker. The basement of the building housed the Sons Of Palermo Social And Athletic Club. A group of ancient Sicilians sat inside playing dominos and bocce. I went up went three flights of stairs and knocked on a door.

  The girl who opened the door was blonde, like Lynn Farwell. But her dark roots showed and her eyebrows were dark brown. If her mouth and eyes relaxed she would have been pretty. They didn’t.

  “You just better not be another cop,” she said.

  “I’m afraid I am. But not city. Private.”

  The door started to close. I made like a brush salesman and tucked a foot in it. She glared at me.

  “Private cops, I don’t have to see,” she said. “Get the hell out, will you?”

  “I just want to talk to you.”

  “The feeling isn’t mutual. Look—”

  “It won’t take long.”

  “You son of a bitch,” she said. But she opened the door and let me inside. We walked through the kitchen to the living room. There was a couch there. She sat on it. I took a chair.

  “Who are you anyway?” she said.

  “My name’s Ed London.”