Complex 90 Read online

  “Not important, kitten. Not important.”

  She sat at the kitchen table. Folded her hands as if saying grace. She was staring into nothing. I sat beside her, put a hand on her shoulder.

  She said, “You’re such a big dumb lug. I could tell you I lost it riding my bike, and you’d buy it. So you wanted to marry a virgin. I’d be a virgin for you. But it was a lie.”

  “I don’t care, Vel. I don’t care.”

  Now she turned her lovely face to me, streaked with tears and snot and desperation. “What that beast did to me in Russia, Mike...” She beat her belly with a small fist. “The doctors... over there... later... the doctors... here. Mike, there can’t ever be any little Mikes and Veldas. That Commie bastard stole them from us, Mike. He... he... stole them from us...”

  And she fell into my arms and I carried her back to the couch and held her in my arms cradled like a child. She wept. And then she slept. Not long.

  Just long enough for me to imagine a million ways I would torture that torturer if I ever got my hands on him. But the impossibility of that was a torture that I knew I would suffer for the rest of my life...

  Finally, Velda got up and went into the bathroom a while. I heard the water in the bathroom basin running. She returned in the same terrycloth robe, but she’d redone her make-up and she looked fresh and new. Across from where we sat was a gas fireplace and she got that going, switching off the end table lamp that had been the only other light in the room, to let the flames flicker orange and blue against the darkness. As the fire reflections lashed her flesh, she moved cat-like over to her stereo console and let the soft strains of Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique fill the room.

  Then she came and sat beside me again. The smell of her was a subtle, heady thing, nothing but soap and the natural scent of her, and I closed my eyes with the sheer pleasure of being close to her.

  Velda let out a soft moan as her mouth reached for mine. The kiss had a liquid warmth sparked by the fire of her tongue that spoke of all the longing she had known these past months too, and all the secret hurt of so many years. The robe slipped off as if of its own accord, and her skin was pure velvet under my hands, every vital curve and hollow of her trembling with desire. My fingers drifted across the tips of her breasts, bringing them to instant rigidity. When I gently touched her stomach I could feel the concave plane of it flex with the knowledge that there were other places to explore and she squirmed with a feline movement to give me access to all of her.

  Then she slipped from my arms and stood before me, loomed above me, tall again suddenly, a goddess with a mane of black, uncombed hair, gypsy wild, high full breasts and a narrow waist and flaring hips and more wild dark curls. She gave me a wicked smile. She crooked a finger, like a mother summoning a naughty child.

  On the round braid carpet in front of the fire, she got down on all fours, then looked over her shoulder at me, as the twin globes of flesh beckoned, and she said, “Take me, Mike. Take me where I am a virgin. Take me. Take me.”

  I took her.

  The record ended, but we never noticed. The music we made ourselves was wilder and louder, the theme of it bigger than any instrument could interpret, ending in a smashing climax that seemed to wipe out time itself, the present, and the past.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The sky still had its gray lid over the pressure cooker of New York, holding in not heat but cold, a clammy cold, unsure of whether it wanted to rain or snow. The sidewalk crowds moved in hunched-over lockstep, raincoats clutched at throats, men’s trouser legs flapping like flags, women holding down their skirts, even those in minis.

  I liked this weather. The chill helped me think. It kept me alert, thanks in part to various old wounds including the shot in my leg that had started this all. Old wounds could help you prevent new ones, if you paid attention and weren’t reckless. Of course, sometimes the latter could be a problem for me.

  The Trib Building was old-fashioned enough to still use elevator operators. I got off on the familiar floor and didn’t bother knocking at the door with the gold letters that said HY GARDNER. There was no reception area, the office big enough to accommodate both Hy at his big desk across the room and the bouffant blonde he used as a secretary at her desk where you came in.

  She was very efficient and not there for her considerable good looks, since Hy’s wife Marilyn, a former secretary of his herself, wouldn’t have put up with that. Still, the peroxide had apparently damaged certain brain cells, as when I told her to go out for a smoke, she just showed me the big blue eyes and said, “You know I don’t smoke, Mr. Hammer.”

  I jerked a thumb at the door. “Start.”

  When she was gone, I pulled up the visitor’s chair and tossed my hat on Hy’s desk, while he swung around from his typewriter on its stand.

  “You always have had a way with the ladies, Mike.” He was smiling that knowing little grin.

  “Knowing” was right—a top columnist like Hy knew where just about every body was buried. If you saw this modest-sized man with his unremarkable pan, just a pair of glasses and a receding hairline and a born snooper’s droopy nose, you would never know the power he wielded.

  I watched him light up one of his ever-present cigars. It smelled like Havana in there, but in a good way.

  He waved out his match and said, “That M.P. you got assigned to you seems like a bright fella. Also looks like he could bench-press a Cadillac.”

  “He’s the real goods, Hy. You know why I’m here. You may have thought Des was bright, but there were still things you didn’t want to tell him. You wanted me here in person. Here I am.”

  “Lucky me.” His glasses had slid down his nose and he was looking over them. “Mike, you do understand there’s a kind of unwritten agreement between the press and the politicians.”

  “Do I?”

  “We had a president a while back who couldn’t keep it in his pants.”

  “That was the rumor.”

  “But it didn’t get in the papers, or on the radio, or on the TV.”

  “Oh. That unwritten agreement.”

  Hy nodded, rocking back in his leather desk chair. Behind him were metal filing cabinets. On the side walls were enough pictures of him with famous celebrities and politicians to rival those in Senator Jasper’s office.

  “So you are or aren’t going to tell me?” I asked. “Or do I have to read between the lines?”

  “They wouldn’t be that hard to read between, kid.”

  “Spare me the trouble anyway, Hy. Or do you think I’m a security risk?”

  His smile was small but it was the guardian of big secrets. “Mike, I like Allen Jasper. We need more like him. I like his brand of politics. He sits on powerful committees, and he doesn’t try the grandstanding bull that brought McCarthy down. And he can’t be bought.”

  “Can he be blackmailed?”

  Hy put his cigar in a tray, leaving him wreathed with smoke. “I didn’t say that.”

  “There’s something in his private life that may be a weak spot. How’s that for reading between the lines?”

  Hy put his glasses back in place and leaned forward. He folded his hands on top of the news copy he’d been checking.

  “Mike, the senator has a lovely wife. Wonderful wife, and children, really just the kind of ideal American family that helps keep a politico in office. Allen Jasper could have a shot at the White House one of these days, if he plays his cards right.”

  “But is he? Playing his cards right?”

  Hy shrugged, retrieved his cigar and puffed at it, sending up smoke signals I could just about read.

  “I met Emily Jasper myself,” I said. “When you say she’s lovely and she’s wonderful, I agree. But she’s also overweight, thanks to bearing the senator his lovely, wonderful children and because middle age is an unforgiving bastard.”

  “You’re getting warmer, Mike.”

  “I spent enough time with Allen to know he has an eye for a well-turned calf. He never did anything out
of line on that trip— too much of a pro for that—but he made remarks. And when I got friendly with the little gal the Russians provided to translate for us, he could have rightly had a shit fit. Man, was that a breech of protocol.”

  “So if I told you,” Hy said, “way off the record, that he has a history of extra-marital activities, you wouldn’t fall off that chair and sue me.”

  “No. I think he should be punched in the face for cheating on that great wife of his, but no.”

  “Mike, people who screw in glass houses shouldn’t cast stones.”

  I batted the air. “Last time I looked, I wasn’t married and I wasn’t a United States senator. If he’s playing around, he’s an idiot a bunch of ways.”

  “I can’t argue with you,” Hy said with a shrug. “And things are changing. Look at the Profumo affair and how the British press blew it wide open.”

  “This is why I hate politics,” I said. “Even the good ones are sons of bitches. Listen, Des showed you the list of guests at Jasper’s party. Anybody there I should be talking to?”

  Hy shook his head. “The only one involved in top-secret projects is Dr. Giles, and he’s at least semi-retired. Maybe that Contreaux chick who works for him is worth a chat. Yeah, Mike, definitely you should talk to her. Tell her your theories about how a guy should be faithful to his best gal. How is Velda, by the way?”

  I grinned at him. “Screw you, buddy. You know anything about those top-secret projects?”

  “No. Just that Giles has been tied in with N.A.S.A. since the start. Other than that, it’s outside my area. N.A.S.A. scientists almost never star in Broadway plays.”

  “Suppose not.” I shifted in the chair. “You ever hear of something called Complex 90?”

  “No. What is it, a new vitamin pill?”

  “Maybe one of those top-secret projects you mentioned.” I told him about the death of Lisa Contreaux’s science-nerd boyfriend.

  “Maybe you really should talk to that doll,” Hy said.

  “Anybody else on that list I should check up on? What about that Wall Street whiz, Warren Bentley?”

  Hy shook his head. “Don’t bother. Strictly high finance stuff. Nothing government-related.”

  “Well, if it’s not breeching the security of the Trib’s top columnist, is this Bentley character really going to marry Irene Carroll?”

  Hy laughed and choked on a bushel of cigar smoke doing it. I waited for him not to die, and finally he said, “Are you kidding? Have you met the guy?”

  “I saw him at Jasper’s party. I only talked to a handful of the guests and he wasn’t one of them. I was just doing my security job.”

  Still chuckling, Hy shook his hand sideways. “The guy’s a fly ball, Mike. Irene Carroll’s strictly his beard.”

  “No kidding. So that’s a secret, too. You must have an unwritten agreement with that crowd, too.”

  “Actually, we do. That, as we say, is showbiz. Don’t be a prude, Mike. Irene Carroll helping out a nice guy like Bentley doesn’t hurt anybody.”

  “I didn’t say it did. But it does raise an interesting question.”

  “Yeah?”

  I got up, stuffed on my hat. “What’s in it for Irene Carroll?”

  * * *

  I had been to this townhouse before, on the night of the party when Lisa Contreaux, Dr. Giles, and I had grabbed a cab that brought us here, for the doc to patch me up. Just off Fifth Avenue, opposite Central Park, it was a newly restored three-story brownstone that on the first floor housed the doctor’s exclusive practice. I vaguely remembered him mentioning that night that he lived in an apartment above.

  From a booth in the Trib Building’s lobby, I had called Lisa Contreaux and found her at home, and willing to talk. She’d given me an address.

  This address.

  I walked up the stairs to the landing where her apartment took up the entire third floor. I buzzed, and she answered, smiling in a very friendly way, immediately rekindling the rapport we’d had months ago at that ill-fated party.

  Liz Taylor’s imaginary sister had been under-dressed at that cocktail party, wearing a light blue satin blouse and a navy pencil skirt. Now months later, by odd coincidence, she’d selected the same outfit, making her over-dressed in this context. And she had on something else that she’d worn that night, too: Evening in Paris perfume.

  “I was just about to give up on you,” she said, holding the door open.

  She was a doll, all right. Her heavily lashed big brown eyes with those dark, unplucked eyebrows and that bright red-lipsticked mouth provided a stark contrast with her ghostly pale complexion. The beauty mark near her mouth gave her glamour, and the black Carmen-like curls reminded me of the way Velda’s hair had not long ago dried into a gypsy tousle.

  The thought of Velda, and the pact we’d made last night, would have to guide me through the questioning of this beauty.

  People in glass houses, as Hy had said...

  After moving through a small entryway, we were in a large living room with a nice window onto the park, but the furnishings were unremarkable in an anonymously contemporary way, the colors muted, pastel. A few nice framed prints were spotted here and there, including a large one over the white-plaster fireplace, impressionistic Parisian scenes, maybe to go with the perfume.

  She took my trenchcoat and hat and laid them carefully on a chair. Then she closed the curtains over the picture window on the park, as if she thought the trees might eavesdrop. Only one light was on, a subdued yellow-glow lamp by the couch. On this overcast morning, no light in particular found its way in, and it might have been midnight.

  Taking my arm at the elbow, she led me to the couch. “Would you like something to drink? Coffee, perhaps? A soft drink? Beer?”

  “It’s a little early, but. beer would be fine.”

  “I’ll join you.”

  She returned with two poured Pilsner glasses of dark liquid.

  “I hope you like Guinness,” she said, sitting on the couch beside me.

  “Being of good Irish stock,” I said, and sipped and savored, “it’s a requirement.”

  I set the glass on a coaster on the blond coffee table before us.

  “What did you want to see me about, Mike?”

  Apparently we were on a first-name basis after our brief meeting at the Jasper party.

  “A couple of things,” I said. “By the way, my condolences. I understand your fiancé—Dennis? Was in a tragic accident recently.”

  She nodded, her expression turning somber. “Yes. He was a sweet boy, a brilliant boy.”

  “Did the cops ever track down the hit-and-run driver?”

  “No. But I just know it was some callow undergraduate. I’m afraid Manheim University has a deserved reputation as a party school. Lots of drinking among the frat crowd. Reprehensible.”

  She said this as she sipped at her pre-noon glass of Guinness.

  “We don’t know each other very well, Lisa, but maybe you’ve heard I have a reputation for being blunt. Meaning no disrespect to the dead, I just can’t see a beautiful woman like you getting next to a gawky kid like that.”

  She bristled. “Mike—there are women who are looking for more out of a man than just a nice set of broad shoulders. Dennis was a genius, or nearly so. He worked closely with Dr. Giles, and was on his way to the top of his field. His... social graces may have been lacking, but he was a fine young man.”

  “Hey, I’ve been told my social graces are lacking.”

  That got a smile out of her, and there was nothing bristling in her tone when she said, “I have no prejudice against muscles, Mike. But I have a feeling you’re more than just brawn yourself. A detective of your... caliber? Could hardly have achieved that status without considerable mental prowess.”

  “Maybe. But my caliber is .45, and hanging around with a gal who’s got a PhD in physics could give a guy an inferiority complex.”

  She smiled and her tongue darted over the red lips, making them glisten wetly. She squeez
ed my shoulder, with a nice familiarity before withdrawing it. “Mike, you have nothing to worry about.”

  “Speaking of complexes, what do you make of Dennis’s last words? ‘Complex 90’? Does that mean anything to you?”

  The unplucked eyebrows traveled higher. “Actually, it does. It’s the project that he and Dr. Giles were working on together. But I’m afraid the nature of it is strictly classified by the government.”

  Having official credentials has its benefits. I got out the fancy blue-and-gold I.D. card with the embossed seal of Rickerby’s group and let her take a gander.

  “I’m not here strictly as a private eye,” I said, putting the I.D. away, “or a private citizen. I’m investigating the circumstances of the party Senator Jasper threw.”

  She frowned in confusion. “Why would that event need investigating, Mike?”

  “We think it started a spiral of events the culmination of which hasn’t yet been reached. Possibly I interrupted an assassination attempt on the senator.”

  “You really think so? As I understood it, that Carroll’s woman’s jewelry is what that creature was after.”

  “The Carroll dame wasn’t even there yet, but of course maybe our party-crasher didn’t know that. I saw him, no doubt about it, make a beeline for the senator. Also, this ‘creature’—his name was Pietro Romanos—was a championship shooter. A crack shot. That’s the makings of an assassin, doll.”

  She didn’t seem to mind being called “doll” by me. I admit I was testing the waters.

  When she shrugged, the full breasts under the rather tight satin bobbed distractingly. “All right, Mike. Granted that party, and possibly those attending, are worthy of investigation. But what does that have to do with Dennis’s tragedy?”

  “Dennis was one of the partygoers. And now he’s dead. Hit-and-run is a longstanding, time-honored method of covering up a murder even as it’s being committed.”

  Those great big brown eyes got even bigger. “Dennis... murdered? Why?”