Chapter 11

When he started to leave, Lisa clutched at him. "No! Not yet, darling!" At his look a tide of color swept her face. Her glance fell away. "I know, I'm awful."

He settled back down. "I guess a few minutes more won't make all that much difference."

She gave him a shy, yet bawdy smile. "Time for a ... quickie?"

He grinned. "A quickie."

But it wasn't a quickie. He made slow, languorous love to her. They lay side by side, face to face. Familiar with her responses now, Wade knew just what to do to arouse her to a feverish pitch. And Lisa, growing steadily bolder, returned his caresses eagerly. A beatific smile lighted her face when a particular caress caused him to cry out.

When it was finally time, when both were ready, he lifted her leg over his hip and went into her like that. Lisa gasped, sighed softly, and matched his rhythm. Her eyes closed, she blindly sought his mouth and drove her tongue inside. The love play of their tongues was a heated counterpoint to the clashing of their bodies. It built slowly to an excruciating climax.

Abruptly Lisa ripped her mouth away. "Now, darling! Ah-h! Heaven. Heaven!"

They welded together as one, bodies shuddering in sweet rapture. Lisa held him to her for a long time, her fingers stroking his hair, her voice an unintelligible murmur. Finally her arms loosened and fell away. She rolled over on her back. "How marvelous! How marvelous!"

It was a few minutes past midnight when Wade finally got out of bed and began dressing.

"I still don't see why I can't go along," Lisa said plaintively. "If nothing else, I could wait outside."

"No. You're involved enough as it is and there's absolutely nothing you can do to help. I have to do it alone from here on in."

She stamped her bare foot. "But I can't just sit here and wait! I'm not the waiting kind. I'll go out of my mind!"

"I want you here. By the phone. If I don't call you in two hours, phone the police and tell them everything you know."

Alarm showed in her eyes. "If you don't call?"

"Lisa..." He took her by the elbows. "I don't know what's going to happen. You're not a child, so I won't lie to you. I'm going to be in some danger. But if you were along, you'd be in danger, too. And that would only make it harder on me. Surely you can see that?"

"Well, yes, I guess so." She drew a deep breath. "But you don't have to do it this way. You can bring the police in."

"Now you know better than that. Anything I have to tell them at this stage would only draw the net tighter around me."

"I suppose you're right," she said with a discouraged droop of her shoulders.

"You know I am." He tipped her face up and brushed her .mouth lightly with his lips. He could feel her body trembling. "Two hours. Or less."

"Two hours." She tried to smile. "Or less. And you be real careful, cowhand."

"I'll be careful."

He left then, quickly, without so much as a glance back over his shoulders. He used one of the tens for cab fare to Janis' apartment. He was tense and on edge, not at all sure what waited him, but he was no longer apprehensive. His main fear, the fear of madness, was gone now. Any danger he faced now was purely physical, and he would face that as best he could.

He stood for a moment before the apartment house, his glance ranging up. Even as late as it was, many of the apartments were still showing light, and he couldn't pick out the apartment belonging to Janis. He lit a cigarette and, from force of habit, shot a glance at the palm tree up the street. There was nobody there, of course. Wade was sure that his shadow sprawled dead on the movie set. Or, what was more-likely by this time, lay obscenely naked in the cold blue light of the city morgue.

Janis was up when he let himself in quietly. She wasn't pacing the floor. She stood by the view window, staring westward, a drink in her hand. She didn't move to the attack, simply stood quietly, waiting for him to cross the room to her.

She didn't turn around until he reached her. The robe she was wearing looked like the same one she'd had on when she'd passed out on the couch that morning. Her hair was as untidy as a fouled bird's nest. Her eyes were glazed, her mouth slack. A sour odor came from her. She had a beautiful shiner.

"I'm sorry I'm late again, Janis," he said warily. "I got hung up. You saw my note?"

She nodded dully. "Yeah, I saw it."

Her words were thick; she was very drunk. But she seemed sunk in apathy and that puzzled him. A mouse of worry began to nibble at the edges of his mind. Something was drastically wrong. He took a deep breath and plunged ahead. "I got hung up by a friend of yours. Brewer. Or maybe you know him as Barnes. Carl Barnes. He's dead, Janis."

She blinked slowly and seemed to draw back into herself. "Carl's dead? How...? "

"He tried to kill me. We fought and he ended up dead. The police will probably be along soon to ask you a few questions about him."

Even that got very little reaction from her. She shrugged, tipped her head back and drained her glass.

"They'll also have some questions about Claire Duncan. You killed her, Janis. Or had her killed."

"I didn't kill anyone," she said sullenly. She walked around him and made her way unsteadily to the bar. She dropped two ice cubes in her glass and poured it full of straight gin.

"Maybe you didn't actually kill anyone, but you know who did. And you're involved up to your pretty little neck. You've been in it from the start, working overtime to make me the fall guy."

"You're the fall guy, all right." She laughed harshly. "You are indeed, cowboy!"

A rustling sound behind him brought Wade around. Russell Sylvester was just stepping out from behind the drapes by the big window. Wade wasn't at all surprised; somehow he had suspected all along that the man was involved. He held a gun in his left hand. It didn't seem to be pointing anywhere in particular, yet Wade knew instinctively that the man was good with it and could shoot him down before he could take a step.

"That'll do, Janis. Put a zipper on it," Sylvester said in his hoarse voice. "You've said enough already."

"Sure, sure," she mumbled in defiance. Wade heard her glass thump on the bar. "It's always me. Nobody else does anything wrong around here. Now it's Carl. He's bungled, too. Did you hear about Carl?"

"I heard. We only have the cowboy's word for that. And lay off the sauce!" His voice took on a drillmaster's snap, and a whimper came from Janis as though he'd struck her.

Sylvester transferred his melancholy gaze to Wade. "Hello, cowboy." His doleful clown's smile flickered. "Long time no see."

"You can take my word for Barnes. He's dead, Sylvester. Or is it Sylvester?"

The man shrugged thin shoulders. "The name's Garth Holmes. No reason you shouldn't know now." He took the inhaler from his coat pocket and sniffed twice. "Damn sinuses."

Wade restrained an absurd impulse toward laughter. "Any relation to Sherlock?"

"Eh?" Holmes looked puzzled for a moment, then chuckled. "I see. I'm afraid not, Wade. I like to see a man retain his sense of humor no matter how hairy things get."

"It's a good thing or I really would be whacky by this time."

The man nodded. "Yes, I'm sorry about all that but it was necessary. I hope you believe that."

"Oh, I do, I do," Wade said dryly. "So I'm no longer Bart Evans?"

"Oh, you're still Bart Evans. That's what this is all about."

"Garth..., " Janis cried. "Are you going to stand there and talk all night? He said the police...."

"You just shut the hell up, you stupid bitch," Holmes said casually, "or I'll give you another shiner to match the one you've got."

Wade half turned so he could see Janis. Her alcohol-induced apathy was cracking. She glared at Holmes briefly, then defiantly splashed gin into her glass, weaved around the bar and to the couch, where she sat down with her back to them.

Holmes said, "I'd offer you a drink, cowboy, but I can't risk it. You might get some kooky idea of tossing liquor in my face, like the hero does in the movies when the bad guy has him under the gun. Then I'd have to shoot you and that would spoil the plan."

"Just what is the plan? Or am I never supposed to know?"

"No reason why you shouldn't know," Holmes drawled. "We've got some time to kill before I can tie it all up." He gestured toward the couch. "Why don't we get comfortable?"

Holmes pulled out a wing chair, placed it before the couch, motioned Wade into it, then sat down on the couch with the gun always pointing in Wade's direction. Holmes talked with evident relish. Janis didn't listen, or didn't seem to. She drank in sulking silence, getting up twice to replenish her drink.

Wade realized that he still knew almost nothing about Holmes, what he did for a living, et cetera, and he doubted he ever would. Even now, the man said nothing about his personal life. He had a monstrous ego, a pride in his Machiavellian deviousness, and evinced not the slightest remorse.

"Janis and I have had a thing going for quite a while, starting back in New York," Holmes began. "She's good in bed when she's not on the sauce." He flicked a glance at Janis with a curl of his lip. She gave no indication she had heard. "Be that as it may, we'd been planning a job on Bart, her ever-lovin', for quite some time. You see, he was very healthy in the long green department and Janis stood to inherit a bundle, should he demise prematurely. I had it all worked out so he'd die in an accident. But first I thought it best to get him out of New York, get him out here where he wasn't known. He didn't have a single relative, you see, which made it very nice. It was Janis' job to get him out here. She handled that rather well, I'll give her that. Then we got careless ... damn these sinuses!" He paused to use the inhaler. "When this is over, I'm getting the hell out of all this smog.

"Like I said, we got careless," he resumed. "It's funny what a strong libido can do to a man. Bart was still spending a great deal of time in New York on business. He came back unexpectedly one night and caught us with our pants down, so to speak. like all the corny iceman jokes you've ever heard." He snorted laughter.

"Only it wasn't very damn funny at the time. He was raving like a maniac. I had to shoot him and with his own gun, no less. And that blew it. There was no way in the world I could see to explain his death to the police and have a prayer of getting away with it. Oh, I got rid of his body, buried it where it'll never be found.

"But there was bound to be an investigation and I knew we wouldn't come out very clean. And even if we did, if it was finally put down as an unexplained disappearance, Janis would have to wait seven years for him to be declared legally dead so she could get her hands on all the loot. So we decided to scrape together what money we could and blow. There was quite a bit. He had a large bank account, both checking and savings, both available to Janis. But we didn't quite make it. It seems hubby had been suspicious for some time that we were playing fun and games and had hired a private snooper. That's where dear Carl came into the picture. Bart had hired him. That's how Bart knew I was bedded down with Janis on that particular night. Carl had given him the word. So, when Bart turned up missing, Carl smelled foul play, so to speak, and paid us a little visit. But that turned out all right. All he wanted was his cut. And he'd worked out a scheme that he figured entitled him to it. We'd simply find another Bart Evans. Since there was nobody out here that knew Bart at all well and since he had no relatives...."

"And that's where I came into the picture," Wade broke in.

"That's where you came into the picture, cowboy," Holmes said lazily. "It was my chore to find someone who resembled Bart. And you do, you know. You could have been brothers. Of course, you had to be unknown in Hollywood and have no close relations. You'll have to admit you fit the role as though type cast for it.

"The rest of the plan was a little more complicated but workable. As soon as it was time, you were to go into Dr. Hunter's nut farm as Bart Evans suffering from a mental breakdown. As soon as you were released you would have a fatal automobile accident. Dr. Hunter's identification, as a disinterested third party, plus the bereaved widow's, would have been enough to swing it. The casket would have been closed at the funeral, you being cut up pretty bad in the accident, and the few people who might have known either of you wouldn't get a gander at the corpse. Carl, a man of many talents, was an expert forger. He forged all the papers and documents we needed...."

"And then Claire Duncan came into the picture," Wade said.

Holmes' face contorted in a grimace of pure rage. "Claire Duncan! That nympho, junkie bitch! Naturally, you had to get hot pants for her. I followed you home with her that night. I thought if you didn't get too hung up on her, maybe I could still put the snatch on you when you came out and still go on with the plan. But you stayed in there so damn long I started stewing. I saw all the work I'd put in going up in smoke. So I went in. The front door wasn't even locked, for hell's sake! Duncan's death was something of an accident. She stumbled onto me in the living room and started yowling at the top of her lungs. I had no choice but to shut her up before she brought the whole building in on me...."

Janis stirred. "You panicked, you mean. You lost your head." Her voice was surprisingly clear. "Just like you did with Bart. You loused that up, too."

Holmes turned to her and hit her, almost casually, across the mouth, knocking her off the couch and onto the floor.

Taking advantage of the man's brief inattention, Wade came up out of the chair like a scalded cat. He launched himself at Holmes, his hands going for the throat. But Holmes' reflexes were too quick. He leaped aside in time, just far enough, and Wade sprawled ignom-iniously across the couch, his knees on the floor, his arms on the couch, as though in an attitude of. prayer.

Then the gun smashed down on his head. Bright light burst inside his skull. He spiraled down and down into darkness.