Naked and Alone

Naked and Alone

A PI Johnny Amsterdam Mystery

Lawrence Lariar

CHAPTER 1

I waded through the lush carpeting in the lobby of the Coral Apartments. The place stank of upper-class elegance, all marble and dark woods and a silence you could cut with a knife. I crossed the lobby and headed for Apartment 1B, Kay Randall’s nest, whistling her theme song, the little number that made her famous maybe ten years ago. She was back from France now, and I would be hearing it often. I would be hearing it straight from the larynx, complete with Kay herself. The idea made me hop down the hall even faster. You can’t think of a doll like Kay Randall without feeling your corpuscles leap and bounce.

I pressed the buzzer and held my breath, as shivery as a high-school kid on his first date. Inside the apartment, high heels tapped toward me. And inside my vest, mounting blood pressure kept time with the rhythm of her heels. I was anticipating the sight of her; the sleek, well-stacked chassis and my first big grab at it, followed by the first big kiss. I ran my fingers through my hair. I spread my arms like Al Jolson singing Mammy.

Then the door opened.

And I felt like a damned fool.

Because Kay wasn’t Kay at all.

The girl before me was a tall silhouette against the dull background of the little hall behind her. But I could tell from the size of her and the shape of her that this was not Kay Randall.

I must have buzzed the wrong bell, I said. Sorry.

Stinker, she said. You’ve got a bad head for old friends, Johnny Amsterdam.

She clicked on the light as she said the sentence and the hall flooded with brilliance.

Jordice! I yipped, and reached for her. She came willingly, a bundle of soft curves, and the way she kissed me revived old memories. Jordice Gray, as I live and breathe!

You breathe heavy, as usual, she said. Are you coming in or do I have to whistle Dixie?

Try and stop me, I said.

She took my hand and led me inside, through the hall and into a commodious living room, neatly decorated and reflecting Kay’s delicate personality. She sat me down and put a drink in my hand. She got one for herself and joined me on the couch. It was like old times, sitting this close to Jordice. She was built for entertainment, tall, but not in the lean and hungry fashion. The red silk blouse was a second skin around her more than ample breasts. She had a striking face, primitive and basic, with high cheekbones and a nose that came out of a long line of Roman ancestors. She had a light coffee complexion, dark coffee eyes and black coffee hair, loose over her smoothly rounded shoulders. If you put a rose in her mouth and a comb in her hair, she’d be Carmen.

Still the same old Johnny, she smiled. Or do all detectives unzip ladies with their eyes?

It’s a specialty of my agency, I apologized.

And how is your agency?

Business is picking up, especially since Kay called me a couple of hours ago.

What kind of business would that be? Jordice laughed, and the high good humor inside her came through easily in that husky laughter. You could get ideas from laughter like Jordice’s. All kinds of ideas. Or are you really the busy private investigator you used to be?

Never too busy for old friends, I said. Where’s Kay?

She’s out on a dinner date, Johnny. She’ll be back soon.

Did she say when?

Do you care?

I can wait, so long as you stay with me, I said.

Are you making a pass at me? So soon?

Am I supposed to?

Gags. I was as full of gags as a mortician making an estimate. Jordice was easy to take. We had bumped heads together a long time ago, during the days when Jordice was a younger and friskier babe. She had danced in an uptown bistro, but she performed for me, too, in private and without music. Jordice still retained the billowing fullness of ripe femininity, overlaying the lithe muscles of a good professional dancer. And she was holding my hand and playing cute, the way she used to operate in the dim and distant past. But the fact that Kay Randall was missing spoiled the effect Jordice should have produced.

Kay sounded all upset when she called me, I said. Two hours ago she damn near fainted on the phone. She pleaded with me to come a-running. Matter of life and death, and all that kind of thing. What’s the gag? Or is she still batting a thousand in the wack league?

Kay’s in trouble, Johnny.

What kind of trouble?

I honestly don’t know.

Can’t you ad lib a little?

I can try, Jordice said. Have another drink, Johnny, and wipe that scowl off your ugly face. I’ll tell you what I know, but I don’t think it’ll add up to much for you. I ran into Kay down at NBC the other clay, the first time I’d seen her in a few years. She’d been over in France all this time, on some sort of a deal that her, husband, Paul Graham arranged.

Who in hell is Paul Graham?

Jordice shrugged her pretty shoulders. You’ll have to ask Kay that question. I gathered that Paul was her agent, a small-time operator who took her off to Europe on a soup and beans routine after she began to slide here in New York. When the end of her career came in view, Kay got really upset. You know how emotional she is. Well, the way she tells it, Paul Graham offered her the only way out—a tour of Europe and some dates he had picked up that would guarantee her at least another year over there—and possibly a comeback. But the comeback never happened. Kay’s voice lost its appeal.

You mean she’s all washed up?

She sang her swan song over in Paris, Jordice said. She’s finished—especially since her husband died over there.

When did it happen?

Just a week or so ago. Paul Graham was killed in an auto accident in Paris. She came home to New York.

Broke? I asked.

Not quite, Jordice said, pointing out the lush décor in the apartment. Kay had enough money to rent this furnished palace. But you know how she is, Johnny—Kay believes in living it up. She probably figures she’s going to book another sponsor for a radio show in this place. It could happen.

Maybe it has happened already. Kay always found it easy to get herself an angel.

It isn’t a cheap apartment, Jordice admitted.

And you still think Kay’s paying her own way here?

You’ll have to ask Kay that one, Johnny.

You don’t seem to know much about your old pal.

I keep my nose clean, Jordice said. I’ve only seen Kay twice since she came back. I figure it this way—when she feels the urge to tell me things, why, I’ll listen to her. But you won’t find me playing question and answer games with anybody, Johnny. I’m the quiet type.

So you are, baby. It was true. Jordice had a deep loyalty for old friends. She knew all about Kay’s ancient loves, from the time when Jordice and Kay both began their careers in the chorus line of a small club uptown, The Green Box. They had roomed together then, but Kay started up the ladder after that. Jordice remained on the line until she became attracted to the outside world by various and sundry interests, some of which wore pants. All this had happened long ago, during that happy time when Jordice and I played together. Jordice was free and easy, friendly and warm, a girl who admitted she had the morals of a mink injected with testosterone.

Jordice poured again and tried to entertain me with sly talk.

Tell me about yourself, Johnny, she said. I hear you’ve become a great detective.

I get along. But I’m not getting very far here.

You’re not trying.

I’d still like to know why Kay called me over.

Please, Jordice begged. She’ll be back soon. Can’t you forget about her while I’m here? You’re making me feel like a failure, Johnny. I don’t like to see you looking angry, not while you’re with me.

Angry? I had been through the same stall-and-tease with Kay before. It could be that she was trying to play wrap around the finger, the way she used to in the days when she could make me jump through hot hoops. But I no longer responded to corny feminine pranks. Kay had phoned me on business and I was giving up another client tonight for the sake of friendship. She had cooed her distress to me over the wire, and now she was giving me a new routine—a stand-up with a stand-in. And despite the fact her substitute knew how to make the marrow melt in my bones, I couldn’t quite kill my annoyance with Kay Randall.

It showed, too. Jordice saw it all.

You mustn’t go, Johnny, she said. Her eyes were wide open and loaded with worry. She had beautiful eyes, and the touch of her hand on mine warmed up my memory of her, complete with all the important details. Kay really needs you.

She didn’t tell you where she went?

I’d tell you if I knew, Jordice said. Relax, Johnny. What’s a little more time to you?

You’re twisting my arm, baby. She was right, of course, so I checked my pride. I had another hooker of Scotch, and still another. Jordice lifted her glass to mine in a quiet toast. Then she downed her shot as if it were a chocolate soda. Through it all, she was watching me carefully, hell bent on liquoring me up so that I’d lose track of time. And she knew my capacity, out of the joyful days when we had been through beverage-busts together. After the next hooker, I began to forget about Kay a little. I began to forget that she had called me frantically, her voice trembling with fear. Because Jordice held my mind in the present, on her ripe mouth, on the smooth white column of her throat …

A little penny for your thoughts, she laughed, catching me on the way down.

I was thinking of Kay again.

The hell you were.

All right, I laughed. You’re a mind reader. I was thinking about you and me, Jordice. I was remembering the old days.

I’ve gained a bit of weight since then.

Only in the right places.

You still know the nice words, Jordice said. She took my glass and crossed the room to the bottle again. She walked naturally, without deliberate exaggeration, yet the movement was a symphony of seductive havoc. It was hard to take. On the return trip, she caught the heat in my eye and hovered, bending slowly to hand me the glass. And your eyes, she said, are still operating on the same wavelength, Johnny.

You haven’t changed much either, I told her. Sit down here and let me do some more research.

Physical or mental? she asked.

Tell me about yourself, Jordice. What do you do besides playing Girl Scout for Kay?

I have a job. Nothing important.

Married?

I was. But I’m not the type, I guess. I don’t work at it anymore.

Too bad, I said. Or is it good?

I like it. I’m a divorcee.

You look happy, baby.

Jolly Jordice is what they call me. She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue, a gesture that stabbed deep into my memory and made my internal heater snap on. And when she smiled at me, the furnace began to boil. She let me pull her my way. Do you remember what you used to call me, Johnny?

I said the funny word and she let me kiss her. She had a lush mouth, and the mouth was taking me out of the present, down the road that would dead-end on the couch. She was making me forget all about Kay. But completely. When I drink, when the Scotch bites deep, everything fuzzes up for me. It was fogging now, feathery and gray and nicely clouded. What kind of a game was I playing now? Suppose Kay walked in and found me wound up in Jordice’s arms? The questions buzzed and hummed in my brain. But after a while, the feel of her tongue kicked my conscience in the pants and brought me back to the task at hand.

Stop looking at your watch, Jordice complained petulantly. You make me feel like a short beer between trains.

I broke away from her, pretending need of an errand to the john. Something made me take a small walk for myself, a quick tour of the apartment. It didn’t seem right for Kay to keep me waiting so long. It was out of character for her. Kay loved to tease, to whet the appetite, yet her sort of babe always made a point of showing up before the victim quit. Why was she late now? A quick thought skipped through my mind. Maybe Kay had come in through another door. Maybe she was asleep now, in the bedroom, drunk. Maybe Jordice was lying to me.

I strolled through the square hall that led to the kitchen, the bedroom and the john. The place was as neat as Kay herself, a masterpiece of tidy housekeeping. Around the walls, on the odd tables and in the cute corners, I saw the unmistakable touches of Kay’s personality, the miniatures and porcelains she loved to collect,

I detoured into the bedroom and looked around. A huge bed was planted in the dead center of the room, a tufted square of comfort and coziness, covered with a bright red throw that sang with color against the beige walls. My mind recreated the picture of Kay on a mattress of this type. The memory stalled me in the bedroom for an extra few minutes, wondering about her, trying to estimate the reason for her frantic phone call.

I backtracked through the hall and into the living room. Jordice eyed me with curiosity.

Taking a detective’s walk? she asked. Or is it just idle snoopishness that gives you that preoccupied look?

I was wondering about Kay, I said. Why she’s late.

Jordice refilled my glass. The stuff was beginning to fog my eyes. But nothing could dim the sight and feel of the babe at my side. She ran her smooth fingers up my arm. I kissed her, thoroughly.

Maybe I don’t want Kay to come back any more, I said.

Maybe you’re drunk, Jordice said.

I never get that drunk.

Jordice was soft under my hand. She sighed.

Still thinking of Kay?

In the pig’s valise, I said. She had been leaning against me, letting me play with the small buttons on the back of her dress. There were three buttons back there. Two of them had snapped open. The third would be easy, but I didn’t want to force it. Not with Jordice. She pulled away and stared at me, her eyes a bit dim, but still warm and curious about me. I tugged her back and she let herself come my way.