Another silence. Maybe his arm was around her waist. The arm with the restless fingers.
“Drink your drink, Archie.”
He laughed. “In a hurry?” he asked.
“Yes. A big hurry.”
“Can’t keep a lady waiting.” I heard his glass come down hard on the table. “Take ’em off, baby.”
She didn’t say anything. It was worse than if she’d spoken. I backed away from the wall as though I’d been slugged. From the other room came scattered sounds, some of them indistinct, some of them I could label. She had taken her shoes off, for the soft thumping beats on the floor were her stockinged feet padding to the chair. She liked to wear suits. Maybe now she was laying her jacket neatly across the back of the chair. Then the skirt would be unhooked and slipped down over her hips. She’d fold it carefully.
“Put out the light, Archie.”
“I like the light on. I like to look at you.”
“Please,” she said. “Please put it out.”
He knocked the glass from the table and swore drunkenly. I heard him flick the wall switch. Then a soft thud that I couldn’t identify.
Then his voice. “Come here, baby! Com’ere!”
I closed my eyes. That made it worse. I could see her walking toward him, her head back, a smile on her beautiful lips. It was dark in there, but there was white light behind my eyes.
The cheap bedsprings creaked. She was in his arms. In his arms . . .
“You’re the best,” he said. He was very drunk. Not just tight anymore, but drunk. I knew why.
“Am I the best, Archie?”
“You always were. Those other two . . .” He stopped speaking.
“What about them?”
“They’re just women.” His voice was muffled. “You’re the princess.”
“We’re all just women, Archie. All three of us.”
There were no more words after that. Just sounds. The sound of the bed, the sound of movement, the sounds from his throat. Nothing from her. She was quiet. She generally was. Not always, though. There had been a night, a long night in New York.
But he made sounds. Moans. Then he made a particular moan—but I only heard the beginning of it. My hands were gripping the edge of the bed and something merciful flooded my brain, drowning out all sound. I couldn’t have stood it otherwise. I’d have opened the door and killed them both.
After a while the roaring was gone from my head. It was over in there. It had been quick. Archie had been too full of liquor, too exhausted from months of hard riding on a trail that was downhill all the way. He had probably passed out.
All I could hear now was her dressing. She seemed to be moving around quickly, and stumbling into things. Why the hell didn’t she turn the light on? What was there to be so modest about now? Maybe she didn’t want to see herself in the bureau mirror. That might remind her of me, and of all that had happened in New York. Maybe she was as disgusted with herself as I was.
Her heels were clicking toward the door. It opened and she went out, walking fast past my door and out of the little hotel.
I moved to the window. She came out and stood in the overhead light for a moment before turning in the direction of La Cantada. She wore a two-piece green suit and a large-brimmed white hat. Her legs were as long and as beautiful as they’d always been. Her figure still stopped the beat of my heart. I loved her as much as I had before she’d gone to his room.
She passed the bar and kept going. For a moment she was swallowed by the darkness. Then two red taillights blinked on. They moved away from the curb and faded out of sight down the narrow road.
I felt suddenly empty, all life sucked out of me. I had come down here with good reason to kill Archie St. George—for what he had done to her.
But apparently I was the only one it made any difference to. She’d certainly shown me how it was on her part. Then I knew that if I wasn’t going to kill him for her, I was going to do it for myself.
I walked to the door, making a lot of noise about it, hoping that he’d hear me and be waiting with a gun in his hand. That’s how I wanted it to be now. There was nothing to be careful about anymore, nothing to go back to.
I pulled the door open. It was pitchdark and I stood for a moment in the doorway, a dark target but a target nevertheless if he had guts left for a fight.
His body took form on the bed. He was sprawled on his stomach, out cold. I went and snapped the light switch. His head was sideways on the pillow, facing me. The face was still good looking, still tough looking, even with the mouth open and the lips slack. You couldn’t take that away from Archie. He was a son of a bitch, but he was a handsome son of a bitch.
Then I found out you could take it away from him. There was a splash of red on the sheet, widening out from beneath his body even as I stared at it. I put my hand beneath his shoulder and raised him. Then I turned him completely on his back. Sticking between two ribs was a knife, a knife I’d seen once before. Its shaft pointed downward and its long thin blade had to be in his heart from an angle as sharp as that.
I pulled it loose. I lifted an end of the sheet, wiped it clean and dropped it in my inside jacket pocket. Then I looked around the room. Beneath the chair was her compact. That was the soft thud I’d heard. She’d gotten the knife out of her purse as soon as he’d turned the light out. The compact had slipped to the floor. Either she hadn’t heard it or had forgotten about it as she dressed in the dark and left. I put it beside the knife.
I spent two more minutes wiping surfaces with my handkerchief. Chair, bureau, bed, doorknob—anything she might have touched.
Then I gave them a mystery. I locked his hall door and moved the bureau in front of it. I took the key to the adjoining door—which had been on my side—and tied a length of thread from the spool in my pocket to the end of it. I passed the thread through the old-style keyhole, closed the door from my side, relocked the door with my skeleton and then pulled the key up into the lock. When it was in place, its handle on his side, I slit the slipknot in the thread.
I take nothing from the Mexican police, local or national. But they would have a good time with a dead man in a room locked securely from both sides and with no access to the second floor window.
Then I got the hell out of there. Fast.
TWO
“BARNEY,” he said, “meet Kyle Shannon.”
It was a pleasure to meet Kyle Shannon, even though it was through Archie St. George; even though he stood with his hands on the back of her chair, fingers all but touching her slender neck; even though the eyes which she could not see were asking me: How’d you like a night with this, kid? How’d you like it?
I dropped my glance to hers. She would be tall when she stood up. Her face was an angular heart, rounded only at the chin. She
