Kisses of Death. Henry Kane
I said. “Actually, my opinion is no compliment to you. Simply, you don’t need it, Miss Trent.”
“Why the formality, Peter? The client is in the library, remember?”
“I keep forgetting. Quite a beautiful chick, eh?” That was a second stab, even more ponderously subtle.
“A bitch.” That retort was disappointing, too typical.
“Bitch?” I said trying to sound horrified.
“A cheater. A cheater is a bitch. I don’t like cheaters.”
“The lady is a cheater?”
“The lady is a bitch. If you’re in love with a bartender, then toss up the vice president, I always say.”
“A bartender?” I said. “She doesn’t appear to be the type.”
“The vice president is handsome, but so is the bartender. I cannot speak for the husband’s bedroom proclivities, but the bartender is quite an agile performer.”
“Were you there?” I said.
“I’ve looked at pictures,” she said.
“So that’s the bit?” I said.
“Frankly,” she said, “I don’t know what in hell the bit is. At first I thought it was the normal desire for the acquisition of evidence for divorce. Now I’m beginning to believe it’s something far more complex. The vice president may even be bitchier than the bitch.”
“The vice president, I take it, is your client?”
“Sorry, confidential,” she said.
“He retained you to gather up the evidence, I take it.”
“Sorry, confidential,” she said.
“I stood up staunch for you against the blackmail.”
“I repeat, you’re sweet.”
“I am also trying, pulled away from breakfast on a Saturday morning, to earn a fee.”
“Noblesse oblige,” she said. “Professional courtesy can be broadened to professional confidence. You are sweet and I do believe you did stand up for me.”
I beheld in awe, as she clicked a peg of her intercom and said, “Willie, would you go get the Kiss file and bring it in to me, please?”
“Your wish is my command, dearly beloved.”
Hurriedly, I lit a cigarette. The blue eyes regarded me enigmatically. I smoked with all the deliberate insouciance I could muster. Natuarlly I choked, restraining a cough, but coughing enough to demolish any cigarette commercial.
“I’ve begun to believe that it’s the husband that’s the weirdo.”
“Beg pardon?” I said.
“Willie agrees with me. It began as a simple matter of obtaining evidence for divorce, except that the client was willing to pay real good. Ten thousand bucks, the expenses ours.”
“That’s good enough unless it’s complicated.”
“No complications. Straight adultery.”
“When did it start?”
“The adultery?”
“Your being retained.”
She closed her eyes, thinking, and it was restful: it was as though Klieg lights had been turned off. Then she opened her eyes and I was back to smoking, furiously.
“Right after New Years,” she said. “January Third. The guy called for an appointment, came into the office, and told us his story. The old story. He had a feeling his wife was cheating and he wanted to know. He wanted to know with all the proof. He wanted tape recordings and he wanted pictures. On the pictures he wanted a double-header.”
“You lost me,” I said.
“Tapes are tapes. Now look, Peter, don’t go ingenuous on me. You seem to be in the mood to play the little boy this morning, but sweetie, I know how much you’ve been around.”
That finished the cigarette. I squeezed it out, said, “So?”
“Tapes are aural, practically secondary evidence in a courtroom.”
“Plus you have to prove the voices.”
“And tapes can be faked.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Also, as you very well know, tapes are mostly for the masochistic kick, to listen, to hear what’s going on. If all he would have required was tape, then we’d have known he was a weirdo right off the bat.”
“But he also wanted pictures. A double-header.”
“Which made him a husband seeking evidence for divorce.”
“Provided the double-header on the pictures means what I think it means.”
“You’re in the business. You know. The tape and one set of pictures for him. The second set of pictures kept right here in the office. Dig?”
“I do,” I said. “No weirdo. Straight goods. Par for the course. It takes a lot of doing, time and expense, to obtain the evidence, but if the wife catches up with the bit, she might destroy tape and pictures, and the guy’s got nothing to show for his trouble. And once she’s wise, she also reforms, or she does her cheating more carefully, and the guy can’t even get himself his divorce. With a duplicate set of pictures in the office of his operator, he’s got insurance.”
“Very good, dear Peter. It’s nice to have you coming out of your Saturday morning fog.”
“Not fog, dear Marla. Daze. Whoever isn’t dazed by your dazzling presence ought to go see his doctor to check his reactions.”
“Well, thank you. Not bad for Saturday morning. Not at all bad.”
“Thank you. So let’s get back to Jonathan Kiss.”
“He laid ten big ones on the line, and he was a client. Actually, it was routine stuff. Willie handled it, with, of course, Willie’s customary skill.”
“So when did he become a weirdo?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
The door between the offices swung open and William Boyd Winkle’s broad bulk filled the doorway, jamb to jamb.
FIVE
WILLIAM BOYD WINKLE was as much an anomaly in his way as Marla Trent was in hers. In a profession dominated by plug-uglies William Boyd Winkle was also a Doctor of Philosophy who had majored in abnormal psychology and whose thesis for his doctorate, like Marla’s, had been concerned with criminology. Unlike Marla, however, William Boyd Winkle had been an all-American fullback at Notre Dame, an intercollegiate wrestling champion, and an undefeated wrestler three years running at the Olympic Games. He stood perfectly balanced at six feet two, massive-shouldered, flat-bellied, and homely-handsome with a broken nose. Naturally, he had been nicknamed Wee Willie Winkle. He was soft of speech and easy of manner and slow to anger but when the fuse gave out he could be dangerous. Adding anomaly to anomaly, he was a scholar of the Bible and a scholar of Shakespeare and he had turned down a full professorship at Michigan State for the dubious distinction of private detection, joining with Marla in founding the richly successful Marla Trent Enterprises. It was common knowledge that there had never been a romance between them—each had previously been married, Marla divorced and Willie widowed—and it was common knowledge that there would never be a romance between them, first because their appeal to one another was strictly cerebral, and second because they both subscribed to the pragmatic adage that sexual byplay in commercial venture tends to befoul the business nest.
“To what do we owe the pleasure?” said Willie to Marla.
“Mr. Chambers