Free Getting Away With Murder by Howard Engel Page B

of long-standing arrangement that might allow for Anna to not see me for a couple of weeks. The last thing I wanted was to have Anna know more about Abe Wise than was good for her. I had already quizzed her during dinner about her responsibilities at the university. She couldn’t take any time off and that was that. What would have happened to her, I wondered, if she had been with me when Mickey and the Three Stooges paid their call?
    “Do you remember what I was saying?”
    “You were talking about … No, I don’t remember. You caught me fair and square.”
    “Well, you’re honest, at least.” She was looking at me. I knew it, but I couldn’t return her gaze. I wasn’t sure what I might not say once I was caught staring into Anna’s salamandrine eyes.
    “Let’s start again. Okay? I’ll try harder. I’m not the rat fink you think I am. I’m just careworn from a bad day at the office.”
    “Office. You haven’t been in your office for hours. I tried calling you there umpteen times. You’re not going to tell me what this is all about, are you?”
    “This is something you don’t want to get involved in.
    “Benny, you’re always saying that the only way to protect yourself from the consequence of having guilt knowledge is to pass it around. Secrets get people killed. You say it all the time! Well, why not take your own advice? What’s going on in your life that I should know about? Are you tracking down a serial killer? Are the fuzz about to bust you for non-payment of your many secret operatives spread out across the nation, around the world?”
    “Very funny!”
    “Maybe it isn’t business at all. Let me think about that. The blonde hasn’t arrived to displace me, has she?” Anna has always been kidding me about my falling for a blonde bombshell with no brain and a full bra. I know it is just a joke, but she brings it out whenever she’s feeling peculiar about our arrangements. We have been seriously not living together off and on for nearly three years. I could go on like this forever, but Anna and Anna’s father would like some resolution to the informality. My own parents are noisily silent on the subject. I get looks across the table when Anna’s name is mentioned. I catch exchanged glances and sense the undercurrent in the room. I once was kicked under the table when Pa got close to the subject of rabbis and invitations. I didn’t know how to pass along the warning from Ma, but my father got the idea from my cry of pain.
    “The blonde is in the closet under my laundry,” I said. Anna looked over at the closet door then back at me.
    “She’s very quiet.”
    “She’s well brought up. Breeding does it every time.”
    “Is that a reproach to my father’s new money?” she said, brushing a lock of hair back where it belonged.
    “You know I’m indifferent to your old man’s millions. It’s your body I’m mad about.”
    “What about the blonde under the laundry? Doesn’t she have a body? Maybe she can’t pull herself away from your smalls.”
    “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Dirty shorts are a very big kick. Maybe not my kick, but a kick nevertheless. Come over here.”
    “Aren’t you saving yourself for her?” I answered the question by getting up and walking around the table. The next half-hour has no place in the report about Abe Wise’s call on my professional services. Although I hadn’t answered Anna’s questions, I had forgotten that she had asked them. Maybe she had too. It was a long time before I thought of Abe Wise or of his minions stationed across the street.
    The light was gone when I rolled over. The candles had guttered out in silence while I caught thirty winks in Anna’s warm arms.
    “She isn’t making much noise in there,” Anna said at length.
    “I thought you were asleep.”
    “I was, but I was feeling sorry for the woman with your smalls.”
    “I told you; she likes it in there.”
    “Until I’m gone and then she jumps out to behave