Free Coward's Kiss by Lawrence Block Page A

coaxing. Try coaxing in a rasp. It doesn’t come off. “One last chance, London. You’re a smart boy. I play very rough. How much do you want for it?”
    “Are you Bannister?”
    “I’m Al Capone,” he said. “What do you say, London?”
    I said: “Go to hell, Al.” And I hung up on him.
    I made coffee, filled and lit a pipe, sat down to think. I was pretty sure it was Bannister on the phone. I was just as sure that Bannister was X—that he had killed Sheila-Alicia himself or had ordered the killing.
    That left Z and it left Clay, so I put the two of them together. He was the one with the briefcase.
    It played itself out that far and it hit a snag. I couldn’t carry it any further. It looked as though Sheila-Alicia had teamed up with Clay to pull something on Bannister. Or as though Sheila-Alicia had something Bannister wanted, and she gave it to Clay, and then Bannister killed her. But there wasn’t much point in listing possibilities. First I needed more facts.
    Like Bannister’s name. Like Clay’s name.
    Like an idea of what was in the briefcase.
    I gave up for the time being, picked up the phone again and gave Maddy a ring. It was too early to call her, too early for her to be properly awake. I could have been polite, waited a few hours to call her, but I didn’t feel polite to begin with. Too many people had called me early in the morning for me to take anybody else’s sleep into consideration.
    Still, Maddy was special. And I felt guilty, expecting her to answer the phone with sleep coating her tongue and clogging her pores. She surprised me. Her hello was fresh and happy and very much awake.
    “Sleep well?”
    “It’s Ed,” she said gaily. “Hello, Ed. Yes, I slept well. Like a hibernating bear, sort of. Then I woke up and saw my shadow. Or is that with groundhogs? I guess it is. Anyway, I slept soundly and awoke bright-eyed and hungry. You missed a phenomenal breakfast, sir. Fresh orange juice and pancakes with real maple syrup and crisp bacon.”
    She said all this with one mouthful of air, then stopped and caught her breath. “And then it was all topped off with a phone call from you. How sweet! You’re still alive!”
    I laughed, picturing her in my mind. Her phone was by the side of her bed. She would be sitting on the edge of the bed with a cigarette in one hand and the phone in the other. She’d be wearing old slacks and a man’s shirt and she’d look lovely.
    “Damn you,” she said suddenly.
    “Why?”
    “Because you wouldn’t call at this hour just to be nice. I’m never awake this early and you know it. You’ve got some more detecting for me to do.”
    “I’m afraid you’re right.”
    “Damn you again. What is it?”
    “Clay.”
    “Clay,” she said. “You want more inside info on this off-Broadway behemoth. You want the high-up way-out lowdown on this murky man of mystery, this heavyweight hotster, this——”
    “You should be ghosting for Winchell.”
    “I’m a gal of many talents,” she said. “What do you want to know about him?”
    “Who he is.”
    “Oh,” she said heavily. “It couldn’t be something simple, like what he eats for breakfast or what brand of cigarettes he smokes. Cigars, I mean. It has to be——”
    “Just who he is. All I’ve got now is a name. I’d like a first name to go with it. If you can find out.”
    “Lee Brougham would know,” she said thoughtfully. “But he’s supposed to be in California. I told you that.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    She was silent for a minute. “This,” she said, “is going to be a bitch.”
    “I’m afraid you’re right.”
    “Hell of a conversation. You keep being afraid and I keep being right. Let me think this out for a minute, Ed. I can find out who directed ‘Hungry Wedding.’ Nobody would boast about it, but somebody must have directed the dog, and I can find out who. And he just might have a list of backers, which he just might let me look at. And Clay just might be on it. There’s no