Bedside Murder

John D. MacDonald Bedside Murder

Chapter I

He made me want to laugh. If my case of the jumps hadn’t been so bad, I would have laughed. Maybe he could have been at ease and charming with college girls. He had a face he could have used to be charming with. One of those Mephistopheles faces, but young and nice around the eyes. Crinkly. It was flattering the way he acted as though I were Helen of Troy, just hurled into his lap.

I had to repeat my name twice before it got by the glaze in his brown eyes. He stuck two fingers under the knot in his necktie and pulled it.

“Ah, yes,” he said hoarsely. “Henrietta Ryan.” He pretended as though it meant something. The name couldn’t possibly have meant a thing to him.

The office was new and dean and small. Kimberly Hale, Attorney-at-Law. No girl. I guessed he used the public stenographer whose sign I had seen in the lobby of the musty old office building on Fortieth.

I had no appointment I hadn’t even phoned. When you have the jumps as bad as I had them, you don’t consider the niceties. I sat in the chair he made the aimless gesture at.

“My friends call me Hank,” I said.

He stared at me as though I were Truman and had just asked him to call me Harry. “I’m Kim,” he said weakly.

Maybe he wouldn’t have had such an extreme reaction to Harry. In my business I’m forced to be spectacular. Nature helped by giving me soft silver hair and smoke-gray eyes — and a figure that I have inadvertently overheard described in words no lady would repeat. I further the illusion with the right clothes and a sunlamp that gives me a tan the color of warm honey.

He stared at me, popped up and adjusted the blinds behind his desk to keep the light out of my eyes. I took my cigarettes out of the red lizard purse and he scampered around the desk with a lighter, banging his leg heartily against one of the desk corners. After he sat opposite me, he pulled himself together again, squared his shoulders.

“What is your trouble, Miss Ryan?”

I puffed a fat and perfect smoke ring which looped nicely over his pen on the desk set.

“Somebody is trying to kill me,” I said. “I’d like to assure a — certain degree of failure on their part.”

The remains of the smoke ring flattened out against the top of his desk in an expanding gray pool. There was a frantic note in his voice.

“People just don’t come into law offices with that sort of thing,” he said. “What’s the matter with the police?”

“I think the police are fine. In fact, my father was a cop.”

“Then you better tell them about this. I... I wouldn’t know what to do.”

He was becoming a shade brusque. I relaxed in his uncomfortable visitors’ chair, arching my back just the smallest bit. As his eyes began to glaze, I lowered my head, looked at him through the small thicket of eyelashes and smiled.

“Maybe you’d like to hear about it?” I asked.

He tried to say he did and he didn’t, at one and the same time.

“I thought of going to the police,” I said, “and I thought of going to some reliable detective agency. But I don’t want an obvious bodyguard. I’m afraid my unknown friend is a little too clever to be stopped by such a move. I have friends who would help me, but I prefer a stranger.”

“Did... did someone mention me?” he asked.

“I found your name in the book. How busy are you?”

He regained his dignity. “Quite busy. I have some estate work and... and... quite a bit of estate work.”

I unclipped the purse again, took out one of the five new bills I had picked up at the bank an hour before. A five hundred dollar bill. I put it neatly on the corner of his desk, smiled at him again.

“Shall we call that a retainer?” I said.

He stood up suddenly, turned to the window and shoved his hands in his pockets. When he turned back there was no shade of expression on his face.

“I’m afraid, Miss Ryan, that I’d rather not get into this sort of thing. I’m sure the police would—”

It wasn’t an act on my part. The tears were just there. You can fight something for just so long, and then it’s too much. They rolled down my cheeks and I knew my mouth was trembling. I couldn’t look at him. He handed me a big, white, crisp handkerchief and made small soothing sounds.

After I had blotted up the tears, I looked up. He was sitting on the edge of the desk.

“Suppose you tell me about it,” he said softly.

“My professional name is Laura Lynn,” I said.

His eyes widened. “Some quality in your voice, the huskiness—”

I smiled through the remnants of tears. “It isn’t natural. When I was thirteen I was playing football with the kids on the block and got kicked in the throat.”

“All women ought to be kicked in the throat,” he said warmly, then caught himself. “Ah — you’re singing at the Staccato Club now, aren’t you?”

“Yes, backed up by Sonny Rice and his band. I’ve been there six months and, according to Sam Lescott, the owner, I’ll be there another six. I make recordings on the side, do some guest spot work in radio and so on.”

“What makes you think someone is trying to kill you?” he asked, frowning.