Dangerous Women

When Leonid moved to kiss Katrina she leaned away and he laughed.

“Why don’t you leave me?” he asked.

“Who would raise our children if I did that?”

This caused Leonid to laugh even harder.

He reached Babette’s Feast at nine-fifteen. He ordered a double espresso and stared at the legs of a mature woman seated at the bar. She was at least forty but dressed as if she were fifteen. Leonid felt the stirrings of the first erection he’d had in over a week.

Maybe that’s why he called Karmen Brown on his cell phone. Her voice had sounded as if it should be clad in a dress like that.

When the call was answered Leonid could tell that she was outside.

“Hello?”

“Miss Brown?”

“Yes.”

“This is Leo McGill. You left a message for me?”

“Mr. McGill. I thought you were in Florida.” The roar of an engine almost drowned out her words.

“I’m sorry if it’s hard to hear me,” she said. “There was a motorcycle going down the street.”

“That’s okay. How can I help you?”

“I’m having a problem and, and, well it’s rather personal.”

“I’m a detective, Miss Brown. I hear personal stuff all the time. If you want me to meet with you then you’ll have to tell me what it’s about.”

“Richard,” she said, “Mallory. He’s my fiance and I think he’s cheating on me.”

“And you want me to prove it?”

“Yes,” she said. “I don’t want to marry a man who will treat me like that.”

“How did you get my name, Miss Brown?”

“I looked you up in the book. When I saw where your office was I thought that you must be good.”

“I can meet you sometime tomorrow.”

“I’d rather meet tonight. I don’t think I’ll get any sleep until this thing is settled.”

“Well,” the detective hesitated. “I have a meeting at ten and then I’m going to see my girlfriend.” It was a private joke, one that the young Miss Brown would never understand.

“Maybe I can meet you before you see your girlfriend,” Karmen suggested. “It should only take a few minutes.”

They agreed on a pub on Houston two blocks east of Elizabeth Street, where Gert Longman lived.

Just as Leonid was removing the hooked earphone from his ear Craig Arman entered the bistro. He was a large white man with a broad, kind face. Even the broken nose made him seem more vulnerable than dangerous. He wore faded blue jeans and a T-shirt under a large loose knit sweater. There was a pistol hidden somewhere in all that fabric, Leonid knew that. Nestor Bendix’s street accountant never went unarmed.

“Leo,” Arman said.

“Craig.”

The small table that Leonid had chosen was behind a pillar, removed from the rest of the crowd in the popular bistro.

“Cops got their package,” Arman said. “Our guy was in and out of his place in ten minutes. A quick call downtown and now he’s in the Tombs. Just like you said.”

“That means I can pay the rent,” Leonid replied.

Arman smiled and Leonid felt a few ounces being placed on his thigh under the table.

“Well, I got to go,” Arman said then. “Early to bed, you know.”

“Yeah,” Leonid agreed.

Most of Nestor’s boys didn’t have much truck with the darker races. The only reason Nestor ever called was that Leonid was the best at his trade.

Leonid caught a cab on Seventh Avenue that took him to Barney’s Clover on Houston.

The girl sitting at the far end of the bar was everything Katrina had once been except she was blonde and her looks would never fade. She had a porcelain face with small, lovely features. No makeup except for a hint of pale lip gloss.

“Mr. McGill?”

“Leo.”

“I’m so relieved that you came to meet me,” she said.

She was wearing tan riding pants and a coral blouse. There was a white raincoat folded over her lap. Her eyes were the kind of brown that some artist might call red. Her hair was cut short-boyish but sexy. Her tinted lips were ready to kiss babies’ butts and laugh.

Leonid took a deep breath and said, “I charge five hundred a day-plus expenses. That’s mileage, equipment rentals, and food after eight hours on the job.”

He had just received twelve thousand dollars from Craig Arman but business was business.

The girl handed him a large manila envelope.

“This is his full name and address. I have also included a photograph and the address of the office where he works. There’s also eight hundred dollars in it. You probably won’t need more than that because I’m almost sure that he’ll be seeing her tomorrow evening.”

“What you drinkin’, guy?” the bartender, a lovely faced Asian boy, asked.

“Seltzer,” the detective asked. “Hold the rocks.”

The bartender smiled or sneered, Leonid wasn’t sure which. He wanted a scotch with his fizzy water but the ulcer in his stomach would keep him up half the night if he had it.

“Why?” Leonid asked the beautiful girl.

“Why do I want to know?”

“No. Why do you think he’s going to see her tomorrow night?”

“Because he told me that he had to go with his boss to see The Magic Flute at Carnegie Hall. But there is no opera scheduled.”

“You seem to have it all worked out yourself. Why would you need a detective?”

“Because of Dick’s mother,” Karmen Brown said. “She told me that I wasn’t worthy of her son. She said that I was common and coarse and that I was just using him.”

The anger twisted Karmen’s face until even her ethereal beauty turned into something ugly.

“And you want to rub her face in it?” Leonid asked. “Why wouldn’t she be happy that her boy found another girl?”

“I think that the woman he’s seeing is married and older, way older. If I could get pictures of them then when I leave at least she won’t be so smug.”

Leonid wondered if that would be enough to hurt Dick’s mother. He also wondered why Karmen suspected that Dick was seeing an older married woman. He had a lot of questions but didn’t ask them. Why question a cash cow? After all, he had two rents to pay.

The detective looked over the information and glanced at the cash, held together by an oversized paper clip, while the young bartender placed the water by his elbow.

The photograph was of a man whom he took to be Richard Mallory. He was a young white man whose face seemed unfinished. There was a mustache that wasn’t quite thick enough and a mop of brown hair that would always defy a comb. He seemed uncomfortable standing there in front of the Rockefeller Center skating rink.

“Okay, Miss Brown,” Leonid said. “I’ll take it on. Maybe we’ll both get lucky and it’ll be over by tomorrow night.”

“Karma,” she said. “Call me Karma. Everybody does.”

Leonid got down to Elizabeth Street a little after ten-thirty. He rang Gert’s bell and shouted his name into the security microphone. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the roar of a passing motorcycle.

Gert Longman lived in a small studio on the third floor of a stucco building put up in the fifties. The ceiling was low but the room was pretty big and Gert had set it up nicely. There was a red sofa and a mahogany coffee table with cherry wood cabinets that had glass doors along the far wall. She had no kitchen but there was a miniature refrigerator in one corner with a coffee percolator and a toaster on top. Gert also had a CD player. When Leonid got there she was playing Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter tunes.

Leonid appreciated the music and said so.

“I like it,” Gert said, somehow managing to negate Leonid’s compliment.

She was a dark-ski