Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 12 Read Online Free PDF Page B

asked, “How did the audition go this morning?”
    “It wasn’t an audition,” she said.
    “I thought it was an audition.”
    “It wasn’t. It was a doctor’s appointment.”
    “Doctor’s . . . are you all right?”
    “Yes. No. I don’t know.”
    I scooched around beside her in the booth, slipped an arm around her. “Peg, what’s wrong?”
    “I was late.”
    “Late?”
    “You know . . . late ?”
    I couldn’t be hearing this.
    “And I’m never late,” she went on, her tone as light as a Noel Coward play, and as ominous as an obituary, “so I made a doctor’s appointment . . . just to be safe, you know? I’m pregnant, all right.”
    “Well,” I said thickly, “that’s . . . that’s wonderful.”
    “Wonderful?” The violet eyes glared at me: are you insane? “You can’t be serious. This couldn’t come at a worse time.”
    She didn’t know how right she was, but I said, “It’s a great time—we’re newlyweds and we’re going to be parents. That’s great. It’s the American dream.”
    “It’s a nightmare. It doesn’t fit in with our plans at all!”
    “Our plans?”
    “Nate, I’m going to be in a movie next week. I have an agent. My dreams are all coming true.”

    “Don’t you have any dreams that involve me, and starting a family?”
    She sighed impatiently, glancing away. “Of course I do . . . just not right now.”
    “What are you suggesting?”
    “I think we should . . . consider . . . you know.”
    “Consider what?”
    “Must I say it?”
    “. . . Getting rid of it?”
    Now her manner turned businesslike. “Surely, with your connections, you know people that could . . . take care of this.”
    My connections again.
    “Peggy,” I said, scooching away a little, pawing the air, “no more discussion. You’re having this baby. We’re having this baby.”
    She huffed, she puffed, she blew my house down: “I should have known you’d take that selfish attitude.”
    Whatever happened to the good old days, when you knocked up a woman, she tried to talk you into getting married, and you tried to talk her into having an abortion instead?
    “You’re my wife,” I said, “and I love you, and you’re going to be the mother of my . . . of our . . . child.”
    “You’re impossible,” she said, and she began to cry, and when I tried to comfort her, she slapped at me and rushed off to the powder room. Other patrons glared at me, wondering what terrible thing I’d done to this poor girl.
    I took the opportunity to use the pay phone to try the number at the Biltmore. I let it ring and ring and ring.
    Finally a male voice answered. “This is a pay phone.”
    “I know. Is there a pretty girl sitting there, waiting in the lobby? Dark hair, almost black? Real dish?”
    “Yeah, I seen her, she was hangin’ around awhile. She blew, though.”
    “Thanks.”
    Shrugging, I hung up; what the hell—what had been her damn rush, anyway? Beth Short knew where to find me.

    So I leaned against the wall outside the ladies’ powder room, nodding to Bogart and Bacall as they strolled by, heading to the bar; Bogart nodded back and Bacall bestowed a smile. Nice couple. Glad somebody was happily married.
    Well, at least I could be sure of something: I might be one fertile son of a bitch, but none of the women in my life wanted to have my kid.

3
    Flies were not alone in swarming around the milky-white cleaved cadaver in the weedy vacant lot on South Norton Avenue—within minutes of Bill Fowley abandoning me by driving off to make his phone call, cops and reporters and assorted rubberneckers were getting grisly glimpses.
    It began slowly, with another radio patrol car pulling up, a uniformed sergeant who’d been cruising Slauson having heard the 390 call. Though he was older, and obviously experienced, the sarge whitened and shook his head and backed away from the body, mumbling, “Man oh man oh man.” Shortly thereafter a blue ’41 Ford with a press