Read The Big Kiss-Off of 1944: A Jack LeVine Mystery for Free Online Page B

fear, had found a comfortable spot in my stomach. Kerry Lane sounded terribly frightened, about something I was sure I knew nothing about. Maybe more than her budding career was on the line. Like her life. Like my life.
    One of the kids shooting craps looked to have rolled up about thirty-five cents so far. He was doing better than LeVine, who stripped down to his powder blue shorts and curled up on the couch. You’ll like the dream I had: having just finished a performance of some kind, I am sitting in front of a dressing-room mirror, the kind that’s ringed with forty-watt bulbs, rubbing cold cream on my face. Butler walks in with Roosevelt, Stalin, and Pete Gray, who had one arm and played outfield for the St. Louis Browns. He was the guy who would catch the ball in his glove, pop it up in the air while whipping off his glove, catch it in his bare hand and throw it back to the infield. Butler says, “Gentlemen, Jack here is a consummate performer,” and then points a gun at my head, which is when I woke up. I thought maybe I’d try and figure it out, using my best City College Introduction to Psychology, but decided against it. I had better things to do, like open a can of Spam, fry an egg over it, and call it supper.
    GI Canteen reminded me of why I never went to the theater anymore. Chorus boys prancing around in army outfits until I felt like puking; a number called “That’s How We Do It in the U.S.A.” in which a girl with tremendous knockers spilling out of her red, white, and blue bathing suit shot down a couple of guys made up to look like Hitler and Tojo, except that they looked like the butcher and the laundryman. Kerry Lane was so pale, even through the makeup, that Kitty nudged me the minute she walked on stage. Five years as a crime reporter does wonders for the intuition. After eating at Sardi’s we went back to her place on East 68th Street.
    Kitty’s apartment was a spacious one-bedroom affair with plants and vases and good taste radiating from every corner. She took my coat and asked if I’d care for some cognac. I said yes and went to the most comfortable-looking chair in the joint, where I lit a Lucky and thought about being in the apartment with Kitty. We’d had a funny kind of friendship over the past six months, a couple of divorced people making with the jokes and never really getting down to business. We had bedded down once, to nobody’s particular satisfaction. I was a little drunk and had pretended to be even drunker.
    Kitty came over with the cognac in a snifter and sat on my lap.
    “How tired are you, Jack?”
    “Very.”
    “I see.” She smiled and put her hand in my lap. Kitty’s rust-brown hair was piled high on her head and her green eyes shone with intelligence. “I had a wonderful time tonight, Jack. We seem to think very much alike.” She wasn’t making a pitch, just leveling. She emphasized her words by rubbing her hand, rolled into a small, loose fist, across my lap.
    “I don’t think I’m that tired.”
    She laughed. “I hate coy men, Jack.” Her hand continued its intent but unhurried dance around my body. The ride got bumpy.
    “How sweet,” she said. Her hand stopped and flattened out against my fly. “No drunk act this time, Jack.”
    “Absolutely not. You may ravish me at will.”
    We stood up and headed for her bedroom, young and foolish, the private eye and his bimbo. Just like in the books.
    In the sack we made that sweetest of discoveries: that we really were friends, great and royal and generous friends. That stuff you don’t get in the books.

 
    I T’S A GOOD TWO and a half hours out to Smithtown from Sunnyside, a terrible two and a half hours actually. I was tired to begin with and the ride in my aging Buick almost put me away: a vista of swampy lots, marshes, gas stations, and clumps of houses that looked like they didn’t know what they were doing on Long Island when they could be in Brooklyn or Queens. I rubbed so many mosquitoes and