Coward's Kiss Read Free Page A

do either of us any good. Get to the point, Jack.”
    He looked at the rug. It’s a Bokhara, a much better oriental than the length of rug in the hallway. But Jack Enright isn’t especially interested in oriental rugs.
    He found this one fascinating now.
    “Who was she?”
    “Sheila Kane.”
    “And—?”
    “And I’ve been paying her rent for the past three months now,” he said. He was still looking at the rug. His voice was steady, the tone slightly defiant. “I’ve been paying her rent, and I’ve been buying her clothes and I’ve been giving her spending money. I’ve been keeping her, Ed. And now she’s dead.”
    He stopped talking. We both sat there and listened to the silence.
    He laughed. His laughter had no humor to it. “It happens to other men,” he said. “You’ve got a perfectly good marriage; you love your wife and she loves you. Then you listen to the song of the sirens. You meet a beautiful blonde. Why are they always blondes, Ed?”
    “Sheila Kane was a blonde?”
    “Sort of a dirty blonde originally. She tinted it. Her hair was all yellow-gold. She wore it long and it would cascade over her bare shoulders and——”
    He stopped for another sigh. “I didn’t kill her, Ed. God, I couldn’t kill anybody. I’m not a killer. And I don’t even own a damn gun. But I can’t call the police. Christ, you know what would happen. They’d have me on the carpet for hours with the bright lights in my eyes and the questions coming over and over. They’d work me six ways and backwards. They’d rake me over the coals.”
    “And then they’d let you go.”
    “And so would Kaye.” His eyes turned meek, helpless. “Your sister’s a wonderful woman, Ed. I love her. I don’t want to lose her.”
    “If you love her so much——”
    “Then why did I play around? I don’t know, Ed. God knows I don’t make a habit of it.”
    “Did you love this Sheila?”
    “No. Yes. Maybe . . . I don’t know.”
    That was a big help. “How did it start?”
    He hung his head. “I don’t know that either. It just happened, damn it. She came to my office one day. Just wandered in off the street, picked my name out of the yellow pages. She thought she was pregnant, wanted me to examine her.”
    “Was she?”
    “No. She’d missed a period or two and she was worried. Hell, it happens all the time. Just worrying can make a girl miss. I gave her an examination and told her she was all right. She wanted to be sure, asked me to run a test. I took a urine sample and told her I’d run it through the lab and give her a call. She said she didn’t have a phone, she’d be back in two days.”
    “And?”
    “And that was that. For the time being, anyway. The test went to the lab. It was negative, of course. She wasn’t pregnant. That’s what I told her when she came back.”
    I told him it was a funny way to start an affair.
    “I suppose so,” he said. He was getting steadier now, pulling himself back together again. It seemed to me that his adultery was nagging him more than the simple fact of the girl’s death. Now that it was out in the open, now that he’d let his hair down in front of me, he could start to relax a little.
    “She was broke, Ed. Couldn’t pay me. I told her the hell with it, she could pay me when she got the chance. Or not at all. I’ve got a rich practice. East Side clientele. I can afford to miss out on an occasional fifteen-dollar fee. But she seemed so bothered about it that I felt sorry for her. I took her to a decent restaurant and bought her a lunch. She was a kid in a candy store, Ed. She said she’d been eating all her meals in cafeterias.”
    I grimaced appropriately.
    “So that’s how it started, Ed. Silly, isn’t it? Affairs aren’t supposed to start with a pelvic examination.”
    “They can end with one,” I suggested.
    He didn’t laugh. “I guess I was just in the right mood for it, if you know what I mean. I was in a rut. The girls are growing up, Kaye has her