Coward's Kiss Read Free Page B

women’s groups, my practice is so safe and secure that it’s duller than dishwater. I’ve got a good life and a good marriage and that’s that. So I decided I was missing something. Why do men climb mountains? Because they’re there. That’s the way I heard it.”
    “And that’s why you climbed Sheila Kane?”
    “Just about.” He lit another cigarette while I knocked the dottle out of my pipe. “I was a different person when I was with her, Ed. I was young and fresh and alive. I wasn’t the old man in a rut. Hell, she had me pegged as some sort of romantic figure. I took her to a matinee or two on Broadway. I gave her books to read and records to listen to. This made me a God.”
    He drew on the cigarette. “It’s nice, being a God. Your sister sees me as I am. That’s the way a marriage has to be—firm understanding, genuine acceptance, all of that. But . . . oh, the hell with it. I’m a damned fool, Ed.”
    “You went with her for three months. Then what happened?”
    He looked at me.
    “Did she start angling for marriage?”
    “Oh,” he said. “No, nothing like that. I was coldblooded about it, Ed. I made up my mind that one word from her about marriage would mean it was time to walk out on her. You’ve got to understand that—I never stopped loving Kaye, never thought about a divorce. But Sheila was the perfect paramour, happy to sit in the shade and be there when I wanted her. It was almost terrifying, having that kind of hold over a person.”
    I nodded. “And now she’s dead.”
    “Now she’s dead.” He made the word sound colder than dry ice.
    “And you won’t call the police.”
    “Ed . . .”
    “Anonymously,” I suggested. “So they can look for the killer.”
    He was shaking his head so hard I thought he’d lose it. “I paid her rent,” he said. “I gave her checks; I spent plenty of time up at her apartment. Her neighbors would remember me and her landlord would recognize my name.”
    He was sweating now. He wiped sweat from his forehead with one hand. His eyes were angry and frightened at once.
    “So the police will find me, Ed. They’ll find me and they’ll drag me in. And then they’ll be sure I did it. That I killed her, that I found a gun somewhere and got rid of it somewhere. Isn’t that what they’ll say?”
    “Probably.”
    “And Kaye will find out,” he finished. “And you know what that will do to her.”
    I knew damn well what it would do to her. The marriage that seemed like a rut to Jack was Kaye’s whole life. She lived in a sweet little world where the sun was always shining, where charge accounts bloomed on every bush, where the worst peril was going down two doubled in an afternoon bridge session. Where her husband loved her, and loved her faithfully, and where God was in his heaven and all was right with the world.
    “What do I do, Ed?”
    “Let’s turn that one around. What am I supposed to do for you, Jack?”
    “Help me.”
    “How?”
    He avoided my eyes. “Suppose I were a client,” he said. “Suppose I came to you and——”
    “I’d throw you out on your ear. Or call the cops. Or both.”
    “But I’m not a client. I’m you’re brother-in-law.”
    He went on talking but I wasn’t listening any more. Hell, if he was a client I had no problems. I turned him in and avoided being an accessory after the fact to murder. Because if I didn’t know him, if he weren’t my brother-in-law, I would have to figure him for the killer. He didn’t have a gun? A hundred dollars buys you an unregistered gun in half the pawnshops in New York. On every street corner there’s a sewer to toss it into when you’re done with it. So he didn’t have much of a case at all. A good prosecutor would tie him in Gordian knots.
    “She can’t be found at the apartment,” I said slowly. “Or they’ll connect the two of you. That’s how it boils down.”
    He blinked, then nodded.
    “Which means they can’t identify her at all,” I went on. “If