The Monkey's Raincoat Read Free Page B

was 26 years old and wore a size 8. She could play tennis, enjoyed water sports, could ski, and ride both Western and English.Her credits as an actress didn’t amount to much. Mostly regional theater from Arizona. She claimed to have studied with Nina Foch. Farther down the stack I found some full body shots, one with Kimberly in a fur bikini doing her best to look like a Pictish warrior. She looked pretty good in that fur bikini. I thought of Ellen Lang invisible in my director’s chair. Sit, Ellen. Speak. I put one of the head shots in my pocket.
    I finished with the desk and moved to the closet. There were twelve shoe boxes stacked against the wall. I found a snapshot of a sleeping dog in one of them. There was a large empty space about the size of a suitcase on the right side of the closet shelf. Maybe Morton Lang had called and said,
I’ve finally had my fill of this invisible sexless drudge I’m married to so how’s about you and me and Perry hit the beach in Hawaii?
And maybe Kimberly Marsh had said,
You bet, but I havta get back for this role I got on “One Life to Live,”
so she’d pulled down the suitcase and packed her toothbrush and enough clothes for a week and they had split. Sounded good to me. Ellen Lang wouldn’t like it, but there you are.
    I shut the closet and went through the dresser, starting with the top drawer and working down. In the third drawer from the top I found a small wooden box containing a plastic bag of marijuana, three joints, two well-used pipes, a small bong, a broken mirror, four empty glass vials, and a short candle. Well, well, well. There was a 9×12 envelope under the stash box, folded in half and held tight by a rubber band. There was a pack of photographs in it. The first picture featured a nude Kimberly seated on her davenport, stark white triangles offsetting a rich tan. Not all of the shots were raw. A couple showed her posing on the back of a Triumph motorcycle, a couple more had her at the beach with a big, well-muscled, sandy-haired kid who had probably played end for the University of Mars. Near the bottom of the pack I found Morton Lang. He was naked on the bed, grinning, propped up on one elbow. A well-tanned female leg reached in from the bottom of the picture to play toesies with his privates. Mort. You jerk. I tore the picture of Morton in two and put it in my pocket. I put the rest of the stuff back, closed the drawers, and made sure the apartment was the way I’d found it. Then I let myself out.
    The pear-shaped man was standing by the mailboxes on a little plot of grass they have there, waiting for a rat-sized dog on a silver leash. The dog was straining so hard its back wasbent double. It edged sideways as it strained. Awful, the things you see in my line of work. The pear-shaped man said, “You’re not Johnny Staccato. That was an old TV series with John Cassavetes.”
    â€œCaught me,” I said. “That’s the trouble with trying to be smart, there’s always someone smarter.” The pear-shaped man nodded and looked superior. I gave him a card. “You see Ms. Marsh around, I’d appreciate a call.”
    The Mexicans in the Nova were still there, only now they were arguing. Charlie Bronson gestured angrily, then fired up their car and swung off down the street. Hot-blooded. The pear-shaped man put the card in his pants. “You aren’t the only one looking for that woman,” he said.
    I looked at him. “No?”
    â€œThere was another man. I didn’t speak to him, but I saw him knocking on number 4. A big man.”
    I gave him my All-Knowing Operative look. “Good-looking kid. Six-three. Sandy-haired. Could be a football player.”
    He looked at the dog. “No, this man was dark. Black hair. Bigger than that.”
    So much for the All-Knowing Operative. “When was this?”
    â€œLast week. Thursday or Friday.” He belched softly, said