"EB - Edward L. Ferman - The Best From Fantasy & Science Fiction 23rd EditionUC - SS" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine)

I picked up Janice at her apartment in Westwood early Saturday morning. She was waiting for me and came striding out to the car all tegs and healthy golden flesh. She was wearing white shorts, sneakers, and that damned Dallas Cowboys jersey. It was authentic. The name and number on it were quite well-known—even to non-football fans. She wouldn't tell me how she got it, just smirked and looked smug. She tossed her suitcase in the back seat and slid up against me. She smelled like sunshine.
We flew over and spent most of the day glubbing around in the Pacific with a bunch of kids fifteen years younger than I and five years younger than Janice. I'd been on these jaunts with Janice before and enjoyed them so much I'd bought my own wetsuit But I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I did Saturday night and all of Sunday.
I got back to my apartment on Beachwood fairly late Sunday night and barely had time to get something to eat at the Mexican restaurant around the corner on Melrose. They have marvelous came asada. I live right across the street from Paramount, right across from the door people go in to see them tape The Odd Couple. Every
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Tom Reamy
Friday night when I see them lining up out there, I think I might go someday, bat I never seem to get around to it. (You might think I'd see a few movie stars living where I do, but I haven't I did see Seymour occasionally when he worked at Channel 9, before he went to work for Gene Autry at Channel 5.)
I was so pleasantly pooped I completely forgot about Andrew Detweiler. Until Monday morning when I was sitting at my desk reading the Times.
It was a small story on page three, not very exciting or newsworthy. Last night a man named Maurice Milian, age 51, had fallen through the plate-glass doors leading onto the terrace of the high-rise where he lived. He had been discovered about midnight when the people living below him had noticed dried blood on their terrace. The only thing to connect the deaths of Harry Spinner and Maurice Milian was a lot of blood flowing around. If Milian had been murdered, there might be a link, however tenuous. But Milian's death was accidental—a dumb, stupid accident It niggled around in my brain for an hour before I gave in. There was only one way to get it out of my head.
"Miss Tremaine, Fll be back in an hour or so. K any slinky blondes come in wanting me to find their kid sisters, tell 'em to wait"
She humphed again and ignored me.
The Almsbury was half a dozen blocks away on Yucca. So I walked. It was a rectangular monolith about eight stories tall, not real new, not too old, but expensive-looking. The small terraces protruded in neat, orderly rows. The long, narrow grounds were immaculate with a lot of succulents that looked like they might have been imported from Mars. There were also the inevitable palm trees and clumps of bird of paradise. A small, discrete, polished placard dangled in a wrought-iron frame proclaiming, ever so softly, NO VACANCY.
Two willowy young men gave me appraising glances in the carpeted lobby as they exited into the sunlight like exotic jungle birds. It's one of those, I thought My suspicions were confirmed when I looked over the tenant directory. All the names seemed to be male, but none of them was Andrew Detweiler.
Maurice Milian was still listed as 407.1 took the elevator to four and rang the bell of 409. The bell played a few notes of Bach, or maybe Vivaldi or Telemann. All those old Baroques sound alike to
The Detweiler Boy
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me. The vision of loveliness who opened the door was about forty, almost as sum as Twiggy, but as tall as I. He wore a flowered silk shirt open to the waist, exposing his bony hairless chest, and tight white pants that might as well have been made of Saran Wrap. He didn't say anything, just let bis eyebrows rise inquiringly as his eyes flicked down, then up.
"Good morning," I said and showed him my ID. He blanched. His eyes became marbles brimming with terror. He was about to panic, tensing to slam the door. I smiled my friendly, disarming smile and went on as if I hadn't noticed. "I'm inquiring about a man named Andrew Detweiler." The terror trickled from his eyes, and I could see his thin chest throbbing. He gave me a blank look that meant he'd never heard the name.
"He's about twenty-two," I continued, "dark, curly hair, very good-looking."
He grinned wryly, calming down, trying to cover his panic. "Aren't they all?" he said.
"Detweiler is a hunchback."
His smile contracted suddenly. His eyebrows shot up. "Oh," he said. "Him."
Bingo!
Mallory, you've led a clean, wholesome life and it's paying off.
"Does he live in the building?" I swallowed to get my heart back in place and blinked a couple of times to clear away the skyrockets.
"No. He was . . . visiting."
"May I come in and talk to yon about him?"
He was holding the door three quarters shut, and so I couldn't see anything in the room but an expensive-looking color TV. He glanced over bis shoulder nervously at something behind him. The inner ends of his eyebrows drooped in a frown. He looked back at me and started to say something, then, with a small defiance, shrugged his eyebrows. "Sure, but there's not much I can tell you."
He pushed the door all the way open and stepped back. It was a good-sized living room come to life from the pages of a decorator magazine. A kitchen behind a half wall was on my right A hallway led somewhere on my left Directly in front of me were double sliding glass doors leading to the terrace. On the terrace was a bronzed hunk of beef stretched out nude trying to get bronzer. The hunk opened his eyes and looked at me. He apparently decided I wasn't
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Tom Reatny
competition and closed them again. Tall and lanky indicated one of two identical orange-and-brown-striped couches facing each other across a football-field-size marble-and-glass cocktail table. He sat on the other one, took a cigarette from an alabaster box and lit it with an alabaster lighter. As an afterthought, he offered me one.
"Who was Detweiler visiting?" I asked as I lit the cigarette. The lighter felt cool and expensive in my hand.
"Maurice—next door." He inclined his head slightly toward 407.
"Isn't he the one who was killed in an accident last night?"
He blew a stream of smoke from pursed lips and tapped his cigarette on an alabaster ashtray. "Yes," he said.
"How long had Maurice and Detweiler known each other?**
"Not long."
"How long?"
He snuffed his cigarette out on pure-white alabaster and sat so prim and pristine I would have bet his feces came out wrapped in cellophane. He shrugged his eyebrows again. "Maurice picked him up somewhere the other night."
"Which night?"
He thought a moment. "Thursday, I think. Yes, Thursday."
"Was Detweiler a hustler?"
He crossed his legs like a Forties pin-up and dangled his Roman sandal. His lips twitched scornfully. "If he was, he would've starved. He was dt-formedf'
"Maurice didn't seem to mind." He sniffed and lit another cigarette. "When did Detweiler leave?"
He shrugged. "I saw him yesterday afternoon. I was out last night . . . until quite late."
"How did they get along? Did they quarrel or fight?"
"I have no idea. I only saw them in the hall a couple of times. Maurice and I were ... not close." He stood, fidgety. "There's really not anything I can tell you. Why don't you ask David and Murray. They and Maurice are... were thick as thieves."
"David and Murray?"
"Across the hall. 408."
I stood up. "I'll do that. Thank you very much." I looked at the plate-glass doors. I guess it would be pretty easy to walk through one of them if yofl thought it was open. "Are all the apartments alike? Those terrace doors?"