Strange Embrace by Lawrence Block Page A

call the old coot on the phone, Sam. Not that one—the intercom. Over there on the wall. Here, let me.”
    Johnny picked up the intercom phone, jangled the hook a few times and waited until the doorman got around to answering it. “Police,” he said. “Mr. Tracy leave the building since you came on? Uh-huh. Yeah. He have any visitors? Yeah. Thanks.”
    He returned the receiver to the hook and turned to Haig. “The doorman’s been on since noon,” he said. “Tracy went out to lunch at one and came back half an hour later. He’s been here since, as far as our boy knows.”
    “Visitors?”
    “None. Tracy’s here and he’s alone. Why don’t we look for him? That might make sense.”
    “Hey, good thinking, Johnny.” The tone was mild but the implication was obvious: Quit showing off, sonny boy. We like you and you’ve been handy but we know our business. So sit down and behave.
    “Sure,” Johnny said. He lowered himself uncomfortably to an uncomfortably low couch and picked up a copy of Hollywood Reporter from a low coffee table. He flipped it open and tried to get interested in the not-too-exciting trade gossip of a not-too-exciting trade. If Hollywood would only stop being Hollywood, he thought sadly, they might manage to accomplish something out there.
    That train of thought lost him. He turned to the scandal section, a column written by, for and about idiots, and tried to care who was infanticipating and who was headed for Splitsville and what U-I hot property was last seen with what director on the Twentieth lot. He failed. He was reading the latest inside poop—the columnist’s word—on the latest heartthrob of a teenage teaser with the improbable name of Thursday Rivet when he heard Haig’s voice.
    “Johnny!”
    He stood up quickly. “Aha! You need my special talents. You’ve run into a snag—”
    He broke off the sentence when he saw the look on Sam Haig’s face. The big cop was standing in the doorway of what looked like the bedroom. His shoulders were slumped and his face had a haggard look.
    Johnny reached him in a hurry.
    Johnny went inside.
    He took a good look.
    He saw a bedroom, the ceiling high, the walls a bright baby blue, the bed huge and built for comfort. He saw cigarette burns on new furniture, the scars of cigarettes forgotten while the bed was being put cheerfully to use. He saw a set of matched and expensive luggage in one corner, a big picture of the room’s tenant on one wall, another glaring abstract on another. He saw two empty liquor bottles and one packet of contraceptives prominently displayed on the dresser.
    He also saw a body. The nude body of Carter Tracy. It lay on its back on the bed, lay on the sheet with the bedcovers carelessly kicked down around the foot of the bed. The eyes in its head were open and glassy. Its hands lay palms-up at the sides of its torso.
    Its throat had been cut wide open.
    There were times when you didn’t want to think about anything in the world. There were times when all you wanted to do was to go home to your own place and open one or two bottles and get very drunk. Not happy drunk, which would be impossible. Not moody drunk, which would be unpleasant. Just drunk, dead drunk, so that when you closed your eyes and passed out you would be so thoroughly stoned that you wouldn’t even dream.
    That was about the way Johnny Lane felt.
    “I don’t even want to talk about it,” Haig said. “I don’t want to talk about it or think about it or do anything at all about it. Everything was all set up, everything was perfect, we had the motive and the means and the opportunity, we even had the goddamned murderer. We guessed it right, we figured it right, we saw the whole mess clear through. The leading man killed the leading lady and the ball game was over.”
    Johnny didn’t say anything.
    “Then this,” Haig went on. “Our killers get killed. The old switcheroo. And the killer isn’t the killer anymore, because our killer gets killed the