Junkie Read online

  Junkie

  Jonathan Craig

  This page formatted 2011 Munsey's.

  http://www.munseys.com

  CHAPTER TWO. Anybody Can Kill

  CHAPTER THREE. Too Young, Too Lovely

  CHAPTER FOUR. Hell's Own Jewel

  CHAPTER FIVE. Two-Toned Beauty

  CHAPTER SIX. A Close One

  CHAPTER SEVEN. Lovers' Meeting

  CHAPTER EIGHT. Quick Switch

  CHAPTER NINE. Passionate Enigma

  CHAPTER TEN. The Nightmare

  CHAPTER ELEVEN. Bird in Hand

  CHAPTER TWELVE. Powerhouse Boogie

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN. The Best Approach

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN. Reefer Pad

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN. The Disembodied Voice

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN. The Perfect Frame

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. Dead End

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. Any Man Will Do

  CHAPTER NINETEEN. One Chance in a Million

  CHAPTER TWENTY. Time to Die

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE. Crazy with Love

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO. Horn Man's Reward

  * * *

  BY DAY—A PART-TIME SECRETARY BY NIGHT-A FULL-TIME PLAYGIRL

  “How long ago was that?” he asked. In the glow of the match her face seemed almost too angelic to be real. An angelic call-girl, he thought.

  “About a year ago,” she told him. “But it seems longer.”

  “How'd it all begin, Kathy?” he asked suddenly.

  She glanced at him quickly, then away. “They always ask that,” she said softly. “Always.”

  “I'm sorry,” Steve said, meaning it.

  She pursed her full lips and blew smoke out slowly, gazing toward the river.

  “There was a man, of course,” she said. “There always is.”

  Other memorable novels by the best-selling Jonathan Craig include COME NIGHT, COME EVIL—SO YOUNG, SO WICKED— and THE LAUGHING VIRGIN.

  (originally titled Junkie)

  CHAPTER ONE. Uninvited Blonde

  IT was bad and he knew it was going to get a lot worse before it got better. It was four a.m. on a muggy Washington morning and the liquor hadn't helped. Neither had the jam session at Sully's. That was the hellish thing about a torch— the longer you carried it, the hotter it burned.

  He had almost reached the door of his apartment before he heard the music, the soft wailing of a tenor sax against a bank of muted brass. He shifted his trumpet case to the other hand and fished for his key, wondering how many times recently he'd forgotten to turn off the radio before leaving for the club. He turned the key in the lock, vaguely irritated. The torch he was carrying for Kathy was doing uncomfortable things to him, dulling his awareness.

  He opened the door and stepped inside. Then for a long moment he stood motionless, staring at the girl on the floor.

  She was something to stare at. She was very beautiful and very blonde and most of her clothes were in a heap on the studio couch behind her.

  She sat cross-legged, one smooth white arm extended to the record player. Record albums fanned out in a semi-circle on the floor around her and within easy reach were a half empty bottle of whisky and a tall glass. A cigarette smoldered in a tray close by.

  She smiled up at him through incredible long lashes.

  “Close the door, Steve darling. Maybe your neighbors aren't broadminded.”

  He closed the door angrily and said, “This is crazy, Lois.”

  She turned up the volume on the record player and the tenor sax gave way to a trombone... deep-down anguished blues.

  “It's the heat,” she said. “People do strange things in weather like this.”

  He said, “Put your clothes on, Lois. You're getting out of here. Right now.”

  She glanced down at the wisp of brassiere, the triangle of frothy black panties. Slowly she pushed her shoulders against the studio couch, arched her back. Her breasts strained against the taut brassiere. With a graceful, flowing motion she folded her hands behind her blonde head and stretched slim, nylon-clad legs out straight.

  “It's a hot night, Steve,” she said.

  Steve Harper swore softly.

  He tossed his trumpet case into an easy chair and strode into the kitchen.

  “Turn that damned thing down,” he said over his shoulder.

  “Certainly,” Lois said. “Anything for you, darling.”

  He sloshed cold water from the sink on his face, poured a can of beer and went back into the living room.

  He said, “Look, Lois. It was quits three months ago. It's still quits. Put your clothes on and get out.”

  She smiled at him. “No. Steve, I'm coming back to you. We're starting over again. Get used to the idea.”

  “I'm not even going to try. Even if you weren't married, even if it weren't for Kathy, I'd...”

  She laughed softly. “Kathy! I hear that you and the little mouse have been feuding.”

  “So?”

  She shrugged. “So you'll forget her.” She moistened her short upper lip with the point of a pink tongue. “I'll help you.”

  He said, “Lois, I'm beat—all the way down. How about remembering we're through and getting out of here?”

  She reached out and flipped the record over. This time a piano took the melody, a good, gutty barroom piano. She listened, her head tilted slightly to one side, her shoulders moving with the rhythm. “Nice,” she murmured. “Very nice.”

  “Damn it, Lois!”

  She muttered something under her breath and turned off the record player. Then she got to her feet, took three short steps toward Steve and stopped. She was smiling, but there was no warmth in her gray-gold eyes.

  She said, “This isn't an audition for scoutmasters, Steve. You like what you're looking at. You were crazy about it once. You're going to be crazy about it again.”

  He could smell her now—the lush, ripeness, the warmth of her. His mouth went suddenly dry.

  She opened her fingers. On her palm lay a flat brass key. “I let myself in with this,” she said. “You gave it to me the second time we met. Remember?”

  “You kept it all this time?”

  She laughed shortly. “Of course I kept it. I told you I was only marrying Mel as an investment. So many nights with him, so many dollars in the bank.” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Only Mel's a phony. Phonier than a three-dollar bill.”

  “You made a choice, Lois.”

  She shook her head. “I made an investment—an arrangement. I thought he had money, so I married him. It's as simple as that, Steve. Why complicate it?”

  “Call it what you want. You did marry the guy. That tore it right down the middle.” Somehow she had moved closer to him. He hadn't been aware of it but now her face was only inches from his own. “Besides,” he went on, “it gave me time to think things over.”

  She was so close to him now that she had to tilt her head back to look up at him. “Time to meet Kathy Mason... isn't that what you mean, Steve?”

  “Maybe. Anyhow, things are different.”

  She pressed against him closely. “Are they?”

  In the tautness of the moment the sudden jangle of the telephone was almost a roar.

  “Let it ring,” Lois said. Her moist parted lips formed each word carefully. “I've been waiting a long time for this...”

  He put his hands on her shoulders and pressed his ringers into soft, warm flesh. The phone rang twice more before he gently pushed her away and walked to the telephone.

  “Steve?” a man's voice queried as he answered.

  “Yes.”

  “This is Mark. Steve, where have you been?”

  “Over at Sully's. A few of us got together for a little bash.” Steve thought, a nice guy. Mark Logan, even if he could never quite forget he was a cop. “What's up?” he asked aloud.

  “How long have you been home?”

  “Not long. Why?”

  “Anybody with you?”

  “Maybe. What the hell, Mark... what's with all the questions?”

  A pause. “Steve, do you know where Kathy is?”

  “No.”

  “I'm over at Wally Haynes' place, Steve. I think maybe you'd better come over here.”

  Steve glanced over his shoulder at Lois. She had moved to the studio couch and was pouring whisky into the tall glass.

  “What's wrong, Mark?” Steve asked softly.

  “Wally Haynes is dead. Murdered.”

  Steve's fingers tightened around the phone, tightened until the knuckles ached. He fumbled for a cigarette as Mark droned on. “A hell of a thing. Better get over here right away.”

  “Sure, Mark...”

  “And, Steve—don't say anything about this to anybody before you see me. Understand?”

  “All right. I'm on my way.”

  He put down the phone and walked back to Lois.

  “Short and sweet,” Lois said. “Anybody I know?”

  “No. Forget it.” He took the glass from her hand and drank deeply, then gave it back to her.

  “I have to leave, Lois,” he said. “You, too.” He scooped her clothing from the couch and tossed it to her. “No more arguments. The game's over. Get these on.”

  She stared at him but made no move to dress.

  “Get dressed, Lois, or I'll drag you out that door just the way you are.” He took a short step toward her. “And hurry! Either way, dressed or raw, it doesn't make a damn bit of difference to me.”

  The smile faded from her eyes, “I don't think it would.”

  “Hurry!”

  She began to dress.
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  CHAPTER TWO. Anybody Can Kill

  THERE were two cruisers parked in a No Parking zone in front of Wally Haynes' building but there was no crowd, no indication that anything unusual had happened.

  Steve stood on the sidewalk a moment, staring up at the ancient building. Even in the soft blend of moonlight and street lamp, it was ugly. Old and decayed, ready to be condemned. A hell of a place for a man to die, Steve thought. Especially Wally Haynes... one of the greatest horn men who had ever lived—greater than Armstrong, a lot of people said.

  He was suddenly interrupted by a sharp voice behind him. “You there, bud! Keep moving!”

  Steve turned to face a cop who had climbed from one of the cruisers. “Lieutenant Logan told me to come,” he said.

  “Well, he isn't out here. Talk to the officer on the door.”

  Steve went up the short walk and opened the door. Another cop moved toward him. “You live here, fella?”

  “Lieutenant Logan sent for me.”

  “Your name Harper?”

  Steve nodded.

  “Ail right. Let's go up.”

  Upstairs they walked along a worn strip of carpet to Haynes' apartment. There was no one in the corridor, no sound of any kind.

  The cop said, “When they open the door, keep your voice down. We ain't advertising this thing.” He leaned forward and rapped softly at the door. It opened for them almost at once.

  Inside were three men in plain clothes and two more in uniform. They were working rapidly and efficiently with camera and chalk and tape measure. They paid no attention to Steve.

  “Where is he?” Steve asked.

  “Who?”

  “Wally Haynes. The man who was killed.”

  “Hold your water. You'll see him. That is, if the lieutenant figures your belly can take it.”

  Steve glanced around the living room. A mean, malodorous, squalid room with little furniture—a lumpy leather chair with dirty gray stuffing oozing from a rip, cheap upright piano and, against the wall, a sagging day bed with an oblong dark smear on the wallpaper above it.

  Mark Logan emerged from the kitchen, saw Steve and nodded. He said, “You sure took your time getting here.” Then he shrugged and said, “Well, come long inside.” He crossed toward the bathroom and when Steve had followed him inside, he closed the door and sat down on the edge of the bathtub.

  Steve waited silently for Mark to begin.

  At length Mark said, “I called you over because you knew Haynes better than anybody else—at least anybody in Washington. I want you to fill me in on him. You know... any enemies, gambling debts, any girls he was fouled up with. Things like that.”

  Steve listened to the drip-drip-drip of the leaky faucet in the washstand. “Wally was my best friend,” he said.

  “I know that. And from what I've heard, you were his only friend.”

  “I wouldn't say that, exactly. He had a couple bad habits, sure.”

  Mark shifted his weight on the tub's edge. “He lived at your place a while, didn't he?” Steve nodded. “When he first came to Washington. He wandered in to a club where I was playing and sat in with the band. None of us believed he was really Wally Haynes until he started to play. Then we knew.”

  “So you took him in?”

  Steve wet his lips. “He was broke and he'd been drunk a week. I let him stay at my place until he could get straightened out,” he explained.

  “But he stayed longer than you'd counted on. Right?”

  The memories were swirling back now. “He took an interest in me,” Steve said. “He began to show me how a trumpet should be played. I learned more from him in a few weeks than I'd learned in my whole life before that. He was only forty but you'd think he was my father, the way he used to make me do a figure over and over again until I got it right.”

  “Okay, so you thought a lot of the guy. But what I want to know, Steve, is do you have any idea who might have wanted him dead?”

  Steve thought for a moment before he spoke. “He rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, I guess—but I can't think of anyone who'd want to kill him. He was pretty soured on women but I don't think he had any real trouble with any of them. He played the horses once in a while, a couple bucks at a time. Mostly he liked to sit down with his horn and a bottle and drink and play until he passed out. He had a lot on his mind.”

  “How long ago did he move out of your place?”

  “Right after I met Kathy,” Steve said. “About three months ago. I sort of lost track of him after that. I saw him around, of course, but he stopped coming to my place.”

  “He and Kathy didn't get along, eh?”

  “Not too well.”

  “What was the trouble?”

  “A lot of little things. Nothing that really amounted to anything.”

  Mark glanced at him thoughtfully. “Think like hell, Steve,” he said. “Try to remember anybody who had a grudge against him.”

  Steve shook his head. “Nobody.”

  “Okay.” He stood up. “Come out in the kitchen now and take a look at what somebody did to him.”

  Steve hesitated only a moment before he followed him out. Wally Haynes lay on his back, arms thrown out at right angles to his body. There were angry dark bruises on his throat and his face was a nightmarish mask. One brief look at that purple face with its protruding tongue and eyes was enough. Steve turned away, feeling suddenly ill.

  Mark said, “He was choked to death. You don't have to be a doc to see that. Pretty nasty, huh?”

  Steve said nothing.

  “Damn near all choke jobs are done by men,” Mark went on. “Women don't have the strength.”

  Steve took another look at Haynes. “Jesus...” he said softly.

  “There's some screwy angles to this thing,” Mark continued.

  “You notice there isn't a mark on him, except on his neck. That means he got it while he was either dead drunk or coked up. Otherwise, he'd have put up a fight. Chances are it was somebody he knew, maybe somebody he got drunk with tonight. The autopsy will show whether he was doped.”

  He shook a cigarette from a crumpled package, then looked up at Steve. “You damned sure you don't know where Kathy Mason is, Steve?”

  “No.” The skin across Steve's cheekbones felt taut and dry. “Why? What's she got to do with this?”

  Mark's bulging pale eyes studied him carefully. He said nothing.

  “I asked you a question, Mark,” Steve said.

  Mark's gaze was steady as he spoke. “Maybe everything,” he said. “We'll know more about it when we pick her up.”

  “What do you mean, pick her up?” Steve's voice sounded strange in his own ears. “Are you crazy, Mark?”

  “Maybe. For your sake, I hope so. Maybe you noticed there wasn't any crowd out in the street or in the hall,” he explained. “That happens once in a blue moon, Steve. It happened this time because somebody did us a favor. A woman called Headquarters and said she'd just killed Haynes and was going to kill herself. She gave her name as Kathy Mason.”

  To Steve, Mark's words seemed to hang in the air. He became acutely conscious of his own breathing, of the pressure of the belt against his stomach and the tightness of the collar against his throat. From above, he heard the sudden clamor of an alarm clock, the thud of bare feet on the floor. He listened to them pad across the room. Then, after a moment, the sound of a flush box.

  “It wasn't Kathy,” he heard himself saying at last. “It couldn't have been.”

  “Why not?”

  “She... Kathy couldn't kill anybody, Mark. You know damned well she couldn't.”

  “Wrong. She could. Anybody could. There's no such thing as a person who can't kill. That's the first thing you learn when you're on Homicide.”

  “Why didn't you tell me this when I first got here?” Steve asked. “What was that song and dance about filling you in on Wally?”

  “Take it easy, Steve. I wanted to be sure you didn't know where Kathy was, that's all. We sent a man over to your place first thing, of course, and when nobody answered his ring, he let himself in with a passkey—-just to be on the sure side. He hung around and pretty soon you did have company —but not Kathy.” He looked at Steve speculatively. “Who's your blonde pal, Steve?”

  “Old friend of mine,” Steve said bitterly. “What is this— another fill-in, like you wanted on Wally?”

  “It was Lois Connery, wasn't it?”