By Blood We Live

The nightmare receded. I let go of her wrists. She retreated two steps, bumping her hip against a bedside table loaded with a jar of cold cream and a stack of big leatherbound books that looked straight out of Dr. Caligari's library, as well as a lamp with a frilly pink shade and an economy-sized box of Kleenex. We stared at each other, and the fine damp texture of her skin looked better than it ever had.

She rubbed at her right wrist, the one I'd grabbed first. "You were screaming," she whispered.

For once, I had no smart-aleck thing to say. Of course I'd been screaming.

Miss Dale drew herself up, tightening her kimono with swift movements. She was barefoot, and her dark hair wasn't pinned back. It tumbled down to her shoulders in a mass of curls, and it looked nice that way. She folded her arms and tried her best glare on me, and if I hadn't been lounging half-naked in what I suspected was her bed, it might have worked.

"I'm sorry." It was all I could say.

"You'd better be. You're wanted for murder."

I closed my mouth with a snap and started thinking furiously.

"You disappeared three days ago, Mr. Becker. The police tore apart your office. I am sad to report they also took your last three bottles of Scotch. They questioned me rather extensively, too."

My throat was dry. The thirst was worse than ever, and that distracting sound was back, the high hard thumping. It was her pulse, and it sounded like water in the desert. It sounded like the chow bell in basic training.

Her heart going that fast meant she was terrified. But there she stood, high color on her cheeks, arms folded and shoulders back, ready to take me to task once again.

Three days? "Murder?" I husked.

"The murder of Arthur Kendall, Mr. Becker. His widow identified you as the killer." Hung on the bedroom wall behind her was a Photoplay page of Humphrey Bogart in a fedora, leering at the camera like the bum he was. I was beginning to suspect my practical Miss Dale had a soft spot for leering bums.

"The Kendall job." It was difficult to think through the haze in my head and the sound of her pulse, calming down a little now, thank God.

There was something very wrong with me.

"The Kendall job," she echoed. "Naturally I have an extra copy of the file you prepared. And

naturally I didn't mention it to the police, especially to Lieutenant Grady. I think you are many things, Mr. Becker-a disgraceful drunk and an immoral and unethical investigator, just to mention a few. But a murderer? Not the man who does widow cases for free." She rubbed at her right wrist.

So I'm a sucker for dames with hard stories. So what? "I didn't kill anyone." It was a relief to say it. "You've got the file?"

"Naturally." She dropped her arms. "I would appreciate an explanation, but I'm only your secretary."

"You're a stand-up doll," I managed. "The Kendall job went bad, Miss Dale. I didn't kill him."

Being that practical type, she got right down to brass tacks. "Then who did, Mr. Becker?"

Even though the thirst was getting worse by the second and the sound of her pulse wasn't helping, I knew the answer to that one. "Get me that file, Dale. And while you're at it, can I have some clothes or am I just going to swing around like Tarzan?"

If she'd muttered something unladylike under her breath as she swept from the room I wouldn't have blamed her.

I cleaned the rest of the mud off in her pink-and-yellow bathroom. She had an apartment on the seedier side of Parth Street, but everything was neat and clean and prim as you'd expect from the woman I'd once caught alphabetizing my incoming mail. She even had a suit hanging on the back of the door for me, one of mine. The door didn't shut quite tight, and I could hear her moving around the kitchen, and hear that maddening, delicious, irresistible thumping.

I looked like I'd been dug up that morning. Which, if you think about it, I had. There was an ugly flushed-red mark over my right eye, a divot I could rest my fingertip in. It was tender, and pressing on it made my whole head feel like a pumpkin again. The back of my skull was sore too, seamed and scarred under my short wet hair. There were bruised bags of flesh under my eyes, and my cheeks had sunken in, and I looked yellow as a jaundiced Chinaman.

I peeled away my shirt collar and looked. A fresh, bruised mark above the collarbone, two holes that looked like a tiny pair of spikes had gone into my throat. The bruise was fever-hot, and when I touched it, the rolling thunder of a heartbeat roared in my ears so loud I grabbed at Miss Dale's scrubbed-white sink and had to fight to retain consciousness.

What the hell happened to me?

The last thing I remembered was Letitia Kendall wiping her mouth and the skinny, nervous redhead putting the barrel of the gun to my forehead. Right where that livid mark was, the one with speckles of dark grit in an orbit around its sunken redness. Then that sound, like an artillery shell inside my skull…