The Heckler

TEDDY CARELLAwas in a robe when her husband came home from work that night. He kissed her as he crossed the threshold of the big monstrous house they lived in, and didn’t truly realize she was so attired until they’d gone into the kitchen together. Then, surprised because the house was so still at six-thirty in the evening, surprised that Teddy was wearing high-heeled bedroom slippers with the robe—hersilk robe, at that—he asked first, “Where are the children?”

Teddy’s hands moved in silent answer.Asleep .

“And Fanny?” he asked.

Her fingers moved again.Thursday.

“Oh yeah, her day off,” and suddenly it was all very clear to him. He did not acknowledge that he’d tipped to her plans or her preparations. He pretended he did not see the bottle of white wine resting on its side in the refrigerator when she opened the door to take out the melon. He pretended that he didn’t notice the exaggeratedly female way in which Teddy moved this evening, or the fact that she was wearing a subtly penetrating perfume, or that she had made up her eyes, startlingly wide and brown in her oval face, but that her lips carried not a trace of lipstick, her lips seemed more than anxious to be kissed—he pretended he noticed none of these things.

He went into the bathroom to wash, and then he took off his holster and gun and put them into the top drawer of their dresser, and then he put on a tee shirt and threw his soiled white shirt into the hamper, and then he came downstairs. Teddy had set the table outdoors on the patio. A cool breeze rustled through the grape arbor, crossed the patio, lifted the skirt of her robe to reveal the long lissome curve of her leg. She did not move to flatten the skirt.

“Guess who I ran into today?” Carella said, and then realized that Teddy’s back was to him, and that she could not hear him. He tapped her gently and she turned, her eyes moving instantly to his lips.

“Guess who I ran into today” he repeated, and her eyes followed each muscular contraction and relaxation of his mouth so that—though she was born a deaf mute—she could almost hear each separate word as it rolled from his tongue. She raised her eyebrows in question. There were times when she used sign language to convey her thoughts to her husband; other times, when there was no real necessity for a formal language between them, when the simple cocking of an eye or nuance of mouth, sometimes a glint, sometimes the rarest of subtle expressions served to tell him what she was thinking. He loved her most during those times, he supposed. Her face was a beautiful thing, oval and pale, with large brown eyes and a full sensuous mouth. Black hair curled wildly about her head, echoing the color of her eyes, setting the theme for the rest of the woman who was Teddy Carella, a theme of savagery which sprang through the blatant curve of her breast and the ripe swelling of hip and thigh and splendid calf, narrow ankles, narrow waist, a woman with the body of a barbarian and the gentle tenderness of a slave. And never was she more lovely than when her face explained something to him, never more lovely than when her eyes “spoke.” She raised her eyebrows in question now, and fastened her eyes to his mouth again, waiting.

“Cliff Savage,” he said.

She tilted her head to one side, puzzled. She shrugged. Then she shook her head.

“Savage. The reporter. Remember?”

And then she remembered all at once, and the light broke over her face and her hands moved quickly, bursting with questions.What did he want? My God, how many years has it been? Do you remember what that fool did? We weren’t even married then, Steve. Do you remember? We were so young.

“One at a time, will you?” Carella said. “He was beefing because I’d sent that I.D. photo to every newspaper but his.” Carella chuckled. “I thought that’d get a rise out of the bastard. And it did. Man, was he steaming! Do you know something honey? I don’t think he even realizes what he did. He doesn’t even know he could have got you killed.”

Carella shook his head.

What Savage had done, actually, was run a story in his newspaper several years back, a story which had strongly hinted that a detective named Steve Carella had confided to his fiancée, a girl named Theodora Franklin, some suspicions he had about a series of cop killings. In addition, Savage had also listed Teddy’s address in the newspaper, and he could not have fingered her more effectively than if he’d led the killer to her apartment in person. The news story had indeed smoked out the killer. It had also damn near got Teddy killed.