"Hold on," I said. "I'm coming. Count your change a minute."
I slid off the couch and stared out through the pebble-glass door. The blurred shape was smallish and thin. At least I probably wouldn't need the .38. I opened the closet and had a look at myself in the mirror hung inside the door. I looked like two weeks of prickly heat. I straightened my tie. It had been so long between clients I'd almost stopped caring. The tie was the only proof of almost.
I opened the door.
"Mr. Rule?"
She was about twenty-seven, twenty-eight years old, blonde and breathing hard. She smelled of sweat and Mentholatum. I had smelled worse. Ringlets of hair clung to her forehead. The T-shirt was blue and said ADIDAS. The shorts were blue too and said I have one hell of a terrific ass. Her legs were long for the rest of her and deeply tanned. She wore white sweat socks with a powder-blue trim. The running shoes were so streamlined they looked like they could fly without her. I checked her wrist. No chronograph. I put her down for a hobbyist.
"That's right. I'm Rule."
She looked distrustful. Even distrustful she was beautiful. "Slade Rule? The private detective?" She squinted at me and I remembered the mangled look I'd had in the mirror.
"You want to see my library card?"
She didn't smile. I decided to be nice to her. The shoes looked like they cost a fortune.
"Relax," I said. "You look like you could use a rest."
"Thanks. I guess I could."
She sat down and the leg muscles shimmered. Either there was a lot of testosterone in the girl or she'd been gulping steroids like I'd been gulping Budweiser.
"What's the problem, Miss..."
"Foot. Sandy Foot. I think my running partner has disappeared."
"What makes you think that?"
"This makes six days now he hasn't shown up in the morning. We always meet at Tavern on the Green. We do the Lower Loop together. You know, from 57th Street over to Fifth and up to East 72nd. Then we go for fruit juice. Frankly, I'm worried."
"What's your partner's name, Miss Foot?"
"Call me Sandy. His name's Dave Loggins. He's twenty-seven years old, has brown hair, blue eyes, a hundred and ninety pounds. He wears the blue Puma Elite Riders and the brown Gore-Tex warm-up suit. Or else a Kafka T-shirt. He has a small mole on the inside left thigh, almost at the knee, light brown in color."
"You're a good observer, Sandy."
She smiled. "I used to be a lifeguard."
I let it slide.
"You said he wears the Puma brand of shoe?" Something about that bothered me, some dim memory just out of reach.
"That's right. Why?"
"No reason in particular. Let's go on. Address?"
"I don't know. Like I say, we always meet at Tavern on the Green. I've never been to his apartment and he's never mentioned where he lives. Somewhere on the West Side, I guess. We just run together, that's all. So I don't really know much about him."
"I see."
I sat back in the chair and watched her a moment. I had the feeling she was holding back on me. Something in her story didn't smell right. I decided to level with her.
"Look, Miss Foot, I get a hundred dollars a day plus expenses. To be honest, that seems a lot of money to pay somebody to find a lost running partner. If that's all he was to you. You sure you want me to go ahead with this?"
"I'm sure." I let it hang awhile until she started to look uncomfortable. Then I let it hang some more. Finally she said, "The fact is that Dave is very important to me. Much more than you could know. I used to be...I used to be a fat girl, Mr. Rule. I just ballooned up after High School. I met Dave in the park one day and he encouraged me to run. I got rid of twenty-five pounds in six months. Do you what that means to a girl?"
"I understand," I said.
Sure I did. Like I understood black holes in space and why the dinosaurs disappeared. But I took the case. Days and nights were long lately and I needed the cash.
On her way out the door I gave her a little pat on the ass. She didn't mind. It wasn't a fat girl's ass. Not anymore. It was the kind of ass that toppled governments and gave barflies like myself one last hope for the world. You know the kind. The kind that sings.
I found what I was looking for in the New York Public Library, in Friday's copy of the Post. It was a page-one story or else I'd never have noticed it. I don't buy the papers, I glance at newsstands on the way to somewhere else and that's the extent of my interest.
But there it was, in the Post's inimitable style. PUMA PANTHER SLAYS THIRD RUNNER. COPS WINDED.
I dragged a dime out of my pocket and put in my call to Jerry DiMartini over at Homicide.
"Tell me about this Puma Panther clown," I said.
"What's to tell? Asshole kills joggers. Props open their mouths, sticks in the shoe-tongue from one of those Puma running shoes and closes it up again. Looks pretty funny, actually. If you forget they're dead for a minute. Then he sends the victim's shoelaces over to Breslin at the News with a little note so's we know it's him."
"What's the note say?"
"Same thing every time. 'Better than blisters.' That's all. Except he signs it 'The Puma Panther.' Schmuck."
"Give me the MO."
"The guy seems to like variety, Slade. First time was a young girl. Got her with a .45 caliber slug over on the West Side Highway. Shot through the heart. Time of death approximately 5:10 a.m. Nobody heard or saw a thing, naturally. There's nobody but drunks and joggers out at that hour, anyway."
"I know," I said. And I did.
"Second victim was run over by a car on the East River Drive. Unidentified male."
"Describe him."
"Caucasian, five-two, thirty or so, hundred and four pounds. Wore glasses. The coroner found over a pound of bananas in his stomach. Something about potassium being good for leg cramps or something. I swear all these assholes are crazy, Slade."
"Get on with it, Jerry."
"Okay, final victim, the guy we got on Friday. Also unidentified. See, the problem is these jokers don't carry identification half the time. Like a wallet would slow 'ern down, right? Anyhow, this one's also male Caucasian, one-ninety, in his twenties, about six feet tall..."
"Scars? Moles? Anything like that?"
"Now that you mention it, yeah. Mole on his left leg. You onto something, Slade?"
"I'll let you know. How'd he die?
"Blunt instrument, baseball bat or something. Found him at 62nd and Central Park West. Some faggot with a poodle discovered the body. Dog nearly took a leak on him."
"Give me his name and address, Jerry." He gave it to me.
I decided to call my client before going any further. I had some questions. The pickup was on one ring but I didn't know the voice on the other end.
"Who's this?" I said.
"Who's this yourself?" The voice was female but hoarse and nasal, as if she had a cold. I gave her my name and asked for Sandy. "Just a minute," she said.
A moment later Sandy came to the phone. I hadn't the heart to tell her yet that her running partner was dead. So I just asked the questions. It would be easier to break it to her when I also had the answers.
"Do you know anybody of the homosexual persuasion, Sandy?"
She thought a moment. "I don't think so," she said.
"And you say you haven't seen Dave in six days, right?"
"That's right."
"And before that you ran every day."
"Yes."
That was interesting. Loggins had only been dead for three days. That left three unaccounted for.
"Have you found anything, Mr. Rule?"
I'd dreaded that question. But for the moment I had to lie to her. "Not yet. I'll tell you when I do. By the way, who's the girl who answered the phone?"
"My roommate Beatrice. She's been wonderful, Mr. Rule. I think she really understands what I'm going through."
I figured it was nice that somebody did.
"Does she run too?"
"Bea? Oh
, no. But it's good not to be alone now, you know?"
"I know. I'll be in touch, Sandy."
I hung up the phone, figuring to leave the commiseration to the roommate. I had a faggot to see. A faggot with a poodle. My god, I thought. What a world.
His name was Mandy and the poodle was Cloris. With rents the way they were the brownstone over on 71st was worth its weight in gold. I flashed my identification at him and he showed me into a room that was not quite as big as Long Island. We sat down over tea and he gave me the details. He put the time at 7:45. And apart from Cloris he'd been alone.
"Anybody else around?"
"Oh, the usual. A drunk or two. A rather attractive black fellow on roller skates. And what's his name, Gibson, the Man With No Legs."
"No legs?"
"That's right. He has a hotdog stand down at the base of the park. I'm surprised you don't know him. He's very much the local character." He lit a cigarette, holding it with the tips of his fingers. You know the way they do.
"I see you're a smoker."
He looked up at me as though I'd just sprouted a goiter on my neck. "What of it?"
"Just wondering how you feel about joggers."
"I don't like them," he said. "I don't know if you're aware of it, Mr. Rule, but it used to be that a dog like Cloris was all one needed to meet some very nice people in this town. You'd walk the dog and meet plenty of other dog-lovers in the park. It was a graceful way to meet, over a mutual enthusiasm. Poodles, Pomeranians, Schnauzers. Now you have to run. And personally I have never liked to sweat. Outside the bedroom."
Gibson's hotdog stand was within walking distance so I decided to stroll over. After two blocks the sweat began to creep down my neck like a mucinous slime. The city ate it raw but it was all I had.
Gibson was an ugly little weasel with all of three teeth in his mouth and a hydraulic lift that allowed him to reach the franks with his fork. I ordered a pair and told him to hold the kraut and onions.
"Does the word Gatorade mean anything to you, Mr. Gibson?" I flashed my ID.
He smiled and I saw that two of the three teeth were fading fast. "Sure," he said. "That's the shit them runners drink. Them runners is weird bastards, you know? I never sold a frank to one of `em yet. You know what they eat? Eggshells. Eggshells ground up fine. Supposed to give `em calcium or somethin'."
"Lactose intolerance," I said. I'd been doing my homework.
"Huh?"
"Lactose intolerance. They can't drink milk, some of them, so they eat eggshells."
"I guess you're here about the killin'. "
"That's right."
He shook his head. "Whoever it was did it nice and quiet. I never heard a thing."
"You a drinking man, Mr. Gibson?"
"Me? Sure. Within moderation, naturally."
I decided to throw him a fastball. "How'd you lose them?" I said.
"The legs? Discotheque. Fan fell out of the ceiling fixture in the middle of a Gloria Gaynor number and mowed 'em away. Wouldn't have taken me for a dancin' man, now would ya?"
I had nothing. A lot of dead ends. It was time to level with my client. I'd found her running partner and that was what I was paid to do. It wouldn't be pleasant, telling her about Dave.
Or about the Poodle.
I phoned and told her I'd be right over.
The cab ride uptown did nothing to improve my mood. Everywhere I looked I saw them running, running, in pairs or alone, the lithe beautiful girls in shorts and athletic bras, the strong young men beside them, mouths open and sucking air, faces streaked with sweat. They were out there innocent and vulnerable and somewhere in the City there was a maniac loose. I had pieces to the puzzle but something was missing and I couldn't help them. To run was to take risks, I guessed. Blisters, torn ligaments, chafing. They were a tough courageous crew and you had to respect them. But dammit, that was about all I could do.
The cab pulled over next to a shabby brownstone and I walked the two flights up. Sandy opened the door, a look of nervous anticipation flushing her face beneath the golden tan. She saw my frown and all the animation suddenly deserted her. She was a smart girl. She saw it coming like a night-train to oblivion.
"He's dead, isn't he," she said.
"The Puma Panther. Sorry."
"Who?"
"The Puma Panther. You didn't read about it in the papers?"
She shook her pretty head.
"I don't read the papers. I just glance at newsstands on my way to somewhere else. I guess that's the extent of my interest. Oh my god," she said. "I'll never run again."
It was a death sentence to her. Rolls and rolls of fat coiled on the horizon like poisonous snakes.
"You'll run," I told her.
"Not without Dave."
"I'll make sure you run."
I took her in my arms. I felt the twitch fibers of her legs jump against my own. It was contrary to my principles to get involved with a client but there had to be exceptions, there had to be compassion in the world. I kissed her. Her breath was sweet with wheat germ and honey and I remembered it was suppertime.
She knew all the moves. The Downward Dog. The Sitting Wall Push. The Partner Back Stretch. Her spine was as limber as her thighs were sleek and powerful. She made a burbling sound down deep in her throat when I peeled the Band-Aids off her nipples. And I knew that no T-shirt had ever chafed them the way that I was chafing them now.
It was a fast break. I dug in. At the ten-minute mark I began to have periodic cramps in both legs, upper and lower, front and back, but the pain was exhilarating and wonderful. At the fifteen-minute mark her face looked physically broken, her stride became erratic. But she covered those last few miles like a champion. Her legs moved like pistons. Her arms flailed at her sides.
Then suddenly it was over. We rolled away from each other at fifteen minutes twenty-eight seconds. I thought she was the bravest girl I ever knew.
"You'll run," I said. And she smiled.
I lay back on the pullout sofa in the living room and had a look around me.
Some cases break like a flower opening, some are like walking into a grave. This one was like a door opening on a bright summer morning. You took a single step out of your room and into the light. A pair of glasses, thick glasses, lay on the table beside us. Behind us shelves of books. Books piled nearly to the ceiling. I checked the titles. Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Lawrence, A. A. Milne, Rimbeaud, Jung and Freud. Somebody around here was pretty bookish and I had a hunch that it wasn't the tanned naked goddess lying here beside me.
I turned to her. "Your roommate, Beatrice..."
"Yes?"
The voice behind me was flat with hate, the same voice I'd heard on the phone, only now it was rising through tar pools of emotion. I whirled on her and at the same time slid my right hand into the jacket pocket beside me for the .38.
"Don't try it," she said.
The .45 in her hand looked like a mouse in the trunk of an elephant. She must have been all of five-two and weighed three hundred pounds. Her belly made huge shimmering waves inside the shapeless dress. Her eyes were flat and amphibian behind the inch-thick bottle glasses. Her mouth was a single nuance in a face that was otherwise lost in folds of flesh and now it was smiling.
"That's right, Rule," she said. "You found your Puma Panther."
She held the gun steady, its cold steel gleaming like a fish in the twilight.
"It all led up to this, didn't it? You killed the first two just for window dressing," I said. "It was Loggins you were after all the time. You were jealous of Sandy, jealous of her body. How does it feel to be a fat lesbo bitch, Beatrice?"
It was a wild card but I had to play it. I had to shake her somehow. It was like trying to shake the Great Pyramid at Giza. She laughed. "You've got me wrong, copper," she said. "It was a vendetta, pure and simple. How long do you think I could stand everybody out there jogging, jogging, jogging? Everybody I know! When there's Lautreamont and Sartre and Dickens and Henry Miller? How long! Isn't it b
ad enough I have to put up with five minutes of sports on the evening news every night of my goddamn life? Do I have to see them every time I go out on the street? Their hairy legs? Their unshaven armpits? What the hell ever happened to reading?
"And as for that bastard Loggins, he was cheating on Sandy. For three days he'd been running with another partner." She turned to Sandy. Her eyes began to pool with tears. "I'm sorry, Sandy," she said. Her nose began drooling. "I just couldn't stand it. You're the only jogger I've ever known who's ever been decent to me. I'm sorry."
She was close to breaking down. It was now or never.
I swung off the couch and pushed Sandy down flat beside me and heard the gun go off and saw the bullet sink deep into the B volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Before she could squeeze off another one I had the .38 turned on her and put a slug in her belly. It disappeared without a trace. I fired again and this time caught her square in the chest. Something red and soupy began to happen there. Her tiny pig eyes rolled back as she fell. It was as though they'd amputated the top two floors of the World Trade Center. I went to Sandy.
"You all right?"
"I think so," she said.
I lifted her to her dainty calloused feet. "Get dressed," I told her. I dialed the police and told DiMartini to bring a truck and eight men, that I'd shot the Puma Panther.
"What is she, a cave bear?" he asked me.
"Bigger."
By the time I got off the phone Sandy was dressed and I saw that she had on her Sub-4 mesh singlet and her Adidas Marathon Trainers.
She was going to be all right.
We drank some bananas and eggs and waited for the police to arrive. When it was over we went outside and I hailed myself a cab. Sandy paced us for a few blocks and then waved goodbye as we pulled away from the light at Lincoln Center. I knew I'd never see her again. Runners ran. A man like me didn't.
Back at the office I left the door open awhile to draw in the cool night air from the window. I opened a fifth of Scotch and three drinks later I was asleep. There were no dreams.
When I woke it was morning and hot again and there was a tall slim brunette standing over me watching me grope my way off the couch. I looked hard at her. She wasn't as tall as she looked at first.