Hard Case Crime: Blackmailer Read Online Free Page B

all seemed to be happening to someone else.
    I bent down and came up again like a spring uncoiling, with my knee hitting the little one squarely in the groin. He screamed in agony and lay rolling on the floor. I picked up the coffee table and threw it at the big one.
    I was screaming hysterically myself. I felt like I’d suddenly gone insane.
    I saw Jean racing for the door. She was standing fumbling with the lock when the big one caught her. I hit him four or five times with a chair. I kicked him and threw myself at him when the chair finally broke. Jean darted out the door. I slammed the door hard as Jean started running down the corridor. I stood with my back to it kicking and swinging while he tried to drag me away. When he finally got the door open Jean had disappeared.
    Now, suddenly, I was over my insanity.
    I watched him come back into the room and very quietly lock the door.
    I was sick with terror.
    The little one had picked himself up off the floor. His face was still contorted with pain. The two of them moved in on me. I started to scream, but the fist stopped the sound in my throat.
    It happened very fast and I’m not sure exactly what they did. They kept me conscious for a good part of it. I remember lying on the floor being kicked. That’s the last I remembered. Being kicked.
    I must have been hit in the stomach, too, because I was covered with bruises and I had vomited.
    I was unconscious for several hours.
    And after I came to, it was another hour before I could get off the floor and to the telephone.

Chapter Four
    I described the two men to the police as well as I could. I described everything that had happened. But I did not mention Jean Dahl. And I did not mention the Anstruther book.
    The police were under the impression that the place had been ransacked by hoodlums under the influence of dope. “They get coked up,” the detective said, “and they don’t know what they’re doing.”
    He was under the impression that the two men had been searching my apartment for narcotics and had become enraged at not finding any. I allowed them to keep that impression.
    They wanted to take me to Bellevue for an examination but I talked them out of that. My own doctor had arrived by then, and about five in the morning I checked into a hotel. I didn’t do anything about straightening up the wreckage in my place. I just moved out.
    I was all right after a couple of days in bed. But it was almost a week before my face no longer scared little children.
    I did not go in to the office for the rest of the week. My first public appearance was Walter Heinemann’s cocktail party Friday night.
    There had been a small item about the “robbery,” as it was called in several of the papers, and an enormous basket of fruit, a large bouquet of flowers, and six bottles of champagne arrived at the hotel the second day. Walter’s card was attached to the gifts.
    There was also an invitation to his cocktail party, and a note suggesting that the whole thing was the work of disgruntled authors, unhappy about their advertising allotments.
    As I said, I went to Walter’s party.
    It would be hard to tell you much about Walter Heinemann. The only thing I can tell you is that he gave parties. Big parties.
    That was his profession. He was a professional host.
    And his cocktail parties were an important part of the book publishing business.
    His parties made it possible for people who were interested in doing business with each other to meet on neutral territory. For instance, I know for a fact that Tim Wales’ last book was sold to Hollywood over cocktails at Walter’s.
    Everyone came to Walter’s. People from the publishing houses. Picture people. Radio people. Television people. Actors of a certain standing. And pretty girls in incredible numbers.
    Walter gave a cocktail party at least once a month. They began at six and ended when the last guest had gone home.
    Walter’s house on upper Fifth Avenue was a perfect setting. It was