Henry Ullman took it easy with Mike Mulligan, playing him slowly and not asking too many personal questions. The bank officer seemed to enjoy meeting Ullman for drinks every evening after work. Once he invited the investigator to his home for dinner. His condo looked as if it had been decorated by a department store, and was so spotlessly clean that it was difficult to believe anyone lived there.
Ullman told him the same cover story he had given James Bartlett: His name was Samuel Henry, and he was a mortgage loan officer at First Farmers' Savings amp; Loan in Madison, Wisconsin. He had come to south Florida to see if he and his wife could relocate. Mulligan accepted this fiction without question, especially since the two men spent.a lot of time talking shop, and Ullman was obviously knowledgeable about banking procedures.
They were in the back booth of the Navigator on Friday evening when Mulligan said, "Sam, how about dinner at my place tomorrow night?"
"You've already fed me once," Ullman protested. "Now it's my turn."
"No, no," Mulligan said, smiling. "Maybe some other time, but tomorrow is going to be a special occasion. I'll send out for Italian food, and after dinner a couple of guests are going to drop by."
"Oh? Friends of yours?"
"Sort of," Mulligan said. "I think you'll like them."
On Saturday night, Ullman arrived at Mulligan's apartment bearing two cold bottles of Chianti, having learned that practically everyone in south Florida preferred their red wine well chilled. The food had already been delivered and was being kept warm in the oven. Mulligan had ordered antipasto, veal piccata, spaghetti all'olio, and arugula salad.
They each had two martinis before sitting down to eat. They finished a bottle and a half of Ullman's Chianti during dinner. Then Mulligan served big snifters of brandy. By that time the little man was feeling no pain, blinking rapidly behind his horn-rimmed glasses and occasionally giggling. He tried to tell a joke about an Englishman, a Frenchman, and an American, but forgot the punch line. Ullman wondered if his host would still be on his feet when his guests arrived.
They showed up around ten-thirty: two tall, thin women who appeared to be in their late thirties. They were introduced to Ullman as Pearl and Opal Long-necker, sisters, who worked at a Crescent Bank branch in Deerfield Beach.
Both women were rather gaunt, with lank hair and horsey features. They were drably dressed except for their shoes: patent leather pumps; kelly green for Opal, fire-engine red for Pearl. They sat primly on the couch and politely refused the offer of a drink. They spoke little, but answered questions in a heavy southern accent.
Ullman made them for a couple of rednecks and hoped, for the sake of Crescent Bank's public relations, their jobs-maybe data entry work-were in a back room where their speech patterns and appearance were unimportant. He couldn't understand what staid, respectable Mike Mulligan had in common with these unattractive and uncommunicative women.
After about ten minutes of desultory conversation, Opal rose and announced, "I gotta use the little girls' room."
"I'll come with you," Pearl said, standing.
Ullman noted they went directly to the bathroom without asking directions.
"What do you think of them, Sam?" Mulligan asked.
Ullman took a sip of his brandy. "They seem very nice," he said. "But quiet."
The host had a fit of giggling. "You'll see," he said, spluttering, "you'll see. You're the guest, so you take the bedroom. I'll make do on the couch."
"What?" the investigator said, bewildered. "What are you talking about, Mike?"
"You'll see," the little man repeated, and sloshed more brandy into his glass.
The Longnecker sisters came out of the bathroom about fifteen minutes later. They were laughing, holding hands, practically skipping.
"Whee!" Opal cried.
"It's party time!" Pearl shouted, eyes glistening. "Time for all good men to come to the aid of the party. Let's go, big man." And she held out her hand to Henry Ullman.
He turned to look at Mulligan. The bank officer had taken off his glasses and pulled Opal onto his lap. His hand was thrust beneath her skirt. He saw Ullman staring at him.
"Go ahead," he urged. "Pearl will do you good."
Henry followed her into the darkened bedroom, but then she turned on all the lights.
"I like to see what I'm doing," she said.
"Shall I close the door?"
"What the hell for? Wait'll you hear Mike huffing and puffing. It's a scream!"
She undressed so swiftly that he was still taking off his socks when she was naked, lying on the bed and kicking bony legs in the air.
"C'mon, hurry up," she demanded. "I been waiting all week for this, and I'm hot to trot. Oooh, look at the big man. What a sweet cuke!"
He had never had a woman like her before and wasn't certain he'd live to have another. She was demented, insatiable, and wrung him out. She was still at it twenty minutes later, long after he had collapsed, drained. Suddenly she stopped, jumped out of bed.
"Little girls' room," she said, panting. "Don't go away."
Ullman lay in a stupor, thinking this was above and beyond the call of duty, and wishing he might find the strength to rise, dress, and stumble out of that madhouse. But then naked Opal came bounding into the lighted bedroom.
"Turnabout's fair play!" she yelled, and he saw in her eyes what he expected to see.
It was another half-hour before he could get away from her, stagger to his feet, go reeling into the bathroom. He soaked a washcloth in hot water and swabbed off his face and body.
Then he started looking for it.
He checked all the boxes, jars, and bottles in the medicine cabinet, but it wasn't there. It wasn't behind the frosted glass doors of the bathtub. Then he did what he should have done in the first place: lift the porcelain lid of the toilet tank.
There it was: a watertight mason jar containing at least a dozen little glassine envelopes filled with a white powder. He took out the jar, unscrewed the lid, removed one of the envelopes. Then he tightened the lid, replaced the jar in the water-filled tank.
Ullman opened the door cautiously. There was talk and laughter coming from the living room. He heard the voices of the two women and, as promised, the huffing and puffing of Mike Mulligan. He slipped into the bedroom, put the glassine envelope deep in the breast pocket of his jacket.
Then he went back to the living room. Mulligan, his body fish-belly white, mouth smeared, eyes bleary, was sprawled on the couch, and both women were working on him. They all looked up when Ullman entered.
"Party time!" he bawled.