THE ADULTERESS

 

THE ADULTERESS

 

 Three private detectives, armed with telescopic lens cameras, had failed to snare Burt Cello’s wife while she was in an adulterous embrace with her paramour, and so the wealthy cuckolded husband decided to deal with her infidelity in a different way.

He contracted me.

        His wife’s lover was no mystery man.  He was a vice president in Cello’s company.  Cello instructed me to have a chat with the Casanova and to make him an offer he couldn’t refuse.  I made the offer, and he did not refuse.

        Sandra Cello had expected that she would be with her lover that same evening.  They had planned to have their rendezvous in an abandoned taxi shack on the outskirts of town.  She was to ride the elevated train to the last stop on the line, Bowdoin Station, and then she would have to walk nearly a mile along Bromley Avenue, which was mostly a stretch of long-ago condemned apartment buildings and burned-out shops. 

         The blight of the area had become so severe that the city fathers had ballyhooed a plan to tear down all the structures and create a connector to the interstate highway.  But, of course, like most bureaucratic blarney, it never happened.

       

 Early that evening, I roosted myself at a table by the window in a coffee shop across the street from Bowdoin Station, and watched the trains arrive every thirty minutes. 

Sandra Cello’s train screeched to a halt at seven-thirty.

        The Cello woman was easy to spot.   I watched appreciatively as the gorgeous blonde moved along the platform and came down the steps to the street.  She was a tall, sturdy woman, and even though she was wearing a bulky trench coat I could tell that she had a fine figure.  There was a scowl on her pretty face as she moved past my window and started on her trek through the slummy neighborhood.

         Sandra Cello was a beautiful woman, and I had no doubt that her beauty was the reason that Cello had married her, because I knew he didn’t love her.  Men like that don’t love anyone but themselves. 

He owned her.  And he wasn’t about to let anybody steal his property.

        I gave Sandra Cello a good head start before I left the coffee shop and tagged slowly along behind her.  There was no worry about losing the tail because I knew exactly where she was going.

        The thing was, though, she didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get there.  She just plodded along, gazing at many of  the destroyed buildings and the piles of rubble.  She did stop in front of the shell of a three-story tenement house, and for quite a few minutes she just stood there staring at the building. 

I figured that she had probably once lived in that house, since I knew that she had been raised in this foul neighborhood.  But because Sandra Cello was beautiful and wily, she had found a way out.  She married a wealthy man and traded in the dumpy tenement for a palatial mansion.  And now she was throwing it all away for nothing more than a fleeting passion with a dippy office clerk. 

Sandra Cello moved on and I moved on behind her.

She was not more than a few yards away from the taxi shack when she stopped and turned around so quickly that I had no chance to duck out of sight.

“Don’t worry about it, detective,” she said cheerfully.  “It’s not as though I wasn’t on to you.  I’ve been followed many times by many detectives, and I know the drill.”

I grinned harshly.  “It’s been a pleasant stroll,” I said.

“Oh, yes, I like to walk through the old neighborhood,” she agreed.   “Especially when I know I have company.  You know there have been at least three other private detectives before you, and I’ve disappointed all of them.”

“You won’t disappoint me.”

“Oh? And why is that?  My husband did hire you to catch me with a boyfriend, and probably take some pictures.  Do you see a boyfriend around here?”

“He’s not going to come, you know.”

“Who?”

"Who the hell do you think?”

“So, what are you anyhow?  Just another goddamned detective.”

I moved towards her, and she backed up a step or two.

“I’m not a detective,” I told her.  “Mr. Cello says he’s all done with detectives.”

Sandra Cello’s eyes widened, and she stiffened.  She backed up some more, until she was right in front of the taxi shack.  I moved forward and backed her right into the shack and I followed her inside and closed the door behind me.  I put my hand in my pocket and brought out my business tool.

A press of the tiny button on the handle of the stiletto announced the gleaming presence of a long slender blade.