The Damsel

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by Richard Stark


  “In here? Only in my dreams, friend.”

  “Whadaya doin, layin there? You drunk?”

  “Sick. I got gored by a bull.”

  “Tough. Get ya in the privates?”

  “Good God, no. My back, by the shoulder.”

  He laughed. “You was goin the other way.”

  “Sane men do.”

  The other two meantime had searched the room. It hadn’t taken long. They opened the closet and bathroom doors, glanced inside, shut the doors again, then looked behind the armchair and under the bed and that was that. One of them went over to the window and leaned out and looked up, and Grofield hoped the girl had had sense enough to go all the way up and back into the room upstairs, and haul the sheet in after her. Apparently she had, because the guy brought his head back in, looked at the one who talked, and shook his head.

  The talker looked back to Grofield. “The reason we’re here,” he said, “is because there’s a crazy dame loose.”

  “A crazy dame?”

  “Yeah. You know, coo-coo.” He made circles beside his head.

  Grofield nodded. “Got it,” he said. “Off her wonk, you mean.”

  “That’s it. We’re supposed to deliver her to her father in South America, only she got away from us.”

  “South America,” said Grofield.

  “She got away from us,” the guy repeated, meaning that was the part of the sentence he wanted Grofield to think about. “She hung a sheet out the window. We figure she came down the sheet, in your window here, and out of the place. You been right here all day?”

  “Right here,” said Grofield. “Only I’ve been asleep most of the time.”

  “How come when we knocked you said just a second, just a second? What were you doin?”

  “Coming back to bed. I’d just been to the head.”

  “So what?”

  Grofield looked coy. “Underneath here,” he said, “I’m all nudey.”

  “Is that right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So you figure she must of gone through the room while you were asleep.”

  “If she came through, it was while I was asleep. I haven’t seen anybody since lunch, and that was the desk clerk when he brought the food up.”

  “You wouldn’t of seen this girl, and she told you a crazy persecution-complex story, and you believed it, would you?”

  “Not me.”

  “Yeah.” The guy reached out all at once and yanked the covers off Grofield, who shouted, “Hey!”

  “That’s okay,” said the guy. “Just checkin.” Satisfied, he flipped the covers back up over Grofield again. “Take care of yourself,” he said, and to the other two, “Come on, boys.”

  “I don’t think I liked that,” Grofield said.

  One of them stopped by his suitcase, which was closed again but still out in plain sight. He seemed as though he might be thinking about opening it, just out of idle curiosity. Grofield said, loudly, “I think you three are a bunch of bastards, if you want to know.”

  The two silent ones both looked mad, but the talker laughed and said, “That’s okay, we don’t mind. See you around.”

  At least the other one wasn’t thinking about the suitcase anymore. All three of them walked over to the door, and Grofield watched them with a face that showed nothing but outrage.

  At the door, the talker turned and said, “Keep away from the bulls, buddy.” He laughed, and followed the other two out, and shut the door behind him.

  “Ha, ha,” said Grofield sardonically. He shifted position till he could use his right arm to lever himself up, and managed to get into a sitting position by the time those long tanned legs came swinging in the window again.

  The rest of the girl followed, landing gracefully on hands and knees and popping right up again. “I want to thank you,” she said.

  Grofield said, “I don’t like those guys.”

  “They’re dreadful, terrible, awful.”

  “On the other hand,” Grofield went on, “I don’t think I like you a hell of a lot either.”

  “Me? Why, what did I do?”

  “Just answer me one thing. Which one of those three was your aunt?”

  She blushed. “Oh,” she said. “The lie, you mean.”

  “The lie, I mean, right. Your aunt, and Brad, and Tom, that sterling cast of characters.”

  She made embarrassed faces, embarrassed gestures. “I didn’t know what to do, what to say. I wasn’t sure I could trust you.”

  “You’re getting a whopper ready,” he said, “I can tell the signs.”

  “No, I’m not. Really.”

  “Cross your heart, honey. You forgot to cross your heart.”

  “Now, don’t be nasty,” she said. “Besides, what about you? You told a pretty big whopper yourself.”

  “Only to protect you, only to keep you from getting in even worse trouble than you already are.”

  “Oh, if you think I believe that—”

  “Why not? What’s wrong with it?”

  “I wouldn’t,” she told him, “I wouldn’t believe a word you said to me.”

  “Honey, I feel exactly the same way about you.”

  They faced each other, both somewhat irritated, both displaying more irritation than they felt, both thinking desperately. Until Grofield, seeing how identical they were being, suddenly burst out laughing, and a second later she started laughing too. She sat down on the edge of the bed and laughed, and Grofield leaned forward over his knees and laughed, and they kept on that way a while and gradually subsided into friendly silence.

  Grofield finally broke it, saying, “I could use a drink. How about you?”

  “Desperately.”

  “I’ll get us a bottle and some ice,” Grofield suggested, and reached for the phone.

  “Don’t let anybody know I’m here!”

  “Don’t worry about a thing. The desk clerk is madly in love with my money. You hungry?”

  “Starved, as a matter of fact. Excitement always makes me hungry.”

  “The life you live, I’m surprised you’re not fat as a horse.”

  “What do you know about the life I live?”

  “It includes those three aunties of yours, doesn’t it? Any life that includes that trio is bound to be exciting. And probably short.” Grofield picked up the phone. “I’ll get us food,” he said.

  3

  “AAAHH,” SHE SAID in contentment, and smiled, and patted her lips with the napkin, and pushed the tray away across the table. “That was good.”

  “I could use a fresh drink,” Grofield told her. “And then we’ll talk.”

  “Right. Then we’ll talk.”

  In the last half hour, since he’d made the call for food and drink, they’d said practically nothing to one another, both accepting this as a sort of time-out. She’d insisted on hiding in the closet while the desk clerk, grinning evilly beneath his moustache, brought in the huge tray of food, and since then she’d sat demurely at the writing table across the room, packing it in like an infantryman after a forty-mile hike.

  Now she got to her feet, gathered up their two glasses, took them over to the bottle of scotch and the ice bucket on the dresser, and made fresh drinks. She came back and sat down on the edge of the bed, handed Grofield his glass, and said, “Who goes first?”

  “Names first,” he said. “We might as well have something to call one another. My name’s Grofield, Alan Grofield, and that’s straight.”

  “Hello, Alan Grofield. I’m Ellen Marie Fitzgerald, and that’s also straight.”

  “It sounds straight enough. What do they call you?”

  “Elly, mostly.”

  Grofield practiced raising his left arm. It was feeling better and better, and was only really bad immediately after sleep. “Let me,” he said, “let me run down what I know about you, Ellen Marie, and then you see if you can tell a straight story to fill in the blank spaces.”

  She smiled, looking pert, and said, “I love to b
e the center of attention.”

  “The hell you do. That Gale Storm bit doesn’t suit you, honey.”

  Her smile got a bit more honest. “Circumstances are against me,” she said. “But go ahead, tell me my story.”

  “Right. You’re a young girl, good-looking, unmarried, from the northeastern part of the United States. A city, somewhere between Washington and Boston, but probably neither of those. Maybe New York, but I’ll take a stab at Philadelphia. Okay so far?”

  Her smile had faltered, and now was turning sour. “Are you very clever,” she asked him, “or are you a part of this somehow? Do you already know everything?”

  “I knew nothing,” he told her, “until you came in my window. And that’s straight. Surely it shouldn’t have been that tough to tell you were a big-city girl from the northeast. I doubted it was New York, because when I told you I came from New York you didn’t ask me what part. People always ask strangers from the same city what part of the city they live in. Boston and Washington both would probably have left some trace of accent in your speech, and you have none, so that left Philadelphia.”

  “And Baltimore,” she said. “And Wilmington. And Trenton. And Buffalo. And Cleveland.”

  He shook his head. “Big city. And not Baltimore because Baltimore is Pittsburgh, and you aren’t from Pittsburgh.”

  She laughed and clapped her hands, a return to the girl-child style. “You’re wonderful,” she said. “You’re delightful. I believe you now, you looked at me and guessed I came from Philadelphia.”

  “But not your three aunties,” Grofield said, gesturing at the door. “They’re New York, the three of them, and they’re professional hoods, and your background shouldn’t cross theirs anywhere. So. A rich girl from Philadelphia is being held prisoner by three New York hoods in a respectable middle-income hotel in Mexico City. Fine so far?”

  “As nicely put as anything I’ve ever heard. And I know what you do for a living. You write those paragraphs called ‘The Story So Far’ in front of serial chapters in the magazines.”

  Grofield grinned. “My secret is out. But don’t tell anybody.”

  “I promise. Are you done with me?”

  “Not quite. You escaped from the hoods, but you didn’t call the cops, which means it isn’t a straight kidnapping job. You’re in on something crooked, in other words.” Grofield reached out to the bedside table with his good arm, got his Delicados, and lit one. “Now,” he said, “it’s your turn.”

  “What kind of cigarette is that?”

  “Mexican.”

  “Well, it smells awful. Put it out. Here.” She lifted a corner of her sweater, and a pack of Luckies was tucked into the waistband of her skirt. She tossed it to him, saying, “Light us each one.”

  He did so, and said, “To repeat, now it’s your turn.”

  “My turn?” She smiled brightly, doing her child routine again.“You mean now I tell you what I know about you?”

  “Not yet, Ellen Marie. First you—”

  “I wish you wouldn’t call me that. My friends call me Elly.”

  “I’m glad for them. Whenever you go into your act, like Ginger Rogers in The Major and the Minor, I’ll call you Ellen Marie. Fair enough? Now, tell me your tale of woe.”

  “I’m not sure I’m going to talk to you at all.”

  Grofield gestured with his thumb at the door again. “Those three thugs are a lot tougher than any auntie, little girl. You need help to keep clear of them. In fact, you need this room.”

  “You wouldn’t throw me out.”

  “Not if I know what I’m involved with. But I don’t go in blind, that stupid I’m not.”

  She bit her lip and looked worried. “I suppose you’re right,” she said at last. “I suppose I’ve got to let you know the truth.”

  “It would be a change.”

  She puffed nervously at the cigarette, and then said, “Did you ever hear of Big Ed Fitzgerald?”

  “Big Ed Fitzgerald? No, I can’t say I have.”

  “He tries to keep out of the limelight, avoid publicity, but the papers have written about him a few times. Particularly when he had to go give evidence in front of that Congressional committee.”

  “Oh? Who is this guy?”

  “He’s . . . well, he’s what they call a kingpin.”

  “A kingpin.”

  “In the underworld,” she explained, being very earnest now, like a brand-new schoolteacher. “He’s very important in organized crime in Philadelphia.”

  “Oh,” said Grofield. “Ah. And this Big Ed Fitzgerald is related to you, is that it?”

  “He’s my father.”

  “Your father.”

  She shook her head and waved both hands, expressing confusion. “I didn’t know it myself,” she said, “until three years ago, when the committee called him. I just thought he was a building contractor. But he’s a lot more than that. He’s in the rackets up to his neck.”

  The last sentence sounded terrible in her mouth, and Grofield winced. “Very graphic,” he said.

  “Sorry. But he is. He’s a kingpin, it said so in the papers.”

  “The aunties are his boys?”

  “Oh, no. They work for someone else, a . . . competitor of my father’s. Someone who’s trying to—”

  “Don’t say it. Trying to muscle in?”

  She smiled and nodded. “That’s right. My father’s having a meeting with them in Acapulco on Friday and—”

  “You mean like that Apalachin meeting a few years ago.”

  “But this time they’re meeting outside of the country, which is a lot smarter.”

  “Right.”

  “Anyway,” she said, and gestured vaguely, “anyway, they kidnapped me. They’re trying to use me to force my father to go along with what they want. So that’s why I’ve got to stay here until Friday, and then get down to Acapulco to meet him, so he’ll know I’m safe.”

  Grofield motioned at the telephone. “Why not call him now? Why wait till Friday?”

  “Because I don’t know where he is now. He’s incommunicado somewhere, because it would be too dangerous for him right now. These other people might try to kill him.”

  “So today’s— What day is today?”

  She seemed surprised. “You don’t know what day it is?”

  “Honey, when you just lie around in bed forever, one day begins to look pretty much like another.”

  “Oh. It’s Tuesday.”

  “Tuesday. And you have to be in Acapulco by Friday.”

  “On Friday. I wouldn’t dare get there early.”

  Grofield nodded. “All right,” he said, “I think that part’s probably the truth. Acapulco on Friday.”

  “What do you mean, that part?”

  “Because the rest is pure greasepaint, honey. I remember when Edward Arnold used to play Big Ed Fitzgerald all the time. And didn’t Broderick Crawford do it once or twice? Sheldon Leonard was always the heavy, and—”

  Abruptly she got up from the bed. “I don’t think you ought to make fun of me. I’m all alone, I’m helpless—”

  “Oh, come on!”

  “What about you? I suppose you were going to tell me the truth!”

  Grofield grinned and shook his head. “Not a bit of it. I’ve got three beauties lined up to tell you, one after the other, each with an all-star cast.”

  “You just think because you’re an inveterate liar everybody else is, too.”

  “No. Just you.”

  She opened her mouth to say something else, something angry, but the door opened at the same second and the three hoods came back in, all of them holding guns. The talker smiled in a smug way and said, “Hello there, Miss Fitzgerald. You kind of got lost.” He looked at Grofield and made clucking sounds and said, “And you tell lies. We got to do something about that.”

  4

  GROFIELD SAID, “All you people go home. The party doesn’t start till five, I don’t even have the ashtrays out.”

  The talker sho
ok his head and said, “You are a very funny man. I wanna keep you with me all the time, to make me laugh when I’m blue. You well enough to walk?”

  “A little,” Grofield admitted. “Like to the potty and back.”

  “Like to the elevator and up. Get your clothes on.”

  One of the others, silent till now, said, “Maybe we just bump him, it’s simpler.”

  The talker looked long-suffering, and shook his head. “And we got the hotel full of cops,” he said. “Very bright.”

  “Maybe he fell out the window. Dizzy from being sick and all.”

  “You’re dizzy. Dead is dead, the hotel is still full of cops. A sick guy, bedridden, what’s he doing over by the window?”

  Grofield said, “Tell him. I’m on your side.”

  The talker looked at him. “Then why don’t you get dressed?”

  The girl said, “Shall I turn my back?”

  “Maybe you’d better. Underneath here, I’m horribly scarred.”

  She made a face and turned around.

  Grofield got out of bed slowly, feeling weak but capable of movement. The stiffness that came after sleep had worn off again by now, but he still had no strength. His trousers seemed to weigh a ton, and his fingers were thick and slow-moving and prey to trembles.

  The talker said, “You’re very slow, pal. You’re making me get second thoughts about the window.”

  “I’m out of practice,” Grofield told him. He could feel perspiration beading his face, trickling down his sides, coating his chest and back. The shaking in his fingers had spread up his arms now, and exertion had set waves of dizziness rolling behind his eyes.

  The girl said, “Let me help him.”

  “Fine.”

  She buttoned his shirt for him, put his shoes on and tied the laces, got his arms into his jacket sleeves, and draped his tie around his neck. “There,” she said. “You’re beautiful.”

  “But I’ve got to leave the ball at midnight, right? Or all this stuff turns back into ermine and silk.” He felt lightheaded and foolish, like a drugged prince in a story of palace intrigue in a Carpathian duchy. Background music circled around his head, an unlikely blend of Berg and Debussy. His clothing felt heavy enough to be a prince’s uniform, complete with sword buckled at the waist.

 

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