"You must have been pretty sure I'd say yes."
"I was. Only a fool would have said no to a chance to make a million dollars."
"That much?"
"Easily. Now if you're quite ready . . .?"
She had lifted herself from the chair and hugged the fur-trimmed coat tighter about her lithe figure. For a moment, the border of fluffy feathers framed her face in an unforgettable setting. But her eyes were cold and cruel. I had an idea she was exactly the same way. They kid a lot about eyes as windows of the soul but not even the greatest actors in the world can hide what their eyes say twenty-four hours a day. Madame Arla Roti would have been an ideal female to run a place like Buchenwald. It was written all over her. Her slim, tapering hands curled for the haft of a whip.
"I'm taking my .45 with me," I reminded her. "One bum play and I'll blast away. And remember. You don't have to be a good shot to hit anything with one of these babies."
I took out the gun and let her see it for size.
Madame Arla Roti opened the fur coat and held it wide in a fan shape. I had a quick image of a vampire bat spreading its wings, but none of Dracula's daughters were ever built like this steel-plated butterfly. She let me drink my fill and even as I did, her dark eyes were fixed on my mouth as if she wanted to bite me.
"Really?" she purred. "Is that all you can do with a very beautiful woman? Shoot her?"
"Cut it out," I said.
"Look at me, Mr. Noon. Have you ever seen a woman to compare with me?" For emphasis, she poked out her chest, sucked in her gut and allowed her hips to undulate a trifle. I would have laughed out loud except I remembered all too well what the Wicked Queen did to Snow White when the magic mirror on the wall gave all the wrong answers. I knew instinctively I was facing one of the super lady-egos of all time. The Madame was in love with herself. Narcissistically. Maybe insanely.
"Put away your weapons," I said. "You're wasting your time. I've been seduced by experts."
That one got to her slightly. I saw a dangerous flicker in the dark eyes. The fur coat closed up shop again and she hugged herself almost dreamily.
"You've got a big gun, Mr. Noon. Perhaps you are a big man. Perhaps we shall see about that soon enough. . . ."
"If you're through acting like Mata Hari, let's go to Florida, huh? This New York winter is getting me down."
I reburied the .45 in its holster.
Madame Roti looked me in the eye.
"You're a bore with your crudities," she laughed tightly. "But suit yourself."
"That's what I said the first time."
For a moment I thought she was going to laugh right into my face. Bust out and really snicker like a queen talking to the stableboy. But she didn't. She saw something in my face that prevented her. She merely shrugged and walked toward the door of the apartment. I followed her, my brain trying to work something out. I wasn't sure how far I could play along with her. Right at that particular moment, I had no intention of going farther than Times Square with her, but I was lost for something to say or do. So I decided to play it by ear. A real lousy way to be a detective, but sometimes you have no other choice.
Like a cop on the beat, I had to see what she'd do next.
We walked the quiet corridors of the apartment building, rode down in a deserted elevator car whose self-service deprived me of any eyewitnesses and once again I had to marvel how an overcrowded metropolis like Manhattan can sometimes resemble a graveyard. We ran into nobody. Downstairs in the lobby, even Pete the doorman had disappeared somewhere for a second. It was another scene from a dream. Me and the dark lady of doom all by our lonesomes.
There was a limousine though. An enormous Packard parked just in front of the canopy, and the uniformed guy who hopped out and opened the back door for her was about a head taller than me. In the dim night, with its frosty backdrop of snowed-in Central Park and icy bunkers high up on the curbing, he looked like something out of a monster movie. His size was awesome, his face resembled a kid's play-dough construction. Lumpy, gristled and broken-nosed. He flung me a look, his slitted eyes experienced enough to see the really unnoticeable bulge of my left shoulder holster.
"He's coming with us, Leo," Madame Roti said in a low unhurried whisper. "The airport."
Leo touched his cap, grunted and slammed the door behind me. When he went around and climbed behind the wheel, his head and shoulders filled the front seat. Madame Roti settled back against her cushions and I hugged the right-hand side of the rear seat. There was enough space between us to accommodate two Jackie Gleasons. You could barely hear the Packard's motor or feel its smooth glide away from the curb. Not even the crust of icy snow beneath its wheels slowed things up. In seconds, we were cruising down Central Park West with the ribbons of electric lights and neon gleaming from the West Side. The high towers of the skyline rising from the mouth of Columbus Circle, dead ahead, glowed like a Christmas tree in the night.
They say silence is golden but you can't prove it by me.
She was going to play the Sphinx from here on out but I couldn't sit still for that.
"Where is Harry Healey?"
"He's no concern of mine."
"I didn't ask you that. Is he alive or dead?"
She didn't turn but kept staring straight ahead. Her profile was right off an old Spanish medallion. The religioso kind.
"I really don't know," she admitted. "No matter. It no longer means anything in so far as we are committed."
"Talk English."
"I always try to. But you seem the sort of man who is uncommonly dedicated to plain facts. Rest easy, Mr. Noon. All your questions will be answered in due time."
"In Florida, you mean."
"Yes, of course. In Florida."
"One more question?"
"If you must, you must."
"I must. Did Serena Savage really meet you in an underground or undersea cave somewhere off Skeleton Key?"
"Did she say she did?" Madame Roti had turned to regard me with that mocking bitchiness so natively her own. In the subtle fusion of passing lights and the chrome gleam of the limousine's accessories, she was breathtakingly beautiful. Satanic style, but sensational all the same.
"Yes, she did. How about it? Do you run an underwater complex for dames in bikinis out to lure the seagoing Rover Boys on the rocks?"
"You are amusing." She shook her head gently but she didn't laugh. The smile was deadly empty. "But I cannot discuss anything with you. It really isn't wise. Because if I do and then you try to do something foolish like running away or refusing to go on the plane, I will have to order Leo to shoot you."
I leaned back and folded my arms so that my right hand was close to the butt of my .45.
My mind was reeling. Thinking of everything that had led to this moment, and all my last-second suppositions about the Bermuda Triangle. And now this. Madame Roti, the weird babe in Serena Savage's weirder story, personally escorting me into the heart of the layout and the enigma at virtually the eleventh hour.
But there was no more to be said.
Madame Arla Roti shrunk back into her fur-trimmed coat and buried herself in about ten yards of silence. I did likewise, my eye on the route we were taking, my hand close to the .45. I wanted the whole game in front of me.
Big Leo swung the big car like a toy toward the Lincoln Tunnel and plowed through the lighted tube smoothly. Beyond its length, on the Jersey side, he ignored the turnpike and took Route 9 heading south. There was an ocean of traffic going in both directions and the dark limousine was the shapeliest wave in the mainstream. Leo drove like a machine. His precision was perfect.
Linden and the waiting airplane was only about twenty minutes away when Madame Arla Roti took the lid off Pandora's box.
She was remote and inaccessible in her dark corner of the car when her lush, sultry voice said: "You can make love to me now, Mr. Noon, if you care to. There is plenty of time until we reach the airport. . . ."
We were separated from Big Leo and the front s
eat by a glass partition, but the rear of the car was as secluded as an expensive boudoir out of Hugh Hefner's wildest fantasies.
And mine.
LETHAL LOVELY
JUST like that
Sounds fun, eh?
It was. Or rather it could have been. If I had parked my brains with my conceits and egos.
Madame Arla Roti had reached over one slender hand and placed it meaningfully on my lap. Then the hand roved until it rested with even more messages across my crotch. I looked at her. She looked at me. In that split second, she moved closer, skillfully uncrossing her legs so that now her ample thigh brushed against me. She nudged with the kind of emphasis you used to get in the darkened rows of a movie house when the world was a helluva lot younger and more innocent I smiled. She smiled back. I closed my hand over her familiar one and took some liberties of my own. She snuggled closer, letting her eyes half-lid for me. Her red mouth looked moist in the dim interior of the limousine. I could smell her now, too. All those jungle aromas larded over with deep dark mystery of exactly what she might be like in bed. Her trapped hand tried to worm its way to where it wanted to go and I laughed lightly to show her I was pleased. By that time, she was sure she had me hooked. The other hand, the one I couldn't see, was behind her, out of sight. We strained toward each other and she let the buttonless fur coat flutter open. The solidly packed environs of her torso began to crowd me in earnest. Her exquisite face tilted up to me for a mad kiss. The one that was supposed to sweep everything before it, make my blood boil, my toes curl and my logic fly off to parts unknown. She closed her eyes and let me see how my male nearness had affected her female senses. She was husky-voiced, almost crooning with ecstasy, and now her trapped hand broke free to come up around my head and pull me down for that kiss that was going to hook up all the electricity and make the ride to Linden a very special trip indeed.
It was a great performance. Beautifully played, perfectly timed and not a moan or gesture or nuance off. The only thing wrong with it was I didn't believe it for a second.
I've been down that route too many times. She was setting me up and sex was the last thing she had in mind. Me, too.
Her tongue tried to dart between my lips and as it did, the hand that was out of sight suddenly materialized like a separate entity. If I'd closed my eyes, responding to her magic, I never would have seen the small hypodermic needle palmed in that hand.
It was actually a pleasure to hit her. I did. A short, straight jab which if it didn't have distance had plenty of Wheaties behind it. I had kept my back toward Leo, looking for all the world like I was getting a real stranglehold on his mistress. But fortunately the highway was heavy with traffic and he couldn't really have made out what exactly was going on in the rear of the car.
The punch for all its brevity did the trick. No more than a hiss of sound whistled through Madame Roti's teeth and she shuddered violently in my arms before she twitched and lay still. Her eyes stayed closed. I hugged her to me, keeping her tight in my arms, and then I settled back against the cushions, huddling with her. If Leo caught a glimpse in his rear-view mirror, he would decide for himself that Madame and the private-eye sap were touching a few bases. If he was in on her plan at all to slip me a paralyzer on the way to the flyfield, he could figure she was delaying things to get some of her own private kicks. You never could be sure with dames like Madame Arla Roti.
As her cheek bored unconsciously into my shoulder, I kept my eyes on Leo's broad back and the road ahead. We were just passing Newark Airport and the runway lights were doing their usual intermittent blinking routine along the thousands of yards of space. I could hear but not see the thunder of a jetliner as it approached from the south. That would put Linden about ten minutes away. I wondered why the Madame had chosen to put me under before we took the plane. If we were going to take the plane at all. Had she been afraid I might change my mind, or did she simply imagine I'd be easier to handle as quiet as a Care package? After all, Leo could have handled me as easily as an overnight bag.
It was understandable why she had selected Linden instead of Newark. It was a lot more secluded and private and not as big and as secured as Newark. Private planes take off from there all the time.
I didn't know what to think, really.
She felt nice and warm and feminine in my arms and if she had been a different kind of female article we could have had a ball. But she wasn't, so I thought about something else.
She hadn't been carrying any kind of purse or catchall and as my fingers fanned over the fur coat and the culottes, I didn't find any pockets. The hypo, which was no more than two inches in length all told, must have been pinned inside the expensive lining of the coat. She was getting heavy lying against me like that but I had to leave her that way to lull Leo into thinking everything was copacetic. It was a helluva bore. I tried to think of what I could do when we got to Linden. I was running out of time.
Famous last words.
I didn't smell anything funny until it was far too late. The stuff must have been piped in by control from the front of the car where Leo sat like the statue of death. He wasn't as dumb as he looked. He had read the scene in the back seat all the way. And read it right. Within a frantic few seconds I caught the very first whiff of something foreign and sickly in the atmosphere of the car. There had been no need for air-conditioning, thanks to the weather, but that didn't mean the limousine wasn't equipped for it. I should have known better. Should have guessed that Madame Roti wouldn't have been that easy to take over the hurdles. Anything as big as the deal she was involved in wouldn't have permitted anything less than ultra-efficient, highly-coordinated technological safety factors.
The aroma thickened and the sudden smarting stench in my nostrils galvanized. It was a sweet, sickly smell. Not like ether at all. But obviously just as sleep-inducing. I could feel my senses reeling, the lights began to flicker alarmingly and, as I twisted away from Madame Roti's body, it seemed like it took me five minutes to manage it. The limousine was moving like a vehicle in a dream. Soundlessly, swiftly. I felt drunk. Roaring drunk. I fumbled out my .45 and all of a sudden it weighed ten pounds. I tried to draw a bead on Leo's head, saw the thick partition of glass between his seat and the rear and forgot about it. My lungs were starting to burst. It was too late to hold my breath. I pawed past Madame Roti's limp figure as it sprawled across me. I reversed the .45 in my hand and began to pound away at the glass window of the door on my side. My arm felt like a stick of wood. The .45 now weighed twenty pounds and was getting a lot heavier. The glass didn't budge. I used both hands to reverse the .45 and tried to squeeze off a shot. But my trigger finger wouldn't bend. I blinked, shaking my head, and then it all seemed so silly and why was I taking it so hard and why in hell didn't I just lay down and relax and stop fighting it? Sleep now seemed the answer to everything. Blessed, delicious slumber.
Thoughts collided in my confused mind. Bulletproof partitions, ditto the windows, knockout gas piped in via the air-conditioning circuit and one steel-plated ladybird of doom. What a parlay. I felt myself suspended, the tonneau of the car catching all the passing reflections of headlights and stars in a kaleidoscopic pattern of madness. I closed my eyes, hardly feeling my face smashing up against the floor of the car, close to the left door. My hands unconsciously strayed for the door handle. We must have been doing sixty miles an hour and it had never once crossed my mind to bat the car doors open. They probably were locked tighter than a drum anyway. Any kind of drum.
The .45 now weighed a ton.
It seemed like a sixteen-inch gun when I finally shut my eyes and went to sleep.
I must have been dreaming.
Blackouts, no matter what kind they are, impose a curious form of lifelessness and bodilessness on the slugged one. Ask the man who knows. Whether you wake up from a bad car accident and find yourself wrapped around a tree trunk or catch a punch on the button in a street fight or go to the hospital to have your appendix out or have simply passed on into the eu
phoria of dreamland, it's all the same somehow. You come out of it slowly, almost gingerly, as if you're not quite sure you want to. It's hard to focus the eyes or the hearing or any of your senses for that matter and getting reoriented can take the twenty years that it required Rip Van Winkle to wake up and find out that things weren't what they used to be.
All the senses lie in mothballs, and removing the layers of twilight unconsciousness, one by one, can take an eternity. What seems like an eternity.
You hear voices, too.
Strange voices. Familiar voices. The voices of the dead and the living. And the fondly and not-so fondly remembered.
You're kind of weightless, floating around in a void, and the censor band that blocks off your conscious mind from the subconscious that old Sigmund discovered in the long ago, can give you a very bad time, indeed. Like I said, you don't know what happened, which end is up or where all the pieces are. Or where they belong.
It's a Coney Island nuthouse of impressions. As wacky as all that and the brain that never sleeps takes all those sensations and impressions one by curious one and tries to dope them out. And it isn't easy. It never is.
There was no pain.
No headache.
No nausea.
Only euphoria.
A blissful, dreamy, tranquil sort of restfulness that allowed for all the time in the world. It was as if the longer things took to unwind, the better.
The trip back from shockland was a strange, incredible journey. But along the devious route, there were some signposts and markers to chart the trip so I got some notion if I was going in the right direction.
I didn't open my eyes. Somehow I couldn't But I heard things. Odd, half-remembered, dimly recalled tidbits that seemed to tell me something. I tried to think about what the voices were telling me. It was very difficult. I was wrapped in a million miles of fuzzy, absorbent cotton. I strained against a wall of bewilderment, trying to think. Trying to get acquainted with reality again. Stumbling toward some kind of light in seventy miles of darkness.
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