She gasped, “But I haven’t really done—I haven’t really told them—I never meant to go through with—” She swallowed hard. “I was just—a little crazy, I guess.”
“It is,” I said, deliberately, “a form of insanity that we can’t afford to tolerate. I’m sorry.”
Don’t blame us for the dialogue. Somebody wrote it for us in Washington. Jean stared at me for a moment longer. Her eyes were that china-blue color that never looks real in anyone’s but a child’s face. They disturbed me, and I saw another disturbing thing: the glass, which she’d kept hidden from me, was full to within an inch of the top with straight whisky—it had to be that, since there was no water nearer than the bathroom, and she hadn’t gone in there.
She looked at me, with those odd, blue, child’s eyes staring out of the pretty, plump, dissipated woman’s face. Then she ducked her head abruptly, and drank down the contents of the glass, shuddered, and set the glass aside. It took her a moment to catch her breath after that massive slug. Well, if she wanted to anesthetize herself at this point, having said almost everything she was supposed to say, I couldn’t really blame her.
She licked her lips, and got out her final line with difficulty, “I know—I know, you’re going to—to kill me!”
“Not kill, Jean,” I said. “Not kill.”
As I went to work, I was glad for her sake that she had all that alcohol inside her, but I wished she’d stuck to those corduroy pants. She was still kind of attractive in spite of everything. Nicely dressed as she was, it was kind of like taking an axe to the Mona Lisa.
I wasn’t halfway through the scientifically brutal roughing-up program Dr. Perry had laid out for me when she died.
4
It wasn’t the worst moment of my life. After all, I’ve been responsible for the deaths of people I knew and liked: it happens in the business. Although we’d worked for the same outfit, this woman had been a stranger to me. Still, she’d trusted me to know what I was doing, and it’s no fun to find yourself holding a corpse and wondering what the hell went wrong.
I caught her as she collapsed, and I felt her fight for breath—for life—and fail to make it. It took only a moment. Then she was dead. I was clumsy about easing her to the floor; I got my watch strap tangled in her necklace. Maybe I was just a bit rattled, too. Anyway, suddenly there were artificial pearls all over the rug. Several strands had been broken by the time I’d managed to lay her down and disentangle myself. The damn beads kept slipping off the broken strings by twos and threes, and rolling about in a nasty alive way while she lay among them, absolutely still. Edgar Allen Poe would have thought it was swell.
I straightened up and took a couple of long breaths and listened. She’d died practically in silence, but it had been a very loud silence, if you know what I mean; and there had been a bit of scuffling before that. It seemed as if somebody outside must have noticed something, but apparently nobody had.
I took another long breath, and knelt down and made a brief examination. There was nothing fundamentally wrong, that I could see, except that she was dead. She was kind of a mess by this time, of course. She was supposed to be. That was what I was there for. The idea had been for her to look spectacularly beat-up—to show how seriously we took her disloyalty—without having anything really broken except a certain bone in the forearm. As Mac had said, she had to have at least one broken bone or they wouldn’t buy it. Besides, a nice big cast makes a person look very harmless and helpless, while at the same time it affords concealment for a number of small emergency tools and weapons, properly designed. The surgeon at the local hospital had his instructions...
But I hadn’t got that far when she keeled over; and a woman doesn’t die from a bruised eye or a cut lip. She doesn’t die from a split dress seam or a laddered stocking. I’d been following instructions carefully. Except for the incidental damage to her clothes and necklace, nothing was broken, and she’d lost no significant amounts of blood. She was just dead, lying there.
I rose and went over and sniffed the glass she’d set aside. It smelled of whisky and nothing else. I uncapped the bottle she’d used and tasted the contents cautiously. If there was an adulterant, it had the flavor of whisky, or no flavor at all. Of course, she could have been given something slow-acting in a drink before she came in here, or in her food, if she’d eaten. Or she could have been shot with a poisoned dart, or stuck with a hypo, or bitten by a black widow spider. Or she could simply have died of heart failure.
I grimaced. Matt Helm, boy detective. It didn’t matter what she’d died of, for the moment: she was dead. Scratch Jean, agent, female, five feet four, a hundred and thirty pounds. I went to the door and paused to check my watch band for telltale fibers, and my pockets and pants cuffs for beads. I kicked a slim black shoe out of the way, reflecting absently that I’d never yet met a woman, pro or amateur, who could stay in her pumps when the going got rough.
I looked back. If you can do it, you can damn well look at it, no matter how badly you’ve loused it up. I never trust these delicate chaps who are hell behind a telescopic sight at five hundred yards but can’t bear to come up close and see the blood. I gave her a long look, lying there among her spilled pearls. What did I think about—besides wondering, again, what the hell went wrong? Well, if you must know, I thought it would be nice to be in Texas, which is a hell of an attitude, for a good New Mexican.
I went out, pulled the door closed behind me, removed my gloves and put them in my pocket. I turned and walked casually towards my parked car. As I did so, I realized there were people at the pool.
We’d counted on the pool being empty after dark, this time of year. I’d gone too far to turn back without attracting attention; so I sauntered by in a leisurely way, and even allowed myself to glance in that direction, like any man curious about what kind of fools would want to go swimming this late on a cool fall night. An athletic male was doing a racing crawl down the pool. On shore there was another man and two girls. These three were making a funny, funny thing of how cold the air was, how cold the water was, and how cold they were.
Maybe I shouldn’t have looked at all, though it seemed like the natural thing to do. Maybe I just looked too long. Anyway, the smaller of the two girls glanced around and, seeing me, gestured for me to stop. I couldn’t very well pretend I hadn’t noticed. I stopped, like any man flagged down by a pretty girl. I waited. She came up to the low fence that separated the tiled pool area from the concrete walk.
“M-mister, have you g-got a m-m-match?”
The cigarette between her blue-cold lips bobbed as she spoke. She had good reason to be cold; she didn’t have enough on to warm a newborn kitten. Personally, I applaud the return of the reasonably discreet one-piece bathing suit, such as the other girl was wearing. It has brought a little suspense back into our lives. For a while, there was hardly a thing a girl could reveal to you in private that you hadn’t already seen in public—you and every other man on the beach.
But this kid was still on the Bikini kick. The scanty bra and G-string might have looked very sexy in July, but they didn’t go well with goose-bumps. They just looked ridiculous and a bit indecent. I got a folder of matches from my pocket and held it out. She waved her hands to indicate that they were wet. She leaned forward, sticking her face, and the cigarette, over the railing.
I struck a match and stepped up to hold it for her, having no choice. This close, I realized how small she was: no more than five feet and maybe ninety pounds of toy blonde. Her hair, cut boyishly short, was that pale color that doesn’t even darken much when wet. It was plastered unbecomingly to her small head. Even so, soaked, shivering and practically naked, she was cute. You wanted to drop a handkerchief over her when nobody was looking, and slip her into your pocket, and take her home for a pet.
“Thanks!” she said, throwing back her head and blowing smoke at the night sky. “I gu-guess you think we’re d-drunk or c-crazy. Funny thing is, you’re p-perfectly right!”
I grin
ned at her, in response, and walked away. I got into the car and took out a handkerchief and wiped my hands, which were slightly damp with perspiration—I’d half-expected somebody to start yelling murder while I stood there being polite and helpful. I started the little blue Ford they’d given me. Lash Petroni would drive something flashy on his own time, but he’d want an inconspicuous heap when he was working. I backed out of the slot and started towards the highway. I had to remind myself not to attract attention by hurrying.
The little blonde, wrapping herself in a striped beach towel under the pool lights, paused to wave at me as I drove past. She wasn’t only cute, she was friendly, too. Under the circumstances, I may be forgiven for preferring the attitude of the other girl, the lean, dark, reserved one, who wouldn’t demean herself by bumming matches from strangers. Well, time would tell how much damage had been done, if any.
It didn’t take much time. I didn’t even get halfway to Washington before I was picked up.
5
When I heard the siren and saw the red flasher coming up in the mirror, I glanced at the speedometer to make sure I was operating within the law and held on, hoping they’d go past to bother somebody else. They didn’t. I pulled over onto the shoulder, therefore, like a docile citizen, and cranked down the window, waiting for the first policeman to come up.
“What’s the matter, officer?” I asked.
Then I saw the revolver in his hand, and I knew I was in real trouble. They don’t unlimber the firearms for a simple traffic offense. I’d been hoping to make Washington, where I’d have turned in the car for burial, along with everything else connected with the fictitious Lash Petroni, who’d have ceased to exist. That was the first line of defense, if things went wrong. The second was to stick to my Petroni cover and hope for the best.
The one thing I had no authority to do was to reveal myself publicly as a government agent who went around beating up people—not to mention leaving them dead on the floor. That decision was Mac’s to make, not mine.
I had no choice. I drew a long breath and became Lash Petroni until further notice. “I asked you a question, buddy,” I said harshly as the state policeman reached me. “What’s the big idea, stopping me like this? I wasn’t doing over fifty-five, and what’s with the crummy artillery, anyway? Here’s my license—”
“Please keep your hands on the steering wheel, sir.” He was very polite and business-like. He waited until his partner was in position to back him up before he waved me out with the gun. “Now get out slowly—”
They drove me back the way I’d come. Presently they left the big highway and took me by smaller roads to a building equipped with a tall radio mast, where they turned me over to the county police, with a sigh of relief. They were state cops. Their primary job was seeing that people didn’t kill themselves, or each other, on the public highways. Suspected criminals, even loud-mouthed ones, were just a sideline with them.
The county officers searched me and put me through the fingerprint routine. They also searched the little Ford, which had been brought around by somebody. At least I deducted that was what a couple of them had been doing outside when they came back in with my suitcase— Lash Petroni’s suitcase, to be exact. Mine reposed in a Washington hotel room that was beginning to seem more remote every minute. As for Texas, it was already as unattainable as paradise.
They went through the bag and discovered the switchblade knife hidden in the lining. That had been Mac’s idea. When helping an agent build a cover for a particular assignment, he’s apt to get carried away by creative enthusiasm. I’d thought the knife unnecessary as a prop, but it’s always reassuring to have some weapon along, so I hadn’t fought it very hard. Maybe I should have. It certainly didn’t make the police feel more kindly towards me now, although it did convince them of my low character.
Then we waited. I offered my blustering Petroni act again, got no takers, and subsided on a bench in sullen silence. After a while, the door opened, and a man came in. He was stocky and white-haired, with a heavy, impassive cop face. His uniform was neat enough, but it had seen lots of wear.
“Here you are, Tom,” one of the office help said. “Name: James A. Peters, Chicago. About six-four, about two hundred, dark suit and hat—well, look for yourself. Picked up at eleven-seventeen about twenty miles west on U.S. 50, driving a blue Falcon two-door, Illinois plates.”
“That checks right down the line.” Neither policeman looked at me, but I didn’t think it was accidental that I was present to overhear the conversation. I was being informed, I gathered, that they had the goods on me and I might as well confess. “What’s this?” the white-haired man asked, touching the knife on the counter.
“We found it in his luggage, hidden behind the lining.”
The white-haired one picked up the knife and carried it over to me. He stood over me for a moment without speaking, tossing the knife contemptuously into the air and catching it again—closed, of course, or he’d have cut himself badly. He was probably pretty good with his police revolver, and maybe even with his bare hands, but knives were out of his line and he was proud of it.
So many of them are, these days. Jim Bowie would be startled to hear it, as would Jim Bridger and Kit Carson and all the rest of those rugged old-timers who opened up a wilderness with their Arkansas toothpicks and Green River blades; but nowadays there’s supposed to be something very underhanded and un-American about a knife.
“I’m Sergeant Crowell,” the white-haired man said. “Tom Crowell.”
“If you drop that,” I said, “and damage it, you’ll buy me a new one.”
He caught the knife and looked at it again, raising his eyebrows. “You admit it’s yours?”
“Damn right it’s mine,” I said. “And I want it back, along with my cuff links and cigarette case and all the rest of the stuff those jerks have been pawing through like they owned it.”
“A knife like this is illegal,” he said.
“Be your age, Sergeant,” I said. “Wearing it may be illegal in certain places, but you know as well as I do that in my suitcase, locked in the car trunk—hell, I could carry a Samurai sword back there if I wanted. Legally.”
He sighed. “I guess that’s true, Mr. Peters. But it’s kind of a specialized weapon. Do you mind telling me why you have it?”
“I’m interested in specialized weapons; it’s a hobby of mine.” I got to my feet, which gave me a sudden height advantage of several inches. He was heavier, though. But he wouldn’t be hard to take. Nobody is who kids himself that one deadly weapon is morally better, or worse, than another. I said, “Did you have the state boys flag me down and bring me here just because you heard I was packing a shiv in my suitcase? What’s the matter, did some local taxpayer get cut? Send it to your lab, if you’ve got one. They won’t find any blood on it.”
He looked at me sharply. We both knew that knife was irrelevant—that it had nothing whatever to do with the case—but I wasn’t supposed to know it, yet. He tried to decide whether or not my attitude indicated guilty information. Then he shook his head, dismissing the subject.
“Would you mind telling me where you’ve spent the day, Mr. Peters?”
I said, “I was a day early for an appointment in Washington, so I took a drive over your big bridge and down the peninsula a ways, just sight-seeing. I was coming back to Washington to spend the night when I was stopped.” Saying it, I wondered if there were some way he could check if I’d crossed the toll bridge twice. Usually there isn’t; but I took a step forward and said harshly, to get us off the subject, “What the hell is this all about, anyway? Who do you think you’re pushing around? You hick cops are all alike when you get hold of somebody with an out-of-state license—”
I could have saved my indignation. He had stopped listening. Another policeman had stuck his head in the door. When Crowell looked in his direction, the newcomer nodded briefly and withdrew as silently as he had appeared. Crowell tossed the knife into my open suitcase and turned to me.
“Let’s go in the other office, Mr. Peters.”
“I’m not going anywhere until somebody tells me what—”
He took my arm. “If you please. This way.”
I jerked free and started to speak. Then the door opened and stayed that way, held by the young policeman who had looked in a moment ago. Two people came in. The woman stopped abruptly, staring at me.
“That’s him!” she said. “That’s the murderer!”
6
It wasn’t exactly a shattering surprise. The police had been too sure of themselves not to have what they considered positive identification.
The surprise was that it wasn’t the diminutive Bikini blonde whose cigarette I’d lit. This was the taller female member of the Polar Bear Club; the one who’d seemed to pay me no attention at the pool. She’d exchanged her bathing suit for a casually expensive-looking sweater-and-skirt outfit, and she looked older and more dignified with clothes on, but she still looked quite tall: a brown, handsome woman with dark hair brought back smoothly to a big knot at the nape of her neck.
I already had reason not to be fond of the lady—even with justification, nobody likes to be called a murderer— but seeing her at close range for the first time, I couldn’t help that special feeling of respect and admiration reserved for something unique. I mean, one gets tired of the sexy young carbon copies of Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot; one even gets bored with all the nice girls who used to be more or less Grace Kelly and are now more or less Jacqueline Kennedy, attractive though the prototypes may be.
This woman wasn’t outstandingly beautiful or strikingly seductive, but there was only one of her. She’d never look like anybody else. She had a real nose in her face, instead of something cute and indeterminate. She had a real mouth with real teeth—strong, white ones— and real eyes with real eyebrows. She was herself. It takes a certain amount of guts, these days. But it was no time to stand gawking at handsome ladies.
Murderers' Row Page 3