“What did you want to tell me, punk?” My harsh voice didn’t sound quite right, even for hard-boiled Petroni.
“I wanted, well, to tell you to stay way from Miss Michaelis.” He hesitated, but I didn’t say anything, and he went on quickly, “She’s—well, a little mixed up. She told me, well, never mind. She’s got some weird ideas. But I don’t want you taking advantage of—I mean, she’s a lovely person, but she needs someone to look after her.”
“And you’ve elected yourself to the job?”
He cleared his throat, a little self-consciously. “Well, yes. After the way she insisted on waiting to speak with you outside the police station, it was obvious she had something crazy in mind. I—” He stopped and squared his shoulders. “I don’t intend to let her ruin her life by becoming involved with a racketeer and strong-arm man, Mr. Petroni. She’s just a crazy kid; she doesn’t mean everything she says. I think she likes to pretend. Stay away from her, Petroni.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Stay away from her. Sure.”
I hit him. I gave it to him hard and low, without warning, and he went to the ground, hugging himself where it hurt; and somebody was coming at me from behind. I whirled, ready, but it was only Teddy Michaelis in her blue pajamas. She made her way up to us cautiously, still barefooted, and looked down. Orcutt pushed himself to hands and knees, retching painfully.
“What did you do that for?” Teddy asked me. There was no reproach in her voice, only curiosity.
“I felt like it,” I said. I didn’t say I’d hit him because I’d come damn close to killing him. She wouldn’t have understood. I wasn’t sure I understood myself.
She giggled. “He looks awfully silly, doesn’t he? Poor boy. I heard what he said. I think it’s kind of cute, his wanting to protect me, don’t you?”
“Yeah, cute,” I said. “When he catches his breath, clean him up and send him home. I’ll call you tomorrow. Good night.”
As I drove away, I kept hearing Mac’s voice in my head: I have seen it happen before in men whose occupation allows them to kill and get away with it. I’d laughed at the time, but now I had to face the fact that twice in one night I’d almost killed a man, quite casually, without even making sure of his identity first. After a while, Mac had said, their judgment becomes impaired, since human life has ceased to have much value for them.
I’d almost killed two men, and I had killed a woman. At least Jean had died, and I was no longer so sure that my hand hadn’t slipped, a little. Maybe I’d even wanted it to slip, as Mac had said, subconsciously...
I found a hotel, got a room, and sent the bellboy away with a tip. I opened the suitcase he’d placed on the stand at the foot of the bed and grimaced at the gaudy Petroni apparel inside. I found a silver flask and started towards the bathroom for a glass and said to hell with it. Drinking when I felt lousy had never made me feel any better. I screwed the cap back onto the flask and dropped the flask back into the suitcase. The telephone rang. I picked it up.
“Is this Mr. Peterson?” a female voice asked. “Is this Mr. Peterson, from Chicago?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m from Chicago, but the name is Peters, ma’am. James A. Peters.”
“Oh, dear,” the voice said. “I’m terribly sorry. I do hope I didn’t wake you, or anything.”
“It’s perfectly all right, ma’am,” I said.
I put the instrument back in its cradle. It was code, of course. There were half a dozen names she might have asked for. Peterson meant I was supposed to hunt up a clear phone and call Washington. I didn’t ask myself how Mac had known where to reach me. After all, I’d told him I had a date with the Michaelis kid, whose temporary residence was known; and I hadn’t made it very hard for anybody who wanted to tail me from there. The only question was, should I call and learn where I stood, or should I be proud and independent.
I didn’t feel very proud and independent. I went down into the lobby and used one of the pay phones.
“Eric here,” I said, when I heard the familiar voice on the line.
Mac said, “Yellow Cadillac two-door, male driver.”
“It rings no bells.”
“It should. He was behind you all the way from the girl’s motel, our man says, trying to make up his mind to close in. No armaments in view, but that means nothing.”
“No, sir.”
“I got your message.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Independence is a virtue, I’m told, but there are arguments in favor of discipline. We will discuss the matter later.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I presume what you have in mind could be classified under the heading of atonement. Even assuming that you were at fault, which you have denied, it is a sentimental notion.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sentiment is rare in our line of work.” His voice was dry. “Well, Jean would have appreciated the romantic gesture. Since you seem to have a lead of sorts and nobody else has, you may as well carry on, if you feel capable—What did you say?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing at all, sir.”
“What did the little Michaelis girl have to propose?”
“She has hired me to assassinate Mrs. Louis Rosten in a discreet way. Twenty-five hundred down, twenty-five hundred on delivery. I’ve only collected five C’s so far, but I’m getting the rest tomorrow after she’s been to the bank.”
It silenced him briefly. I’d hoped it might. He asked at last, “What are your plans?”
I said, “I thought the deal was that no questions would be asked.”
“That was in another connection. You can’t very well—”
“Can’t I?” I asked. “How important is this machine of Dr. Michaelis’? The last I heard, the fate of the world hung in the balance.”
“But—” I heard him swallow at the other end of the line. He thought I was needling him, but he wasn’t quite sure. Well, I wasn’t quite sure, either. He called my bluff. “Very well. Use your judgment.”
“Thank you, sir, but judgment-wise I’m suffering from fatigue, remember? And a superman complex. Ah, hell.” I was being childish. “I want everything anybody’s got on Michaelis, Theodora. Orcutt, William. Rosten, Robin. Rosten, Louis. And a schooner named Freya. Oh, and a man named Nick, paid hand on the schooner. Can do?”
“I think we have most of that information. In a minute, I’ll switch you to the girl downstairs and she’ll read it off for you. Anything else?”
“One thing. There was a New York private detective, name unknown, who came down here to investigate for Miss Michaelis and got scared off.”
“He was taken aside by some people with impressive credentials and told to forget it.”
“That wasn’t too smart,” I said. “It would have been better, maybe, to let him keep working and have him send her innocuous reports, or maybe not. This way the little girl’s on the warpath. Maybe she’ll help us blast something loose.”
“Yes. It would be well, however, if the blast damage were confined to a reasonable area. Eric?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Concerning Michaelis, senior. Keep in mind that this is a valuable man. Merely because the orders permit a certain course of action does not imply that course is mandatory. I had some high officials in here this evening—”
I said, “Do they want him shut up or don’t they? This isn’t the search-and-rescue branch of the U.S. Coast Guard, for God’s sake! There’s only one chance in a thousand I can even reach the guy, and if I do, I may have all of ten seconds to act. Now, do I have the go-ahead or don’t I?”
He sighed. “You have it.”
I hesitated. “How’s Alan, sir?”
“Alan is going to be all right.”
“Sure,” I said. “Well, give me that office girl and let me find out something about these people. A yellow Cadillac, you say?”
“That’s right. Be careful. Report when you can.” He paused. “As for that matter of discipline—”
“Sir?”
&
nbsp; “It will depend on which of us turns out to be right, won’t it, Eric?” He cleared his throat delicately. “Judgment-wise, I mean.”
11
When I came out of the hotel, after getting the information I wanted, the sky to the east held a pale hint of dawn. There weren’t any yellow Cadillacs around. I hoped I hadn’t lost him. I started walking. It might not be the best plan, judgment-wise, but I was too sleepy to be clever. I wanted to stir up some action, and if it happened to involve hand grenades, submachine-guns, or sawed-off shotguns, well, it was about time a little hardware came my way, for a change, so I could prove I could be real tough on the receiving end, too.
Atonement, Mac had said. He’d pulled the rug out from under me very neatly—or, rather, instead of pulling it out, he’d left me standing on it. He’d given me no chance to back away from the position I’d chosen. To put it a different way, I’d stuck my neck way out, with melodramatic flourishes, and instead of crudely chopping it off, as I’d invited him to do, he’d just pulled it out a little farther and tied a pink ribbon around it...
Balanced or unbalanced, glad or sorry, I was stuck with the job. In theory, I was picking up the case where Jean had left it. In practice, I wasn’t anywhere near that place and had no idea where to find it. Jean, according to her reports, had had a real contact, a muffled voice on the phone, somebody interested enough in an alcoholic, disillusioned, potentially disloyal member of our team to make propositions; interested enough to bug her motel room and check up on her. All I had, so far, was a screwy kid with a grudge against her vanished papa’s handsome lady friend.
What I needed was action, I thought, or about twelve hours’ sleep, or a month in the sun with a lady named Gail. Well, it was no time to start thinking about that. I was thinking about it, nevertheless, when a yellow Cadillac glided up beside me and stopped. I stopped. The near door of the car opened, and the handsome, sunburned face of Louis Rosten looked out.
“Please get in, Mr. Petroni,” Rosten said. “I’ve been trying to catch you. I would like to speak with you.”
I shrugged and got in. He sent the car away smoothly. Well, it was action of a sort. I leaned against the door, watching him drive and wondering if he could possibly be Jean’s mysterious telephone contact. That slick, gutless air could be a fake—so could Orcutt’s Don Quixote act. So could Mrs. Rosten’s air of regal indifference, or pretty little Teddy Michaelis’ pose of a bloodthirsty kitten.
“I’ll buy you a cup of coffee,” Rosten said. “We’ll drive out the highway. Under the circumstances, I think it is better if we’re not recognized eating together, don’t you?”
I shrugged. “Circumstances? What circumstances? I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“Nothing except a murder,” Rosten said.
It was hard to think of Jean’s death in those terms; but of course Petroni would. “What are you driving at, mister?” I demanded with sudden harshness. “The cops let me go, didn’t they?”
“Please!” he said. “Don’t think I have any intention of—what I mean is, Petroni, I do have eyes in my head, whatever my wife may think. You’re rather a distinctive figure. I could have made a great deal of trouble for you last night, but I chose not to. That’s all I’m trying to say.”
I studied him balefully. “Okay,” I said. “Okay, so you saw me and kept quiet. What do you figure it’s going to buy you? What do you think you’ve got on me? You’d play hell trying to change your story now. The police would crucify you.”
“Please,” he said. “I’m not a blackmailer. I have no intention of changing my testimony. The dead woman was nothing to me; nor do I have any strong feelings about law and order. I must say, however, that I am curious. How did you get Miss Michaelis to lie for you, too? Had you known her before?”
I said, “She’s my long-lost kid sister. It was a family reunion. How could she send me to the electric chair, her own flesh and blood?”
He glanced at me, and laughed politely to show he got the joke. “Ha ha. Well, never mind. It isn’t important, except that it enabled me to find you again. Knowing that she’d lied for you, I could guess that you would make contact with her sooner or later. It was merely a matter of—well, of getting away from my wife unsuspected, so I could watch the motel. Of course I couldn’t let her know what I was doing.”
“Of course not,” I said. “She might have got the wrong idea about your hanging around a pretty young girl.”
He looked a little startled, as if I’d offered an unexpected thought. Then he laughed again, rather nervously. “Ha ha. Yes, well, there’s that, too. And of course Teddy, Miss Michaelis, is quite attractive. There’s something very charming about a small, really feminine woman, don’t you think?”
I had a picture in my mind of the small, really feminine woman asking bright-eyed, How much would you charge to make a hit for me? But it wasn’t for me to disillusion him, if he wanted to take her doll-like appearance at face value.
“Feeling that way,” I said, “maybe you should have married one.”
“Maybe I should.”
“Of course,” I said, “there’s something even more charming about a rich woman.”
He laughed. “If you’re trying to insult me, Petroni, you’re wasting your time. Of course my wife is wealthy. Of course I married her for her wealth—why else would anyone marry such a female horse?”
“I think Mrs. Rosten is quite a handsome dame, myself.”
“Handsome!” he said. “My God, man, do you know what it’s like, living with a handsome woman with the authority of money behind her, and a will of iron?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t know what it’s like. I never had any offers.”
“I’m a sensitive man,” he said. “I—I feel things. She has no conception of—she is a brutal woman, Petroni. A horrible woman, a grasping, selfish, avaricious woman. She has a pathological sense of family and property. She shot a child once, a mere boy, who’d broken into the house at night and was making away with a silver candlestick. I watched her throw the shells into that Purdey shotgun of hers—she loves to hunt—and close the breech deliberately and take aim out the window, swinging the gun as casually as if she were knocking over a rabbit. When we got out there, the boy was dead. The buckshot had practically torn him to shreds. It was dreadful!”
“I always figure a burglar takes his chances like anybody else outside the law. Your wife sounds like quite a girl.”
“You’d say that. I don’t suppose a human life means anything to you, either.”
It was an echo of what Mac had said, and I didn’t like Rosten any better for saying it, even though he was saying it to Lash Petroni, not Matt Helm.
“Well, no little juvenile slob had better try running off with any of my silver, mister. If I had any. What did Mrs. Rosten have to say about it?”
Rosten grimaced. “She said, ‘I couldn’t let him get away with great-grandmother Sandeman’s candlestick, could I?’”
“Did she get away with it?” I asked. “I guess she must have. She isn’t in jail.”
“Of course she got away with it,” he said resentfully. “She always does, no matter what high-handed action it may be. Well, not quite always. There was the time she tried to hold off the Federal Government with that same Purdey double—they were taking over some run-down family property she’d inherited down the Bay. For the Navy, I think. They talked her out of it, somehow. I think they just made her see she was making herself perfectly ridiculous, and there’s nothing she hates worse than that. Well, here we are.” He stopped the big car at a roadside joint, half restaurant, half drive-in. “We might as well have our coffee in the car,” he said.
“Sure.”
I told the girl who came up that I’d have coffee and a doughnut. He ordered black coffee and watched the girl move away through the lights in tight lavender pants and a frilly white blouse. At that angle, retreating, the pants were much more interesting than the blouse. Rosten licked his lips thoughtfully.
&n
bsp; “I—I have a proposition for you, Petroni,” he said.
“I know,” I said. “It’ll cost you five grand. Twenty-five hundred down, twenty-five hundred on delivery. Cash. No bills larger than a hundred; I like fifties and twenties better.”
He turned sharply to stare at me, shocked that I’d read his mind. From his expression, I knew I’d read it right. Before he had recovered, the girl was returning. From this angle, advancing, the blouse was more interesting than the pants, but the poor guy wasn’t noticing.
“I’ll take the coffee with cream, miss,” I said, and waited until she’d gone. “Get to the bank as soon as it opens,” I said, to Rosten. “Well, there’s no rush; any time today will do. Twenty-five hundred in used bills. You know the countryside; you pick a place where we can get together this evening. After dark would be best. I don’t have to tell you to keep an eye on the rearview mirror. We don’t want any witnesses to this little transaction, do we, mister?”
He watched me take a bite of doughnut as if he’d never seen a man eat before. He licked his lips. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said weakly. “I don’t— there must be some misunderstanding. I didn’t—”
I said, “What’s the matter, is the price too steep for you? Hell, you’re making a million on the deal; what’s five grand to you?”
“A million!” He cleared his throat and said more strongly, “Really, Mr. Petroni, I’m afraid we’re talking at cross purposes. The proposition I had in mind—”
“Was killing your wife,” I said.
He turned pale and looked around fearfully. I thought he’d actually put his fingers to his lips and say hush. He started to speak, but nothing came.
“Cut it out, little man,” I said. “Last night you lied for me. Why? Why did you help me stay out of jail, knowing I was a murderer? This morning you went to a lot of trouble to find me—and to make sure your wife didn’t know you were trying to find me. Why? You’ve told me you married her only for her money. You’ve told me what a terrible person she is. Hell, she’s a murderer herself, according to you; she deserves to die. That’s what you were saying just now, isn’t it? You were trying to justify what you were going to ask me to do to her. What the hell did you look me up for, if not to have me kill her? I don’t do plumbing or paint houses or wash cars, mister. The police told you what my business is.”
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