Armed… Dangerous… ms-54

by Brett Halliday

  “An off-duty cop on the subway!” he said in disgust. “Eight million people in New York, and I had to get on the one train with that guy. You know I don’t have a single conviction? I mean that. Not even for carrying a weapon. And now all of a sudden the breaks start going the other way.” He appealed to her, as though he really wanted an opinion. “Why did those bastards have to be down there with that goddamn piano?”

  She was watching him carefully. The corner of his mouth was working again. His eyes darted from side to side.

  “Every cop on the West Side of Manhattan is going to be trying to ream my ass in another couple of minutes.”

  Michele forced herself to breathe normally. She must think. After being shot once, the detective in the lobby had been no further threat to McQuade. McQuade had shot him a second time because he had been recognized and called by name. One more killing now would make no difference. She would stay alive as long as she could make herself useful, and no longer.

  “What’s the apartment number?”

  “Twelve H.”

  “Who lives there besides you?”

  “No one. I am alone.”

  He gave her a quick glance, and she explained, “I am here on business. It is a colleague’s apartment, so I need not stay in hotels. He is in Los Angeles.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “Clothes.”

  They reached the twelfth floor. McQuade punched the buttons of two higher floors so the car would continue without them. He took her arm again in his punishing grip.

  “Don’t, please. This is not necessary. There is no place to run.”

  His upper lip lifted. “Nobody tells me what to do. Remember that, kid.”

  She took him down the short hall. There were two locks, the regular spring lock, which even an amateur could open with a strip of celluloid, the other a heavy bolt which couldn’t be forced without special tools. As usual, she tried the wrong key first.

  “For Christ’s sake,” he snapped, shouldering her aside. “Don’t take all day.”

  After throwing the bolt he took her arm again, nudged the door open, stepped quickly inside and kicked it shut.

  They were in a large one-room apartment. It was comfortably furnished, though the furniture looked as though it had been ordered by phone. There were no books, no pictures on the walls. There was a kitchen area to the left, a bathroom to the right. Without relinquishing his hold on her arm, he looked into the bathroom and took her to the big windows.

  “We are really alone,” she said. “You can release me now.”

  With his free hand he lowered the Venetian blinds and adjusted the slats so he could look out without being seen. The three buildings in the group, tall, unadorned rectangular slabs, were arranged in U-shape around a paved court which was black with parked cars.

  A siren sounded.

  “There they are,” he said, sounding almost pleased.

  He released her arm. She rubbed the place, hoping she would live long enough to see it turn black and blue.

  “Do you want a drink? There is bourbon. Gin, perhaps.”

  He rubbed his knuckles along his jaw. “Give me a slug of bourbon.”

  She went to the little refrigerator. He bolted the front door and put the key in his pocket. Then he picked up her bag, unzipped it and shook out its contents on a low coffee table. While Michele waited for the water to run warm, she watched him. He picked her car keys out of the litter, two keys chained to a plastic tag with a New York number and the Chevrolet insignia. He weighed the keys for an instant before setting them aside. Then he looked at her passport. After checking the statistics on the first page-none of them, as it happened, true-he flicked past the intervening visas to get the date of her entrance into the country.

  He looked up suddenly. Their eyes met and held. His stare was colder than the ice cubes in her hands. Michele shivered. She had to come up with something fast.

  He swept everything off the table into his cupped hand, keeping out only the car keys, and returned it to her bag. When she came in with the drinks she found him studying the diamonds he had taken from Jake Melnick in the elevator. There were four unset stones, each wrapped separately in a fold of tissue paper.

  “The transaction is profitable?” she said.

  “Fair.”

  He refolded the tissue around the diamonds and transferred them to his own wallet. She handed him a glass filled with whiskey and ice.

  “Please, may I say something?”

  He cut her short. “Shut up a minute.”

  He took a long taste of the whiskey. As if to comment on his situation, another siren began to howl. It was coming across the park, coming fast. His face worked.

  “I should have stopped on the way up to clobber that bastard Melnick. I mean clobber him. As soon as he comes out of it they’ll have my description.”

  “If he recovers at all,” she said.

  “Hell, I barely tapped him, I’m sorry to say.” He came to his feet suddenly, then waved it away. “Too late. But I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Why didn’t I think of it?”

  They were silent for a moment, listening to the sirens. He looked at her over the raised glass.

  “You begin to get the idea, baby.”

  “I think so,” she said quietly. “I do exactly what you say, or I stay in America, in an American graveyard.”

  “Baby,” he said with one of his disconcerting returns to good humor, “there wouldn’t be enough left of you to bury.” He drank, watching, her. “Are you expecting anybody?”

  “No, no one.”

  “Then let’s get organized. The first thing they’ll do is go through the building.” He slid the clip out of his. 45 and added two loose rounds from his coat pocket. “How much of a look did that cop get at you? I mean the cop out on the street.”

  “I think he did not really see me.”

  “He saw you, but how much did he see? Now when they knock on the door”-he moved to the bathroom, his gun still in his hand-“I’m going to be inside here. With the light out. And I’ll be watching you, kid. I can’t hear out of one ear, but there’s nothing wrong with my eyesight. Don’t try to give him any message, because the minute that cop puts one foot inside the room-”

  “I understand you, believe me.”

  He finished his drink in a long swallow and went to the kitchenette, where he poured himself another, larger than the first. Glass in hand, he kept moving around restlessly, as though something about the apartment bothered him. He opened the closet and looked in at her clothes. She had only brought three suitcases from Paris. He went for his hat, which he had dropped on the table by the door, and put it out of sight in the closet.

  “You can use my car,” she said, “or if you like I will drive you. Then you can have the car. By the time the police are told it is stolen, two weeks will be gone. Three weeks, four, whatever you say.”

  He turned and watched her, but it seemed to her that he was listening to something else.

  “I know,” she said. “How can you believe me? I know your name but I have no intention of telling the police. This is not my affair. My passport has been forged, you see. That will be a difficult thing to prove to you, but I believe I can do it if you will listen to me. Please listen, for the love of God.”

  “Put something else on,” he said. “The cop saw that suit. And that jerk Melnick-as soon as he can talk he’s going to mention the twelfth floor. Put on a wrapper or something. Some goddamn curlers in your hair.”

  She gave an elegant half shrug. “You heard nothing that I said.”

  “Later,” he said impatiently.

  She stood up. “Must I really put in curlers?”

  He grunted. “You look too good the way you are. That’s what they’ll remember. I want you to look like a slob.”

  She made a little grimace, her eyebrows going up. She took a negligee out of the closet and started for the bathroom. “Curlers. Very well. But when you see me next, you will be sorry.�
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  “Huh-uh,” McQuade said, shaking his head.

  She stopped. “What does that mean?”

  “I want you out where I can see you. You might decide to wave a towel out the bathroom window.”

  “I do not wish to be a heroine. I wish to exist.”

  “Get it through your head, kid: I’m taking no chances. When a cop’s involved they still use the chair in this state.” He snapped his fingers. “Get into action.”

  She gave another tiny shrug, using her eyebrows as much as her shoulders. “Michele,” she told herself aloud, “do as he says.”

  Tossing the negligee on the sofa, she unfastened her earrings and put them on the coffee table beside the keys to the Chevrolet. She unfastened the inner catch of her suit jacket and shrugged it off. She was wearing a half-slip and a low-cut bra. The bra was nothing but crossed ribbons and two fragments of transparent fabric.

  She was reasonably objective about herself, she believed. She knew she had faults, some of them severe, but they were mainly of a moral nature. Physically she was satisfied with the way she looked. Her breasts she knew to be excellent, though they were the despair of her dressmaker, who liked his clients to look like slender young boys. Reaching behind her, she unfastened the little double hook and the bra fell to the floor.

  She was facing McQuade. He watched her, his head lowered. She continued to undress, without self-consciousness or coquetry, trying to hold his eyes so she could judge his reaction. She could not make mistakes. If she misjudged him to the slightest degree, she was finished. So far he was a puzzle to her. When he moved, with the power and grace and some of the sullenness of a big cat, he gave off a kind of electricity that agitated her nerve ends and left her feeling charged and unsure of herself. He was attractive, certainly, one of the most attractive men she had encountered in a long time. If she had met him casually she would have made no attempt to look beneath the surface, for it wouldn’t have mattered. She would have put him down as a handsome animal who might or might not be worth a little attention, depending on her schedule at the time. Life had taught her one big lesson-never to commit herself to anyone. The only person she could be completely certain of was herself. And now with McQuade, she had to make up her mind what steps to take, how best to reach him, then back her judgment to the limit. She had seen that he could think and act quickly, but how good would a story have to be to fool him? In Michele’s view, anybody who chose to make his living as an armed robber had to be a little stupid. There were easier and safer and more satisfying ways of earning money. And there were moments when he seemed stupid, or at least not interested in making the necessary connections. But she had the nagging feeling that this was a manner, a style which he had decided to affect because he considered it suitable to his profession.

  Now she stood before him naked.

  Her dressmaker, poor darling, would have been appalled, but she could see that McQuade found nothing wrong with her appearance. His mouth was no longer taut at the corners. He took out a cigarette and lit it, all without looking away from her. Perhaps, after all, she thought, things were going to be all right. She picked up the negligee.

  “Is that all you’ve got?” he said.

  “To sleep in? I sleep in nothing. It is easier.”

  She drew on the negligee. It had no fastenings except the belt at the waist. She cinched it in tightly. She could tell from his eyes that they would have sex, probably soon. But she saw something else: it made no difference. If he felt it was necessary he would still kill her.

  The phone rang. He did not jump; he had good nerves, she noticed. But the flesh around his eyes contracted. There was no question about it. Big and handsome he undoubtedly was, but when he wanted to he could look very mean.

  The phone rang again. He motioned to her and she picked it up.

  “Hello.”

  “Michele,” a man’s voice said. “What progress?”

  “Ah, cheri,” she said. “I wished for you to call. For tonight I fear I must beg off. The noise, the rushing about, it has given me a headache. I must go to bed with my bottle of aspirin.”

  “Anything wrong?” the voice said quickly. “If there is I can send somebody. Say yes or no.”

  “No. Call me tomorrow. But I am truly sorry. It came on all at once, like the ceiling falling.”

  “You know, of course, that there isn’t much time.”

  “I think of nothing else. But it will arrange itself. Now I must hang up. Forgive me. My head.”

  She put the phone back. “A man I met,” she said quickly. “I said perhaps I could take dinner with him. Now what are you thinking, with that face like a hurricane? That he will come to see if I am with another man? If he does, shoot him.”

  He held her eyes a moment longer. “Don’t try to pull anything.” He drank. “Come on, put that junk in your hair.”

  “You won’t like the way I look, believe me, like the Statue of Liberty.” With her drink, she made believe she was holding a torch. “No,” she suggested, “why not wash it instead? That would be better.”

  She watched him thinking about it. “OK. Wait a minute. You still look like something in a magazine.”

  There was an open box of powder on the chest of drawers. He spilled some of it down the front of the negligee. Then, with the burning end of his cigarette, he put a hole in a conspicuous place. The negligee had cost her seventy-five dollars at a Fifth Avenue store, a fact it would have been unwise to mention.

  “And more lipstick,” he said. “Really smear it on. You’ve been hitting the bottle all day. You’re so plastered you can’t walk straight.”

  “Plastered? Oh, I see. Drunk. It will be difficult. I have never felt less so.”

  She unscrewed her lipstick and took it to the bathroom mirror while he watched critically from the doorway.

  “Put it on crooked.”

  She bore down heavily on one side. The lipstick slipped and left a red smear on her chin. By the time she was finished she had changed her appearance very much for the worse.

  “Plastered,” she said darkly, eyeing her reflection. “Now I am repulsive enough?”

  “Get to work on your hair.”

  He stayed in the doorway while she washed and rinsed her hair. She was toweling it briskly when the doorbell chimed.

  McQuade moved quickly. The. 45 was back in his hand, and he used it to motion her out of the bathroom. She twisted the towel around her head with one deft motion. He passed her the key, which she had to have to throw the bolt. Before opening the one-way peephole, she looked back at the bathroom. McQuade let the. 45 come into sight for an instant and pulled it back. It was a reminder she didn’t need.

  She turned. She could use this interruption, she thought, to prove to McQuade that she had no intention of betraying him. With her back to the bathroom she twitched the negligee open so the nipple of one breast showed. She looked through the peephole. The policeman outside was young, callow. Having heard the clink, he was looking straight at the peephole.

  “Police officer.”

  She threw the bolt. Steadying the turban with one hand she opened the door.

  “How nice, a policeman,” she said loosely.

  He glanced down at her disordered negligee. His glance lingered for an instant on her breast. Incredible, she thought. I have shocked him.

  “Sorry, lady, but we’re making a check. There’s been some trouble downstairs. How long have you been home?”

  “Hours. I have been washing my hair.” She smiled lopsidedly. “What trouble?”

  The policeman licked his lips. “Well, a shooting.”

  “That is how it always is!” she cried. “When anything exciting happens, I am washing my hair!”

  “What have you got here, just the one room?”

  He looked past her. His eye stopped on her clothes, which still lay in a heap on the floor, and jumped back to pick up the whiskey bottle and glass.

  “I am terribly messy,” she murmured.

  She g
ave him another bleary smile and started to close the door. He put his fingers against it from the outside. He glanced down the corridor.

  “Searching the building, for God’s sake,” he said. “When you shoot a cop you don’t hang around to see what’s going to happen. You get away fast. Frankly, I could use a drink.”

  He grinned. Michele let her smile fade.

  “What is this, please?”

  He took his hand off the door. “Nothing! Now don’t get your bowels in an uproar. I just thought, seeing you’re all by yourself-”

  “A policeman!” she cried. “And you are supposed to protect us! Trying to force your way in with some nonsense about a shooting!”

  She whipped the soggy towel off her head and slapped him with it. He retreated, his arms up to ward off another blow.

  “OK, OK.”

  “It is very much not OK!”

  She banged the door shut and turned the key. McQuade came out of the bathroom grinning. The mask of outraged indignation stayed on her face for another instant, and then she smiled. They met in silence, coming together hard. She felt a moment’s alarm, as though she found herself at the top of a steep hill in a racing car without brakes. Then her mouth opened to his kiss.

  CHAPTER 3

  The apartment was dark.

  Michele twisted, coming to one elbow. They were together on the sofa. Without much effort, by releasing a catch and making a few other minor arrangements, they could have opened the sofa into a double bed. But they hadn’t taken the time.

  She reached across to the lamp. “Fair warning. I am turning on the light.”

  She snapped it on and found McQuade studying her soberly, one arm behind his head. He was naked to the waist. His. 45 was wedged behind the cushions. He had placed it there with one hand while caressing her with the other. During the lovemaking that followed she was fairly sure-not completely sure, because for a time things were rather turbulent and confused-that he never for a moment forgot the pistol. She was anything but foolhardy. Under no possible circumstances would she have tried to seize it, but he had given her no chance. On the whole she liked people who showed that kind of common sense.