by Jack Barnao
I went in and quickly cased the room. Nobody was hiding anywhere. I turned to tell her this, but she was already half-undressed, moving with the practiced speed she would have used if she had been alone, not attempting to get my hormones tap-dancing.
She stripped and slipped into bed, naked, then patted the bed beside her. I can take a hint. I quickly stripped, putting my clothes over a chair where I could find them in the dark if I had to. Then I switched off the light and quietly slipped my pistol from its holster and pushed it under the pillow.
Our lovemaking was slower this time, more like an old married couple than two virtual strangers. She was controlled, making no attempt to try anything athletic. When it was over, she slipped her hand into mine and started talking, very softly, so that I had to keep my ear almost against her lips to hear her. It was all very romantic, right up to the moment when she told me she wanted me to kill Orsini.
CHAPTER 10
That was when the other shoe finally dropped and I understood why she had whisked me off to bed so promptly. She had me figured for a killer. She needed this little job of tidying up done and had figured she could get it done for free, if you didn’t count the wear and tear, by rolling me in the hay, making me feel that she was wild for me, and bingo, I’d take all her worries away.
When I didn’t answer for about a minute, she started the soft sell, squirming closer to me, kissing my ear. “Will you do it?” she whispered.
I had to be cagey. If I got on my high horse, she would holler rape. Nobody would take my word over hers. Beautiful women are pure as the driven snow. I’d be inside a French jail before I could get my pants on. “What has he done that I must kill him for you?”
“He murdered my brother,” she said. As the Brits would say, that was a load of cobblers. She didn’t care about her brother. She had some other reason for wanting Orsini dead. But I played along, the personification of sweet reason. “How can you be sure? If he’d done that, he would never have come here today like he did.”
She spoke softly, placating me. “You are a soldier, John, a man of action. A good man. He is a Corsican.”
“Well, if you’re certain he’s done it, let’s go to the gendarmes and have him arrested.” I took pains to sound as if I were working things out, not pleading with her. I had to seem strong and as close to silent as I could; otherwise, I’d be on the outs. With this bird of prey, that could be downright dangerous. Ask Orsini.
“You’re not afraid?” a teasing question.
“Not of him, no. But I’m a bodyguard. I don’t go around killing people unless they’re trying to kill me.”
She changed gears, leaving her problem alone for a while, cranking up the charm instead. “John, you are precious to me. This has never happened to me, not to see a man and know he is the one. You are the very first.”
Maybe if I watched the soaps I’d be ready for dialogue like that. I played along, anyway. “And you are very dear to me, Hélène. But if something goes wrong and the police find what I have done, I won’t see you again.” Ever, probably; they still use the guillotine on murderers in France.
“Nothing can go wrong. We will do it together. I have a plan.” Her voice was pure syrup, but her pacing made me sure she’d worked out every move before she undid that first button on her blouse.
“How?” I kissed her, high on the forehead, and stroked her flank, the besotted swain, ready to leap tall buildings, even with a rope around my neck.
“When he comes tomorrow to visit Amy, I will invite him to an assignation. He will come. He is vain, that one.”
“And then, while you’re blowing in one ear, I’ll stick my gun in the other?”
She slapped me playfully, but I could feel her spine stiffening. She was getting impatient. “You will find a way.”
“And then what? When he is dead, you will thank me and go away.” I said it wistfully, as if I didn’t know for a dead certainty that was the program.
“Then we will be together always.” Not a whisper of marriage. Either she didn’t believe in the institution or she thought I didn’t and didn’t want to make me gun-shy. “We could have a wonderful life. You will love Paris. We will live there and travel together and spend all our nights like this.” Not a bad idea, except I wondered how many of them would be spent planning murders.
“I must think about this.”
She was silent for a moment, and then her hands began to move. “No. You must think about this,” she said, and I did.
Half an hour later she was asleep. She had made love to me ferociously, as if she were either mad for my body or extremely skillful at what she was doing. I figured it was the latter, but I’ve always enjoyed watching experts at work, and afterward she didn’t bother doing any more selling. She just said, “We will make our plan in the morning,” confident that she’d burned out any resistance I might have harbored.
When I was certain she wasn’t likely to wake up, I slipped out of bed and got dressed. As far as Orsini was concerned, this was still Amy’s room, and somebody might make a move on it. I didn’t want to greet them in the altogether. When I had my clothes and shoes on, I sat on the floor beside the bed with my back to the wall, watching the window.
I was drowsing when he came. The scraping on the roof alerted me, and I stood up silently and moved away from the bed, staying opposite the window, waiting for a man’s shape to grow against the square of grayness.
Hélène was a fresh-air freak, and the window was open about two feet. He didn’t even have to raise it. He slithered through like a snake, silently taking his weight on his hands and drawing his legs in after him.
I let him advance toward the bed. My night vision was clearer than his; he was used to the starlight outside. I’d been sitting in darkness for three hours. I saw him approach the bed and raise a pistol. Without waiting, I put a bullet into his shoulder, high up.
He screamed in pain and surprise and fell sideways. I heard his gun clatter to the floor and then Hélène’s own scream. I clicked on the light. “Stay down,” I said, and she squeezed herself under the pillows. I walked over the bed and looked down at the guy on the floor. He was holding his injured shoulder in his left hand, he eyes wide with pain and horror. His gun was a yard away from him, but he made no attempt to go for it, didn’t even look at me. He had suddenly realized that pain hurts.
I stepped down and kicked the gun farther away from him and then tapped his left elbow with my toe. He looked up at me owlishly, like a drunk. It was Armand’s chauffeur. “Okay, Hélène, ask him who sent him.”
She sat up, wrapping the sheet around her. If the chauffeur hadn’t been in shock, he would have been exhilarated, for her body was tightly outlined under the sheet, her nipples standing out like the winner in a wet T-shirt contest. She hissed at him in French, and he said nothing, just looked at her, then at me.
I lowered my pistol and pointed it between his eyes. “Tell him he’s got ten seconds or I blow his brains out.”
He didn’t need a translation. He babbled for mercy, but she shut him up curtly and repeated her question, and his answer poured out.
“He says he met a man in the village. The man offered him ten thousand francs to kill Amy. He doesn’t know the man.”
I laughed. “Tell him he watches too much television. I need the man’s name. Ask if it was the guy you don’t like.”
“I have a better idea,” she said savagely, and came around the bed to kick him hard in the injured shoulder before I could stop her.
He screeched in pain, and behind her the door burst open, and Armand almost tumbled in, followed by Amy. They all babbled at one another too fast for me to follow, and Armand came around the bed and saw who was lying there. He gasped, and I saw him clutch his chest. Lord. That was all we needed, a heart attack now. “Get your father’s pills,” I snapped, and Hélène let her sheet drop as she sat him down gently on the bed and took the vial from his dressing-gown pocket. She put one under his tongue, and he whispered someth
ing.
“D’accord, Papa.” She grabbed her sheet and scooped up her clothes and headed for a screen in the far corner of the room.
Amy was looking at me, seeming to be more concerned that I had seen Hélène nude than the fact that this man had been in the room with a gun. “He came to kill you,” I said, improvising quickly. “I heard him come into the room and saw he had a gun, so I stopped him. He says he met a man in the village who offered him ten thousand francs to shoot you.”
“Me? Why?”
“With luck we’re going to find out.” I picked up his pistol. It was a neat little Beretta .32, plenty big enough to do the job he’d come for. I slipped the magazine out and worked the action. He had a shell up the spout, and I caught it as it flew out and put it and the magazine in my pocket. “If there’s a phone on this floor, call the gendarmes. Tell them what’s happened.”
“On this floor?” She was bewildered and fluttery, more so than she had been when we found Pierre’s body.
“They may have other guys downstairs; they could see you through a window and finish this.”
Hélène came out from behind the screen, wearing her jeans and top, barefoot. “I’ll go,” she said.
Armand spoke. “No.” It was a painful whisper. “No gendarmes. We will end this here.”
“This guy needs a hospital.” Armand had lots of clout, I knew that much, but he was about to break the law, and I could end up taking the fall for it. I’d pulled the trigger.
“Wait outside,” he whispered, and waved at the two women. They went, Hélène moving confidently, Amy backing out, not knowing what was about to happen here but afraid.
When she had gone, Armand smiled at me shyly, like a new recruit. “We will find out who sent him,” he said, and asked the man a question.
The guy answered rapidly. I made out the word blessé, wounded. It didn’t soften Armand’s heart. “Kick him,” he told me.
The guy was in agony. I could see that. My bullet had shattered his upper arm and penetrated his side. Probably it had stopped against his ribs. He was hurting like he’d never hurt before, but he wasn’t about to die. I kicked him lightly on the sole of the left foot. He hissed with the jolt, but he could handle it. “Tell him the next kick is on his wound,” I instructed, and Armand did it, then repeated his question in a slow voice.
He answered, speaking fast, apologetically.
Armand turned to me. “As I thought. He was working for Dubois, the man you fought today.”
“That means he was working for Orsini,” I said.
Armand put the question, and the man shook his head. It must have hurt him not being able to shrug, but his shrugging days were on hold until that shoulder healed.
Armand repeated the question, and this time the man agreed. I could tell by the tone.
“Shoot him,” Armand told me.
“No.” I put my gun in its holster. “I’m a bodyguard. I did my job, and I can support that. I don’t shoot wounded men.”
I’d tossed the chauffeur’s empty gun on the bed, and Armand picked it up. “I will do it myself,” he said, and pointed it at the man’s head.
The man babbled and covered his face as Armand pulled the trigger. It clicked, and Armand swore, dropped the gun, and flopped back on the pillows, exhausted. “Get my daughter.”
I went to the door. Hélène was in the corridor with Amy. “Your father wants you.”
She came into the room, and he gave her an order in rapid French. She nodded and left. “What did he say?” I asked Amy, who was still holding on to the door frame. She was wearing a white nylon nightdress and looked delicious. That she was bewildered and not so much in charge as usual didn’t hurt a bit.
“He asked her to get the doctor from the village.” She hesitated a moment and then put a question shakily. “John, what’s going on?”
“He came to shoot you.” She trembled, and I caught her by the elbow. She came into my arms like a baby, trying to make herself safe. I held her tight, patting her shoulder rhythmically. “He was sent by the man who drives Orsini’s car,” I said. “You’ve got to leave this place, Amy. Go back home where you’re safe.”
She didn’t reply, just stood there, warm against my chest, shaking. “Come on,” I said after a moment. “Get your dressing gown on. You’re freezing.”
At my urging she turned and walked slowly down the hallway to her room. I waited at the open door while she put on her housecoat and turned to face me. She was pale but had stopped trembling. “Why is all this happening?” she asked in a whisper.
“I’m not sure, but it’s not about you. Not just about you, anyway. I’m sure of that.” It probably didn’t matter, anyway. When news of my shooting somebody reached Labrosse, he would ship both me and Amy home, at the least. The alternative wasn’t worth thinking about, that he would charge me with wounding and sling me in jail. I wanted the ten grand this assignment would earn me, but not enough to do hard time for it.
“There is something going on,” she said softly. “M’sieur Armand has a serious hate going for Victor. I could tell from his face when they met outside this afternoon. He was polite, but he was angry.”
I didn’t answer. I was beginning to realize they were in trouble. Hélène wanted Orsini dead, and yet she didn’t seem to care for her brother at all. The way I was reading it, Orsini was trying to muscle into the family business and take it over. I got back to my own business. “Will you be all right here for a minute? I have a feeling Armand is liable to start kicking the guy I shot.”
“Yes. I’m going to get dressed, and I’ll join you.”
“Don’t go anywhere without telling me. There could be somebody else outside waiting for you. You’re in danger, Amy.”
“All right.” Her voice was dull. Her worry circuits were all overloaded. I gave her a cheerful thumbs up and went back to the other bedroom. There was no problem with the wounded man, but Armand was in distress, trying to take another pill. I took the bottle from him and shook out a pill and gave it to him. He put it under his tongue without acknowledgment and lay back.
I leaned against the wall and waited for the women to return. Hélène arrived first, trotting down the corridor from her father’s bedroom. “The doctor is coming,” she told me.
“Good. Before he comes, tell me. Where did your dad find this guy? He looked like a hood to me when I saw him on the street. Did you hire him for protection, or what?”
“He was recommended to us.”
“By whom? It wasn’t the local bishop!”
She didn’t answer at once. I watched her beautiful face, almost able to see the wheels turning inside her head. At last she said, “I have not told you everything, John.” I said nothing and after a pause she looked at her father, then at me, and made a slight beckoning motion with her head. I followed her out the door, and she said, “Orsini is trying to force us out of the business. He has some kind of hold over Papa. He is the one who insisted we hire this man as protection.”
“Protection from whom? It sounds as if the only problem around here is Orsini. Having his man in the family is like inviting the fox into the henhouse.”
She shrugged. “Do not ask me why. Papa does not tell me everything. I know only that Orsini must be killed.”
She didn’t add anything, just looked at me, her face pale but still stunningly beautiful. I could read in her glance a tacit repetition of the question she had asked me in bed. Would I kill Orsini. It was appealing to hear the truth like this, although it still didn’t make me want to jump on a white horse and rush off to slay her personal dragon, but I reached out and patted her arm reassuringly. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
There was the noise of a car outside. “That will be the doctor,” she said, and left. I waited there while she went downstairs and came back with an elderly man carrying a medical bag. He went over to the injured man, but Hélène spoke rapidly to him, and he turned to her father first. He took his pulse and listened to his heart, then took hi
s blood pressure. He said something to Hélène and she turned to me. “The doctor says Papa should be in bed. Will you carry him, John?”
“Sure.” She spoke to her father, and I picked him up. He wasn’t very heavy, and I carried him in my arms down the corridor to his own room, laying him on the bed and covering him. He lay back and shut his eyes, and I went back down the hall to watch the doctor work. There was a syringe on the top of his bag, and the chauffeur was lying flat, his eyes closed. The doctor had raised his injured arm and cut away his shirt. He was digging into the smaller wound under his arm. He brought out the flattened bullet and held it up, looking at me fiercely but saying nothing.
Hélène caught the glance and spoke to him sharply, picking up the guy’s pistol and waving it. The doctor shrugged and laid the bullet and his tweezers aside and dressed the wound under the arm. Then he turned his attention to the shattered arm, tutting sharply and speaking to Hélène again in rapid French. She answered, and he bound up the arm and gave the man another injection.
At last he stood up, and he and Hélène talked for a while. Then she translated for me. “He is going home to get a proper splint for Torrance. I have said we will put him in his room and hire a nurse to take care of him. Can you get him back to his room?”
“Sure. Can you show me the way?”
I picked the man up over my left shoulder in a fireman’s carry. The doctor stood aside, and Hélène led me out of the room and downstairs. The factor of the business was awake, peeking out of the kitchen, but Hélène spoke sharply to him, and he closed the door as we went out through the back door. I drew my pistol and dangled it in my right hand as we crossed the yard and climbed the stairs to Torrance’s apartment over the garage. It was a big, comfortable room, but he lived in it like a pig. There were clothes everywhere, and the bed had not been made for days by the look of it. Hélène hissed and pointed to a chair. “Set him down.”
I dropped him on the chair and waited while she quickly changed the linen on the bed, finding what she needed in a cupboard at the top of the stairs. She seemed so familiar with the place that part of my mind niggled at the thought that she may have tried her charms on the chauffeur at some time. Anything seemed possible on a crazy night like this.