Murderers' Row (12 page)

I went on, “That little mistake cost you a cocktail outfit and a trip to the beauty parlor, lady. Well, you can afford it. But the next time you get on that arrogant kick, it could cost you something you can't afford to lose, no matter how rich and pretty you are.”

Her eyes widened. “My God! That's what it's all about! I hurt his damn little feelings!”

“Yeah,” I said. “You hurt my feelings, Mrs. Rosten.” I took out the wad of bills I'd collected from her husband and Teddy and slapped it against my hand. “Right here, you hurt my feelings. In the money department.”

She lost some of her confidence. “I—I don't understand.”

“Have you any idea where I got all this money, five grand?” She looked at me questioningly. “Hell, where are your brains, lady? What do you think we're doing here? This is a down payment. I get the rest when I kill you.”

There was a little silence. She was really shocked; this explanation hadn't occurred to her.

“Kill
me? But
who
—”

“Who hired me?” I laughed. “I'm not likely to tell you that. I've got principles; besides, it would be bad for my reputation if certain people heard I'd given a client's name away. But I'm a businessman, Mrs. Rosten. I said to myself, somebody's willing to pay to have this dame killed, okay. But maybe she'll up the ante, Petroni. Maybe she's willing to pay more
not
to be killed. So I called you, to give you a chance for your life, and you gave me cops. Through the maid, yet! You're damn lucky to be alive, that's all I can say!”

She drew a long breath. “I—all right, what's your proposition?”

I said, “Go home and wring yourself out. I don't like talking to dames who look like they'd been drowned a week. Then get on the phone and call me at the Calvert Hotel, Room 311. I'll be waiting. For a while. Don't make me wait too long, Mrs. Rosten. And I hope I don't have to tell you to keep your trap shut or the deal's off.” I looked at her bleakly. “You'll ask me to your home for a sociable drink, in private. And you'll say please.”

She said quickly, “If you think for one moment that even to save my life I'd—” She stopped.

I grinned in what I hoped was a sinister fashion. “Did you ever see a floater, Mrs. Rosten?”

“A floater?”

“You were well on the way to being one tonight,” I said. “A floater's a stiff that's been fished out of the drink. They generally come up after a while, no matter how they're weighted. They build up gas or something and swell up and break loose and come to the top, what the fishes and crabs have left of them. Then the doc does the autopsy with a gas mask on, and the cops take strips of skin off the fingers and try to restore the prints because nobody's going to recognize the bloated thing on the table except maybe from its jewelry or the few stinking rags wrapped around it.” I looked her up and down, as if measuring her for the part. “You call me. Ask me over. Nicely, remember. No maids with any more crummy messages. No maids at all. No servants. No husbands. And don't think it over too damn long. If you do, lady, you're dead.”

I turned and walked away, past the stranded Cadillac. She was no hothouse flower; she'd get it out in time, but it would take some bare-handed digging and several trips into the thorn-and-honeysuckle jungle for brush to put under the rear wheels. By the time she got through, I figured, her appearance and disposition would really be something to witness.

Well, there would be witnesses when she got home, if Teddy and Rosten had followed instructions.

I picked up my car in the woods nearby, where I'd hidden it earlier, waiting for Rosten. She was already trying to get the Cadillac loose; I could hear her spinning the wheels as I drove away. Back in my hotel room, I shed my wet clothes in the middle of the rug, and got into the flashy pair of silk pajamas that went with my hoodlum act.

There was no point in sitting by the phone like a teen-aged maiden waiting for a date. If it rang, I'd hear it. I got into bed and fell asleep at once, and dreamed of a dark goddess rising from the sea with a shining spear. I knew the spear was meant for me, and I watched her approach while the great cat stalked majestically by her side, ready to spring if I should move a muscle... The phone rang. I sat up, made a face at my subconscious, and looked at my watch. I'd slept an hour and a half, if you could call it sleeping.

The phone rang again. I picked it up and said, “Yeah?”

“Petroni?” It wasn't at all the voice I'd expected to hear. “Jim?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Jim, this is Teddy. Teddy Michaelis.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I—I'm down in the lobby. Can I come up?”

“You can try,” I said. “If you make it, the door will be unlocked. Turn the knob and you might even be able to fight your way into the room. I'll be plugging for you all the way.”

I hung up, rose, fixed the lock, and heaved my discarded clothes into the bathroom. I combed my hair and put on slippers and a dressing gown that a Chicago tart might have found irresistible if she were drunk and not wearing her contact lenses. Mac had really gone all out to costume me for the part. It shouldn't have bothered me. After all, I'd worn a Nazi uniform a couple of times in the line of duty, and sung the Horst Wessel in guttural German, and said nasty things about Jews. Being a Grade B gangster was a breeze.

I heard the rapping of high heels outside and turned to face the door. Teddy slipped into the room, eased the door closed, and leaned against it, breathless, clutching a small blue satin purse to her bosom. I noticed the purse first. It seemed to contain something considerably bulkier than it had been designed for.

“Well,” I said, “what's this all about?” Then I looked at her more sharply. “What the hell happened to you?”

It was a bad night for fashion. The long white gloves were gone, and the shiny blue dress had got a drink spilled down the front. The extravagant bubble skirt was crushed as if she'd been sleeping in it, making love in it, or at least lying down in it very carelessly, perhaps crying. Her small face seemed to bear out the last hypothesis. It had the unbecoming blotched look that follows an emotional crisis accompanied by tears.

“What's the pitch, bitch?” I demanded. “Who broke your doll?”

She looked at me for a moment, and made a sniffing noise. “Here,” she said, shoving the purse at me. “Here, take it!”

I glanced at her, took the purse, and opened it cautiously. It was stuffed full of money.

“Go on!” she gasped. “T-take it. It's all there, the rest of your d-dirty five thousand dollars. Take it and go. Go away. Go far, far away. I—I'd tell you to go to hell, but I wouldn't wish you on anybody, not even the d-devil himself!”

She sniffed again, loudly. The phone rang. I picked it up. A deeper voice than the kid's, but still female and familiar, started to speak in my ear.

I said, “I'm busy. Call back in half an hour.”

“But—”

“You heard me. Call back.”

“Well, really! I must say!”

I hung up on my dark goddess with her well-reallys and her I-must-says. It would do the haughty Mrs. Rosten good, from Lash Petroni's viewpoint, and maybe even from Matt Helm's, to stew a little longer. The fact that she'd called at all meant that I'd won something, although I still wasn't quite sure what. I turned back to the kid, took a clean handkerchief from my pocket and placed it in her hand.

“Blow your nose and tell Papa Petroni all about it.”

She looked at my handkerchief and threw it on the floor and ran the back of her hand and forearm back and forth under her nose, defiantly. I guess the unladylike gesture was supposed to shock me.

“All right,” I said. “If you spurn my hanky, have a drink instead—and don't tell me you won't touch my lousy liquor. That's enough temperament for tonight. I read your message loud and clear: you don't like me any more.”

“I hate you! I don't know how I could have—”

“Skip it,” I said. I pocketed the money and gave her little purse back. “Now go into the bathroom and wash your face. Other cosmetic and sartorial improvements may occur to you, once you look in the mirror. One might even say the field is wide open.”

“I won't—”

“Go on,” I said, swinging her around and giving her a slap behind. She started indignantly.

“Don't touch me!”

“Don't worry, I'm not contagious.”

She glared at me over her shoulder. “Oh, yes, you are! If it hadn't been for you, I'd never have dreamed of—”

The phone rang again. It was my busy night. If it kept up like this, I'd have to hire a secretary. I closed the bathroom door on Teddy's rumpled, rebellious little figure, and crossed the room. This time it was the male half of the Rosten duo on the line. It sounded as if he were calling from a bar or all-night restaurant; there was jukebox music in the background.

“Petroni, I have to talk to you—”

“In the morning,” I said.

“But I must know what went wrong—”

“In the morning,” I said. “I'll get in touch.”

I hung up on Louis and made the drinks, trying not to feel too pleased with myself. I might not know any more than I had before, but at least I had them all buzzing like angry bees. The kid came out of the bathroom looking subdued and, except for her stained dress, almost respectable. I put a glass into her hand.

“Who was on the phone?” she asked.

“None of your damn business,” I said. “Don't get nosy.”

She flushed. “You don't have to be rude!”

I said, “Easy, Teddy. I never told you the devil didn't deserve you. I figure I've still got some change coming, as far as rudeness is concerned.”

She looked up at me and drew a long, ragged breath. Her eyes were big and shiny in her tiny face. “I—I don't understand you, Jim. I don't understand myself. I know you're a dreadful person, and I tell myself I hate and despise you, and then I come here and—and you're almost human in your funny, overbearing way, and I—oh, I don't know what I'm trying to say!” She gulped at her drink, and looked up again. “What happened? What went wrong with your plans?”

“What makes you think something went wrong?”

“Well, Mrs. Rosten—she escaped, didn't she? She came home a mess, but alive and hopping mad.” Before I could offer an excuse or explanation, Teddy shook her head quickly. “Never mind. I don't want to know anything about it. I don't care, just so she's alive. Why—why, I might be a murderess now!” She glanced at me. “It's all right, isn't it? You have your money, all of it. I don't mind. I must have been insane! I deserve—I don't mind about the money. But you will go away, won't you—and forget I ever asked you to—It was horrible,” she breathed. “Simply horrible!”

“What was horrible?”

“All that waiting at the house, making conversation, trying to act natural, not knowing how we'd hear. I thought I'd throw up when the telephone rang, honest! And then hearing her car come up the drive like a maniac was at the wheel, or somebody who'd been—terribly hurt and was trying to get home before—before she—passed out or died.” The childish blue eyes looked up at me, remembering. “And the car screeched to a halt outside, and we heard her get out and stumble up the steps—and I remembered what you'd said about—about smashed faces and ripped out fingernails. I thought I'd die, watching that door, waiting to see what—I wouldn't go through another minute like that for a million dollars!”

I said, “You hate Mrs. Rosten. She's responsible for your daddy's death. Remember?”

Teddy didn't seem to hear. “And then she was standing there like that, like a—a tattered ghost, like something that had clawed its way out of a damp grave, and I knew if she saw my face she'd know, and I managed to spill my drink—” Her voice trailed off.

“Quick thinking,” I said. “Did it work?”

“I think so. I don't think she suspects. I'm going back to New York in the morning,” Teddy said breathlessly. “I should never have come! I've made a perfect little fool of myself! Why, I really haven't any proof at all, have I? I guess I was just, well, dramatizing. I just don't know what I was thinking of!”

I looked down at her for a little while without speaking. It was the first clear profit of the evening's work: I could cross one name off the list. She wasn't acting. She honestly believed she'd just missed becoming a blood-stained criminal; which meant she believed in her ruthless accomplice, the criminal Lash Petroni. She had no suspicion she was talking to a phony. Whoever had listened to those tapes recorded in Jean's room, it wasn't she.

I felt kind of sorry for the little girl, standing there with her prettiness tarnished and her self-confidence destroyed. A night's sleep and a change of clothes would fix her up in one respect, but it would take some time before she got over the shock of discovering that she wasn't nearly as wicked as she'd thought. I was tempted to let it go at that; but this was no time for sentimentality. I couldn't afford to let her off the hook as long as there was a possibility of her exerting useful pressure on one of the others.

I took the purse from her hands, got the money from my dressing gown pocket, and stuffed it back the way it had been. I put the purse into her hands.

She said quickly, “But I
want
you to have it.”

“I'll have it,” I said. “When I've earned it.”

She stared at me, wide-eyed. “But you can't—I mean, you don't have to—I mean, I don't want—”

“Who the hell,” I said, “cares what you want, now? You started the ball rolling, how are you going to call it back? Go to New York, go anywhere you please. You'll know when the payoff is due. You'll read about it in the papers. You have the dough ready. Okay?”