The Revengers (23 page)

There was silence in the room, but somebody walked down the hall outside. She waited for the footsteps to die away, before she went on, speaking very steadily;

“And then they just threw me down and did it to me, that’s all. I think you can probably supply those details from your own experience, Mr. Helm. They weren’t very original about it, thank God; it was a pretty standard sexual exercise.” After a moment she continued softly, “Oh, and you’ll like this final detail, I’m sure. All naked and bruised and hurting like that in the weeds and dirt, my stupid body responded numbly, like a damaged mechanical doll. And I let it, Mr. Helm. I was afraid that if I didn’t give them some satisfaction, some response, they’d get mad and hit me in the mouth again. I didn’t really care what I did by that time. I just wanted to save what was left of me, what little was left of me. Isn’t that a lovely detail, Mr. Helm? I thought you’d like that, you bastard. Get me a drink.”

When I returned with her refilled glass she didn’t see me at once; then she reached up and took it from me. I stood there a moment.

“Elly—”

She said tonelessly, looking at her drink, “We’re really going through this stuff, aren’t we? We ought to go into the movies; the old hard-drinking reporter-private-eye routine.” She was silent for a little and went on softly, “Don’t say it, Matt. Don’t apologize for being rude and crude. You proved your point, didn’t you? They
did
know who I was; it wasn’t just a casual pickup rape. And they had their orders, they were supposed to ... to spoil me but not too badly, meaning, I suppose, not too permanently, not enough to raise a stink just before election time.”

“I had to blast it loose even if it hurt.”

She said, “Yes, and tomorrow or next week I’ll probably be very grateful to you for making me face it all at last. It’ll probably turn out to have been very good for me. But tonight I don’t like you very much, so let’s get this over with so I can take a shower. I feel dirty all over just from talking about it.”

I sat down facing her once more. I said, “The man you were talking with in that joint, before they caught you outside, the one you said was very polite and bought you a beer—what did you go to see him about?”

Eleanor shrugged. “His sister. She used to be a girlfriend of Lorca’s in his wicked past he has now renounced. A pretty blond kid who thought she could sing, named Ar-lette Swallow. Her brother, Pete Swallow, was setting it up for me to interview her.”

I said, “It could be that Lorca didn’t want her interviewed. Maybe he thought an old mistress was bad for the image.”

She shook her head quickly. “These days? Don’t be naive, little boy. Hell, even presidents sleep around and nobody thinks a thing of it. Anyway, I doubt the magazine would have used it. There seems to be a kind of gentleman’s agreement about this political stuff: you lay off the bedroom dirt unless it’s just too irresistibly dirty. So even though I’m not a gentleman, I didn’t really expect to get much mileage out of the fact that Lorca had slept with a cheap little nightclub nightingale occasionally, particularly since it had happened well before his miraculous and well-publicized conversion to righteousness. Now he was a devoted family man with a pretty wife and daughter he wouldn’t hurt or shame for the world. But the name had cropped up. . . ."

“How?”

She hesitated. “Well, it had been whispered to me in confidence by somebody who had good reason to want to embarrass the Lorca campaign. I didn’t think it would prove all that embarrassing even if the information was straight; but I thought I’d better check the girl out anyway. At least I could get an idea of how Lorca had looked from her viewpoint, to add to my other worms-eye views of the great man.”

“Did you?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, no. The brother was supposed to call me, but I guess he didn’t. . . .”

“You guess?”

“Matt, for God’s sake!” Her anger had a defensive quality. “I could hardly get out of that damned hotel bed the next day, and what I saw in the mirror wasn’t worth getting up for anyway! I gave the hotel people my auto accident story and stayed in my room except for. . . . Well, I told you. Until I could show my face without causing a riot. In the meantime I just beat on the damned typewriter and tried to forget how much I hurt and why.”

“Writing what?”

She made an impatient gesture. “The Lorca election piece, of course! What’s the matter with you, anyway? Why the crossexamination?”

I said, “The Lorca election piece without the girlfriend. Because the brother never called back. And you hurt too badly to bother finding out why he never called.”

“Damn you, Matthew Helm! . . She stopped. There was a lengthy silence, while a little flush came to her face. At last she nodded reluctantly. “Yes, damn you. The Lorca piece without the girlfriend. Yes. Because I hurt too damned bad to remember I was a reporter, and damn you for pointing it out. Yes. I just wanted to get the lousy article out of the typewriter so I could he in bed and count my aches and explore my crazy new mouth with my tongue and wonder how long it would be before I looked human again, well, as human as I ever look.” She grimaced. “Yes! I just knocked the piece out with what I already had in my notes and sent it off to the magazine. There were some minor changes they wanted, but we took care of those over the phone. So I guess Mr. Pulitzer is just going to have to find somebody else to give his prize to. Even if it were offered, I’d be morally obliged to turn it down, wouldn’t I? A journalistic false alarm like me?”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

“Hard?” Her voice was savage with self-contempt. “I didn’t hurt
that
badly. I didn’t hurt too badly to see a doctor and a dentist and read up on animal husbandry, did I? But I never once asked myself why did it happen to me just then, and
what
could
who
gain by having me . . . well, disfigured, demoralized, partially disabled, at just that point in my research. The smooth sly bastard! If there had been threats I’d just have got mad and stubborn, but the way he did it. . . . No threats, no warnings, just go out and spoil the wench a little! Give her something else to think about, the nosy bitch!” She drew a shaky breath. “And I did what he obviously hoped I’d do. In spite of everything they’d let slip they obviously weren’t supposed to, in spite of the way they’d betrayed themselves, I crawled back to the hotel just cursing my lousy luck at accidentally meeting up with two cruising sex freaks. And then hauled myself out of bed just long enough to knock out a nice innocuous Lorca article and to hell with making any more efforts to check out mysterious girlfriends and their secretive brothers. I didn’t even ask myself why the brother was so secretive; why the sister was so hard to interview. Did you ever since Garbo hear of a performer who made it tough for a reporter to find her? My God, usually you can’t keep them out of your lap!”

I nodded. “So you have no idea why Pete Swallow never called you as he’d promised.”

Eleanor shook her head. “No. As I keep saying, I just shut that whole ghastly evening out of my mind; it was the only way I could continue to function. But I’d better do a little checking right now, hadn’t I?”

I said, “It can wait until morning. You ought to get some sleep.”

“Go to hell,” she said. “You worry about your goddamn health and let me worry about mine. I may need a bodyguard but I don’t need a male nurse.” She frowned. “I’ll see if I can get hold of Spud Meiklejohn in Miami. He probably can’t do much tonight, but he owes me, and he’ll get what’s to be got as soon as things open up tomorrow.”

“Don’t have him send it here. We’ll pick it up over there.”

She glanced at me sharply; then she grinned. “You’re supposed to be guarding the body, Mister; not pushing it around. But what’s the plan?”

I said, “What’s left for you to do here in Nassau? The man you wanted to interview is dead. The police gave you clearance; best to get the hell out before they change their minds and think of more questions they want to ask you. And I want you to introduce me to somebody.”

“What somebody?”

“That big man in Miami Beach who lent you three thugs when you needed them.”

“Velo? What do you want with Giuseppe Velo?”

“Is that his name? I presume he has syndicate connections.”

“None better. He was the syndicate down there for many years; he’s kind of semi-retired now. A very tough old buzzard, and I do mean buzzard. That’s just the way he looks.”

“Good. Just the man I want.”

“But does he want you, Matt? And do I want to be responsible for bringing the two of you together? Velo is a good man to do a good turn for, but I wouldn’t want to do him a bad one without a very good reason.”

I said, “Hell, I can do it on my own, Elly. I know some names, too. But if you’ve got a pipeline to a big local guy like Velo it’s easier. You might as well do that first. There’s the phone over by the bed. Tell him to check with Otto Rentner in Milwaukee about the man from W who was with Heinrich Glock, known as Heinie the Clock, when he died with a twelve-gauge shotgun in his hands.”

She looked at me for a moment. “What’s W?” she asked at last.

“You should know that, after all the research you did on us. That’s what they call us in the syndicate. W for waste.”

She shivered a little. “And I don’t suppose you mean garbage. No, I never came across that. It’s very . . . picturesque; I could have used it.” She hesitated, and went on, “Well, all right, I guess you know what you’re doing. But run that past me again, please, slowly. . . .”

It took an hour. There were the two calls to the U.S. and then a wait for the first party called to call back. At last the phone rang and she picked it up.

“I see,” she said. “Yes, of course. For lunch. Yes, I know where it is. Please thank Mr. Velo very much.” She put down the instrument and looked at me. “It’s okay. Apparently you checked out okay. He’s seeing us for lunch at his place tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Elly. It’ll all become clear eventually. I’m trying to get the kiddies off the street, that’s all.”

“If I’m supposed to understand that,” she said, “you’d better repeat it in the morning when I’m thinking clearly again. My God what a day! Who makes the plane arrangements?”

“I do,” I said.

“Well,” she said, “well, I’ll let you have your phone.” But she didn’t move at once, sitting there on the edge of the big bed, my big bed. She seemed to have dismissed the natural hostility she’d felt toward me for the way I’d goaded her into unearthing all the buried ugly memories of her ordeal. She looked rather small and vulnerable, sitting there; and there’s nothing more dangerous to virtuous masculine resolutions than the natural masculine feeling that, no matter what the lady’s sexual hangups may be, no matter how they might have been incurred, you’re just the guy sent by Fate to cure them. By the traditional method, of course. She looked up at me and smiled faintly, rising. “No, dear,” she murmured. “The patient is not yet ready for the Helmstein Treatment.”

“Madame will inform me when she thinks it is the proper time?”

“Proper is hardly the word, Herr Doktor,” she said. “But Madame will certainly inform you. Goodnight, Matt.”

“Goodnight, Elly.”

In the morning, inevitably, there were afterthoughts. Breakfast was a remote meal. Psychologically speaking, socially speaking, the distance across the table could have been measured in rods, even miles, instead of feet. Although I’d been aware of no nightmares, she’d obviously spent an unsatisfactory night; her eyes looked bruised and tired.

I knew she must have relived the whole dumb evening; hating every stupid revealing word she’d uttered, herself for uttering it, me for bullying her into uttering it and then sitting there listening avidly to her recital of the awful indignities that had been inflicted upon her. Now I was the man who knew exactly the abysmal depths of humiliation to which she’d been brought. I even knew her ultimate degradation—that she’d probably intended to tell to no one, ever—the fact that in the end she’d deliberately allowed herself to give some satisfaction to the men violating her in order to save herself from further injury. Her cold defensive attitude this morning made it clear that she’d decided that I must now consider her very soiled and damaged goods indeed; and a lousy little coward to boot.

Well, I guess there are men around who deal only in perfect, unblemished dream-girls; just as there are other men around who deal only in perfect, unblemished stamps that lose most of their value if they’re used, certainly if they’re damaged in any way. Of course they must all, girls and stamps, be sheltered and protected very carefully to preserve their perfect purity, their pure perfection. Well, dream-girls are nice to dream about; and I suppose every man has at least one dream-girl in his past—I was married to mine for a while—who meant a great deal to him at the time but didn’t prove very practical when the going got rough. I mean, there’s a limit to how far you can go to shelter a woman from reality.

Then there are the real girls who’ve been dirty and hurt and maybe even a little broken at times, who’ve done what was necessary for survival no matter how distasteful it might be, and who’ve picked themselves up afterward and washed themselves off and patched themselves up and gone on with the business of living. You don’t have to save them from use, they expect to be used, they like being used; they know that’s what women, like men, are for. While you’d like to protect them from harm, it’s not a tragedy if you fail a little. They don’t lose their value so easily. This one was getting very close to becoming a very real girl, at least to me; and I wasn’t at all sure I wanted her to. Dream-girls come and go, but real girls can be forever; and there’s no good place for forever girls in our line of work.

“When do we catch the plane?” Eleanor asked, glancing at her businesslike watch.

“Whenever you say,” I said, getting to my feet. “It’s waiting on the field.”

She rose and started to move away, but her innate fairness made her pause and look back. “Well, there’s something to having a high-powered bodyguard after all. Private air transportation, yet. Very nice, Mr. Helm.” She hesitated and glanced down at herself a bit self-consciously and went on, “It’s not a deliberate act of hostility, Matt.”