big police case that didn't have a mystery man or, better, a mystery woman. Usually she was a woman in a black veil. The cops had to have their romance. I got up and went to the toilet. I took the card identifying me as Peter Jensen out of my wallet and tore it up and dropped it in the water. Then I pulled the chain. “So long, Pete,” I said.
I went back and looked at the paper again. The hood I'd killed had been identified as Piper Sommes. He had worked in one of the town's pool halls. The cops said he was one of the stick-up mob under Jensen. Nothing was said to link him with Pug Banta. Another body was identified as Joe Manno, one of Papas's waiters. They still had one corpse to go. A trace had been found of Gus Papas. A car with five Greeks in it had gassed up at a filling station in Cairo, Illinois. One of them was wounded. The attendant had reported the wounded man to the local sheriff. It was thought they were heading for Chicago.
It was Papas, I decided. He was probably clearing out for good. Greeks never liked fighting. I wondered what had happened to Winnie and the two men. They'd probably decided to keep quiet. I had an idea one of the men had been cheating with Winnie. I read some more. I was reading Chief Piper's statement that Caryle Waterman had been killed accidentally during the stick-up, when a waiter came with my food. I put the paper down. Upstairs someone had figured there were two of us, and the waiter set two places on the rubbing table. That was all right with me. It meant I got twice as much bread and coffee.
When I finished the pie I told the Finn to send the dishes up to the kitchen. I got undressed and took the paper and a towel into the steam room. I would steam for half an hour, and then I would take a rub and a cold shower. Then I'd go about my business. I wanted to do something about Oke Johnson. I felt guilty about him.
I sat on the wooden bench and tried to find something in the paper about Oke. I couldn't. The Papas job had made the shooting unimportant. I read a statement by the DA saying he was going to clean up the county. There was another statement by the mayor. And another by the Governor. The lid was off. I hadn't done so badly. It was a break, getting Caryle Waterman killed. On an inside page I saw a picture of the burned cabin. There wasn't anything left but the foundation and the stone fireplace.
It was hard to read because the steam blurred the print. I put the paper down and sat without looking at anything much. The steam was so thick I couldn't see the opposite wall, anyway. Waves of it kept rising from the pipes, warm and smelling of menthol. Sweat ran off my face and chest, tickling my skin. I wondered if I was losing weight. I thought about Ginger, wondering how she would look in the steam room. I thought about her long legs and high breasts. I didn't get much of a buzz from it. The Princess had fixed that. I wouldn't have gotten a buzz from George White's chorus.
I tried to think about business. I had two days to get the Grayson girl. I wondered why McGee didn't come through. A lawyer usually knew of a way to do anything. I wiped my face with the towel and then I got a handful of salt out of the box and gave myself a rub down with it. The salt stung, but it cleaned my skin. I was still sweating. I began to relax. The mendiol made the steam feel good in my lungs. The worst was the Ceremony of the Bride. It sounded theatrical, but everything sounded that way at the Vineyard. Still, I didn't like the idea of there being no surviving brides. What if the brides just disappeared after the ceremony? Were sent away, or something? That didn't sound possible. People don't disappear. They write to their families, or send for clothes, or draw out money in banks. But if they died, like McGee said, how could the Vineyard keep it a secret?
I asked that last question, but it was just a formality. I knew almost anything could be kept a secret at the Vineyard. Religious cults were the hardest nuts of all to crack.
Look at Father-, for instance. The Government's been trying for years to find out where he gets the dough to ride in Rolls-Royces and buy estates on the Hudson, but he doesn't even bother to file an income tax. It wouldn't be too tough for the Vineyard to get rid of a girl a year. They could say she had gone away and nobody would be wiser, just so the body didn't turn up.
It was all probably phony; girls didn't get killed that way, but it scared me. It would be the end if Penelope Grayson disappeared. I could see myself explaining to Grayson that I thought she was dead, but I didn't know where the body was. He would like that! I was in a tough spot with a lot of very strange people, and I had three days to get out of it. I began to think about how it would be to live in Mexico. I had nearly four grand. That would last for a while. The trouble was, they didn't have many redheads in Mexico.
Someone opened the door. I felt the steam move with the draught. I couldn't see across the room. “Craven?”
“Yes.”
I didn't recognize the voice. It wasn't the Finn. The door closed and the mist didn't drift any more. I couldn't see anything through the steam.
“God damn you, Craven,” the voice said. “You killed my sister.”
I rolled off the bench to the floor. The pistol made kind of a plop and lead flattened against the tile wall over me. Brother, that was one time I was plenty scared. I couldn't think who was shooting at me, or what he was talking about. I didn't know anybody's sister. I crawled towards the shower booth that people used to wash off the salt. He fired again. Now I could barely see something dark through the steam, but I knew he couldn't see as much of me. My skin was closer to the colour of the steam, especially right now. I said: “Get back or I'll shoot.”
“Don't kid me.”
He started forward. I picked up the wooden box of salt and threw it at him. It caught him high up and he went back out of sight against the door. I heard him hit the door. I got to my feet and started to rush him and my feet slipped on the wet floor. I hit my jaw a hell of a crack on the table. I hurt my knees and elbows. I crawled to the shower booth. He fired twice. Neither shot came near me. I crawled into the stall, expecting a shot in the backside.
I was glad to get in that stall. It was a funny feeling, being naked and fighting a man with a gun. I didn't like it. I felt the bullets would hurt more, naked. I ran my hands around the stall and found a bar of soap and a back brush. They made a really fine pair of weapons. I couldn't see the guy. He was quiet now, waiting for me to move. He'd shot four times. That left two or three bullets. That was nothing to be cheerful about. It would only take one to knock me off.
I peeped around a corner of the stall. The steam was so thick I couldn't see him. I wondered if the Finn had heard the shots. I wondered if the steam in the room had muffled them. Then I saw him I He was coming slowly towards me. He didn't know where I was, but he was going to get up close for his last shots. I watched him come, seeing his clothes through the steam.
I waited a second, and then I shook the shower curtain. He fired twice; I felt the curtain twitch as the bullets went through it. I knelt and groaned a couple of times, made a gasping noise in my throat, and then held my breath. He was a sucker. He came right up to the curtain. I reached out and jerked his legs. The pistol went off as he fell. He lit hard, and I crawled up and wrestled away the pistol. He didn't have much fight, but I socked him twice with the pistol. He lay still on the floor.
