“Did I hurt you?” she said softly.
I nodded.
“That’s fine.” She hauled off and slapped me again, harder if anything. “I think you’d better kiss me,” she breathed. Her eyes were clear and limpid and melting. I glanced down casually. Her right hand was balled into a very businesslike fist. It wasn’t too small to work with, either.
“Believe me,” I said. “There’s only one reason I don’t. Even if you had your little black gun with you. Or the brass knuckles you probably keep on your night table.”
She smiled politely.
“I might just happen to be working for you,” I said. “And I don’t go whoring around after every pair of legs I see.” I looked down at hers. I could see them all right and the flag that marked the goal line was no larger than it had to be. She pulled the hostess gown together and turned and walked over to the little bar shaking her head.
“I’m free, white and twenty-one,” she said. “I’ve seen all the approaches there are. I think I have. If I can’t scare you, lick you, or seduce you, what the hell can I buy you with?”
“Well—”
“Don’t tell me,” she interrupted sharply and turned with a glass in her hand. She drank and tossed the loose hair around and smiled a thin little smile. “Money, of course. How damned stupid of me to overlook that.”
“Money would help,” I said.
Her mouth twisted in wry disgust but the voice was almost affectionate. “How much money?”
“Oh a hundred bucks would do to start with.”
“You’re cheap. It’s a cheap little bastard, isn’t it? A hundred bucks it says. Is a hundred bucks money in your circle, darling?”
“Make it two hundred then. I could retire on that.”
“Still cheap. Every week of course. In a nice clean envelope?”
“You could skip the envelope. I’d only get it dirty.”
“And just what would I get for this money, my charming little gum-shoe? I’m quite sure of what you are, of course.”
“You’d get a receipt. Who told you I was a gum-shoe?”
She stared out of her own eyes for a brief instant before the act dropped over her again. “It must have been the smell.” She sipped her drink and stared at me over it with a faint smile of contempt.
“I’m beginning to think you write your own dialogue,” I said. “I’ve been wondering just what was the matter with it.”
I ducked. A few drops splattered me. The glass splintered on the wall behind me. The broken pieces fell soundlessly.
“And with that,” she said, completely calm, “I believe I must have used up my entire stock of girlish charm.”
I went over and picked up my hat. “I never thought you killed him,” I said. “But it would help to have some sort of reason for not telling you were there. It’s a help to have enough money for a retainer just to establish myself. And enough information to justify my accepting the retainer.”
She picked a cigarette out of a box, tossed it in the air, caught it between her lips effortlessly and lit it with a match that came from nowhere.
“My goodness. Am I supposed to have killed somebody?” she asked. I was still holding the hat. It made me feel foolish. I don’t know why. I put it on and started for the door.
“I trust you have carfare home,” the contemptuous voice said behind me.
I didn’t answer. I just kept going. When I had the door ready to open she said: “I also trust Miss Gonzales gave you her address and phone number. You should be able to get almost anything out of her—including, I am told, money.”
I let go of the doorknob and went back across the room fast. She stood her ground and the smile on her lips didn’t slip a millimeter.
“Look,” I said. “You’re going to find this hard to believe. But I came over here with the quaint idea that you might be a girl who needed some help—and would find it rather hard to get anyone you could bank on. I figured you went to that hotel room to make some kind of a payoff. And the fact that you went by yourself and took chances on being recognized—and were recognized by a house dick whose standard of ethics would take about as much strain as a very tired old cobweb—all this made me think you might be in one of those Hollywood jams that really mean curtains. But you’re not in any jam. You’re right up front under the baby spot pulling every tired ham gesture you ever used in the most tired B-picture you ever acted in—if acting is the word—”
“Shut up,” she said, between teeth so tight they grated. “Shut up, you slimy, blackmailing keyhole peeper.”
“You don’t need me,” I said. “You don’t need anybody. You’re so God-damn smart you could talk your way out of a safe-deposit box. Okay. Go ahead and talk your way out. I won’t stop you. Just don’t make me listen to it. I’d burst out crying to think a mere slip of an innocent little girl like you should be so clever. You do things to me, honey. Just like Margaret O’Brien.”
She didn’t move or breathe when I reached the door, nor when I opened it. I don’t know why. The stuff wasn’t that good.
I went down the stairs and across the court and out of the front door, almost bumping into a slim dark-eyed man who was standing there lighting a cigarette.
