went under her arm and she responded to the touch, rising slowly, clutching her pocketbook. I picked up a lamp and led her upstairs to the one bedroom I had fixed up. I put the lamp down and turned back the covers while she stood in the middle of the room staring at the wall. When I crossed her line of vision her eyes seemed to follow me vacantly and she was still smiling that faint smile.
She was easy to undress. I simply unzipped the back of her gown and let it fall to the floor. She didn’t have anything else on except her shoes. I took them off when I lifted her feet from the tangle of fabric around her ankles, then put my arm around her and made her sit on the edge of the bed. I pushed her back gently, took her legs and stretched them out, then brushed her hair away from her face.
She was beautiful, all right, soft skin nicely tanned that was white across her breasts and thighs, a body lushly mature with hidden sensuality in the mounds of her pink-tipped bosom and the tawny triangle of hair where her tapered legs met.
For the first time her eyes moved and the smile relaxed from its fixed position, her face watching me almost absently. I took the tips of my fingers and drew them slowly down her body, over the rise of her breasts, across the flatness of her belly through the soft vee of hair and in a wavy line down her legs. I gave her toes a little squeeze, pulled the covers up under her chin and patted her cheek.
“Poor kid,” I said softly.
The brightness in her eyes seemed to mist over, then the lids closed over them, her mouth softened and her chest rose in the regular rhythm of sleep.
The local newspaper ran a special edition to contain the events of the previous night. The triple killings took precedence on the first page with four photos of the bodies where they lay and police mug shots of what they had looked like previously. Identification was immediate and positive. All three were members of the mob led by the Guido brothers but no motive for their deaths had been uncovered. At present it was suspected that, since the Guido crowd had been engaged in illegal strong-arm union tactics on the waterfront, they might have been in Linton to muscle in on union activities going on with the reactivation of the Barrin plant. Local police were working in conjunction with New York City departments and other state authorities and expected immediate results.
Balls.
Inside pages of the edition covered the activities of the S. C. Cable production crews setting up for the forthcoming Fruits of Labor picture, the society pages went all out on the party given for prominent local citizens and the picture company and the rest of the world news was sandwiched in the last section.
Even the New York papers were having a field day with the topic and even if Fruits of Labor hadn’t been a great book to begin with, it sure was getting one hell of a push with all the notoriety going on around it. Mona Merriman ran a full-column plug with details obviously supplied by Lee and the publicity department, another Hollywood columnist gave it two paragraphs and Dick Lagen hinted at a more sinister possible aspect and stated flatly that this was only the beginning of the unrest that was bound to come. If he did have anything substantial, either it wasn’t provable or he wasn’t ready to break it yet.
Chet Linden had listened while I told him what happened and told me to get lost.
I said, “Buddy, I’m getting highly pissed off and I don’t want any crap from you at all. I told you what could happen and you wouldn’t listen and if you feel like stranding me, old pal, I’ll blow the whistle on the whole damn shebang and bring it down on everybody’s head.”
His voice was flat and cold. “We don’t take that stuff, Dog.”
But I could be just as cold and a lot more deadly I had four more kills in my pocket to prove it and he damn well kept count too. “You don’t have any choice, Chet. Just do it.”
I heard him suck in his breath with disgust. “Okay, where’s the car?”
When I gave him the directions I said, “They have tire impressions from the area, so just switch shoes of the same type and the rental company will never notice it. Do the window, wash down the undersides, run it through the countryside a little bit to pick up traces of dirt other than that beside the hotel and leave it where you found it.”
“You think their labs can’t pick up something if they nail you?”
“They won’t have time. I’m not on anybody’s list yet.”
“You’re on ours now.”
“Come get me then. And, Chet...”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t try booby-trapping the car. I know all the gimmicks too ... and you just might get some innocent slob killed.”
He didn’t answer me. He just hung up and I grinned because the choice was all mine. But from now on I had something else to look out for.
Rose was waiting for me at the back table of the Arcade Bar and Grill, a little place struggling for survival without seeming to care what happened. The couple who ran the place had aged along with the building and looked more like wooden fixtures than people. She had gotten there five minutes early and had ordered a hamburger, getting ready to bite into it when I arrived. I called for one myself and sat down opposite her.
She smiled a faint hello, but there was a cloud across her face that hadn’t been there before. I said, “How’d you make out, kid?”
“You picked a live one.”
“Any trouble?”
She shook her head. “He took me out for a snack and a drink, then dropped me off at the hotel.”
“You didn’t invite him up?”
“Let me play the johns my way. He wants to be the aggressor.”
I took my hamburger when it came and doused it with ketchup. “I may be wrong.”
“You aren’t wrong. I know the signs. I told you, I had it happen to me before.” She looked at me a few long seconds, the cloud still there veiling her feelings. “I thought I could handle this when I took you up on the deal. Now I’m not so sure.”
“Why?”
“Dog ... if this were just a badger game ...”
“It isn’t,” I said.
“Your games are all for keeps,” she told me softly. “Like last night.”
“Last night?” I took a big bite out of the hamburger and watched her.
“Don’t be so damn cool, Dog.”
“See me in jail, Rose?”
“Maybe they haven’t caught you yet.”
“Let’s wait until it happens.”
I saw her eyes go past my head and she nodded. “Could be it’s about to.”
But I had seen Bennie Sachs in the mirror I was facing and was all ready for him when he walked up and gave a curt nod to both of us. I stood up, still chewing and offered to buy him coffee.
He said No, glanced at Rose, then back to me and said, “Can I see you alone, Mr. Kelly?”
I put the rest of the hamburger down, wiped my mouth and nodded. “Sure. Where?”
“They got a back room here.”
“Let’s go.”
“You first. He pointed toward a door in the far comer. “Over there.” He kept his hand close to the police special on his hip and followed me through the door into a storeroom, then into a smelly toilet reeking of filth and stagnating water on the floor.
“Now what?” I asked him.
“Let’s see that rod of yours.”
I handed him the .45. He smelled it, checked the action, snapped out the clip then slammed it back in again. “Stand against the wall,” he said.
I shrugged and did what he told me. Bennie kept me in sight while he took the lid off the tank of the bowl.
