what happened. Not much was left of the car at all.'
'There was a dame in there,' I told him.
'I'm coming to that.' His head came up and his eyes searched my face. 'She was dead. She's been identified.'
'As an escapee from a sanitarium,' I finished.
It didn't catch him a bit off base. 'Those county cops were pretty sore about it when they found out. Why did you pass them up?'
'I didn't like their attitude.'
He nodded as if that explained it. Hell, it did.
'You better start thinking before you pull stunts like that, Mike.' 'Why?'
'The woman didn't die in the crash.' 'I figured as much.'
Maybe I shouldn't have been so calm about it. His lips got tight all of a sudden and the fingernails he had been tending disappeared into balled-up fists. 'Damn it, Mike, what are you into? Do you realize what kind of a mess you've been fooling around with?'
'No. I'm waiting for you to tell me.'
'That woman was under surveillance by the feds. She was part of something big that I don't know about myself and she was committed to the institution to recover so she could do some tall talking to a closed session of Congress. There was a police guard outside her door and on the grounds of the place. Right now the Washington boys are hopping and it looks like the finger is pointed at you. As far as they're concerned you got her out of there and knocked her off.'
I lay there and looked at the ceiling. A crack in the plaster zigzagged across the room and disappeared under the molding. 'What do you think, Pat?'
'I'm waiting to hear you say it.'
'I already said it.'
'An accident?' His smile was too damn sarcastic. 'It was an accident to have a practically naked woman in your car? It was an accident to lie your way through a police roadblock? It was an accident to have her dead before your car went through the wall? You'll have to do better than that, pal. I know you too well. If accidents happen they go the way you want them to.'
'It was an accident.'
'Mike, look... you can call it what you like. I'm a cop and I'm in a position to help you out if there's trouble, but if you don't square away with me I'm not going to do a thing. When those Federal boys move in you're going to have to do better than that accident story.'
Velda moved her hand up to my chin and turned my head so she could look at me. 'It's big, Mike,' she said. 'Can you fill in the details?' She was so completely serious it was almost funny. I felt like kissing the tip of her nose and sending her out to play, but her eyes were pleading with me.
I said, 'It was an accident. I picked her up on the way down from Albany. I don't know a thing about her, but she seemed like a nervy kid in a jam and I didn't like the snotty way that cop acted when he stopped the car. So I went on through. We got down maybe ten miles when a sedan pulled out from the side of the road and nudged me to a stop. Now here's the part you won't believe. I got out sore as hell and somebody took a shot at me. It missed, but I got sapped and sapped so beautifully I never came completely out of it. I don't know where the hell they took us, but wherever it was they tried to force something out of the dame. She never came across. Those lads were anxious to get rid of her and me too so they piled us in the car and gave it a shove over the cliff.'
'Who are they?' Pat asked.
'Damned if I know. Five or six guys.' 'Can you identify them?'
'Not by their faces. Maybe if I heard them speak.'
I didn't mean maybe at all. I could still hear every syllable they spoke and those voices would talk in my mind until I died. Or they did.
The silence was pretty deep. The puzzle was on Velda's face.
'Is that all?' She asked me.
Pat spoke out of the stillness, his voice soft again. 'That's all he's going to tell anybody.' He got up and stood by the bed. 'If that's the way you want it, I'll play along. I hope like hell you're telling me the truth.'
'But you're afraid I'm not, is that it?'
'Uh-huh. I'll check on it. I can still see some holes in it.' 'For instance?'
'The gap in the guardrail. No slow-moving car did that. It was a fresh break, too.'
'Then they did it with their car purposely.'
'Maybe. Where was your heap while they were working the woman over?'
'Nicely parked off the road with a jack under it and flares set out.'
'Clever thought.'
'I thought so too,' I said.
'Who could ever find anybody who noticed the flares? They'd just breeze right on by.'
'That's right.'
Pat hesitated, glanced at Velda, then back to me again. 'You're going to stick with that story?'
'What else?'
'Okay, I'll check on it. I hope you aren't making any mistakes.
Good night now. Take it easy.' He started to the door.
I said, 'I'll do my own checking when I'm up, Pat.'
He stopped with his hand on the knob. 'Don't keep asking for trouble, kid. You have enough right now.'
'I don't like to get sapped and tossed over a cliff.' 'Mike...'
'See you around, Pat.' He shot me a wry grin and left. I picked up Velda's hand and looked at her watch. 'You have five minutes left out of the thirty. How do you want to spend it?'
The seriousness washed away all at once. She was a big, luscious woman smiling at me with a mouth that was only inches away and coming closer each second. Velda. Tall, with hair like midnight. Beautiful, so it hurt to look at her.
Her hands were soft on my face and her mouth a hot, hungry thing that tried to drink me down. Even through the covers I could feel the firm pressure of her breasts, live things that caressed me of their own accord. She took her mouth away reluctantly so I could kiss her neck and run my lips across her shoulders.
'I love you, Mike,' she said. 'I love everything about you even when you're all fouled up with trouble.' She traced a path down my cheek with her finger. 'Now what do you want me to do?'
'Get your nose to the ground, kitten,' I told her. 'Find out what the hell this is all about. Take a check on that sanitarium and get a line into Washington if you can.'
'That won't be easy.'
'They can't keep secrets in the capital, baby. There will be rumors.'
'And what will you do?'
'Try to make those feds believe that accident yarn.'
Her eyes widened a little. 'You mean... it didn't happen that way?'
'Uh-uh. I mean it did. It's just that nobody's going to believe it.'
I patted her hand and she straightened up from the bed. I watched her walk toward the door, taking in every feline motion of her body. There was something lithe and animal-like in the way she swung her hips, a jungle tautness to her shoulders. Cleopatra might have had it. Josephine might have had it. But they never had it like she had it.
I said, 'Velda...' and she turned around, knowing damn well what I was going to say. 'Show me your legs.'
She grinned impishly, her eyes dancing, standing in a pose no calendar artist could duplicate. She was a Circe, a lusty temptress, a piece of living statuary on display, that only one guy would be able to see. The hem of the dress came up quickly, letting the roundness under the nylon evolve into a magical symmetry, then the nylon ended in the quick whiteness of her thigh and I said, 'Enough, kitten. Quit it.'
Before I could say anything else she laughed down deep, threw me a kiss and grinned. 'Now you know how Ulysses felt.'
Now I knew. The guy was a sucker. He should have jumped ship.
