look. I saw Benny take in the Willie Elkins' Garage, Repairs and Towing Call Pinewood 101 sign printed there, make a snap decision, figure us for locals in the woods, and decide to write us off as coincidence.
His smile stretched a little. "No, . . . no trouble. Pulled a little hard on the turn and skidded around. Just didn't want anybody ramming me while I turned around."
He got in the Cad, gunned the engine, and made a big production of jockeying around in the small area. He wound up pointing back toward the mountain and waved as he went by. I waved too and at that moment our eyes met and something seemed to go sour with Benny Quick's grin.
Either he was turning it off as a bad fit a little too fast or he recognized me from a time not so long ago.
Around the bend ahead I stopped suddenly, cut the engine, and listened. Then I heard a door slam and knew Benny had picked up his passenger. Dari was watching me and I didn't have to tell her what had just happened.
Silently, her eyes dropped to the .45 on the seat, then came back to mine. She said, "You would have killed him, wouldn't you?"
"It would have been a pleasure," I said.
"It's terrible," she whispered.
"Well, don't let it snow you, kid. I may have to do it yet."
It was dark when we reached the hotel. The clerk waved Dari over and said, "Right after you left a call came in. Girl said she was Ruth Gleason. She sounded almost hysterical. I couldn't make much out of it. She was crying and talking about needing somebody."
Dari's face turned ashen. She turned to me, waiting. "You said you could reach Grace Shaefer," I reminded her.
Dari nodded.
"See if she can meet us at Jimmie's bar in an hour."
Ten minutes went by before the operator got my call through to Artie. As usual, we made idle talk before I gave him the plate numbers I had picked up on the mountain road. He grunted disgustedly when I told him I wanted it right away. This would take a little time, so I left the number of the hotel and said I'd stand by.
I looked at my watch and told the clerk to put any calls through to me in Dari's room.
Dari's room was on the ground floor at the end of the corridor. I knocked and heard her call for me to come in. I stood there a moment in the semidarkness of the small foyer and then, unlike her, turned the key in the lock. Inside I could hear her talking over the phone.
She was curled up on the end of a studio couch, wrapped in a black-and-red mandarin robe that had a huge golden dragon embroidered on it. The fanged mouth was at her throat.
She had a Mrs. Finney on the wire. Trying to conceal her annoyance, Dari said, "Well, when Grace does call, can you have her meet me at Jimmie's in an hour? Tell her it's very important. All right. Thanks, Mrs. Finney."
She hung up and grimaced. "She knows where Grace is, damn it."
"Why is it a secret?"
"Because . . ." she gave me an impish grin, "Mrs. Finney's rooming house is . . . a little more than a rooming house. During the summer, that is."
"Oh," I said. "And she's still loyal to her . . . clients?"
"Something like that."
"The national pastime. No place is too big or too little for it. Any town, anyplace, and there's always a Mrs. Finney. Do you think she'll speak to Grace?"
"She'll be there." She stood up, the satiny folds of the robe whipping around her until the golden dragon seemed almost alive.
There is some crazy fascination about a big woman. And when I looked at her I knew that her love was my kind, greedy, wanting to have everything; violent, wanting to give everything. Her eyes seemed to slant up and the front of the robe followed the concavity of her belly as she sucked in her breath. Her breasts were high and firm, their movement making the dragon's head move toward her throat hungrily.
I held out my hand and without hesitation she took it. When I pulled her toward me she came effortlessly, sliding down beside me, leaning back against the cushions with eyes half-slitted to match those of the guardian golden dragon.
My hands slid around her, feeling the heat of her body through the sheen of the satin. There was nothing soft about her. She was hard and vibrant, quivering under my touch and, although she was waiting, she was tensing to spring, too, and I could sense the flexing and rolling of the muscles at her stomach and across her back.
Her fingertips were on me, touching with wary gentleness and having the knowledge of possession, but first exploring the fullness of something she now owned. One hand went behind my head, kneaded my neck, and the other guided my face to hers. No word was spoken. There was need for none. This was the now when everything was known and everything that was to be would be. She held me away an instant, searching my face, then, realizing how we both desperately hated the silent restraint, did as a woman might and licked my lips with her tongue until they were as wet as her own and with a startled cry let herself explode into a kiss with me that was a wild maelstrom of a minute that seemed to go on endlessly.
My fingers bit into her wrists. "Now you know."
"Now I know," she answered. "It never happened to me before, Kelly."
Dari raised my hands to her mouth, kissed the backs of my hands and smiled.
"What do we do now?" she asked me.
"We don't throw this away, kid. It's ours. We'll take it right and keep it forever."
Slowly she uncoiled, stood in front of me and let all the love in her face tell me I had said what she wanted to hear but didn't expect.
She let me watch her, then laughed deep in her throat and said, "What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking that you're not wearing anything at all under that . . . geisha thing."
"You're right," she said.
She let me look and hunger another moment, then fingered the clasp of the robe. She held each edge in her hand and threw her arms back slowly, unfolding the robe like immense, startlingly crimson wings, and stood outlined against them in sheer suntanned beauty highlighted by the mouth so red and hair so blonde.
With another smile my Valkyrie turned and moved away slowly into the bedroom opposite, and behind me the phone rang so suddenly I jumped.
The desk clerk said, "Mr. Smith, I have your New York call."
My tone stopped Artie's usual kidding around.
"Okay, buddy," he said, "but you got yourself a mixed-up package. Two of those cars, a station wagon and a sedan, belong to businessmen who show clean all the way."
"Maybe, Art, but Harry Adrano was riding in the wagon and that boy's been working with the happy dust."
"That one Cadillac is a rented car. The guy who signed out for it is a Walter Cramer nobody knows anything about, but the guy who paid the tab
I thanked Art, hung up, and stared at the phone. The picture was coming through loud and clear.
Dari took me out back to her car and handed me the keys.
It was 8:30. Jimmie spotted us when we walked in and came down.
"Grace Shaefer's in the back. Said she's waiting for you."
I grinned back and we headed for the back room.
Grace Shaefer sat there nursing a highball. She was a wide-eyed brunette with a voluptuously full body in no way disguised by the black, low-cut dress. The white swell of her breasts was deliberately flaunted, the outline of her crossed legs purposely apparent. One time she had been beautiful, but now her beauty had gone down the channels of whoredom.
"Hello, Dari. Who's your big friend?"
"This is Kelly Smith. How have you been, Grace?"
Her smile was to me, a plain invitation, though she spoke to Dari. "I've been fine. Let's say, I have everything I've ever wanted."
"Grace . . . are you going up on the hill this time?"
