Murders' Row

FOURTEEN

IT WAS A stupid damn business. By the time I had fished her up and towed her back and arranged her artistically at the water’s edge, I felt like a prize damn fool. Soaking wet, with water squelching in my sharp Petroni shoes, I made my way back up the beach disgustedly, and stepped behind the car to watch and wait.

It didn’t take long. The cold water had brought her around. I saw her head come up. Her long dark hair, washed free of combs and pins, covered her face like seaweed. She pushed strands of hair from her eyes, sitting up in the shallows, and looked around dazedly, regarding her surroundings and herself with shock and horror. I could hardly blame her. She’d left a gay party and got into her expensive car, something had happened that she couldn’t quite remember, and now she was discovering herself in the sodden wreckage of her party finery washed up like driftwood on a dark and lonely shore…

I saw her draw a long breath and take her runaway emotions under firm control. She got to her feet, took a couple of steps to dry land, and stood there looking around in the moonlight, rubbing her hands on her hips to get the wet sand off them. Now there was something aggressive and challenging, something startlingly primitive in the way she stood there, brown and tall and lean, with her bare feet planted solidly in dry sand, well apart. The wet white cocktail dress could have been a scrap of hide or woven bark. Plastered to her body unheeded, leaving one tanned shoulder bare, it gave her a look of barbaric nakedness. All she needed, I thought, was a stone-tipped spear, and maybe a tame ocelot for a pet. The damn cat didn’t need to be very tame, at that. She could handle it.

She stood there, looking and listening warily. I saw her take notice of the Cadillac, stuck in the sand, and I saw her discover her shoes and purse, closer at hand. Presently she moved over and studied them, frowning. She shrugged, and at last gave some attention to her dress, twisting the skirt up hard against her thigh to force the water out of it.

After yanking the wrung-out garment into some kind of order, she squeezed the excess water from her hair and found something in her purse with which to tie the hair back out of the way. She stepped into her shoes, and moved towards the car, but froze as I stepped into sight and came towards her.

“You didn’t have to wake up,” I said, stopping in front of her.

“You!” she breathed. “What are you doing here? What in God’s name do you think you’re-what do you want?”

“You didn’t have to wake up,” I said. “I could have arranged it the other way, too. Call it an object lesson, Mrs. Rosten.”

“I’ll kill you for this,” she said softly. “I will! I’ll shoot you down like a dog, Peters-or are you Petroni tonight?”

“Let’s say Petroni,” I said. “Peters is a harmless jerk.”

“The inference being that you’re not harmless? You’re threatening me?”

I looked at her sadly, and sighed. “Lady, it’s not a threat, it’s a demonstration. I’m showing you how easy it would be. The only reason you’re still alive is because I wanted you that way.” I paused deliberately. “You should have come to the phone when I called you this morning, Mrs. Rosten.”

“I see,” she breathed. “I see. So that’s it!”

“I don’t call up people just to pass the time of day, not people like you. You could have figured that out, if you’d got off your high horse for a moment. I was trying to do you a favor. You threatened me with cops. You didn’t even do it yourself; you had your maid do it. That wasn’t smart. That wasn’t smart at all.”

It was a funny interview. It’s hard for a man to be menacing with his pants hanging wet and baggy down his legs, but it’s equally hard for a woman to be regal with her dress dripping water into her shoes. We were on even terms, except that she didn’t know what I was after, and I did. At least I hoped I did.

I went on, “That little mistake cost you a cocktail outfit and a trip to the beauty parlor, lady. Well, you can afford it. But the next time you get on that arrogant kick, it could cost you something you can’t afford to lose, no matter how rich and pretty you are.”

Her eyes widened. “My God! That’s what it’s all about! I hurt his damn little feelings!”

“Yeah,” I said. “You hurt my feelings, Mrs. Rosten.” I took out the wad of bills I’d collected from her husband and Teddy and slapped it against my hand. “Right here, you hurt my feelings. In the money department.”

She lost some of her confidence. “I-I don’t understand.”

“Have you any idea where I got all this money, five grand?” She looked at me questioningly. “Hell, where are your brains, lady? What do you think we’re doing here? This is a down payment. I get the rest when I kill you.”

There was a little silence. She was really shocked; this explanation hadn’t occurred to her.

“Kill me? But who-”

“Who hired me?” I laughed. “I’m not likely to tell you that. I’ve got principles; besides, it would be bad for my reputation if certain people heard I’d given a client’s name away. But I’m a businessman, Mrs. Rosten. I said to myself, somebody’s willing to pay to have this dame killed, okay. But maybe she’ll up the ante, Petroni. Maybe she’s willing to pay more not to be killed. So I called you, to give you a chance for your life, and you gave me cops. Through the maid, yet! You’re damn lucky to be alive, that’s all I can say!”

She drew a long breath. “I-all right, what’s your proposition?”

I said, “Go home and wring yourself out. I don’t like talking to dames who look like they’d been drowned a week. Then get on the phone and call me at the Calvert Hotel, Room 311. I’ll be waiting. For a while. Don’t make me wait too long, Mrs. Rosten. And I hope I don’t have to tell you to keep your trap shut or the deal’s off.” I looked at her bleakly. “You’ll ask me to your home for a sociable drink, in private. And you’ll say please.”

She said quickly, “If you think for one moment that even to save my life I’d-” She stopped.

I grinned in what I hoped was a sinister fashion. “Did you ever see a floater, Mrs. Rosten?”

“A floater?”

“You were well on the way to being one tonight,” I said. “A floater’s a stiff that’s been fished Out of the drink. They generally come up after a while, no matter how they’re weighted. They build up gas or something and swell up and break loose and come to the top, what the fishes and crabs have left of them. Then the doc does the autopsy with a gas mask on, and the cops take strips of skin off the fingers and try to restore the prints because nobody’s going to recognize the bloated thing on the table except maybe from its jewelry or the f ~w stinking rags wrapped around it.” I looked her up and down, as if measuring her for the part. “You call me. Ask me over. Nicely, remember. No maids with any more crummy messages. No maids at all. No servants. No husbands. And don’t think it over too damn long. If you do, lady, you’re dead.”

I turned and walked away, past the stranded Cadillac. She was no hothouse flower; she’d get it out in time, but it would take some bare-handed digging and several trips into the thorn-and-honyesuckle jungle for brush to put under the rear wheels. By the time she got through, I figured, her appearance and disposition would really be something to witness.

Well, there would be witnesses when she got home, if Teddy and Rosten had followed instructions.