Ladies of Chance

Chapter 6

Lucile called the man Harry, and he kissed her lightly on the cheek as he came in. He was thick-necked and short, with cheerful blue eyes. Well-dressed, with a sandy mustache and reddish hair.

She pulled away from his kiss and asked him what he wanted as though she wasn’t any too pleased to see him. He looked past her at me before answering:

“I was passing and had the happy thought of dropping in on you for a drink.” Sandy eyebrows were question marks as he kept on looking at me.

Lucile shrugged her shoulders and said: “Harry Green... Mr. Barlow.”

I shook hands with him without saying anything. He planted his feet solidly on the rug in front of me and drooped the lid of his right eye.

“Sorry to have busted in and interrupted.”

I told him that was all right, looking over his shoulder and trying to figure out what Lucile’s frantic gestures meant. It was clear that she wasn’t glad to have him there. One hand twisted the front of her robe, and her eyes on Green’s back were murderous. She bit her underlip when he turned away from me and said:

“I’ll take that drink... now that I’m here.” He went to the table and began mixing a drink as though we had both begged him to make himself right at home.

I lit a cigarette and walked over to the window with my back to them. Lucile’s voice drifted to me across the clinking of glasses.

“I told you I didn’t want to see you again.”

Without lowering his voice, Green told her cheerily: “But I knew you didn’t mean it.” There was the hiss of a siphon in his glass. I heard a little movement, and Green’s whispered: “Who is this bird?”

Lucile said aloud, angrily as though she wanted me to hear and be drawn into the conversation: “Ed Barlow. A very particular friend of mine.”

I turned around and Green laughed across the room at me. But there was no real mirth in his eyes. “Only yesterday, I was Lucy’s most particular friend.”

I didn’t answer him because I had a feeling he hoped I’d say too much.

Lucile said flatly: “That’s a lie.”

Green tipped his glass and drank from it looking at her over the rim.

He was turned sideways to me and I saw a bulge in his coat just in front of his left armpit. The sort of bulge made by a small automatic in a clip holster.

I said: “Maybe I’d better be running along.”

Neither of them heard me. Lucile was breathing hard, not shrinking from the steady look Green was giving her.

He said: “Men have waked up in hell for saying less than that.”

“Don’t lie about me then.”

He set his glass down without looking at it. “Trying to pull the wool over your new boy friend’s eyes?”

Lucile was beginning to tremble. “What I do isn’t any business of yours.”

He lifted his glass and seemed to consider that statement. Both of them acted as though they had forgotten me. I sat down in a chair and wished I was some place else.

Green emptied his glass. He said slowly: “You’re an ungrateful bitch.”

Lucile slapped him — hard. I jumped up, and Green’s glass fell to the rug. There was a patch of white on his ruddy cheek. He said, “You shouldn’t have done that,” in a tone that made me realize she shouldn’t have done it.

She seemed to feel it, too. Her hand, raised as though to slap him again, fell limply to her side. I took a step forward without quite meaning to.

Green said out of the side of his mouth without looking at me: “Keep out of this.”

Lucile’s eyes were enormous as she looked at me and gasped: “You’d better go... Ed.”

“He’s staying,” Green told her. I sat down and lit another cigarette, wondering why the devil I had to step into a mess like this.

Green mixed himself another drink and said musingly: “No. You really shouldn’t have slapped me. And just because I called you an ungrateful bitch. Worse men than I have called you worse than that.”

Lucile’s hands curved into claws at her side. I was sweating like a nigger at an election in Alabama.

Green seemed to be extremely pleased with the effect he was creating. He tasted his drink and nodded approvingly, carried it to a chair near me. “Better sit down,” he said to Lucile.

She was drawing in great shuddering breaths. She looked older than I had thought her. She said shakily:

“You have no right to force yourself in here like this, Harry.”

“Force myself?” Green winked at me, for all the world as though he and I were companionably watching a good show. “Hear the woman rave. Didn’t I knock on the door and didn’t you let me in?”

I couldn’t figure him. He seemed to be deliberately trying to drive her wild with anger.

“I wouldn’t have opened the door if I’d known it was you,” she spit at him.

“Nuts,” he told her. “You have opened it for me plenty of times.”

Lucile gritted something at him and turned her back. I stood up.

“I’ll be going along.”

Green slouched back in his chair and slitted his eyes at me, hooking his thumb in the top button of his coat.

“I’ve got a few questions that need answering first.”

I said, “To hell with your questions,” and started for the door.

Green was in my way before I took three steps. His hand was near that bulge in his coat. “Not so fast, wise guy.”

I might have knocked him down before he could get hold of his gun. But it would have been close, and I like to have the odds on my side when I butt up against a gun-play. I stood still and said:

“Get it over with.”

“You wouldn’t run out on your little playmate, would you?” Green’s thick lips twisted into a nasty snarl.

“Is that one of the questions?”

Lucile had swung about and was facing us. The expression on her face was unreadable.

“No. But this is: Did you have a good time at the Axelrod tea this afternoon?”

“Since it introduced me to Lucile... yes.”

“You figure that was a break, eh?”

“I did... until you shoved your goddamned ugly face in the door.”

Green didn’t twitch a muscle. He said: “Somebody is liable to get hurt around here.”

I was watching his hand. Thumb and first finger were twiddling with the top coat button. I said:

“Go on with your questions.”

“Here’s the important one. Who are you and what do you want?”

“Looks as if I might be wanting Lucile.” I tried to make a joke out of it.

“You’ll stay healthy a lot longer if you decide to make out with some other man’s doll in place of mine.”

“I’m not,” Lucile said in a strained voice, “his doll.”

Green didn’t turn his head. The pupils of his eyes dilated a trifle. He said, “Shut up,” out of the side of his mouth with surprising venom. His coat sagged open.

I asked: “What is this? A badger game?”

“This isn’t any kind of a game, Mister. I asked you who you were.”

I felt empty in my middle, but hell! I couldn’t stand there all night and take his lip. And it looked as though he was getting ready to blast me whether or not.

“It’s none of your goddamned business.” One dive and I could have my shoulder in his belly.

“Oh.” He relaxed unexpectedly, looked me up and down with a curious expression on his face. “Maybe it isn’t,” he said after a little time. He moved from in front of me toward the table.

I looked at Lucile. She sank down on a couch and was watching Green, sharp teeth nibbling at her underlip.

“You’re lucky if it isn’t,” Green added to me as an afterthought while he splashed whisky in a clean glass.

I moved toward him. “You’ve asked your questions and had your answers. Are you going to beat it or shall I throw you out?”

Lucile moaned. Just loud enough for me to hear. I was past paying any attention to further histrionics from her.

Green emptied the glass and set it down. “Hard guy, eh?”

“Not particularly.” I kept on moving toward him. “I don’t have to be hard to handle a cheap gunman like you.”

Lucile moaned a little louder. Green’s mustache twitched. I was pretty sure I had his number. I told him not to let the gun under his arm give him any big ideas.

“This one?” His hand snaked in and brought out a .38 automatic.

“Have you another one?”

“This is all I need. You’re asking for it.” He swung his hand forward with the automatic flat in the palm.

I ducked and it slid over my head. My left rocked him back on his heels but he was built as solid as a brick outhouse and wouldn’t go over. The butt of the gun was sliding into his hand and I just had time to put my knee in his abdomen before his finger touched the trigger.

He went down on the rug in a heap with a little exhaled sigh. Lucile grabbed my arm as I came up with the .38.

“Oh, my God!” Tears were racing down her cheeks. “You’ve done it now. You’ll have to get out before he comes to.”

“This is a hell of a poor time to start running,” I told her. “He’ll be out for some time... What with a left to the chin and a knee to the belly.”

She was leaning against me, shaking and sobbing. I put my hands on her shoulders and shook her. She leaned against me and my arms went around her.

I had thought I was all done with that sort of thing for the night, but something made desire surge up stronger than before. Reaction from looking at death, perhaps. There’s a close alliance between death and what Lucile offered me.

I kissed her lips and she stopped crying. Her body tensed and seemed to grow cold. I shivered and a ghoulish chill swept over me. I would have given a whole lot to have been able to turn my back on her and go out the door.

I couldn’t. I said, roughly: “We were going to get drunk.”

She was looking past me at the huddled body of Green on the floor.

I pushed her away. “Mix some stiff drinks. I’ll get rid of this.”

She went to the table and started mixing drinks. I picked Green up, shouldered him like a sack of flour, carried him out to the hall and rang for the automatic elevator. I put him in the cage when it came up, closed the door and left him there.

Lucile had the drinks mixed when I went back.

They were potent. So potent that the rest of that night hasn’t a definite place in my memories.

Which is, perhaps, just as well.