Murders' Row

FOUR

IT WASN’T THE worst moment of my life. After all, I’ve been responsible for the deaths of people I knew and liked: it happens in the business. Although we’d worked for the same outfit, this woman had been a stranger to me. Still, she’d trusted me to know what I was doing, and it’s no fun to find yourself holding a corpse and wondering what the hell went wrong.

I caught her as she collapsed, and I felt her fight for breath-for life-and fail to make it. It took only a moment. Then she was dead. I was clumsy about easing her to the floor; I got my watch strap tangled in her necklace. Maybe I was just a bit rattled, too. Anyway, suddenly there were artificial pearls all over the rug. Several strands had been broken by the time I’d managed to lay her down and disentangle myself. The damn beads kept slipping off the broken strings by twos and threes, and rolling about in a nasty alive way while she lay among them, absolutely still. Edgar Allen Poe would have thought it was swell.

I straightened up and took a couple of long breaths and listened. She’d died practically in silence, but it had been a very loud silence, if you know what I mean; and there had been a bit of scuffling before that. It seemed as if somebody outside must have noticed something, but apparently nobody had.

I took another long breath, and knelt down and made a brief examination. There was nothing fundamentally wrong, that I could see, except that she was dead. She was kind of a mess by this time, of course. She was supposed to be. That was what I was there for. The idea had been for her to look spectacularly beat-up-to show how seriously we took her disloyalty-without having anything really broken except a certain bone in the forearm. As Mac had said, she had to have at least one broken bone or they wouldn’t buy it. Besides, a nice big cast makes a person look very harmless and helpless, while at the same time it affords concealment for a number of small emergency tools and weapons, properly designed. The surgeon at the local hospital had his instructions…

But I hadn’t got that far when she keeled over; and a woman doesn’t die from a bruised eye or a cut lip. She doesn’t die from a split dress seam or a laddered stocking. I’d been following instructions carefully. Except for the incidental damage to her clothes and necklace, nothing was broken, and she’d lost no significant amounts of blood. She was just dead, lying there.

I rose and went over and sniffed the glass she’d set aside. It smelled of whisky and nothing else. I uncapped the bottle she’d used and tasted the contents cautiously. If there was an adulterant, it had the flavor of whisky, or no flavor at all. Of course, she could have been given something slow-acting in a drink before she came in here, or in her food, if she’d eaten. Or she could have been shot with a poisoned dart, or stuck with a hypo, or bitten by a black widow spider. Or she could simply have died of heart failure.

I grimaced. Matt Helm, boy detective. It didn’t matter what she’d died of, for the moment: she was dead. Scratch Jean, agent, female, five feet four, a hundred and thirty pounds. I went to the door and paused to check my watch band for telltale fibers, and my pockets and pants cuffs for beads. I kicked a slim black shoe out of the way, reflecting absently that I’d never yet met a woman, pro or amateur, who could stay in her pumps when the going got rough.

I looked back. If you can do it, you can damn well look at it, no matter how badly you’ve loused it up. I never trust these delicate chaps who are hell behind a telescopic sight at five hundred yards but can’t bear to come up close and see the blood. I gave her a long look, lying there among her spilled pearls. What did I think about-besides wondering, again, what the hell went wrong? Well, if you must know, I thought it would be nice to be in Texas, which is a hell of an attitude for a good New Mexican.

I went out, pulled the door closed behind me, removed my gloves and put them in my pocket. I turned and walked casually towards my parked car. As I did so, I realized there were people at the pool.

We’d counted on the pool being empty after dark, this time of year. I’d gone too far to turn back without attracting attention; so I sauntered by in a leisurely way, and even allowed myself to glance in that direction, like any man curious about what kind of fools would want to go swimming this late on a cool fall night. An athletic male was doing a racing crawl down the pool. On shore there was another man and two girls. These three were making a funny, funny thing of how cold the air was, how cold the water was, and how cold they were.

Maybe I shouldn’t have looked at all, though it seemed like the natural thing to do. Maybe I just looked too long. Anyway, the smaller of the two girls glanced around and, seeing me, gestured for me to stop. I couldn’t very well pretend I hadn’t noticed. I stopped, like any man flagged down by a pretty girl. I waited. She came up to the low fence that separated the tiled pool area from the concrete walk.

“M-mister, have you g-got a m-m-match?”

The cigarette between her blue-cold lips bobbed as she spoke. She had good reason to be cold; she didn’t have enough on to warm a newborn kitten. Personally, I applaud the return of the reasonably discreet one-piece bathing suit, such as the other girl was wearing. It has brought a little suspense back into our lives. For a while, there was hardly a thing a girl could reveal to you in private that you hadn’t already seen in public-you and every other man on the beach.

But this kid was still on the Bikini kick. The scanty bra and G-string might have looked very sexy in July, but they didn’t go well with goose-bumps. They just looked ridiculous and a bit indecent. I got a folder of matches from my pocket and held it out. She waved her hands to indicate that they were wet. She leaned forward, sticking her face, and the cigarette, over the railing.

I struck a match and stepped up to hold it for her, having no choice. This close, I realized how small she was: no more than five feet and maybe ninety pounds of toy blonde. Her hair, cut boyishly short, was that pale color that doesn’t even darken much when wet. It was plastered unbecomingly to her small head. Even so, soaked, shivering and practically naked, she was cute. You wanted to drop a handkerchief over her when nobody was looking, and slip her into your pocket, and take her home for a pet.

“Thanks!” she said, throwing back her head and blowing smoke at the night sky. “I go-guess you think we’re d-drunk or c-crazy. Funny thing is, you’re p-perfectly right!”

I grinned at her, in response, and walked away. I got into the car and took out a handkerchief and wiped my hands, which were slightly damp with perspiration-I’d half-expected somebody to start yelling murder while I stood there being polite and helpful. I started the little blue Ford they’d given me. Lash Petroni would drive something flashy on his own time, but he’d want an inconspicuous heap when he was working. I backed out of the slot and started towards the highway. I had to remind myself not to attract attention by hurrying.

The little blonde, wrapping herself in a striped beach towel under the pool lights, paused to wave at me as I drove past. She wasn’t only cute, she was friendly, too. Under the circumstances, I may be forgiven for preferring the attitude of the other girl, the lean, dark, reserved one, who wouldn’t demean herself by bumming matches from strangers. Well, time would tell how much damage had been done, if any.

It didn’t take much time. I didn’t even get halfway to Washington before I was picked up.