The Drowning Pool

Chapter 12

The woman stood up with the gun. She held it in a gingerly way, as if it were a reptile. “You catch on quickly, Archer. That is your name, isn’t it?”

“Unknown admirer,” I said. “I didn’t realize I had this fantastic power over women.”

“Didn’t you? I knew when I saw you you were for me. Then I heard my husband telling them to bring you here. I came. What else could I do?” Her hands made a pretty gesture, spoilt by the gun.

“Unlike Rico,” I said, “I’m allergic to ham.” I looked down at the man at my feet. His toupee was twisted sideways, so that the straight white line of the part ran from ear to ear. It was funny, and I laughed.

She thought I was laughing at her. “Don’t you dare to laugh at me,” she said in a blind white rage. “I’ll kill you if you do.”

“Not if you hold the gun that way. You’ll sprain your wrist and shoot a hole in the roof. Now put it away and kiss your boyfriend goodnight and I’ll take you home. I suppose I should thank you, too? Mavis.”

“You’ll do as I say,” but her heart wasn’t in what she said.

“I’ll do as I think best. You hadn’t the guts to tackle Rico alone, and I’m a tougher proposition than Rico.”

She dropped the gun in her coat pocket and clasped her white silk hands below her bosom. “You’re right. I need your help. How did you know?”

“You didn’t go to all this trouble for fun. Unwire my hands.”

She slipped off the gloves. Her fingers unwound the thin steel wire. The man on the floor rolled onto his side, the breath whistling tinnily in his throat. “What can we do with him?” she said.

“What do you want to do with him? Keep him out of mischief, or get him into mischief?”

A smile brushed her lips. “Keep him out, of course.”

“Give me the wire.” My fingers were nearly numb, pierced by shooting pains from returning circulation, but they worked. I turned the tall man onto his back, doubled up his knees, and wired his wrists together behind his thighs.

The girl opened the door, and I dragged him over the threshold by the shoulders. “Now what?”

“There’s a closet here.” She closed the front door and switched on the light.

“Is that safe?”

“He lives here by himself.”

“You seem to have cased the joint.”

She touched a finger to her mouth and glanced at the man on the floor. His eyes were open, glaring up at her. Their whites were suffused with blood. His hair had fallen off entirely, so that his skull looked naked. The toupee lay on the floor like a small black animal, an infant skunk. Its master’s voice came thin between purplish lips:

“I’m going to make bad trouble for you, lady.”

“You’re in it now.” To me: “Put Tall and Handsome in the closet, will you?”

I put him in under a dirty raincoat, with a muddy pair of rubbers under his head. “Make a noise and I’ll plug the cracks around the door.” He was still.

I shut the closet door and looked around me. The lofty hallway belonged to an old house which had been converted into an office. The parquetry floor was covered with rubber matting, except at the edges where the pattern showed. The walls had been painted grey over the wallpaper. A carved staircase loomed at the rear of the hall like the spine of an extinct saurian. To my left, the frosted glass pane of a door bore a sign in neat black lettering: HENRY MURAT, ELECTRONICS AND PLASTICS LABORATORY.

The woman was bent over the lock of this door, trying one key after another from the keyring. It opened with a click. She stepped through and pressed a wall-switch. Fluorescent lights blinked on. I followed her into a small office furnished in green metal and chrome. A bare desk, some chairs, a filing cabinet, a small safe with a phony dial that opened with a key. A framed diploma on the wall above the desk announced that Henry Murat had been awarded the degree of Master of Electronic Science. I had never heard of the school.

She knelt in front of the safe, fumbling with the keys. After a few attempts she looked around at me. Her face was bloodless in the cruel light, almost as white as her coat. “I can’t, my hands are shaky. Will you open it?”

“This is burglary. I hate to commit two burglaries in one night.”

She rose and came towards me, holding out the keys. “Please. You must. There’s something of mine in there. I’ll do anything.”

“That shouldn’t be necessary: I told you I’m not Rico. But I like to know what I’m doing. What’s in there?”

“My life,” she said.

“More histrionics, Mavis?”

“Please. It’s true. I’ll never have another chance.”

“At what?”

“Pictures of me.” She forced the words out. “I never authorized them. They were taken without my knowledge.”

“Blackmail.”

“Call it that, but it’s worse. I can’t even kill myself, Archer.”

She looked half dead at the moment. I took the keys with one hand and patted her arm with the other. “Why should you think of it, kid? You have everything.”

“Nothing,” she said.

The key to the safe was easy to pick out. It was made of brass, cut long and flat. I turned it in the keyhole under the dial, pressed the chrome handle, and pulled the heavy door open. I opened a couple of drawers filled with bills, old letters, invoices. “What am I looking for?”

“A roll of film. I think it’s in a can.”

There was a flat aluminum can on the upper shelf, the kind that was sometimes used for 16 mm. movies. I peeled off the tape that sealed the edges, and pulled off the lid. It contained a few hundred feet of film rolled in a flat cylinder. I held the end frame up to the light: it was Mavis flat on her back in a brilliant sun, with a towel over her hips.

“No. You wouldn’t dare.” She snatched the film from my hands and hugged it to her.

“Don’t get excited,” I said. “I’ve seen a human body before.”

She didn’t hear me. She threw the film on the linoleum floor and huddle over it. For a moment I didn’t know what she was doing. Then I saw the gold lighter in her hand. It flicked open and made sparks, but didn’t light.

I kicked the film out of her reach, picked it up, replaced it in the can. She cried out and flung herself at me. Her gloved hands beat on my chest.

I dropped the can in my pocket and took her wrists. “That stuff explodes sometimes. You’ll burn the house down and you with it.”

“What do I care? Let me go.”

“If you make velvet paws. Besides, you need these pictures. So long as we have them, Rico will keep his mouth shut.”

“We?” she said.

“I’m keeping them.”

“No!”

“You asked for my help. This is it. I can keep Rico quiet, and you can’t.”

“Who will keep you quiet?”

“You will. By being a good girl and doing what I say.”

“I don’t trust you. I don’t trust any man.”

“Women, on the other hand, are extremely trustworthy.”

“All right,” she said after a while. “You win.”

“Good girl.” I released her hands. “Who is this Rico?”

“I don’t know much about him. His real name is Enrico Murratti, I think he’s from Chicago. He did some work for my husband, when they put two-way radios in the cabs.”

“And you husband?”

“Let’s just talk about human beings for now.”

“There are things I want to know about him.”

“Not from me.” Her mouth set firmly.

“Reavis, then.”

“Who’s he?”

“You were with him in the Hunt Club.”

“Oh,” she said. “Pat Ryan.” And bit her lip.

“Do you know where he’s gone?”

“No. I know where he’ll go eventually, and I’ll dance at his funeral.”

“You’re close-mouthed for a woman.”

“I have things to be close-mouthed about.”

“One more question. Where are we? It feels like Glendale to me.”

“It’s Glendale.” She managed a smile. “You know, I like you. You’re kind of sharp.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I always use my brains to save my brawn. That’s how I got this bump on the cerebellum.”

His long minutes in the dark had aged and mellowed Rico. The knuckle-taut youthfulness had sagged out of his face. He looked like what he was: and insecure middle-aged man sweating with fear and discomfort.

I pulled him under the hall light and talked down at him: “You said something a while ago about making trouble for my client.” I nodded at the woman by the door. “Any trouble you make will be for yourself. You’re going to forget you saw her tonight. You’re not going to tell her husband or anybody else that she was here. Nobody. And she’s not going to set eyes on your pan for the rest of her natural life.”

“You can cut the spiel,” he said tiredly. “I know where I stand.”

I took the can of film out of my pocket, tossed it in the air and caught it a couple of times. His eye followed it up and down. He licked his lips and sighed.

“Flat on your back,” I said. “But I’m going to give you a break. I’m not going to beat you, though that would give me pleasure. I’m not going to turn you and the film over to the D.A., though that is what you deserve.”

“It wouldn’t do Mrs. Kilbourne a lot of good.”

“Worry about yourself, Rico. This film is solid evidence of blackmail. Mrs. Kilbourne would never have to take the stand.”

“Blackmail, crap! I never took no money from Mrs. Kilbourne.” He rolled his eyes, seeking the woman’s glance, but she was fixedly watching the film in my hand. I put it back in my pocket.

“No judge or jury would ever believe it,” I said. “You’re in a box. You want me to nail down the lid?”

He lay still for fifteen or twenty seconds, his lean brown forehead corrugated by thought. “A box is right,” he admitted finally. “What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. Just keep your nose clean and stay away from my client. A young boy like you deserves a second chance, after all.”

He showed vari-colored teeth in a shamed grin: so far gone that he was smiling at my jokes. I unwound the wire from his wrists and let him stand up. All his joints were stiff.

“You’re letting him off easy,” the woman said.

“What do you want to do to him?”

She turned her eyes on him, gray and lethal under the heavy curtains of her lashes. Instinctively he moved away from her, keeping his back to the wall. He looked willing to be put back into the closet.

“Nothing,” she said at last. It was one of her favorite words. But on the way to the door she stepped on the black hairpiece and ground it under her gold heel. The last I saw of Rico, he had his right hand flat on top of his scalp, utter humiliation on his face.

We walked in silence to the nearest boulevard and caught a cruising cab. She told the driver to take her to The Flamenco.

“Why there?” I said, when the cab was under way. “It’s close by now.”

“Not for me. I have to go back there anyway. I borrowed taxi-fare from the powder-room girl, and left her my bag for security.”

“That’s quite a situation you have there. A diamond-studded bag, and nothing in it.”

“Tell it to my husband.”

“I’d be glad to.”

“Oh no!” She moved against me. “You wouldn’t really?”

“He’s got you frightened out of your wits. Why?”

“You won’t ask me any questions, will you? I’m so tired. This business has taken more out of me than you think.”

Her head touched my shoulder tentatively, and rested there. I leaned sideways, looking down into her face. Her gray eyes were crepuscular. The lashes came down over them like sudden night. Her mouth was dark and glistening. I kissed her, felt her toe press on my instep, her hand move on my body. I drew back from the whirling vortex that had opened, the drowning pool. She wriggled and sighed, and went to sleep in my arms.

I dropped her half a block from The Flamenco, and asked the driver to take me to Graham Court. He needed directions. It was all I could do to give them to him. My brain and body had gone into a champagne hangover. Through the long ride back, the wearing business of retrieving my car, driving it home, opening and shutting the garage, unlocking the door of house and locking it behind me. I stayed awake with difficulty. I told my brain to tell my body to do what had to be done, and watched my body do it.

It was twenty after four by the electric alarm on the table beside my bed. Taking off my jacket, I felt for the can of film in the pocket. It was gone. I sat on the edge of the bed and shivered for two minutes by the clock. That made it four-twenty-two.

I said: “Goodnight to you, Mavis.” Rolled over in my clothes, and went to sleep.