The Ravagers

XIV

LEAVING THE elevator, we walked down the hall, passing the door to Jenny's room. I had to start thinking of her as Jenny now. It wasn't possible to consider playing a seduction scene with a woman with the cold and formal name of Genevieve.

She didn't say anything about checking to see if her daughter had made it safely. I guess she felt it was no time to act motherly; besides, a fifteen-year-old girl wasn't likely to get lost between lobby and hotel room. We stopped at my door. Jenny put a hand on my arm.

"Dave." Her voice sounded hesitant.

"What?"

"You're going to have… to give me the cues. I haven't had much experience at this sort of thing."

I glanced at her sharply, a little disappointed in her. I don't mean that I'd been taking her proposition at face value: I hadn't. It was fairly obvious that she had something tricky in mind, whether or not it actually involved a bed. I couldn't legitimately complain about that. We were all being pretty tricky on this job. I just didn't like being treated as if I were a moron who'd swallow anything. That innocent-little-me line, from a woman her age with her record, was getting us pretty far out into the cornfield, I felt.

Surprisingly, I saw that, for all of being a married woman with a teenage daughter-not to mention all the other things she probably was-she did look kind of innocent. I don't mean the fragile, helpless, frightened kind of innocence. She looked like a healthy, freckled, tomboy who'd finally been run down and put into shoes and a pretty dress, and who thought it was kind of crazy, but was perfectly willing to give womanhood a whirl if somebody'd just show her how. It bothered me. She kept stepping out of character

– the character my evidence said she ought to have, the character the acid bottle in her trailer said she ought to have.

"I mean," she went on, "I've never seduced anybody before. You'll have to show me how it goes."

Well, it was a moderately fresh angle from which to attack an ancient situation. I guess it beat the sultry-siren routine at that. I unlocked the door, opened it, and reached inside to switch on the room light before speaking.

Then I said, "I seem to recall hearing your name linked with that of a man once. A man named Ruyter. Probably a vicious slander."

She glanced at my sarcasm, hesitated, but walked on past me without making a response. I followed her inside and closed the door. She turned to face me in the center of the room.

"I didn't say I was a Virgin, Dave."

"So?"

"So I'm married, I've had a child, and maybe I've even slept with a man who wasn't my husband. A man who was charming and attentive and very, very persistent. Maybe I was even silly enough to believe, at first, that his persistence was due to my irresistible beauty and fascinating personality." Her tone was wry. After a moment she went on: "And maybe one night when my husband was supposed to take me out and I'd got all dressed up only to get the usual last-minute call from the lab-Howard didn't even bother to call himself, he had his assistant do it-maybe I just got good and mad and called up Hans and let him buy me an expensive dinner and lure me to his place afterwards." She was silent; then she looked up almost shyly and said, "That isn't quite the same, Dave, as cold-bloodedly arranging to spend the night with a man I hardly know and don't trust at all."

"Thanks," I said.

"Well, I don't trust you and I'm not going to pretend I do. I'm quite sure, for instance, that you're here not only because a woman has made you a proposition you find moderately intriguing, but also because you feel it your duty to your government-all right, your employers, let's not argue about who they are-to learn what's behind her offer." She studied me shrewdly. I didn't say anything. She sighed and said, "Not that I ever had a great deal of faith in Hans, either, but don't tell him that. Of course I pretended to be madly in love with him. It made the whole thing seem more dignified and graceful, and you don't tell a reasonably nice man-well, I thought he was reasonably nice at the time; an obvious, international-type smoothie, but a nice smoothie-that you're just sleeping with him because he's available and you're mad at your husband."

I said, "For not having much faith in this international smoothie, you're sure going a long way with him now. Could this have something to do with what you need help with?"

"It could, but let's not talk about it yet," she said. "I mean, it isn't very romantic. Right now I'm supposed to be overwhelming you with my charm, not boring you with my troubles." She hesitated. "Dave."

"Yes."

"Be nice," she said softly. "Play up a little, please. You're making it very hard for me. Don't act so government-agentish. Can't you see I'm embarrassed as hell?" She drew a sharp little breath and went on briskly before I could speak:

"All right, now I've got as far as the man's hotel room. What do I do next, seduction-wise? Do I simply take off my clothes and jump into bed and stretch out my naked arms to him? It seems a little… well, abrupt. Shouldn't we first maybe have a couple of drinks?"

I said, "Shouldn't we first maybe discuss just what kind of help you're hoping to buy with your white body?"

She drew another quick breath and said impatiently:

"You're really being damned difficult! Even though I don't trust your motives at all, I'm willing to gamble on your being honest enough to do something for me after.., after you've had me. Why can't you be willing to gamble on my being sensible enough not to ask more of you than… than one good Jay is worth? Believe me, after living for fifteen odd years with a man who considers sex infinitely less interesting than science, I'm not likely to overvalue what I've got to offer."

I regarded her with growing respect, and the uneasy feeling that somewhere beneath the play-acting was some kind of a solid foundation of truth and sincerity. The question was, what kind.

"I said, "You do put it right on the line, Irish."

She met my look steadily. "I try to. I'm not going to ask you to betray your country or neglect your duty or anything like that. I… I just want somebody in my corner when the showdown comes, somebody who has a personal interest in seeing that I get a reasonably fair deal. I'm glad you didn't ask for money. I'd never be sure of a man to whom I'd given money."

I said, "You don't know much about this kind of business, do you? What makes you think a man who's willing to go for a deal on the side is going to stay bought no matter what you pay him off with?"

She shook her head quickly. "You don't understand. I'm not really asking you to be bought or stay bought, Dave Clevenger. All I'm really trying to do is get you to look at me as me, not as a bunch of damaging information in a file somewhere. If you'd just take one good look at me, forgetting everything you've heard, you'd see I couldn't possibly be the sinister person you think I am-you, and those two other government men who are following me so tenaciously, and Howard, and Hans, and… and everybody. I'm not that wicked and I'm not that clever."

She was really very good. I thought of a glove and a bottle that was supposed to contain salad dressing and didn't. I said, "I don't know what's more dangerous, a woman who tells you how wicked she is, or a woman who tells you how wicked she isn't."

Jenny made a protesting gesture. "Damn it, you're thinking of me as a movie clichй: espionage heavy, female, Type

B. I'm not a clichй, I'm a woman, and a pretty ordinary woman at that. If I have to pay you or go to bed with you to make you realize that… Ah, let's get on with it! Where do you keep your liquor? That should be the first step, shouldn't it, to get the man drunk and susceptible?"

"Sure," I said. "That's the procedure. Here."

I went to my suitcase and got out a bottle of Scotch in a paper bag. As I slipped it out of the sack, I remembered the last time I'd had a drink from that bottle, and who'd been with me that night, and what had happened between us, and what had happened to her later. It made me, for some reason, feel kind of cheap and disloyal.

I said to Jenny, "I didn't expect to be doing any entertaining up here, or I'd have had ice ready. Do you want me to ring for some?"

"No, let's not have bellboys crashing the party. I can drink it warm if you can." She took the glass I gave her and looked at me appraisingly. "Now you'd better sit down in that chair, so I can perch seductively on the arm, and then slither down into your lap and snuggle up to you and get you all aroused."

I said, "The hell with that. You're too big a girl to sit on anybody's lap. If there's any lap-sitting to be done, let's wake up Penny. She's got the size for it, if not the age and experience."

"Penny might surprise you," Jenny said. There was an odd note in her voice. I looked at her, and she laughed quickly and said, "Sometimes I just wonder how much my daughter knows about life first-hand. But I suppose all parents wonder that."

"She's kind of a sweet kid," I said.

Jenny drank from her glass and looked up irritably. "Damn it, we didn't come here to discuss my offspring! Come on, Dave, please give me some help. What do I do next to get this man into bed with me, and what happens about the clothes? I always wondered how in the world a woman got her girdle off with reasonable dignity at the critical moment."

"You shouldn't be wearing a girdle," I said. "Very poor technique. There are other ways of holding up your stockings. And who said anything about dignity?" I looked at her and frowned. "Hell, wasn't either Howard or Hans ever in a hurry, Irish?"

She grimaced. "Oh, dear, no! They were both perfect gentlemen at all times, damn them. Very considerate and patient… Look here, Dave Clevenger, is there something wrong with me? Here I am, offering to be as drunk and disorderly and sexy as you like, and all you do is ask stupid questions. Either you help me get this seduction off the ground and onto the mattress, or I'll go back to my room and get some sleep." She glared at me. "We've been in this room together for half an hour-well, it seems like half an hour- and you haven't even kissed me."

The moment of truth and sincerity had passed. We were back out where the tall corn grew-asking to be kissed, for God's sake.

I said, "Well, if you insist…" I stepped forward and kissed her on the mouth. The drinks we were both holding made it a rather awkward and cautious osculation. "Okay?" I said, stepping back.

She shrugged. "It depends on what you expect from a kiss. But now you've made a gesture in the right direction, Professor, proceed with the lesson."

I said, "There are two approaches you can use. There's the gradual-loss-of-inhibitions approach, and then there's the slaves-of-sudden-passion routine. The first takes more time and liquor, but the second's apt to be kind of hard on the costume. I mean, in one case you disrobe little by little, ostensibly for comfort's sake, as the orgy progresses, until you're down to fundamentals and things start happening. In the other case, after a short buildup, desire grips you all of a sudden and you drag the guy down on the nearest bed. Between the two of you, you manage to get off what's got to come off, and it may not all come off intact, if you know what I mean. If you've got a distance to go afterwards, and people to meet, and no safety pins handy, it can get awkward."

She was silent for a little. I wondered if she was telling herself to be a brave girl and go through with the horrid performance, now she'd carried it this far.

She said, "Well, I haven't got far to go, just down the ball, but these are the only reasonably good clothes I've got and… and Penny may be awake when I come in. Let's try the version that's easier on the wardrobe. What comes off first, the shoes or the dress?"

"Oh, the dress, by all means," I said. "Leave the shoes on as long as possible. Most men find the combination of high heels and lingerie very stimulating… Hold it!"

She'd gulped down the remains of her drink and set the glass aside. Now she was reaching around back for her zipper. She looked up, perplexed.

"What's the matter?"

"Where's your psychology? Let the man do the work, always. He probably wants to. Most men get a kick out of helping a woman take her clothes off. Turn around."

After a slight hesitation, she turned her back to me. I unhooked and unzipped the blue linen jumper and unbuttoned the thin white blouse underneath. The buttons were small and round and my fingers weren't quite steady, which annoyed me. It was strictly a mechanical reaction. I mean, I didn't really want the damn woman at all. I guess I had some sentimental notion of being true, at least a little longer, to a girl who was dead; besides, as far as I could see, it would be an additional and useless complication to an already complex situation. Genevieve Drilling wasn't a complete fool. Sleeping with me wouldn't change her opinion of me in any way that really mattered.

"There you are," I said, working the stuff off her shoulders. I couldn't help noticing that these were strong but nicely rounded, and freckled like her face. "It's legitimate to hang it up neatly at this stage of the proceedings," I said as, having stepped out of the dress and slipped her arms out of the blouse, she stood holding the garments a little uncertainly. "Later, of course, we'll be scattering things around in an uninhibited way… What's the matter?"

She'd swung back to face me. "You might at least take off your coat," she said with some resentment. "I feel awfully bare like this, with you standing there with coat and tie on. Here, I'll help you."

I watched her step up to me, in her high-heeled pumps and a white slip with a lot of finely pleated stuff at top and bottom, that rippled as she moved. They can do some very pretty things with pleats these days. She was a tall girl and she moved nicely. Well, I'd noticed that before.

I said, "Irish."

Her fingers were busy with the knot of my tie. She didn't look up. "Yes?"

"This is a lousy game, Irish. What are you hoping to win by it?"

The direct question startled her. Her fingers stopped working, and she had to grab at the dress and blouse draped over her arm, to keep them from sliding off to the floor, but she still didn't look up. When she spoke, her voice was expressionless.

"I don't know what you mean."

"You're batting in the wrong league, doll," I said, making my voice hard. "I've had this one pulled on me before."

She said lightly, "Well, we're getting somewhere! At least you aren't calling me ma'am any more."

I said, "Okay, have it your way."

She yanked my tie free and looked up at last. "I told you-"

"I know. When the showdown comes, you want a friend in your corner at any cost. Okay, let's be friends. Here, take my coat, too. You can be hanging things up while I freshen the drinks." There was a little pause while she moved away and came back. Busy with the bottle, I glanced at her over my shoulder. "Now you can start moving in on one of the beds, Irish. Don't be obvious about it. Just act as if that happened to be the handiest place to sit."

"Like this?"

I went over and looked down at her sitting there. I didn't want to like her, and I didn't. It's hard to feel tenderness for a lady who keeps vitriol in the pantry. I didn't want to be attracted to her, either, but a goodlooking woman with her dress off is always attractive to a certain type of lewd male mind, and I'm afraid my mind happens to be just that type… I shoved one glass into her hand, and took a drink from the other one.

"Hell, you're much too ladylike, even in your underwear, Drilling," I said. "You're supposed to be getting tight, remember? Shove your legs out straight and let them wander well apart; let that slip ride up… That's better. Now muss your hair a little and drop a strap off your shoulder. Lick your lips. That's the girl. A little pouty now, kind of sleepily provocative I stepped back and surveyed the effect like a photographer posing a fashion model, with my head cocked to the side. "Very good, Irish. We'll make a tart of you yet."

She tossed the displaced lock of hair out of her eyes and looked up at me reproachfully. "You're making fun of me, aren't you?"

"Sure," I said. "Aren't you making fun of me, doll? Aren't you laughing silently at the stupid man who'd fall for a corny gag like this?" I made a face and mimicked: "Please show me how to seduce you, Mister Clevenger, 'cause I'm just a little girl and don't know how."

She made no response to this. She just watched me sit down beside her. Then she asked quietly, "What have you had pulled on you before, Dave? What did you mean by that?"

"You know what I meant," I said. "If you want the details, there was a girl in… Well, never mind where." Actually, it had happened in Kiruna, Sweden, but Jenny'd want to know what a Denver private detective had been doing up there above the Arctic Circle and it was too late at night to figure out a plausible lie. I went on: "This girl had some friends. The friends wanted something from my hotel room. Her job was to keep me busy and interested while they got it. Like you're keeping me busy and interested now. What's happening in your hotel room, Irish?"

It was a long shot, but a faint narrowing of her eyes told me it had hit close. "Did she get it?" Jenny asked quickly. "I mean, did her friends get it?"

"Sure they got it," I said. "I wanted them to get it. It was a plant, but they didn't know that."

I used the word deliberately, to see what reaction I would get. The result was satisfactory. I might have been talking about an aspidistra for all the sign she gave. She wasn't concerned about plants. She had no suspicion she was part of one, a very elaborate one-that we all were. All she cared about was steering the conversation away from her room and what might be taking place there.

"You're very clever, aren't you Dave?" she said smoothly. "And what happened to the girl?"

I looked at her for a moment longer. I needed very much to know what kind of a woman this really was, and I'd had enough of her acting. I had to shake her up a bit, for my own satisfaction.

"I'll show you what happened to the girl," I said, and her eyes widened slightly at the tone of my voice. I took the glass from her hand, set it on the floor, and placed mine carefully beside it. "This is what happened to that girl," I said, and I grabbed her and pulled her to me roughly.

I heard her startled gasp. "Dave, please-"

Then I was kissing her hard, and forcing her down on the bed. I guess I wanted to see if she'd panic, and for a moment I thought she had. There was a second or two of desperate resistance, or so I thought; then I heard something fall to the rug-two objects-and realized that she'd just been holding me off while she kicked off her shoes. She made a funny little triumphant sound in her throat and came to me as if she'd been waiting all her life for some man to realize she wasn't made of glass and wouldn't break-or as if she'd just been waiting all night for me to make the tactical mistake of laying rough hands on her.

I felt her fingernails dig through my shirt, and her mouth was warm and responsive despite my violence. I found my clever plans and sentimental reservations quickly becoming unimportant. I even found myself forgetting, more or less, that I was supposed to be a dedicated public servant on an important mission. I soothed my conscience with the thought that I wasn't really supposed to care what might be happening in her room. As a tough private eye, I was reacting the way I was supposed to. You might even say I was tending strictly to business.

There were those first frantic seconds-maybe minutes- of exploration and discovery; then we lay quite still in each other's arms, breathing hard. It was no time for jokes, perhaps, but suddenly I knew this woman well enough to try one even though I didn't know her at all.

"Here's your moment, Jenny O'Brien."

"Moment?"

"The critical moment," I whispered in her ear. "When you get it off with reasonable dignity. Don't forget the dignity. This I want to see."

She laughed softly, lying close to me. "Clothes!" she murmured. "Why do we have to wear them? Just pull it off me, darling. Skin me like a rabbit. Peel me like an eel, stockings and all."

"Do eels wear stockings?"

"Stop being silly and finish undressing me, damn you. You started it. You said the man liked to do the work. Dave?"

"Yes?"

"Do you love me?"

"Hell, no," I said. "I hate your lovely guts. Good God, talk about chastity belts. Where's the key to this thing?"

There were only the two of us in the world, talking breathlessly to bridge the awkward but necessary pause between promise and fulfillment. Then the roof of our private paradise fell in, the floor buckled, and the walls collapsed, leaving us exposed and unprotected, two rumpled strangers on a rumpled bed. What I mean is, somebody knocked on the door.

"Mummy," said a hesitant voice outside. "Mummy, are you in there? Mr. Clevenger, do you know where my mother is?"