McQuade moved quickly. The. 45 was back in his hand, and he used it to motion her out of the bathroom. She twisted the towel around her head with one deft motion. He passed her the key, which she had to have to throw the bolt. Before opening the one-way peephole, she looked back at the bathroom. McQuade let the. 45 come into sight for an instant and pulled it back. It was a reminder she didn’t need.
She turned. She could use this interruption, she thought, to prove to McQuade that she had no intention of betraying him. With her back to the bathroom she twitched the negligee open so the nipple of one breast showed. She looked through the peephole. The policeman outside was young, callow. Having heard the clink, he was looking straight at the peephole.
“Police officer.”
She threw the bolt. Steadying the turban with one hand she opened the door.
“How nice, a policeman,” she said loosely.
He glanced down at her disordered negligee. His glance lingered for an instant on her breast. Incredible, she thought. I have shocked him.
“Sorry, lady, but we’re making a check. There’s been some trouble downstairs. How long have you been home?”
“Hours. I have been washing my hair.” She smiled lopsidedly. “What trouble?”
The policeman licked his lips. “Well, a shooting.”
“That is how it always is!” she cried. “When anything exciting happens, I am washing my hair!”
“What have you got here, just the one room?”
He looked past her. His eye stopped on her clothes, which still lay in a heap on the floor, and jumped back to pick up the whiskey bottle and glass.
“I am terribly messy,” she murmured.
She gave him another bleary smile and started to close the door. He put his fingers against it from the outside. He glanced down the corridor.
“Searching the building, for God’s sake,” he said. “When you shoot a cop you don’t hang around to see what’s going to happen. You get away fast. Frankly, I could use a drink.”
He grinned. Michele let her smile fade.
“What is this, please?”
He took his hand off the door. “Nothing! Now don’t get your bowels in an uproar. I just thought, seeing you’re all by yourself-”
“A policeman!” she cried. “And you are supposed to protect us! Trying to force your way in with some nonsense about a shooting!”
She whipped the soggy towel off her head and slapped him with it. He retreated, his arms up to ward off another blow.
“OK, OK.”
“It is very much not OK!”
She banged the door shut and turned the key. McQuade came out of the bathroom grinning. The mask of outraged indignation stayed on her face for another instant, and then she smiled. They met in silence, coming together hard. She felt a moment’s alarm, as though she found herself at the top of a steep hill in a racing car without brakes. Then her mouth opened to his kiss.
CHAPTER 3
The apartment was dark.
Michele twisted, coming to one elbow. They were together on the sofa. Without much effort, by releasing a catch and making a few other minor arrangements, they could have opened the sofa into a double bed. But they hadn’t taken the time.
She reached across to the lamp. “Fair warning. I am turning on the light.”
She snapped it on and found McQuade studying her soberly, one arm behind his head. He was naked to the waist. His. 45 was wedged behind the cushions. He had placed it there with one hand while caressing her with the other. During the lovemaking that followed she was fairly sure-not completely sure, because for a time things were rather turbulent and confused-that he never for a moment forgot the pistol. She was anything but foolhardy. Under no possible circumstances would she have tried to seize it, but he had given her no chance. On the whole she liked people who showed that kind of common sense.
She ran the palm of her hand along his arm. “I love the way you feel,” she said.
He had said nothing since she slapped the policeman with the towel. With the tip of a finger she traced the lines on his face. He was not her type, of course. She had a favorite restaurant in Paris, which served indifferent food with tremendous style, at a fantastic price. She could never take him there. He would make the place and the other people in it look foolish.
Suddenly, looking into his eyes, she had the answer to the puzzle. They were both in trouble! They had to work together! It was obvious, it would solve everything. All she had to do was sell it to him.
She kissed him lightly. “I must do something about this lipstick.”
“Who cares?”
“I care, my dear.”
She left him on the sofa and looked at herself in the mirror over the bureau. She groaned. Her hair!
She did what she could. Still naked, she went for drinks and cigarettes, then told him to hold still while she wiped some of the lipstick off his face.
Finally he sat up. She gave him a cigarette and lit it for him. He filled his lungs with smoke and breathed it out slowly.
“Yeah,” he said.
And that, it seemed, was to be his only remark on what had happened.
He swung his long legs off the sofa and pulled on his shirt. He fitted the button of his hearing-aid into his ear and dropped the battery case into his shirt pocket. She poured whiskey into a glass for him without ice.
“Somehow,” she said, “all at once I find it extraordinarily difficult to remember your name.”
“It’ll come back.”
“No, when I washed my hair I washed it out of my brain.” She laughed. “No, perhaps you are right. Names are easy to forget only when they are not important.”
She drank, while the laughter faded out of her eyes. “I think you are not much of a sentimental person, my friend. This encounter was pleasant, exciting perhaps, but it has no bearing on what you must do now.”
She pulled his hand so the back of his wrist touched her breast. Holding his hand in both of hers, she moved it slightly. The little friction made her shiver.
“You will stay with me tonight. I think you will stay awake drinking and making love as often as it pleases you, and all the time you will be thinking of your problem. What will you do with me? I am a girl who knows your name, who saw you shoot a detective.”
He stirred and she said quickly, “I am putting myself in your head, wondering what lies I must tell you to make you let me go. And I can think of none. What I must do, then, is simple-tell the truth.”
“Don’t go that far,” he said. “You might bust something.”
“No, I have just realized that I can help you. How hard will it be to place those diamonds, for example?”
He grunted. “Not easy.”
“Did you really find out about Melnick from a mistake on the telephone?”
“Hell, no. I didn’t want him to wonder about it. I had a tip from a guy in his workroom.”
“And perhaps he will think of that person, and then if the police are clever they can get your name.”
He shot her a sharp look, took his hand away from her breast and drank slowly.
She went on, “The thing for you to do, my dear, is take an airplane to some distant country, where the jewelers will not ask you if anyone was killed because of these diamonds. To do that you will need money. You will need a passport. I will get you both. All you must do for me in return is touch me lovingly from time to time, and help in a little adventure of my own.”
“Don’t try to con me, baby,” he said harshly. “I’m in no mood.”
“To be specific: fifteen thousand dollars. Half to be paid tomorrow, half the day after. An airplane to Portugal. Meanwhile, concealment.”
“And what do you want me to do, knock over a bank?”
“Not a bank, darling,” she said seriously. “Say you will consider and I tell you.”
“At your service,” he said humorously.
“It is real, I assure you. We plan to steal a truck. It will be escorted by two armed policemen. At the most, three. But there will be five of you, and with luck there will be no shooting.”