“Helen, Helen, take it easy. Nothing will hurt you now. You’re okay.” I lifted her head away and smoothed back her hair. “Listen, you’re all right here.”
Her mouth was too close. Her eyes were too wet and my mind was thinking things that didn’t belong there. My arms closed tighter and I found her mouth, warm and soft, a salty sweetness that clung desperately and talked to me soundlessly. But it stopped the trembling and when she pulled away she smiled and said my name softly.
“How’d you get here, Helen?”
Her smile tightened. “I was brought up in a place like this a long time ago. There are always ways. I found one.”
“I heard what happened. Who was it?”
She tightened under my hands. “I don’t know. I was waiting for a train when it happened. I just ran after that. When I got out on the street, it happened again.”
“No cops?”
She shook her head. “Too fast. I kept running.”
“They know it was you?”
“I was recognized in the station. Two men there had caught my show and said hello. You know how. They could have said something.”
I could feel my eyes starting to squint. “Don’t be so damn calm about it.”
The tight smile twisted up at the corner. It was like she was reading my mind. She seemed to soften a moment and I felt her fingers brush my face. “I told you I wasn’t like other girls, Joe. Not like the kind of girl you should know. Let’s say it’s all something I’ve seen before. After a bit you get used to it.”
“Helen...”
“I’m sorry, Joe.”
I shook my head slowly. “No... I’m the one who’s sorry. People like you should never get like that. Not you.”
“Thanks.” She looked at me, something strange in her eyes that I could see even in the half light of the room. And this time it happened slowly, the way it should be. The fire was close again, and real this time, very real. Fire that could have burned deeply if the siren hadn’t closed in and stopped outside.
I pushed her away and went to the window. The beams of the flashlights traced paths up the sidewalk. The two cops were cursing the cranks in the neighborhood until one stopped, grunted something and picked up a sliver of steel that lay by the curb. But there was nothing else. Then they got back in the cruiser and drove off.
Helen said, “What was it?”
“There was a dead man out there. Tomorrow there’ll be some fun.”
“Joe!”
“Don’t worry about it. At least we know how we stand. It was one of their boys. He made a pass at me on the street and got taken.”
“You do it?”
I shook my head. “Not me. A guy. A real big guy with hands that can kill.”
“Vetter.” She said it breathlessly.
I shrugged.
Her voice was a whisper. “I hope he kills them all. Every one.” Her hand touched my arm. “Somebody tried to kill Renzo earlier. They got one of his boys.” Her teeth bit into her lip. “There were two of them so it wasn’t Vetter. You know what that means?”
I nodded. “War. They want Renzo dead to get Vetter out of town. They don’t want him around or he’ll move into their racket sure.”
“He already has.” I looked at her sharply and she nodded. “I saw one of the boys in the band. Renzo’s special car was hijacked as it was leaving the city. Renzo claimed they got nothing but he’s pretty upset. I heard other things too. The whole town’s tight.”
“Where do you come in, Helen?”
“What?” Her voice seemed taut.
“You. Let’s say you and Cooley. What string are you pulling?” Her hand left my arm and hung down at her side. If I’d slapped her she would have had the same expression on her face. I said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. You liked Jack Cooley pretty well, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” She said it quietly.
“You told me what he was like once. What was he really like?”
The hurt flashed in her face again. “Like them,” she said. “Gay, charming, but like them. He wanted the same things. He just went after them differently, that’s all.”
“The guy I saw tonight said you know things.”
Her breath caught a little bit. “I didn’t know before, Joe.”
“Tell me.”
“When I packed to leave... then I found out. Jack... left certain things with me. One was an envelope. There were cancelled checks in it for thousands of dollars made out to Renzo. The one who wrote the checks is a racketeer in New York. There was a note pad too with dates and amounts that Renzo paid Cooley.”
“Blackmail.”
“I think so. What was more important was what was in the box he left with me. Heroin.”
I swung around slowly. “Where is it?”
“Down a sewer. I’ve seen what the stuff can do to a person.”
“Much of it?”
“Maybe a quarter pound.”
“We could have had him,” I said. “We could have had him and you dumped the stuff!”
Her hand touched me again. “No... there wasn’t that much of it. Don’t you see, it’s bigger than that. What Jack had was only a sample. Some place there’s more of it, much more.”
“Yeah,” I said. I was beginning to see things now. They were starting to straighten themselves out and it made a pattern. The only trouble was that the pattern was so simple it didn’t begin to look real.
“Tomorrow we start,” I said. “We work by night. Roll into the sack and get some sleep. If I can keep the landlady out of here we’ll be okay. You sure nobody saw you come in?”
“Nobody saw me.”
“Good. Then they’ll only be looking for me.”
“Where will you sleep?”
I grinned at her. “In the chair.”
I heard the bed creak as she eased back on it, then I slid into the chair. After a long time she said, “Who are you, Joe?”
I grunted something and closed my eyes. I wished I knew myself sometimes.
(To be concluded in next issue.)
Teaser
by William Lindsay Gresham
She was strange — passionate one minute and aloof and cold the next. It was almost as though there were two different women inside her beautiful body.
Many men went out with Gerry Massingham. And when, apparently on the threshold of surrender, she suddenly seemed to change and stopped them, they realized that they could go just so far and no farther with her. They responded in a remarkably uniform fashion. First their faces registered desperation and something like hatred. Then they sulked. Then they got control of their dignity and would chat in a civilized manner for a few minutes. Then they went home, promising to phone her. Only they never did.
There were, in secret, two Gerrys... Warm Gerry and Cold Gerry. Sometimes, when a man had gone, Warm Gerry would take over, and she would start to rush out toward the hall to remind him that he had left his pipe, or his scarf — anything to bring him back. But then Cold Gerry would take over and stop her, freeze her hand on the doorknob.
The other girls in the office did not suspect that there were two Gerrys. Warm Gerry was always turned on there, and the girls envied her looks, her poise and her small, beautifully decorated apartment. She would smile inwardly when one of the girls came home with her. Gerry could see what was going through the girl’s mind — that Gerry was a femme fatale and had a tremendous life.