"Okay, small stuff," I said, holding out my hand.
She fished a crumpled envelope out of her tight pants. I opened it and counted the bills inside. I closed it again and tucked it away in my coat. Teddy giggled and took my arm as we walked towards the shore.
"I like you, Jim," she said. "I had a dog once that was just like you, a big black Doberman. He'd bite anybody I told him to. I didn't even have to tell him. If I didn't like them, I'd just snap my fingers and he'd go for them. I taught him that. Papa thought he was just getting mean, the way Dobermans do. Papa didn't know. The dog's name was King. Papa had him put away, finally. I cried all night, I was nine years old."
"Sure," I said. "Will you cry all night if they put me away, Teddy?"
"Don't say that!" She stopped, swinging to face me. "I don't want you to take any chances. I do like you. At least you're honest, in a brutal sort of way. You don't pretend to be something you aren't, like everybody else I know."
Even if she was a screwball, even if she had murder on her twisted little mind, it made me feel a little guilty to have her say that to me. Anyway, that was my first reaction. And then I found myself wondering if maybe that wasn't the reaction she'd been trying for.
It occurred to me suddenly that I'd been overlooking something: I'd been overlooking the fact that Jean's room had been wired for sound. She'd reported to that effect, and an agent of her experience wouldn't make a mistake about it. I had to assume, therefore, that some tapes had been recorded last night. I had to assume that the person I was trying to locate-the contact-had already played those tapes, carefully studying the dialogue that had passed between Jean and me before she died. I'd been putting on an act of sorts, if you recall-so had Jean-but anybody listening to our recorded conversation would certainly know I wasn't a gangster named Petroni.
Yet the two people who had made contact with me so far had acted on the assumption that I really was Lash Petroni, a ruthless, unscrupulous, but possibly useful individuaclass="underline" a killer for hire. Or had they? It was, after all, a coincidence that two people should have hit on the idea of hiring me for the same job. Perhaps at least one of them knew perfectly well that the man he-or she- was ostensibly trying to bribe to commit murder was really a government agent. Perhaps it was a clever cover-up as well as a delicious joke and a way of keeping an eye on my activities.
I glanced at the kid standing in front of me with the sun bright on her cap of pale hair. Her words ran through my head again: You don't pretend to be anything you aren't. She could be perfectly sincere in her cockeyed way, but I couldn't overlook the possibility that she was throwing me a mocking hint, taunting me with her secret knowledge that, as a one-man Murder, Inc., I was the world's biggest fake.
I said, "Everybody pretends something, small fry. How are you at pretending?"
Her blue eyes got narrow, as if I'd accused her of something. Well, maybe I had. "Are you busy tonight?" I asked easily.
She relaxed. "Well, yes. I have a date."
"Break it. Wait a minute. Who's the guy?"
"Who would it be?" she asked with a grimace. "How many people do I really know in this forsaken town? He kept pestering me and what else was there to do except sit in that lousy motel room and think?"
"Orcutt?" I said. "Well, can you get him to take you to a cocktail party being given this evening by some people named Sandeman? I gather they're relatives of Mrs. Rosten, which means they're relatives of Orcutt, so he should be able to swing it."
She said, "Well, I can try, but-"
"When you get there," I said, "ditch the Thunderbird boy temporarily and make a play for Louis Rosten. Can you do that? Can you play them both, Orcutt and Rosten! Can you take Rosten away from his wife and make her mad so she'll march out of the place fuming-and then can you get the two men together and spend the evening with them? I think it would be a good idea if you all wound up at the Rosten place for drinks, say eleven-twelve o'clock. Can you swing that?"
She hesitated. Her eyes were bright, contemplating the challenge. "Of course I can, but-but why do you want me to do it?"
I said, "Don't be more stupid than you have to. I want Mrs. Rosten alone, naturally. And I think it would be a hell of a good idea if you had a solid alibi for the whole evening. Don't you?"
"Oh." Her breath caught. "I see. You mean-it's tonight? So soon?"
"Do you want me to stall around so you can dream about it?" I glanced at her, and said casually, "Talking about dreams, I forgot to ask what kind of a job you want me to do. Smooth or rough?"
She frowned. "What do you mean?"
I said impatiently, "Hell, the price you're paying entitles you to a few frills if you want them. So tell me, do you just want the dame dead? Or do you want her dead with her face smashed in, her teeth knocked out, her breasts sliced off, and her fingernails ripped out by the bloody roots?"
She gulped. "Don't be so damn graphic, Jim!"
I said sneeringly, "That's what I thought! You're really chicken, aren't you? Now you listen to me and get this straight: we don't give refunds. You can call it off now, but once we leave here you're in for the whole job and the whole five grand; so don't come whimpering to me later about how you've changed your mind." I took the envelope out of my pocket and held it out. "This is it, kid. In or out. You call it."
She hesitated. I let my lip curl scornfully. She saw it and slapped the envelope aside. "Go ahead," she said. "Go ahead, Jim! I'll be there; midnight at the Rosten house. And you can do it just as rough as you please; it can't be too rough for me!" She giggled abruptly.
"What's funny?"
"Just something you said. She'd never miss them."
"Miss what?"
"She's pretty flat-chested, you know. She'd never miss them."
I watched her run along the pier to the shore and jump into a small white sports car-an MG, if it matters. She clashed the gears badly getting into low, and again shifting up, which is hard to do with a synchromesh transmission, but she managed. She was really a pretty horrible little girl. At least she was working hard to give that impression.
THIRTEEN
I WAS EARLY for Rosten. It's always best to beat the other party to the rendezvous if you don't trust him very much; besides, I wanted to look the place over and see if it would do for another purpose I had in mind. It was a pretty, sandy cove bordered by a honeysuckle jungle such as they have in this part of the world; anybody who thinks of that stuff as just a pretty garden vine has never been in Maryland. Presently the big yellow Cadillac came nosing through the tangled woods like a prehistoric monster, and stopped at the parking place favored by the people who used the beach for picnics in the summer. You could tell by the rusty beer cans.
I settled with Rosten quickly enough and had him drive me back to town, leaving my car where it was hidden. I gave him instructions paralleling those I'd given Teddy. He didn't like the idea of doing or knowing anything about it until I brought up the alibi question and pointed out the legal advantages of having people around at the moment of his great bereavement.
Later that evening, I found myself waiting in a rose garden, reflecting that each part of the world seemed to have its own peculiar disadvantages for undercover work. During the past few years, in the practice of my profession, I had sloshed through Arctic bogs full of tangled laurel, fought my way across snow-covered mountains, and sweated over deserts full of spiny cacti. Now I had honeysuckle and roses to contend with. Only the people remained the same, and the job.