In the cottage, I soaked in a hot tub while I put together what I had so far. My remarks to Hawk had been more true than facetious. Fact one: the three kev men involved in the three tragedies had been silenced, in one way or another. I'd tried to get to Dawsey, then Comford, so they figured Dempster would be my next stop. They'd been cute and switched techniques with him, but the result was to have been the same, preventing me from getting information. Fact two: Dawsey, Comford and Dempster had been bought Dawsey's sudden wealth tipped that off. Fact three: the Chinese washed ashore two months ago with 50,000 Australian dollars on him. There had to be a connection between him and the first three men.
But that's where the facts ended. I didn't know who was doing this or why. Was it a home-grown group of some kind? If so, they needed a cove The ranch Judy spoke about could do for that of course. And if it was an outside source, they'd need a cover, too, but a more elaborate one. But so far they were shadows, all except for the three hoods that tried to give me a copper bath.
The headlines and articles in the Aussie newspapers I'd seen were plenty evidence that relations all around continued near the breaking point. The other members of the alliance were still dissatisfied with Australian explanations and were pulling back fast. The Aussies with their fierce pride were reacting with a to-hell-with-them-all attitude. And all I had was a nice, neat theory. I needed more, and fast. Whoever was behind this was not going to stand still. The next tragedy could well wreck the alliance beyond repair.
I dressed slowly. I'd decided against going to The Ruddy Jug to see Judy. I'd pay her a visit at her place. My watch told me she'd be getting there soon, so I headed for her little apartment. I got there first and was waiting just inside the doorway when she came up.
"Welcome home," I said quietly.
"Yank," she said, her eyes lighting. "I've been trying to get to you for days and days, maybe a week."
We went into her place. This time she was wearing a black dress with almost the same, low-cut neckline as before, that made her round breasts overflow.
"He's been in almost every night," she said to me, her tone guarded. "The fourth one, the one with the hawk face. He keeps telling me to find some more men for him. He says the others worked out fine, but they've been sent on to bigger things."
"I hope you told him you were looking for new contacts," I said.
"Yes, but I'm ruddy scared," she said. "I'm afraid he'll find out you know about me. Then if I go to the States, it'll be in a pine box."
Her fears were justified. But she and Lynn Delba were my only possible leads now. I didn't like letting her stick her pretty little neck out, but a lot of good men didn't like getting needlessly killed either. I turned away from moral judgments. That wasn't my job. My job was to get at the bottom of this, to crack it open, not to worry about who might get hurt along the way. Was I being too hard? Damned hard, but you could be sure the others had no time for sentimentality. Neither did I.
"Keep doing just what you've been doing, Judy," I told her. "I've been away for a while so nobody's seen you with me. I'll watch it as best I can. Try and pump him. Find out where they operate from. But don't be too obvious."
"I'm glad you're back," she said, standing close to me. The lost, fearful quality was a part of her again, and I felt like a fourteen-carat heel. "Sometime, maybe, after this is all over, maybe we could get together, just you and I, for the fun of it."
"Maybe," I said. I cupped her chin with my hand and looked into the smoke-gray eyes. Dammit, she had a way of getting to you, like a kitten. She had claws and she could scratch like hell, but she reached out to you.
She stood up on her toes and kissed me — a small, gentle kiss. "I feel safer when you're around," she whispered. I gave her rear a little pat and turned and left. It had been a firm, round little rear, well worth parting again sometime. I went back to the cottage hoping that things would work out all right. It might be nice to spend some time with Judy. I had the feeling that she deserved some good times.
I slept late the next day, and when I woke I felt like my old self for the first time since I'd been tossed out of that jet I decided to pay Lynn Delba a visit Something about the woman had left me with an unfinished feeling. She had seemed unduly frightened for someone who knew nothing about Dawsey's involvement. I was glad to find her home, and her eyes lighted up when she saw me.
"Come in," she said. She had the same faded quality I'd noticed the last time, but her legs, encased in short shorts now, were every bit as good as I'd remembered. The way her breasts moved beneath a pale yellow blouse told me she was still against wearing bras.
"Anybody contact you about Dawsey?" I asked. She frowned.
"No", she answered, truculence in her voice. "Why should they contact me. I told you I only knew he was in on something he said would make him a lot of money and I'd have everything I wanted. Nobody's got any reason to contact me about anything."
I smiled pleasantly but in my mind I was thinking of how she'd acted during my first visit to her. Then she'd been scared as hell that maybe Dawsey had told his killers about her. "Maybe they'll think I know something about whatever he was into," she had said, and the fear in her eyes had been real. And now it was a somewhat defiant "Why should anyone contact me?" I had a more than fair idea what had caused this sudden reversal in roles. First, she'd been afraid because she had good reason to suspect Dawsey's killers would wonder what she knew. But in the time that had passed since my first visit she'd been contacted and had convinced them she knew nothing. Or perhaps she hadn't been contacted at all and felt that she was safe. Either way, she felt comfortably secure now, and in the clear. Fear had been tossed aside. All of which meant she knew more than what she'd told me, which was nothing.
I wanted to know what that «more» was, no matter how little, but I didn't want to get it the rough way. For one thing, I wasn't sure it could be gotten that way without my getting very rough. She had a stubborn truculence to her under that faded exterior. And maybe she knew very little, actually. It was a rule of mine that one didn't use a mallet to kill a mosquito. I wanted to be a little more certain she really knew something before I went for it.
Her eyes were watching me with the same approval I'd seen in them before and she'd sat down on an over-stuffed chair with her legs up and spread just enough to be tantalizing. They were gorgeous legs; I quietly admired them again. I was going to try another route to her.
"Well, if there's nothing to tell me, then I'll be going." I smiled pleasantly, and let her watch my eyes move up and down her legs. The short shorts came hardly an inch down the side of her thighs as she sat with her legs pulled up. "But I'll be back. It's worth the visit just to look at your legs." I smiled again.
Her eyes came alive at once as she reacted with that sharp eagerness of the woman who is hungry for attention.
"Do you really think so?" she asked, stretching them out further for me to admire. "You don't think they're too thin?"
"I think they're just right," I said. She got up and walked over to me. "Well, I'm glad to see you're not so taken up with your job you can't react," she said. "Would you like a drink?"
"I don't know," I said, hesitantly. "I'd like one but I'd better not."
"Why not?" she frowned. "You're old enough and Lord knows you're big enough." I watched her eyes quickly move across my shoulders and chest.
"Well, for one thing, I couldn't promise anything after a drink," I said. "Not with those legs of yours. I've never seen anything like them, really."
She smiled quietly. "Who asked you to promise anything?" she murmured. She went over to a little cabinet and brought out some rye and glasses.