“Sue-Ellen,” I croaked. “What the hell...?”
“Just stay lyin’ down like a good boy, sweetie. I wouldn’t want you to jump up all ugly and fierce like.”
“Get your hand off my damned chest. I want to sit up. If I can.”
“Okay, honey, you try. But real slow like, you hear?”
Her strong brown hand eased its pressure as I cranked myself into a sitting position. I wasn’t on a bed after all, but a huge white couch that could have slept six with no crowding. Cautiously I looked around; if it hadn’t been for the round windows we could have been in any run-of-the-mill Park Avenue living room. And then I realized that the gentle rocking under me wasn’t just my head.
“Your boat?” I asked.
“Sharp as always, aren’t you, Nick? Uh-huh, it’s my boat. Or my husband’s, whoever he is.”
I was too mad to smile. “What the hell is going on here, Sue-Ellen? Who slugged me?”
“Oh, one of my watchdogs. How’s your head feel, hon?”
“How do you expect?” I tried to stand up, but with her forefinger she poked me back onto the couch. Sue-Ellen, I remembered, had been Texas All-College Girl Rodeo Champion when she was at SMU, and she hadn’t softened up any after ten years and at least three husbands I knew of.
“Too bad. Want a little bourbon and branch?”
“Not right now.”
“Had enough this mornin’ did you?”
“Not exactly.”
“Well, that’s what it looked like when you passed out by the phone back at the hotel. Lappin’ it up at the bar and all. Lucky one of my watchdogs came along and got you out before the police came along and arrested you for D and D.”
“So one of your watchdogs slugged me.” I sneaked a look at my watch again; it hadn’t gotten any earlier.
“Oh don’t worry, sweetie. Your little Greek tart’s just waitin’ back on that dinky old tub you’re travelin’ in. Fit to be tied, the way she keeps comin’ out on deck and lookin’ toward the dock like one of those wives of a whalin’ captain on a widow’s walk.”
“Come on!” I snapped. “What do you want with me?”
Her grin was pure imp, laced with pure whore. She was dressed in a bikini bottom and a shirt she hadn’t bothered to button. Her breasts were small, I recalled, but as firm as melon halves. At thirty or so she had the muscular belly of a professional acrobat, and though her legs were beautifully proportioned they had the strength of a lifelong bronc rider, which she was. Sue-Ellen barely topped five feet, but more than once I’d discovered that to subdue her I had to forget she was a girl. She liked that.
She dropped down on the couch beside me, letting the shirt fall open to expose a breast. “You got me in a heap o’ trouble last night, Nick. You know?”
“Me? How?”
“Well... what was it? Couple o’ days ago this friend of mine saw you in... where was it? Piraeus?”
I nodded. It hurt. “I remember.”
“Well, Rhonda, she said you pretended you didn’t remember her. Or me. But the way she described you I knew it had to be Nick Carter. Right? Ain’t nobody like you, hon.”
“I...” It was hard to know exactly what to say. Sue-Ellen knew I did something for the government, because for a time her father had been a Senator on one of the committees that dealt with the CIA and other alphabet security agencies. “You know there are times I can’t say hello, even to old friends.”
“Uh-huh. Not to old friends like Rhonda, who don’t know beans. But when you show that good-lookin’ face all over Greece like you’ve been doin’, I know you aren’t on any secret mission or whatever you do for Uncle. Pretty man like you, you’ve got to use disguises, because those bad boys in the Kremlin or wherever, they’ve got the zap on you.” She pointed her finger at me and snapped down the thumb-hammer. “So I got to talkin’ a little that night, told ’em what a great... well... friend you were. The bourbon braggin’, you know?”
I knew. Much too well. Once or twice I’d almost fallen for Sue-Ellen, but each time her spoiled-little-rich-girl routine, fueled by booze, had rescued me.
“So last night, when we all saw you hoppin’ around those dance floors with that ugly ol’ Greek girl and you didn’t even say hello, well, that burned me.”
“But I didn’t see you!”
“No? Not even when I was bumpin’ my ass against yours for a couple of minutes steady? In that whatchamacallit discothèque, I forget which?”
“I guess... they were all pretty crowded.”
“Not that crowded, buddy boy! If you don’t know my ass, who does?” She slid closer to me, emphasizing her words appropriately.
“What... what about your husband?”
“Oh, him. Achillion, he’s off buyin’ some ships in Japan or somewhere. He hasn’t been near me more’n half a dozen times since we been married.”
“So he leaves you here? With watchdogs?” My head was clearing rapidly now; in an odd way the crack on the skull was counteracting the effects of no sleep and too much bourbon.
“Uh-huh. He let me have this big old yacht and a crew I pay to play deaf and dumb, but there’s these two heavies who follow me most everywhere I go.” She giggled and snuggled close to me. “But not here.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, he thinks he’s foolin’ me, but everywhere I make port around here I see ’em. Them and that big old tan car of theirs.”
“Big... Mercedes?”
“Uh-huh. You noticed it too? Everybody does.”
“Were you in... Pirgos a couple of nights ago?”
“Planned to be, but I didn’t make it. Why? Were you?”
“For a little while.”
“That where you picked up your little whore?”
“She’s not a whore. And she’s not little.”
“No, she ain’t little. But I could bulldog her with one hand tied behind my back.” She was fumbling with my belt buckle.
“I have to get out of here.”
“No way. We’re gonna have us a party, Nick Carter. A private one, right now. And later on all my buddies are comin’ back aboard and I’m gonna show ’em nobody snubs Sue-Ellen Barlow in front of all her friends.”
I pulled away from her. “Do you mean that’s why you had me slugged and brought here?”
“Well... it was maybe a little drastic, hon. But I stayed up all night with those people and I could see ’em snickerin’ because I’d bragged on you some and then you made a fool of me in front of everybody. So when my watchdogs said they seen you goin’ into the hotel bar there, I just kind of acted on impulse. Those watchdogs, they’re good for somethin’, aren’t they?”
“Yeah. I guess they are. Where are they now?”
“Oh, I got one standin’ outside the door there.” She gestured vaguely. “In case you’re too anxious to get back to your Greek tart.”
“She was supposed to catch a plane.”
“Well she can wait for another one, can’t she?”
It was hopeless, I saw, to try to reason with Sue-Ellen. I stood up, brushing aside her clawing hands, and walked quickly toward the door. When I opened it, I saw the brutish face of one of the men from the tan Mercedes staring at me. In his hand he held a .45 automatic, and it was aimed straight at my chest. He looked eager to use it. I closed the door again.
“Hon, you think I’d let you run out on me after I went to all this trouble? Come on now.” She was lying on the white couch, the shirt on the carpet beside her, a hand tucked inside the band of the minimum bikini bottom.
There had been a time when Sue-Ellen was fun and games, raunchy but healthy. Now it was obvious she had changed, to say the least; I might have had fun with her, but her games turned me off.
I walked over to her, pulled down on her bikini. She arched her strong, narrow hips to help. I flipped her over on her stomach.