The Melting Man

I began to move for him. There was no time to get at his gun in my pocket, no time or thought for anything except blind action. But as I felt my muscles contract, the hollow of my guts squeeze tight with die moment of taking off to get at him, there was a zip past my shoulder like the clumsy whirr of a June bug. Max's head jerked as though he had been struck violently under the chin and upwards. He stared at me stupidly, his mouth rolled open and then he fell backwards to the ground with a neat little hole drilled an inch above his nose, dead centre between his dark eyebrows.

A voice I knew said from behind me, 'Damn necessary, and no great regrets. In fact, Mr Carver, sir, no regrets at all.'

I dropped back into an armchair, shaking all over like a man with Parkinson's disease. After a moment or two a glass was put into my right hand.

'Here, lover-boy, down this and get the roses back in your cheeks.'

Panda's long fingers patted my shoulder. The glass was full to the brim.

I had to steady my wrist with my left hand to get the glass to my mouth. It was cognac and went down like lava and the shaking in my body stopped.

Mr Najib Alakwe, Esquire, stepped back from me and said, 'It is a nice little dog, but I think not right for it to lick dead master's face.'

Panda picked up the poodle and moved out of the room with it. She was wearing sky-blue ski-trousers and a short red jacket and her legs seemed to have grown in length since I had last seen them.

Najib sat on the edge of the table, one leg swinging and showing a flash of purple sock above his ginger-suede shoe.

I put the glass down, almost empty, and said, 'Thank you very much, Najib.' If any man deserved to be promoted into the first-name category he did.

He beamed at me. 'Yes. I saved your life. It is a good feeling for me since I do not often do good deeds. But also I am sad.' He looked down at Max. 'What good is damned dead body? You get much information from him?'

I said, 'How did you know about him?'

Panda, coming back into the room, said, 'That is my department, lover-boy. There is a steward on the Ferox who likes Mamma. I say to like Mamma and have Mamma like him then Mamma likes names and addresses of all people Miss Zelia sends letters to. So everything ends up very likeable. One day soon I'll show you.' She sat on the arm of my chair and twined a long arm around my neck.

Najib said, 'But there never are any letters until you visit Miss Zelia. Then there is the letter to this gentleman and you are gone from your hotel, so we come up here. We have damned fine car, American Thunderbird, hired, you understand, because I cannot personally afford to own such a luxury. You wish more cognac?'

'No thanks.'

Panda patted my cheek. 'Good. Complete recovery.' She looked at Najib. 'I shall take him up to the bedroom for some liking and then he will tell me all Mr Max tell him?'

I said, 'It's not such a complete recovery as that.'

'Nevertheless,' said Najib, 'in return for life-saving you will tell what he said about the red Mercedes. Personal details of Miss Zelia, of which I hear a little before I shoot, do not interest my good self. I read between the lines why she said nothing about whereabouts of car. But it is damned reasonable now to tell me what you know. Yes, sir?'

He was dead right, of course. It would have been only damned reasonable to repay him with the information he wanted. I wanted to do it. But, like most people who have been hauled out of trouble, once the shock of crisis has passed, I knew that life had to go on in its same old sordid, double-crossing way. Gratitude must never get in the way of bringing home the bacon. The best place for sentiment was on Christmas, birthday and get-well cards. Najib was on the other side. I wanted to help him. But I had a job to do, fees and a bonus to collect, so there was never a moment's doubt in my mind.

I said, 'I didn't get much out of him — and I don't know that what I did was the truth. I think I'd have needed a few hours to work him up into a state of frankness. You know how it is.'

Panda stood up, stepped over Max, and helped herself to a cigarette from the box on the sideboard. She turned and winked at me. 'Try, honey, try hard to remember all the lies he gave you. We'll sort 'em out. You want that Mamma takes you up to the bedroom and works you up to a state of frankness. Whoof! Whoof!' She did a couple of high kicks.

I said, 'The car was stolen from here by a friend of his called Otto Libsch. He's a pretty undesirable character, I gathered. If you have a way into police records, you'll probably find him there. Because of what happened here with Miss Zelia, he was pretty safe in taking the car. But he didn't have any idea — nor did Max here, I imagine — that there was anything special about the car.'

'This man, Otto — you have an address for him?' asked Najib, and I noticed that when he was getting down to facts his pidgin English slipped.

'No.' I decided to play hard to get, because if he had to drag it from me he wouldn't suspect, perhaps, that it was a false address.

Najib fingered his tie, took off his panama and laid it on the table by the bowl of flowers.

'Splendid dahlias,' he said. 'I am very fond of flowers.'

'Runs in the family.'

'Maybe,' said Panda, 'I should break the bowl over his head? Eh, honey?' She came back and sat on the arm of my chair.

Najib shook his head and smiled at me, his dark eyes full of understanding. 'You are, of course, Mr Carver, stuck on the horns of a dilemma, no? In thanks for your delivery, your heart wants to be generous. But your brain is a professional man's brain. Tell nothing, it says.'

'In my place, what would you do?'

'The same.'

'Stalemate, then.'

'But you have an address for Otto Libsch?'

'Well… I've an address but I wouldn't know whether Max had just made it up.'

'That we can check. The address, please, Mr Carver.'

He produced his gun from his pocket and nodded at Panda. She slipped a long arm round me and took Max's Browning out of my pocket, kissing my left ear as she did it.

'Damned big bulge these make,' she said. 'You should have used it on the late gentleman.'

'I didn't get a chance.'

Najib said, 'You get no chances now. Personal feelings are disqualified. I want the address.'

'And if I won't give it?'

I just caught the flicker of his eye towards Panda and then it happened. She grabbed me by the wrist, hauled me up, dropping her shoulders as she did, and I went cartwheeling over her and hit the floor on my face. Her weight dropped on my back and a pair of long legs took a scissors grip round my neck, almost choking me.

'For proper likings, honey,' she said, 'we begin with gentle love play.' She twisted my right arm hard and I shouted.

'Let him up,' said Najib. There was nothing phoney about him now. He was crisp, cold and determined and there wasn't a thing wrong with his Queen's English.

Panda let me get up. Najib faced me, pulling at his pudgy nose. Panda straightened my tie for me.

'You ought to meet a friend of mine called Miggs,' I said. 'You've got a lot in common.' Then, out of sheer pique, I kicked her feet from under her and she sat on the floor with a bang. For a moment she stared, disbelieving, at me, and then she began to laugh. 'Oh, Rexy-boy,' she chuckled, 'I got you wrong. You got promise.'

Najib made an impatient movement of his gun-hand.

'Give me the address. If not I shall shoot you so that you cannot take advantage of it. The situation will then be that I still do not know the address, but you will be dead, and I shall be able to find it some other way without trouble from you.'

'That'll leave two bodies here. Could be embarrassing.'