"What about me?" she gasped. "Mr. Tillery, what about the protection you promised me? What about my money?"
Tillery turned. He looked down at the blood-stained handkerchief he'd been holding to his scratched face; and he looked at the kneeling girl. He laughed sharply.
"You bitch!" he said in his high-pitched voice. "You nasty, vicious little tramp! I hope Frankie has lots of fun with you before he wrings your skinny neck! I just wish I could be there to watch."
As the door closed behind them, Roberta began to cry once more, softly and hopelessly.
xv
Entering my room, I found another one on the bed. I mean, it had been a morning for beat-up females: first Beverly Blaine, then Roberta Prince-whom I'd left repairing her tear-damaged makeup-and now there was Charlotte Devlin sprawled face down on top of the bedspread with her shoes on. They were still, I noted, rimmed with dried mud. Her sheer dark stockings were kind of loose and wrinkled about her legs, and her tailored gray suit was kind of bunched about her body. Her glasses lay on the bed beside her. She didn't stir as I closed and locked the door behind me.
I moved forward cautiously, expecting the worst, since a woman will almost invariably kick off her shoes before lying down on a bed unless she's in very bad shape indeed, drunk or dying. Exactly why anybody would want to kill the girl and dump her on me I didn't know, but then, there seemed to be a lot about the case I still didn't know, probably enough to motivate another murder or two. Frank Warfel could simply have decided she was making a nuisance of herself, and he was a man who seemed to take homicide quite lightly, particularly if he could get it committed by someone else.
Approaching the bed, I saw that one dangling hand retained a precarious grip on some white paper, perhaps a clue. I worked it free and found myself holding a genuine wad of damp Kleenex. I dropped it into the nearby wastebasket and studied the motionless figure before me more closely, realizing that it was breathing quite normally.
There was no blood or other sign of violence that I could see. I decided with relief that, not only wasn't she dead, she wasn't even wounded, bruised, poisoned, or drugged. Shoes or no shoes, she was merely sound asleep, looking only as disheveled as any woman is apt to, caught taking a daytime nap in her clothes. The brief skirt of her suit had worked up far enough behind, I noticed, to reveal an interesting sartorial detaiclass="underline" the currently somewhat untidy stockings weren't separate stockings at all, but integral parts of an all-in-one nylon garment, sheer below and only slightly more opaque above, apparently designed to render obsolete such old-fashioned undercover engineering items as garters and girdles.
"Mr. Helm!"
It was an embarrassed and rather indignant gasp as, waking, Charlie sat up to look at me reproachfully. After a moment, she made the standard sleeping-beauty gesture of tugging down her skirt-undoubtedly the first conscious act of the legendary princess kissed awake by the legendary prince-then she sniffed and looked around helplessly. Guessing at what was required, I went into the bathroom, got a fresh bunch of tissues from the dispenser there, and returned to put it into her hand.
"Thanks," she said, applying it vigorously to her nose. Finished, she put on her glasses to see me more clearly, saying, "I'm sorry, Mr. Helm. I didn't mean to fall asleep-"
"Ladies occupying my bed generally call me Matt," I said. "How's the allergy?"
It was a casual, conversation-making question designed simply to put her at ease, but she took it seriously, hesitating over the answer as if it really mattered.
"Well," she said reluctantly, "well, if you must know, it's terrible. Or was. It seems to be considerably better now, but I had some kind of an asthma attack on the way down. I really thought for a while I wasn't going to make it here; I could hardly breathe. It was all I could do to keep the car on the road. That's why, when I got in here and found the room empty, I just couldn't help flopping down on the bed for a moment, but I had no intention of… My God, I look like something thrown out with the trash! If you want to be a gentleman, you can discreetly avert your eyes, just for a moment."
I said, "Cut it out, Charlie. A gentleman? A trigger-happy super-spook like me?"
She flushed slightly and, rather defiantly, rose and turned her back on me and went through the contortions necessary to take the slack out of her sagging hosepants. Then, without deigning to look my way, she moved stiffly to the dresser. After making a wry face at her reflection in the mirror, she smoothed down her outer garments neatly, buttoned the collar of her blouse, and patted her short, crisp hair into place.
"Matt."
"Yes, Charlie."
"You don't like me very much, do you?"
"Now, what brought that on?" I asked.
"The way you keep throwing my words in my face. Heavens, I didn't think you'd be so sensitive, in your line of work. If you want me to apologize, well, all right, I will. I am very sorry I called you a trigger-happy superspook, Mr. Helm."
It reminded me of Lionel McConnell, dying, apologizing for calling me a honkie bastard. The memory was not a happy one, particularly now that I knew he'd been shot down just to make me believe that Beverly Blaine was also in danger.
I said, "That's not the point. It's not what you call me, it's what you are while you're calling me that-and while you're talking about my 'line of work' as if it gave you a pain in your tummy."
She turned slowly to look at me, frowning. "That's a little complicated, Matt. You're going to have to explain it."
I said, "Hell, I'm just mildly allergic to cops, that's all. Particularly dedicated cops with high-moral, law-enforcement missions. And most particularly dedicated cops with high-moral, law-enforcement missions who look down their long blue noses at me and my job."
"I don't-"
"The hell you don't. I'm not supposed to kid you about what you do, but you're supposed to be quite free to sneer at what I do." I grinned. "I'm not complaining, understand. We're used to that attitude from you badge-toters. I'm merely pointing out that if you want my respect and affection you're picking a damn funny way to get it."
She didn't smile. She said sharply, "You're being rather stupid, aren't you? After all, you're kind of a cop yourself."
"Don't ever think it, Charlie," I said. "My job is defending the people and to hell with the laws. Your job is defending the laws and to hell with the people."
"That's not fair! I… we…" She checked herself and drew a long, ragged breath. "I don't know how we got into this, Mart, but I don't think we'd better pursue the argument any further, do you? Particularly since what I really wanted was… was to ask a favor of you."
"A favor?" I said. "Sure. In our detestable undercover line of work we hold no grudges. Anything your little heart desires. My house is yours, as they say down here."
She looked at me for a moment without speaking, then she asked gravely, "Why does it amuse you to needle me, Matt? Is it because -.. because I have no sense of humor? Would you tease me for being half-blind if I were missing an eye? Or for being crippled if I'd lost a leg?"
It was a hell of a thing for her to say. It made her, suddenly, a human being instead of a kind of stiff-necked female-type robot programmed to give interestingly pompous reactions to my excruciatingly clever stimuli. I regarded her for a moment, totally disarmed and disconcerted.
"All right, Charlie," I said at last. "All right. I'm sorry. Smack me if I get flip again. What's the favor?"
"You… you won't tell them at the Bureau, will you? Please?"
"Tell them what?"
"You know." She made a gesture towards the bed. "The way… the way you found me in here. I haven't had an attack like that since I was in high school. I thought I was all over them long ago, permanently cured. I don't know what brought it on, maybe strain; I've been working pretty hard on this Warfel thing. They say it's partly emotional, you know." She stopped. I waited, and she went on: "Don't you see, Matt? If… if the Bureau learns about it, and about the way I blanked out in here afterwards while I was supposed to be on duty.. We're all supposed to be perfect physical specimens, you know."