I shrugged once more. "Does it matter?"
She hesitated. When she spoke again, her voice was cooclass="underline" "Not unless.. – unless you mess up this job for me, doing your thing, whatever it is. I wouldn't advise your sacrificing my mission to yours, Matt. I think you'd regret it."
I looked at her for a moment. Her face was strangely cold, and there was a hard, bright, fanatic gleam in her eyes. I said, "Why, Charlie, that's a threat! Are you sure you mean it?"
"I mean it." Her voice didn't waver, and neither did her shiny eyes. "This job is extremely important, not only for me but for a lot of innocent people. Don't spoil it. If you do, you… you'll be sorry."
I don't react well to threats, not even from handsome young ladies in horn-rims who disarmingly admit to having no sense of humor.
"Now it's my turn," I said. "My speech on the subject goes like this, Charlie: don't get in my way, or put any people in my way, no matter what you think I may have done. For one thing, I probably won't have done it. I have no intention of turning Warfel or anybody else loose with a boatload of heroin; I'm going to do my best to see that you get him. Remember that, if anything goes wrong. But remember another thing, too. If you get mad at me, and send somebody after me, and he interferes with my assignment in any way, he won't come back, whoever he may be. Okay?"
She said softly, "You're really quite unbelievable, aren't you?"
"Hell, one good threat deserves another," I said. "But I'd better not be unbelievable, because if you don't believe me, somebody could die. Now let's stop making faces at each other. You were supposed to check on a guy named Sorenson."
"Are you still harping on that?" When I didn't answer, she said, "Oh. all right, I checked on him. He's had some chemical training, mostly stuff like gas analysis, but he might be able to master the necessary technique. But a more unlikely person for Warfel to pick to run his laboratory…" She paused. I didn't say anything. She said, "Well, so much for Sorenson. Now what about that syndicate man, Tillery, and his two friends? How do you in-tend to locate them and deal with them?"
I said, "I'll worry about the dealing after I've done the locating. And I think I have a pretty good lead, just a few doors down the hall."
"Do you think that blonde will tell you where to find them? Even if she knows, why should she tell?"
I said, "Never mind, Charlie. You have your little secrets and I have mine, and that's one of them."
She made a small gesture of distaste. "Well, do it your way. But remember, this is very important, to me and to-"
"I know," I said. "To thousands of innocent people. I'll remember. Well, I'll be on my way as soon as I've cleaned up a bit in the john. Help yourself to the phone if you need it… What's the matter?"
"Nothing. I just remembered, they had another smog alert on the Los Angeles radio as I was driving down. I hope it won't interfere with our plans. If Warfel should be delayed by weather…" She was silent, obviously considering that and other problems confronting her; then she looked up. "Matt."
"Yes."
"I didn't mean to be nasty."
"Neither did I," I said. I wasn't telling the exact truth, but then, I didn't think she was, either.
xvi
Approaching Roberta Prince's room, I made a little bet with myself as I had before, quite recently, under very similar circumstances. I mean, the girl had said she was merely going to fix her makeup while I went and cleaned up in my room, but once she got to thinking about the situation, I was fairly sure other ideas would occur to her, if they hadn't already. After all, this was Hollywood country or close to it, and once they get a good script out there, or even just a passable one, they'll all gang up on the poor, lonely little idea and beat it to death.
I knocked on the door and got no answer. Checking, I found it unlocked, as I had left it. I walked in, since I'd told her I'd be back shortly and she'd said that would be fine. The first thing I noticed was that the black and white pants outfit she'd been wearing was kind of scattered around the room along with everything that went with it, intimate and otherwise. The second thing I noted was that the bathroom door was closed and the shower was running. I made a mental check in my mental notebook to indicate that I'd won my own money once more.
I knocked on the bathroom door. "Roberta," I called. "Miss Prince. Bobbie. Are you all right?"
The shower stopped. After a little pause, the door opened, and as expected, she had on absolutely nothing except a towel wrapped around her head, turban-wise, to protect the long blond hair from the spray. Another towel was being used for drying purposes, but it was carefully deployed, at the moment, so as not to obstruct much of the view.
Her body was more feminine than I'd anticipated, despite its lean greyhound proportions. After all, even grey-hounds come in two sexes, and there was absolutely no doubt which one she was. She was smoothly tanned all over. I reflected on the philosophic truth that the difference between being embarrassingly naked and interestingly nude can be just a nice coat of tan.
"Get my robe out of that closet, will you. darling?" she said calmly. "The blue terry cloth beach thing. You'll see it."
"Sure," I said, and grinned, not moving. "Just how long did you stand under that shower, Bobbie, waiting to make this spectacular appearance?"
She was slightly disconcerted; then she laughed. "Too damn long. I'm practically waterlogged. What the hell kept you, anyway?"
"I had a visitor. A lady dope-cop with the sniffles. We had to compare notes and strategy."
"The sniffles? What's she got to sniffle about?" Bobbie asked.
I couldn't see why she should be interested in Charlotte Devlin's respiratory symptoms, when there were other things in my statement designed to concern her more, but at the moment, feeling out the situation, I was happy just to follow any conversational lead she offered. As for my promise to Charlie, I'd only promised not to tell the people for whom she worked. The chances of this girl discussing with them the health of one of their agents was fairly small.
I said, "Apparently she had asthma as a kid and something brought on a recurrence this morning, but she's pretty well over it now."
"That's too bad," Bobbie said. "Cops! Wouldn't it be great if they'd all drown in their damn mucus? If you're quite through appraising the merchandise, you might get me the robe I asked for."
I still didn't move. "Merchandise," I said, regarding her boldly. "The word implies something for sale."
She looked at me for a moment. A kind of hardness came into her eyes. "Who said it wasn't? Are you making an offer, darling?"
"It depends," I said. "Are we dealing in cash or some other medium of exchange? I'm a government man, Bobbie. They don't pay us enough that we can afford to take on high-priced, Hollywood-type dames; at least not for money."
"You've got a gun, haven't you? You're supposed to know how to use it, aren't you? I need protection, don't I? From Frankie Warfel and… and maybe now from those other creeps as well. Why do you think I staged this nudie show, anyway?" There was a little silence. "Well, is it a deal?"
"Sure," I said. I licked my lips, as if they'd gone kind of dry, which they had. It was an automatic reaction that annoyed me. "Sure it's a deal," I said.
"Do you want to close it now?" Her voice was expressionless.
I shrugged. "Why not? No sense your putting on a lot of clothes just to take them all off again."
"Well, dump that junk off the bed while I lock the door," she said, very businesslike, and turned away.
I walked over to the bed and yanked everything off it except the bottom sheet and the pillow. When I turned, she was coming towards me, pulling the towel-turban off her hair, which spilled over her slender brown shoulders, pale and gleaming.