‘Well, it’s very unhygienic,’ said Perri. ‘Not wearing shoes, I mean. You could pick up all kinds of foot diseases.’
Star looked at her. She was mesmerically pretty, and Perri felt that she could almost have drowned in those wide, slate-grey eyes.
Star whispered, ‘I shall be as quiet, as quiet as a tiny mouse.’
Perri took a deep breath.
‘Please? Pretty please?’ Star said.
Perri, for a moment, felt at a loss for words. She never had had anyone make such an openly sexual advance to her before, and in spite of her uncertainty and her irritation, she found herself fascinated. Star had something about her which was so erotic that it didn’t seem to matter if she was a girl or a boy. She had a magical magnetism, as if she was a changeling, or the offspring of some forbidden love between goblins and humans. Perri found herself wondering what it would actually be like to be lesbian, or at the very least bisexual, and touch a girl like this. Kiss her, and hold her small rounded breasts in the palm of her hand.
It’s my vanity, she thought. My vanity, and the tension and fears of being in love with a priest.
‘I really think it’s better if you leave. I’m sorry.’
Star lowered her long eyelashes. ‘I see. Then you don’t really like me.’
‘I don’t know you. How can I tell if I like you or not?’
Star lifted her face. ‘You could trust me. That’s the first step to liking somebody.’
‘Why should I trust you? You broke into my apartment,’ Perri asked.
‘Yes, but I didn’t steal anything. And I waited for you.’
Perri sat down on the vinyl settee, and Star knelt down beside her. They looked at each other carefully and warily. Then Perri said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m flattered if you find me attractive, I really am. But if I let you get involved with me – well, you’d only wind up getting hurt. I’m in love with a man, and that’s all there is to it.’
Star leaned close to Perri. ‘I love you, Perri. Doesn’t that count for anything?’
‘It’s crazy. You don’t even know what I’m like. How can you love me?’
‘Kiss me, Perri,’ she whispered. ‘Kiss me once, and then I’ll go. Just kiss me once so that I can remember it.’
Perri shook her head. ‘No, Star. All I want you to do is go.’
‘Oh, God, kiss me once, just kiss me once,’ moaned Star, with her eyes closed. She began to tug at her shorts, pulling them up so that they cut even deeper.
‘For God’s sake—’ Perri said.
It happened in a split second. Perri started to rise up off the settee, but Star lunged forward and kissed her full on the mouth. More than that, she seized Perri’s right hand and pressed it right up between her legs. Urgently, instinctively, Perri tried to pull her hand away, but Star held her wrist tight, smearing her fingers against her moist flesh.
At that moment, the room was blotted out by the brilliant blue light of a photo-flash.
Perri slapped at Star, and tugged her hand free. She turned around just in time to see a man in a light-coloured linen suit and a Panama hat walking unhurriedly down the hallway towards the front door. He opened it, and stepped out into the darkness. Perri stood in the centre of the room, appalled and frightened, and then she turned back to Star.
Star was already pulling her shorts down so that they didn’t reveal as much of her pubic hair as they had before, and straightening her denim vest.
Perri said, ‘Star
Star looked up, and gave her a mischievous grin.
‘You set me up for that, didn’t you?’ demanded Perri.
‘Sure.’
‘You admit it? You actually have the barefaced nerve to sit there, in my apartment, and admit it?’
‘Sure.’
‘All right, why?’
Star smiled, but the smile was matter-of-fact now, and all the pretended passion had vanished.
‘It wasn’t my idea, Perri. It really wasn’t.’
‘You really think I’m going to believe you?’
‘You have to believe me.’
‘Why? You broke into my apartment and set me up for some cheap blackmail picture and you expect me to believe you?’
‘Perri,’ Star said, soothingly. ‘Can’t you guess who thought of it?’.
‘I’m damned if I can. Who would have the gall to—’
She stopped herself. Star was smiling at her, gentle and fey and still outrageously erotic.
‘It wasn’t Hilary, was it?’
Star only smiled.
Perri sat down again. ‘Now I get it. Hilary Nestor Hunter. She paid you to come here, right? She even gave you my address.’
‘She gave me fifty bucks. But you’re real nice, you know. I would have done it for nothing if I’d known how nice you were.’
Perri felt chilled. ‘Does Hilary really think that I’m that much of a threat? Can’t she be satisfied with voting me down, instead of dragging me down? There was only a thin chance of my winning that motion tomorrow, and she knows it as well as I do.’
‘Well,’ grinned Star, ‘I just don’t know about all that. All I know is what Ms. Hunter told me to do.’ Perri looked at her frigidly. ‘I see. Well, since you’ve done it, and very successfully, you’d better get out of here before I have you thrown out.’
Star said, ‘There’s one more thing. A message.’
‘What message?’
‘It’s simple,’ Star told her. ‘Hilary says that if you don’t withdraw your motion tomorrow, then she’s going to make sure this picture gets around.’
‘Well, you can tell her I don’t give a damn.’
‘Hilary says you have to remember that if the gay delegates see the picture, they’ll probably vote against you because they’ll think you’ve been hiding your lesbianism in the closet. And if the straight delegates see it, they’ll vote against you because they’ll think you’re gay.’
Perri shook out another cigarette. ‘I’ll take my chances, thank you. Tell her to show the picture to anyone she likes.’
Star brushed back her long shiny hair, and smiled ruefully. ‘Hilary said to remind you that none of this would do Father Leonard much good, whoever Father Leonard is.’
Perri stared at her. ‘What does Hilary know about Father Leonard?’
‘I don’t know,’ shrugged Star. ‘But she told me to make a point of mentioning him.’
Perri’s mouth felt dry. She just stared at Star as the girl picked up her purse from behind the settee and blew Perri a kiss. ‘So long,’ she said, and padded off up the hallway on her bare feet. She opened the front door, and was gone.
Three
Early Thursday afternoon they caught David Radetzky as he was crossing the state line from Nevada into California, on highway 52 through the Pahrump Valley. He had been driving his white Monarch at ninety miles an hour for three hours, a high tail of dust rising behind him as he sped away from Las Vegas.
The day was dazzlingly hot, and David drove with the air-conditioning at full blast, his eyes screwed up against the dusty glare of the road. His short-sleeved shirt was soaked in frigid sweat, and he chewed gum like an animal trying to bite its own leg off to get out of a trap.
On the seat beside him lay the spool of tape on which he had recorded Senator Chapman’s incriminating conversation with Lollie Methven. On the centre console, rattling slightly as he drove, rested a Smith 8c Wesson .38 police revolver.
David and Duke and Juan had abandoned their room just below the Pompadour Suite as soon as they realised that Lollie was giving the game away. Duke had taken the videotape and headed back to California on Interstate 15. Juan, with the movie films, had headed northwest to Reno so that he could cross the state line at Lake Tahoe. David had opted for a fast but (he hoped) unexpected escape through the Nopah mountains to Shoshone.
The highway was deserted for miles, except for occasional trucks. His hands perspired on the steering-wheel as he slewed the Monarch around long mountainside curves with it
s tyres shrieking and its suspension bucking. He counted the miles to California, and chewed savagely at his gum, and prayed to God that the wrath of the senior Senator from Minnesota wouldn’t be able to catch up with him. He had heard Chapman mention the name ‘Domani,’ and he knew what that meant. Eugenio Domani was one of Las Vegas’s inner circle of mobsters, with a fondness for horseracing, maiming, and blinding, in that order. If Chapman had a man like that for a friend, then David felt he would rather be out of Nevada and into California as fast as he could. California was David’s home turf, and there were plenty of people there to help him, not least amongst them the Highway Patrol.
He was tempted to put out a call for assistance on his CB, but until he crossed the state line, he thought it was wiser to keep radio silence. He didn’t know how wide Chapman’s influence was cast, but he knew that Domani ran the southwest corner of Nevada as if it was his own vegetable patch.
He glanced at his gas gauge and saw that it was reading a little under half-empty. But he should be able to make Shoshone without any difficulty, and tank up there. He suddenly realised his chewing-gum was all chewed out of flavour, and he put down the window and tossed it out on to the road. He wished he wasn’t so damned tense.
This was the kind of situation he had always feared. For years, in his single bed in his neat, tobacco-coloured apartment in West Los Angeles, he had had nightmares of getting involved with hoodlums and big-time mobsters. He was a precise, experienced private detective, with a systematic way of working which sometimes took longer but almost always brought results. He didn’t want to get himself tangled up in those dangerous and unpredictable cases that usually ended up in injury or death.
He looked across at the spool of tape. He was almost tempted to throw it out in the desert and forget about it. But that wasn’t going to solve any problems, neither America’s problems nor his. It seemed that what he had on that tape was at least as deadly and volatile as Watergate, and somebody was going to have to be told about it. He was scared, but it gave him a strange kind of high, thinking that he was responsible for something so important. Maybe, when everything was tied up and Chapman was arraigned for criminal conspiracy, the newspapers would write about this ninety-mile-an-hour drive from Las Vegas like the ride of Paul Revere. He just wished it was all over, and he could stop sweating.
He switched on the car radio. Reception wasn’t too clear out here, because of the mountains and the heat. But through the fizz of static, he could hear President Carter talking about the neutron bomb. He listened for a while, as the desert flashed past him and the road unwound beneath the wheels of his car like a dusty black ribbon, and then he switched over to an easy-listening station.
He was ten or twelve minutes from the state line. What he didn’t see was the Bell B-47 helicopter skirting the hills behind him from the direction of Potosi Mountain. It was flying fast and low, glinting in the afternoon sunlight, tracking the tail of dust that rose from the back of his car, but keeping well out of sight. As the Monarch zigzagged down a long series of bends that took the road down into the Pahrump Valley, the helicopter hovered and danced behind the rocks, and then sped off again like a dragonfly as the car reached the straight highway on the valley floor.
Val, in a garish red-and-orange sport shirt, was piloting. Beside him, in well-pressed white slacks, clean white shoes and a white half-sleeved shirt, sat Umberto, with a .47 calibre big game rifle held upright between his knees.
Umberto pointed a few miles across the valley to a rising curve in the road, and told Val, ‘There. Take me down behind the curve, where he can’t see me.’
‘I don’t know why we just don’t swoop right down and blow off his head,’ Val said.
‘Because it’s dangerous and stupid, that’s why,’ Umberto said coldly.
‘We never do anything with style. We’re always playing it safe,’ Val grumbled.
‘That’s because Senator Chapman wants it that way.’
‘Senator Chapman! What does he know?’
Umberto shrugged. ‘He knows enough to be President, and that’s good enough for me. Now, let’s get over there before we lose our chance.’
Chased by its shadow across the scrub, the Bell sped towards the distant rise in the ground. Umberto glanced across the valley from time to time, checking the distant white speck of David Radetzky’s car. They had overhauled it in a matter of seconds, and then they clattered over the rising ground and circled around towards the highway.
Umberto indicated a left-hand curve in the road, still out of David Radetzky’s sight. ‘Set me down here. Then back olf and land behind those hills,’ he ordered.
Val brought the helicopter down by the roadside, whipping up a hurricane of dust. The deafening chock-chock-chock of its rotors gradually slowed, and Umberto unbuckled himself and opened the door. He clipped a radio-transmitter to his belt, and took six extra shells, which he buttoned neatly into his top pocket. He checked his Seamaster watch.
‘Radetzky should be here in two or three minutes. Make sure you’re well out of sight. I don’t want the helicopter damaged if there’s any shooting. If I don’t report back in ten minutes, come looking for me.’
Val grinned. ‘You’re going to blow his head off, huh?’ Umberto lifted the rifle out of the helicopter. ‘That’s right. Just for you, I’m going to blow his head off.’
He closed the cockpit door, and then loped quickly for shelter as the helicopter’s motor roared, and the rotors beat at the hot, dusty afternoon air. He waited until the Bell had risen a hundred feet, and clattered away towards the hills, and then he walked along by the roadside until he reached a solitary road sign which read Dangerous Curve.
Umberto took out a clean white handkerchief and dabbed the dust and the perspiration from his forehead. Then he checked his watch again. At ninety miles an hour, David Radetzky’s car would reach the curve in about one minute twenty seconds. He would be a fast target to hit – faster than any of the animals his rifle had been designed to bring down. But three factors would slow him up as he approached the spot where Umberto was standing: the curve, the rise in gradient, and the sun which would suddenly shine in his eyes as he came speeding into view. All these would make for an easier shot, although Umberto was not unduly worried. Even at a hundred miles an hour, David Radetzky’s car would only be travelling at 140.8 feet per second, and that, in relation to a 300-grain bullet travelling at 1,861.5 feet per second, was almost standing still.
The road was suddenly quiet. The noise of the helicopter had dwindled and died now, as Val set it down behind the hills. The wind blew only softly, streaking the blacktop with dust, and there was only the muted chirping of insects in the scrub. Umberto chambered a round into the breech of his rifle. The sound of the bolt clicking into place was almost embarrassingly loud.
Barely audible in the distance was the murmur of a car engine, and the swishing of tyres on a dusty road surface. Umberto took out his handkerchief again and wiped the palms of his hands. Then he rested his back against the road sign, and raised the rifle so that it pointed towards the approximate area where David Radetzky’s car would appear.
The sound of the car engine grew louder.
At that moment, only a half-mile away from the curve, Umberto was still hidden from David Radetzky by the wind-eroded rocks that bordered it on each side. David’s foot was almost flat down to the floor now, and he was driving in the centre of the highway at a hundred and ten. He kept checking his rear-view mirror to see if anyone was behind him, but he knew that they couldn’t have gone after him soon enough or fast enough to catch up.
He reached over and switched on his CB. In a few moments, he’d be speeding over the Nevada-California state line, and then he was going to put in a call to his friends of the Highway Patrol straight away. The sooner he offloaded that tape, the better he was going to feel.
He’d gotten hold of incriminating evidence quite a few times before, and he’d usually managed to sell it back to the guilty parties for
a substantial profit. But this time, he knew that he didn’t have the nerve to start making deals. He could have tried to blackmail Carl Chapman, or sell the details of the Sweetman Curve to the Democrats. He could have called up Woodward and Bernstein, and asked them if they wanted the greatest news story since Watergate.
But Carl Chapman’s whole career was tied up with the Sweetman Curve, and David knew that he wasn’t going to take at all kindly to anyone who attempted to put the squeeze on him. David had a nagging fear, although he wouldn’t really admit it to himself, that Lollie Methven was already dead, or at least maimed, and he wouldn’t have bet much on Duke’s chances either, out on the interstate highway.
Umberto raised his rifle, settled it against his shoulder, and took aim down the long barrel. One minute and thirty-seconds had elapsed since he had alit from the helicopter.
David eased his foot off the gas as he came nearer the curve. He was about to reach over to change radio stations but the sun suddenly dazzled him and he raised his hand to fold down his sun-visor instead.
It happened in seconds. Umberto was resting against the Dangerous Curve sign, tense and ready, when the white Monarch abruptly appeared. He squeezed the trigger once, and the .41 bullet, almost half-an-inch in diameter, burst through the car’s windshield and exploded straight through David’s upraised hand.
The car snaked across the highway in an agonized skid, and collided tail-first with the rocks at the side of the verge. Then it slewed back across the road, with David desperately wrenching at the steering-wheel with his one good hand. The car shrieked like something alive, scoring the dusty road with twisted curves of black rubber.
Umberto smoothly turned around, resighted his rifle, and fired again. The bullet punched into the trunk, but missed the gas tank. He fired once more and the rear window smashed. He fired a fourth time, and a rear tyre flapped into black ribbons.
The Sweetman Curve Page 22
