The Damsel

by Richard Stark

  Grofield left the Ford cautiously, looked around for activity, saw none, and walked back uphill to the first cross street. He turned right, hurried over to the next block, turned right, down a block, right again, and came back to the street he’d initially left. The Ford was now uphill to his right, the Datsun just around the corner to his left.

  There was no point worrying about the guy stationed downhill. The thing to do was clear the one near the car, which was parked facing uphill anyway, then get into the car fast and up the hill, pick up Elly, and get the hell out of town before Honner and the others could get themselves organized.

  So where was number two? Grofield approached the intersection cautiously, peeked around the corner, and there he was. Sitting on a doorstep directly across the street from the car, smoking a cigarette, looking idle and harmless. He could take a chance on sitting out there in the open like that because he was a new face; Grofield had never seen him before.

  Did that mean there were four of them now?

  No, it was more likely this was a replacement for the one they’d given the shock treatment. He was maybe not yet in condition for round two.

  But that Honner could replace him this fast, in Mexico City, was bad news. That he could do so meant Grofield could no longer be sure exactly how much manpower he was up against. Had it just been Honner and two other guys who’d checked the car-rental agencies and found out where he and the girl had gone, or did Honner have an unlimited supply of assistants?

  Once again, Grofield wished he knew more about what was going on here, what Elly had herself involved in.

  All right. Later. Right now, there was a new boy to be initiated. And in order to do it, Grofield had to walk all over the county, retracing his steps around the block and then going around the block on the far side so as to come back to this intersection from the opposite direction. He got there at last, peeked around the corner, and the new boy was just to his right, about ten feet away, still smoking and lazing and looking like local color. Except that the face came off the Brooklyn docks.

  Grofield stuck his head around the corner and said, “Psst!”

  The guy looked up, startled.

  Grofield showed him the Beretta. “You stand up slow,” he said softly, “and come around here for a get-acquainted chat.”

  The guy said, “I don’t know what you’re up to, buddy. You got me mistaken for somebody else.”

  “Oh no,” Grofield told him. “If I had you mistaken for somebody else, you wouldn’t know it. You’d think this was a holdup. To plead ignorance before the question has been asked is to reveal knowledge. Confucius says. Come on around the corner, honey, it’s hazing time for the new pledges.”

  The guy looked disgusted. He flicked away his cigarette—would that have been a signal to somebody?—and got to his feet and came around the corner, where Grofield hit him twice with the Beretta. Twice because the guy rolled with it the first time.

  And now Grofield was in a hurry. Honner was probably staked out downhill somewhere, and had surely seen his boy walk around the corner. He’d be coming to see what was what.

  Grofield came charging out from the cross street, unlocked the Datsun, jumped in, and was just putting the key in the ignition when he heard the scream.

  7

  GROFIELD SQUEALED the Datsun around the square, and suddenly they were right in front of him, frozen in the glare of the headlights, a tableau straight off the cover of a 1940 pulp magazine. Against a background of cobblestone street and dark old buildings, the slender blonde struggled in the grip of two men, two burly types in dark clothing. One of them was Honner, the other was a second new face.

  Grofield braked hard, stuck the Beretta out the window, and fired into the air, at the same time shouting, “Elly! Get over here!”

  The new man let go of Elly and ran for cover, out of range of the headlights. Honner, not giving up so easily, kept holding onto Elly until she kicked him three or four times, when he too let go. Elly dashed for the car.

  With her out of the way, Grofield snapped two quick shots at Honner, neither of which seemed to score. Honner, ducking low and fumbling inside his coat for a weapon of his own, ran away to the right toward the row of parked cars.

  Elly scrambled into the car, and Grofield had tromped down on the accelerator before she was fully in. Her door slammed, she said, “Wow!” and they careened on around the square and down the hill, headed for the road out of town.

  She tried to talk a couple of times, but was too out of breath, so she just sat there, half-turned so she could look back out the rear window. Grofield drove the way the Datsun people had never intended.

  After a while he said, “You’ve got to tell me what I’m up against. I can’t work blind like this; I make mistakes I don’t know about.”

  “What mistakes?” She was still somewhat out of breath, but better. “You did fine,” she said.

  “Sure I did. I figured the three we knew were all there was, so it was safe to leave you and go for the guys on plant around the car. But there were two new faces back there, honey, two of them.”

  “Don’t get mad at me, Alan, please.”

  “You damn fool.”

  “Please.”

  Now that they were safe again for the moment, Grofield’s irritation was growing like Topsy. “What have you got me up against, damn it? A whole army?”

  “No. Not an army, honest.”

  “What, then?”

  “I wish I could tell you,” she said. “Maybe I can Friday, when this is all over.”

  “It may be over a lot sooner than Friday,” he said.

  She took a quick look out the rear window, but there was no other traffic on the road. “Why?” she said. “They can’t follow us now.”

  “I’m not talking about them, I’m talking about us.”

  “You mean, you’ll walk out on me.”

  “Walk, hell, I’ll run. I’d fly if I could.”

  “This afternoon you—”

  “This afternoon we wound up in bed. Which we both had known would happen since the first minute we looked at one another. It had nothing to do with anything else. You didn’t climb into my bed as part of a contract for me to stay with you till Friday, and I didn’t service you in order to keep you with me either.”

  “Service!”

  “That’s the word for it.”

  “You can be a first-class grade-A bastard when you want, can’t you?”

  “You send me in to fight three guys and I’m up against the goddamn Light Brigade. Don’t talk about bastards.”

  She folded her arms, demonstrating a czarist contempt, and stared out the side window.

  They drove the rest of the way to the hotel in silence.

  As they were getting out of the car she said, “You know, I rented this car. If we split up, it goes with me.”

  “Take it with my blessing. You can drop me off at the first city we come to.”

  “I’ll drop you off right here, you mean.”

  “Don’t get smart-ass, Ellen Marie.”

  “You’re a hateful man. You’re the most hateful man I ever met.”

  He walked away from her, went to his room, and unlocked the door. Inside, he left the door open and started to pack. He had the keys to the Datsun in his pocket, so he wasn’t worried about her taking off without him.

  The other two guns and the three wallets were in his new suitcase. He took the usable papers from the wallets, threw the wallets in the wastebasket, stowed the papers in a pocket of the suitcase, and put the two extra guns in the pockets of his new raincoat. Then he packed everything else, leaving the raincoat out to be carried separately.

  She came into the room as he was shutting the lid. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He looked at her, and she was being the little girl again, this time practically Baby Snooks. “Sorry again?” he asked her. “It must be a rough life, being sorry for this and that all the time.”

  “But I am sorry,” she said. She came o
ver and sat down on the bed. “I was just upset, because of those men grabbing me and all.”

  “You’re about as trustworthy,” he told her, “as a pool shark. Cut out the innocent and frightened bit, I’m wise to you.”

  “I’m not faking, Alan, honest I’m not. I am innocent, in some ways, and you can bet your bottom dollar I’m frightened.”

  “And you can bet your bottom dollar we’re through.”

  “Alan—”

  “All up,” he said.

  The little girl turned on a little sex. “Please?”

  “Kaput,” he said. He picked up the two suitcases. “Better get your stuff into the car. They’ll be out here looking for us sooner or later.”

  “Alan, please.”

  He left the room, went over to the car, and stuffed his luggage onto the back seat. Then he stood beside the car, waiting.

  She came over without her bags. “It’s a beautiful night,” she said.

  “Oh, bushwah. Will you cut it out?”

  “If those two hadn’t jumped me, we wouldn’t be fighting, would we? We’d have come back here and had that moonlight swim—there is a moon, did you even notice it?—and then—”

  “Yeah, there’s a moon,” he said. “A nice thin sliver. And a great big pool full of warm water. And a darling bed. And neither one of us would last till Friday, because you don’t have brains enough to let me know what’s going on so I can tell what to do about it.”

  “Alan—”

  “I leave here in two minutes,” he said, looking at his watch. “With you or without you.”

  “Alan, I want to tell you!”

  He stood silent, ostentatiously following the sweep second hand of his watch.

  “We can keep away from them now. Mexico’s a big country, we can go wherever we want, they’ll never find us.”

  He ignored her.

  “We had a bargain,” she said.

  “It’s off.”

  “Alan, please!”

  “One minute,” he said. “Better get your bags.”

  “How could you be sure I was telling you the truth? How do you know I wouldn’t just lie to you again?”

  He looked up from the watch. “If it sounds like a lie,” he said, “I’ll ditch you. And I think I can tell when you’re lying to me. I’ve seen better liars.”

  She waved her arms in a helpless gesture. “All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you.”

  8

  “I DON’T KNOW where to begin,” she said, looking gloomily at the dashboard.

  Grofield glanced away from the road. “That sounds like the preamble to a non-truth,” he said. “Watch it.”

  “Oh, I’ll tell the truth,” she said. “Don’t worry about that.” She sounded fatalistic, the last defenses gone.

  They were on the road, heading north. Rather than wait around at the hotel while listening to whatever she was going to have to say to him, Grofield had had her get her luggage and stow it away, and now they were moving again. She could tell him her story while he drove.

  He’d taken a quick look at the road map, and decided to make for San Luis Potosí, a medium-size city about a hundred twenty-five miles away. They’d take this secondary road north to Dolores Hidalgo, then another secondary road back out to the main highway, Route 57 again, and then straight north to San Luis Potosí.

  Now, as they drove along, she was supposed to be telling him at last what was going on, but after the doubtful preamble, she stayed glum and silent, gazing at the dashboard.

  “The last I heard from you,” he said, to prompt her, “you didn’t know where to begin.”

  “I was just trying to get it all straight in my head,” she said. She looked at him, her expression somber in the light from the dashboard. “I hope you really can tell when I’m lying and when I’m not lying, because I’m terribly afraid this is going to sound like the biggest lie of all.”

  “Try me.”

  “All right.” She took a deep breath, and said, “The best place to start, I guess, is with Governor Harrison. Governor Luke Harrison, of Pennsylvania. He used to be governor, a few years ago, but the title sticks.”

  “That’s our lead character, then,” Grofield said. “Governor Luke Harrison of Pennsylvania.”

  “I’m not telling you a lie!”

  “What?” He glanced at her, and she was clearly upset. Looking back at the road he said, “Oh, you mean because I said lead character? I meant nothing by that, I was only using trade idiom. Remember, by profession I’m an actor.”

  “An actor? You mean, for real?”

  “Let’s not lose the thread, honey, I’ll show you my scrapbook later. We were, when last seen, studying a close-up of Governor Luke Harrison. Of Pennsylvania.”

  “Yes. I . . . I’d better tell you about him, something about the way he is, so you’ll understand the rest of it.”

  “By all means.”

  “He’s one of the richest men in the state, in the first place, maybe the richest. He owns mines, and he’s in steel production, and his family has owned a lot of property around Philadelphia since before the Civil War.”

  “Money and social status?”

  “If he wanted it, yes. He’s what Philadelphia calls Main Line.”

  “I know that. The New York equivalent is, or used to be, the Four Hundred.”

  “Yes. But the thing is, he inherited all of it, the money and the position and everything. And he’s a dynamic, man, a forceful man, he’s . . . he’s almost frightening to be near, there’s so much energy in him, so much drive.”

  “You know him personally, then.”

  There was the faintest of hesitations, and then, in a flat voice she said, “Yes.”

  “All right. A dynamo with inherited money and social position. The way that usually runs, the guy goes into politics just to work off the excess energy. He can afford to be a liberal, because they’re taxing him at ninety-one percent anyway, and the consciousness of the stuff that he got on a silver platter makes him one of those forthright fighters for the common man. Raise the minimum wage, increase unemployment insurance, give more aid to education, it’s up to government to solve the problems and make the world more beautiful.”

  “Perfect,” she said. “That’s exactly the kind of man he was. Is.”

  “I’ll do you another one,” Grofield told her. “In the old days, when government changed hands, it went back and forth between the machine boss and the reform group. Thirty years of the machine, two years of reform, thirty years of the same old machine, and so on. But not anymore. These days, it goes back and forth between the economizers and the social workers. I’ll bet your boy took over from a guy whose boast was that he’d balanced the state budget.”

  She smiled, though reluctantly. “Right again,” she said. “And lost the next election to a man who promised to cut state taxes. Did you guess all that, or did you used to live in Pennsylvania?”

  “Wherever I live, I take no interest in politics. Except in the abstract, of course. Shall we get back to the story?”

  “Yes.” She smiled again, wanly, and said, “You don’t know how much I’d rather not talk about it. But if I must— For God’s sake, Alan, don’t ever use this. Don’t ever say anything to anybody, don’t ever—”

  “Scout’s honor. The story.”

  “All right. Back to Governor Harrison. He only had the one term as governor, and then he tried to turn a favorite-son Presidential nomination into a real nomination. It didn’t work, and he got a lot of the bigwigs in the party sore at him, so when he wanted to run for Senator from Pennsylvania, he didn’t get the nomination.”

  “Many are called, but few are chosen.”

  The comment, tossed off as a glib space-filler, seemed to intrigue her. “Do you think so? Maybe you’re right, maybe that’s what it is.”

  “I have the feeling,” he said, in order to get her back on the track, “that Governor Luke Harrison isn’t ready to retire, and is still struggling for public office somewhere
. Mayor of Philadelphia?”

  “Oh, no. He has too much pride for that, he can’t possibly take any job smaller than what he’s already had.”

  “So he’s moved out of politics into something else.”

  “Not exactly. For the last several years he hasn’t done much of anything. He’s run charity funds and so on, he was involved in some sort of educational organization for the UN, he had an advisory post in Washington for a while, but nothing full, nothing solid, nothing to use up all his interest and energy.”

  “Description of a powder keg,” said Grofield.

  She nodded. “Yes. About to explode.”

  “Now we get to you.”

  “Not yet. There are other people in this. Governor Harrison’s son Bob. He’s twenty-nine years old, and for the past seven years he’s been personal press secretary to General Pozos.”

  She’d said that last name as though she assumed Grofield would recognize it, but he didn’t. “General Pozos? Never had the pleasure.”

  “Oh, you must have heard of him. He’s the dictator of Guerrero.”

  “Strike two.”

  “Really? It’s a country in Central America. You’ve never heard of it?”

  “If I have, I don’t remember. But all right, I’ll take your word for it. General Pozos is dictator of Guerrero. Is that what they call him? Dictator?”

  “Oh no. Officially he’s El Presidente. There was an election and everything. In 1937. And any year now, as soon as they get the constitution ready, there’ll be new elections and the provisional government will be replaced by a permanent democratic government.”

  “Since 1937.”

  “Yes.”

  Grofield nodded. “They don’t like to rush into things.”

  “Haste makes waste.”

  “Right. Back on the beam, now. So far, we’ve got Governor

  Harrison in Pennsylvania, full of energy and out of work. We’ve got his son doing what?”

  “Press secretary. Public relations, that means. Trying to get the General a better press in the United States, mostly.”