“Me, too?”
He laughed softly, his fingers searching adroitly for the beginning of another tune. “You, baby? You’ve got more surprises than Pandora’s box.”
“That was the box with all the world’s troubles in it, wasn’t it?”
“That’s the one.”
“You think I’m full of trouble, Terry?”
“For me, you are. For me, you’re trouble in spades. That ought to be obvious. Because you’re a lovely, lovely hunk of stuff, and you’re Guy Sebastian’s. Guy doesn’t like the hired help feeling possessive about his property.”
“You afraid of Guy?”
He laughed again, shortly. “I’m supposed to say no? I’m supposed to push out my chest like a Rover Boy? You know the right answer. Hell, yes, I’m afraid of Guy! I’m afraid of him the same way you’re afraid of him. The same way any little guy is afraid of any big guy with money and power and the ruthlessness to throw them around.”
She slipped around the curve of the grand piano and sat on the bench beside him. “Little guys grow.”
His fingers moved out of one tune, into another. “There’s something else, baby. There’s the fact that Guy’s been a pretty good friend.”
“Don’t be a fool, Terry. Guy doesn’t have friends. Like you said, he has property. I don’t get it, Terry. A bright guy like you, with a big chunk of education. What are you doing here?”
“Haven’t you heard? I’m Guy Sebastian’s secretary.”
“Don’t play, coy with me.” Her mouth sagged at the corners, losing for a moment its beautiful lines. “You’re no more a secretary than I am. You’re a deluxe errand boy. Pleasant presence and fancy talk. We’re both the same. Figure a name for me, and we’ll share it.”
His fingers went on with the thin, tinsel tune. Hadn’t the knowledge been a sickness in his soul for the eight long months past? He shrugged. “Regrets, Liza?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it depends on you. You haven’t answered my question.”
“Why I’m here? I could ask the same of you.”
“If you did, I’d tell you.”
“I’m a lazy guy with no special ambition and no incentive to make big stuff of his little talents… And, well—all tyrants have guys like me around, Liza. Hitler had one to play the piano and tell jokes…”
“As simple as that?”
“That’s right. And now it’s your turn.”
“It’s a matter of values, I guess,” she said slowly. “It’s a matter of overestimating the things you’re born without. Things like mink and money and all this. You want them, you go after them. You work the only way you can—by investing natural assets. For a long time after you get them, you think they’re good enough. But then something comes along to let you know they’re not. Something, or someone. Can you play My Desire, Terry?”
His brain said no, but his fingers wouldn’t listen. They ran a scale and worked back down into the tune.
“It’s for you and me, that tune. You know it’s for you and me,” she said softly. He let the tune die, and turned on the bench to face her. Her pale blond hair fell forward from a low side part, to cast her face in shadow.
He saw again the perfect structure of bone beneath perfect skin, and he told himself again, for the thousandth time, not to be a fool.
“Don’t say it, baby. Even to say it means the end of luck.”
“Maybe not. Maybe we could get Guy to see it our way.”
“He’d crucify us and you know it. He’d nail us on the wall and celebrate with a wake.”
“You’ve got to believe in luck…”
“We’d never get away with it. Never in the world,” he said.
“We could talk to Guy together…”
He took her by the shoulders and pushed her roughly away. Getting up from the bench, he moved around the piano and stood with his back to her.
After a while, he turned and went back to her and found that she was standing waiting quietly.
He said harshly, “Forget it, Liza.”
She moved against him.
“Tell me how, Terry. Tell me how to forget.”
He couldn’t, because he didn’t know, and suddenly his right hand moved up into her hair against the back of her skull, mashing her mouth upon his with hungry brutality.
She whispered, “Terry, Terry…”
He tore her mouth away, pressing her head forward and down against his shoulder.
“So you don’t forget, baby. So you just remember how it might have been if things were different.”
Her head turned, her lips moving against his neck. “You always call me baby. Call me darling, Terry. Just once, call me darling.”
His voice was distorted with harshness, wrenched from his throat in the anger that comes with frustration. “Darling’s a word. It’s as cheap as ten thousand others. Darling Liza. Darling, darling, darling. Is that enough to pay you for the way we’ll die if Guy Sebastian gets any idea of this?”
She slipped away from him.
“You make him sound pretty grim, Terry. Guy. I mean.”
He laughed again without humor and took shoulders in his two hands.
“You trying to kid yourself, baby? If you are, you’d better quit. Guy Sebastian’s strictly a no-limit operator. How do you think he got all this fancy stuff you and I have been living with? Why do you think things happen when he says a word? Because he plays a horse now and then? Because he puts something on the books when the odds are right? You know better than that. These things are just to pass the time.
“He knows a lot of people in a lot of places. It might surprise you, the places those people are. It might surprise you even more to know where the big profits come from. You and I, we’re nothing. If we don’t watch out, we’ll be two stiffs in an alley, and no questions asked.”
“What does that make us, Terry?” she asked. “If Guy’s a louse, what does that make us? Funny that I never wondered before.”
“It makes us two parasites on a louse,” he said quietly, releasing her shoulders. “It’s getting late. Pretty soon this place will be swarming with people looking for drinks. You’d better get yourself sharp. Guy likes you to be a credit to him, you know.”
“I know.” She went back to the piano and picked up the purse she’d deposited when she came in. “When are you going to be on the level with me? When are you going to tell me why you’re really here?” The sudden desire to tell her the truth was an almost irresistible temptation. And he wanted to tell her to start running. But he only said, “I told you. I’m an educated flunkey. Self-made big shots always like to have one around. It keeps their egos fat.” Signifying defeat by the slight sag of her mouth, she rounded the piano and went out a door beyond it into the hall.
He stood without moving, hearing the receding tap of her high heels on asphalt tile, and when the sound was gone, he went down to the west windows and stood looking out across a wide terrace to the ragged skyline.
He was still there five minutes later when one of Guy Sebastian’s stony-faced servants materialized soundlessly at his elbow. Without moving, Terry angled a look over the corner of his shoulder into eyes as flat and depthless as metal disks.
“The boss wants you. In his office.”
“Okay.” Terry returned his gaze to the skyline, now darkening and grim.
The stony-faced servant said, “Now.”
Terry shrugged and went down the long room. In the hall, he took the stairs that ascended in a broad sweep to the second floor. Continuing on the level, he knocked on a door at the rear of the hall and the voice of Guy Sebastian invited him to come in. It was a peculiar voice, distorted and coarse and strangely modulated, as if its softness was intended to minimize its ugliness.
Terry responded to the invitation.
The man who stood in the center of the room to receive him was no more than average height, but he managed to give the impression of added inches. He was dressed in a conservative gray suit that was tailored to fit his
body, not to disguise it. His hair was faded brown, wiry in texture, cropped close to a round skull. The face was aggressive, thrusting itself boldly in the lines of nose and jaw.
The distorted voice said, “Hello, Terry. Find a chair.”
Terry sank into foam rubber and waited. Sebastian, balanced catlike on the balls of feet slightly spread, lifted in a slight gesture the glass he held.
“Drink, boy?”
“No, thanks. I’ll have too many before the night’s over.”
“Sure. You’re smart not to let them get ahead of you.” Sebastian turned and crossed to an immense bleached oak desk. Leaning against it, tilting his glass against his mouth, he looked at Terry over an arc of rim. The eyes were casual. “How long have you been around, Terry?”
“In the organization, eight months,” he said. “Here in your apartment, about six.”
“Not mine. Ours. I told you when I moved you in that you were to use it like it was your own. You remember that?”
“Sure, Guy, I remember it. You know I appreciate it.”
The thin shadow of a smile flickered beneath the bold nose. “You know why I had you move in? Because I liked you. You’re a smooth, easy-to-like guy. It gives me kicks to have you around. I’ve got big plans for you a little later. In the meantime, though, maybe you misunderstood me a little. Maybe I didn’t make myself clear. I meant just the use of the apartment. I didn’t mean everything in it. You straight now, boy?”
He was straight, all right. He was straight enough to understand that he and Liza had been spotted in the clinch.
He closed his eyes and said, “She’s a beautiful gal, Guy. Beautiful enough to entitle anybody to one mistake.”
He sat there with his eyes closed, wondering if it had been the right response. And after a while he heard a soft sigh from Guy Sebastian, and he knew that it had been right.
“I’ve been a good friend, haven’t I, Terry? It’d be a shame to change it. Like you say, one mistake. Just one.”
Terry opened his eyes. He was amazed to learn that a man could, without physical exertion, become completely exhausted in a couple of minutes.
CHAPTER 2
A few days later, Terry was thinking over all this in a bar around the corner from a burlesque theater. On the wall behind him were dozens of slick stills: the cuties who took it off for a living. Someone crawled onto the stool on his right and said, “Mine’s better, Terry. My chassis, I mean.”
He set his glass down carefully on the bar. “I’ll bet it is,” he said. “What I’ve seen of it, I admire. I admire it very much. But I like it living, not dead. Incidentally, I like my own, such as it is, the same way. Now go away, please, Liza.”
“That isn’t a very nice welcome.”
“Look, baby, I’ve told you. I’ve spelled it out so a kid could get it. Listen carefully, and I’ll try again. After our little interlude the other day, Guy Sebastian had me in for a drink and a lesson in manners.”
“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
“Oh, sure. Famous last words. For your information, there isn’t a hell of a lot that Guy Sebastian doesn’t know. About the things that concern him personally, there isn’t anything at all be doesn’t know. Besides, what about me? What about the things I’d know? I don’t usually object to sharing what I have, but some things I like to keep private. I’m greedy that way.”
“You’re a proud guy, Terry. Me, I’ve got no pride left. I want you any way I can get you. Even on shares.”
His voice was defensively harsh. “Look. I’m just a so-so guy. Not even so-so, really. A parasite on a louse, I think we decided. I don’t rate a grand passion. On me, it looks funny. Now be a good girl and peddle your fleshpots to the guy who buys the mink.”
“I’d give it all back, Terry. He can have it all back and welcome—the mink, the diamonds, all the fancy junk together. I’m leveling, Terry. For maybe the first time in my life, I’m honest-to-God leveling. I followed you here to this dump just to tell you. Just to try to get you to see it. We could run, dear, if we had to. It’s a great big wide world, and Guy Sebastian can’t be everywhere in it.”
“Anywhere he’s not, he can damn soon get.” He turned away from her, looking into his empty glass through the drying traces of stale scum. Then he spun back to face her. “I’ve tried to be nice about it. I’ve tried to be a little gentleman. Now let’s get straight for good. You’ve got plenty of attractive stuff to offer. Ordinarily the possibilities for fun would be overwhelming. Ordinarily, I’d be eager to play. But not the way things are now.”
She slipped off the stool and stood silently beside him. He returned his eyes to the glass and waited for her to leave. After a long time, he felt her hand on his arm. Her voice was a hoarse whisper.
“You mean it? You really mean it?”
“I mean it. If you want, you can make me sweat for it. If you want, you can foul me up with Guy. If it comes to liquidation, there’s not much question about whether it’d be you or me.”
She backed off a couple of steps. “You believe I’d do it. Frame you with Guy just to salve the wounds you’ve made in my precious pride? I told you I didn’t have any pride left. And anyway, I’d never do you any harm if I could help it. I’d never do it, Terry.”
Then she turned and went out, and he pushed the empty glass across the bar and said. “Draw another.”
The bartender filled his glass and raked off suds with the back of a knife. He slid the glass down the wet surface deftly.
A thin man in a loose cord suit had claimed the stool on Terry’s left. He was wearing a soiled panama hat that looked too big for his head, and the skin of his face had the same loose look as his suit. The skin was tinged with yellow, almost jaundiced in appearance. The man ordered a beer and waited until the bartender had moved out of hearing range.
“Who’s the dame?” he said.
“Her name’s Liza Gray. Guy Sebastian’s fiancée.”
“How come she was here?”
“Followed me, I guess.”
The man said, “Oh?” He swallowed beer and waited.
Terry shrugged angrily. “I guess you listened in. You heard what she said.”
“I heard, all right. You think she’s straight?”
“Maybe.”
“She suspect anything?”
“I don’t think so. At any rate, nothing like the truth.”
“You think she could have been set onto you by Sebastian?”
“No.”
“We’ve been building this up for a long time, Terry. Too long to have it wrecked by a dame.”
“I know how long it’s been. No one knows better.”
“Sure. You’ve done a neat job. You any farther along with Sebastian? Any indication of letting you inside?”
“No. I’m strictly for kicks. I run errands and stuff. Most of all I jazz up the great ego. I pick up information, however.”
“I know, I know. It’s been tough. Now it’ll be tougher. We’ll have to do it the hard way. Before the night’s over, if things go right, you ought to be out of it. Anything changed?”
“No. The plane will land at Municipal Terminal at midnight. The courier’s on it. I know the guy by sight. As I told you, he’s medium height, getting bald, and has a thin black mustache and a slight limp in his left leg.”
“It still checks. Ever since you put us onto the guy, we’ve had him under observation. We could’ve grabbed him then, of course. If we had, we’d have small fry. We’d have a lousy courier in the can, with his lips buttoned and the big shot gone free. Guy Sebastian’s the boy we want. We want him real bad.”
The thin man in the panama waved the bartender over and passed his glass. When it was full again, he sat hunched over the bar, talking into the beer.
“Here’s the routine. This courier has the junk in a brown traveling bag. According to you, he’ll get a locker at the terminal and deposit the bag. That’s as far as he goes with it, because it’s Guy Sebastian’s method not to have
anyone go too far in the process. He passes the locker key to someone else, and this guy gets the bag and moves it along. Only this time he won’t. Because he’ll never get the key. We’ll grab the courier and the bag. From there on, it’s your show. It’s up to you to take the bag into Guy Sebastian’s apartment. Take it right in the front entrance, so the men we’ll have stationed there can spot you and follow you up. They’ll finish the job. Which means the finish of Mr. Sebastian.”
“A frame,” Terry said. “A beautiful frame.”
“So it’s a frame. Guy Sebastian’s made a fortune peddling dope without ever touching a grain. He directs operations, and he reaps the fat profit, but he never touches the stuff. He’s too smart for that. He keeps himself clear all the way. If we plant it on him, it’s nothing more than he’s got coming.”
“I wasn’t questioning the justice. I was just admiring the beauty.”
The contact looked down through suds into his amber beer, and his lips curved in a soft smile.
“Oh, it’s beautiful, all right. We’ve been yearning for Guy Sebastian for a long time. He’s a sleek, arrogant wholesaler of every kind of vice. Now, thanks to you, we’ll get him.”
He finished his beer fast, and slipped off the stool. A step away, he turned.
“Don’t louse it up, Terry. Not for any woman…not for anything on earth.”
He went away without waiting for reassurance. Terry listened to his light, fast footsteps until they were gone, and then he spun his glass down the bar. The bartender rinsed it, filled it, and sent it back.
And at precisely that moment the stools on both sides of Terry were suddenly occupied.
A voice said, “You’re a naughty boy. Terence!”
The words were facetious, and the tone was facetious, but somehow the net effect was not facetious at all. The net effect was a kind of deadly and irrational levity. Turning. Terry looked at the face behind the words. Round as a dime, the color of olive oil. Full lips so red they looked rouged, not quite meeting over prominent teeth. Large, liquid, swimming eyes.
It was a face Terry had seen in and out of Sebastian’s place. There was a name that went with it. Sulla, it was. There was also an odor. A heavy and nauseous sweetness, like death three days old.
The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery Megapack Page 5
