I poured steadily. My hands didn't shake, but I was fighting the odds, and they were astronomical.
I handed her a glass. She hardly raised her head, inviting me to do what I wanted with my hands. I sat down next to her, legs drawn under me. I raised my glass. She lifted hers, clinking mine. Our eyes locked over the rims. Barely a foot from me lay all the promised delights of a man's lifetime. Mine for the asking, or the begging. It was hard to tell which.
"You're not drinking," she said huskily, undressing me with her eyes.
"Ladies first."
She wrinkled her nose. An uncharacteristic gesture. She heaved a long sigh and sat up. The melons jiggled pleasantly. The delightful whorl of her navel was enough in itself to drive most men mad.
"Spy stuff," she chuckled. A low, feminine sound this time. "Like in the movies? Don't be a fool. I wouldn't poison you or drug you or any of that jazz. I want you on your toes now, Eddie baby. You can see that, can't you? The night is young—"
"And so are we. You still drink first. I'm not that thirsty."
She put her upper teeth on her lower lip, tensing. The green eyes searched my face, found my mouth, and poised there. Still looking at my lips, she added some more coal to the fires.
"Your mouth belongs on a woman, Eddie. So shapely and sweet and smooth. Is it as smooth as it looks?"
"Find out for yourself."
She did, still holding onto her drink, not spilling a drop. She swooped in on me, sealing off the air and biting. Her lush lips clamped on mine. Her tongue darted, strong and true, forcing my mouth open. I did the only sensible thing under the circumstances. I bit back.
But that was right up her alley. She moaned in some low-key pitch of ecstasy and rubbed her bared breasts against my chest. Then she pushed away suddenly, raising her glass once more. The look in her eyes would have made seminary students burn their catechisms.
"Come on," she challenged. "Drink up."
"Sure," I said, eyes glazed. I put the glass to my mouth, took a full gulp of the sour mash, and waited for her to do the same. She did, her eyes laughing. But I was way ahead of her.
I dropped my glass, closed both hands in a lightning move over her mouth, and shot her head back with a violent wrench. Before she knew what she was doing, she had opened her mouth to cry out in surprise and gasp for air. At the same time, the hooch she had been storing in her mouth, like a squirrel saving nuts for the winter, flowed right down into her stomach.
She tried to scream, but I kept my hands vised across her lips. The lithe, spectacular body writhed, twisted, and shot out in a scissors hold, but I wasn't feeling like a gentleman. I rammed my knee into her crotch, just hard enough to convince her not to wrestle. She subsided, muffled whines coming from beneath my hands. While I was holding her I spat out the stream of sour mash I had been keeping in my mouth. It splattered the Persian, staining the beautiful contours of the patterns.
If I was killing her with her own poison, well, that was her hard luck. I'd expected the drinks to be drugged, and I'd had my proof. One hundred percent proof.
It took about three minutes for the stuff to do its work properly. With me holding down tight, Gilda Tiger stopped fighting. She suddenly quivered and flattened out lifelessly. For all her bumps and curves, she had gone as limp as a rag doll.
I waited before taking my hands away from her mouth. Then I took a straight pin from behind my coat lapel and jabbed it sharply into the flesh of her arm. She didn't let out a peep. She was out, all right. I didn't know for how long, but her pulse was normal and she hadn't changed color, so I expected it was nothing more than that old standby, Michael Aloysius Finn.
With a rueful look for the girl who might have made it an evening to remember, I got back to business. It was now time for the twenty-cent tour of Gilda Tiger's personal effects. I needed to find the link that tied her to the Henry Hallmark affair.
Needed to find that before Bhudda got restless on the door and came in for a look-see.
Him, I didn't want to tangle with, and getting past him at the threshold was going to be the biggest headache of them all.
Especially after I had manhandled his goddess.
I put my shoes back on.
12. A Fine Night for Dying
My main concern was Gilda Tiger's luggage. I worked swiftly and silently, exploring behind the tapestries and draped walls until I found the clothes closet. When I slid the door back, it was to a view any woman worth the gender would have swooned over for several hours. What had to be Balenciaga and Dior originals rode herd on each other, maybe fifty different dresses and costumes. Fur, silk, cashmere, satin, you name it. The glitter of sequins and diamonds was blinding. The Gilda Tigers of this slap-happy universe didn't go in for rhinestones. There weren't many shoes, though; maybe three pairs in all. Tiger was yet another of those barefoot contessas. That figured, too.
The clotheshorse closet was a total loss. Just feminine finery, fripperies, and doodads. It was puzzling. I hunted around the stateroom for a handbag, a portmanteau, private jewelry boxes. Anything that would provide a scrap of evidence that the very sexy lady was not going to London just to hear Big Ben toll.
The diamond box was a leather-bound, tooled-in-gold monster, much bigger than a bread box. Opening the snap lid hurt my eyes. Inside was a clutter of tiaras, necklaces, bracelets, and rings, gleaming with precious stones. I found the box planted beneath one of the enormous tasseled pillows, stuck in an out-of-the-way corner of the large stateroom.
I decided to give the bathroom a fast once-over. You never could tell. People choose the damndest places to hide the goods. Gilda was still out on the fancy rug. Way out. Her scandalous figure was tempting, but I had to think about Other things.
It was just about this time that Bhudda poked his head into the stateroom for a look-see. Maybe it was his habit while Tiger-watching, maybe something funny had reached his tiny ears. I can't say. All I know is that he meant trouble.
We met just as I was heading for the john. The door suddenly eased inward, closed softly, and he was there. Man, was he there. Two hundred and sixty pounds of walking killer. It took only a fraction of a second for him to see that Gilda wasn't sleeping off a good roll in the hay and that I was making like a sneak thief. After that, everything went haywire.
I don't know how he managed to cover the twenty feet separating us before I could even go for my hardware. He was on me with one amazing catlike bound long before I could reach the mother-of-pearl knife in my inside pocket. The dummy .45 wouldn't have fooled him for a moment.
His face was expressionless. I could see that as his pudgy hands sledged toward my shoulders, meaning to bracket my head like heavy bookends.
I dropped to my knees, surged sideways, and his bulk moved by me with a whish of air as if his weight had displaced the oxygen in the room. I chopped a slicing palm into the vast width of his back as he went by. He merely grunted, and my hand tingled with pain. I scrambled erect, cursing the absent chairs and tables I could have used as weapons to block him. Oh, I was armed, all right, I was a walking munitions factory; but there wasn't time to stop and wind watches or prepare chemical compounds. Bhudda came roaring back, hands windmilling, giant body moving with all the fluidity you find in the Bolshoi Ballet.
I finally got the knife out. He almost smiled when he saw it. I jabbed out at him, and he skipped out of the way. I jabbed again, and he came around the knife point, got my shoulder lined up, and caved it in with a downward slash of his beefy arm. We were playing in his league now, and as many tricks as I knew, he had cut his teeth on. I began to get that sickness in my stomach that accompanies the sensation of failure. I knew I was going to lose. There was no way out. I was boxed up with a giant in a passion parlor, and the door was too far away to reach.
The capper, when it came, wasn't too unexpected. As I said, it was only a matter of time. I had changed my mind about the knife and was clawing for the .22 caliber cigarette lighter when he hit pay dirt. A .22 against a charging rh
ino! But it was my last-ditch effort. If I could get him in the eye—
Bhudda's round, oily face loomed before me. He had suddenly, somehow, got as close as the pages in a book. Before I could move back, the heavy right arm was arcing downward, thudding into the place where my neck tendons joined my left shoulder. His face ballooned before me. Sweaty, smiling, still jolly. Triumphant. There was another explosion to match the detonating ten-thousand-dollar check of only a few hours ago.
I went down, seeing and hearing nothing else.
Gilda Tiger woke me up. The not-nice way. She kicked me, just below the belt buckle, somewhere in the vicinity of manhood. Electric shocks coursed through my system. My eyes stung with tears. I came awake with a blurt of agony.
For a wild moment all I saw was the ceiling. The smooth dull beige ceiling. Then I smelled the sandalwood. It seemed thicker than ever. Curling, sickly, painful to my nostrils, I felt like vomiting. There was a blazing inferno where my left shoulder should have been.
They towered above me to either side, Gilda Tiger on the left, Bhudda on my right. The giant's arms were folded, his face peaceful and serene, Gilda's cruel face seemed to thrust out above the curved hillside of her bosom. The scenery had not changed, only the circumstances. I tried to wriggle, wanting to come back to life. It was no use. I've been tied too many times not to know the awful sensation it gives. Belts or thongs of some kind were biting into my ankles and wrists. My arms were painfully contorted behind me.
"Wake up, bastard," Gilda snarled, the old Tiger voice back in business. "You're going to make with some straight answers before I'm through with you. Crack wise and it'll all be over, faster than you'd like."
I nodded, fighting the agony of all this enforced slumber I'd been getting. Gilda held something above me so I could get a good look. It was the flat cigarette case, the one that concealed the miniature camera that could take the fifty pictures I hadn't taken.
"Okay," she growled. "We understand each other. Now what's this for?"
"To take pictures."
She cursed and kicked me again. Almost in the same place. I put my teeth together and hung on. It wasn't easy. I was surprised she had left my clothes on.
"I didn't hear you right," she said. "Want to try another answer?"
I did. "That's business equipment. I'm a private detective. You must know that by now. Didn't you frisk me while I was catching some shut-eye?"
Bhudda glowered down at me, but Gilda was obviously satisfied with my answer.
"You said it, Buster. I found this gadget, your forty-five and license, and the trick cigarette lighter. You're fancy-schmancy and up-to-date. Real James Bond. Okay. Who sicked you on my tail?"
I blinked the tears out of my eyes. "Come again? And please don't kick me. I don't know what you mean."
She dropped to her knees, curling up at my side like an adorable genie. Only her hair wasn't light brown. She was black, black as the Death Card, and twice as ugly now. Shape or no shape.
The green eyes probed, the full bosom blossomed before me. She bit her lower lip, almost drawing, her own bload. "Look, Noon man, I've got to brush you off. No two ways about it. Everybody and his brother have been trying to pin something on me for years. Especially those so-called high-class mucky-mucks who bought my body for the marriage bed. Well, I made them pay and pay plenty. I want to know now—I have to know—didn't one of my ever-loving ex-husbands hire you to get some first-class evidence on me so they could drag me into court and get out of paying those juicy settlement claims? Like taking pictures of me with another man? Like say you—tonight—here?"
"You're barking up the wrong detective."
She showed me her thumbs. Her eyes above the thumbs were sadistic.
"Want me to poke your eyes out? It's easier than you think. A Hindu magic man once showed me the method. You don't want to be blind, private-eye baby."
"No," I admitted, feeling things crawl in my stomach. "But I'm not working for anybody that is interested in you."
"Then what are you doing on this ship? Why you bugging me? What the hell did you bring all this junk into my stateroom for?"
"I am working on a case, but it doesn't concern you. I came to see you tonight because you appeal to me. Go ahead, laugh, but you do, I was carrying the stuff because my man will be in the games room after midnight, and I might be able to get some pictures then."
She placed her thumbs below my eyeballs and pressed. I tried to keep my eyes closed, but she was right. The magic man knew what he was talking about. I could feel my eyeballs bulge from their sockets.
"What man?" she asked quietly.
"John Carter Thompson," I gasped, digging up the first name I could remember from the passenger list. "His wife thinks he has his mistress on board, and I was picked to do the job."
Her thumbs relaxed. "Bhudda," she snapped.
He was the perfect companion and servant. He could read her mind, anticipate her wishes. He had already padded out of view and was back in a moment, extending the gilt-edged passenger list with which every stateroom had been supplied.
"Thompson, Thompson," she muttered, her cold eyes flying. "Yeah, he's listed. So what? I don't know him. What does he do for a living?"
"Oil," I said. "Tulsa. Lots of it."
"Sure, sure. And that's what you're selling me." She scowled down at me. "Buster, you're a dead man. I had Bhudda try to warn you off by tossing that pig-sticker at you. So you waltz in here, carrying that, too. Okay. Maybe Thompson is your man, maybe he isn't. I can't afford any mistakes. Von Tappen would love to crawl out of our annual payoff. That ex-Nazi would do anything to get me out of his bankbook. I think you're his man. Got me? So that's all I have to think. That's the way the cookie crumbles, baby."
"Yeah." I was trying to think, but she was writing my epitaph right out loud in front of me.
She had risen to her feet, superb figure tall and memorable. I waited. There was nothing I could do but make talk, and I just might be talking to myself.
"You should have taken your knockout drops like a good boy, Eddie. That way I could have had my doubts and maybe had Bhudda let you sleep it off somewhere on deck. But this way, with you acting the clever dick and all, I know you're smarter than I thought you were. So the message from me to you is—see you in hell, baby."
"Maybe. What now?"
"I'm through talking to you. Bhudda, what time?"
"Eleven," the giant said in his blurred accent. Eleven! Again I had been pounding my ear for a long time. Long enough for Gilda to recover from the Mickey Finn, long, enough for her to think about what to do with me. Or did the lateness of the hour coincide exactly with what she had in mind?
"Now, Bhudda," she said. "Untie him. It would look suspicious if he was found all trussed up like a chicken. What the hell. Anybody can fall overboard. Especially if they've had too much to drink. It happens to the best of people."
Before I could decipher all that, she was standing over me again, tilting the chrome decanter of Jack Daniel's sour mash all over my face and clothes. I smelled like a brewery in two seconds flat. It was the oldest gag in the books, but it's fooled the investigating policemen many times. Maybe that was one of the reasons it was always used. It generally worked.
There was no use yelling. They hadn't bothered with a gag, and I wasn't ready to get her foot shoved down my throat for trying. I had to bide my time, keeping a short halter on the panic buttons going on all over my system.
Bhudda knelt over me, clamping one mammoth paw over my mouth. His left hand made short work of the bonds shackling my ankles and wrists. Before I could make a move or a start, Gilda Tiger had turned out all the lights in the stateroom.
The sudden darkness really unnerved me. I could feel my senses and faculties leaving me. I was helpless. Bhudda, the man with muscles of steel and uncompromising power, had clasped me across his enormous chest like a baby, bending me double, his paw locked over my jaws. To him I was as light as a sack of dead mice. He barely grunted as he move
d quickly to the door.
The door inched open. A sliver of moonlight probed into the room. I could smell the sandalwood burning, the thick closeness of Bhudda's mighty body. My imagination began to trip the light fantastic. True, I was untied, but visions of the unknown, coupled with the thought of the gigantic swirling propellors at the stern of the Francesca, made those few moments the most exquisite sort of torture. Chinese torture, even if it was being dished out by a Japanese and his heartless lady boss.
For an interval, we waited there in the darkness. I didn't need a blueprint. The Great Gilda was casing the deck, waiting for that moment when nobody would be on hand to see the unfortunate accident that would befall one of the passengers on the fastest ocean liner in the world.
I didn't want to wait. I would have called the whole thing off in a minute. It wasn't my idea at all—
"Go!" Gilda's sudden whisper was a hissing snake in the blackness. I tensed. Too late. I tried to squirm, to wriggle, to tear loose. It was useless.
I was rushed for the rail. In a flashing kaleidoscope of impressions—the starry sky, the three-quarter moon, the gay sounds of laughter and music emanating from the decks of the great ship—I felt myself hustled across deck. Bhudda wasn't even working up a sweat. When he reached the railing, his muscles contracted and then expanded. Like a shot from a catapult I arced out over the rail, gaining all the freedom and space that I didn't want, the night winds fanning me as if I were a bit of sail set aflying.
I tried to claw out, to grab something, anything, to check my fall. I couldn't even scream. Beneath me the white caps and the foaming wash of the ship spread out like an enormous bed to take me.
There was nothing to hold onto. Bhudda had flung me out like a slingshot.
I plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean, the towering hull of the Francesca shooting away from me like a fantastically outsized ghost ship zooming off into the darkness.
Assassins Don't Die in Bed Page 9
