Assignment — Angelina

by Edward S. Aarons

  He didn't understand it. In Slago's world, a woman served only one purpose. You called for them when you needed them, and then you put them aside and forgot them until the next time.

  "We'll drink upstairs," he said. He wondered if Mark was back yet. He had left Erich uptown with the station wagon. "We'll talk business, all right." He felt a trembling in his bowels. He put his hand on Angelina's wrist and exerted pressure. Not much. Just enough to hurt her. "Come on, sister."

  "My name is Angelina."

  "And you're alone," he said flatly.

  "That's right. Let go of me."

  "Come on."

  She stood up. He kept his hand on her wrist. She didn't let the pain show through. It wasn't the pain that bothered her. It was the hatred. She didn't know if she could keep it pushed down where he wouldn't see it yet. She wanted to kill him — slowly, the hard way, the way he had killed poor Pete. She didn't want it to come impersonally, from the law. She wanted him to know who was the cause of his death, she wanted him to think about death coming for him. If he knew her as a person, as an individual and not just the blank face of justice, then it would hurt him more and she would be satisfied.

  "You don't have to force me," she said quietly.

  The pressure on her wrist relaxed a little. Nobody paid any attention to them as they crossed the dingy lobby to the elevator.

  Mark wasn't back yet. Slago closed the door, turned the key in the lock, and then, with no warning and no change in his face, he suddenly flung Angelina across the room toward the bed. She stumbled and fell across it, lost her handbag, slid to one knee on the floor, and pulled herself up again.

  Slago leaned back against the door. He looked at her legs. "Now, talk."

  "Is this the way you always do business?"

  "It's the way I do it with you."

  Angelina straightened her skirt. One of her nylons had a run in it. She picked up her handbag. He hadn't thought to take her bag away yet. He wouldn't find anything in it, anyway. The knife was still strapped high up inside her thigh, where not even the flare of her skirt as she fell had revealed it.

  "You're Slago, aren't you?"

  "Keep talking."

  "I'm not sure if you're the one I ought to talk to. You're just the muscle. Big Socks told me about you and Fleming. He doesn't know about the Corbins, except that you four are together."

  Slago said, surprised: "You know Big Socks Johnson?"

  "I've done business with him back home. A sort of sales representative, you might say."

  Slago blinked his mean little eyes. "Did he send you?"

  "No. I want in. On my own."

  "In on what?"

  "On what you people have. On how you cracked the bank."

  "Why should you get in?"

  "Because I know who you are."

  "You won't get a chance to talk about it now," Slago said.

  "I've already talked. With pen and paper, on a letter to the law. If anything happens to me, if I don't get back to somebody who's waiting for me, the letter goes to the law."

  Slago laughed. "That's pure corn."

  "It still works."

  "So you think you can jack in because you know us?"

  "You don't have any choice," Angelina said. "Besides, I can help. Now let's be civilized and have a drink and talk about it."

  Slago wished Mark was here. Mark would know what to do with this one. He opened and closed his hands. He made them into hard fists, enjoying the pull of the muscles up his arm. Maybe she was bluffing. She looked cool and smart, though. She was a lush piece. He didn't miss any of that, either. He had heard about the bayou women. This one was smart, but she was only a woman, after all. He made up his mind, watching her take a cigarette from her handbag and light it. The room was quiet. A shabby room in a shabby hotel, filled with people who avoided trouble like the plague.

  Angelina saw the change in Slago s face. For a moment it puzzled her. She was sure she had convinced him of two things: that she wasn't fingering him for the police, and that she would carry through her proposal. She watched the way he moved away from the door. His thick shoulders were hunched and his head was pulled into his neck. Something in his eyes looked unnatural.

  "Sweetheart, you made a big mistake," Slago said hoarsely. "We ain't stayin' here long enough for any letter of yours to give us any trouble."

  "Lets have that drink," Angelina said.

  "Shut up and listen. Who sent you? Who's your friend with the letter? Is it that Durell?"

  "I just came to talk business in a friendly way," Angelina said. She knew this was all wrong, because she now sounded defensive. All she wanted was for him to busy himself with the bottle. When he wasn't ready, that's when she would do it to him. The shock of the first blow with the knife would make him helpless. After that she would talk to him, tell him who she was and what she intended to do with him. But she took a step backward, toward the bed, and she knew this was wrong, too. "Maybe we'd better wait until Fleming and the Corbins show up," she said.

  "You don't think I can handle you, sister?"

  "It isn't that. I..."

  He slapped her. His move was quicker than she had expected, so quick that the full force of his heavy hand crashed across her cheek and nose. She dropped her handbag. He kicked it aside. He put both hands out and crushed her breasts and pushed her and she fell back on the bed in an agony of pain. She tried to kick at him, but he laughed softly and then he caught her leg and pulled her half off the bed. Her skirt slid up. All the way up.

  He saw the Bowie knife strapped to her thigh, and he laughed.

  All at once, Angelina knew that this one was different from any other man she had known. And with the knowing, there came a terror that was also different from any fear in the past. She had made a mistake. She had been too sure of herself, certain that Slago was just a man, like any other man when it came to being controlled by a woman. She saw the true blankness in his laughing face, the way his mouth hung open. She tried to get the gleaming Bowie knife.

  That was a mistake, too.

  His strength was incredible, and he enjoyed using it. He took the knife from her with an easy twist that sent pain screaming up through the shock of his hand that violated her. She twisted and fell to her knees before him. He had her arm pulled up high behind her then, forcing her head and shoulders down, and he raised his knee and crashed it against her face and then let go of her arm. She fell backward, half under the bed, and tried to crawl away from the screaming pain. She wanted to scream, but she couldn't. Her face felt broken. She felt his hands on her, ripping her clothes away. She felt him pick her up, his fingers digging into her flesh. She bounced on the bed.

  "Come on, baby. You wanted to wrestle," he said.

  And he said: "Knives are my business, baby."

  She saw he had the Bowie knife in his right hand. His left hooked her brassiere, broke it, flung it away. She couldn't breathe. There was a crushing weight on her chest and she saw the ceiling move, fading away into a bright violet shot through with red, a color that wriggled and flooded violently down upon her like a rain of blood. She screamed then, but she didn't hear the sound.

  "Who's your friend with the letter? Is it Durell?"

  His voice echoed violently inside the dark chamber of her mind. There was no room for it, no room for anything but her panic and the red pain he was inflicting on her. She saw her hands beat against his looming face. Her fists seemed futile, as if they belonged to some stranger, flailing without conscious volition. They were puny against his sullen, maniacal strength. How could she have been so wrong? She should never have left Durell; he had warned her. She had been so sure that her way was right, that they were only men, after all.

  Somehow she got out from under him and fell off the bed. Her clothes were in tatters. She got to her hands and knees and looked at her nakedness and saw the bloody pattern on her body and could not believe what she saw. He had used the knife on her. She felt her stomach convulse and then the floor gave way a
nd she slid into darkness that was not darkness, because the red was still there, dark and pulsing, and the sound of his voice moved like fire in it, and then the sound of the door came and another voice moved in with his...

  "She's got a friend."

  "Who? Did she say?"

  "Probably the guy who was with her at Jake Moon's."

  "Durell?"

  "Who else?"

  "What did she want?"

  "She wanted to cut in."

  "Did you have to do that to her?"

  "Ah, she had this knife. She asked for it."

  "Damn you, we'll have to get rid of her."

  "Uh-uh, buddy boy."

  "You've made enough mistakes. Well get rid of her."

  "No, we'll take her along. Maybe that will suck in Durell. The cops aren't in on it. Just the two of them, trying to cut in. That's all, I tell you. I'm sure of it."

  "What do you want with her?"

  Laughter.

  "Look at her. She's too good to waste, buddy."

  "I think you're nuts, you know that?"

  "Look at her. I'm gonna have some of that. You got Jessie, right? So I'll take some of this."

  "The way she is?"

  "Jesus, that's the way I like 'em."

  Angelina wished she could die. She had expected to deal with men. She knew she had met a monster.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Durell stood in the darkness of the Corbin bedroom and listened to the outer door thud softly shut. There was no other way out except a service entrance through the kitchen, and he couldn't reach it without being seen from the foyer. A slab of yellow suddenly showed under the bedroom door as a light in the wall was snapped on. A woman's heels clicked on the tesselated floor, moving toward the front of the apartment, and he opened the bedroom door a crack and looked. He could see Jessie Corbin's straight, slim back for a moment before she moved beyond his range of vision. She had gone straight to the heavy table where he had found the blueprints. Durell looked grimly at the rolls of paper on the bed where he had put them. She had noticed their absence immediately.

  His orders were to watch and wait, not to capture. He did not want to be found here, to alarm and alert them and possibly postpone what was being planned. He went to the tall windows in the back of the dark, perfumed bedroom and looked out. A fire escape angled down into the rear courtyard, but the windows were closed, and he doubted if he could raise them without noise.

  Then the telephone rang. It rang almost under his hand in the bedroom, and also in the living room. Jessie picked it up on the other extension, and he listened to the quick murmur of the woman's voice. He could see her again from the angle of the bedroom door. It was the best look he'd had of her so far. Her blonde hair was sleek; her face was cold, beautiful, angry, and then thoughtful as she listened to the voice in the receiver. Cola fury swept like a gust of wind over her features. Durell turned to the extension beside the bed and lifted it very carefully and listened, too.

  "...have you done with her?" he heard Jessie ask.

  Mark Fleming's voice replied. "Slago is keeping her."

  "What for?"

  "You know Slago. He thinks he can suck in Durell with her."

  Angelina? Durell thought.

  Jessie said: "We can't take her with us."

  "We've got to."

  "Then we should leave at once."

  "That's what I was thinking," Mark said.

  "No, wait. Just a moment, darling."

  Durell held the extension phone and waited. Jessie was silent. She was silent for a long time. He thought. They've got Angelina; She couldn't leave it alone. A coldness spread in him like the creeping of ice through his belly. He had warned her, but she hadn't listened; now he either had to abandon her or go after her, and possibly wreck everything Wittington wanted to achieve.

  The silence in the telephone lasted too long. When he looked up, Jessie Corbin stood in the bedroom doorway. She had heard him lift the extension phone. She pointed a gun at him as he stood by the bed with the phone in his hand.

  "So you're here," she said. "It didn't take you long."

  He started to put down the phone.

  "Don't," she said. "Be very careful, Mr. Durell."

  "I will be."

  "Put the phone on the bed. Don't hang up. Step back a bit."

  He did as he was told. She handled the gun with a casual grip that told him she was accustomed to guns, and he didn't like that. A gun in a woman's hand was still an unpredictable thing. He stepped back and watched her turn on the light. Her eyes were bright with triumph as she picked up the instrument.

  "Mark? Mark, he's right here! I've got him."

  Durell could hear the excited clatter of Fleming's voice. He drew a slow, deep breath. Everything had come apart. They knew him. They knew his name. He did not know how much more they knew, but it was too much. For a brief moment, hearing about Angelina, he had lost his caution. He saw the tight smile on the blonde's lips. She was looking at him, and he looked at the black muzzle of the gun pointed at his stomach.

  She spoke into the phone. "We'll leave right now. Slago was right. We've got them both. Well take them with us for a short way... Stay on the phone, Mark. Is Erich with you?"

  "No. And listen, I'm worried about him. Slago says..."

  "Never mind. He's sure to be along soon. Just hang on. When Erich comes, we'll drive over and pick you up with the girl."

  "Be careful," Mark said.

  "He won't make a move." Jessie looked at Durell. "Not if he wants the girl to live... Do you understand?" she asked Durell.

  He said nothing, and she took his silence for agreement. There were a few more precise instructions, and then she put down the telephone. She gestured toward a chair. "Sit over there. And tell me why you think we ought to cut you and your girl into the deal Because you've got a letter she wrote to the police?" Jessie shook her head. "You won't mail it. You don't want Slago to kill her, do you?"

  "No," Durell said.

  "So you don't go to the police. So you don't cut in."

  "If you say so.

  Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. Durell knew he was dealing with a quick intelligence. There was an objectivity in the way she looked at him, and lines of frustration around her mouth when she relaxed a little. She didn't care what he thought of her looks. She might be lovely, but not with the gun in her hand. He wondered how much time he had. Corbin was expected at any moment.

  He spoke quietly. "You've made a bad mistake, Jessie. You've overlooked something."

  "I don't think so. You and the girl are interfering, so we'll get rid of you. It's as simple as that."

  "And if I decide to sacrifice the girl now?"

  She frowned slightly. "You won't. You're in love with her, aren't you? You wouldn't want Slago to have her."

  "I may be in love with her, but I might let Slago have her anyway."

  "I doubt that. As an American, you have confused ideas of loyalty, the sanctity of human life, and all those medieval concepts of chivalry that prohibit you from risking the girl to get your own way."

  'You sound familiar," Durell said. "You sound like some people I once knew from Moscow."

  "I am not a Communist," she said flatly.

  "What are you, then? An opportunist?'

  "Perhaps."

  "Dealing with them?"

  "That is nothing to you. You are a small-time operator, Mr. Durell. You saw something you didn't understand, you and your girl, and you tried to muscle in where you don't belong. This was your major error. This, and letting the girl try to work on Slago. She was rather surprised to learn what Slago is. At this moment, Slago is withholding his attentions, but it depends on you."

  "Are you going to kill her?"

  "Perhaps."

  "Isn't there any chance we can join you?"

  "Well talk about it," she said. She paused, eying him. "You said I made a mistake. What is it?"

  Durell said: "Thinking I'll sit still for you because of Angelina. You
can have her."

  He had made up his mind.

  He stood up. Her gun moved to follow him. But he knew she wouldn't dare fire in this building. She was too smart for that. He saw the panic of indecision in her eyes. Her gun was a .32 a war-issue Italian Beretta. Loud and noisy, and not very accurate except at extremely close range. He smiled at her.

  "Sit down," she said again. Her voice shook a little. "What is the matter with you? Don't you know what Slago is like? Would you leave your girl to him?"

  "I have a feeling it's too late for Angelina already."

  "No, Slago didn't..." She paused as Durell moved toward her. She smiled. "You're mistaken, too. You think I won't shoot here. But I can. You're a thief, an intruder..."

  He jumped for the gun. The blast was like a burst of thunder in the high, echoing room, and then he drove her hand aside with a sweep of his arm and brought his arm back up again to crash against her body and slam her backward. She fired again, and he saw she wanted to kill him. The first bullet had smashed into the wall. The second slammed into the ceiling. Dust drifted down on them. He heard someone shouting, muffled by the walls, and then he got the gun away from her and threw her to one side and kicked the weapon in the other direction. The blonde fell against the wall, grabbing at the telephone table for support, and knocked it over. She was breathing hard. Her eyes were furious, hating him.

  "All I want is in," he said. "I intend to move in."

  "Into your grave," she whispered. "Into a deep, dark hole."

  "I want a part of it. The girl and I came all the way up here to join you. You could use me. You need me. Remember that I'll give you a little time to think it over."

  "We'll kill her," Jessie breathed.

  "No, you won't. Remember that, too. You won't kill her."

  Somebody pounded on the door, and then a key rattled, and he knew Erich Corbin had returned. This wasn't the time to talk business. He was thinking of Angelina and how to get her away from them. He knew the blonde was smart. He could see she was smart by the way she considered him now. Her anger was gone; she was weighing him, thinking how he might be useful. He saw her face relax.

  "I'm leaving," he said. "I don't want to waste time talking to your husband. You're the one who runs things, so think it over. You can use a man like me. And I can use you. A strictly business proposition. What about using me?"