That called for a drink. When you got silly enough that you didn’t know what you did with your chips, you’d better start stopping, or stop starting, or however you wanted to put it, and start doing some serious drinking, or you’d lose all your money.
Suddenly he was afraid to look into his wallet to see if he’d gone into the five thousand he’d reserved for paying off his bet to Conny Kamiros. That was a dirty trick Conny had pulled on him, just for the sake of soothing a ruffled ego. But, damn it, had he been so tight that he’d gambled away the five thousand, too? He didn’t think so but he didn’t dare look.
He ordered another drink, noticing that Edouard was frowning worriedly at him. Good old Edouard, one of the best bartenders in Monaco. One of the best? What the hell. The best. He decided to leave a good-sized tip for his old pal Edouard. Along in here the fog rolled in again.
When the fog rolled out, he was in some bistro that he didn’t remember ever having seen before. He shook his head and made a mental note never to see it again. It was a hole-in-the-wall.
His vision cleared. He slurred, “Why, hello, Nadine. I didn’t see you.”
She laughed. “Didn’t see me? Good heavens, for the past half-hour you’ve been telling me how you used to pack up into Kings Canyon National Park with somebody named Old Mart and fish for trout.”
He shook his head again. “Hell, I feel awful. What time is it?”
She looked at her watch. “About ten.”
“How long — I mean, what happened? I’m afraid I’m a little tight.”
“A little tight. I’d hate to see you really hang one on,” she laughed at him. “I saw your car parked outside, about an hour ago, and looked in to see if you were here. I wanted to ask your advice on where I should drive tomorrow. You seemed to be a … bit under the weather, so I thought I’d rally round.”
He looked at her for a moment. “Thanks,” he said gruffly. “I guess I ought to be getting to bed. Would you mind driving me home? I think I’d better leave my car here.”
“Let’s go, pal,” she said lightly.
• • •
It was the same, or almost the same, as it had been the first time.
They had got Steve a couple of cups of black coffee and then, on the way back to the trailer in her Simca convertible, they’d put the top down and he’d let the cool touch of the Mediterranean night air wash over him.
He also remembered the cable that had come that morning and passed it to her and she’d put it away in her bag to be read when there was light. He had also checked his wallet, and found to his relief that the five thousand was intact.
There had been a strange simplicity in the way they had walked together down to the trailer. An air of inevitability, that seemed to dominate everything.
She hesitated only momentarily at the trailer door.
“Are you all right now?” she said.
“Of course. Stone sober.” There was a husky quality in his voice. She was ethereal in her beauty in the moonlight which struck her in such manner that her light blouse seemed not exactly transparent but actually nonexistent. It seemed as though her full breasts were bared.
She said then, a touch of indignity in her voice, “Then why in the world did you allow yourself to get that tight? You don’t seem to be the lush type.”
He grinned at her, wanly. “And you don’t seem to be the scolding mother type. I suppose I was being stupid, but I saw a ghost today.”
“A ghost?”
“My former wife. She and her new husband are staying in Nice.” He held the trailer door open and she entered and sat down on the small couch.
“I see,” Nadine said. She looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. “Should it be as upsetting as all that? Are you still in love with her, Steve?” Then she said quickly, “No, don’t answer that, of course.”
He sat down next to her and there was an electric quality in the air. A touch of lightning. Nadine drew in her breath and felt her woman’s body respond to his animal maleness. Guided as though by an alien power without her, she reached forth her hand. Her eyes closed and she touched his thigh as she had at the bullfight in Nîmes — but this time consciously.
She tensed, and grasped him intimately. It was an instinctive, almost involuntary gesture and already he was ready for her.
She felt her senses swooning away as his eager hands moved on her, trembling, exploring. He forgot the other night. He forgot everything except this woman’s body, the treasures of the darkness her thighs framed.
Her blouse was gone, her breasts, the nipples warm cherry stones, proud, erect and demanding. She moaned when he took one in his lips.
“Darling, it’s so good,” she whispered. “Don’t wait any more. Oh, Steve, don’t make me wait any longer….” Her voice fell away into incoherence.
Steve had never seen a woman in this extreme of need. Far away in his conscious mind, he was surprised, even, in a way, compassionate.
But that was his conscious mind, and a different reality. His current self was in a blind passion, possibly as strong as her own. He fumbled with his clothes, the sound of belt buckle and zipper loud in the silence of the night.
“Oh, quick,” she moaned.
He descended upon her waiting, yielding body. Now, this was it. This was the moment of truth, of glory. He pressed hard, ready to possess her completely.
Suddenly she dissolved into a screaming, pounding, squirming, scratching, she cat. Her small body, perhaps seventy-five pounds lighter than his own, abruptly displayed a strength beyond him.
In pure shock, he scrambled to his feet and stumbled back two or three steps, standing nude before her, to the rear of the trailer’s small living room.
Mewling like a terrified animal, Nadine grasped up blouse and skirt, and blindly darted for the light which marked the open but screened trailer door, suited to the summer heat and the occasional Riviera mosquito.
The screen banged open and then shut, behind her.
“Sonofabitch!” Steve blurted.
It took him several full minutes to control himself to the point where he stopped shaking, trembling with emotional crisis.
He looked down upon himself ruefully. “I must be losing my grip,” he muttered.
Then, partly in a return to the drunkenness and despair from which she had rescued him, he growled, “I’ve got to do something about that. One way or the other.”
He dressed and made his way up the path to the Pavilion Budapest. Nadine had disappeared. Probably, he decided viciously, cowering in her bed, behind a locked door. To one side, he seemed to see some movement. Was that a man’s figure, silhouetted over there? No, of course not, at this time of night.
He looked up at the contessa’s villa. There was a light in Carla’s bedroom window. He wondered, in his present condition, what response he would get if he knocked on her door. But then he shook his head. His relationship with Carla Rossi had been a long one and a friendly one. And she had been right, the other morning. It they became intimate just once, the friendship would be over. He knew himself that well. And evidently she did, too.
His own car was parked back there in front of the bistro where Nadine had found him, but that was no problem. She had left her keys in the Simca. The emergency was of her own making. She could hardly begrudge him the use of her vehicle to get into town and find some kind of relief, both physical and psychic.
• • •
He picked the tart up in the Place Massena and followed her to her small hotel on the Avenue de la Victoire. She spoke English, as tarts are apt to do in Nice, the center of British tourism in southern France. She spoke English and had evidently worked out a system of cutting the time afforded a customer by arousing him with words before they ever got to her room.
She told Steve Cogswell, as they walked along the Avenue, just what it was she was willing to do for him. And her words were graphic. The darkness of sex was again upon him by the time they reached her room.
It was a sad r
oom, a drab room, as so often are the dens of those who sell human flesh. He sat on the bed and looked at her, his face expressionless. Already some of it was going out of him.
“Love me, honey?” she smiled, her fingers going to the clasps at the side of her garish, tight, tart’s dress.
He didn’t answer her, but his face was flushed. She knew all the signs. Her mind was clicking away at business details, even as she disrobed provocatively. This one had been drinking. Drinking too much, which was sometimes bad. But he was an American and, hence, rich.
She would ask double her regular price and then he would probably tip her besides. It would probably take longer than usual, if he’d been drinking as much as she suspected, but then the amount of his “little gift” to her would more than make up for it.
The dress fell away and she smiled again. She wore nothing beneath except black silken panties and she hooked her thumbs in these and slowly, deliberately pressed down. She smiled into his eyes. “Like me?”
He still said nothing. He just sat and watched, his face flat.
She was worried. Was this one too drunk to perform? Sometimes when that happened, the customer got mad, and then anything might develop. She hoped there would be no noise. This hotel was not a bad base of operations and she didn’t want to be ordered from it.
She kicked her shoes away and literally nude now crossed over to him, taking short, provocative steps to arouse him the quicker. Zut! this one was cold.
She stood before him, hands on hips. “You like it?” she said, her voice low.
Steve bit out, as though irritated, “Evidently not.”
He was surprised at himself. The girl was cute, and young. They were seldom this young, even on the Côte d’Azur. Her body was still firm, and evidently comparatively unused. And, heavens knew, she was willing.
She sat down beside him and fondled him with an expert hand. “Perhaps you are too drunk, hein?”
“No, that’s not it,” Steve growled. Actually, he didn’t know what was wrong. He’d come here, coldly and deliberately. Now something was wrong.
The girl leaned closer to his ear. She whispered, “I am a French girl, you know.”
“No,” he said brusquely. “I don’t want that.” He came to his feet and scowled down at her. He began to say something, an excuse to leave, but she stood, too, and took him by the hand and led him to the bureau. There was a wicked wisdom in the way she looked at him from the side of her eyes.
“Ah, I know your kind,’ she murmured. “You will see. It will cost more, but you are willing to pay. No?”
He didn’t know what she was talking about until she opened one of the drawers. Inside were three or four whips of various design. Behind him, she opened the closet door. “Or perhaps some of these,” she said, her voice heavy with urgency.
In the closet were fantastically high-heeled shoes and women’s leather boots that laced almost to the knee. Rubber clothing of various types. Leather clothing, both male and female. Ropes and cords.
His gorge rose.
She said throatily, “I will do anything Monsieur desires — for a price, Monsieur.” She added, “Or do you wish me to do it to you?”
A sort of impotent rage swept him. He fumbled in his pockets for money, brought out a fistful of bills and silver, tossed them on the bed and, pushing her angrily and brutally aside, pulled open the door and stumbled into the corridor beyond.
Too overcome with conflicting emotions to wait for the elevator, he walked, almost ran, down the stairs. He crossed the dingy lobby in what seemed to be no more than a dozen strides and emerged on the street. It took him a long moment to remember where he had parked the Simca.
He didn’t remember, later, the drive from Nice to the Pavilion Budapest, a distance of three or four miles. He pulled into the parking area, and garages, and left the car in the spot where Nadine Whiteley had parked it earlier in the evening. He left the key in it, as she had, and started to return to the trailer.
The alcohol was gone from him now, but he was exhausted with the aftermath of both the drinking and the emotional tensions he had been through the last twelve hours. He didn’t even see the hulking shadow which detached itself from a deeper shadow. The first he knew of the presence of the other was the crushing blow that hit him full in the belly.
He caved forward, in nausea and shock, and the second blow, a brutal uppercut, smashed into his face. He began to reel backward, but the other was upon him.
The blackness rolled over him. Idiotically, the last thought that went through his brain was, After all this I’ll be in no shape tomorrow to attend that party of Carla Rossi’s….
Chapter Five
Tuesday, August 9th
Carla Rossi was bending over him, shaking his shoulder frantically, her voice shrill with concern.
“Steve, Steve, what has happened to you? Carla looked out the window, and here you are on the ground.”
He tried to return to life and reality. It was dawn. His jaw felt broken and there was still nausea in his belly. As poorly as his mind was functioning he was able to think, wryly, What am I suffering from most, that sock in the stomach or pure hangover?
He sat up and felt his jaw, waggled it back and forth. He looked up at the contessa. She was dressed in negligee, nightgown and bedroom slippers. For the sake of the usual banter they carried on between themselves, he tried to whistle and found he couldn’t; his face was too swollen.
Steve said, “I had just parked the car. Somebody was hiding, somewhere. He managed to knock me out before I even so much as saw him.”
She stooped and picked something up, recognized it and handed it to him. It was his wallet.
Steve came to his feet and inspected it. It was devoid of money — both the five thousand dollars’ worth of new francs that he had held in reserve for Conny Kamiros, and whatever he might have had left after his night on the town. He groaned to express both his physical and mental anguish.
Carla said worriedly, “Come into the kitchen, Steve. We’ll clean you up, get some coffee into you. Then Carla will phone the police. Did you lose much?”
“At least twenty-five thousand francs,” he said bitterly. He decided that the jaw wasn’t broken but, Christ, it hurt.
She clucked in sympathy. “About fifty dollars in your American money.”
He grunted in self-deprecation. “Twenty-five thousand new francs, Carla. Five thousand dollars.”
She stopped and stared at him, her eyes wide. “Carla doesn’t understand. What were you doing with so much money, Steve?”
“Like an ass, I was carrying it around waiting for Conny to come back from Switzerland, so I could pay him what I owed him. I won it Saturday night at the Casino.”
They were in the kitchen of the villa. It was still early morning. The contessa was the earliest riser at the Pavilion Budapest. Even after an evening-long party, she was always up and around before the servants. She took a clean towel from a drawer, moistened it at the sink and dabbed at his face, clucking her tongue in sympathy as she worked.
The contessa moaned softly, “Steve, Steve, five thousand dollars. So much money! And I have heard the rumors going around. Conny has insisted that you repay him a loan he made you.”
Steve Cogswell grunted disgustedly. He imagined the story was being circulated by the gossip route all up and down the coast. Even his supposed friends were probably secretly pleased by his come-uppance dished out by Conny Kamiros. Steve’s romantic activities weren’t always well received either by husbands or lovers of the Riviera’s more attractive glamour girls or by those women themselves whom he had bedded and then deserted.
“Carla will phone the police immediately,” the contessa said. “It is a matter for the police. With luck, perhaps they will find this villain before the day is out, eh?”
“No, wait,” Steve said.
“Why this wait? The sooner they begin to look for this apache …”
“I don’t know why,” Steve said, and he didn’t.
“But something is wrong here.”
“Something is wrong, yes. You have had twenty-five thousand new francs stolen. But it is for the police. Carla will …”
He was shaking his head, stubbornly now. Steve said, “Whoever slugged me not only knew I had the money, but also knew where I lived and must have had some idea when I’d return. It wasn’t just some stray thug. I’ve got to think.”
He’d been sitting on a chair as she administered to his cuts and bruises. Now he came to his feet and approached the small mirror that hung above the large double sink. He touched a cut on his face thoughtfully. Hardly had that cut from Jerry Silletoe’s blow of the other morning healed up, but he had this new one.
Steve’s eyes narrowed. How had Elaine described that nick Sunday morning? A small triangular cut, she had said, And so was this one. Silletoe’s ring must have a strange setting. Or, for that matter, possibly he deliberately so mutilated anyone he struck. It wasn’t beyond the man’s obvious ego to mark his victims.
Steve said, “What time does Miss Whiteley usually come down for her breakfast?”
Carla frowned at him. “She is up early. Usually she swims, then goes off for long drives. Carla seldom sees her except at mealtime. This is a very nice American girl, Steve.”
“I know. How early is early?”
“She should be down soon. Which reminds me, where is Annette? These servants!”
Steve said, “I’m going down and try to freshen up with a swim and get some clean clothes. I can see Nadine later. I’ll see you later, too, Carla.”
“You are sure you do not want Carla to phone the police?”
“Yeah, sure, but thanks.” He started for the door.
She hesitated. “Steve.”
He turned with a slight frown of impatience. “Yes?”
Her impish face was serious. “Steve, Carla has known you for nearly five years now. At first you were like a madman. Drink and women, drink and women. But then, what happened?”
Episode on the Riviera Page 8
