Читать книгу Kiss and Kill - Richard Deming - Страница 5

I SUPPOSE that in any profession you grow with experience. I know that I did. When I think of my crude planning in the early years, and the chances I took, it makes my hair curl. Time and again I blundered past disaster by pure luck.

But you learn as you go along. Nobody’s luck holds forever, and in my business you’re allowed only one bad break. Long ago I decided the only way to avoid that eventual bad break was to eliminate chance from my planning entirely. I’ve never taken a chance since.

When Mavis was in a teasing mood, she used to call me “the careful man.”

I’m careful, all right. You have to be careful to get away with an average of three murders a year.

We sort of drifted into the business of murder. In the beginning neither Mavis nor I had any plans more serious than working bunco dodges. Maybe if we’d never met, neither of us would ever have turned to murder. But we did meet, and as a team we could hardly avoid moving into the big time. We complemented each other too beautifully to miss.

When I met Mavis six years ago, she was nearly as naïve as the typical mark.

We met at the Beverly-Wilshire, where we were both registered at the time. I was working on a well-to-do widow who was staying there. Mavis, she later told me, was merely looking for a prospect and had picked the Beverly-Wilshire as a likely place to find one.

My plans for the widow had just struck a snag. I was going to need a feminine partner to work the score, and I was sitting alone at the hotel bar mentally sorting over the women I knew in the profession. My mark, Mrs. Cora Hollingsworth, had flown up to Las Vegas for the day.

The trouble was that all the con-women I knew were used to posing as rich, sophisticated women of the world. And for this play, I needed someone to act the part of an ordinary working girl, youthful and unworldly. I doubted that any of them could swing it.

A young woman came into the bar, glanced around, and took a stool two places from mine. In a musical but rather affected voice, she said to the bartender, “A Tom Collins, please.”

Giving her a cursory glance, I saw a slim, black-haired girl of about twenty-five, with a firm, well-formed body and disturbing green eyes. By conventional standards of beauty, her face was too thin, and her small white teeth were faintly irregular. Yet there was a sensual, entirely feminine quality about her which automatically quickened my pulse. Perhaps it was the ripe fullness of her lips, or merely her sultry expression. Whatever it was, it made me give her a second look.

She wore a plain knitted dress which at first glance looked expensive. But I was practiced in judging women’s clothes, and decided it was only the attractive lines of the body beneath the dress that gave that impression. A duplicate could be bought in any department store for under thirty dollars. Her pumps and matching bag, also expensive-looking at first glance, were simulated alligator. To top it off, she wore a wristwatch which glittered with fake diamonds and a ring set with a green stone which would have been worth several thousand dollars if it had been an emerald instead of tinted glass.

Her clothes, her affected tone in ordering her drink, and the rather theatrical condescension with which she laid a twenty-dollar bill on the bar tabbed her as a woman of limited means attempting to act as though she had money. It never occurred to me that she might be a fellow member of the profession, though. I pegged her as a working girl on vacation enjoying the harmless fantasy of being her favorite movie actress for a short time.

Exactly the type of girl I needed to work my score, I thought ruefully.

She covertly examined me at the same time I was looking her over. I seemed to make more of an impression on her than she did on me. Which wasn’t surprising. Even in those days, I did know how to put on a front. My suit had cost a hundred and fifty dollars and my shoes were hand-tooled leather. Everything I wore was conservative but expensive. I looked like a young, successful executive.

The girl waited until the bartender was at the far end of the bar, then produced a cigarette and called to him in the same affected voice, “May I have a light, please?”

Her eyes flicked sidewise at me as she spoke. She was waiting for me to save the barkeep the trouble of walking the length of the bar by offering a light myself. Amused, I produced my lighter and held flame to her cigarette. The bartender, halfway to her, dropped a packet of matches back into the pocket of his white coat.

“Thank you,” she said primly. “I left my gold lighter in my room.”

The adjective “gold” amused me. She was as refreshingly naïve as a small girl playing princess. If I hadn’t been in the process of working a dodge, I would have played along just for kicks. But I had too much on my mind to let myself get sidetracked by a flirtation. Finishing my drink, I gave her an impersonal smile and walked away.

At the door I looked back to see her crook her finger at the bartender. When the man came to her, she leaned forward to speak to him in a low tone. He glanced toward me, then quickly averted his eyes again when he saw me standing in the doorway watching. I continued on out, amused to know that the woman was inquiring who I was.

She would probably be impressed by what the bartender told her, I imagined. The hotel employees thought I was a vacationing executive of a New York importing firm which had branch offices all over the world.

I paused in the lobby, considering where I could go for some quiet, uninterrupted thinking. It was a sunny afternoon in late May, and the thought of spending it in my room wasn’t very attractive.

I thought of the hotel swimming pool. The outside temperature was only about seventy, warm enough to be comfortable lying in the sun, yet cool enough to assure that the pool would be relatively deserted. Deciding I could think as well lying in the sun on my back as I could in my room, I walked out to the pool and rented a pair of trunks.

When I came from the dressing room, I brought a towel, a package of cigarettes and my lighter with me. I laid them at the front edge of the pool, on the opposite side of the diving board from where the lifeguard was seated in a canvas chair, and dived in.

Except for the lifeguard and a young couple lying in the sun at the far edge of the pool, I had the place to myself. I did a few fancy dives, then stretched out on the concrete with my head on the towel to absorb some sun and think. I closed my eyes against the brightness of the sun.

A shadow touched my face, making me open my eyes. The girl I had seen in the bar, now wearing the briefest of blue bathing suits, stood over me. She must have gone up to her room to change, for it obviously wasn’t a rented suit. Apparently she had followed me from the bar into the lobby and had seen me head for the pool. She was persistent when she wanted to meet a man, I thought sourly.

She carried a towel and a bathing cap in one hand, a package of cigarettes in the other. “Could I trouble you for another light?” she asked. “I forgot my lighter again.”

This time I wasn’t amused, because I had wanted to be alone. Sitting up, I asked dryly, “The gold one?”

“Why, yes,” she said. “I only have one.”

I flicked my lighter and she stooped to get the flame. Then she dropped to the edge of the pool about two feet away from me and dangled her feet in the water.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Sure,” I told her a little shortly. I fished a cigarette from my pack and lighted one of my own.

“I was watching you dive,” she said. “You’re quite expert, aren’t you?”

“Run-of-the-mill. I was a summer lifeguard as a kid.”

“Oh?” she said in an interested tone. “That accounts for all those muscles. I’ve heard swimming is the best all-around exercise there is.”

She was beginning to amuse me again. The asking-for-a-light technique was about the corniest approach in the book. Now she was going into the my-what-a-big-strong-man-you-are act.

“You have nice muscles yourself,” I said.

She gave me a quick glance, blushed when she saw I was pointedly staring at her full bosom. For a flustered moment she didn’t know what to say. I didn’t help her any. I was interested to see how she handled wolf wisecracks.

She simply ignored the remark. She asked, “Do you stay here?”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“So do I. I just checked in. I’m Mavis Train.” She looked at me expectantly.

“Sam Carter,” I said. “What’s your room number?”

She looked a little startled. “What? Why, 713. Why?”

“I collect them,” I said.

“Collect what?”

“Pretty girl’s room numbers. Then when I get drunk and feel lecherous in the middle of the night, I go pound on their doors.”

She stared at me, not sure whether I was making a joke or was really a screwball.

I said, “I’m just warning you. Didn’t your mother ever tell you it’s dangerous to speak to strange men?”

She decided I was teasing her. “I’m not that young,” she told me. “I’m twenty-five.”

“From where?” I asked.

“What? Oh, you mean my home. Long Island.”

I nodded. “Your father has a big estate there?”

“Why, yes. How did you know?”

“Just a guess. What are you doing so far from home?”

She hesitated, then said with rehearsed reluctance, “I ran away from a wedding.”

“Oh? Whose?”

“My own, silly. My father wanted me to marry this old man. Well, not old exactly. He’s about forty-five. He’s a business associate of daddy’s.”

The words had a familiar ring. They were the prelude to one of the oldest female bunco games there is. Old, but pretty effective when a real artist pulls it. But Mavis was no artist. Her idea of how heiresses acted was derived from seeing movies. Up to now I had assumed she was merely play-acting for the thrill of it. Now I realized with a shock that she was trying to work a bunco game and had picked me as her mark.

For a few moments I was too flabbergasted to speak, A little offended too. I regarded myself as an accomplished pro, and it wasn’t very flattering to be taken for a sucker. Then the humor of the situation struck me.

“Daddy insists on the marriage, huh?” I said with a wide grin. “If you go home and behave, all will be forgiven. If you don’t, he’ll cut you off without a cent. Already you’re running low on cash, and are becoming a little desperate. You’ve about decided to give in.”

She examined me doubtfully. I was going too fast. That part of the story wasn’t supposed to come out for several days yet, when I had become fond enough of her to object to her throwing her life away on a man twenty years older than she was.

“Don’t go back home and marry him,” I advised. “Something will come up. Maybe some kind man will stake you until you can get a job and make it on your own.”

She frowned and looked a little confused.

“How much do you need?” I asked.

She stared at me for a long time. Then she said accusingly, “You’re making fun of me.”

“Me?” I said. “Make fun of a damsel in distress? You wound me. Your story tugs at my heart. I’d open my purse wide, except for one thing.”

She ground out her cigarette on the concrete and tossed it aside. Rising, she looked down at me disdainfully. “I don’t think I like you, Mr. Carter.”

“Don’t you want to know what the one thing is?” I asked.

“No.” Turning her back, she started to walk away.

“It’s that there’s very little in my purse,” I said softly. “I’m in the bunco racket too.”

She stopped and slowly turned around. Her eyes were wide as they stared down at me.

“Sit down again,” I invited. “I’ve been looking for a girl like you. Maybe we can get together in a different way than you intended.”