Читать книгу City Limits - Will Oursler - Страница 11

SHE STARTED TO OPEN her bag and reach into it for the four fifties I had given her, but I held up a hand and she paused long enough to stare at me.

“Don’t go off half-cocked,” I said rapidly. “The fake name was just to keep me out of trouble. Think your friend Smith would have sent you along if I’d given my real name?”

She examined my face for a long time, finally said, “Are you trying to tell me you really just wanted to let your hair down? This isn’t some kind of an undercover investigation? “

I said, “I have no intention of getting you up to my room, having you undress and then arresting you, like Harry Allerup did to Gloria Townsend. I’ll leave that kind of work to the Morals Division cops. What difference does it make who I am? You have your fee, and you said I don’t revolt you. Wouldn’t you rather earn it from me than take a chance on your next customer being a greasy fat man?”

She continued to look at me doubtfully. “You’re in charge of the call-girl investigation. Everybody knows that.”

“Sure. Eventually I hope to crack it. But it wouldn’t crack it to toss you in jail. I promise I won’t get you in trouble.”

She hesitated, undecided whether to return my fee and leave, or stick it out. I think my suggestion that her next customer might be less pleasant finally decided her.

“I’m probably crazy,” she said. “I believe you are making some kind of undercover investigation. But I think I trust you too. I don’t think you’d arrest me after promising you wouldn’t.”

I grinned at her. “Now that we’re friends again, want another drink?”

She shook her head. “Not here, now that I know who you are. You aren’t the only one who could be recognized by a friend. And I wouldn’t want it to get back to Mr. Smith that I was hobnobbing with an assistant D.A. Let’s get out of sight.”

By out of sight, she obviously meant my room. I took her up to it and ordered a couple of highballs from room service.

While waiting for our order, Penny opened her large bag, drew out a filmy lace nightgown and neatly folded it under one of the pillows of the double bed. After she carried a toothbrush into the bathroom, her moving-in seemed to be complete.

When she came from the bathroom, she cocked her head to one side and examined me curiously.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“You’re an odd one, Mike Macauley. You haven’t even kissed me hello yet.”

Stepping toward her, I took her shoulders and looked down into her face. “Hello, Penny Coynes.”

She raised her lips as innocently as a teen-ager offering a good-night kiss to her date after the high-school prom. But when they touched mine, they became the lips of a woman. One instant they were cool and gentle, the next hot and demanding. Her arms went about my neck and her body strained against mine. She began to tremble as my hands drifted over her body.

A knock came at the door.

We broke reluctantly, her hands lightly sliding across each side of my face in a final caress as she moved away. Her eye pupils were enormously dilated and her soft lips slightly parted. It was no simulated professional act. There was genuine desire in her face.

Wiping lipstick from my mouth with a handkerchief, I opened the door to admit the room-service waiter. He carried in his tray, set the two highballs on the dresser and handed me the tab. I overtipped him and got him out again.

When the door closed, Penny and I looked at each other. There was a waiting expression on her face. There may have been one on mine too, but I suppressed it. I had brought her up here to learn something about the call-girl racket, and business came before pleasure.

“Better not let the ice melt,” I said, lifting one of the drinks and handing it to her.

She looked a little disappointed, but she accepted the drink. I raised mine, said, “Bumps,” and we both sipped.

“You mentioned Gloria Townsend before,” I said. “Know her well?”

Her expression became a little wary. “Pretty well. She was one of the girls.”

“Was? She isn’t dead.”

She studied the ice in her highball. “No. But close to it. I don’t imagine she’ll come back to work if she recovers.”

“She’d be a fool if she did,” I said. “You know who beat her up, don’t you?”

She gave me a frightened look. “Do you?”

“Not by name. But it was someone in the organization you work for. To keep her from talking to me.”

Her expression relaxed at the news that I didn’t know the actual assailant. “Tupper Smith has a different theory.”

“The farmer whose place you girls use for a headquarters? He would have, since it was probably on his order that Gloria was beaten. What’s his story?”

“He thinks Gloria’s brother beat her because he found out she was a call girl. Sid Trask.”

“She has a brother named Trask?”

Penny nodded. “That’s her real name too. Gladys Trask. Sid’s the yard manager at Sullivan’s Lumber Company. He’s a huge man and has a violent temper. He’d be quite capable of beating her if he found out what she was doing.”

I snorted. “The girl was going to give me some inside dope on the racket. The beating stopped her. It would be pretty coincidental if an outraged brother came along just in time to get Tupper Smith and his cohorts off the hook.”

Penny drained her glass, set it down on the dresser and said, “You didn’t really make this date to let your hair down, did you? You just want to pump me. Would you like to see me beaten like Gloria?”

The minute she made the remark, she wished she hadn’t. She looked at me in consternation.

“So you know the real reason she was beaten,” I said softly. “Didn’t it scare you a little to see what happens to girls who want to quit? Won’t you want to quit some day, Penny?”

The, question jolted her. You could tell by her suddenly pinched and withdrawn expression that it was one she had skirted because she was afraid to face it.

“Let’s change the subject, Mike. If you just want to pump me, I’ll give you your money back and go home.”

I set down my glass. “Come here,” I ordered.

She came to me obediently, standing before me like a little girl, with averted eyes. I took her shoulders and drew her into my arms. Her lips raised, but it wasn’t like before. She was unresisting, but without passion.

After a moment I raised my head and looked down into her upturned face. She waited, her eyes closed and her expression remote.

“It’s no good, is it, Penny?” I asked quietly.

Her eyes opened. “Why, Mike?”

“Because before you wanted me. Now you’re just offering what’s paid for. And I think I like you too much to buy you.”

She gazed at me steadily, her lips barely parted. “Do you, Mike? You mean you’d only want me if it wasn’t a business arrangement?”

“That’s about the size of it, Penny.”

“But you would want me then?”

“Who wouldn’t?” I said a little bitterly. “You’re a lovely girl.”

Disengaging herself from my arms, she picked up her conical bag and drew out the two hundred dollars. Separating one of the fifties, she returned it to the bag and laid the other three on the dresser.

“Tupper Smith’s cut for the referral is fifty,” she said. “Now there’s no profit in it for me.”

I shook my head wonderingly. “For a call girl you’re the poorest businesswoman I ever heard of. Stop trying to give me my money back every few minutes. You’ve kept your part of the bargain. It’s my loss if I don’t want to take advantage of it.”

She watched me quietly, looking a little lost, as I picked up the bills and dropped them back in the bag.

“I said, “What’s your real name, Penny?”

“It’s Coynes. The Penny is faked, but the last name is right. Peggy Coynes.”

“Then next time I’ll take you out as Peggy Coynes the dress model, instead of as Penny Coynes the call girl. I think we’d both like it better.”

She went over to the bed, drew the filmy nightgown from beneath the pillow, went to the bathroom and returned with her toothbrush. She stowed both sway in her bag without looking at me. She started for the door, stopped with her hand on the knob and suddenly turned and ran to me.

“Mike,” she said, “be careful. Be awfully careful.”

She gave me a quick kiss, ran back to the door and was gone.