Girl on a Slay Ride

Terror began when the ransom note arrived in the morning mail demanding $100,000 in unmarked bills….

Three days later, the girl’s parents received her dress in the mail. The next day her shoes and stockings arrived. The day after that came her slip. When her brassière came in, the ransom was paid.

With a fortune in blood-money at stake, four men and a girl are caught up in a knife-edged story of greed, violence and unleashed passions.

M
ALLORY WAS
sweating as he drove his old Ford station wagon through Portland’s late-afternoon traffic. He drove nervously, more than normally aware of the other drivers on the road. He had the distinct sensation that they were all watching him closely.

It was strictly imagination, he thought. He wasn’t used to carrying forty thousand dollars worth of negotiable securities casually about in a briefcase. And he wasn’t used to making dates to pick up other men’s wives.

He made the complicated turnoff from Burnside onto the freeway. He swung to the right lane, forcing himself to keep the old Ford to a safe speed, fighting a desire to reach the airport and Denise as quickly as possible.

Denise Lawton, her name was now, he remembered. Not Denise Turney any more. Not Denise Mallory. It hadn’t been that for eight years. And he hadn’t seen her in nearly four years, he thought in surprise. But her husky, intimate voice coming over the telephone from Reno last night had still sounded the same. And it still brought the urgency of old desires to catch him hard under the breastbone.

He left the freeway. He dropped one hand from the wheel and wiped sweat from his palm onto his trousers. It was hot for late September, but the heat wasn’t making him sweat this way. He was acting like a damn fool, he thought. Like the Mallory of eight years ago who had waved his twenty-two-year-old nobility in her father’s face and stalked away, leaving Denise.

It was still hard to laugh at himself for the spectacle he must have made.

And hard to laugh at the final letter he had written with its bold declaration: “If you ever need me, Denise, come to me.”

And now she had come—eight years later. Last night he had felt the strong undercurrent of desperation in her voice when she’d said, “Cliff, this is Denise. Do you remember?”

And he’d swallowed the sudden aching dryness in his throat. “Sure, I remember.”

“It’s Mrs. Denise Lawton now, Cliff. Did you know that?”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

I’m in trouble, Cliff. I need help. You wrote me once that if I ever needed you, I should come to you.”

He said, “I remember. Where are you?”

“Reno,” she said. “I can’t get a plane until tomorrow afternoon. It gets to Portland at six. Will you be there, Cliff?”

“I’ll be there,” he said.

He’d played it cool, he thought. He hadn’t felt much of anything until he heard her lower the receiver. Then the reaction hit him. And it was still hitting him. If hearing her voice could do so much, what would seeing her again do?

He turned onto the airport road. A moment later he slid to the curb alongside the big terminal building. He leaned to the right, peering through the dusk at the thin crowd gathered under the marquee.

Then he saw her. Familiar, aching desire hammered inside him. She was more beautiful than he remembered her. Even four years ago there had still been a leggy immaturity about her. But here was a magnificent woman. The white skirt she wore molded itself against her long sleek legs as she strolled across the sidewalk. The tight, white jacket barely restrained the bold fullness of her breasts. Her burnished bronzed hair glowed softly in the light from the terminal.

He threw open the door. She was carrying two pieces of luggage. He took them from her and dropped them behind him, covering the briefcase with the forty thousand dollars worth of securities locked inside.

She slipped gracefully into her seat and tugged her skirt down. She pulled the door shut. “Let’s get out of here quickly, please, Cliff.”

Mallory put the wagon into gear and moved into the thin flow of traffic. She held a white purse in her lap. She opened it and took out a cigarette. He saw her fingers shake as she flicked her lighter. She glanced over her shoulder, out the rear window of the wagon, then she turned back and settled in the seat.

He could feel the effort she made to keep her voice light. “I caught you just in time, I see.”

He said, “My vacation started this afternoon.”

“Another fishing trip from the looks of all that camping equipment.”

“That’s right,” Mallory said.

She took a nervous puff of her cigarette. “To the same old place, Cliff?”

Mallory braked to a stop and then swung toward the interstate bridge that would take them north across the Columbia River. “I always go back,” he said.

“To the spot where we were?” The cool laughter he remembered was shaky. “Where Dad caught us?”

“There and other places,” Mallory said. He glanced briefly at her. She was studying the tip of her cigarette. She was remembering and wondering too, he thought.

She said softly, “Did you ever regret not fighting the annulment, Cliff?”

“What good would regretting do?” he asked harshly. “What was I—a punk kid fresh out of the service. No prospects except to be a hunting and fishing guide. What chance did I have against a man with all the money your father had?”

He’d learned not to think about it; he didn’t want to talk about it now. Denise, seventeen, a little wild even then. The two of them running away from her father’s fishing camp, lying about her age, getting married. And going back like fools to the only place Mallory really knew, back where her father found them and took her away before they’d even got up the nerve to consummate their marriage.

And Turney offering him money. And Mallory throwing it back at him and walking away.

She said suddenly. “Why didn’t you stay when you came to San Francisco four years ago, Cliff?”

“I didn’t fit with your kind of people,” he said bluntly. “I’m nothing but a glorified salesman.” He thought of the briefcase he had to deliver to his boss in Port Angeles before noon tomorrow. “And a high-class messenger boy. I can’t afford your kind of life.”

“Still the oner,” she said. “Still the outdoor type.”

“That’s the way I’m made,” Mallory said.

“But you work in an office,” she said.

“I spent four years of college training for business,” Mallory said. “I don’t know how to do anything else.”

“Except be a guide in the Olympic Mountains.”

Mallory fed the wagon into the swift-moving bridge traffic. He said, “You didn’t fly here to talk about me.”

She turned and looked through the rear window again. She settled back in the seat and lit a second cigarette from the stub of the first. She said, “This is asking a lot of you, Cliff.”

“What’s asking a lot of me? You haven’t told me anything yet except you were in trouble. What do you want me to do to help?”

She leaned forward and crushed her fresh cigarette in the ashtray. “I don’t know,” she said. “I only know I need help. And I couldn’t think of anyone else to come to.”

He looked at her again. The beauty of her patrician face was marred by twisted fear. Denise, so confident and so sure of herself with her father’s money behind her. So cool and sophisticated even at seventeen. That was the way he remembered her. But she was not that way now. She was simply a frightened woman.

He said, “Tell me about it.”

“I’m in a jam, Cliff. A real jam.”

Mallory said impatiently, “Look, it’s been four years since I saw you with that crowd of silk-underwear beatniks you hung out with. A lot can happen in that time. So fill me in.”

“A lot has happened,” she said bitterly. She twisted toward him in her seat. “For one thing, I grew up.”

Mallory was trying to keep the old Ford up with the swift-moving traffic as they left the bridge for the freeway. He didn’t answer.

She said, “That’s the truth, Cliff. I’m not the same person you saw four years ago.”

The traffic eased up enough for him to take out a cigarette and light it. He said, “What happened?”

“Dad turned me out of the house,” she said.

“I didn’t know fathers did that to their daughters any more,” Mallory said.

“Maybe most fathers don’t have kids as crazy as I was.”

“When was this?”

“Six months ago,” she said.

Six months ago, he thought, and she must be almost twenty-five. Hardly a “kid”!

He didn’t say anything.

She said, “I needed money. I’d always had so much.”

Mallory said, “Tell it straight. He didn’t just toss you into the street.”

“No,” she said, “not quite. Oh, damn it, you know, don’t you?”

“I can guess,” Mallory said, “from what I saw four years ago. You got in too deep gambling. He cut your allowance.”

“He paid my debts and stopped my allowance,” she said ruefully.

“So you thought you’d show him and you married some character named Lawton.”

“You make it sound so cheap, Cliff. Am I cheap?’

Mallory reached out and touched her briefly. “Just a little slow to grow up,” he said.

“I never really forgave Dad for annulling our marriage,” she said. “I guess I wanted to—to show him. Because I did love you, Cliff. I really did.”

“He was right,” Mallory said. “What would you have done with a guy like me? I’m really rolling now. I make six thousand a year.”

“Maybe I’d have been happy—married to you?”

Mallory said, “What was the matter with the man you did marry?”

“Rick?” She laughed harshly. “Rick was the gambler Dad paid off to. When Dad stopped my allowance, he offered me a job. I used my connections to bring him customers.”

“You damn little fool,” Mallory said.

“What else could I do?” she demanded. “What else did I know how to do?”

Mallory said, “And you found out he was cheating your friends?”

“I wish that was it,” she said. “It was worse, Cliff. I used to see a lot of strangers in his place after the gambling house closed—friends of his. I didn’t really pay much attention. But I guess Rick thought I did. A few days ago he asked me to marry him.”

“A few days ago?” Mallory echoed.

“That’s right,” she said. “I’ve been Mrs. Lawton for four whole days now.”

“After you’d worked for him for nearly six months? Why the sudden urge?”

Denise said, “That’s what I thought it was—an urge. Because he couldn’t—couldn’t …”

“Get it any other way?” Mallory said.

“You make it sound so crude.”

Mallory said, “If it wasn’t an urge, what was it?”

She said, “I found out the day after we were married. Rick and his friends were setting up a syndicate to work the small towns in the Sacramento Valley. Some of those men who visited him were racketeers.”

“I should think you’d find that sort of thing exciting,” Mallory said.

She said pleadingly, “I told you I’d changed, Cliff. Believe me, please. I didn’t know what was going on until we were married.”

“I believe you,” Mallory said. “I never knew you to be a liar.”

“Thank you.” She paused, then said, “The syndicate wasn’t just for gambling. Rick had expanded his interests. He was going to be the big businessman, he told me. Gambling and prostitution and dope! A wonderful business to be in!”

Mallory said, “He thought you knew and he married you to keep you from testifying against him?”

“That and to tie me in with his filthy mess so I’d help him.”

“God,” Mallory said softly.

“I made the mistake of telling him I wanted out—and why,” she said. “He told me I couldn’t get out.”

“That’s an old bluff,” Mallory said. “You should have run for the cops.”

She shivered violently. “Rick told me what happened to people who did that. The syndicate has long arms, Cliff.”

“You could have gone to your father.”

“I tried to. He wouldn’t even see me.”

“So you came to me?”

“Don’t sound so bitter, Cliff. I didn’t—not right away. The day I tried to see Dad, I was nearly hit by a car. It was no accident. Rick let me know that. He told me they had too much invested to take any chances with someone like me messing them up. He told me they’d kill me if I tried to tell anyone.”

She lit another cigarette and puffed on it nervously. “Yesterday I couldn’t stand it any longer. I got together what money I could and ran. I took a bus to Reno and called you from there.” She glanced over her shoulder at the flow of headlights behind them. “I think I dodged them, but I can’t be sure.”

Mallory said, “Relax. No one would ever look for you to be in an old clunker like this.”

“Then you will help me, Cliff?”

Mallory hesitated. He felt the responsibility of the securities, forty thousand dollars worth of them, negotiable as cash in the right hands.

But he also felt the responsibility of Denise. Because of a remark made by a dramatic young man eight years ago? Not that alone, he thought. She was a woman in trouble. He couldn’t deny her terror. And she had been his wife—if only for a brief few hours.

She cried out in desperation, “Cliff, who else is there if you won’t help me?”

“I’ll help you,” Mallory said. “You can go to Port Angeles with me tomorrow morning. We can figure something out from there.”