The Erection Set (37 page)

The party had thinned out and separated into tight little groups making their own points with champagne perfection. A tired orchestra played to a half-dozen couples rubbing pelvises on the small floor. Walt Gentry was smiling at the blonde leading lady who had left her white fox somewhere and was holding him off in a dance designed to give him a full view of her chest that was barely encased in swath of see-through chiffon. His demeanor was one of total satisfaction, like the deal had been made hours ago.

Cousin Dennisoh was hovering over Leyland Hunter who was-drawing up some kind of a document, with Cross McMillan gloating beside them, and S. C. Cable was busy talking to Sharon. She was taking notes, consulting the two elderly gentlemen alongside who were apparently quite happy with everything. One owned a whole tract of downtown property and the other was the mayor of Linton.

I didn't see Rose and I didn't see Alfred.

Nobody had seen a waiter with a Daly nameplate, either.

Over in the Comer Sheila McMillan was holding a glass of champagne in either hand and when she saw me standing by myself beside the piano she put the glasses down and walked around the edge of the crowd to my little nook and said, “Take me out of here, Dog.”

One of the waiters brought her jacket and we walked back through the kitchen to the side entrance I had used before. She was weaving a little bit and her face had a peculiar set to it. “Why this way?” she asked me.

“People talk,” I said.

“I don't care about people anymore.”

At the door I flipped the overhead light out and she leaned against me for a moment breathing the cool air. “Want to walk?”

“Yes. I need it.”

The parking area was half empty, but I never did like rows of quiet cars and took the path to the right that led behind a row of bushes and cut into the main entrance. Under the light at the door Bennie Sachs was talking to another uniformed cop and I didn't like that either, so I led her across the grass and angled toward the comer of lawn to the street and stood in the darkness of the trees a minutes to look around.

“You're waiting for somebody,” Sheila said.

“Not really.”

“Somebody's out there.”

“Everybody's out there, kitten.”

I felt the shiver run through her and held her hand. “Get me away from everybody, Dog.”

“Come on, I'll take you home.”

“No, not home. I took a room at the hotel for the night. Cross is going back to New York and I didn't want to stay in the big house alone. I'm tired of being alone.”

“What's bugging you, kid?”

“Nothing. Please, just take me to the hotel.”

So we walked to the car, listening to the night sounds, my ears trying to pick up anything that didn't belong to the night alone. I got her inside, went around the car and shoved the key in the lock. She shivered again and stared straight ahead. “Trouble?” I asked her.

“Why do people do things to people?”

“Beats me, sugar.” Inadvertently, I put my hand on her thigh and although it was only a quick touch I felt her contract in a spasm of emotional anguish that only stopped when I had both hands on the wheel.

The inn was a two-storied affair with a semicircular drive that cut in front of the main entrance, with a cut-off drive for deliveries that circled the building. Just to be sure, I went around the back and stopped when the taxi drove up to the front to unload a foursome.

The taxi driver took his money and drove off and I shoved the car into gear and that was when they jumped me.

Their only trouble was that I had seen them coming and shot one right through the middle of his forehead and left him standing there with only a mangled mess from his eyes up until he hit the ground and ran over the other one with both wheels, then backed up over him with the same two wheels in a sound like running over a wooden bushel basket.

I was out and rolling when I spotted the third one coming in fast to see what the hell had happened and just as he saw the tangled heaps on the ground I broke his arm with one smashing chop and his neck with the next.

All three of them had guns with full loads, two .38s and a 9 mm. P-38, all with the hammers back and ready to go, but they hadn't been fast enough to use them. It only took a few seconds to go through their pockets. The one I had shot was unrecognizable and his name didn't mean anything at all. The other one's face was contorted in some exquisite agony, but I recognized him. Up close he didn't look like a teen-ager at all, but he was the side man in the car that had followed me earlier. The guy with the broken neck had a very familiar name. He was one of the Guido brothers' hit men, a backup on what was expected to be a sure kill.

When I looked up, Sheila's face was framed in the window of my car, one eye looking at me through the hole the .45 had punched in the glass. She was smiling distantly and I could sense the waves of shock and terror that were sending signals through every nerve of her body. I got in the car and this time when I put my hand on her there was no response at all except a slight widening of her eyes that' didn't mean a thing.

They were all around me and there was no place to go except a beat-up old clapboard house on the ocean.

 

There was an oddity to her state of shock, as if she had been squeezed dry. She walked with a strange lightness, her smile an enigmatic Mona Lisa twisting of the lips with no desire to explain her attitude. She neither complained nor resisted, simply going where I directed her, across the sandy hillocks to the warped boardwalk and into the house, where she stood quietly until I pulled the blinds and lit the kerosene lamps.

“You all right?” I asked her.

She waited, turned her head slowly and one corner of her smile twitched. Her eyes were much too bright. I took her hand, led her to a chair and sat her down. “Wait here.”

In the kitchen I turned on the gas stove, set the kettle over the burner and while the water was getting hot, disassembled the .45. I fitted in a new barrel, took the old one and the ejected shell that had flipped onto the dashboard and buried them under the sand. When I was finished the water was boiling and I made us both a cup of coffee.

Sheila was still sitting where I had left her in exactly the same position. I didn't like it a bit. For ten seconds I held the coffee cup out to her before there was a semblance of recognition, then she took it from my hand with a tiny nod and lifted it to her lips.

There wasn't going to be any way of getting through to her for a while so I just sat there toying with the coffee, watching her face.

By now they should have found the bodies, I thought. Or perhaps not, too. Maybe that service drive wouldn't see any use until the deliveries started tomorrow. I had fired the shot from inside a closed car on the dark side of the building and even waited a reasonable length of time before moving out. There had been no alarm, nobody around to investigate, so in all probability the sound of the blast hadn't been heard at all. There hadn't even been a yell from any of the punks who were mashed to pieces back there. Overconfidence had caught them asleep and all they knew was that last second of horror.

Tomorrow I'd have the window glass replaced and the tires changed on the rented car and I hoped it would give me the time I needed. There was still the problem of a witness who sat across from me in a stupor. Maybe she would talk, maybe she wouldn't, but to let anybody see her as she was now was inviting immediate disaster. Right now Sheila McMillan's mind was one huge mass of turmoil trying to bury itself in some deep, dark place and anything could trigger it in the wrong direction.

She had finished the coffee and I took the empty cup from her hand. “Come on, Sheila,” I said. My fingers went under her arm and she responded to the touch, rising slowly, clutching her pocketbook. I picked up a lamp and led her upstairs to the one bedroom I had fixed up. I put the lamp down and turned back the covers while she stood in the middle of the room staring at the wall. When I crossed her line of vision her eyes seemed to follow me vacantly and she was still smiling that faint smile.

She was easy to undress. I simply unzipped the back of her gown and let it fall to the floor. She didn't have anything else on except her shoes. I took them off when I lifted her feet from the tangle of fabric around her ankles, then put my arm around her and made her sit on the edge of the bed. I pushed her back gently, took her legs and stretched them out, then brushed her hair away from her face.

She was beautiful, all right, soft skin nicely tanned that was white across her breasts and thighs, a body lushly mature with hidden sensuality in the mounds of her pink-tipped bosom and the tawny triangle of hair where her tapered legs met.

For the first time her eyes moved and the smile relaxed from its fixed position, her face watching me almost absently. I took the tips of my fingers and drew them slowly down her body, over the rise of her breasts, across the flatness of her belly through the soft vee of hair and in a wavy line down her legs. I gave her toes a little squeeze, pulled the covers up under her chin and patted her cheek.

“Poor kid,” I said softly.

The brightness in her eyes seemed to mist over, then the lids closed over them, her mouth softened and her chest rose in the regular rhythm of sleep.

The local newspaper ran a special edition to contain the events of the previous night. The triple killings took precedence on the first page with four photos of the bodies where they lay and police mug shots of what they had looked like previously. Identification was immediate and positive. All three were members of the mob led by the Guido brothers but no motive for their deaths had been uncovered. At present it was suspected that, since the Guido crowd had been engaged in illegal strong-arm union tactics on the waterfront, they might have been in Linton to muscle in on union activities going on with the reactivation of the Barrin plant. Local police were working in conjunction with New York City departments and other state authorities and expected immediate results.

Balls.

Inside pages of the edition covered the activities of the S. C. Cable production crews setting up for the forthcoming Fruits of Labor picture, the society pages went all out on the party given for prominent local citizens and the picture company and the rest of the world news was sandwiched in the last section.

Even the New York papers were having a field day with the topic and even if Fruits of Labor hadn't been a great book to begin with, it sure was getting one hell of a push with all the notoriety going on around it. Mona Merriman ran a full-column plug with details obviously supplied by Lee and the publicity department, another Hollywood columnist gave it two paragraphs and Dick Lagen hinted at a more sinister possible aspect and stated flatly that this was only the beginning of the unrest that was bound to come. If he did have anything substantial, either it wasn't provable or he wasn't ready to break it yet.

Chet Linden had listened while I told him what happened and told me to get lost.

I said, “Buddy, I'm getting highly pissed off and I don't want any crap from you at all. I told you what could happen and you wouldn't listen and if you feel like stranding me, old pal, I'll blow the whistle on the whole damn shebang and bring it down on everybody's head.”

His voice was flat and cold. “We don't take that stuff, Dog.”

But I could be just as cold and a lot more deadly I had four more kills in my pocket to prove it and he damn well kept count too. “You don't have any choice, Chet. Just do it.”

I heard him suck in his breath with disgust. “Okay, where's the car?”

When I gave him the directions I said, “They have tire impressions from the area, so just switch shoes of the same type and the rental company will never notice it. Do the window, wash down the undersides, run it through the countryside a little bit to pick up traces of dirt other than that beside the hotel and leave it where you found it.”

“You think their labs can't pick up something if they nail you?”

“They won't have time. I'm not on anybody's list yet.”

“You're on ours now.”

“Come get me then. And, Chet...”

“Yeah?”

“Don't try booby-trapping the car. I know all the gimmicks too ... and you just might get some innocent slob killed.”

He didn't answer me. He just hung up and I grinned because the choice was all mine. But from now on I had something else to look out for.

Rose was waiting for me at the back table of the Arcade Bar and Grill, a little place struggling for survival without seeming to care what happened. The couple who ran the place had aged along with the building and looked more like wooden fixtures than people. She had gotten there five minutes early and had ordered a hamburger, getting ready to bite into it when I arrived. I called for one myself and sat down opposite her.

She smiled a faint hello, but there was a cloud across her face that hadn't been there before. I said, “How'd you make out, kid?”

“You picked a live one.”

“Any trouble?”

She shook her head. “He took me out for a snack and a drink, then dropped me off at the hotel.”