Fletcher Flora - The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery MEGAPACK™ - 20 Classic Mystery & Crime Stories!

“You afraid of Guy?”

He laughed again, shortly. “I’m supposed to say no? I’m supposed to push out my chest like a Rover Boy? You know the right answer. Hell, yes, I’m afraid of Guy! I’m afraid of him the same way you’re afraid of him. The same way any little guy is afraid of any big guy with money and power and the ruthlessness to throw them around.”

She slipped around the curve of the grand piano and sat on the bench beside him. “Little guys grow.”

His fingers moved out of one tune, into another. “There’s something else, baby. There’s the fact that Guy’s been a pretty good friend.”

“Don’t be a fool, Terry. Guy doesn’t have friends. Like you said, he has property. I don’t get it, Terry. A bright guy like you, with a big chunk of education. What are you doing here?”

“Haven’t you heard? I’m Guy Sebastian’s secretary.”

“Don’t play, coy with me.” Her mouth sagged at the corners, losing for a moment its beautiful lines. “You’re no more a secretary than I am. You’re a deluxe errand boy. Pleasant presence and fancy talk. We’re both the same. Figure a name for me, and we’ll share it.”

His fingers went on with the thin, tinsel tune. Hadn’t the knowledge been a sickness in his soul for the eight long months past? He shrugged. “Regrets, Liza?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it depends on you. You haven’t answered my question.”

“Why I’m here? I could ask the same of you.”

“If you did, I’d tell you.”

“I’m a lazy guy with no special ambition and no incentive to make big stuff of his little talents... And, well — all tyrants have guys like me around, Liza. Hitler had one to play the piano and tell jokes...”

“As simple as that?”

“That’s right. And now it’s your turn.”

“It’s a matter of values, I guess,” she said slowly. “It’s a matter of overestimating the things you’re born without. Things like mink and money and all this. You want them, you go after them. You work the only way you can — by investing natural assets. For a long time after you get them, you think they’re good enough. But then something comes along to let you know they’re not. Something, or someone. Can you play My Desire , Terry?”

His brain said no, but his fingers wouldn’t listen. They ran a scale and worked back down into the tune.

“It’s for you and me, that tune. You know it’s for you and me,” she said softly. He let the tune die, and turned on the bench to face her. Her pale blond hair fell forward from a low side part, to cast her face in shadow.

He saw again the perfect structure of bone beneath perfect skin, and he told himself again, for the thousandth time, not to be a fool.

“Don’t say it, baby. Even to say it means the end of luck.”

“Maybe not. Maybe we could get Guy to see it our way.”

“He’d crucify us and you know it. He’d nail us on the wall and celebrate with a wake.”

“You’ve got to believe in luck...”

“We’d never get away with it. Never in the world,” he said.

“We could talk to Guy together...”

He took her by the shoulders and pushed her roughly away. Getting up from the bench, he moved around the piano and stood with his back to her.

After a while, he turned and went back to her and found that she was standing waiting quietly.

He said harshly, “Forget it, Liza.”

She moved against him.

“Tell me how, Terry. Tell me how to forget.”

He couldn’t, because he didn’t know, and suddenly his right hand moved up into her hair against the back of her skull, mashing her mouth upon his with hungry brutality.

She whispered, “Terry, Terry...”

He tore her mouth away, pressing her head forward and down against his shoulder.

“So you don’t forget, baby. So you just remember how it might have been if things were different.”

Her head turned, her lips moving against his neck. “You always call me baby. Call me darling, Terry. Just once, call me darling.”

His voice was distorted with harshness, wrenched from his throat in the anger that comes with frustration. “Darling’s a word. It’s as cheap as ten thousand others. Darling Liza. Darling, darling, darling. Is that enough to pay you for the way we’ll die if Guy Sebastian gets any idea of this?”

She slipped away from him.

“You make him sound pretty grim, Terry. Guy. I mean.”

He laughed again without humor and took shoulders in his two hands.

“You trying to kid yourself, baby? If you are, you’d better quit. Guy Sebastian’s strictly a no-limit operator. How do you think he got all this fancy stuff you and I have been living with? Why do you think things happen when he says a word? Because he plays a horse now and then? Because he puts something on the books when the odds are right? You know better than that. These things are just to pass the time.

“He knows a lot of people in a lot of places. It might surprise you, the places those people are. It might surprise you even more to know where the big profits come from. You and I, we’re nothing. If we don’t watch out, we’ll be two stiffs in an alley, and no questions asked.”

“What does that make us, Terry?” she asked. “If Guy’s a louse, what does that make us? Funny that I never wondered before.”

“It makes us two parasites on a louse,” he said quietly, releasing her shoulders. “It’s getting late. Pretty soon this place will be swarming with people looking for drinks. You’d better get yourself sharp. Guy likes you to be a credit to him, you know.”

“I know.” She went back to the piano and picked up the purse she’d deposited when she came in. “When are you going to be on the level with me? When are you going to tell me why you’re really here?” The sudden desire to tell her the truth was an almost irresistible temptation. And he wanted to tell her to start running. But he only said, “I told you. I’m an educated flunkey. Self-made big shots always like to have one around. It keeps their egos fat.” Signifying defeat by the slight sag of her mouth, she rounded the piano and went out a door beyond it into the hall.

He stood without moving, hearing the receding tap of her high heels on asphalt tile, and when the sound was gone, he went down to the west windows and stood looking out across a wide terrace to the ragged skyline.

He was still there five minutes later when one of Guy Sebastian’s stony-faced servants materialized soundlessly at his elbow. Without moving, Terry angled a look over the corner of his shoulder into eyes as flat and depthless as metal disks.

“The boss wants you. In his office.”

“Okay.” Terry returned his gaze to the skyline, now darkening and grim.

The stony-faced servant said, “Now.”

Terry shrugged and went down the long room. In the hall, he took the stairs that ascended in a broad sweep to the second floor. Continuing on the level, he knocked on a door at the rear of the hall and the voice of Guy Sebastian invited him to come in. It was a peculiar voice, distorted and coarse and strangely modulated, as if its softness was intended to minimize its ugliness.

Terry responded to the invitation.

The man who stood in the center of the room to receive him was no more than average height, but he managed to give the impression of added inches. He was dressed in a conservative gray suit that was tailored to fit his body, not to disguise it. His hair was faded brown, wiry in texture, cropped close to a round skull. The face was aggressive, thrusting itself boldly in the lines of nose and jaw.

The distorted voice said, “Hello, Terry. Find a chair.”

Terry sank into foam rubber and waited. Sebastian, balanced catlike on the balls of feet slightly spread, lifted in a slight gesture the glass he held.