Fletcher Flora - The First Golden Age of Mystery & Crime MEGAPACK™ - 26 Stories by Fletcher Flora

“Perhaps I could persuade your client that he is making a mistake. Would you care to give me his name?”

“No, I wouldn’t. The truth is, I don’t particularly care for your methods of persuasion.”

“No matter. If I really want to learn the identity of your client, I can do it easily enough. Now, however, I don’t propose to discuss this matter with you any longer. I believe I’ve made you a fair proposition. Do you still refuse to accept it?”

“Sorry. I’m holding out for the million.”

If there was the slightest sign between him and Darcy behind me, the lifting of a brow or the twitch of a tick, I never saw it. It could be, I guess, that they’d developed a kind of extra-sensory communication that functioned automatically when the time was precisely right. Anyhow, sign or not, Darcy grabbed me abruptly above the elbows from behind and wrenched my arms and shoulders back so violently that I thought for a moment I’d split down the middle like a spring fryer. At the same instant, Lawler made a fist and stepped forward within range.

“I regret this, Hand,” he said. “I really do.”

“I know,” I said. “You dislike violence. You and Darcy both.”

“It’s your own fault, of course. You’re behaving like a recalcitrant boy, and it’s necessary to teach you a lesson.”

“Don’t you think you ought to teach me somewhere else? You wouldn’t want to get blood on this expensive carpet.”

“It’s acrilan. Haven’t you heard of it? One of these new miracle fabrics. Blood wipes right off.”

“Is that a fact? Better living through chemistry. I’m impressed.” He was tired now of the whole business. I could see in his face that he was tired, and I believe that he actually did regret what he considered the necessity of having to do what he was going to do. It was only that he knew no other way to fight, in spite of Chopin and Mozart and the veneer of respectability, than the way of violence. He wanted to get it over with, and he did. He drove the fist into my face, and it was like getting hit with a jagged boulder. Flesh split on bone, and bone cracked, and darkness welled up internally.

I sagged, I guess, and hung by my arms from the hands of Darcy, and after a while, I guess, I straightened and lifted my head and was hit again in the face. When I opened my eyes after that, I was lying on the carpet, and there was blood on it. In my mouth there was more blood, and a thin and bitter fluid risen from my stomach. I was sick and in pain, but mostly I was ashamed. I got up slowly, in sections, and looked at Lawler through a pink mist.

“Your carnet’s a mess,” I said. “I hope you’re right about acrilan.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You’re a tough guy, Hand, and I like you. If you think I get any kicks out of pushing you around, you’re wrong. There’s a lavatory in there. Through that door. Why don’t you go in and wash your face?”

“I think I will,” I said.

I went in and turned on the cold tap and caught double handfuls of water and buried my face in them. The water burned like acid, but it revived me and dispelled the pink fog. In the mirror above the lavatory, I saw that a cut on my cheekbone needed a stitch or two. I found some adhesive tape in the medicine cabinet and pulled the cut together and went back out into the other room.

Lawler was seated at the grand again. Darcy was leaning against the wall behind him. Robin Robbins, in her chair, was still wearing her poker face. I thought I saw in her eyes a guarded gleam of something appealing. Compassion? Camaraderie based on mutual beatings? A raincheck? Who could be sure with Robin? I kept right on walking toward the door, and I was almost there when Lawler spoke to me.

“Hand,” he said.

I stopped but didn’t turn. I didn’t answer either. It hurt to talk, and I saw no sense in it.

“One thing more,” he said. “I made a reasonable offer, and you’d be wise to accept it. This is just a suggestion of what you’ll get if you don’t. I’ll put a check for five thousand in the mail today. You’ll get it tomorrow.”

“Thanks very much,” I said.

I started again and kept going and got on out of there.

In a sidewalk telephone booth I dialed Faith Salem’s number and got Maria.

“Miss Salem’s apartment,” she said.

“This is Percy Hand,” I said. “Let me speak with Miss Salem.”

“One moment, please,” she said.

I waited a while. The open wire hummed in my ear. My head felt three times its normal size, and the hum was like a siren. I held the receiver a few inches away until Faith Salem’s voice came on.

“Hello, Mr. Hand,” she said.

“You said to call before I came.”

I said. “I’m calling.”

“Is it something urgent?”

“I don’t know how urgent it is. I know I just turned down five grand in a chunk for twenty-five dollars and expenses a day. Under the circumstances, I feel like being humored.”

She was silent for ten seconds. The siren shattered my monstrous head.

“You sound angry,” she said finally.

“Not at all,” I said. “I’m an amiable boob who will take almost anything for anybody, and my heart holds nothing but love and tenderness for all of God’s creatures.”

Silence again. The siren again. Her voice again in due time.

“You’d better come up,” she said. “I’ll be expecting you.”

“Fifteen minutes,” I said.

When I got there, the sun was off the terrace, and so was she. She was waiting for me in the living room, and she was wearing a black silk jersey pullover blouse and black ballerina-type slippers and cream-colored Capri pants. On her they looked very good, or she looked very good in them, whichever way you saw it. She was lying on her side, propped up on one elbow on a sofa about nine feet long, and she got up and came to meet me between the sofa and the door. I thought I heard her breath catch and hold for a second in her throat.

“Your face,” she said.

“It must be a mess,” I said.

“There’s a stain on the front of your shirt,” she said.

“Blood,” I said. “Mine.”

She reached up and touched gently with her finger tips the piece of adhesive that was holding together the lips of the cut that needed a stitch or two. The fingers moved slowly down over swollen flesh and seemed to draw away the pain by a kind of delicate anesthetization. It was much better than codeine or a handful of aspirin. “Come and sit down,” she said. I did, and she did. We sat together on the nine foot sofa, and my right knee touched her left knee, and this might have been by accident or design, but in either event it was a pleasant situation that no one made any move to alter, certainly not I.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“So am I,” I said. “I’m sorrier than anyone.”

“Would you like to tell me about it?”

“It’s hardly worth while. I took a job, and this turned out to be part of it.”

“It’s all my fault.”

“Sure it is.”

“But I don’t understand. Why should anyone do this to you?”

“Someone wanted me to give up the job, and I didn’t want to. We had a difference of opinion.”

“Does that mean you’ve decided to go ahead with it?”

“That’s what it means. At least for a while longer. When anyone wants so hard for me to quit doing something I’m doing, it makes me stubborn. I’m a contrary fellow by nature.”

“You must be careful,” she said.

She sounded as if it would really made a difference if I wasn’t. She was sitting facing me, her left leg resting along the edge of the sofa and her right leg not touching the sofa at all, and she lifted her hand again and touched the battered side of my face as if she were reminding herself and me of the consequences of carelessness, and it seemed a natural completion of the gesture for her hand to slip on around my neck. Her arm followed, and her body came over against mine, and I was suddenly holding her and kissing her with bruised lips, and we got out of balance and toppled over gently and lay for maybe a minute in each other’s arms with our mouths together. Then she drew and released a deep breath that quivered her toes. She sat up, stood up, looked down at me with a kind of incredulity in her eyes.