A. Fair - Owls Don't Blink

“Have what?”

“Found her.”

“Where is she?”

I grinned at Bertha and said, “I’ve taken care of that little thing. You can search New Orleans from now until next year at this time and you’d never find her.”

“Why?”

“I mean that I’ve hidden her, and this time I’ve made a good job of it.”

“What’s the idea of hiding her? Why not tell Hale that we’ve got her, and smoke the whole thing out into the open?”

“Then what?”

“Well, we’d — then we’d finish our contract.”

“And where would that leave Roberta Fenn?”

“To hell with Roberta Fenn. I’m thinking about us.”

“Think some more about us then.”

“What do you mean?”

I said, “We’re given a deck of marked cards. We’re supposed to put them into the game-very innocently. All right, we put them into the game, collect our stipend, and that’s all. But suppose we take the marked deck of cards, slip them into our pocket, forget to put them into the game, and a big jackpot is coming up? Then what?”

She gloated over me rapturously. “And I thought you were dumb about money matters!” For a moment I thought she was going to kiss me.

I got up and moved over toward the door.

“What do you want?” she asked.

I said, “I want you to sit in your office and not know where I am. If Hale telephones, I’ve disappeared, too.”

Bertha frowned. “I’d have to lie to him, wouldn’t I?”

“You would now,” I said. “If you hadn’t been so smart about tracing telephone calls and hunting me up, you could have told him the truth — that you didn’t know where I was.”

“What are we going to do about that?” Bertha Cool asked.

I said, “When he rings up tonight, tell him you don’t know where I am.”

“You mean you want me to lie to him?”

I smiled at her and said, “No.”

Bertha said, “What are you getting at?”

I said, “I want you to tell him the truth.”

“I don’t get you.”

I held the door open for her. “By tonight,” I told her, “you won’t know where I am.”

I caught up on sleep for the biggest part of the afternoon. About six o’clock I tapped on the communicating door to Roberta’s room.

“Yes,” she called, “what is it?”

I opened the door a crack. “Getting hungry?”

“Come on in.” She had a sheet pulled up over her. From the clothes on the chair, it looked as though the sheet was about all she had on.

She grinned, said, “This is my negligee. Donald, I’ve simply got to get some clothes. I’ve been using a purse as a suitcase and overnight bag until I feel like something the cat dragged in. The drugstore downstairs managed to give me enough creams, comb, brushes, and toilet articles, but no negligee.”

I said, “I could use some clean clothes, but it’s Sunday and the stores are closed.”

“You live here, don’t you? You must have a room with a lot of things in it.”

“I have.”

“Why don’t you go get them?”

I smiled and shook my head.

“You think-that the police—”

“Yes.”

“Donald, I’m sorry. I’m the one that got you into this mess.”

“No, you didn’t. It isn’t any mess, and I’m not in it. I like the clothes I’ve got on.”

She smiled. “Where would we go?”

“Oh, there are half a dozen places where we could get something to eat and perhaps do a little dancing.”

“Donald, I’d love that.”

“Okay, get your things on.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ve washed out my undies and left them hanging in the bathroom. I think they’re dry.”

“How long?”

“Ten or fifteen minutes.”

“Be seeing you.”

I went back and closed the door, settled down and lit a cigarette. Fifteen minutes later she joined me, and thirty minutes after that we were seated in one of the less exclusive nightclubs with cocktails in front of us, and a special de luxe dinner ordered.

Getting a girl drunk is always a risky business. You don’t know what she’s going to do or what she’s going to say when the cautiousness wears off and she gets right down to the real low-down. What’s more, you never know whether you’re not going to wake up with a terrific headache and find your victim has drunk you under the table.

I suggested a second cocktail. Roberta took it. She turned me down on a third, but admitted that some wine would go nicely with the dinner.

I ordered sparkling Burgundy.

It was a place where people came to dine and talk, laugh, proposition, and be propositioned. Waiters made quite a show of bustling about, but didn’t try to serve the dinners under an hour or an hour and a half.

Our dinner dragged into its second bottle of sparkling Burgundy, and I could see Roberta was getting tight. I was feeling pretty darn good myself.

“You never have told me what your partner said to you.”

“Bertha?”

“Yes.”

“That was because your delicate ears shouldn’t hear such language.”

“You’d be surprised at the things my delicate ears have heard. What’s eating her?”

“Oh, just a general gripe.”

She reached across the table. Her fingers closed around my hand. “You’re protecting me, aren’t you, Donald?”

“Perhaps.”

“I knew you were. Your partner wanted you to find me and turn me in and you wouldn’t do it. You had a fight about it. Isn’t that right?”

“Listening at the door?” I asked.

Her eyes showed indignation. “Certainly not.”

“Just general powers of deduction?”

She nodded slowly, with that serious solemnity which characterizes a woman who is saying to herself, Now I’m pretty tight, hut no one must know it. I’m going to nod my head, and I must be careful to see that it doesn’t nod too far and fall right off in my lap.

I said, “Bertha’s all right now. You can forget about her. She was a little belligerent at first, but that doesn’t mean anything — not with Bertha. She’s like the camel, very even-tempered.”

“Donald, suppose that had been the police. What could we have done?”

“Nothing.”

“Suppose they pick me up. What am I to do?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that. Don’t talk. Don’t make any statements. Don’t give them any information about anything until you’ve seen a lawyer.”

“What lawyer?”

“I’ll get you one.”

“You’re so good to me.”

Her words were getting just a little thick. There was an effort in the concentration of her gaze, as if she wanted to be certain to hold me in one place so that I didn’t drift out of her field of vision right while she was looking at me.

“Know something?” she asked abruptly.

“What?”

“I’m nuts about you.”

“Forget it. You’re cockeyed.”

“I’m tight all right, but I’m still nuts about you. Didn’t you know it back there in the hotel when I kissed you?”

“No, I didn’t think anything about it.”

Her eyes were large. “You should think something about it.”

I leaned across the table, pushed the plates away to make a clear spot on the tablecloth. “Why did you leave Los Angeles?”

“Don’t make me talk about it.”

“I want to know.”

The question seemed to sober her. She looked down at her plate, thought for a moment, said, “I could use a cigarette.”

I gave her one and lit it.

“I’ll tell you, if you make me, Donald, but I don t want to. You could make me do anything.”

“I want to know, Rob.”

“It was years ago, 1937.”

“What happened?”