George Axelrod: Blackmailer

When she finally spoke her first words were, “My hair’s all wet.” She ran her hand weakly through her wet, matted hair. Then she swore, gasped and was sick again.

This time I left her alone.

In the bedroom I went through her purse. I wasn’t looking for anything but cigarettes.

I hate a man who snoops but I couldn’t help noticing that she had acquired a new automatic.

I took the gun and the cigarettes and matches out of her purse. I put the gun in my pocket and lit two cigarettes. Then I went back into the bathroom.

She was sitting on the edge of the bathtub drying herself with a towel. She had taken off her wet underwear. She spread the towel across her lap and said, “What the hell happened, baby?”

“I think maybe you got yourself plastered, baby,” I said. “I think maybe you kind of passed out.”

I handed her the other cigarette. She took it, inhaled deeply, coughed, then recovered and inhaled again.

“Thanks, baby,” she said.

I realized suddenly that I was staring at her body, at her slim shoulders and firm, full breasts.

I picked up my coat and handed it to her. She put it on.

“Listen,” I said, “what were you drinking, anyway?”

“Drinking?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m trying to think,” she said.

I helped her up and guided her back to the bed. She stretched out and I spread a towel under her still wet hair.

“I feel awful,” she said. “Let me have my lipstick.”

I rummaged around in her purse looking for her lipstick. I found it and handed it to her. She started to use it but she couldn’t make it. She dropped it into the pocket of my coat. “I feel awful,” she said.

“What were you drinking?”

“I had one drink,” she said. “Just one drink.”

I laughed. “In that case, lady, somebody fed you a mickey.”

Jean Dahl gasped sharply and sat up on the bed. It seemed as if her head had suddenly cleared. “My God,” she said hoarsely, “they tried to kill me.”

Then she began to sob hysterically.

I didn’t touch her. I sat in a chair across from the bed and let her cry it out. After a while her sobs stopped. She lay with her head on the towel, her eyes closed, her breathing gradually becoming regular.

“Jean,” I called. “Jean!”

But she was asleep.

My clothes were wet. I went back into the bathroom and got dried up as well as I could. I combed my hair. I had another one of her cigarettes. Then I took her gun out of my pants pocket and dried it off.

It was a dainty and feminine kind of gun. I didn’t know enough about firearms to tell if it was a. 22, a six-shooter, or some new kind of cigarette lighter. But it smelled like a gun. Oily.

I held it gingerly with two fingers, and tried to think of some place to put it.

I didn’t want to give it back to her. But I didn’t want to carry it around in my pocket, either.

Finally I took it into the bathroom and put it in the medicine cabinet. I couldn’t think of anything else to do with it.

I went back into the bedroom. Jean Dahl, I decided, had slept long enough. I reached down to shake her and as I did so, the telephone beside the bed began to ring.

I froze.

Walter’s house is hooked up with phone extensions in every room.

I knew from the first sound of the phone that it wasn’t someone calling Walter. And it wasn’t a wrong extension. It was someone calling me.

I let the phone ring three times before I decided to pick it up.

I lifted the receiver very gently and held it to my ear. I didn’t say anything. I just lifted the phone and waited.

The man’s voice on the other end of the phone was cold, harsh, and derisive.

“Eagle Scout,” it said. “Hero. Why don’t you mind your own business?”

“Who is this?” I said. “Whom do you want to speak to?”

“You, Lone Ranger. I want to talk to you.”

“Who is this?” I said.

“You got your dry clothes on. You can come over now. I want to talk to you.”

My heart began to beat rapidly.

“Where are you calling from? What do you want? Tell me or I’ll hang up.”

“Across the hall, Simon Templar,” he said. “The Saint. I’m calling you from across the hall.”

“What?”

“Falcon,” he said. “I’m right across from you. I think maybe we should talk. What kind of manners-to take a lady up to a bedroom in the middle of a party-”

I felt angry and frightened and vulnerable.

“Who is this?” I said. “What do you want?”

“I want to talk to you. Come over.”

“If you have anything to say to me, say it.”

“I thought we could have a little talk about books. Or anyway, one special book. I’ll be here in the room waiting for you. Come across.”

The receiver clicked on the other end.

I hung up the phone and started for the door. Then I stopped and turned back.

Jean Dahl was still asleep on the bed.

I was frightened, but I didn’t like to admit it.

I thought, What can possibly happen at Walter Heinemann’s during a cocktail party?

I looked again at Jean Dahl. On my way out, I took the key out of the door.

In the corridor I stopped. I was taking no chances. I intended to lock Miss Dahl in. I had the key in the lock when I heard a faint sound.

Then I realized that there was someone standing about two feet away from me.

The explosion rocked the back of my head with a blinding flash and I slid to the floor.

It was done as quickly and as simply as that.

I could taste the dust from the carpet in my mouth. I was lying on the floor. I was not sure where I was or what had happened.

I moved my hand along the carpet up to my face. My hand came away sticky with blood.

I peered around and decided I was inside the bedroom. Lying on the floor.

I lay there for a long time trying to understand what had happened. I had started out to meet the man with the nasty voice in the room across the hall-I had been out in the corridor, locking the door from the outside. There had been some reason why I wanted to lock the door from the outside.

Jean Dahl.

I rolled over.

The bed was empty.

I sat up. After a minute or two I got slowly to my feet. I could tell before I searched the place that I was alone. Jean Dahl was gone. The man who had hit me was gone.

Jean Dahl’s wet clothes were gone. Her purse was gone.

I made my way back into the bathroom. In the mirror I could see the cut on my cheek and above it, on the temple, the beginning of a swelling. I washed my face with cold water. I dried my face carefully.

Gradually I became aware of the fact that my hands were shaking.

At first I thought I was frightened. I was. But I wasn’t shaking because I was frightened. I was shaking because I was angry.

I opened the medicine chest. It was almost an electric shock when I saw the gun. Somehow, I had been sure that it would be gone too.

I took the small, ugly-looking gun out of the cabinet and studied it. I found the safety catch and after a moment or two figured out how to open and close the magazine. It was loaded.

I held the gun in front of me with the safety catch off as I left the bedroom.

There was no one in the corridor. I rang for the elevator and got in.

As the car wheezed to a stop and the doors opened, I could hear a babble of voices, among them Walter’s high-pitched giggle. I started to my left, down the long, thickly carpeted corridor.

There were perhaps fifty people in the billiard room. Walter was standing near the double doors with a glass of champagne in his hand. He saw me and began to giggle. “Richard!” he said, and came bustling over to me. “Wherever have you been? Good God-did you fall into the john?”