Тэлмидж Пауэлл - The Girl’s Number Doesn’t Answer

“I won’t, Ed.”

“I’ll see you later.”

Later was shortly after dark. I pulled the borrowed heap in behind the old but clean car that belonged to the Martins.

The buildings of the small shopping center gleamed like pearl in the glow of street lamps. The center had closed for the night, except for the drugstore.

I got out of the borrowed car and walked toward Helen’s. She was near the corner of the parking area, inconspicuous among the three or four cars belonging to patrons of the drugstore.

The Rollo house, an isolated, snug miniature estate, was not fully visible from this point, but the view was a clear shot of the long, wide, straight street.

Helen leaned her head a little out of the window and looked up to talk to me as I stopped beside her.

“Anything doing?”

“It’s been perfectly quiet down there,” she said. “Not a soul left or entered, unless it was by the back way.”

“Good.”

“Ed...” Hope, and the fear of hoping, mingled in her strained face. “You’ve got something important, haven’t you?”

I hesitated. Then I told her, “We’ve been taking a clobbering against the ropes. After I talk to Tillie Rollo we may be able to start punching our way out of it.”

She couldn’t help the sudden tears any more than she could stop breathing.

“Easy,” I said.

She managed a smile. “Don’t you know we foolish women have to get misty sometimes from a good thing as well as a bad?”

I started to caution her, to remind her that Tillie hadn’t opened up yet, that I could be wrong, that we were still in about as deep a hole as mortals can get into.

I didn’t say it. At this stage, what good would it do to deny her a ghost of hope?

Her fingers were gripping the car window molding. I gave her hand a squeeze.

“You’ve done your stint, Helen. Now I want you to get out of the neighborhood.”

She nodded and started the car. I waited until she had reached the street and turned the corner.

I parked the borrowed chariot about a hundred yards from Tillie’s place and walked to the elegant little cesspool.

The house was softly lighted. The sport car glinted in the half light like a crouching black leopard under the carport.

I didn’t ring. Now that I was here, I moved quickly across the manicured lawn, skirting shrubs, and paused in the carport.

I tried the door providing side entry into the house from the carport. The door was unlocked, and I let myself in.

I passed through a gleaming kitchen, the dining room. At the edge of the living room, I stopped. There was no sign of Tillie and the house was perfectly silent.

Then I heard a faint sound that seemed to come from the hallway off the living room.

I crossed the living room and entered the hall. There was light in the hall, coming from an open doorway a few feet away.

I reached the doorway, and there was Tillie in her bedroom, moving from closet to wardrobe trunk, which stood open beside the silken-covered bed.

Tillie was coolly and properly lovely in a black, lightweight suit. She arranged a couple of dresses in the wardrobe trunk.

As she started to rise, she glanced in the huge, perfect mirror of the dressing table. She stopped breathing for a second, and we examined each other in the mirror. She watched as the bearish, slope-shouldered figure in the mirror came out of the background.

In the mirror I watched the quick flow of expression on her face. Near panic, briefly. Then anger. Then a hood dropping over the green eyes. The hood was invisible, of course. But you knew it was there. You had to look through it to see the eyes, and it did something to them.

“There wasn’t a telephone handy,” I said.

“That’s too bad. You could have saved yourself a trip out here.” She turned to the dressing table, picked up a package of cigarettes, and lighted one to steady herself.

“I didn’t mind the trip, Tillie. I figured you’d rather put me straight on Luisa Shaw in person.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Same thing we’ve been talking about, honey.”

“Really, you’ve been stretching things because of your desperation. I don’t know Luisa Shaw, never saw her but that one time. I suspect she’s far away from Tampa by this time, and I don’t really care. There’s nothing I can do for you, Ed, and I think you’d better leave now.”

“So you can finish your packing?”

“That’s right.”

“Going to hunt that faraway little town sooner than you expected?”

“I believe that’s my business.” Her voice was steady, but there was a pinched whiteness showing through the make-up on her clear, lovely face.

“You weren’t thinking of leaving a few days ago.”

“Wasn’t I?”

“You didn’t say anything about it.”

“That proves something?”

“You were willing to try to help me find Luisa Shaw so you could be protected and stay here. I believe that’s the way it was.”

“You seem to have drawn some wrong impressions, Ed.”

“Such as the impression that since I was out here the other day somebody has scared the hell out of you?”

There was a momentary spoilage of her poise and ladylike demeanor in the quick, hard way she dragged at the cigarette. “Why would anyone do that?”

“Because I’m trying to find Luisa Shaw and you might be a way.”

“I don’t discuss my business with every sloppy-looking bear who barges in here, Ed, which is why I said nothing to you of my plans the other day. I’ve done as I promised. I inquired after Luisa Shaw for you. Don’t you appreciate that?”

“I’d appreciate it a lot more if you’d tell me who doesn’t want me to find her.”

“Okay,” she said, “I’ll tell.”

I waited. “Who?”

“A figment of your imagination. But I’ll tell you one thing. This Shaw business only solidified my plans to leave. It’s shown me that as carefully and rigidly as I conduct my business, I can’t stay out of the records forever, what with people like you around. It’s proven to me that one day one of my girls will do something foolish and I’ll be dragged in. After all, I have enough now, with my stocks, bonds, savings, and the price this house will bring.”

“A woman like you never has enough, Tillie. I’ll put you wise to yourself. For years you’ve kidded yourself. You’ve set a goal that helps you kid yourself. Actually, you like what you’re doing. You like the money and the ease and your power over the girls.”

Hatred was sudden and naked in her eyes. Then the hood washed over the green depths again. “You’re wrong about my not wanting the respectability, the husband, the place in society, Ed. I do like power. I like the power I have now. But it’s nothing compared to the power I want, the power I’ll have.”

“Suit yourself,” I said, “and leave now to search out your nameless little town and respectable husband. I won’t delay you another five seconds. All I want is a name — or Luisa Shaw’s address.”

“I don’t know either...”

I caught the collar of her jacket the way I would a man’s. I snapped her around and opened my mouth to speak as the shot came from outside, punched a neat hole in the window and a messy one in Tillie’s neck. The bullet entered the back of her neck, struck bone, was deflected, and angled up and out. It nipped by my shoulder and I heard it strike the wall behind me, its power spent, and fall to the floor.

A red gusher poured from the side of Tillie’s neck. I felt a paralysis grip her entire body. Her head fell over to rest on her shoulder.

She looked at me with eyes that pleaded desperately for life.

I knocked the lamp from the dressing table and fell with Tillie to the floor. In the darkness I heard the tortured hiss of breath, in and out, through torn flesh.