Donald Hamilton: The Poisoners

He had sharp eyes, but of course that was his job. The man in the sports shirt waved him aside. "Never mind.

Come in, Mr. Helm.. I have a present for you." As I approached, he held out his hand. "I'm Frank Warfel. You may have heard of me."

They always think you must have heard of them. Shaking his hand, I said, without committing myself to a downright lie: "I may have. But why is Frank Warfel giving me presents months after Christmas?"

"Come on in," he said without answering my question; then he went on earnestly. "Mr. Helm, everybody makes mistakes. And sometimes in my business-like maybe in yours-mistakes are pretty hard to correct, if you know what I mean…

He stopped, because I wasn't looking at him any longer. I was looking at the blond girl in the ice-blue satin lounging pajamas who'd appeared in the doorway behind him. She was a tall girl, made taller by her piled-up silver-blond hair and the high-heeled pumps she was wearing. The obsolete hairdo and footgear told her story at a glance. She would know that her bird's-nest coiffure was a couple of years out of date, but if that's the way it pleased The Man, that's the way she'd wear it.

She would also know that the high, slim heels of her blue satin pumps were no longer in fashion. New York and Paris had decreed that women should now stand around on lower and chunkier foundations that were undoubtedly more comfortable, not to mention being easier on the floors and rugs. This woman was undoubtedly aware of it, but she would also be aware that to a lot of men, Frank Warfel presumably included, a woman isn't really sexy unless she's got on narrow heels at least four inches high and to hell with the dictates of fashion. Much as I hated to agree with a guy like Warfel about anything, I had to admit that I felt pretty much the same way on this particular subject.

"Aren't you going to introduce us, darling?" the girl said throatily to Warfel.

The wide satin pajamas rippled and gleamed as she came forward, swaying sinuously. It looked hard on the vertebrae. Her voice, like her movement, was straight Hollywood, just vibrating with artificial sex appeal. It had to be artificial, because in a sense she had no sex. I mean, she had no waist and hardly any hips, and she wasn't even particularly well endowed up above.

Please understand, I'm not saying this in a spirit of criticism. I never did go for the Jersey-cow ideal of feminine pulchritude. I think it's real nice that nowadays they're allowed to admit it when their udders aren't up to State Fair standards.

But the fact was that this willowy blonde was so slender as to be practically useless for bed warming or child bearing-at least that was the impression she gave. It had to be wrong. Warfel might not be interested in procreation, but it seemed unlikely that he'd keep a female around who was totally unemployable in bed. And rightly or wrongly the girl obviously considered herself the sexiest thing since Jean Harlow, or at least since Marilyn Monroe.

I glanced at Warfel and made a soft little noise of appreciation. "Some Christmas present," I said, deadpan. "Remind me to tell you when my birthday is, Mr. Warfel."

He didn't like that. I'd known he wouldn't; I guess I was just getting a cheap kick out of teasing the animals. Or maybe I was making a scientific test to determine how much his greasy affability would take; in other words, how important it was to him, for reasons yet unknown, to be nice to me. It must have been pretty important. They're all the same, those little hoodlum kings, and what's theirs is theirs and nobody poaches on their territory, not even in a joke.-but he took it from me and even managed a hollow laugh.

"Bobbie, this is Mr. Matthew Helm, who works for the U.S. government," he said. "Mr. Helm, Miss Roberta Prince."

"He's cute," Miss Prince said in her throaty voice. "I'm simply mad about tall men, particularly tall government men. Can I keep him for a pet?"

I wondered if she could be doing a little testing, too, because this was also against the house rules. No lady receiving Frank Warfel's favors should be foolish enough to indicate in any way that she might possibly be interested in lesser men, even just for laughs. But he took this, too, with only a faint narrowing of the eyes and sharpening of the voice.

"Run along, Bobbie. We've got business."

"Oh, you and your tiresome old business!" she said petulantly, but she turned away.

I watched her move out of sight in her exaggerated, undulating fashion. It was a good act, or rather, it was a lousy act that would have been laughed off the screen, but what did she care as long as Frank Warfel liked it. If rippling like a snake in high heels and ice-blue satin was what it took to keep the money-tree shedding its crisp green syndicate foliage all over her, and she could do it, more power to her. I just hoped that that was all she was after. I had trouble enough without blonde trouble.

"So I'm a government man," I said sourly to Warfel. It seemed just as well to clarify the situation, since he'd taken the first step. I went on: "I didn't know it showed. Or could you possibly have had my motel room wired for sound when I made a certain call to Washington a little while ago."

He grinned. The idea that he'd put one over on me, electronically, was making him feel better again. He said, "Maybe. Over this way, Mr. Helm. Follow me." He led me through the living room where the blonde, holding a magazine, had draped herself over a big chair in a position that could only have been assumed by a teenager or an acrobatic dancer. "Right through that door ahead of you," Warfel said. "There's your man."

It was a bedroom, but it wasn't being used for the purpose at the moment. I looked at the man tied to the chair at the foot of the bed. He was black, with bushy black hair standing up and out from his head the way it's worn nowadays-proudly. He wasn't as big as the man beside me, but he looked compact and powerful. His nose had been broken in times past, and one ear had been thickened. There was another man in the room to guard him, a nondescript individual with a wide, flat, pock-marked face.

I said, "I liked the first sample better. This one isn't so cute. Who is he?"

"Arthur Brown, known as Basher Brown, or simply The Basher," Warfel said. "You may take him with you if you like, Mr. Helm, but it might be more convenient if you dealt with him right here. Convenient for you, I mean. I'll be glad to have the boys clean up after you, inconspicuously. That's how your chief said it should be arranged, when you spoke to him on the phone just now, wasn't it? Inconspicuously. We're happy to oblige. It's part of the service."

I looked at the black man, who looked back at me with the careful expressionlessness of a member of another race who's damned if he's going to show fear before a bunch of alien tormentors.

I said, "I see. This is the guy I'm looking for?"

"That's your murderer," Warfel said. "I suggest you use the knife, if you want to take care of him here. I own the building, but I'd rather not have any gunshots, if you don't mind."

He was needling me in some way, deliberately challenging me to commit a cold-blooded killing in front of witnesses. I couldn't make out if his purpose was to heat me into it or cool me off it. Or maybe he was just sneering because it was his nature. Or maybe he was simply overacting a role, which brought up the interesting question: what role, in what play?

"What did he use?" I asked. "Where's the cannon?"

"The gun?" Warfel made a gesture at the guard. "Give The Basher's gun to Mr. Helm."

The man went around the bed and picked something off a chair that also held a jacket presumably belonging to Arthur Brown, who was in his shirtsleeves. The guard handed me a large Smith and Wesson double-action revolver with a six-and-a-half-inch barrel. Longer tubes are made, and for a powerhouse cartridge like the.44 they have some advantages, but they're even harder to hide.