Donald Hamilton: Murderers Row

"M-mister, have you g-got a m-m-match?"

The cigarette between her blue-cold lips bobbed as she spoke. She had good reason to be cold; she didn't have enough on to warm a newborn kitten. Personally, I applaud the return of the reasonably discreet one-piece bathing suit, such as the other girl was wearing. It has brought a little suspense back into our lives. For a while, there was hardly a thing a girl could reveal to you in private that you hadn't already seen in public-you and every other man on the beach.

But this kid was still on the Bikini kick. The scanty bra and G-string might have looked very sexy in July, but they didn't go well with goose-bumps. They just looked ridiculous and a bit indecent. I got a folder of matches from my pocket and held it out. She waved her hands to indicate that they were wet. She leaned forward, sticking her face, and the cigarette, over the railing.

I struck a match and stepped up to hold it for her, having no choice. This close, I realized how small she was: no more than five feet and maybe ninety pounds of toy blonde. Her hair, cut boyishly short, was that pale color that doesn't even darken much when wet. It was plastered unbecomingly to her small head. Even so, soaked, shivering and practically naked, she was cute. You wanted to drop a handkerchief over her when nobody was looking, and slip her into your pocket, and take her home for a pet.

"Thanks!" she said, throwing back her head and blowing smoke at the night sky. "I go-guess you think we're d-drunk or c-crazy. Funny thing is, you're p-perfectly right!"

I grinned at her, in response, and walked away. I got into the car and took out a handkerchief and wiped my hands, which were slightly damp with perspiration-I'd half-expected somebody to start yelling murder while I stood there being polite and helpful. I started the little blue Ford they'd given me. Lash Petroni would drive something flashy on his own time, but he'd want an inconspicuous heap when he was working. I backed out of the slot and started towards the highway. I had to remind myself not to attract attention by hurrying.

The little blonde, wrapping herself in a striped beach towel under the pool lights, paused to wave at me as I drove past. She wasn't only cute, she was friendly, too. Under the circumstances, I may be forgiven for preferring the attitude of the other girl, the lean, dark, reserved one, who wouldn't demean herself by bumming matches from strangers. Well, time would tell how much damage had been done, if any.

It didn't take much time. I didn't even get halfway to Washington before I was picked up.

WHEN I HEARD the siren and saw the red flasher coming up in the mirror, I glanced at the speedometer to make sure I was operating within the law and held on, hoping they'd go past to bother somebody else. They didn't. I pulled over onto the shoulder, therefore, like a docile citizen, and cranked down the window, waiting for the first policeman to come up.

"What's the matter, officer?" I asked.

Then I saw the revolver in his hand, and I knew I was in real trouble. They don't unlimber the firearms for a simple traffic offense. I'd been hoping to make Washington, where I'd have turned in the car for burial, along with everything else connected with the fictitious Lash Petroni, who'd have ceased to exist. That was the first line of defense, if things went wrong. The second was to stick to my Petroni cover and hope for the best.

The one thing I had no authority to do was to reveal myself publicly as a government agent who went around beating up people-not to mention leaving them dead on the floor. That decision was Mac's to make, not mine.

I had no choice. I drew a long breath and became Lash Petroni until further notice. "I asked you a question, buddy," I said harshly as the state policeman reached me. "What's the big idea, stopping me like this? I wasn't doing over fifty-five, and what's with the crummy artillery, anyway? Here's my license-"

"Please keep your hands on the steering wheel, sir." He was very polite and businesslike. He waited until his partner was in position to back him up before he waved me out with the gun. "Now get out slowly-"

They drove me back the way I'd come. Presently they left the big highway and took me by smaller roads to a building equipped with a tall radio mast, where they turned me over to the county police, with a sigh of relief. They were state cops. Their primary job was seeing that people didn't kill themselves, or each other, on the public highways. Suspected criminals, even loud-mouthed ones, were just a sideline with them.

The county officers searched me and put me through the fingerprint routine. They also searched the little Ford, which had been brought around by somebody. At least I deducted that was what a couple of them had been doing outside when they came back in with my suitcase-Lash Petroni's suitcase, to be exact. Mine reposed in a Washington hotel room that was beginning to seem more remote every minute. As for Texas, it was already as unattainable as paradise.

They went through the bag and discovered the switchblade knife hidden in the lining. That had been Mac's idea. When helping an agent build a cover for a particular assignment, he's apt to get carried away by creative enthusiasm. I'd thought the knife unnecessary as a prop, but it's always reassuring to have some weapon along, so I hadn't fought it very hard. Maybe I should have. It certainly didn't make the police feel more kindly towards me now, although it did convince them of my low character.

Then we waited. I offered my blustering Petroni act again, got no takers, and subsided on a bench in sullen silence. After a while, the door opened, and a man came in. He was stocky and white-haired, with a heavy, impassive cop face. His uniform was neat enough, but it had seen lots of wear.

"Here you are, Tom," one of the office help said. "Name: James A. Peters, Chicago. About six-four, about two hundred, dark suit and hat-well, look for yourself. Picked up at eleven-seventeen about twenty miles west on U.S. 50, driving a blue Falcon two-door, Illinois plates."

"That checks right down the line." Neither policeman ~: looked at me, but I didn't think it was accidental that I was present to overhear the conversation. I was being informed, I gathered, that they had the goods on me and I might as well confess. "What's this?" the white-haired man asked, touching the knife on the counter.

"We found it in his luggage, hidden behind the lining."

The white-haired one picked up the knife and carried it over to me. He stood over me for a moment without speaking, tossing the knife contemptuously into the air and catching it again-closed, of course, or he'd have cut himself badly. He was probably pretty good with his police revolver, and maybe even with his bare hands, but knives were out of his line and he was proud of it.

So many of them are, these days. Jim Bowie would be startled to hear it, as would Jim Bridger and Kit Carson and all the rest of those rugged old-timers who opened up a wilderness with their Arkansas toothpicks and Green River blades; but nowadays there's supposed to be something very underhanded and un-American about a knife.

"I'm Sergeant Crowell," the white-haired man said. "Tom Crowell."

"If you drop that," I said, "and damage it, you'll buy me a new one."

He caught the knife and looked at it again, raising his eyebrows. "You admit it's yours?"

"Damn right it's mine," I said. "And I want it back, along with my cuff links and cigarette case and all the rest of the stuff those jerks have been pawing through like they owned it."

"A knife like this is illegal," he said.

"Be your age, Sergeant," I said. "Wearing it may be illegal in certain places, but you know as well as I do that in my suitcase, locked in the car trunk-hell, I could carry a Samurai sword back there if I wanted. Legally."