Dan Marlowe - The Fatal Frails

Gloria tugged at his arm. “Can we leave?”

Johnny looked at Rogers, who nodded after a second's hesitation. Johnny rose to his feet. From the corner of her eye the blonde caught the movement. “You're leaving?” she said sharply, interrupting Cuneo in the middle of a question. “I want to talk to you.”

“Give me a ring sometime,” Johnny said easily.

“Mrs. Winters-” Cuneo began doggedly.

“Oh, shut up!” she told him rudely. The tips of the detective's ears glowed pinkly as she moved away from him to take Johnny by the arm. She drew him aside. “I want to talk to you,” she repeated. “Soon. Can't you come back later?” She smiled, pure mischief in her eyes. “If you've the strength?”

“I think I'd rather tackle it fresh.” Johnny cocked an eye at the bedroom. “That room in there-with your clothes off, doesn't a man need a search party?”

“The sheets are black,” she assured him. “Black silk.” She smiled again. “Well?”

“Not tonight. You call me.”

“I'm shameless enough,” she admitted. She was looking at him curiously. “I thought you might make it a little easier for me, though. Ah, well. C'est la guerre. Have fun.”

Johnny collected the waiting Gloria and led the way out to the elevator. He thought she looked a little wan.

“What did Madeleine want?” she asked him directly.

“A younger man, I guess.” He grinned at the redhead. “She's lucky we were with her, walkin' in on that. Alone, she'd have been makin' her noises at Cuneo downtown. They're well paired.”

“I don't know why it shook me so,” she said wearily. “Why are all these people killing themselves?” Johnny looked at her. “Arends never killed himself.” “He didn't? But he looked just the same-” “As Dechant? With some important differences he looked the same. Arends took four in the head, dead center. A man don't last to pull the trigger on himself four times, where he took them.”

“He was killed? But the police didn't say-” “They never do say, till the M.E.'s report is in, but you can bet me. They know what it was.” The elevator stopped, and the door opened noiselessly. Johnny followed Gloria through the lobby to the street. “Come on. We'll get you a drink. You need it.” He looked at her hands as she changed the position of the attache case under her arm. “Forget your gloves? I'll run back up an-”

“Don't bother, Johnny.” She tucked her arm in his. “I'm sure I have a pair of suedes in my bag. I'd just as soon forget about up there.” Her eyes were shadowed as she tried to smile up at him.

“Okay. Let's get that drink.”

He whistled for a cab.

Johnny sat in a big armchair in Gloria Philips' apartment in a pleasantly relaxed glow. The dinner had gone off well, and the after-dinner drinks hadn't hurt anything, either. He sat and awaited the redhead's return from the bedroom into which she'd gone upon their arrival.

His eyes roamed the room, lazily. Gloria Philips' apartment was small but neatly furnished. Gloria Philips herself was small but neatly furnished. It made a hard combination to beat, Johnny felt.

“Keep you waiting long?” she asked huskily from the doorway.

He hadn't heard the door open. “It was worth it,” he said softly. The redhead was wearing something black, fragile, loose, long, clinging and semitransparent. She came directly to him and sat on the arm of his chair. She smiled down at him, the blue-gray eyes bright with liquor and with something else. Johnny pushed back the loose sleeve of the flowing negligee and traced the silken contours of her upper arm with his fingertips.

She bent down over him until her lips rested against one ear. “Did you really move a whorehouse into Silver City?” she murmured.

“I really did.”

She slid down off the arm of the chair into his lap. “Tell me about it.”

He stood up with her dead weight in his arms. “I'll do better than that, kid,” he told her. “I'll show you.”

He carried her to the bedroom and closed the door.

He reached for the switch on the lamp on the night table when he heard her returning to the bed. “No!” she said sharply, sensing his movement, but she was too late. She grabbed for the negligee at the foot of the bed to shield full-fleshed nudity as the light bathed her. Johnny intercepted her arm. Slowly he drew her up and in until she slithered across turn face down. “Will you stop it?” she demanded crossly, and flung a hand behind her.

He removed the hand unhurriedly and rested his eyes upon the smooth white buttocks. He looked again, more closely. With a finger he traced one of a number of misty dark lines faintly visible beneath the satiny surface. “What happened here?” Johnny asked her.

She stirred uneasily on his knees. “I fell on the stairs.” Her voice was muffled.

“The hell you fell on the stairs. I've seen a whipped rump before. Who ploughed your field?”

“Let me back under the covers,” she pleaded. He released her arm, and she crawled back in beside him. The look she gave him was as defiant as her tone. “You can't guess who did it?”

“Stitt?”

“Yes, Stitt, damn him!”

“How long ago?”

She shrugged bare shoulders. “Two months, ten weeks.”

He whistled. “An' you still look like that? What the hell did he use?”

“A riding crop. The doctor said it would be six months before I bleached out completely. I was in bed five days. I couldn't move.”

“I believe it. How'd it happen?”

“I misjudged him,” she said, remembered resentment in her tone. “I had information I thought he'd buy, or trade for. Instead he tied me over the end of a bed and whipped it out of me. I made it harder on myself by thinking that if I kept my nerve and didn't talk he'd get scared and quit. I didn't realize until too late that he was-enjoying himself.”

“Did he have a hold on Arends? He sure as hell didn't sound like a man talkin' to his boss over there.”

“Max always acts like the king of the mountain. You never saw anyone so arrogant.” She leaned up on an elbow to look into his face. “I'm answering a lot of questions, Johnny. I wouldn't want you to forget it when it's my turn.”

“What's with all this mismarked and unmarked symbols I been hearin' about?”

“That was a very minor matter, Johnny, except to Jack Arends.” She slid down beside him again. “Every foreign shipment coming through customs, whether by boat or air, has every individual piece in the shipment marked with the symbol of the importing merchant. For one reason or another a shipment occasionally isn't picked up here by the importer to whom it was consigned, and then, rather than pay round-trip freight charges and wind up with the merchandise still on his own shipping platform, the manufacturer will scramble around to find someone else to take it over. In such cases customs insists that the goods be re-marked with the symbol of the new consignee. It's a tedious, time-consuming and expensive process. Since the manufacturer will make a cash allowance to the new consignee for the expense of the re-marking, if the actual re-marking can be avoided it's cash in the importer's pocket. It's a favorite evasion of the borderline importers and freight forwarders, although not the big ones like Jack. It requires-”

Johnny interrupted. “Hold it just a minute, sugar.” He leaned up over her to reach for the phone on her side of the bed. He dialed the hotel. “Edna? Killain. Tell Vic I'm gonna be late, will you?” He looked down at the auburn hair spread on the pillow and the perfectly formed white neck with the little hollow at the base of the throat. “Make that good an' late. Thanks, Edna.” He hung up, placed a palm flat on the soft swell of Gloria's stomach and jiggled lightly. He grinned as her knees came up involuntarily. “You were sayin' it requires-” he prompted her.