Dan Marlowe - The Fatal Frails

“I really don't know you well enough to advise you, Mr. Killain.” Her smile was brilliant.

“Save the candlepower, kid. This is business. An' the name's Johnny. As for not knowin' me, we could fix that. I'd promise to enjoy it.” He studied her a moment. “Why do you figure Dechant killed himself?”

“Don't you mean why did he kill himself just now?” she answered, and moved right on. “Don't underestimate Jules. You'll hear from him, when he's had time to think it over. He'll tell you to go to Madeleine. He hates her. He'd like to see her in trouble.”

“But you hate Stitt,” Johnny suggested. “You'd like to see him in trouble.”

The long-lashed eyelids lowered, then swept upward again in a dazzling display. “Claude told you about customs finding out about the symbols not being re-marked?” she asked.

“First I've heard of it,” Johnny said. “Outside of the crack you made upstairs.”

“It's well for my faith in you that you answered that way,” she continued. “Claude didn't know it himself, being just off the plane. That's why Ernest and I were there, to tell him.” A coral-tinted fingernail tapped idly on her coffee cup. “You're serious about having something to sell?”

“I've got it,” Johnny assured her. “Like to get on the bandwagon? You just aim me at the moneybelt. To nail it down for you a little, I spent some time in Italy some time back. Like Claude Dechant. I won't have any trouble sellin'. I just want the best price. Is Stitt the man?”

“Max doesn't respond to pressure,” she said slowly. This time Johnny thought her smile was rueful. “I speak from experience.”

Johnny lit two cigarettes, handed her one and sneaked a look at his matchbook cover. “Look, I can't sit still. Stitt will be at the warehouse, I suppose.”

“Usually.” Her tone was absent. She picked a shred of tobacco from a full lower lip, the blue-gray eyes still studying him. Abruptly she made up her mind. “Forget what I said about Max. Go after Jack. He'll be there, too, this time of day. Jack's the man with the money.”

“You're telling me this because you love me.”

The beautiful face was serene. “I'm telling you because, if you make it to the payoff window, I'd like to be in line for a share. And Jack has the money.” She made an impatient gesture at Johnny's careful inspection of her. “All right, I dislike Max Stitt. If it was just a question of getting him punched in the nose, I'd cheerfully let you go over there looking for him. If there's real money involved, though, Jack's the man with something to lose.” She smiled. “None of them has the right time for me. If you score, remember the source.”

“You can believe it, little sister.” He was watching her face. “You don't like Jack, either?”

“Jack's a fat slug,” she replied indifferently. “I could learn to like his money with no trouble at all.”

“That's my kind of jazz you're playin' now,” Johnny said approvingly. He leaned in closer over the table. “How about dinner tonight to set up the articles of war?” He eyed the golden haze of freckles on the white skin. “You freckled all over like that, kid?”

“Not all over, Johnny.” Her gaze was level and self-possessed. “I think I'd enjoy having dinner with you.”

“Fine. Pick you up here at five?”

“I'll be looking forward to it.” She stood up, pushing back her chair, smiled at him again and walked away. Johnny sat and watched her walk toward the elevator until she disappeared into it.

A lovely little playmate, he decided. Lovely. And dangerous.

Johnny alighted from the cab in front of the three-story brick building of the Empire Freight Forwarding Corporation. Waiting for the driver to make change, he noticed that the place had the indefinable air of decrepitude even the newest warehouses speedily acquire. He wondered if the redhead had felt it necessary to make a phone call to anyone announcing his imminent arrival. He'd soon know, and the knowledge among other things would set the tone for his dinner date with Miss Gloria Philips.

He strode up a narrow cement walk between ten-foot-high, heavy-duty wire fences laced at the top with projecting strands of ugly-looking barbed wire. Ignoring the door marked office, he moved forty feet down the building to an unmarked one.

The high whine of a motor assailed Johnny's ears at his entrance. A man in a woolen shirt, with a baling hook thrust through his belt, looked down at him inquiringly from the cab of a rubber-tired fork-lift truck stacking crates against a wall. Johnny could see, stenciled on the crates in bold black, the letters CB A1448 on 10, and directly beneath it via Akama Maru, Yokohama, Japan. In the background a series of crashes and bangs added to the dissonant symphony of noise. The volume of sound was unbelievable.

“I'm lookin' for Max.” Johnny had to yell it twice, and even thought the man on the truck must be reading his lips.

“Office, I think,” the man shouted down above the bedlam, and reached for a lever to elevate the crate checked on the lift at Johnny's entrance.

Johnny raised an arm to stay him. “Jack around?”

“Mr. Arends? He was in earlier,” the man roared down powerfully. “If the blue Caddie's still in the parkin' lot, he's around somewheres.”

“Thanks,” Johnny mouthed, not expecting to be heard. He backed to the door. On the floor a crate with three broken slats was marked Amsterdam, Netherlands, and against the other wall a neat pile of heavy-looking boxes were labeled Oberon, Suisse. It figured, Johnny thought as he closed the door. Dechant was an importer. Somebody had to get the stuff over here for him.

The parking lot disclosed the tail fins of a blue Cadillac projecting six feet beyond everything else. Johnny looked at it on his way to the door marked office. He hadn't wanted to ask Gloria Philips a direct question. There were a lot of “Jacks” in the world, perhaps several in this building, but a Jack Arends with a big blue Cadillac looked promising.

Inside, Johnny looked from a mousy receptionist behind a low wooden railing to a man half hidden by an old-fashioned roll-top desk. “I'd like to see Max Stitt, miss,” he told the girl.

“It may take a few moments,” she said pleasantly. “I'll see if I can locate him for you.” She flipped a switch on the intercom on her desk. She tried a station, and another, and another. As her voice continued patiently to page Max Stitt the man behind the desk first raised his head, then pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. He waddled toward Johnny, hand extended. “Never like to keep a potential customer waiting,” he said jovially. “Anything I can do for you until Helen finds Max? I'm Jack Arends,” he added as an afterthought. “Max lets me sign a few papers around here.” He chuckled deeply.

Arends was short and almost grossly fat. He wasn't young, but the overlarge head surmounting the squat body was capped with surprisingly youthful dark hair. His nose and mouth would have been grotesque on a face less strong, Johnny felt. The lips were unattractively thick, but creased in a genial grin. Above the blob of a body his huge head suggested a nervous lion.

“Killain,” Johnny said, taking the hand briefly. “Dechant sent me over.”

Jack Arends' geniality vanished as though it had never been. “Where you gettin' your messages from these days?” he growled.

“Before he did the samurai bit,” Johnny explained. “He said if anything happened I should look up Stitt.”

“Yeah?” The fat man pulled at a pendulous lower lip. “Why?” His shrewd little eyes, embedded in puffy rolls of fat, were warily apprehensive.

“I'll tell that to Stitt. It's not about the symbol markings.”

Jack Arends appeared to swell internally. “Who the hell are you? Does every sonofabitch in this town know my business?” He rushed right on without waiting for a reply. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Whatever-your-name-is, I'll bust-” He whirled on short legs at the sound of a closing door to confront an alert-looking, ramrod-straight man walking toward them. “Max!” Jack Arends' voice soared nearly to a screech. “Did you have some kind of a deal going with Dechant? Just because you grew up in the same town with that thief-”