James Chase - This Way for a Shroud

Maurer waved Feiner away. When he had gone, he looked over at Gollowitz.

“What’s the idea? He wouldn’t send her here to spy, would he?”

Gollowitz shook his head.

“I can’t believe that.”

“Go and talk to her, Louis,” Maurer said. “Handle her carefully. Don’t let her know you know who she is. See if she’ll tell you. Try and find out what she’s doing here.”

Seigel nodded and went out.

“Do you know anything about her?” Maurer asked as Gollowitz sat down again.

“Not much. She’s a looker. I think at one time before she married, she did a bit of singing: small stuff, small fees: you know the kind of thing. They got married about three years ago.”

“What the hell can she be doing here?” Maurer said, pulling at his under-lip.

Gollowitz shrugged. He wasn’t interested in Janey Conrad. In a few hours, he was thinking, Maurer would be on the yacht. He would then be in charge of Maurer’s kingdom, something he had thought about as a remote possibility for the past three years, and now it was within his grasp. It would be he now who would be the power in the organization. No longer would he have to persuade or even beg to have his advice followed. He would decide something should be done, and it would be done immediately.

His mind shifted from the taking over of Maurer’s power to something else that Gollowitz had looked at with envious eyes and frustrated desire ever since he had first met her: Maurer’s wife, Dolores.

Just to think of that tall, red-haired, green-eyed woman made Gollowitz short of breath. To his mind there had never been any woman more desirable and intriguing than Maurer’s wife, and yet Maurer seemed scarcely to be aware she existed. How could he have had an affair with that Arnot woman when Dolores was his? Gollowitz wondered. How could he?

“What’s on your mind, Abe?” Maurer asked sharply, his eyes on Gollowitz’s face.

Gollowitz realized he had been practically thinking out loud, and that was highly dangerous.

He shrugged, his face expressionless.

“A hell of a lot of things,” he said, frowning. “Do you imagine I like this? You walk out of here and leave me holding the can. I’ve got a hell of a lot of things to think about.”

Maurer nodded.

“I won’t be away for long,” he said. “Just hold everything down until I get back. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Gollowitz thought that if anyone should worry it should be Maurer, but he didn’t say so.

Janey Conrad looked anxiously around the crowded bar. She had got past the doorman by telling him she was expecting friends. The Paradise Club didn’t encourage women on their own. The club had its own flock of hostesses, and outside competition wasn’t welcomed.

The last time Janey had come to the club she had been picked up almost immediately by a fat, elderly man who had spent the evening buying her drinks and telling her off-colour stories. Janey had found him insufferably dull, but now she hoped feverishly that he would put in an appearance, but there was no sign of him.

In fact there appeared to be no unattached men this night at the club, and Janey began to grow uncomfortable. She realized she couldn’t continue to sit alone at the corner table much longer. Already the bartender was looking her way, and two of the hostesses, bright, brassy-looking girls, were eyeing her over with open hostility.

She nervously finished her drink. What a let-down if she had to go! she thought. After spending the whole evening making herself look as attractive as she could, and then wasting a taxi fare to the club. There was nowhere else she dared go. At least none of Paul’s stuffy friends ever came to the Paradise Club.

Then just when she was resigning herself that she could stay no longer, she saw a tall man moving towards her, wearing a faultlessly cut tuxedo: a man that set her heart beating rapidly. His lean good-looking face and the white scar that ran from his left eye to his nose set her nerves in a flutter.

He paused at her table and gave her a wide friendly smile. She smiled back, a little uneasily, but she didn’t attempt to conceal her hopeful interest.

“Don’t tell me he’s stood you up,” Seigel said, bending over her. She felt he was trying to look down the front of her low-cut dress, and she drew back, a little alarmed, but excited, too. “I’ve been watching you. You’ve been here quite a time.”

“Well, yes,” she said, and glanced at her wrist-watch. “He is late, but he’ll be along. He — he’s always late.”

“Time and woman should wait for no man,” Seigel said, his smile widening. “Can’t I take his place?”

She pretended to hesitate.

“Well, I don’t know. I — well, we don’t know each other, do we?”

He pulled out a chair and sat down.

“That’s easily fixed. I’m Louis Seigel. Who are you?”

“Janey… Conrad,” Janey said, remembering that Paul had said she was easily recognized and deciding at the last moment not to give her maiden name.

“Well, there you are,” Seigel said. “We now know each other. Simple, isn’t it? Let’s have a drink.”

She watched him snap his fingers at the bartender, and saw how quickly the bartender came out from behind his bar to take Seigel’s order. She noticed, too, the drinks came with miraculous swiftness, and the martini the bartender placed before her was unrecognizable from the one she had ordered and had to wait for.

“I wish I were a man,” she said, as the bartender went away.

“You get all the service. The last drink I had was disgusting.”

“I’m glad you aren’t a man,” Seigel returned, giving her his famous bold look. He had always wondered how Conrad had got hold of such a lovely wife, and now at close quarters he wondered still more. “Didn’t I see you here a few nights ago?”

Janey nodded.

“I look in sometimes. I like this place. Do you know it well?”

“Pretty well,” Seigel said, and laughed. “It’s the best of the night spots in town.” He picked up the martini. “Here’s to a long and beautiful friendship.” He drank the martini, emptying his glass in one swallow. “Down the hatch with it,” he went on, “and let’s have another.”

Janey was ready to comply, and the bartender immediately served two more martinis without being asked. She was not slow to notice the frank admiration in Seigel’s eyes as he looked at her. She was experienced enough to know Seigel was dangerous. He wouldn’t be content just to sit and talk. Before very long the inevitable suggestion that they should go somewhere alone together would be made, and Janey’s heart beat a little quicker as she tried to make up her mind just how far she would allow him to go. It didn’t occur to her that when the time came, she might have no choice. She had plenty of confidence in herself to handle any situation, but then she wasn’t to know that Seigel was a difficult man to stop, once he got going.

Talking to him, seeing the way he was looking at her, feeling the effects of the martinis and hearing the dance band in the restaurant, brought back to Janey the exciting days before she married. She had really kicked the can around in those days, she thought. After all, it wasn’t all that long ago: three years.

“You have a wicked thought running through your mind,” Seigel said. He had the knack of reading a woman’s mind. It was because he invariably knew the right moment to make his advances that his success with women had become a bye-word amongst his friends.

Janey flushed. “I haven’t!” She finished her martini and put the glass down on the table with a defiant little click. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”