Hamilton, Donald - Novel 01 (4 page)

     
"Sure," he said, giving her one.

     
"Sit down," she said, patting
the space beside her. He lit her cigarette and sat down. "Oh, for heaven's
sake relax," she said irritably, looking at him. "Please relax! Don't
act like a ..."

     
"You should talk about acting."

     
"Well, stop trying to look so ... so
tough. You're not really very hard-boiled, you know, even if you did slap
me." She glanced at him again. "Aren't you going to say you're
sorry?"

     
"No."

     
"I told you to go, didn't I?"

     
"Like that," he said.
"With tears in your eyes.
Nuts."

     
"Well, what do you want me to
do?"

     
"The mystery woman," he said.
"God, come out from behind that mask."

     
She smiled a little. "You didn't seem
to mind it, Phillip. In fact, there were times when you seemed rather to enjoy
it. Tell me ..."

     
"Yes?"

     
"How many times have you
... ?"

     
He looked at her quickly. "I don't
know," he said stiffly. "Should I keep count?"

     
She smiled again, clearly knowing that he
was lying. "Does your mother know about it?" she asked sharply.

     
"No."

     
"I'm sorry, Phillip," she said
smoothly. "You're really very sweet. But you shouldn't accuse people of
acting after putting on an imitation of a class
A
roue
.
The way you took me in your arms.
And carried me to the bed.
It was really very
masterful."

     
He sat looking at the geometric pattern of
windows on the far side of the airshaft. Presently he reached for his pipe.

     
"Well," he said, drawing a long
breath, "well, we've pretty well taken that apart."

     
She said in a small voice, "Yes. We
have rather, haven't we?"

     
"It's kind of too bad," he said.
Looking at her, he saw that she was crying. "Don't do that," he
protested.

     
"I can't help it. I'm not
acting," she gasped, blinking her eyelids and biting at her lips as, the
tears running down her face, she stared blindly at the confined emptiness of
the airshaft. "It's so nasty," she whispered.

"THERE
ARE NOW two kinds of Frenchmen," the girl who had called herself Janet
Haskell said.
"Those who guessed right and those who
guessed wrong.
My father guessed wrong, but he was a cautious man. He
thought the Germans would win, but he sent me to safety while he could."
She smiled wryly. "I'm afraid I can't feel very moral about it, Phillip.
He was my father and he is dead. It is probably very dreadful of me, but I
cannot hate him for his politics."

     
He looked through the plate glass window
at Times Square, a little disappointing, like most of the places you have heard
about and finally see. I suppose
Trafalgar Square
or the
Red Square
in
Moscow
would be the same way, he
thought; or Place de la Concorde, or
Unter
den
Linden. Well, maybe not
Unter
den Linden right now.
Niagara Falls
was a little more water
falling off a cliff than you had ever seen before.
Miami Beach
was a lot of sand. He tried
to concentrate on what the girl was saying
,
to decide
what attitude he should take about it. But the whole thing seemed farfetched
and improbable. The waitress put breakfast in front of them.

     
"Where did you learn your English?"
Branch asked.

     
"Is it all right? I learned it in
England
before the war. That's
rather a handicap, but. I've been working on it."

     
"I suppose your real name is
Jeannette."

     
"Yes. Jeannette
Lalevy
."

     
"Who s
Haskell?"

     
"Nobody.
I
made it up."

     
"This bird who called on me,"
Branch said. "He was no Frenchman. And the others didn't talk like
Frenchmen."

     
"They would naturally be picked for
their ability to Speak English, stupid," she said, smiling.

     
"Not Dickerson," he said.
"If he wasn't what he said he was then I'm talking Greek right now. I bet
he thinks hors d'oeuvres are something you keep in a stable."

     
Jeannette
Lalevy
hesitated and punctured her eggs with a fork and watched the yolk flow over the
plate. "No," she admitted. "He is probably American. That is
another matter entirely." There was a small silence. "Phillip,"
she said, "Phillip, I swear to you it's a private thing altogether. It had
nothing to do with my father.
Nothing at all.
Nor with politics."
She looked up at him. I could have
lied to you. I did not have to tell you that my father was of
Vichy
."

     
He said, "That's just about the only
thing you have told me."

     
"You will have to take me on faith,
Phillip. They want something, they all want something, but I cannot tell you
what it is."

     
"And knowing that your father was
Vichy
I'm supposed to play it
blind and give you two hundred bucks just for the hell of it." He laughed
a little bitterly. "That's a hell of a lot of faith, toots."
Presently, seeing that she was not going to tell him any more of what he needed
to know, he changed the subject. "What made you pick me on the
train?"

     
She looked up from her plate, startled.
"But," she said, "Phillip"

     
"All right," he said.
"All right."

     
She looked away and smiled a little.
"Well, you were rather conspicuous in that uniform," she said.
"And you looked nice. The Army uniform looks more martial, I think, but
the Navy uniform makes you look like a gentleman." She glanced at him and
added, "You were an officer.

     
He grinned. "I was an officer and I
looked easy to handle."

     
"Yes." She laughed. "Are
you angry?"

     
He shook his head, watching her. Her face
showed no signs of the tears of half an hour before and her hair was again
smoothly rolled about her head; but he could remember how she had cried and knew
that, at least, had been genuine. For a moment he had broken through the
guarded reserve that she carried like
an armor
, and
beneath it she was quite young and rather frightened. And there were too many
against her, whoever she was and whatever she was trying to do; and he owed her
something for last night.

     
He said uncomfortably, "I'll cash a
check as soon as I can get to a bank. Will that take care of you?"

     
She hesitated. "Yes," she said.
"I think it will, Phillip."

     
"All right," he said, grimacing.
"How much do you
need ?"

     
"Why are you doing this for me?"

     
"You know why I'm doing it," he
said.

     
After a little she turned her face away
and looked at the momentary sunshine on
Times Square
. "Don't be
cruel," she said softly.
Then turning back quickly,
"Couldn't you.... come with me?
No," she said, "
you
have to get back, don't you?
Because
of the pictures."

     
He grinned at her. "Stop it," he
said. "You're breaking my heart."

     
"You see right through me, don't you,
Phillip?"

     
"No," he said. "Not all the
way. It's sort of like peeling an onion. There's one layer after another.

     
She said, "Heavens
!,
couldn't you make it a little more romantic, like an artichoke, perhaps?"

     
They laughed foolishly, unable to stop,
and the waitress came with more coffee and took away their empty plates.

     
"Well," Branch said when they
had stopped laughing. "Well, where is this place we're going to,
anyway?"

 
    
The
girl reached across the table to touch his hand lightly. "Really you
should go back, shouldn't you?" she said. "I mean, really?"

     
"Oh, I'm not going back," he
said.
"To hell with that stuff.
They can send
their pictures to
BuPers
if they like." He felt
himself growing red as he tried to explain. "It's not that I don't care,
you understand. It's just that, well, nobody's going to tell me ... Oh,
rats," he said. "I'm just stubborn, I guess. Nobody's going to tell a
two-bit private detective, here's this guy Branch and I want him to go to
Chicago, see, so get a move on and make him go.

     
Jeannette
Lalevy
said, "
that
is very stupid."

     
"Anyway," said Branch,
disregarding her, "what they probably want is to keep me from giving you
money, isn't it? If you haven't any money you can't do anything. If I give you
money they don't give a damn if I stay or go back, do they?"

     
She laughed. "You talk as if you knew
all about it."

     
"That much is obvious," he said.
"I wish you'd tell me about a few things that aren't so obvious, like why
your room was searched, and who was that fake ensign, and why do you want me
along."

     
She smiled at him, still touching his
hand. "Do you have to ask why I want you, Phillip?"

     
"Oh, cut it out," he said
impatiently, withdrawing his hand. "What's the matter, honestly? Do you
feel the need for masculine protection?"

     
Having stopped smiling, she said a little
sharply, "Well, I do need help."

     
"Well, I can't go into it
blind," he said. "I've got to know what it's all about."

     
She picked up her gloves and purse.
"Then I'm afraid I'll have to go without you, Phillip." She stood up.

     
"Don't rush off mad," he said,
looking up at her.

     
"I'm not mad."

     
"Will you be at the hotel?" he
asked.

     
She nodded. He watched her go to the door,
liking the swing of her coat and the easy movement of her long straight legs.
It occurred to him that this was another meal she had got out of him, and now
he was supposed to get two hundred dollars for her somewhere.
Not that he couldn't afford it.
A single man spending his
weekends at home could save a great deal on a lieutenant's salary. But he disliked
the idea that perhaps all it meant to her was the money. He was glad to be
going with her, as of course he was, to see what she did with it. If she had
not asked him he would have made the suggestion himself.

     
There were some very nice things about Jeannette
Lalevy
, but she was not a girl who inspired a great
deal of trust and he did not like what she had told him of her father, although
the fact that she had told him was certainly a point in her favor. He grinned
to himself at the thought that keeping an eye on her promised to prove a highly
interesting way of spending a leave. You could go farther and fare worse, as
the saying went.

     
Commander
Tollifer's
face came to him, with that weary,
well-what-can-you-expect-of-a-reserve-officer look; and he shivered a little
and got up, automatically brushing at the inevitable lint deposited by the
napkin on his uniform trousers. He set the cap squarely on his head and paid
the bill and went out, belting his raincoat about him, to find a bank that
would cash an out-of-town check.

     
Outside it was still cold in spite of the
sun, and a wind was blowing strongly. Northeast, he thought idly, and he looked
at the sky that was a little hazy between the buildings. He wondered if the
small-craft warnings were up along the coast. Hell, I wish I could have got to
sea just long enough to find out what it was like, he thought. Then he
reflected that this was probably just one of those things you thought you ought
to want.

     
A car separated itself from the stream of
traffic and drew alongside the curb abreast of him, clearing his mind of
everything but an instinctive sense of danger, but there was nothing to do on
the crowded sidewalk that was not utterly ridiculous. You could not throw
yourself to the ground or run for a doorway. You could not make a damn fool of
yourself in public. He continued to walk stiffly.

     
"Lieutenant Branch?"

     
He turned his head and looked at the man
in the car, squinting against tire dust thrown up by the wind. Then he went
slowly to the curb. "Yes?"

     
The man was nobody he had ever seen
before, and he was alone in the car, a long, gray, Packard sedan. The man was
very big, with the smooth, pale smiling face of a successful minister. Even
sitting down he was one of the largest men that Branch had ever seen.

     
"I'd like to talk to you,
Lieutenant," the man said, opening the door of the car, the window of
which he had cranked down earlier.

     
"Go ahead and talk," Branch
said.

     
The man waited, smiling. There was no
threat in his smile, but Branch could not help remembering the pictures; and
there were a great many things he needed to know that the man might tell him.

     
"Oh, all right," he said, and he
got into the car, closing the door behind him. The man sent the car away from
the curb.

     
"There's a carton of cigarettes in
the compartment in front of you," he said easily. "Help
yourself."

     
"No, thanks."

     
The big man laughed. "Hell, take a
couple of packs. You can give them to a friend if you don't smoke them yourself."

     
Branch glanced at him and, opening the
compartment, removed two packages from the carton of Phillip
Morrises
and put them in his pocket. All right, he thought,
all right, Mr.
Smugface
. He watched
New York
slide effortlessly past the
windows. It was, insulated and relaxed as he was in the big car, like watching
a motion picture.

     
"She's a great little town," the
big man said heartily.
"The greatest town in the world,
Lieutenant.
There's nothing like
New York
."