Murderers' Row by Donald Hamilton Page B

giggled and took my arm as we walked towards the shore.
    â€œI like you, Jim,” she said. “I had a dog once that was just like you, a big black Doberman. He’d bite anybody I told him to. I didn’t even have to tell him. If I didn’t like them, I’d just snap my fingers and he’d go for them. I taught him that. Papa thought he was just getting mean, the way Dobermans do. Papa didn’t know. The dog’s name was King. Papa had him put away, finally. I cried all night, I was nine years old.”
    â€œSure,” I said. “Will you cry all night if they put me away, Teddy?”
    â€œDon’t say that!” She stopped, swinging to face me. “I don’t want you to take any chances. I do like you. At least you’re honest, in a brutal sort of way. You don’t pretend to be something you aren’t, like everybody else I know.”
    Even if she was a screwball, even if she had murder on her twisted little mind, it made me feel a little guilty to have her say that to me. Anyway, that was my first reaction. And then I found myself wondering if maybe that wasn’t the reaction she’d been trying for.
    It occurred to me suddenly that I’d been overlooking something: I’d been overlooking the fact that Jean’s room had been wired for sound. She’d reported to that effect, and an agent of her experience wouldn’t make a mistake about it. I had to assume, therefore, that some tapes had been recorded last night. I had to assume that the person I was trying to locate—the contact—had already played those tapes, carefully studying the dialogue that had passed between Jean and me before she died. I’d been putting on an act of sorts, if you recall—so had Jean— but anybody listening to our recorded conversation would certainly know I wasn’t a gangster named Petroni.
    Yet the two people who had made contact with me so far had acted on the assumption that I really was Lash Petroni, a ruthless, unscrupulous, but possibly useful individual: a killer for hire. Or had they? It was, after all, a coincidence that two people should have hit on the idea of hiring me for the same job. Perhaps at least one of them knew perfectly well that the man he—or she—was ostensibly trying to bribe to commit murder was really a government agent. Perhaps it was a clever cover-up as well as a delicious joke and a way of keeping an eye on my activities...
    I glanced at the kid standing in front of me with the sun bright on her cap of pale hair. Her words ran through my head again: You don’t pretend to be anything you aren’t. She could be perfectly sincere in her cockeyed way, but I couldn’t overlook the possibility that she was throwing me a mocking hint, taunting me with her secret knowledge that, as a one-man Murder, Inc., I was the world’s biggest fake.
    I said, “Everybody pretends something, small fry. How are you at pretending?”
    Her blue eyes got narrow, as if I’d accused her of something. Well, maybe I had. “Are you busy tonight?” I asked easily.
    She relaxed. “Well, yes. I have a date.”
    â€œBreak it. Wait a minute. Who’s the guy?”
    â€œWho would it be?” she asked with a grimace. “How many people do I really know in this forsaken town? He kept pestering me and what else was there to do except sit in that lousy motel room and think?”
    â€œOrcutt?” I said. “Well, can you get him to take you to a cocktail party being given this evening by some people named Sandeman? I gather they’re relatives of Mrs. Rosten, which means they’re relatives of Orcutt, so he should be able to swing it.”
    She said, “Well, I can try, but—”
    â€œWhen you get there,” I said, “ditch the Thunderbird boy temporarily and make a play for Louis Rosten. Can you do that? Can you play them both, Orcutt and Rosten? Can you take Rosten