Strictly For Cash (15 page)

"Why did you give him a ride?"

"He seemed in a hurry to get out of town. It wasn't as if he; looked a tough. He said he was heading for Miami and his car had broken down, and could we take him as far as Lincoln Beach."

"What town?"

"Pelotta."

"Okay, I'll fix it. Paul won't like losing the Bentley."

"He certainly won't."

Reisner was driving fast now, and for some minutes none of us spoke, then he said, "You don't talk much, Ricca. Kind of a quiet character, huh?"

"You wouldn't talk either if you'd had a lump of iron bounced on your skull," I said.

"Yeah, I guess that's right. You look as if you'd been in a fight yourself."

"You don't think Johnny let this thug hit him and get away with it, do you?" Della put in. "Although he was practically out on his feet, he made a fight of it."

"A strong as well as a silent character," Reisner said, and the sneer in his voice was unmistakable. "Not like you, Mrs. Wertham, to stand on the sidelines and cheer."

"I was under the impression you always carried a gun. Not much use carrying it if you don't use it when you have to."

I saw her clench her fists. He had scored a point there.

"I wasn't carrying a gun."

"You weren't? About the first time, isn't it?" He glanced at her in the driving mirror. "Well, well, it always rains when you haven't an umbrella."

I was getting the idea he wasn't talking just to hear the sound of his own voice. He was suspicious, and although there was a bantering, don't-give-a-damn-if-you-answer-or-not tone in his voice, he was after information.

I touched Della's knee, and when she looked at me I cautiously pointed to her handbag, then to myself. She got it the first time. Keeping the bag below the level of the driving seat so Reisner couldn't see what was going on, she took out the gun and passed it to me. I slid it in my pocket. It wouldn't do to let him spot the outline of the gun in her bag as we got out of the car. Our story had to stick.

"How come you stopped at Pelotta?" Reisner asked suddenly.

Della and I exchanged glances. I didn't need any prompting. Now was the time to show him he couldn't go on asking any questions that came into his head.

"Look," I said curtly, "do you mind if we cut out the small talk? I've a head on me like a ten-day hangover. I'd just as soon catch up some sleep as answer your questions."

There was a moment's silence. Then he said, "Sure. Think nothing of it. I've always been a little gabby."

He increased speed, and the big car raced along the broad highway, skirted on one side by palmetto thickets and on the other side by the ocean. After a while we began to climb, and when we got to the top of a steep hill I could see in the distance the lights of a fair-sized town.

"Lincoln Beach," Della said.

I sat forward to stare out of the window. The town was laid out in a semicircle, facing the sea and sheltered by rising ground. We were moving too fast to see much of it, but what I could see told me it was quite a different proposition from any of the other coast towns I'd seen up to now. Even at two o'clock in the morning it was brilliantly floodlit. Blue, amber and red lights outlined the long promenade. Many of the white buildings were plastered with neon lights. From the hill road the town looked like something out of fairyland.

"Pretty nice," I said.

"That's the casino: the flood-lit building at the far end of the bay," she said, pointing. "Looks good, Nick."

"So would I if someone spent a million bucks on me," Reisner said indifferently.

It took us twenty minutes by the dashboard clock to negotiate the twisting hill road, to drive through the town and reach the casino.

The fifteen-foot high gates were guarded by two men in black uniforms, not unlike those Hider's storm-troopers used to wear. They saluted, their faces expressionless as we drove through the gateway.

The mile-long, palm-lined drive was flood-lit with green lamps that created the extraordinary illusion of driving under water.

"I had these lamps fixed a couple of months ago," Reisner said. "There's scarcely a square foot of the place now that isn't lighted. Funny how the mugs go for lights. Business has been pretty good since I put this lot in."

His voice was soft and remote, as if he were talking to himself. He didn't seem to expect Della or me to make any comments, and when Della began to say how well it all looked, he interrupted her as if her remarks were of no interest to him to point out a big bed of giant dahlias that were flood-lit by daylight lamps.

"Every flower has its special lighting," he said. "Paul was crabbing about the cost, but it's worth it. We get mugs from miles around coming to gawp at the flowers: then, of course, they visit the bar and the restaurants and spend their dough."

The drive suddenly opened on to a vast stretch of lawn, and; facing us was the brilliantly lit casino. It was the most impressive and ornate building I have ever seen, like something out of the Ar
abian Nights:
a huge, white building of Moorish architecture^ its six domed towers and bulbous minarets piercing the night sky.

Amber, white, green and red lights, controlled by automatic time switches, played alternately on the front of the building.

He continued to drive along the broad carriage-way, past the casino and on through the pleasure gardens, past the flood-lit swimming-pool where a number of men and women were still swimming or lounging in hammocks in spite of the late hour through another double gate, also guarded by two stiff-necked men in uniform, pait a pitch-and-putt course to a colony of beach cabins built in a semi-circle a hundred yards or so from the ocean, each screened from the other by palms and tropical flowering shrubs.

He pulled up outside one of the cabins.

"Here we are. Everything's ready for you, Mrs. Wertham," he said, twisting around in the driver's seat to look at Della. "Your usual cabin. Where do you want me to put Ricca?"

"He can have the cabin next to mine: the one Paul has," she said, and got out of the car.

"Want me to get the doc down to look at him?" Reisner asked, not moving from behind the wheel.

"I'm okay," I said, joining Della. "Nothing that a good sleep won't put right."

"Suit yourself," he returned, making no attempt to conceal his indifference.

"Don't wait, Nick," Della said. "We'll have a talk in the morning. Thanks for picking us up."

Reisner smiled. His eyes went from Della to me, and back to Della again.

"Well, so long. Call up at the office around noon. We'll have a drink and a get-together."

The big car moved off. Della and I stood watching its bright twin rear lights until they had disappeared, then she drew in a deep breath.

"Well, that's Reisner," she said. "What do you think of him?"

"Tricky."

"Yes. Well, come in. I could do with a drink."

She led me into the cabin and switched on the lights. The place consisted of one large room that served as a sitting-room by day and a bedroom by night, a bathroom and a kitchenette. No expense had been spared to make it luxurious and comfortable. It was unbelievably lavish with its press-button gadgets that operated the windows, the curtains and let down the wallbed and opened the built-in cupboards. Everything in the place seemed to be worked by pressing buttons.

"Like it?" she asked, flopping on the bed. "Paul had a flair for this kind of thing. There are thirty other cabins on the estate, each with its own special d
ecor,
but I like this one best. Get me a drink, Johnny. You'll find whisky in that cabinet over there."

"I'll say I like it," I said as I mixed a whisky and soda. "And the casino! He must have spent millions on it."

"He did." She leaned back on her elbows and looked fixedly at me. The white silk blouse pulled hard across her breasts, and her thick, dark hair fell away from her face and neck, showing the white column of her throat. "All this could be mine if it wasn't for Reisner."

"Would you know what to do with it if you had it?" I said, not paying much attention to what I was saying. The sight of her like that had got me going again.

She took the whisky.

"Wouldn't you, Johnny?"

"I don't know." I went over to a panel in the wall on which were a number of ivory buttons. I pressed one of them marked curtains, and watched the dark-green plastic curtains swing smoothly across the big double windows. "Can you imagine Reisner parting with half a million? I can't."

"He will if we handle him right." She looked down and noticed the rip in her skirt. From where I was standing I could see, through the tear, the white line of her flesh above the top of her stocking. "I must look a wreck," she went on, got to her feet and stared at herself in the mirror that concealed the door to the bathroom.

I came up behind her and we stared at our reflections in the mirror.

Apart from her dishevelled hair, the little cut on the side of her nose, and her ripped skirt, she still looked good - too good for my present mood. Our eyes met in the mirror. She looked fixedly at me, her dark, glittering eyes suddenly tense.

"Better go to your cabin now, Johnny."

"No."

My hands were shaking, and I was suddenly short of breath.

"It'll happen sooner or later if we're going to work together," she said, "but I don't want it to happen now. Please go, Johnny. Not now. It's not safe."

My hands closed over her shoulders. I felt a shiver run through her. I turned her, pulling her against me.

"You've had your say ever since we met," I said. "You've dictated the terms and I've jumped through the hoop. It's going to be different now. I'm having the say and you're jumping through the hoop."

Her arms came up and slid around my neck.

"I like you when you talk like that, Johnny."

V

I had finished a regal breakfast served by a Sphinx-faced Filipino, and had wandered out on to the verandah to smoke a cigarette in the sunshine when I saw Della coming from her cabin towards me.

The sight of her in a sky-blue, off-the-shoulder linen dress, a big picture hat and a pair of sun-glasses the size of doughnuts started my heart thumping. I ran down the steps to meet her.

"Hi, Johnny," she said, smiling up at me.

"You look good enough to eat."

"You don't look so bad yourself." Her blue eyes approved the white slacks and the sweatshirt the Filipino had laid out for me. "And they fit, too."

"They sure do. Where did they come from?"

"I fixed it. I've been busy fixing all kinds of things this morning. We'll go down to the tailor's shop some time and get you properly fitted out. You have to dress the part here."

She laughed.

"It's happening all right. Come and look at the place before we talk to Nick."

We spent an hour wandering around the vast estate. There wasn't a trick Wertham had missed. There were acres of pleasure gardens, an aquarium and sunken lily ponds. Not far from the casino was an arcade of shops where you could buy anything from a diamond necklace to an aspirin tablet. An artificial waterway surrounding the estate, screened by oak trees, hung with Spanish moss, offered a fine hiding-place for you and your girl if you wanted to go for a tour in an electrically driven canoe. There was even a zoo at the back of the casino where peacocks, flamingoes and ibis strutted on the vast stretches of lawn.

"Come and look at the lion pit," Della said. "This is Reisner's pet idea. He's crazy about lions. You'd be surprised how many people come here just to gape at them."

We stood side by side, our arms touching, and looked down into the deep pit, guarded by steel railings where six full-grown lions sprawled lazily in the sunshine.

"I can gape at them, too," I said. "There's something about a lion . . ."

"Reisner feeds them himself. He gives up all his spare time to them." She turned away. "Well, we'd better get on. There's still a lot to see."

Farther along the broad carriage-way we passed an open-air restaurant with its glass dancefloor. A fat, middle-aged Italian in a faultlessly cut morning-coat and a white gardenia in his buttonhole hurried towards us.

"Johnny, this is Louis who looks after our three restaurants," Della said as he bent to kiss her hand. "How are you, Louis? I want you to meet Johnny Ricca."

The Italian gave me a quick, appraising stare, bowed and shook hands.

"I have heard about you, Mr. Ricca," he said. "Is all well in Los Angeles?"

"Certainly is," I said, "but we've got nothing to touch this."

He looked gratified.

"And Mr. Wertham? He is well?" he asked, turning to Della.

"He's fine. On his way to Paris, the lucky man."

"I guess so."

"I will have something very special for you and Mr. Ricca."

"Fine," I said.

"See you later, Louis," Della said, and moved on.

"You mean we eat in that place for all our meals?" I asked as soon as we were out of hearing. 

"Or the other two restaurants. Why not? They're all Paul's, and until they find out he's dead, they're mine, too."

"Yeah," I said, feeling as if I'd suddenly walked into a brick wall. "I hadn't thought of that."

She gave me a sharp glance and lifted her shoulders. We walked towards the casino in silence. There were a few men and women on the wide verandah. They seemed to be catching up with the sleep they had missed the previous night. Some of the women were good enough to go into an Art magazine. I found myself gaping until Della said tartly, "Must you act like a half-wit?"